This BCS report explores the current state of different facets of the e-learning industry in the UK. Some downsides to it are that it appears incomplete – figures for Adobe and Open Source solutions are excluded because the information was unavailable, and it doesn’t offer a comparison to earlier years. However, it does give a reasonable overview of the industry.
In summary, there are five groups:-
Bespoke content developers – producing localised content for large organisations (who may decide to develop content in-house to reduce costs).
Off-the-shelf content providers, such as SkillSoft and Video Arts. These are typically generic content, such as time management and how to use MS Access 2007.
Authoring tool providers – such as Adobe Captivate who may start to face the pressure of open source tools.
LMS/LCMS providers – such as SumTotal and Plateau who may be feeling the pinch from database and ERP companies like Oracle and SAP, as well as open source solutions like Moodle.
Other e-learning products and services. This includes web conferencing like WebEx, Adobe Connect and Centra which may start to feel pressure from open source solutions like DimDim (and Skype if it were extended). It also includes wikis and blogs.
The report concludes that the e-learning industry will come out of the recession with a larger slice of the learning and development pie. I’m not so sure about the technology providers they mention as there is growing competition from open source. Products such as SumTotal and Plateau are charged on a per user basis, which can be prohibitive for medium-sized organisations and large organisations trying to reduce costs. They also have the inflexibility of the software company as they move further into SaaS and the “configure, don’t customise” philosophy.
Tags: eLearning, LMS, open source