The LMS market is in flux. According to a 2010 survey conducted by the Campus Computing Project, Blackboard‘s dominance of the higher education market declined from 71 percent in 2006 to 57 percent in 2010. Open source alternatives Moodle and Sakai have continued to make inroads, as has Desire2Learn–together they now control over 30 percent of the market. The entry of Instructure, whose Canvas LMS recently scooped up the business of the Utah Education Network, provides an additional plot twist. And hanging over it all is the imminent migration of hundreds of legacy Blackboard clients to new systems as their existing platforms are retired.

Often overlooked in the numbers game, though, are more fundamental–even philosophical–questions about the evolving role of the LMS and its ability to meet the needs of higher education today. If the debate of recent years has been between open source and proprietary systems, the focus is gradually shifting to how all of these systems will tackle the thorny issues of informal learning, social networking, assessment, and a mobile learning environment.

To gauge what the future may hold, CT asked leading educators and vendors for their thoughts on the evolution of the LMS in higher education.

LMS Panelists  Josh Baron Senior academic technology officer Marist College (NY) Michael Feldstein Senior program manager, MindTap MindApps Cengage Learning Mark Frydenberg Senior lecturer and instructional software specialist Bentley University (MA) Matt Leavy CEO, Pearson eCollege Ian Smissen Director, eLearning Strategies Desire2Learn Brian Voss Vice chancellor for IT and CIO Louisiana State University Brian Whitmer Co-founder Instructure

Consumers are increasingly relying on their smartphones, preferring their mobile devices over a variety of other electronics.

According to a report by ExactTarget, more than two-thirds of consumers would prefer to keep their smartphones over their Playstation, Wii or other video gaming console. Thirty-four percent would rather part with their microwaves than their cellphones, and 40 percent would prefer to give up their laptops.

Marketers can play to this attachment by launching well-rounded mobile marketing campaigns. Cherry Butler wrote for Fast Casual that small, local businesses should launch mobile-optimized websites as their first move..

“As opposed to simply shrinking a business’ website to fit a phone screen, a mobile-optimized site is a condensed, highly-functional website built especially for the phone,” Butler wrote for the source. “It doesn’t replace a [company’s] main website, but it is an easy way for users and new customers to quickly find and connect with a local [business.]”

Butler also stressed the importance of building a database of consumers via an opt-in campaign, which can help firms roll out SMS campaigns. Once a consumer does this, it’s important to reward them with a coupon or promotional offer.

More than half of U.S. consumers who’ve made at least one purchase on their smartphone have done so based on a marketing message delivered via mobile email, according to a new study by ExactTarget.

While calling, texting and emailing remain the most frequent daily activities for smartphone users, the study found consumers are increasingly using their smartphones for more than the basics.

Key findings of the research include:

• Sixteen percent of smartphone owners have completed at least one purchase as a direct result of a marketing message they received on their smartphone;
• Of those, 55% have completed a purchase directly on their smartphone, 43% have completed a purchase on their computer, and 35% report purchasing in-store;
• Twenty-eight percent of smartphone owners have used their phone at least once to check in using location-based services such as Foursquare or Facebook Places; and
• Twenty-four percent have scanned a QR code or bar code on their smartphone.

A new study by ExactTarget finds that more than half of US consumers who’ve made at least one purchase on their smartphone have done so based on a marketing message delivered via mobile email.

According to the figures, 16% of smartphone owners have completed at least one purchase as a direct result of a marketing message they received on their handset and of those, 55% have completed a purchase directly on their smartphone, 43% have completed a purchase on their computer, and 35% report purchasing in-store.

Featured in Mobile Dependence Day, the latest in ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers research series, the finding is one of many new insights into how consumers are shopping, making purchases and becoming more dependent on emails, text alerts and mobile coupons delivered to their smartphones every day.

“With more than 89% of US online consumers owning a cell phone and 40% owning a smartphone, this is a watershed moment for marketers, said Jeff Rohrs, vice president, ExactTarget’s Marketing Research and Education Group. “Rapid smartphone adoption is transforming how consumers interact with brands and connect to the world.”

While calling, texting and emailing remain the most frequent daily activities for smartphone users, the study found consumers are increasingly using their smartphones for more than the basics.

