breakthrough aragon research about enterprise-learning

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Aragon Research

Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE Number: 2013-32 September 30, 2013

Author: Jim Lundy

Topic: Knowledge

Issue: What technologies will be used to harness knowhow?

The Aragon Research Globe™ for Enterprise Learning, 2013: The March to Social and Mobile

Summary: Aragon Research introduces its first Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Learning, which examines 19 providers. The learning market is changing, and the shift to a social, mobile and user-empowered learning era is here.

© 2013 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved.


TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 3 Mobile is More Than a Mobile App ............................................................................................. 3 Mobile Learning and Tablets ....................................................................................................... 3 Growth of Real-Time Cloud ......................................................................................................... 3 Learning versus Talent Suite ...................................................................................................... 3 Aragon Research Globe Overview .............................................................................................. 4 Dimensions of Analysis ............................................................................................................. 4 The Four Sectors of the Globe .................................................................................................. 5 Inclusion Criteria ........................................................................................................................ 5 Exclusions ................................................................................................................................. 6 The Aragon Research Globe™ for Enterprise Learning, 2013 ..................................................... 7 Leaders ...................................................................................................................................... 8 Contenders .............................................................................................................................. 12 Innovators ................................................................................................................................ 13 Specialists ............................................................................................................................... 16 Aragon Advisory ........................................................................................................................ 18 Bottom Line ............................................................................................................................... 18



Introduction Learning is becoming a more personal, user-driven, social and mobile experience. Users want more. The enterprise learning market is beginning to flex and shift to meet these needs. The days of the LMS administrator-focused feature set are giving way to user demands for an easier and more engaging experience that brings all of the learning resources together. In today’s Facebook era, users want to connect with other subject-matter experts or take a class, no matter where they are or what device they have.

The Aragon Research Globe™ for Enterprise Learning evaluates technology and service providers that allow an enterprise to manage and deliver all forms of learning. Social and mobile lead the pack in user demand, as does the need for easy access to a live class or a recorded one. The vendors with the best strategies understand this and have been doing makeovers of their offerings to support the social and mobile (SoMo) experience users want.

Mobile is More Than a Mobile App Many learning providers and nearly all social HCM providers offer mobile apps, but what matters is what you can do with them. We were surprised at the wide differences in mobile capabilities between providers. In fact, there are now ways to see differences between providers. Some of it involves the functionality, while other factors involve how often the mobile app is updated. Quarterly updates are becoming the norm. Even in 2013 there are still a few vendors who are still in the process of launching a mobile app. For learning, it is as much about taking a course as it is reading a book.

Mobile Learning and Tablets Tablets are the new way of learning, not only for delivering learning courses, but also delivering live instruction as a key component. This is one reason enterprises want more user-centric solutions that are easy to use and make content easy to access on any device. Taking a live or recorded class via tablet shouldn’t be a third-party integration; it should be a normal user experience. More advanced learning solutions enable this (see Research Note 2013-04: Learning With Tablets: Five Reasons the Tablet is the Ultimate Learning Device).

Growth of the Real-time Cloud The real-time cloud is becoming an important deployment option for enterprises that need to leverage their existing investment in areas such as video conferencing, but can’t expand it significantly because building out the infrastructure would cost too much. Real-time cloud offers enterprises the flexibility to blend their UC, video and web conferencing environments together. In learning, the focus is on the Real-time Cloud Virtual Classroom, in which students can take a live virtual class or listen to a class recording.

Learning versus Talent Suite Learning is still a unique ecosystem, and over the years some talent suite providers did better than others in delivering both a compelling learning solution and a full talent suite. Today, it is clear that many HR and learning buyers may purchase two or more suite components from one provider. For learning, the challenge is still to give users great learning that helps them perform better. Regardless of the provider, enterprises need to evaluate learning solutions on how well they do this, and to realize that learning content is a big part of the overall equation.



Aragon Research Globe Overview The Aragon Research Globe graphically represents our analysis of a specific market and its component vendors. We do a rigorous analysis of each vendor, using three dimensions that enable comparative evaluation of the participants in a given market.

The Aragon Research Globe looks beyond size and market share, which often dominate this type of analysis, and instead uses those as comparative factors in evaluating providers’ product-oriented capabilities. Positioning in the Aragon Research Globe will reflect how complete a provider’s future strategy is, relative to their performance in fulfilling that strategy in the market.

