![]() ![]() “We’re not surprised that they’re ending the life of Angel, but in the end we respect the fact that they’re honoring our current agreement.” “We were glad to hear that they went to indefinite support,” O’Heron said, adding that he was disappointed to hear Blackboard will cut back on its support for Angel. Although Blackboard will honor the terms of the five-year agreement, it will be up to the university’s IT staffers to identify bugs, report them to Blackboard and then cross their fingers for a fix, O’Heron said. The agreement likely means a busy 2017 for Penn State. O’Heron, the university’s director of operations in teaching and learning with technology. Now, the committee’s work has started back up again, said Terence N. The committee then put its work on hold - and signed a five-year agreement to keep running Angel through December 2017 - when Blackboard backtracked on the plans. When Blackboard announced the first end-of-life date for Angel, Penn State formed a committee to look for a replacement system. ![]() Among the Angel institutions that migrated this spring, Blackboard only captured between one-quarter and one-third, according to data collected by University of Maryland University College enterprise solutions engineer George Kroner. The decision lets Blackboard focus on fewer products, but the company still faces a fight to retain its customers. “We would be coming into a position where we couldn’t guarantee a service level to these clients that we were comfortable with. “The official answer is that there are third-party technologies that underlie the Angel learning platform that are either at or rapidly approaching their end-of-life from those manufacturers,” said Valerie Schreiner, Blackboard’s vice president of product management. 15, 2016, the colleges and universities still running Angel will be on their own, though Blackboard will still offer “limited, situational support,” it told Pennsylvania State University. Then, earlier this month, Blackboard reversed again. In 2012, Blackboard reversed earlier plans, saying it would continue to support Angel “indefinitely.” The company described its new strategy as one that involved multiple learning management systems, from its flagship product, Learn, to the open-source Moodle. This month, Blackboard said, Angel would move to “end-of-life” status, meaning the company would no longer maintain the system or develop new features. Blackboard acquired the company in 2009, and then gave the system five years to live. “It creates a great opportunity for other providers to say, look, you’ve got an up-or-out decision here.”Īngel Learning’s death has long been foreshadowed. (Casey) Green, whose Campus Computing Project tracks higher education IT trends, including changes in the learning management system market. “This is potentially a big deal, because it’s one of those structural changes in the market that creates disruption,” said Kenneth C. higher education is considered a saturated market, and as one of those systems now leaves the space, it creates an opportunity for providers to scoop up new clients - and headache for the colleges and universities urged to migrate. In the day-to-day battle for market share, providers make gains by peeling off customers from their competitors, outmaneuvering other suitors when a college or university looks to makes a once-in-a-decade shift. The death of a major learning management system is not an everyday event. Before then, hundreds of institutions will have to search for a new provider. The Angel learning management system, after cheating death once, will officially retire in October 2016.
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