LMS Market Trends: A view of recent migrations outside North America

Author

Phil Hill
October 01, 2020

This summer I shared an update on the higher ed LMS market in North America (US and Canada), and earlier this week I shared a view of market acceleration in North American K-12 and higher ed regions. How has the market been changing outside of this region?

While we do not yet have K-12 data outside of North America, we – along with our partners at LISTedTECH – track global markets. Currently we include North America, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, and surrounding countries) in our analysis. So what do the data show us in terms of recent migration trends?

Note and Disclosure: The following data come from our LMS Market Analysis service, where we have further data insights and trend analysis. Several vendors (e.g. Instructure, Blackboard, D2L, Schoology, Moodle), as well as many colleges & universities and investors have been clients of this service over the past four years.

The image below shows the migration trends for 2018 through 2020 for Europe, Middle East, Latin America, and Oceania combined. Keep in mind that this graphic shows migrations – moving from one LMS to another – and not adoptions for schools that previously did not have an official LMS.

LMS higher ed migrations 2018 - 2020 outside of North America, showing biggest gains by Canvas and D2L, and biggest losses by Blackboard and Moodle.

Notes on LMS Losses

  • Blackboard has taken the biggest losses followed by Moodle and Fronter (acquired by itsLearning).

  • ItsLearning and Fronter lost many of their customers in the past few years, largely in the Nordic countries.

  • Canvas has yet to lose a customer to another platform.

Notes on LMS New Adoptions

  • Canvas picked up the majority of new adoptions. Most of this business comes from previous Blackboard and Moodle institutions, followed by the itsLearning and Fronter losses.

  • Brightspace has come in second, with most of its new business coming from previous Blackboard institutions.

  • While Blackboard, itsLearning, and Moodle have lost clients globally, they have also picked up new clients. Blackboard from Moodle and Brightspace (largely in the Middle East), ItsLearning primarily from Blackboard, and Moodle from Blackboard.

We have data outside of these regions and are working to get the coverage to a level where we can add more global regions to our analysis. These questions are becoming more important, not less, due to the Covid-driven acceleration of EdTech market trends and the increased usage of these systems to be the virtual home of academic offerings in academia.