Saba has acquired THINQ. Time was when an acquisition at this level -- two major players in the LMS market -- would have tongues wagging for months. But this has happened with hardly anyone appearing to care. Sure, THINQ's customers are not going to be happy about being told to migrate to Saba's technology over time. But neither the training press nor the usual industry commentators seem to think the acquisition is worthy of much attention.
Is this a sign of market maturity at last? Or is it because there has been so much blood shed in the industry recently that we are just numbed to the reality: this market is just not big enough for more than a few players. If the e-learning-only vendors have any hope of making a stand against the giant ERP vendors, they have to get bigger through merging. But we were talking David and Goliath before Oracle acquired PeopleSoft. Now it's more like David and Godzilla. Even before getting PeopleSoft, Oracle's revenues could absorb those of all the independent vendors put together three times over.
A couple of years ago I was fond of annoying LMS vendors by saying that it would be game over for the pure-play guys once the ERP firms turned their attention to e-learning. Looks like the sun might be setting sooner than anyone expected.
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