Boston, MA (USA), July 2008 - OutStart Inc. and Eedo Knowledgeware Corp. have combined their operations, making the new company the largest provider of software for creating and sharing organizational knowledge through learning and social collaboration. The merged company, conducting business as OutStart, immediately becomes the dominant vendor of learning-content-management systems (LCMS).
The company will use its vision and financial strength to serve the LCMS and learning market, while aggressively supporting the emerging need for a business social-software platform to enable effective informal knowledge sharing.
"This merger brings both companies' customers a larger, stronger organization that's better able to support our needs now and into the future", said Gaylene Galliford, manager of Training, Design & Development for Apria Healthcare. "Employees' learning needs are changing and innovating. The product offerings and support provided by Eedo and OutStart appear to offer a very robust combination of learning, tracking, content management, mobility, and social software options for both current and potential clients."
"This merger is an exceptionally positive event for all of our customers and the market", said John Hudson, president of OutStart. "The product portfolios are highly complementary. We now can offer the two leading LCMS solutions that span the complete spectrum of requirements from blended learning through single sourcing to high-impact eLearning. Together we can fully meet our customers' needs to build, manage, and transfer knowledge across the enterprise."
"Our top priority is to ensure that our customers receive even greater support, innovations, and products as we go forward as one company", said Massood Zarrabian, CEO of OutStart. "As we have in the past, we will move quickly to integrate our portfolio of products. For example, we are already in the process of developing the integration between ForceTen and Participate to further support informal learning, expertise exchange, and collaboration in the ForceTen environment."
"As electronic content has proliferated in corporations, learning-content management has become increasingly critical to corporate learning and HR managers", said Josh Bersin, president of Bersin & Associates, a leading analyst and advisory firm in corporate learning and talent management. "This merger creates an industry leader in learning- content management, providing HR and learning organizations a single solution provider that can offer a broad and proven set of content management and social networking tools to help manage the tremendous amount of learning content in businesses today."
The combined company has more than 300 customers, including many of the world's best-known commercial, government, and defense organizations; a strong global base with close to forty percent of its business coming from international clients; and solid finances, with fifty percent of its revenue coming from recurring business. The company will make its headquarters in Boston and maintain offices in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
