LAS VEGAS, July 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackboard Inc.
(Nasdaq: BBBB) and Kaltura, (www.kaltura.com), developer of the
first open source video platform, today announced a partnership to
distribute Kaltura's rich media solution within the Blackboard
Learn™ platform. With the partnership, Blackboard Learn users
can now activate and try out the Kaltura Video Blackboard Building
Block™ to experience Kaltura's full range of advanced video and
rich-media capabilities for both desktop and mobile devices,
without leaving their existing Blackboard® environment.
The announcement was made at BbWorld®, Blackboard's
annual user conference being held in Las
Vegas this week. With the partnership, Kaltura becomes
a Blackboard Premier Partner™ in the Blackboard
Partnerships Program™.
"We are honored to enter this partnership with such a leader in
education technology," said Ron
Yekutiel, Kaltura's Chairman & CEO. "Hundreds of
universities and colleges across the globe are already using the
various video tools and applications in Kaltura's Cross Campus
Media Suite, including 15 of the top 20 schools in America. We look
forward to expanding our reach further through this partnership
with Blackboard, while allowing educational institutions to enhance
their learning results by using integrated video inside the
LMS."
The Kaltura Video Blackboard Building Block supports Blackboard
Learn 8, 9.0 and 9.1. It adds a full layer of rich-media
functionality integrated throughout the Blackboard Learn platform.
With it, students and instructors can add video to a course, submit
a video assignment, view lecture videos, see a playlist of campus
events, access video from the library and build a personal media
library inside their Blackboard® course.
"We are seeing a surge in demand for rich media functionality in
the education space, for teacher and student generated content as
well as for lecture capture and other sources of campus media,"
said Matthew Small, Chief Business
Officer at Blackboard. "By partnering with Kaltura, we are ensuring
that our clients have access to a comprehensive rich media toolset
at the click of a button."
The integration includes the full capabilities of the Kaltura
Open Source Online Video Platform, allowing users to work with
images, videos, and audio as easily and intuitively as they would
use text documents in their courses. In addition, administrators
have full access to the Kaltura Management Console, a full-featured
media management console, which allows further control of the
system and allows use of rich media across other Kaltura
applications, such as Kaltura MediaSpace™.
About Blackboard Inc.
Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) is a global leader in enterprise
technology and innovative solutions that improve the experience of
millions of students and learners around the world every day.
Blackboard's solutions allow thousands of higher education, K-12,
professional, corporate, and government organizations to extend
teaching and learning online, facilitate campus commerce and
security, and communicate more effectively with their communities.
Founded in 1997, Blackboard is headquartered in Washington,
D.C., with offices in North
America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
About Kaltura
Kaltura provides the world's first Open Source Online Video
Platform. Over 120,000 media & entertainment companies,
enterprises, SMBs, educational institutions, service providers,
platform vendors, and system integrators use Kaltura's flexible
platform to enhance their websites, web-services, and web-platforms
with advanced customized video, photo and audio functionalities.
Kaltura's features and products enable to easily deploy
custom workflows involving video creation, ingestion, publishing,
management, syndication, engagement, monetization and analysis.
The free community-supported self-hosted software and
source-code is available for download at http://www.kaltura.org. A
commercial version of the software can be obtained at
www.kaltura.com along with Kaltura services such as streaming,
hosting, transcoding, analytics, ad serving, support and
maintenance packages, and professional development. Founded in
2006, New York-based Kaltura is
also a founding member of the 'Open Video Alliance'
(http://www.openvideoalliance.org), a coalition of organizations
dedicated to fostering open standards for online video. For more
information: http://www.kaltura.com, http://www.kaltura.org and
http://exchange.kaltura.com/.
Any statements in this press release about future
expectations, plans and prospects for Blackboard and other
statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans,"
"expects," "will," and similar expressions, constitute
forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ
materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements
as a result of various important factors, including the factors
discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our Form 10-K filed
on February 18, 2011 and Form 10-Q
filed on May 9, 2011 with the SEC. In
addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press
release represent the Company's views as of July 14, 2011. The Company anticipates that
subsequent events and developments will cause the Company's views
to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these
forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company
specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These
forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as
representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to
July 14, 2011.
SOURCE Blackboard Inc.; Kaltura