e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Moodlerooms

  • Blackboard Acquires Large Latin American Moodle Provider

    In my first post-BbWorld blog post, I noted that the international market is hugely important for Blackboard and Moodle is hugely important for their international strategy. Nearly a quarter of the company’s revenue and much of their growth comes from their international business, where they seem to be way ahead of their main North American competition in many countries. Learn has some really large contracts—whole country contracts, in some cases—but Moodle has a lot of smaller contracts. In some countries, you just can’t get traction in the LMS space unless you have a Moodle offering. In my post, I predicted that we would see continuing investments in Moodle, based on what we heard from senior management.

    Today, Blackboard announced that they have acquired Nivel Siete, a Colombia-based Moodle hosting and services provider with over 200 customers in Latin America. This follows their acquisition of Remote Learner UK, a company that serviced about 100 UK- and Ireland-based Moodle schools at the time of the acquisition and their acquisition of the X-Ray learning analytics company that currently is focused on Moodle. These are all in the last year. And they are on top of the original acquisition of Moodlerooms and Netspot, two of the biggest Moodle providers around. There are some interesting—and complicated—long-term implications here for the governance and financial structure of the Moodle ecosystem that Phil and I will eventually write about, but for now it’s worth noting that Blackboard is making serious investments in Moodle and international growth.

  • Two-Year Anniversary of Blackboard Acquisition of Moodlerooms and NetSpot

    Two years ago today, Blackboard made a dramatic change of course with a series of public announcements:

    At the time I described these changes:

    Most of the discussion in articles and blogs follows the meme of Blackboard entering open source, or even the meme of Blackboard acquiring competitors. I think the news is more significant than either of these two memes.

    Blackboard just did a 180-degree turn on their strategy for their core LMS business. They have moved from consolidating all customers into Learn 9.1 to providing products and services that are almost LMS-agnostic.

    Archive of Statements

    Given this dramatic turn of events, I wrote an additional post that captured the public statements (press releases, blog posts) from Blackboard, Moodlerooms, NetSpot, and even Blackboard competitors for the purpose of checking to see if the acquisitions really did signal a true change in strategy and support for open source. This two-year anniversary seems the perfect time to check up.

    Bb’s Previous Open Source View

    Just how big of a change did the announcements represent? Consider Blackboard’s moves regarding alternative LMS solutions in the previous six years. (more…)

  • Moodle has quietly become the dominant LMS for online service providers

    One subject that we have not covered much at e-Literate lately is the market position of Moodle. Given the significant LMS market changes over the past two years, it might be worth considering how institutions are adopting and using Moodle. In the US at least, there has been a significant change – whereas in previous years Moodle growth came primarily from institutions moving away from Blackboard, today much of the growth appears to have shifted to online service providers.

    Traditional US Market

    From 2006 – 2011 Moodle grew quickly in the US, both in terms of the number of users (students, faculty) and in terms of the number of schools adopting Moodle. This growth appears to have slowed considerably since 2011, although the data can be difficult to interpret since the system is open source – anyone can download for free and run Moodle, without even notifying Moodle headquarters or often the institution.

    While the data is inconclusive, my assumption is that traditional Moodle growth – institutions adopting the LMS as the campus standard, typically moving away from Blackboard or WebCT – has significantly slowed from its peak growth in 2009 – 2011. I’ll write a separate post on this subject in the future.

    New Growth Model

    While the traditional growth may have slowed, there is a market segment in the US where Moodle is quietly dominating – as the preferred learning platform (or LMS) for online service providers.

    (more…)

  • The Blackboard Announcements, Part 2: Can Open Source Be Bought?

    I have gotten a lot of email from folks who moved to Moodle (often from Blackboard CE) because they wanted to get away from Blackboard and they thought that open source was “safe.” In my first post on the announcements, I noted there are reasons to believe that Moodlerooms customers may do just fine under the new corporate ownership. But still, what does the announcement mean? Did Blackboard buy Moodle? What about open source can be for sale? What protection does it afford from corporate acquisition, and what are the limits of those protections?

    I’ll try to outline some of the ins and outs in this post.

    (more…)

  • Summary of Statements by Key Players in Blackboard Announcement, Including Competitors

    Given all the news and discussion surrounding Blackboard’s strategy change last week, I thought that it would be useful to collect the public statements from Blackboard and their competitors in one place. No analysis, no interviews, just statements. I have a feeling that this might provide a rich source of analysis 6 – 12 months from now.

    Blackboard Official Announcements

    On March 26th, Blackboard made four simultaneous announcements through press release. They also released two additional press releases based on these four announcements.

    Blackboard / Moodlerooms / NetSpot / Moodle / Severance Key Blogs and Interviews

    Subsequently, several of the key players in the Blackboard announcements made statements through their own blogs or through media interviews. (more…)

  • Blackboard Confronts Erosion of Market Share, Makes a Major Change in Strategy

    In a series of announcements that has the educational technology world buzzing, Blackboard reversed their strategy of their core LMS business.

    Most of the discussion in articles and blogs follows the meme of Blackboard entering open source, or even the meme of Blackboard acquiring competitors. I think the news is more significant than either of these two memes.

    Blackboard just did a 180-degree turn on their strategy for their core LMS business. They have moved from consolidating all customers into Learn 9.1 to providing products and services that are almost LMS-agnostic. As Dr. Chuck described:

    The notion that we will somehow find the “one true LMS” that will solve all problems is simply crazy talk and has been for quite some time.

    There is another aspect to this story not described in yesterday’s press releases and the associated articles and blogs. This is the first public strategic decision by Blackboard since they were acquired by Providence Equity Partners. I suspect that if you take all four of Blackboard’s announcements within the context of the private equity ownership, the underlying strategy and rationale make much more sense.

    (more…)

  • Blackboard Acquires Moodlerooms and Netspot

    Press release is here.

    This is obviously a gob smacker of a story. I’m going to take a few days, talk to a few folks, and think about the implications before I write a reaction post. You may hear from other e-Literate bloggers on the subject in the meantime.

    Stay tuned.