e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Netspot

  • Moodle Moves Give Hints of What a Post-Fork World Could Look Like

    Phil and I have written about the growing tension between the interests of Moodle HQ and a those of a couple of the bigger Moodle Partners, most notably Blackboard. There are a number of ways that this tension could be resolved, but one of the more dramatic possibilities would be a fork of Moodle. While we are not predicting it will happen, a couple of developments hit the wires last week that give us some idea of what the world might look like if there were a real and permanent split between the two groups.

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  • 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…)

  • 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.

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  • 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 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.