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Tag: LoudCloud Systems

  • Barnes & Noble Education’s Predictive Analytics Deal With Unizin

    Barnes & Noble Education’s Predictive Analytics Deal With Unizin

    Barnes & Noble Education (BNED) announced today that they have a deal with Unizin to provide predictive analytics services through the LoudSight platform to the consortium’s member universities. As covered by Inside Higher Ed:

    BNED, as the company now likes to be called, operates nearly 1,500 bookstores, but has in recent years expanded beyond course materials. In March 2016, it acquired the software start-up LoudCloud, and it is through that company that BNED now will score a group of 22 potential new clients (or, in the cases where it already runs campus bookstores, form tighter connections with existing ones) that includes Indiana University, Pennsylvania State University and the State University System of Florida, among others.

    The deal represents a new product focus for BNED’s LoudCloud – predictive analytics – and a new financial model for Unizin. (more…)

  • Barnes & Noble Education Buys LMS Provider LoudCloud Systems For $17.9 Million

    Yesterday morning Barnes & Noble Education, the owner of 743 college bookstores and related services, announced the acquisition of LMS provider LoudCloud Systems for $17.9 million in cash. LoudCloud provides a traditional LMS for general higher education and K-12 needs, and they are best known for their customer Grand Canyon University, a for-profit provider and partial investor. LoudCloud from the beginning touted a modular approach to learning management systems, and one of their key modules is LoudBooks, an “adaptive and social” eReader of digital course materials. More recently, LoudCloud entered the competency-based education (CBE) market by releasing FASTRAK, an LMS specifically designed for CBE programs.

    According to LISTedTECH data, LoudCloud is used in a half dozen colleges and university accounts in the US, although these are mostly for-profits with multiple campuses.

    I have long heard discussions that LoudCloud was looking for an exit, so the acquisition of the company is not a surprise, per se. But why Barnes & Noble Education? I think that timing of the announcement helps answer that question.

    (more…)