UberNoggin

Yesterday afternoon, with no warning or rumor, Blackboard announced that it purchased Angel LMS. From the reports online, even Bb employees didn’t know about the acquisition until it was announced.  For a mere $80 million Bb purchased its largest competitor. Why fight in court to impose all of the patents Bb claims to hold when they can just purchase their competition?

Needless to say, there’s much grumbling amidst the education community, especially among folks who work for schools that migrated to Angel to get away from the rumored poor service, lack of support, and high price of Bb.

I think Bb is a victim of its own success. The sheer size of its user base makes its the enemy the same as Microsoft has become. Once a monolith like that is established it becomes an easy target even if you’re still using its product. Microsoft had the first stable OS that was easy for people to make use of then they branched out into Office and used the momentum from the OS adoption to leverage their other projects. However, now we see applications like Google Apps that go after a narrower application base but do it better in some ways and do it for free.  Is Bb trying to be all things to all people? Have they grown and diversified to the point of becoming vulnerable to competition from smaller applications that can do specific tasks better?

Buying Angel may actually be an opportunity for Bb to change its image. I’m sure it’s not easy to change the perception of the flagship product but taking Angel into the fold might mean that Bb has a product with which they can do it “right” in the eyes of the consumer base. Ideally, Bb would launch Angel as an open source alternative ala the business model of Redhat. However, this kind of business takes a serious committment to community and support…something that Bb hasn’t proven itself to be all that good at.

But then, of course, there are the patent cases and other big company behavior that makes Bb look greedy and unappreciative of the huge market share it already has.

Now more than ever, I think what would save Bb is to focus huge resources on community building and the support of good use of the LMS rather than just how to use it. Otherwise, that $80million may have been invested in Moodle or the DIY movement directly because the backlash to the acquisition will certainly fuel the fire under those who prefer to create their own solutions rather than struggle under a huge LMS.

Bb will always have customers. FERPA and other regulations that are applied to big institutions will always create a need for a one-stop solution in the eyes of administrators and those who write the checks. But that won’t last too long as individual departments and instructors rebel and do things their own way. Eventually administration will realize that they’re spending money on a product that isn’t being used and there will be a growing market for an alternative.

For more info visit the following links. Be sure to read the comments! :

• Chronicle Wired Campus
• Washington Business Journal
• Inside Higher Ed
• Twitter reaction to the purchase

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