35% of smartphone users check Facebook several times a day on their smartphone and 34% of people have checked a bank account balance on their smartphone. Just shy of 30% of smartphone owners have used their phone at least once to check in using location-based services like Foursquare or Facebook Places and 24% have scanned a QR code or barcode on their smartphone>

The report also finds that more than two-thirds of people would choose to keep their smartphone over an iPad or similar tablet computer (69%) or a game system such as Playstation or Wii (72%), while more than a third would give up their laptop computer (40%) or microwave (34%) to stay connected with their smartphone.

“A majority of smartphone owners are now comfortable making purchases with their smartphones,” said Tim Kopp, ExactTarget’s chief marketing officer. “However, as our Mobile Dependence Day report makes clear, smartphone messaging is driving purchases across all channels—online and off. Marketers must, therefore, look to optimize their messaging in ways that recognize the consumer’s mobility and control.”

Mass email attacks designed to target a wide-ranging audience are falling out of favor with attackers, according to research conducted by Cisco Systems Inc.

You’ve got to ask yourself: In your organization, do you possess data or are you an organization that someone would preselect as a target?

Wade Baker, director of research and risk management,Verizon Business

The study, “Email Attacks: This Time It’s Personal,” (.pdf) was conducted by Cisco’s Security Intelligence Operations, the San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant’s threat management unit. It found the success rate declining for mass email campaigns. Mass spam volumes plummeted from 300 billion daily spam messages to just 40 billion between June 2010 and June 2011. The estimate of how much money is being made from traditional mass email-based attacks has declined more than 50%, from $1.1 billion in June 2010, to $500 million in June 2011.

To make up for the lack of success, attackers are developing spear phishing campaigns and personalized scams, according to the report. Rather than pushing out thousands of email randomly, attackers use targeted phishing to exploit select groups of people: employees at a defense contractor, bank tellers or college students. Typically the attack has a more deceptive email catered toward the victim’s interests or activities.

The Cisco researchers credit the reduction in mass email attacks to law enforcement action, effectively crippling botnets that drive the activity, including Rustock, Bredolab and Mega-D.  In addition, Russian police pressed charges against the owner of SpamIt, a large spam-sending affiliate network. “By disrupting the financial and technical business models of key cartels,” the report states, “threat volumes have declined in favor of more lucrative activities.”

Cybercriminals made an estimated $150 million in June from spear phishing attacks, according to the report. The figure, derived from what Cisco calls a conservative estimate of a $400 loss per user, per successful phishing event, and then extrapolated on an annualized basis, has tripped from $50 million in June 2010, and is expected to continue to increase.

Spear phishing and other targeted attack methods were used in a number of recent high-profile data breaches. A spear phishing email was used in the RSA breach, which led to the loss of sensitive data pertaining to the company’s SecurID two-factor authentication product. The Google Aurora attack also contained a spear phishing component. Once a victim clicks on the link, the attacker typically scans for an application vulnerability and sometimes exploits a zero-day flaw to infect and gain control of the victim’s machine.

While the costs to the cybercriminal are typically higher for a spear phishing attack, Cisco said, the yield and benefit is greater. A single spear phishing attack targeting 1,000 people has the potential to haul in $150,000, according to the Cisco report.  Meanwhile, a cybercriminal’s traditional mass email campaign that targets about 1 million people can potentially bring in $14,000.

The 2011 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report also found a moderate increase in targeted attacks. Breaches are not one dimensional, said Wade Baker, director of research and risk management at Verizon Business. Organizations often have a social engineering element, a malware element and a hacking element to an incident, Baker said.

“There are attackers that seek out whatever organizations they can exploit using a particular method because they are there to find easy targets, and then there are attackers who are targeting specific organizations,” Baker said. “You’ve got to ask yourself: In your organization, do you possess data or are you an organization that someone would preselect as a target?”

There are a variety of ways to mitigate the threat of targeted attacks. In addition to security awareness training for end users, organizations need to bolster patch management for applications running on endpoint machines, said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer at vulnerability management vendor eEye Digital Security, in a recent interview with SearchSecurity.com. Most organizations lack a real process for assessing and remediating vulnerabilities, Maiffret said. For attackers, using a zero-day is simply overkill because a lot of businesses have endpoint machines running software that is not up to date.

“The reality is there are so many organizations and solo attackers who have a significant number of zero-days,” Maiffret said. “A lot of times when businesses are being compromised these days it’s still through normal, everyday Adobe- and Microsoft-related flaws, and typically they are not even zero-day vulnerabilities.”

