Rustici Software

Rustici Software was founded in 2002 by Mike Rustici with a focus on making eLearning standards practical and implementable. The company's first major product — SCORM Engine — was a software library that abstracted away SCORM's complexity, allowing LMS vendors to add conformant SCORM support without building it from scratch.

SCORM Cloud, launched as a cloud-hosted version of SCORM Engine, became the de facto testing and hosting platform for eLearning content worldwide. Developers, QA teams, and LMS vendors relied on SCORM Cloud to test content packages, debug runtime issues, and validate conformance.

Rustici's most consequential project came in 2010, when ADL awarded the company a contract to research and develop a next-generation replacement for SCORM's communication framework. Drawing on LETSI's white papers and their own deep experience with SCORM's real-world limitations, Rustici's team designed and built the Tin Can API — later renamed the Experience API (xAPI).

xAPI 1.0, released in April 2013, fundamentally changed what was possible in learning data tracking. The RESTful, statement-based architecture broke free from SCORM's browser-only constraints, enabling tracking of mobile, social, simulation, and real-world learning experiences.

Rustici Software was later acquired by Learning Technologies Group (LTG) but continues to operate as a key infrastructure provider. Their products support SCORM, xAPI, cmi5, AICC, and LTI — making them the only company with production-grade implementations of every major eLearning standard.