Comments on: Bad News for Blackboard, Good News for ANGEL

By: Patrick Aievoli

Patrick Aievoli — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:08:22 +0000

Bb will run itself out of the market soon enough. Schools are getting tighter budgets and soon LMSs will be free software populated by teacher generated content and the market will disappear. It’s like the font market from the 1980′s. fonts were 100s of dollars apiece now there are sites that give them away. Same will be true for LMSs. Give it a while and colleges will cut their spending so close to the bone that Sakai and Moodle will look like luxuries. Bb is basically walking the plank. They just want to get as much market share as possible to translate into dollars before the lank runs out.

By: Robert L. Moore

Robert L. Moore — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:28:02 +0000

Bb may be able to offer real value items to this merger, but price, legal battles, and customer support will not be among those positive assets. ANGELS beware.
Bob

By: Blackboard buys ANGEL Learning Systems | EdTechPodcast.com

Blackboard buys ANGEL Learning Systems | EdTechPodcast.com — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:24:19 +0000

[...] market. ANGEL has been snatching up Blackboard’s costumer’s, especially in the community college market, left and right. Now, ANGEL customers will be forced into the Blackboard product line with the [...]

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:17:59 +0000

John, I think Blackboard just answered your question today.

By: ANGEL: A Corpse for Blackboard’s Corpulence | Flexknowlogy - Jared Stein on Education and Technology

Wed, 06 May 2009 21:37:43 +0000

[...] once looked like good news for Angel has become a nightmare for an LMS consumer market in need of diverse and innovative choices, and a [...]

By: Mike Z.

Mike Z. — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:01:27 +0000

My observation is that Bb is going after D2L because D2L represents the biggest threat in the large school / state consortium segment of the market. Losing share at the low end of the market (to Angel or Moodle) is OK as long as they can hold onto the lucrative upper end of the market. I believe Michael reported here that Bb even indicated part of their strategy is to focus on larger accounts and increase spend (and penetration of their full suite of software) at those accounts. D2L was having success with state-wide deals and securing business with many large institutions. Hence the attacks. It will be interesting to see who is next. For instance, what happens when a system like Sakai gains even more inroads into these large institutions? How will Bb react when their bread-and-butter accounts start falling to the competition?

By: Michael Feldstein

Michael Feldstein — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 23:14:58 +0000

As far as I know, nothing prevents them on a legal basis. For whatever reason, Blackboard have decided that it is in their interest to go after Desire2Learn and not the others.

By: John

John — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:24:35 +0000

Out of curiosity, how is it that Blackboard can sue Desire2Learn but not a company like Angel? What is preventing Blackboard from attacking all other corporate competitors?