Description
Blackboard Inc. is an American educational technology company with corporate headquarters in Reston, Virginia. It was known for Blackboard Learn, a learning management system. It merged with Anthology in late 2021, with the future name of the combined company not announced yet.
The company's last CEO was William L. Ballhaus, formerly president and CEO of SRA International, who was also named chairman and president, on January 4, 2016, following the resignation of Jay Bhatt, who had led Blackboard since October 2012. The firm provides education, mobile, communication, and commerce software and related services to clients, including education providers, corporations and government organizations. The software consists of seven platforms called Learn, Transact, Engage, Connect, Mobile, Collaborate and Analytics, which are offered as bundled software. The firm was founded by Stephen Gilfus, Daniel Cane, Michael Chasen and Matthew Pittinsky through a business combination in 1997, and became a public company in 2004. It operated publicly until it was purchased by Providence Equity Partners in 2011.
As of January 2014, its software were services are used by approximately 17,000 schools and organizations in 100 countries. Seventy-five percent of US colleges and universities and more than half of K–12 districts in the United States use its products and services, and eighty percent of the world's top academic institutions use Blackboard tools, according to Times Higher Education Reputation Ranking.
