Through Stephen Downes I was directed to this great post by Michael Feldstein on his e-Literate weblog.
The title of his entry is Blackboard by the Numbers and he refers toJim Farmer: "According to Jim’s numbers, Blackboard needs to acquire 185 new customers every year to hold steady, 371 to get 5% growth, and so on, up to 742 new customers needed to grow at 15%. How many new customers a year has Blackboard been getting? 152. Less than they need to break even."
Michael predicts that "at some point in the not-too-distance future, expect Blackboard to be the acquiree rather than the acquirer (just as Banner has been bought and sold a few times now), and Oracle is the most likely purchaser."
Ofcourse, you need to know that Jim Farmer is heavily involved in the Sakai Foundation.
16 January 2006
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Actually, Jim is no longer working for Sakai; he is now working for Georgetown University, at a Center for Integration, where he works directly with vendors such as Blackboard and SCT/Banner. He also ran a proprietary software firm once upon a time (university financial software, I believe). So, while he has become something of an advocate for Open Source, he's hardly coming at it from a position of bias.
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