Anthology Together (Bb Learn) Conference Notes

July is typically the busiest month for LMS user conferences, and over the past few weeks we've attended Anthology Together in Orlando (for Blackboard Learn), InstructureCon Online (for Canvas), and D2L Fusion in Boston (for Brightspace). The nature of user conferences has changed over the years, as vendors often used to release major product news either at these meetings or at Educause in the fall. These days you get less product news, but the conferences are still excellent ways to get a sense of current customer sentiment, likely new clients, and cultural views of the vendors.

I should note that the vendors control the conferences and news releases, although they typically allow us to have hallway conversations on our own. Thus, the overall tone of these conference notes will be fairly positive, and focused on company direction.

Today's newsletter will focus on Anthology Together, to be followed by InstructureCon and D2L Fusion. We attend Global MoodleMoot in Barcelona in late September. Hopefully Jeanette's labor relations dispute over Orlando vs. Barcelona travel will be solved by the arbitrator soon.

Anthology Together

Anthology Together, held July 12-14th, was the first users conference for Blackboard since it ceased being a standalone company and became a brand for a product line (Blackboard Learn). I questioned the strategy at the time of the acquisition news:

I still question the strategy of combination in terms of the Anthology administrative products impacting LMS evaluation decisions, but I have heard of the reverse impact, where having Blackboard Learn helped Anthology win a major SIS contract. That is a one-off piece of information, but it is worth noting.

Turning a Negative into a Positive

More important for the short term is execution, and in our initial coverage of the acquisition, I noted:

In this context, the importance of the Anthology Together conference should not be understated. If the corporate acquisition had gone poorly, or if current Blackboard Learn clients had seen the acquisition as the death knell of their LMS, there would have been a nonlinear jump in the number of clients looking to at least go to a formal LMS evaluation, and most likely to leave Blackboard.

That hasn’t happened, and interestingly, the mood of Learn clients and employees at the conference was more upbeat and optimistic than we have seen for almost a decade. In numerous hallway conversations, Learn clients liked what they were seeing from Anthology’s increased investment in Learn Ultra, and they also reported on improved customer service There was more optimism that Learn Ultra development would get closer and closer to having sufficient features to truly replace Learn Original at the course level. The optimism itself was more important than the specific features.

Impacts on LMS Evaluations

Outside of the conference, however, we have not seen a material change in Blackboard Learn competitiveness vs. D2L Brightspace or Instructure Canvas. Blackboard Learn does win here and there - for example, Anthology announced a recent win at the University of Mindanao in the Philippines, where Blackboard Learn will replace LTG’s Open LMS (formerly Moodlerooms) - but by and large Brightspace and Canvas win most head-to-head evaluations.

Learn does best when schools choose to deepen their relationship with Anthology and not go to a formal evaluation, and the mood at Anthology Together could signal that a greater percentage of current Learn clients over time may avoid going to a formal evaluation. LMS evaluations and migrations are still happening, but they might happen less often in 2023 and beyond if Anthology continues to execute well.

Product News

In product news . . .

Development of new features for Learn Ultra is accelerating, with an aggressive push to get more schools to migrate fully from Original to Ultra. This investment has led to “the largest Learn Ultra release to-date” in the late spring. It should be noted, however, that fewer than 25% of existing Blackboard Learn courses are on Ultra as of mid 2022. Anthology needs to accelerate, or to change strategy.

Anthology announced a vision for Anthology Intelligent Experiences (iX)™, which will leverage the combined LMS, SIS, and CRM data to create nudges and in-context interventions across product lines. I would describe in more detail, but this is a vision, not a fully-developed set of agents or features yet. It does show the product direction we are likely to see more often from Anthology.

Where Blackboard has made the most progress is in Learn SaaS. Currently ~85% of Blackboard Learn clients are on SaaS or have signed contracts to move to Learn SaaS. The company is on track for the end-of-life of Managed Hosting and Self-Hosting options by the end of 2023.Another positive sign on the product front comes from a recent change in final grade release features based on feedback from the company's weekly focus groups. Quite a few faculty members spoke up against the design, and Anthology delayed the release and redesigned to address the concerns. Anthology is not the only company that gets customer feedback within their product development cycle, but this specific example speaks well of the changes being made post-acquisition.What we are not seeing Anthology address, however, are changes in competitiveness of Learn Ultra vs. other vendors. Most Learn Ultra changes are placed in the context of Learn Original and product upgrades.

Overall

This was a good conference for Blackboard Learn's current clients and for Anthology. Corporate acquisitions are difficult, and if anything, Anthology has proven itself to be a net positive for Blackboard at this stage when any wrong moves could have led to an exodus of clients.