Blackboard and Microsoft make expansive agreement for .NET technologies

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, June, 2001

Microsoft's .NET technologies (www.microsoft.com/net) will be more common in higher education through a significant agreement with Blackboard, Inc. (Washington, DC, www.blackboard.com). The co-marketing partnership calls for Blackboard to develop the next version of its e learning platform using the technologies, and for Microsoft to recognize Blackboard as its preferred e-education partner.

Gary Bauer, program manager for the Microsoft education solutions group, defines .NET as nothing less than the future of Microsoft. The young XML technology, comprised of programming tools and hardware, competes with Java and promises to allow web applications to work and play well with each other. It is targeted at enabling distributed computing, creating more personalized web services, and allowing for rapid deployment on a number of devices.

Bauer describes the depth of the co-development and co-marketing agreement with Blackboard as "precedent setting," and says that it will not be followed up with any similar arrangement in the foreseeable future. Microsoft, says Bauer, judged Blackboard to be in the best position to help the company deploy .NET technologies on a world-wide basis.

Market Penetration through Building Blocks

Many of the advantages of .NET rely on building blocks that interoperate with each other. The frequently cited example of a building block called Passport, for example, allows a user to move between different sites without logging in again and again. It is frequently cited because there are not yet many building blocks out there. However, Matthew Pittinsky, Blackboard chairman, envisions many possibilities for Blackboard and their content partners. For just one example, a .NET building block could include a performance tracking engine that follows a student from a Blackboard class, to a textbook publisher's quiz, to a third-party assessment.

For such a tool to work, all content players along the path would need to develop in the .NET environment. This kind of wide adoption of the technology is essential if users are to recognize any benefits from .NET. The Microsoft/Blackboard agreement is aimed at not just bringing the technology to Blackboard's platform, but to their content providers as well.

Pittinsky says the company won't actively evangelize .NET. Microsoft, he says, has plenty of muscle to do that. But Blackboard also has building blocks for third party developers to create Blackboard-enabled content, and these will be built on .NET technologies.

Close Relationships Don't Translate to Exclusivity

Blackboard, says Marcia Cuszmaul, group manger for industry relations, Microsoft education solution group, is a significant move forward into the education market for .NET, but not an exclusive one. eCollege (Denver, CO, www.ecollge.com), Intralearn (Northboro, MA, www.intralearn.com), Chancery (Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle, WA, www.chancery.com) and Learningstation.com (Charlotte, NC, www.learningstation.com) for example, are all .NET development partners.

Customer needs, says Pittinsky, drive Blackboard's technology decisions, and they strive to offer an open platform. Blackboard will continue to develop for Java environments. The company has a formal relationship with Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Palo Alto, Ca. www.sun.com) to develop for Solaris. They cooperate with the Sun sales and marketing departments and they sell bundles of Blackboard running on Solaris and Sun hardware. Blackboard also has a cooperative sales and marketing agreement with Oracle.Corp. (Redwood Shores, CA, www.oracle.com)

The company also has a vast user base using Microsoft, and Pittinsky believes .NET can enhance their experience considerably. Institutions of higher education, for example, frequently implement their software in a distributed environment with one part of Blackboard, such as email, on one server, courses on another, databases on a third and learning materials on another. That kind of scalable system is expected to run more smoothly under .NET. And Blackboard's student debit accounts offer just one example of a service that can, potentially, benefit from working on a wider range of web sites. Other sites that adopt the Blackboard .NET technologies can then sell to students.