Giunti Labs has undergone a management buy-out and, from 1^st August, rebranded to eXact learning solutions (ELS). ELS (www.exact-learning.com) will continue to be engaged in the leading EU R&D framework projects and offer the multi-language content production activities formerly offered by Giunti Labs.

The new management team, which acquired the company with the financial support of private capital investors, has confirmed Fabrizio Cardinali, the former Giunti Labs’ CEO and, currently, the chair of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG), as CEO of the new set-up. It has also confirmed Albino Bertoletti, a co-founder of Giunti Labs (with Cardinali) as the company’s President.

The company’s European headquarters remain in Italy (Florence, Milan, Rome and Sestri Levante), while American lead offices will be in Athens and Atlanta (Georgia, USA) and the activities in Asia Pacific market will be coordinated from Perth (Western Australia).

ELS’s offerings include former Giunti Labs’ learning content management and digital repository solutions, the eXact LCMS™ for the corporate and industry markets and the Harvestroad Hive DR™ for academic, defence and Government initiatives, together with the eXact Method™ consulting methodology.

Comment: Those in charge of ELS claim that, in the era of the iPad and iPhone, its dreams of affordable and effective learning devices bringing learning contents to users where they need them, personalised to their needs and abilities, are coming to market but these new ‘personal media’ need even more powerful infrastructures, platforms and tools on the back-end for single source, multi-channel content production and delivery.

This is the sort of research and development that ELS wants to do – freed from the constraints of being tied to a company in the educational publishing industry. Instead, ELS wants to experiment with the many new digital production and distribution models now being developed. If they succeed in their aims, then every learner who is open to using ‘learning technology’ to achieve their learning goals should benefit.