Thursday, November 02, 2006

eLearning Reaches New Buyers in a $10 Billion Industry

A recent article at Tekrati reports:

The market for Self-paced eLearning products and services in the U.S. across all
the buying segments topped $10 billion in 2006, according to Ambient Insight.
"The current U.S. eLearning market is in a period of rapid transformation with
new business models being tried, new low-cost variations of traditional products
appearing, new suppliers entering the market, and new buyers adopting the
products," said Sam Adkins, Chief Research Officer at Ambient Insight

Currently, there are literally hundreds of eLearning providers on the market. Many of these are in-house applications from corporations like IBM and HP and even more prevalant are the traditional CBT (Computer Based Training) models such as Blackboard.

However, according to the article, "..inexpensive hosted services are driving prices down very fast. This is great news for customers," as products like the SimplyDigi University will deliver better and more reliable eLearning models to industry.

This is particularly good news for the small business and non-profit markets as, "It is a new industry and the old rules do not apply. The market now favors innovative disruptor suppliers that are skilled at meeting the needs of the new buyers. Suppliers that know the answer to the question, 'who is the new buyer?", according to Adkins.