Vendors

This is not a comprehensive list, nor is it intended to be. When people email me, asking how to be listed here, I tell them to do something really great for their customers. "eLearning" is losing its meaning as every training vendor with a web site proclaims its elearningness.

eLearning solutions circa 2001. The situation changes so frequently I'm going to stop updating this.

Click2Learn -- started life as Asymetrix with Paul Allen funding. Continually reinventing its appearance, like Madonna. Once an authoring tool company, switched to services, then became a learning store and self-publishing portal, and later acquired content management capability and is looking like a more general eLearning solution provider. Currently doing well with its Aspen learning environment.
Digital Think -- best ads in the business. Developed and stuck with a production-line approach to courseware development. Courses tend to be simple but quick to assemble. Acquired Arista Knowledge Systems mid-2000 and retooled it as their LMS. Then hit a brick wall, downsized, handed off custom development to India, and is emerging a leaner operation.
ElementK (the "K" is knowledge) was once ZDU, Ziff-Davis University, the source of cheap online PC-skills training. ElementK now offers testing, certification, and much more. For example, SmartPlanet and Gateway are ElementK front-ends.
GeoLearning
Global Knowledge is a gigantic instructor-led IT training shop that is currently converting 100% of its courseware into eLearning format.
IBM MindSpan probably does more eLearning business than everyone else in this category put together but the details are buried in IBM's consolidated statements. Dropping the Lotus name and ending the schism between IBM's learning and Lotus learning.
KnowledgeNet is going after the tech certification market with a vengeance.
Knowledge Planet
Knowledge Universe -- an elearning and education holding company funded by Michael Milken and Larry Ellison. Milken seems to be losing interest in the low-return ed business.

IT training pioneer NETg was acquired once again, and its star appears to be sinking.
Skillsoft sells soft skills. ("She sells seashells?"). SmartForce -- first with a full-featured, dynamic, hosted eLearning environment. They are merging in 2002 (SkillForce? SmartSoft?).
Thinq keeps popping up on my radar.

eLearning Hosted Services
Andersen Virtual Learning Network
HP eLearning-on-Tap

eLearning Implementation Services
No links until these guys get their acts together. Expect to see: PWC (merging into IBM), Deloitte, KPMG, Accenture, CapGemini/E&Y, EDS, Raytheon, and some smaller players.

The Parable of the Plums
Howard Block tells a tale of some boys who happen upon a plum orchard. They stuff themselves with ripe fruit and fall asleep with satified smiles on their faces. Then a big guy with a mechanical harvester comes through, stripping the trees of the plums.
Howard's parable makes me wonder which of the following companies operate harvesters: Cisco is not a vendor per se. They use eLearning in-house and wish everyone else would -- because that would sell a lot of Cisco equipment. Oracle is taking another run at this with iLearning. Like Cisco, it's only in-house at this point. Publishers Pearson (FT Knowledge) has big eLearning plans. Bertelsmann can't be far behind. Microsoft has backed a learning standard called LRN but hasn't made its move yet. Some day they may buy somebody, cut price drastically, gain awesome market share, issue two buggy versions but then get it right, be sued for antitrust, rig an election, win on appeal, dominate third-world markets, replace community colleges, and spin out of control. Steve Ballmer told me Microsoft has no plans to get into the content business.

Business skills content:
Ninth House Network -- entertaining content, high production values.
Skillsoft -- gobs of content but it's pure "e," unblended
Learn2.com -- learn to fix your toilet, tie your tie, etc.
Achieve Global -- sales, customer service, teamwork. acquired by IIR
Provant -- a training conglomerate putting the "e" into its courseware
DDI -- leadership, teamwork, selection, customer service
Forum -- sales, leadership, teams, productivity. acquired by Pearson mid-2000.
LearnNothing -- a new entrant in this field
SMG -- pioneers in business simulations

Categories are blurring

No eLearning companies are vertically integrated, that is, inventing all their technology in-house. The important thing is whether a vendor's components seamlessly mesh with others to form a working system, not who wrote the code. Compiance with evolving standards are making hybrids feasible.

For a customer, the issue is who takes responsibility for uptime performance. Can I get things on track with one phone call? Or do I have to jockey among vendors, everyone of whom is pointing a finger at the other guy? Do I pay one bill or many?

Alliances

Many alliances are little more than inter-vendor co-marketing deals, little more than a handshake-agreement that if one lands some business, the other will cooperate in trying to make their systems work in concert. Caveat emptor. Ask for references to customers using the hybrid systems before assuming it's real.

