Brainshark and Blackboard Announce Partnership

Waltham, Mass. — April 21

Brainshark Inc. and Blackboard Inc. announced a partnership Wednesday with the intention of boosting each other’s presence in the learning community.

“Any good partnership works both ways,” said Joe Gustafson, CEO of Brainshark, a provider of online and mobile video presentations. “We’ll be helping them, and they’ll be helping us.”

Brainshark now joins Blackboard — which provides higher education, K-12, professional, corporate and government organizations with its Learn platform — as a Blackboard Signature Partner. A Signature Partner typically has access to Blackboard marketing and sales resources and is integrated into Blackboard product distribution channels, among other things.

The partnership will allow users of the Blackboard Learn platform to use Brainshark’s technology to create both computer- and mobile-based learning content. The content, which can be created with tools such as PowerPoint, can be deployed instantly and tracked.

“The ability to create that content once and have it accessible to any audience anywhere is pretty key,” said Andy Zimmerman, vice president of product marketing at Brainshark.

He explained that Brainshark has maintained a presence in the corporate learning sector for 11 years, and during that time, informal learning has grown in demand.

“There will always be a need for formal learning, which we support with our integration with Blackboard Learning Systems and other LMS systems,” he said.

The audience for informal corporate learning has become geographically dispersed; an increasing number of individuals are required to be on the road.

“Our support for virtually any mobile device is pretty important to support that corporate informal learning,” Zimmerman said.

Currently, Brainshark also has a partnership with Saba Software Inc. and previously had a partnership with GeoLearning before it was acquired by SumTotal Systems.

“This partnership is another learning management system partner for us, but one that is a little different in that it’s much larger, and they are very aggressively trying to get into the corporate space,” said Kate Skelly, vice president of corporate and business development at Brainshark. “By partnering, we are hoping to offer those customers and prospects a better combined solution that will help them have a better e-learning solution for their customers.”