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Today, the LMS market is at a turning point. With the tremendous growth in demand for integrated talent management solutions, most LMS providers have added features for performance management, succession management and development planning. But another critical trend is further shaping the market – the tremendous demand and importance of social learning or informal learning. Our research shows that, in 2008 and 2009, companies have stopped investing significant new dollars into e-learning – and are now adding many of their incremental investments into social networking and tools to help build collaborative learning solutions.
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In order to open a dialogue about Hawaii’s pandemic preparedness and allocation priorities, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is funding an alternate reality game starting in mid-May at CoralCross.org.
As part of a larger public engagement initiative that includes community meetings and a live TV panel, the Hawaii State Department of Health has contracted with the Hawaii Research Center for Future Studies to produce Coral Cross, a “playable scenario” on the island of Oahu.
According to Judy Kern at the Communications Office of the Hawaii State Department of Health, the goal of the ARG is to “help encourage public dialogue and elicit input for decision-makers on Hawaii’s pandemic priorities.”
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This announcement reflects many of the rapid trends taking place in this market, making it even more important for buyers to understand the history and financial strength of their technology providers. The trends which are causing these changes include:
* The increased demand for a consolidated HR systems platform which manage enterprise learning, talent management, and other HR functions. We believe that today integration is more valuable than functionality in the majority of companies.
* The tremendous demand for collaborative and social learning platforms, which are slowly replacing formal learning and even traditional e-learning platforms, forcing LMS vendors to redefine their offerings. Many companies today are building their own YouTube-like learning systems which provide social, collaborative learning, often without the need for an LMS.
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Vista Equity Partners announced the proposed acquisition of SumTotal Systems for $102.3 million. This is a significant event in the evolution of the LMS market for a few reason. 1. Traditional learning is shifting to more informal, social collaboration and knowledge sharing and companies have less demand for a “LMS”; 2. The traditional LMS market has been essentially running on auto-pilot for 3 years. 3. Multi-tenant SaaS has proven difficult to execute for traditional on-premise vendors like SumTotal and Saba. It is presumed that SaaS subscription revenues are less than 10% for both companies.