A further differentiating factor is the global market reach of each vendor. This allows all vendors with similar strategy and performance to be compared regardless of their size and market share. It will improve recognition of providers with a comprehensive strategy and strong performance but limited or targeted global penetration, which will be compared more directly to others with similar perspectives.

Dimensions of Analysis

The following parameters are tracked in this analysis:

Strategy reflects the degree to which a vendor has the market understanding and strategic intent that are at the forefront of market direction. That includes providing the capabilities that customers want in the current offering and recognizing where the market is headed. The strategy evaluation includes:

• Learning Product • Product strategy • Market understanding and how well product roadmaps reflect that understanding • Marketing • Management team, including time in the job and understanding of the market

Performance represents a vendor’s effectiveness in executing its defined strategy. This includes selling and supporting the defined product offering or service. The performance evaluation includes:

• Awareness: Market awareness of the firm and its product. • Customer experience: Feedback on the product, installs, upgrades and overall satisfaction. • Viability: Financial viability of the provider as measured by financial statements. • Pricing and Packaging: Is the offering priced and packaged competitively? • Product: The mix of features tied to the frequency and quality of releases and updates. • R&D: Investment in research and development as evidenced by overall architecture.



Reach is a measure of the global capability that a vendor can deliver. Reach can have one of three values: national, international or global. Being able to offer products and services in one of the following three regions is the third dimension of the Globe analysis:

• Americas (North America and Latin America) • EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) • APAC (Asia Pacific: including but not limited to Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea,

Russia, Singapore, etc.)

The market reach evaluation includes: • Sales and support offices worldwide • Time zone and location of support centers • Support for languages • References in respective hemispheres • Data center locations

The Four Sectors of the Globe The Aragon Research Globe is segmented into four sectors, representing high and low on both the strategy and performance dimensions. When the analysis is complete, each vendor will be in one of four groups: leaders, contenders, innovators or specialists. We define these as follows:

• Leaders have comprehensive strategies that align with industry direction and market demand, and effectively perform against those strategies.

• Contenders have strong performance, but more limited or less complete strategies. Their performance positions them well to challenge for leadership by expanding their strategic focus.

• Innovators have strong strategic understanding and objectives, but have yet to perform effectively across all elements of that strategy.

• Specialists fulfill their strategy well, but have a narrower or more targeted emphasis with regard to overall industry and user expectations. Specialists may excel in a certain market or vertical application.

Inclusion Criteria The Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Learning, 2013 will help clients differentiate the many vendors who offer tools to let enterprises manage and deliver all forms of learning.

The inclusion criteria for this Aragon Research Globe are:

• A minimum of $4 million in primary revenue for learning products or services (LMS, LCMS, Classroom, Authoring) or a minimum of $15 million in revenue in a related market (Talent Management, Collaboration or Learning Content Courseware).

• Shipping product; must be announced and available. • Customer references: Vendor must provide customer references in each region where the

vendor does business.



Exclusions The following vendors were excluded from this Aragon Research Globe:

• Drumtalk: Drumtalk is a new knowledge-sharing solution that just launched this year. We see promise from them in social learning, and given their horizontal focus, we will evaluate them in our Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Networking.

• Workday: Workday is one of the fastest-growing cloud providers of human capital management and financial management solutions. They partner with multiple vendors for learning solutions and as such do not qualify for inclusion in this Globe.



The Aragon Research Globe™ for Enterprise Learning, 2013: The March to Social and Mobile

(As of September 30, 2013)

Figure 1: The Aragon Research Globe™ for Enterprise Learning, 2013: The March to Social and Mobile



Leaders

Cornerstone OnDemand

Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD) was one of the pioneers in leading the shift to the cloud and has capitalized on that by offering a full talent suite, and markets them either individually or as bundled modules. CSOD has been growing fast, in part due to strong marketing and its focus on the Cloud Talent Suite. While CSOD has had community capabilities since 2008 that are used by 25% of their client base, it has been late in offering next-generation mobile, social and virtual classroom capabilities. CSOD did show off its new mobile and social capabilities at its annual customer event in June 2013. While its product architecture is based on the Microsoft .Net framework, scalability has not been an issue in some of the big deals it has won. The main thing we hear from customers is that CSOD has proven itself as a firm that is easy to do business with.

