Angel/Bb Merger and the Opening LMS landscape
The LMS/CMS landscape has just significantly shifted. Angel was a great company and it is a real shame that they’ve been acquired. They were great innovators and now they are being folded into Bb. Bb is suggesting that they’ll learn from ANGEL by providing better customer service and integrating ANGEL’s innovative features. Remember the WebCT merger? I don’t think it’ll play out as the PR folks are spinning it.
I’ve got to wonder about how the ANGEL executives feel about this outcome. They’ve spent the last 9 years building a great company with strong revenues, only to have to sell it to Bb for considerably less than it is actually worth. Rumors suggest ANGEL had to sell b/c their chief stakeholder, Indiana University, needed some capital. I’m not sure if this is true or not, but their press releases seem to more than hint that the increased capital was a significant factor in the sale.
The sales team has to also be incredibly frustrated by this situation. They’ve spent the last 9 years attracting clients from Bb. Angel, by far, had the best rates of winning Bb clients over. Now these sales executives are stuck. They’ve won clients over, trained them, celebrated them, and now…ironically…they have to turn them right back over to Bb. How’s that for insane? ANGEL clients are rightly furious about this situation. Many of them chose ANGEL, so they didn’t have to choose Bb.
All of that said, Bb suing Desire2Learn for patent infringement, and now acquiring ANGEL, has resulted in a significant shifting in the LMS market. There are now several smaller companies competing for the title of “not Bb.” Who knows how this will all shake out. Many are commenting that it’ll drive traffic to these smaller commerical companies and that it will also be a boon for Moodle and Sakai. I’m sure all of these parties will benefit from the acquisition.
How does NIXTY fit into all of this? Well, for one, we are going to be incredibly more affordable than any of the other commerical providers out there. Pricing is hard to come by, but right now we are imagining we will be approximately 20% of the cost of the smaller vendors and likely 10% of the cost of Bb. People are amazed to hear that we will be able to offer a robust LMS at that low cost. They often think we are exaggerating. The dirty secret in the LMS industry is that overhead costs are actually quite low if you are smart about running your company. The easy majority of the costs are spent on sales and marketing. If you can get market adoption with very little sales costs, then you can charge really low prices and still generate considerable revenue.
How do you get the word out about your LMS without spending a ton of money on advertising, sales, marketing, conferences, PR etc. Easy, you build an awesome product that solves client problems and you connect it to an open platform that provides free tools that are needed by learners, educators, and institutions. You also have to be creative about finding ways to foster collaboration so that real network effects occur.
We’d love for you to be part of that process. Sign up for our beta and help us fulfill our mission of Empowering Education for Everyone!
