Kion

KION Spa is a private, for-profit technology company supporting the modernization agenda of roughly 120 universities across several countries in the European Higher Eduation Area - Italy (65), Albania (11), Romania (5) and Turkey (41). We digitize and automate the entire student life-cycle of Higher Education Institutions - from enrollment through graduation - through the implementation of Student Information Systems. In Italy alone this means managing some 1.2 million students every day, approximately 80% of the market. In 2013 KION moves into the K-12 space aquiring a unique, over-arching perspective over students digital identity across different education levels. Our aim is to become the leading solution provider in selected areas of Mediterranean region, the Middle-East, Central Asia, the Russian Republic and Europe. Established in 2001, KION turns around about 14 Mil €, employess 150 people and is head-quartered in Bologna with regional offices in Istanbul and Izmir. KION is wholly-owned by CINECA a public, not-for-profit university consortium counting as members 74 Italian Universities and the Ministry of University and Research.(www.cineca.it) CINECA has been serving Education and Research since 1969 - orginally a Supercomputing center, eventually turned into a (software) solutions provider for its members. Most notably CINECA develops a full "ERP" for Higher Education Institutions (of which Kion's Student Information Systems is the core module) and acts as the "IT outsourcer" for the Italian Ministry of University and Research developing for example the National Students Database and the National Courses Database.