The History of Open LMS
In the last 20 years, the EdTech industry has grown exponentially as it has matured and expanded throughout the world.
Open LMS’s origin is closely linked to the 2002 birth of Moodle™, an open-source LMS created to help educators design online courses in a simple and collaborative manner. Thanks to its open-source philosophy, anyone can make improvements to the programme and share it with the community.
In this manner, a group of teachers from the United States joined together in 2005 to create an independent company called Moodlerooms, a learning platform based on Moodle™, to which they added new features and functionalities that improved the distance teaching and learning experience at that time.
From Open Source to Global SaaS
In 2008, Moodlerooms made the leap to SaaS to guarantee uninterrupted online education experiences for its users, while also encouraging institutions to focus all of their efforts on the design of the teaching experience. Additionally, it took care of all infrastructure issues such as scalability, availability, or concurrency of the platform.
In 2012, Blackboard acquired Moodlerooms and Netspot (an Australia-based company that provided Moodle™ professional services for the entire Asia-Pacific region) with the goal of providing a world-class teaching and learning experience based on open-source technologies.
In 2015, Blackboard acquired Nivel Siete (a company based in Colombia that provided professional Moodle™ services for Latin America) with the purpose of expanding the reach of Moodlerooms to cover the Latin American market, and guarantee a global presence. By this time, the company was serving more than 4 million users worldwide.
Becoming Part of LTG
At the end of 2018, Moodlerooms changed its name to Blackboard Open LMS and continued with the development of a robust teaching, training, and learning ecosystem.
In March 2020, Learning Technologies Group (LTG) acquired Blackboard Open LMS from Blackboard, changed its name to Open LMS and launched the new company as a standalone business within LTG’s growing portfolio.
With the aim of offering an innovative experience, excellent customer service, a robust and powerful Moodle™-based learning and training ecosystem, LTG also added eCreators from Australia in September 2020, and just a few months later in December 2020, it acquired eThink Education in North America. Both companies have vast experience in offering state-of-the-art Moodle™-based solutions.
As a result, at Open LMS, we have a global team of professionals working to transform the lives of thousands of people around the world by delivering exceptional teaching, training, and learning experiences. Today, Open LMS serves more than 1,500 customers and more than eight million users in over 120 countries. We also have an extensive team of channel partners that help us promote the Open LMS experience in different parts of the world in their local languages.
Finally, we celebrate having one of the most powerful and integrated digital learning ecosystems in the market, as we’ve made new add-ons available in our platforms—Open LMS EDU for high education institutions and Open LMS WORK for corporates and organisations—including SMOWL, Class, Sumadi, Open Sesame, Kaltura and Intelliboard. A list of our integrations and extensions can be found here.
One of the world's largest Moodle™-based LMS platforms provider
By integrating the best human talent, we’ve created a solid and diverse team with worldwide coverage capable of efficiently satisfying the different needs of the educational and corporate market. Open LMS is the best-selling open-source provider in the world with a strong vision focused on being an ally for our clients and offering a professional and timely service.