bbplusangel - Reaction to Blackboard's Acquisition of Angel

Just last week Blackboard announced that they have bought Angel Learning. I thought it might be useful to pull together some of the information and opinion that I have observed online since this announcement.

First the info. Blackboard have been through the mill once before with a high profile acquisition, and while Angel is not as high profile as WebCT was in terms of client numbers it still represents a leading competitor at this time. Announcements came through thick and fast from Blackboard, and you can read them here:

Michael Chasen’s twitter account, closely followed with retweets from other well known Bb twitterers, and complete with its own hashtag of #bbplusangel
Blackboard blog posts
Blackboard press release
Dedicated section on Blackboard Website
Michael Chasen on Fox Business News

Early reaction included lots of retweets, and news of a 10% drop in Bb’s shares (Nasdaq BBBB) - this was later accredited to lower guidance and a downgrade on the day. Subsequent twitter reaction seemed to show disappointment from Angel clients, and approval from Blackboard clients. The news that Ray Henderson (the No.2 at Angel Learning) was now to become head of Blackboard Learn seemed to help even out the opinion.

From what I have read, I have seen three main themes for community concern and opinion - collated here with example blog posts to reflect them:

1. Can you escape the gravitational pull of Blackboard? Many felt they had made repeated decisions against Blackboard, by buying WebCT and then Angel, yet seem to be pulled back to being Blackboard clients without actively making that decision.

Angelic Learning Online

2. Have enough lessons been learnt? Many of the statements of optimism from this acqusition seemed to reflect similar statements given at the time of the WebCT merger.

Three tests for the ‘new’ Blackboard

3. Can Blackboard ever have a good guy reputation? Many feel that Blackboard’s reputation is going from bad to worse, following the WebCT merger, D2L lawsuits and now this latest acqusition of a main competitor.

It is important to remember that Blackboard are a business. Not a charity, not an educational establishment, not a government funded body. They are a company, and if they don’t do business right then they will cease to be a company, and the time and money invested in them by institutions will amount to nothing. Somebody has to be a leader in a marketplace, and that fact alone does not make them evil or dangerous. A lack of innovation or monopolising while stagnating would do. In the time I’ve worked on Bb systems they have continuously taken significant steps forward, and that is important to me. Interesting that the anger is always directed to Blackboard who appear committed to offering educational products rather than the companies that sold out their customers. Perhaps its just easier to aim at the ones that are still around.

Also, they are a really young company. A big company, but still young and still learning. We all work to promote learning in individuals so why are we so unforgiving of businesses that are learning? Maybe they have learnt nothing at all from the WebCT merger, but I don’t believe that could be the case. However, learning is not enough alone, and they must act on what they have learnt. I hope they do, as it could benefit many institutions. I’m possibly too optimistic, but I feel that a focus on the negatives helps no-one. There will be opportunities to come from bbplusangel - perhaps people should focus on providing a strong community voice to guide them.

3 Comments

Michael Carr May 20th, 2009 at 2:43 pm

You say it’s “Interesting that the anger is always directed to Blackboard” and “why are we so unforgiving”. Have you read the blogs that you linked to? The negativity poured onto blackboard is always the result of:

- terrible product support
- unimaginably high prices
- buggy and frustrating software

These are all under Blackboard’s ability to control, and the negativity they receive is the natural result of these problems, as would any other company with the same issues.

Just randomly grabbing a few quotes from the links you posted as examples:

“In our LMS search, Blackboard was too expensive, it lacked customer support”

“we began hearing horror stories of poor service and poor product.”

“We moved last August from CE 4.1 to Angel specifically because of lack of support from BB/WebCT”

“We left BB/WebCt because the cost was prohibitive and because BB’s support department was unresponsive to many of our problems.”

So it’s easy to see that no, noone is being too harsh on Blackboard.

hannahwhaley May 20th, 2009 at 10:06 pm

Hi Michael,

I understand why people choose to move away from Blackboard, and the dissatisfaction in the support and product they have received since the WebCT merge. It is important that technologists can choose the product that they feel best suits the needs of their institution, and that choice should be able to include working with smaller, and therefore more agile and responsive, companies. I genuinely sympathise with the institutions that find these decisions and investments are being reversed by external forces outwith their control - it must be unspeakably frustrating.

However, I would have expected the anger about the situation to be largely directed towards the companies that people have invested their time, money and faith in - and who appear to have taken the money and run. I always find myself reading about Blackboard as an evil giant corporation and not about WebCT/Angel as sell-outs. Do people really see WebCT and Angel as powerless to prevent a hostile takeover? Could WebCT/Angel customer support really be that good that everyone is happy for them to get rich and leave? Have Blackboard become just a Microsoft-esque caricature?

Perhaps as you suggest it is just the extreme dissatisfaction with the support and product forced on them. I’m not making excuses for Bb’s track record, I have just always been surprised by the lack of animosity towards the other companies and executives involved in the deals, and curious if the scale of anger towards Bb’s product and support is escalated because there is no one else at whom to direct overall frustration with the situation.

Thanks,
Hannah

Glen Moriarty May 22nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm

Hannah, thanks for the summary post and for the response above. I think you bring up some valid points. I’m not sure as to what the customer response was to the WebCT buyout; however, the customer response (from our perspective) has been frustration towards Blackboard AND frustration towards ANGEL. That said, the latest rumor is that ANGEL had to sell. The university that owned a major stake in ANGEL needed the capital, so the executives really didn’t have a choice in the matter. That doesn’t take away from the frustration ANGEL clients (and employees!) likely feel towards Blackboard, but it does put it in context.

We at http://www.scholar360.com have been getting approached by ANGEL clients. One of the first questions they ask is whether or not we are going to sell. We assure them that we will not, b/c we are committed to building a great product and company. They counter that ANGEL said the same thing. The primary difference is that ANGEL had major institutional backers that owned the majority of the company, whereas we wholly own the company. I’m sure the executives at ANGEL thought they were in a similar place when they made the statements they did to clients. It just goes to show that one needs to keep majority control in order to build long-term win/win relationships with clients.

This is a complicated scenario. We can’t see around all corners. I’m sure Blackboard has learned and will do some positive things for ANGEL clients. However, ANGEL clients have a right to be skeptical. Time will tell if Blackboard can deliver on what they are promising.

Hannah Whaley . com