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 […]
Moodlerooms
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: Blackboard acquired two Moodle hosting and service providers — Moodlerooms in the US and NetSpot in Australia (although they had different business models). Blackboard created an Open Source Services Group, which helps “institutions successfully manage open source learning management systems […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. Blackboard acquired two Moodle hosting and service providers – MoodleRooms in the US and NetSpot in Australia. Blackboard created an Open Source Services Group, which includes helping “institutions successfully manage open source learning management […]
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.