As a Gartner research director and previously a faculty member and administrator at three different universities, Marti Harris has been monitoring the higher education software and services segment for a long time. She isn’t much surprised by the recently announced acquisition of Blackboard by private equity firm Providence Equity Partners. After all, she pointed out in this interview, Blackboard is the leader in the commercial learning management system space and continually reports strong growth not just in the LMS space but increasingly in multiple areas–collaboration, commerce, notification, and, most recently, services. “They were looking really attractive for this type of acquisition anyway,” she noted.

Prior to publication of her own “First Take” briefing on the acquisition, to be published by Gartner shortly, Harris spoke to Campus Technology to share her current thinking on the acquisition of Blackboard and what it means for the future of the company and its many customers.

Dian Schaffhauser: You’ve seen a lot of acquisition activity happen in the education sector. This one involves an investment group. What can the customers expect in the short term and then in the long term after the deal is approved?

Marti Harris: In the short-term I don’t think we’ll see a big change. I think through the rest of this year certainly, they’ll stay on course for their current strategy and pricing and those types of things. I don’t think there’s anything that will be of any magnitude of change through the rest of this year

What will be important to watch is if there’s going to be changes in leadership within Blackboard. I don’t expect that to be the case. In this case I’m expecting the team to stay at Blackboard for one reason: This team has caused them to be the type of company that this particular equity group wants to acquire. I think they see them as performing well. Certainly Ray [Henderson, president of Blackboard’s teaching and learning division] is very important for Blackboard.

Going forward I think moving from being publicly traded to being part of a private equity firm is going to allow Blackboard to perhaps move a little faster on innovation and to remain competitive not only in their core areas, but in additional areas in higher education.

When you see the acquisition of iStrategy and the announcement on Blackboard Collaborate, we can certainly see their positioning to be not just servicing Blackboard Learn customers. So I think they’ll be able to do more things like that going forward. The obvious example of that is with Collaborate. They bought Wimba and Elluminate, brought in customers running those products with other learning [management systems]. Collaborate is really going to be a platform on its own, integrated into other learning systems and for other purposes. And I can certainly see that as they build their K-12 and corporate spaces as well, these types of products will sit in there nicely.

I think the difference now with the acquisition from a private equity is that it’s going to allow things to be agile going forward. We’ll see things being developed and brought forward to the customer base and to a new customer base in ways they just couldn’t do in the past as a publicly traded company.

Schaffhauser: Why do you think there’s going to be a substantive difference between the kinds of activities they can undertake as a privately held firm versus as a public company? What has been holding them back?

Harris: A difference there is when it’s publicly traded, of course, they are answerable to the stockholders. Every quarter there are expectations. Any major decisions would certainly need to have agreement with all of those involved in it.

You might wonder, will that be the same for the equity partners? I think the difference is if an equity firm sees a longer term success, there’s the potential that they would invest, looking for the longer term results of that investment.

Schaffhauser: You mentioned areas of expansions beyond learning products. Care to conjecture about what some of those might be?

Harris: The acquisition of iStrategy certainly is putting them in with student system environments as a popular choice for being the analytics piece for [SunGard’s] Banner, Datatel, and other student systems. Through that acquisition, they are already acquiring customers who may not have any other Blackboard applications but will be using the analytics.

Another example was their acquisition of Presidium, [a higher ed-focused support and services firm]. I really expect to see them making strides in the student services area.

Schaffhauser: You alluded to being more agile. Why did Blackboard do this now? Have you seen indicators that Blackboard is losing marketshare in its flagship product area? Is there something else coming that the company needed time to tackle?

Harris: I don’t know that it was so much that they had been planning to seek out a deal like this. I know, in fact, that for several years now they have been a company that has performed consistently well and that is dominant in the education market. And those are the types of companies, of course, that equity partners would be interested in. So for that reason, I don’t know that it was that they were out there trying to sell the company to an equity firm. I think they’ve become very attractive because of their steady growth, how big they are in the market, and the results they’ve been able to post. They were looking really attractive for this type of acquisition anyway.

When I talk about being a bit more agile, by that, I’m not talking about how this acquisition will allow them to roll something out three months from now–not that kind of change. But I think if they have ideas and want to do some innovative things, they’ll have funding to do them–to move those products forward. I can see that as a positive result of this acquisition.

