The State University of New York (SUNY) established the need among faculty for an Internet-based course/classroom management system (CMS) to provide the means to customize and manage the instructional process in teaching and learning and to integrate the content from a variety of sources including instructors both local and remote, students, and publishers in an asynchronous or virtual learning and/or synchronous, distance learning environment. SUNY evaluated various commercial software applications to find a product which is open standards-based, easy to use and maintain, portable, replicable, scaleable, affordable, and has a high probability of success with long-term cost effectiveness. Other specifications included: the ability to get traditional face-to-face courses online in as short a period of time as possible in order to provide universal access to the content anywhere anytime and to do it in a simple but relatively seamless manner; and to reduce the amount of time spent teaching students to use the computer-based technology to keep the main focus on course content. The software programs TopClass and LearnLinc I-Net (LLI-Net) both interface well with several well-established Web-based support utilities. A complete course can be created, online, and running in as little as 4-6 weeks, and training needed for both faculty member and student can be conducted over the Internet and telephone. Either TopClass alone or a combination of TopClass and LLI-Net provide a comprehensive CMS package with low overhead for support. (Contains 15 references.) (Author/SWC)