IBM Looks to Provide Intranets With Out-of-the-Box Content

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IBM is looking to garner a bigger slice of the e-learning market by teaming up with what it considers to be the pre-eminent players in selected fields. Together, Big Blue and the content providers will market out-of-the-box e-learning systems to corporate customers.

By offering companies complete packages they can easily mount onto their intranets with content from such A-list providers as Harvard Business School, IBM believes it will have an edge over other providers that sell e-learning systems to companies, then pull together content from third party providers.

"It seemed like a logical step to go to the market with an offering that had proven and validated content," says Karen Kocher, Worldwide Central Offering executive for IBM's Mindspan division. "Not only with content that's proven, but also with content that comes ready to run on the computing infrastructure."

IBM formally announced the initiative in early June, while at the same time announcing its first four partners in the program. The e-learning platform is based on Lotus' LearningSpace 5.0 platform, which is designed to support three models of learning - self-paced, collaborative, and live virtual classroom.

Harvard Business School has been selected to provide content related to corporate leadership and management training. IBM has also teamed with Coastal Training Technologies, to offer training programs in the safety and health regulatory and compliance arenas. Ninth House, which provides training in a wide range of business skills, will also have its offerings directly ported onto the LearningSpace platform, and a fourth partner, TRA, will provide its courseware for students preparing for Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) CTP certification.

Kocher says the overall goal of the Mindspan initiative is to partner with a single content provider in each of the most attractive markets, to offer customers an e-learning system with their desired content already plugged in.

Ian Fanton, chief relationship officer with Harvard's Online Business division, says the agreement with IBM is not exclusive and Harvard will continue to provide content on its own and to other e-learning providers. However, the partnership with IBM was seen as a positive way to package its content for potential customers.

"It made sense for several reasons. First of all it's a strong combination of brands - IBM and Harvard speaks of trust and staying power," says Fanton. "Then there's the ease of deployment. The ability to offer a turn-key offering will allow customers to get a system up and running in a very short timeframe."

Harvard already operates a sizeable e-learning business. The school has 500 to 700 large global clients using its courses in leadership and management training, amounting to what Fanton says is a "multi-million dollar" business.

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