I’m very interested in CourseSites, which is advertised by Blackboard as this free service for educators. But what I see as the potential there is Blackboard Learn and Blackboard Collaborate in the cloud. So I really think that’s one of the areas where over the next year we’ll see some increased interest from both their customers and other institutions that are [shopping for a learning management system].

The way the company introduced CourseSites, it was kind of low-key. It wasn’t a huge Educause announcement. Initially, I think they were interested in getting that out there to introduce it perhaps to faculty who are not seeing Blackboard Learn or Collaborate for any of several reasons. At the same time these faculty out there who want to try something else, they can download Moodle and sample it. So I think CourseSites was intended to really introduce Blackboard to the educators again.

When you think back in the history, Blackboard and WebCT, starting out, were really focused on selling to the educators. And they were the ones running these things on servers under their desks. This kind of brings more interest and activity from the actual people who are teaching in higher education.

The other thing is–though this may not be the case in every situation–but some of the institutions that may be running older versions and have not gone up to the next generation, version 9 or 9.1, maybe comparing older versions of Blackboard with brand new products and new versions of other companies’ flagship offerings. So really to do that comparison, they need to be comparing the newest product from Blackboard and not assume that the version they’re running on is what Blackboard looks like today. Trying out CourseSites would allow the teaching faculty to experience more what next-generation Blackboard really is. But more important to Blackboard’s strategy is that CourseSite is in the cloud. New competitors are appearing such as Instructure [Canvas], which offers a cloud-based solution with a SaaS or subscription service. Cloud-based solutions in this space are increasingly important.

Schaffhauser: Blackboard is really making some inroads into K-12. How will the acquisition impact their efforts in that segment?

Harris: They are well known in the K-12 space–not quite like higher ed, but certainly, I would say they’re a recognized player in that space. Both in the K-12 and the corporate side, those markets are ripe for harvest, in a sense–more so K-12, because there aren’t as many choices. In the corporate side–corporate training–there are a lot of choices out there. I think K-12 has a great potential for growth; especially in larger contract situations, I think Blackboard would do well.

Schaffhauser: Private equity firms have a reputation for changing the character and culture of the companies they purchase to focus on trimming what they often view as the “fat.” What sorts of changes do you envision for a few years out–and do you see any potential benefits for customers?

Harris: Thinking about acquisitions in the past. I haven’t seen a whole lot of change to culture. If you look at Datatel, they went through something like this as did Jenzabar at one point. In those cases I didn’t see a real difference in the points you’re talking about. Of course, when Blackboard acquires a company, the expectation is that  the acquisition become more like Blackboard and its culture; but in this case I don’t know if we’d see the Blackboard culture become more like the equity owners.

The question I’m wondering about is, will Blackboard have more acquisitions? I expect they will. They continue to fill out a full range of education-specific types of products and services. That would be something that we may see from this. It’s not like Providence is going to give out money, and say, “Now grow.” They’re going to expect return. They’re going to expect it to continue to be profitable.

You asked earlier, are they losing marketshare? Some surveys will say that there has been quite a bit of movement to Moodle, for instance–not necessarily running it as open source but running it out of the box and perhaps with third-party service and support. Definitely in certain tiers of education, there’s been some of that going on.

But I think at the same time you would find that they’re acquiring new customers through other product areas. I think that’s what’s keeping them as a profitable company. They’re not just depending on forever being the learning system choice of every organization. I think they’re very aware that they have new competitors in that space. But the way they’re positioned, even if you go with Moodle, you may still be very attracted to a Wimba or Elluminate, which is now offered as Blackboard Collaborate. There are other pieces of this company they could still sell to any institutions running another learning system.

Even looking at Blackboard Transact, [a campus ID and debit card system], that was one of the early acquisitions, I could remember thinking at the time, I wonder why they want  a card business? It didn’t seem like a match at all at the time. It’s just operated as a solution on its own. So when you think about their acquisitions, they went into mass messaging [with Blackboard Connect[; they went into the card business [with Transact]; they acquired Xythos, which continues to operate under the name Xythos, but gave them their content management technology. And of course iStrategy.

So Blackboard has been on a pretty steady course. But because some of these acquisitions have been coming more rapidly or with less time between them, it’s becoming more noticeable how they’re expanding.

Schaffhauser: Now the acquirer is being acquired. What do you advise customers to do?

