Blackboard has a habit of acquiring an education-technology company every year, but this year it bought not one but two companies—both of which offer similar services for holding online courses and virtual office hours.
Today Blackboard Inc. announced plans to buy Elluminate, based in Alberta, Canada, and Wimba, based in New York, both of which sell products that support online learning and student collaboration through online videoconferencing and audioconferencing tools. The sales must first be approved by the boards of both rivals. Blackboard plans to pay a total of $116-million for the pair.
In a fact sheet about the purchases, Blackboard officials promised to continue to support both products, including their compatibility with rival course-management systems and open-source systems. “We’ll honor all existing contracts for Elluminate and Wimba clients,” the company adds in the fact sheet.
Employees from the two companies will be part of a new division of Blackboard called Blackboard Collaborate, which will be led by Elluminate’s current president, Maurice Heiblum.
Ray Henderson, head of Blackboard’s course-management-software division, wrote on his blog today that the purchases will be part of a new focus on online collaboration. “There’s the opportunity for an unmatched body of expertise with this team of former rivals, a blend well suited to fully realize the potential before us in collaboration,” he wrote.
Trace A. Urdan, an education-industry analyst with Signal Hill, an investment firm, called the purchases “a logical add-on” to Blackboard’s existing suite of services.
“Blackboard could easily have built the functionality that’s provided by both Elluminate and Wimba, but the benefit here is that they pick up the client relationships, which, in some cases, may be ones they don’t already have,” he added. “It’s a buy-versus-build decision.”
Buying two companies that offer similar products is an unusual move, Mr. Urdan said, but it avoided alienating either set of customers. “It probably would have been more contentious if they picked one over the other,” he said. “This speaks to the narrative of, they don’t want to be the evil Borg.”
Last year Blackboard aquired a competing course-management provider, Angel Learning, sparking widespread complaints by those who chose Angel as an alternative to Blackboard.
17 Responses to Blackboard to Buy 2 Education-Software Companies
panacea - July 7, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Great. We had Blackboard. It was awful. We use Wimba Pronto as well, hopefully we’ll be able to keep it.Moodle is soooo much better. Open source, nice interface, flexible, easy to use, and best of all, free!
tjoo1691 - July 8, 2010 at 12:42 am
She says – Blackboard could easily have built the functionality that’s provided by both Elluminate and Wimba, but the benefit here is that they pick up the client relationships…” Well, does anyone remember when Blackboard tried to build that functionality in their virtual classroom? What a nightmare! Desire2Learn is just now integrating with Elluminate and I hope this doesn’t in any way impact that. Isn’t this really a dying market anyway with all the open source and free services out there?Or, is it a market that needs better competition?
bvieweg - July 8, 2010 at 7:07 am
We need more not less competition in this space.
paievoli - July 8, 2010 at 7:21 am
Could not agree more with the posts so far… This will ultimately be a very big problem and basically a roadblock to the advancement of online learning. Open source is the only route to flexibility and success for current traditional B&M schools.
signaledu - July 8, 2010 at 7:37 am
You get the competition you pay for and consolidation of post-secondary software is a perennial problem — witness consolidation of SIS vendors for example. The attraction of the market is that it is finite and inexpensive to sell into as a result. The drawback is that it is finite and unlike businesses, universities are unable to calculate the ROI of a software purchase. In other words every sale into a university budget is a zero sum game.If Open Source is a growing threat to Bb, then it should also be an adequate source of competition.And BTW tjoo1691 “She” is a “He.”Trace UrdanSignal Hill
drmamalama - July 8, 2010 at 8:34 am
I am tired of working so hard to establish positive relations with good companies only to have those companies gobbled up by BB and ruined.
scottsiddall - July 8, 2010 at 9:14 am
In the Bb announcement, they said “…we will continue current Elluminate and Wimba integration work for open source products…” but this misses the point. Higher ed is getting tremendous value from community source such as Sakai. Why turn to commercial source for collaboration? The integration of BigBlueButton (fully open source web collaboration system) with Sakai is simply awesome. Bb bought part of this market but not the most interesting part!
anitat - July 8, 2010 at 10:01 am
How is “assimilating” not just one, but two, companies not an imitation of “the evil Borg?” Yes, be a part of the “collective” – oh, wait! I mean the Collaborate. (My apologies to my fellow Star Trek fans.) In truth, the other commenters have already stated it well: Bb is indeed making open source more and more appealing.
markiemark - July 8, 2010 at 10:08 am
Trace—as you know, Bb could be struggling with organic growth, particularly with regard to Learn licenses. In fact, I am not sure they ever report their licenses by business anymore, but rather mash them up to one total number. An interesting metric would be their renewal rates in K12 and HE with Learn, for example. There are some out in the investment world who believe that Bb has to buy growth, since internally, their main engine is stuck in the mud.
collegewebguy - July 8, 2010 at 10:33 am
Blackboard will invariably extract the best technologies of these two companies and shoe horn them into an already, horrible pile of feieces they call a “learning environment” resulting in an even larger pile of feieces. For those curious, “feieces” in this particular glossary is defined as “a glitchy, user experience nightmare”.
susangautsch - July 8, 2010 at 11:37 am
Could there be a better time to consider alternatives to the ‘traditional’ LMS? Educause has a nice ditty on the how, why, who, where, and when of LMS alternatives. Check it out. 7 Things You Should Know About LMS Alternatives: http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutLMSAl/207429
cmatheson - July 8, 2010 at 1:08 pm
A quick analysis of blackboard’s financial statements reveals why they are not a good fit for most schoolshttp://cytochromec.net/blog/2010/07/the-case-against-blackboard/
jaysanderson - July 8, 2010 at 2:12 pm
If the Borg were real, they began in our time. At Blackboard HQ. We were Bb customers for years. Every contract saw price increases of 10% or more. We finally switched to Angel for 20% of the Bb cost and one freaking week later Bb bought Angel. How is Bb NOT like the Borg? Seriously, resistance seems quite futile.
deniszgonjanin - July 8, 2010 at 3:32 pm
For an open source alternative to Wimba and Elluminate, try BigBlueButton – http://bigbluebutton.org/
uwrf_mam - July 8, 2010 at 4:12 pm
BlackBeard has once again robbed us. More money for them! Another analogy is ‘The Blob’ – consumes everything in its path.
grandeped - July 8, 2010 at 6:28 pm
“One company to rule them all, One company to find them, One company to buy them all and in the Blackborg bind them.”
jpangborn - July 12, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Isn’t there an anti-trust law in this country? Can you say Monopoly?