The huge news of the week: Blackboard and Anthology are merging (I suspect Anthology is acquiring Bb in reality):
https://twitter.com/Blackboard/status/1437417800776171528
Yep. Chairman of CEO of Anthology will lead combined company, with same primary investors (Veritas and Leeds), w Providence (owner of Bb) taking minority stake. 
Remember that Anthology is a roll-up company created by PE-backed move to combine Campus Management, Campus Labs, and iModules.
This ends a very long-running sales process for Blackboard, starting with 2015's attempt to sell for $3 b
eliterate.us/reuters-blackb…
eliterate.us/reuters-blackb…
No details yet on whether they will keep the Anthology brand for the overall company, and how strongly Blackboard will or won't maintain its identity. The PowerSchool acquisition of Schoology is probably the closest parallel.
Part of the reason this is big news - LMS market has been characterized by non-linear events, typically based on M&A or IPOs, where the real change happens, with longer periods of slow movement in between. This could be nonlinear.
A major difference, however, is that K-12 markets support consolidation strategy including academic functions better than HE. PowerSchool, Frontline, etc. The combination of LMS into broader ERP-based portfolio is not as established in HE.
Jenzabar is one example of combo HE company w LMS. In the 2000s there was a *lot* of talk about the same type of combo, but it didn't happen. This is new approach - some parallels w PowerSchool but also some differences.
Blog post from Bb CEO Bill Ballhaus: blog.blackboard.com/the-next-big-s…
Blog post is up - this one mostly objective descriptions.
philonedtech.com/the-end-of-bla…
Next one will be heavier on subjective analysis.
philonedtech.com/the-end-of-bla…
Next one will be heavier on subjective analysis.
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