1995: The start of something huge!
It’s a big year for OpenAthens, our 30th anniversary. We’ve been celebrating all year, with team away days, look-back photos, a celebratory logo and reflections on long-standing happy customers (with a retention rate of 95% there are quite a few!). For three whole decades, we’ve been removing barriers to knowledge to ensure students and researchers worldwide gain secure, seamless access to the resources they need, when they need it, wherever they are. As leaders in authentication, we deliver single sign-on solutions to serve a multi-sector market around the globe.
Watch the OpenAthens Timeline video to see how we’ve evolved
As we sit here in 2025 with the world at our fingertips and the ability to connect almost instantly with people around the world, it’s difficult to imagine how life without constant internet access functioned. But cast your minds back 30 years to 1995 (if you’re old enough!)…
Oasis vs Blur was in full swing as they were locked in their battle to be kings of Britpop – much like today, Oasis were headline news in the UK!
Coolio was top of the charts living in his Gangsta’s Paradise, and Friends was in its second season, only just on the cusp of growing the cult following it now has.
Toy Story became the first fully computer-animated film, a phenomenal milestone. PlayStation launched in North America, changing gaming forever. Tamagotchis, Pogs, and Beanie Babies were everywhere, and being on-trend meant embracing grunge, or having your hair cut into the ‘Rachel’.
The digital age was truly underway. We saw the rise of the internet - Yahoo! was founded, Internet Explorer debuted, and Windows95 launched, a pivotal point of analogue meeting digital and when the seeds of our modern world were quietly planted.
Worldwide, libraries were subscribing to increasing numbers of electronic resources and needed a way to access these securely. This was the start of our mission to remove barriers to knowledge, and the birth of OpenAthens.
At the University of Bath, a pioneering project called Athena was launched to simplify access to digital academic resources. This initiative soon became Athens and part of Eduserv, a not-for-profit focused on education and research. A decade in, we were supporting 2 million people and our customer base just kept on growing. New global partnerships were forged and our reach expanded.
In 2019 Eduserv merged with Jisc, which allowed us to grow further and in 2022 we opened our Singapore office, allowing us to better serve our customers around the world and extend our support hours.
Over the past 30 years, OpenAthens has become a global leader in secure, remote access, trusted by thousands of organizations across academia, healthcare, and government. Its single sign-on (SSO) technology allows users to access a wide range of digital resources with just one login, making it easier for students, researchers, and professionals to securely access digital resources, a vision that remains vital today.
Now in 2025, we have around 3,500 customers supporting 8 million users worldwide. It just goes to show, big things often start small.
So, whether you lived it or are just discovering it, 1995 is worth remembering. Not just for what it was, but for everything it set in motion.
