Anthology, which emerged a year ago from the combination of three higher education administrative software firms, will merge with Blackboard, long the most visible company in learning technology, the two companies. The deal will result at the end of Blackboard as a freestanding company and could bring the end of its well-known, and sometimes controversial, brand.
The companies did not share any financial data, but the combined entity is likely to be among the sector’s biggest educational technology firms. Blackboard’s current owner, Providence Equity Partners, bought it in 2011 for $1.64 billion, and Blackboard was shopped (but not sold) in 2015 for about $3 billion.
“Our combined footprint, from both a product perspective and from the more than 4,000 colleges and universities we serve worldwide, likely makes this the largest education technology company selling into higher education,” Jim Milton, Anthology’s chairman and chief executive officer, said. Milton will lead the combined company, whose name has not yet been decided.
Anthology, whose roots date to 1988, emerged from the combination of Campus Management, a provider of administrative systems including student information, finance, and human resources software; Campus Labs, a firm focused on assessment, learning, and student success technology; and iModules, a community engagement software company. ListEdTech last year estimated that Anthology itself was the third-biggest higher ed administrative technology company behind Microsoft and Ellucian.
Blackboard was for many years the dominant provider of learning management systems, though competitors such as Instructure (maker of Canvas) and D2L have gained ground and, in the former’s case, surpassed it.
In 2019, Blackboard sold off its Transact unit, one of the businesses it had bought as it sought to expand beyond being a learning management company. That led to intensifying speculation that the company could be broken up or sold, as it carried significant debt.
Milton and Bill Ballhaus, Blackboard’s chairman, CEO, and president, said the power of the combined company will flow from its ability to bring data from across the student life cycle to bear on student and institutional performance. “We’re on the cusp of breaking down the data siloes” that often exists between administrative and academic departments on campuses, Ballhaus said.
In the interview, a reporter asked Ballhaus whether Blackboard would disappear as a company and a brand. The company, while widely known, also has significant baggage from years as a target of faculty grumbling about its products and targeting by competitors. He said the new office that would manage the merger was just forming and would “take a fresh look” at many issues. “Both brands bring a lot of assets and history to the table,” he said. The most important thing is to see the combined entity realize its potential, and it’s important that we be unconstrained in our thin
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Technology Express staff and is published from a syndicated feed)
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