Scott Leslie discussed the increase in LMS vendors in the marketplace in a recent newsletter, something that most analysts did not predict:
While it’s definitely true that a few of the 50 seemed to have slowed down their release cycles (no bad thing in a sector that at one point seemed to be averaging close to 2 major releases a year), none of them have actually closed shop. Add to these all of the small open source projects popping up (and some of the bigger ones too), as well as a seemingly neverending supply of elearning startups from India, and one could get the impression that this marketplace is somehow expanding, not consolidating.
Scott goes on to say that organisations should ensure that any system they purchase have the ability to export content in a standards-compliant format, and that this should be proven prior to purchase. This is good advice, as there are numerous purchasers who are locked-in to their sub-optimal systems because they cannot export their content to any other system.
