SunGard and Blackboard have largely kept out of each other’s turf, with Blackboard dominating the market for course-management systems and SunGard focusing on administrative software for student records and other tasks.
Now SunGard is crossing that line. For the first time, the administrative software company will directly sell a course-management system to colleges and universities.
SunGard is making the play through a deal with rSmart, a for-profit company that packages, supports, and hosts freely available software that has been produced through a collaborative “open source” process. Under the partnership, SunGard will sell subscriptions to rSmart’s version of Sakai, an open-source course-management system developed by universities.
The arrangement puts SunGard’s muscle behind that project at a time when a growing number of colleges are considering open-source systems. SunGard counts 1,600 customers worldwide, including 80 percent of all American research universities. Its partner, rSmart, typically works with colleges that are switching to open-source systems from commercial products like Blackboard.
Chris Coppola, chief executive of rSmart, says the joint offering will “save customers substantially in the total cost of ownership.”
Colleges will be charged under a subscription model. That replaces the typical billing structure—a hefty up-front licensing fee plus yearly maintenance costs—by spreading out the costs through annual subscription payments. “We have customers that saved between 40 and 60 percent of what they were paying before,” Mr. Coppola says.
SunGard has been promoting its efforts to offer customers more flexibility, and the subscription pricing is part of that push. SunGard’s aggressive move into Blackboard’s turf also comes on the heels of an agreement between the two companies to provide better integration and support for their common customers.
5 Responses to Course-Management Software Deal Marks a First for SunGard
johnh50 - September 29, 2010 at 7:51 am
Very informed move to select Sakai as the open source platform. The other viable option would have been Moodle, but with its very poor security and FERPA compliance record coupled with its latest 3+ year development cycle for new versions (the latest of which is still not complete), that partnership could have spelled disaster. Source 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1BDHZED4yUSource 2: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6008670 Sakai is a very stable, secure, reliable platform developed by people who are very close to educators who use the system–good move SunGard.
brian_moynihan - September 29, 2010 at 11:26 am
This article makes a good point about open source LMS options as compared to Blackboard or other proprietary products, which is a lower Total Cost of Ownership. Open source supporters don’t always emphasize that point because it is true that many of the costs are in hosting, support, training, etc. – things that aren’t free no matter which system you choose. However, if you add up the cost savings from an open source option they can be substantial: -no licensing fees -competitive marketplace for hosting, support and training -no additional fees (or lower cost) for turning on additional featuresOther factors also make the open source model cheaper in the long run. Blackboard’s pricing model, for instance, is based on the size of the institution rather than the number of actual users. This model also limits expansion to branch campuses, etc. in a way that open source pricing models I have seen show much greater flexibility. The money saved could buy a whole lot of custom development work, or just help to balance cash-strapped university budgets.
pigpen892 - September 29, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Well, if you look at the history of SunGard, this is not their first foray into the LMS market. Remember Eduprise? Collegis? CollegisEduprise? Subsumed by SunGard. They started out with RCDDS, a Lotus Notes-based LMS that bit the dust years ago, then began supporting WebCT, Prometheus, Angel, etc. which were, of course, “acquired” by Blackboard.
sholt - September 29, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Totally disagree. We use Blackboard and for the level of features and support that you get, the price of a hosted LMS like Blackboard far outweighs the cost of managing/upgrading/developing on an open-source product. You have to hire new employees just to manage your new, “free”, open-source product, which most times exceeds the yearly cost of a hosted system like Blackboard.I just got back about a month ago from the Blackboard conference where I spoke to Sakai users from universities who lamented the fact at how far behind their product was compared with Blackboard.
jabberwocky12 - September 30, 2010 at 1:49 am
I know this is rather OTT, but, with reference to johnh50′s comments – I work with an instituion that uses Moodle, and it is very blase about security (there IS NO PROBLEM!). The two links shown by johnh50 are scary enough – is there any other material out there that I can use to scare the admin into taking concrete steps to ensuring secuirty?