Strengths Challenges • Complete end-to-end talent suite • Ease of doing business with CSOD

• Multiple Cloud products - SMB offering is different than the mainline product

IBM Kenexa

IBM made a strategic decision to get back into the learning and social HCM markets by buying Kenexa in 2012, which had also recently purchased Outstart. Outstart has been one of the strongest players in learning content management, and since becoming part of IBM Kenexa it has continually enhanced its overall product portfolio. Today it offers all the major components of learning with particular strengths in content and mobile delivery of content. Besides its large LCMS installed base, IBM Kenexa has enhanced its mobile offering with IBM Kenexa Hot Lava Mobile content authoring and delivery. IBM Kenexa has also consistently updated its mobile apps quarterly, something more HCM vendors need to emulate. It has also enhanced its social capabilities and enhanced its LMS capabilities with a new revamped offering. IBM Kenexa has also made it easy to take content mobile with its Hot Lava app.

Strengths Challenges • LCMS • Social • Mobile app and frequency of mobile app updates

• Known more for LCMS than LMS



Mzinga

Mzinga was an early pioneer in cloud-based e-learning, and it also jumped on social learning earlier than any other vendor. Mzinga has rebranded its product portfolio around the OmniSocial brand. It has also updated its cloud-based OmniSocial Learning platform, and that, along with a total focus on customer satisfaction, has enabled Mzinga to compete for and win a number of significant deals. Mzinga also offers OmniSocial Content, an award-winning content authoring and best-in-class software simulation solution to enable content authors to produce engaging and interactive e-learning content. Additionally, Mzinga provides custom content development services for enterprises looking to augment or outsource their content development needs. Mzinga also bundles an industry-leading virtual classroom solution to broaden the instructor’s classroom toolset and deepen the students’ level of collaboration and engagement in virtual classroom courses.

Strengths Challenges • Social learning functionality • Content authoring and software simulation

tools and services • Virtual classroom capabilities • E-commerce capabilities for internal and

extended enterprises

• Market awareness

NetDimensions

NetDimensions is a publicly traded global learning and talent management firm that is focused on high-consequence industries. It is based in Hong Kong, with offices in the US, UK, Germany, China, Australia, and the Philippines. With a global footprint and the ability to deal with both compliance (21CFR11) and training for external users (extended enterprise), NetDimensions is increasingly competing for large global learning and talent deals. NetDimensions offers social learning directly, but it also integrates with leading social platforms via an API interface. Supported platforms include Atlassian Confluence and WordPress/BuddyPress. In 2012 NetDimensions rolled out a mobile app for tablets, the NetDimensions Talent Slate, which allows for the use of learning in both an online and offline manner. Its global focus, combined with strong deployments in Europe and Asia, makes NetDimensions a good choice for firms that operate across the globe.

Strengths Challenges • LMS • Analytics • Compliance

• Market awareness • Social learning



Oracle

Oracle Learn Cloud delivers a tailored user experience that can be designed to create any look and feel desired through a highly editable UI. Many companies want to make sure that they market the brand and culture of the company in all aspects of employee, channel, or customer engagement. The UI HTML can be tailored to deliver the user experience desired to increase user adoption and engagement with an application. Oracle Learn Cloud is integrated with the Oracle HCM Cloud Suite, Oracle Taleo Recruiting Cloud Service, Oracle Taleo Onboarding Cloud Service, and Oracle Taleo Performance Management Cloud Service. Mobile is a major strong suit, as is the pending integration with Oracle Social Network, which has been fully deployed at Oracle for the last two years. The breadth and depth of the Oracle Learn Cloud technology stack combined with the existing Oracle Learning installed base positions Oracle well going forward.

Strengths Challenges • Cloud focus for learning • Mobile capabilities • Overall strength of HCM suite

• Awareness of learning offering

Saba

Saba, which just named Shawn Farshchi as its permanent CEO, has been a pioneer in learning and has one of the largest installed bases of learning customers. It was early in collaboration, and recently did a complete update of its Saba Cloud to be fully social with embedded virtual classroom capabilities. With full integration of its virtual classroom, Saba is ready for a new wave of training delivery that is immersive, so students can take a live class or just click on a recording. Saba can also address compliance (21CFR11) requirements. Saba also has some of the most complete testing and assessment capabilities on the market, which means that an enterprise can skip the step of buying a testing or assessment platform. Saba has jumped into the smarter systems arena by adding more predictive and machine learning capabilities to their platform. This is a next-generation capability and something other vendors will want to emulate.

