Blackboard Rules the Schools: As educational software goes mainstream, one company becomes the Microsoft of its space

摘要

THERE ARE THOSE RARE moments in business when a technology goes from being cutting edge to being an indispensable part of everyday life. Just ask people who bought shares in Microsoft or Research in Motion at a time before terms like "operating system" and "BlackBerry" were part of the vernacular. In the education space, a company called Blackboard is profiting from a similar cultural shift-the one in which the most basic functions of college life, like attending lectures and taking notes, have gone from analog to digital.