The announcement on October 12, 2005 that the two largest commercial content management system (CMS) providers in the world are merging is a significant development. According to Information Today, Inc., “In the 2004 fiscal year, Blackboard had $111.4 million in revenue; WebCT had $38.4 million.” We are talking about big bucks today, but potentially even more dollars tomorrow in this commercial CMS sphere.
I can’t help but guess that open source CMS systems like Moodle and Sakai were major influences on this development. The functionality offered by Moodle today, for example, rivals in most ways the basic and advanced functionalities of both WebCT and Blackboard. Just like a CIO asking the reasonable question, “Do we really need the functionality offered by an upgrade to Windows Vista?“, CIOs of educational organizations of all sizes should be asking, “Do we really need the functionality of a commercial CMS system when open source alternatives are so robust and flexible?”
In a majority of situations, I would wager, the answer is NO. Open source CMS solutions like Moodle are incredibly powerful and user-friendly. The upshot of this will hopefully be further enhancement of commercial CMS solutions like the merged Blackboard offering, which will be pressured to differentiate themselves from free alternatives.
For more on this topic, read the excellent discussion article “Is Open Source in Your CMS Future?” published in the December 2004 edition of Campus Technology.
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