Mergers are a good indication of interoperability a year later. Recent marriages are:

SmartForce + ic Global
Click2Learn + Intelliprep
Saba + HPT + Ultris
Centra + Mindlever
Sun + Isopia
Knowledge Planet + Peer3

Community-building: Athenium Communispace

Collaborative Groupware Software (mainly Open Source)

Authoring software: eWeek Shootout 5/2001iAuthor Hypercosm MacromediaAllen Communication, acquired by Gilat in early 2000, now Mentergy Click2Learn , once known as Asymetrix, rumor says they're backing away from authoringOutstart, an eLearning platform Tools for eLearning Authors by Clive Shepard

KM: KM vendors evaluated See also our Knowledge Management page

Autonomy - Knowledge Management and New Media
Ruminations on KM vs. Corporate Reality
Delphi Group on KM
IBM Learning Services
Lotus KM
grapeVINE News

Virtual Classroom Tools (Synchronous Learning)
Comparison of online delivery products
Centra, virtual classroom and meeting space. Free test ride of limited version.
InterWise -- which stresses on-line interactivity
HorizonLive -- topnotch virtual classroom application. No plug-ins.
DataBeam, now part of Lotus
ILINC acquired 2/2000 by Gilat and rolled into Mentergy
Placeware, for delivering lectures broadly. Free test ride of MyPlaceware.
NetMeeting, Microsoft's market spoiler. free but creaky.
Intervu Netpodium prides itself on delivering streaming audio and video.
WebEx has a sales-oriented feel, as in remote presentations to clients. PC Mag winner. Superbowl advertiser.
Contigo comes from a marketing environment.
WebLine (recently acquired by Cisco) touts its customer-management features.
WebSentric stakes its claim on easily-customizable presentations.

PC Mag. Real-Time Web Presentations compares five classroom packages from a presentation-only point of view (1/00). Scorecard.

Learning Management Systems (keeping track of things)

Lots of participants at TechLearn 2000 wore buttons anouncing that they were shopping for an LMS. It's like shopping for cheese in France -- they come in hundreds of flavors and some of them, you'd never want to take home. LMS's started as simple registration systems. Then bell & whistles like classroom allocation, on-line course catalogs, and billing bulked them up. Some added student records.

eLearning raised the requirements significantly. Keeping track of the learner is vital -- and it entails not just course completion but module completion, and job requirements, and current level of competency. In New Features for Learning Management Systems, Bruce Henry describes a future where "learning systems will be omniscient and omnipresent" The LMS of the future will include "annotation, natural language integration, live multimedia interaction, quality control, spontaneous group formation, credits-royalties-modularity, and structured interactions for learning network users, researchers and developers."

Brooke Broadbent sees an LMS performing the school function in eLearning. "When learners log on to study, they use the LMS software, much like students do when they walk through the door of a school. Using an LMS, students select courses, receive content, complete exercises, quizzes, and communicate with instructors and other students. Instructors, administrators and managers monitor student participation through records contained in an LMS." His article discusses the complexities and suggests questions to ask vendors.

PC Week Shoot-out Anytime/Anyplace Learning Management Systems (11/99) Shoot-out scorecard and Spec Check

A day in the life of a learning management system by Clive Shepherd

Can LMSs Survive the Sophisticated Buyer? by Clark Aldrich

Don't make an LMS decision without first reading this astute article from Leanring Circuits. There's no market leader, the structure of LMSs is confusing, scalability is iffy, and information about them is often contradictory. Except for IT training, full-blown implementations are rare. Skills management is a pipe dream. Learning deals with customers, too, and LMSs are for employees. Clark concludes that LM is required but perhaps not LMSs.

Learning management system vendors
Docent has a reputation for rapid deployment.
Saba is more or less the ERP of learning management. Large, scalable, enterprise, complex, sometimes overkill.
MindLever -- 4/2001 -- being merged into Centra
Click2Learn -- recently acquired an LMS company and its managers.
Intellinex -- their LEAP system is one piece of Ernst & Young's consulting that didn't go to Cap Gemini.
Socratease -- free trial download. low price leader -- $1200
WBT Manager
Pathware -- being integrated into Lotus
KnowledgeSoft
Phoenix
Learning Portal
Generation 21 now incorporates wireless.
LearnFrame claims to be a Rosetta Stone, making all content SCORM-compatible. On the ropes financially.

SAP has announced its intentions to release a training management module.

New Category: LCMS
"Learning Content Management Systems" is a new term being promulgated to describe systems that distribute learning objects. We've created a new page to keep up with LCMS developments.

Vendor analysis
Online Educational Delivery Applications, a Web Tool for Comparative Analysis
lGuide, Reviews of Online Courses. B2C.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change."

Charles Darwin

Don't forget the free stuff!

A bot brings me new mentions of eLearning on the web. This takes me on many peculiar journeys. ~~This character is from the ugliest eLearning site I've seen in months.~~

These guys cleaned up their site. The new ugliest eLearning site is here.