Blackboard Provides ASP Solutions for More Than 100 Clients
WASHINGTON, D.C. — More and more institutions are turning to Blackboard, the leading e-Education infrastructure company, for their application service offering. Today, Blackboard Inc. announced that more than 100 clients have selected Blackboard’s application service to deliver the Blackboard e-Education platform at their institutions.
In addition to providing a highly effective online teaching and learning environment, Blackboard offers a range of professional services to help instructors and administrators get more value from the Blackboard e-Education platform. Through its application service offering, Blackboard provides a secure and affordable solution to meet an institution’s immediate and future needs, while still allowing the institution to maintain complete control over its course Web sites andcontent.
“We could not devote someone internally to administer the system full-time, and with Blackboard’s application service we know that the system will always be up and our members will have a seamless experience. We would never give up this valuable service,” said Dan Thoms, senior director, Education Products and Services, Mortgage Bankers Association of America.
According to the ASP Industry Consortium, ASP’s save customers 33%-53% over purchasing and managing hardware and software applications themselves. Many Blackboard clients have cited several other key benefits as reasons for calling on the Blackboard ASP team:
- As an ASP, Blackboard addresses all security, network, database and application issues.
- Blackboard ASP provides stability – a proven infrastructure to deliver a mission-critical application and redundancy at all levels of the online environment.
- Blackboard offers greater than 99% guaranteed “uptime” and 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week monitoring.
- A dedicated staff of developers and engineers works to ensure the satisfaction of all clients.
- Blackboard’s dedicated and experienced ASP technical support team frees in-house IT resources at institutions to focus on internal applications.
- Blackboard provides quick implementation, reducing the time to get the software application up and running and allowing access to the application in less than seven days.
“We handle everything,” said Greg Davies, vice president of Internet engineering, Blackboard Inc. “Customers choose Blackboard’s application service offering because e-Education is critical to their success. Clients need an e-Education infrastructure and support that is world class and cost effective. They continually tell us that because of Blackboard’s application service offering, they have been able to invest more time into the actual online learning program, allowing for significant growth since purchasing the Blackboard software.”
“We were a K-12 program still in the development stage and did not have a server for economic reasons. We are very pleased with the technical performance of our program and hosting services through Blackboard,” said Lynn Michaelson, program director of Clintondale Community Schools-Virtual High School in Michigan. “Blackboard has provided our institution with excellent support/technical services, automatic back-up and a dedicated server.”
Blackboard provides application services to institutions that want the benefits of the Blackboard 5™ e-Learning platform but do not have the technical infrastructure to locally install and manage the software. Blackboard application services allow clients to focus on developing and delivering online education programs without investing in the hardware, software, training and staffing resources required to run enterprise applications. Blackboard ASP clients include City Colleges of Chicago, Fordham University and Rochester Institute of Technology.
About Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard develops, licenses, and supports enterprise software platforms for bringing the educational experience online. Whether supplementing traditional brick and mortar education or enabling online distance learning, Blackboard solutions power many of the Internet’s most successful e-Education sites for courses, campus communities, and student commerce. Blackboard’s Course & Portal Solutions and Commerce & Access Solutions power online education and related educational services at schools, colleges and universities, as well as the organizations that serve them, such as education publishers, test preparation companies and other education service providers.
Contact Information:
Blackboard Inc.
Maria Gallagher
(202) 463-4860 x541
Michael Stanton
(202) 463-4860 x305
