Akari Software, one of the first Higher Education software vendors in the world to develop curriculum management software solutions, was established in 2010 as a spin out from an existing company in Cork, Ireland that had developed an in house solution on curriculum management for the Munster Technological University (The Cork Institute of Technology Campus) between 2004 and 2006.

The original company had been assigned to develop a software solution that focused on centrally capturing all module and programme data and publishing this to the institution website.

A key driver for this was the requirement for EU countries to standardise educational qualifications and adhere to the Bologna Process that established the European Higher Education Area to facilitate student and staff mobility, to make higher education more inclusive and accessible, and to make higher education in Europe more attractive and competitive worldwide.

This requirement has now become a common standard followed by many countries across the globe.  

As part of the European Higher Education Area, all participating countries agreed to:

• introduce a three-cycle higher education system consisting of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral studies
• ensure the mutual recognition of qualifications and learning periods abroad completed at other universities
• implement a system of quality assurance, to strengthen the quality and relevance of learning and teaching

The next clients were all Irish based as the introduction of outcomes based education and semesterisation was led out in Ireland followed quickly by Scotland, before the rest of the world began to catch up, and some in 2021 are still catching up.