Desire2Learn, a Canadian online education startup that offers an increasingly popular cloud learning platform for higher education, K-12 and Fortune 1000 companies, just announced that it has raised a $80 million Series A round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and OMERS Ventures. The company, which is based in RIMs hometown of Waterloo, Ontario, says that it plans to use this investment to bolster its customer service and cloud infrastructure, support global growth and to accelerate the development of its platform.

Todays $80 million financing marks the first time the company has taken an outside investment and is actually the largest-ever VC investment in a Canadian software company.

For NEA, this is also one of the companys largest investments. The global venture capital firm just closed on its new $2.6 billion fund in July and todays investment was made out of this fund. According to NEA, $1 trillion is spent on K-12 and higher education globally and technology is starting to transform how education works. Desire2Learn, NEAs Jon Sakoda and Ravi Viswanathan write today, is at the forefront of this shift with its leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) learning platform.

Desire2Learns platform, which competes with incumbents like Blackboard, currently has about 700 clients and 8 million learners have used its tools. The company was founded all the way back in 1999.

Desire2Learns platform aims to cover virtually every angle of the online education experience. Here is a short list of what the companys services capabilities:

Founded in 1999, Desire2Learn Incorporated is a leader in providing innovative eLearning solutions to academic and other leading organizations around the world. Desire2Learns focus is on research and development and service and support for their clients, and their products lead the market in innovation and client satisfaction.

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Online Education Platform Desire2Learn Raises Massive $80M Round From NEA & OMERS Ventures