Strengths Challenges • Social and mobile learning • Virtual classroom • Built-in e-commerce

• Services execution



SuccessFactors

SuccessFactors, which is part of SAP, offers one of the leading learning platforms on the market. Formerly known as Plateau, SuccessFactors Learning is part of the SAP Cloud platform, one of the most complete in the industry. Some of the world’s largest companies use SuccessFactors Learning, and given the large and growing SAP base, we expect to see more firms interested in making that transition. SAP Jam, which integrates with the Learning module, has had a number of significant updates that make social learning a breeze. Like Saba, SuccessFactors has a large on-premise installed base. Given that SAP has both on-premise and cloud offerings, this is the best of both worlds for enterprises that may still want to go with an on-premise deployment.

Strengths Challenges • Platform scalability • Learning functionality

• Focus on learning compared to the HCM suite



Contenders

Skillsoft

Skillsoft has been in the learning and learning content markets for 24 years, and is a dominant supplier of off-the-shelf learning content. They have a large installed base of both content and Skillport customers, and are in the process of a makeover of their Skillport offering, to make it even more contextual and relevant to the learner. Skillsoft has stayed focused on the cloud, and this has made upgrades to its platform easier. Since Skillsoft also offers a very large catalog of content, enterprises may be attracted to its offering since it can represent a one-stop shop.

Strengths Challenges • Ease of use • Complete offering of learning and content

• Integration of social learning • “Good enough” LMS features

SumTotal Systems

Sumtotal Systems is a long-time provider of learning solutions, and given the number of acquisitions it has made, it now offers a maintenance service for the myriad of products it has to support. SumTotal also competes in learning authoring with its ToolBook 11.5 authoring platform. SumTotal has offered an LMS social module, which is based on Microsoft SharePoint, for a few years. This module allows organizations to seamlessly integrate the formal and informal knowledge transfer that occurs inside and outside their organization. It includes enablement of blogs, discussions, documents, etc. SumTotal has not yet indicated if it will support Yammer, which is now Microsoft’s de facto social network, instead of the social functionality in SharePoint (see Aragon Research Note 2013-21, Yammer Becomes The Primary Social Network For Microsoft).

Strengths Challenges • Large installed base • Authoring tools

• Innovation of learning platform • Supporting a large legacy base of products • Support for Yammer integration with SharePoint



Innovators Bloomfire

Bloomfire has jumped into the learning market as a pure-play social learning provider that focuses on people learning from others via its social network. While Bloomfire doesn’t offer formal class tracking, it does offer the ability to onboard employees quickly by ensuring that they get the right information at the right time. This focus on social is a trend we are seeing in the marketplace. Business managers and enterprises that need to share information quickly and efficiently are using solutions like Bloomfire to get the job done.

Strengths Challenges

• Social learning • Ease of use • Fast onboarding of new associates

• LMS Lite functionality may not be enough for some enterprises


Expertus

Expertus has more than a decade of experience in the LMS implementation and support business. It built ExpertusONE leveraging that strength, and in the last four years it has grown into a full LMS product and services firm that is scaling up. It has won a number of major accounts, due in part to the ease of use of ExpertusONE, which is a profile-driven and heuristically built platform that blends collaborative and social features seamlessly into formal learning. Expertus just rolled out an integrated virtual classroom offering called ExpertusONE Meetings that will give it a leg up on others who have to partner for this functionality. ExpertusONE also has a solid mobile experience, with native apps for all Apple iOS and Android devices. In addition, it has offline synchronization and some innovative features like “presence sensing,” which detects that a learner is in a classroom and automatically marks them present.

Strengths Challenges • Full learning suite • Mobile apps • LMS implementation and support experience • Published library of REST APIs • Virtual classroom

• Market awareness • Growth outside U.S.



Meridian Knowledge Solutions

Meridian Knowledge Solutions is an established learning management system provider with a diverse customer base. It provides both enterprise commercial and public sector solutions. Meridian’s core strength revolves around its focus on learning technology with flexible deployment options, either through a perpetual model or a cloud-based offering. Its primary market is U.S. Federal, state and local governments. That said, we are seeing them more in commercial deals, but mainly in the United States. Meridian has always excelled in its ability to deliver content to any device via its content player technology. It has also expanded its capabilities by offering e-commerce storefronts, positioning it well for member-based associations that want to drive revenue by selling training content.

