Blackboard Partners With Google, SAP

October 10, 2006

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Blackboards are being phased out – whiteboards are the standard teaching tool in classrooms these days. The Blackboard company is keeping up with the times, though, and making powerful friends. Earlier this morning, Blackboard announced new “partner initiatives” with Google, and yesterday, it formed a “global agreement” with SAP.

Blackboard is a well-known name in the educational community – the company describes itself as “a leading provider of enterprise technology to the education industry.” In keeping with its mission, then, a Blackboard press release proudly revealed that the company has “joined the Google Enterprise Professional program, becoming the first member of the program to focus primarily on educational institutions.”

“As a Google partner,” the release continued, “Blackboard is launching a series of efforts to enhance search capabilities for students and faculty at thousands of academic institutions around the globe . . . . An exciting outcome of the partnership is the integration of the Blackboard Learning System and Google Scholar . . . . Blackboard will also offer a set of Google OneBox for Enterprise modules through a Blackboard Building Block for Google OneBox.”

Michael Chasen, president and CEO of Blackboard, spoke about the Google partnership. It “provides a tremendous value to people across the campus community,” he said.

Similarly, the SAP deal “offers clients even greater return on investment from the technologies they rely on every day,” according to Chasen (in the second press release). It should also “equip campus leaders with the ability to better track and manage student and institutional data and outcomes.”

With these new partnerships, the CEO probably doesn’t have to worry about his company becoming outdated anytime soon. Blackboard Inc., unlike its namesake, should have a strong presence for some time to come.

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