Harris: At this point I don’t think there should be any knee-jerk reactions. I think this is one of those things that we have to really see what rolls out in the next year. Additionally, any of these applications or services that any of their customers are contracted with are not the types of things you can jump from rapidly. It’s one of those things you’re going to have to watch and see.

That, and read my Gartner First Take report on this next week for additional customer advice.

VersionOne, recognized by agile practitioners as the leader in agile project management tools, today announced the general availability of its latest release featuring an all-new user interface (UI). Inspired by feedback from customers and partners, VersionOne designed the new UI to accelerate user adoption, improve usability and increase productivity.

VersionOne focused on the user experience for all team members (managers, developers, testers, etc.) making the product more intuitive and accessible. Improved primary navigation provides simplified access to frequently used functions in the application, increases customer awareness of more advanced functionality and delivers fast access to detailed content when necessary.

Key Highlights:

Cleaner, simpler, modern UI

• Clear, consistent navigation focuses your attention on where you are and what you can do
• Improved layout delivers common functions intuitively
• “How to” video guidance at your fingertips throughout the application
• Simplified views provide faster access to relevant content

Primary menu enhancements accelerate navigation

• Streamlined menu layout means faster time-to-proficiency for novice users
• Faster access to projects and filters makes it easier for users to quickly switch between projects

Improvements to team whiteboard views convey more information concisely

• Improved use of size and color allows team members to get the big picture at a glance
• Filtering on story cards helps users to drill down and see what’s important to them

The latest release also contains new integrations on VersionOne’s free, openAgile Platform. Included are Git, an open source distributed version control system; Electric Cloud, a market leader in build and release management technology; and support for the latest version of HP Quality Center 11.0.

Supporting Quote:

Robert Holler, President and CEO, VersionOne

“Feedback from our customers and partners drives continuous improvement within our product. Our latest release is centered on a new UI designed to significantly improve the overall user experience for the tens of thousands of VersionOne’s users. Getting teams up to speed quickly on our products has always been one of our most important areas of focus. With this latest release, our leadership and continued focus on successfully helping teams scale their agile initiatives faster, easier and smarter will be even more evident.”

Supporting Information:

• VersionOne Release Webinars – Register Here: http://www.versionone.com/release/2011/spring

About VersionOne

VersionOne is recognized by agile practitioners as the leader in agile project management tools. By simplifying the planning and tracking of agile projects, we help teams deliver better software faster. Since 2002, companies such as Adobe, Boeing, bwin, Intuit, Lilly, Lockheed Martin, McKesson, Oppenheimer, Qualcomm, Sabre and Siemens have turned to VersionOne. Today more than 30,000 teams from over 170 countries use VersionOne. Agile Made Easier @ VersionOne.com.

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about VersionOne
• VersionOne’s suite of agile project and lifecycle management tools helps companies scale agile faster, easier and smarter: http://www.versionone.com/Product/
• Learn more about VersionOne’s Ultimate Edition – a comprehensive agile lifecycle management platform for scaling agile organizations
• Agile Sherpa serves newcomers, practitioners, trainers, consultants, event planners and more: http://agilesherpa.org/

For regular VersionOne and agile news follow us on Twitter and Facebook, as well as our blogs.

VersionOne, one of the juggernauts on the Agile tool industry, is prepping to launch a total overhaul of their user interface. And judging by the teaser images, it looks like a big leap in the right direction.

Last year we at Amcom Technology had evaluated a number of Agile tools, including V1. Our thoughts at the time were that it was incredibly feature laden which would suit a very mature agile shop, and our team was relatively new to Agile and the UI just felt too heavy as we wouldn’t use many of those advanced features (and thus not worth paying for something we wouldn’t use).

What I’m hoping to see in this new UI is a better balance towards those who want to keep the process simple, lightweight, and fast.

New Features

Some key new features they’re touting in the next release:

1. Menu enhancements / faster navigation
2. Readability improvements
3. Whiteboard improvements
4. Switch from pop-ups to modals windows (presumably jQuery style)
5. Better search abilities
6. Modernized/Cleaner UI
7. FireFox 5 & IE9 support
8. HP Quality center 11 integration
9. Electric Cloud Integration
10. Git Integration
11. Hooks to their Data Mart/Analytics for B.I

Release Webinar

If you’re interesting in finding out more they have a few webinars scheduled which you can sign-up from here.