Blackboard Achieves International Expansion Milestone with Adoption at 3,000 Institutions in 140 Countries.

Business Editors

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 11, 2001

300 Institutional Software Licensees and 2,700 Web Adoptions

Represent 280% Growth over Previous Year

Academic institutions around the globe are turning to Blackboard, the leading e-Education software infrastructure company, to bring their educational programs online.

Today, Blackboard announced that its e-Learning solutions are used at more than 3,000 institutions in 140 countries. Already the leader in the United States, Blackboard's Blackboard 5(TM) online teaching and learning solution is live outside the United States at more than 300 institutions on every continent.

Moreover, academics at more than 2,700 international institutions are also using the Company's software over the Web made available through Blackboard.com.

"We recognized early on that the global e-Education marketplace is home to many of the most innovative uses for the Internet to improve access, increase quality, and lower costs in education and training," said Andrew H. Rosen, general manager of Blackboard's international business.

"Our success is directly contingent on our continued dedication to quick implementation, accelerated academic adoption and maximizing our clients' return on their technology investments."

Blackboard's international expansion has been developed on four primary strategic pillars: ease of use, enterprise technology and integration, client success and open architecture.

Ease of Use

Clients reference Blackboard's reputation for ease of use and pedagogical effectiveness as the top reasons for selecting Blackboard over competitors. Our focus on ease of use benefits clients through quick implementations, and accelerated large scale academic adoption by instructors, providing a maximum return on their technology investments.

Newcastle University in the U.K. is representative of the success that can be achieved through Blackboard's ease of use with more than 3,900 courses created in less than one year.

Enterprise Technology & Integration

Over 50 of the 300 licensees are utilizing Blackboard's enterprise level system and are integrating Blackboard 5 with leading ERP systems such as Campus IT, Capita, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), PeopleSoft (Nasdaq: PSFT), SCT (Nasdaq: SCTC), SITS, and homegrown solutions.

Clients such as Sheffield-Hallam University in the UK have more than 270 courses and 32,000 users running on Blackboard-powered e-Learning sites every day.

Client Success

Blackboard's international client base comprises some of the leading schools, colleges, universities and commercial education providers including Griffith University (Australia), University of Technology, Sydney (Australia), Toorak College (Australia), Seneca College (Canada), VFH (Germany), City University (Hong Kong), NextEd (Hong Kong), Universita Commerciale "L. Bocconi" (Italy), Nagoya University (Japan), ITESM (Mexico), Groningen University (The Netherlands), King Fahd University (Saudi Arabia), NTU (Singapore), K-World (Sweden), Zayed University (United Arab Emirates), FT Knowledge (United Kingdom), Kingston University (United Kingdom), Pearson plc (United Kingdom) and Sheffield-Hallam University (United Kingdom).

Open Standards

Blackboard is a strong advocate for open worldwide industry standards and supports efforts such as IMS, AICC, SCORM, Internet2, WebISO, interoperability with JA-SIG channels and industry standard portal data interchange formats.

As a result of Blackboard participation in these initiatives, Blackboard 5 is a flexible and reliable platform for the development of content in multiple formats as well as for digital content available through downloadable publisher Course Cartridges.

All Blackboard content management and content development tools are IMS-compliant, ensuring portability within the Blackboard platform or externally to other IMS compliant e-Learning applications.

Since 1999, Blackboard has increasingly mobilized resources behind supporting the International market including full efforts behind internationalizing the Blackboard platform, staffing local markets, sharing client success stories, and forging deep alliance relationships in the countries it serves.

Blackboard has a dedicated team of professionals servicing its growing international client base and is extending its leadership position with an aggressive timeframe for full scale internationalization and localization of Blackboard 5.5.

The company maintains its international headquarters in the Netherlands with additional staff and support resources located in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom; there are plans to add staff in Asia and Latin America.

By most industry estimates, the e-Education market outside the United States includes more than 20,000 academic institutions, making it approximately five times larger than the U.S. market.

Growth in both Blackboard 5 and Blackboard.com adoptions in countries such as Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Singapore and Canada represent the fastest growing segment of Blackboard's business. The company recently reported 480% year over year revenue growth in Q2 FY01, of which international accounted for 20%.

Compared to published estimates of competitor software companies delivering solutions for teaching, learning and campus commerce, Blackboard's international results place the company at the top, with more revenues than its closest direct competitors combined.

About Blackboard Inc.

Blackboard Inc. was founded to transform the Internet into a powerful environment for teaching and learning. The company offers a complete suite of enterprise software products and services that power a total "e-Education Infrastructure" for schools, colleges, universities and other education providers.

Blackboard solutions deliver the promise of the Internet for online teaching and learning, campus communities, auxiliary services and integration of Web-enabled student services and back office systems.

Blackboard's two major lines of business, Course & Portal Solutions and Commerce & Access Solutions, are consistently ranked by industry analysts as the market share and customer satisfaction leaders for thousands of academic institutions and a leading number of the Internet's most popular consumer education sites.

The company is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices and staff across North America, Europe and Asia. Please visit www.blackboard.com for more information.