Comments on: Blackboard by the Numbers

By: Nellodee

Nellodee — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:23:14 +0000

Blackboard enforces their license with license keys that expire. All pages and functionality in Blackboard has license checks included in them. If your license isn’t current, you can’t access any functionality.

By: Blackboard Is Losing Customers, but What Does It Mean? at e-Literate

Blackboard Is Losing Customers, but What Does It Mean? at e-Literate — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:10:06 +0000

[...] There is no evidence at this time that Blackboard is losing its most lucrative Blackboard Enterprise or Vista customers. And to a certain extent, the loss of the lower-end customers could actually be beneficial to Blackboard’s financials. As we have pointed out previously on e-Literate, Blackboard’s explicit business strategy has been to increase their average revenues per-customer. I don’t know what their per-customer revenues are today, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is well above the $30K that it was in October of 2005. Since every customer represents expenses as well as income, losing the lower-revenue customers in favor of a smaller number of high-revenue customers is a fairly common business strategy (although I emphasize that I have never heard anyone at Blackboard say that they are no longer interested in the lower end of the market). So at this point, there is nothing in their financials that provides strong reason to believe that Blackboard won’t continue to hit their projections, which are fairly robust. [...]

By: Michael Feldstein

Michael Feldstein — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:17:44 +0000

I don’t know how Blackboard enforces their license. They certainly could have coded a requirement for an annually expiring key into their software. Even if they have nothing in their technology, their contract surely forbids the use of the software without annual payment. Universities who violate that contract would be violating the law and exposing their institutions to legal liability.

By: Black Board

Black Board — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:53:41 +0000

So Blackboard only rents their software and you have to pay a yearly fee!

What if the school doesn’t renew its contract and keeps using blackboard’s software (since the school hosts the application itself). Isn’t that entirely possible?

The blakcboard product looks pretty well developed so you wouldn’t need any updates or anything either; point is you can live with the version you get in the first year for several years without paying recurring fee.

Am I right?

By: Coming Soon: Guest Posts by Jim Farmer at e-Literate

Coming Soon: Guest Posts by Jim Farmer at e-Literate — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:57:30 +0000

[...] And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Jim has one of the most interesting and wide-ranging intellects around. Among other things, he has contributed a revealing analysis of Blackboard’s business model and much of the raw materials and behind-the-scenes education regarding edupatents. [...]

By: Michael Penney

Michael Penney — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 01:56:06 +0000

Jim talked about Blackboard by the numbers and more at the Cal State Open Source Days of Dialogue conference, podcast and online link here:
http://csumb.edu/opensource/index.htm

A fascinating talk about a wide range of issues in Higher Ed. He mentions SUNY’s work in specific, along with ESUP Portail, OU, etc.

By: Lisa Neal

Lisa Neal — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 22:05:20 +0000

Really fascinating, Michael. Hey, why don’t you write a column about this for eLearn? -Lisa

By: Eric Behrens

Eric Behrens — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 09:18:03 +0000

There’s other interesting stuff here as well. Jim points out that Blackboard spends 11.9% on research and development, compared to 22.3% for Seibel. He notes, “This suggests the Blackboard products are more mature than Seibel’s–requiring less development as compared to ‘maintenance’ of current features.”

Is that an apples-to-apples comparison?

There’s no doubt that Blackboard spends an enormous amount making a sale. Too much.

I’ve said it many times: the open source development in the LMS space will benefit Blackboard customers. The Sakais and the Moodles will either become legitimate alternatives for current Blackboard customers or they’ll put pressure on Blackboard to change how they do business.

The big problem right now with the open source options right now is that they’re sufficiently commodotized as complete replacements for the functionality of Blackboard. Think of how RedHat relates to LINUX. When we get to that point with integrated LMS/portal/portfolio/one-card systems, then you’ve really got something.

By: Michael Feldstein

Michael Feldstein — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:35:10 +0000

Jon, you’ll have to be more specific in your critique, particularly if you’re going to characterize the paper as “wild speculation.” Because Blackboard is a publicly traded company, much of Jim’s analysis is based on their reported numbers. Relying on industry averages for percentages of license fee applied to maintenance is hardly “wild speculation”, since it’s not a number that varies widely (to my knowledge, anyway).

I’d be interested in hearing substantive critique (especially from Blackboard), but blanket condemnations without specifics are “entirely unconvincing.”

By: Jon Mott

Jon Mott — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:53:07 +0000

This is all very interesting, but it’s all based on wild speculation. Why should we assume that “industry-average data” has anything to do with Blackboard’s actual behavior / expenditures?

Because the article begins with such shaky assumptions, its conclusions are entirely unconvincing.