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What is the reason for Blackboard and eCollege's dominance? Is it truly because the school "IT departments are dominated by Microsoft-trained technicians and c

What is the reason for Blackboard and eCollege's dominance? Is it truly because the school "IT departments are dominated by Microsoft-trained technicians and corporate-owned CIOs" or is there another reason? I understand that Bb is very litigious and has a pretty broad patent on "eLearning" but that doesn't seem like it's stopping its competitors.

Pewpewarrows 15y ago
A buddy of mine and I were looking into writing an open-source replacement for both that didn't suck. We did market research first. Absolutely no one would even consider switching, it's way too far embedded in the schools that we talked to that attempting to get them to switch would take much more effort than we were willing to put in. That, and Blackboard loves to sue anyone that even breaths the words eLearning software.
callmeed 15y ago
I was doing a very small elearning startup at the same time Blackboard started. We were all at the same edu tech conferences, knew the same people, etc. At the time, Blackboard and WebCT were the biggest players in the elearning space. I think Blackboard simply did a better job of winning contracts and selling. You have to remember, when they started these companies were installing systems on campus (there was no SaaS initially) ... so it was a big deal if other campuses in your area used it and/or if it worked with your student information system. Blackboard got a strategic partnership with microsoft (I think money too), they absorbed some smaller players (like Prometheus) and eventually acquired WebCT.
Homunculiheaded 15y ago
I worked in Higher Ed for a while, and when I left I thought "oh it should be really easy to create a company that makes better software than much of the academic software out there, probably for way less money as well". But then it hit me. Almost everything, even pretty inexpensive stuff is purchased by large and mostly unqualified committees (with a requirement that at least one member be insane). The process is usually drawn out over many months, even years (not just for blackboard scale sized products). The result is that to survive the key is not a great product, but to have patience and lots of salespeople in suits to send to listen to these committees and make them feel like you care. (In my experience even if you know what product you want, you still have to go through the ritual, the fastest I ever saw software purchased was 4 months, and that still required bringing in sales people even when we knew what product we wanted) A team of 1-3 smart developers could create a product that is significantly better than blackboard and orders of magnitude cheaper in less than a year. But the process of selling the product would take more energy and resources than they could commit. A team of smart developers would quickly realize there are much better ways to make money and sell software. I believe this is the core of why most academic software (institutional level) is terrible, the only companies that would put up with this are ones that are more interested exploitation than creating great software.
shimms 15y ago
Blackboard had the advantage of being one of the first commercialised learning management systems in the current incarnation. They were able to secure a large part of the market by being first, and then by acquiring others (WebCT/Angel/Prometheus etc - see http://www.quora.com/How-many-acquisitions-has-BlackBoard-made http://www.quora.com/How-many-acquisitions-has-BlackBoard-ma... for a more detailed list). Their really controversial patent ('138 - the one that pretty much patented anything that resembled a group of students accessing materials online), was overturned. Although they have a number of technology patents, and are litigious, it isn't stopping competition. There are quite a few out there. (Full disclosure, I'm one of the founders at http://www.lexim.com.au http://www.lexim.com.au - one of these companies).

Pewpewarrows 15y ago

A buddy of mine and I were looking into writing an open-source replacement for both that didn't suck. We did market research first. Absolutely no one would even consider switching, it's way too far embedded in the schools that we talked to that attempting to get them to switch would take much more effort than we were willing to put in. That, and Blackboard loves to sue anyone that even breaths the words eLearning software.

callmeed 15y ago

I was doing a very small elearning startup at the same time Blackboard started. We were all at the same edu tech conferences, knew the same people, etc. At the time, Blackboard and WebCT were the biggest players in the elearning space. I think Blackboard simply did a better job of winning contracts and selling. You have to remember, when they started these companies were installing systems on campus (there was no SaaS initially) ... so it was a big deal if other campuses in your area used it and/or if it worked with your student information system. Blackboard got a strategic partnership with microsoft (I think money too), they absorbed some smaller players (like Prometheus) and eventually acquired WebCT.

Homunculiheaded 15y ago

I worked in Higher Ed for a while, and when I left I thought "oh it should be really easy to create a company that makes better software than much of the academic software out there, probably for way less money as well". But then it hit me. Almost everything, even pretty inexpensive stuff is purchased by large and mostly unqualified committees (with a requirement that at least one member be insane). The process is usually drawn out over many months, even years (not just for blackboard scale sized products). The result is that to survive the key is not a great product, but to have patience and lots of salespeople in suits to send to listen to these committees and make them feel like you care. (In my experience even if you know what product you want, you still have to go through the ritual, the fastest I ever saw software purchased was 4 months, and that still required bringing in sales people even when we knew what product we wanted) A team of 1-3 smart developers could create a product that is significantly better than blackboard and orders of magnitude cheaper in less than a year. But the process of selling the product would take more energy and resources than they could commit. A team of smart developers would quickly realize there are much better ways to make money and sell software. I believe this is the core of why most academic software (institutional level) is terrible, the only companies that would put up with this are ones that are more interested exploitation than creating great software.

shimms 15y ago

Blackboard had the advantage of being one of the first commercialised learning management systems in the current incarnation. They were able to secure a large part of the market by being first, and then by acquiring others (WebCT/Angel/Prometheus etc - see http://www.quora.com/How-many-acquisitions-has-BlackBoard-made http://www.quora.com/How-many-acquisitions-has-BlackBoard-ma... for a more detailed list). Their really controversial patent ('138 - the one that pretty much patented anything that resembled a group of students accessing materials online), was overturned. Although they have a number of technology patents, and are litigious, it isn't stopping competition. There are quite a few out there. (Full disclosure, I'm one of the founders at http://www.lexim.com.au http://www.lexim.com.au - one of these companies).