Strengths Challenges • Government focus • Cloud delivery capabilities

• Lack of a mobile app

Peoplefluent

Peoplefluent is in the process of an innovative integration with a new unifying user-experience application layer called the Mirror. The new Mirror capabilities include its Learning offering, which is a component in its overall social HCM and talent suite. Peoplefluent Learning has all of the components to deliver enterprise class training, including authoring for content creation and e-commerce for extended enterprise. Peoplefluent Mirror leverages its social capabilities and its video capabilities via recent acquisitions of both social software (SocialText) and video content management (KZO), respectively. This shift allows them to do more in the growing areas of social and video based learning including some compelling use cases such as leadership development. The combination of formal instruction, social interactions, mentoring and video content delivery make the new Peoplefluent learning solution one to watch.

Strengths Challenges • Updated product offering • Strength of overall HCM suite

• Awareness in learning market



Silkroad

Silkroad offers an easy-to-use social learning platform called GreenLight, which is easy and intuitive to use. It is fully integrated with Silkroad Point, its social collaboration capabilities. With a tile-like interface similar to Windows 8’s launch screen, Silkroad is leading the charge into the user-driven social learning landscape. Silkroad offers built-in LCMS functionality along with the option for e-commerce. The social functionality can also be customized, making it ideal for customer learning deployments. Silkroad is more known in the SMB market, but based on what we have seen, their product should be usable in all sizes of enterprises.

Strengths Challenges • Social learning functionality • E-commerce support for extended enterprise • Common look and feel across products


Technomedia

Technomedia is a Canadian talent management provider that has probably focused more on the Quebec and French markets than anywhere else. Its learning platform is solid and comprehensive. We found it easy to use. The social capabilities were more discussion-forum based, but they offered strong configuration capabilities. With a new leadership team Technomedia is looking to grow into additional markets, including the U.S. and western Europe. Its solid base of existing customers should prepare it well for additional growth.

Strengths Challenges • LMS offering • Reporting • Multinational deployments

• Market awareness • Social functionality



Specialists Blackboard

Blackboard is known for its strength in the higher education market, where it has grown to become the dominant provider. In the corporate space, Blackboard is not as well known but it is competing more and it has some compelling customer use cases. Blackboard offers full LMS and social capabilities that are seamlessly integrated and easy to use. Blackboard also offers mobile and collaboration capabilities. The web conferencing and virtual classroom capabilities are solid but we have heard some complaints from users about the consistency of the delivery.

Strengths Challenges • Higher education market • Collaboration • New user experience

• Focus on the corporate market

Hughes

Hughes is known more in the communications space, but with its video technologies and its Hughes Learning Portal, it does compete for learning deals in markets it serves. The Hughes Learning Portal is attractively priced, and it provides good enough LMS Lite functionality. Hughes also offers a corporate DVR solution, which gives distributed organizations the ability to deliver live video as well as video on demand to employees. Another offering from Hughes that we found unique is its break-room TV solution, which can be used in many work environments for learning delivery, in addition to corporate communications.

Strengths Challenges • Hughes brand • Break room TV solution

• Lack of awareness in corporate learning



Lumesse

Lumesse offers a full talent suite portfolio on a global basis. Its Learning Gateway offering is LMS Lite capability, but a number of firms have used it for years with solid results. Lumesse offers content authoring capabilities via its Course Builder product that can allow for courses to be deployed in multiple languages. Lumesse also offers content development services, so it is more of a one-stop shop for firms that need content and learning services together.

Strengths Challenges • Overall talent suite • Ease of content creation

• LMS functionality • Awareness in learning markets

Mindflash

Mindflash, based in Palo Alto, CA focuses on just-in-time learning course authoring that allows people to quickly create a course and deliver it to users. With a focus on content, we would classify it as an LMS Lite provider in its Advanced and Pro versions, making them a good solution for business units that need to get training out fast. Mindflash integrates with Yammer for its social capabilities, and going forward, Mindflash may want to add more functionality to its own offering. Mindflash has been growing and adding new customers, in part due to its ease of course creation and delivery.

Strengths Challenges • Ease of content creation • Ease of purchasing (online buy)

• Base version may not be suitable for learning delivery and tracking

• Needs Yammer integration for social functionality



Aragon Advisory

• Enterprises need to do careful due diligence when evaluating learning providers. • The user experience of a learning solution is just as important as the back-end feature set.

Keep this in mind when evaluating providers. • Social and mobile will continue to become more critical feature sets.

Bottom Line The learning market is shifting and enterprises are looking for complete solutions that make it easier to delivery high quality learning to their users, partners and customers. Enterprises need to ensure that learning can be easy and fun for users by evaluating providers that can deliver on that value proposition.

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