Stephen Downes

If you have to use SAP (as I do) for anything, it's probably your most hated software. No surprise then that Blackboard is entering into a 'strategic agreement' with the company. "Blackboard and SAP are implementing this service-oriented architecture to help institutions deploy integrated end- to-end processes." Any chance of open APIs here? Thought not. My view: the real purpose of an agreement like this is to allow Blackboard, as a commercial sales platform, to tap into student account details, as contained in SAP, to facilitate sales of online content, software, and services.