ANGEL LMS: Dead or Alive?

After the recent news of two significant ANGEL LMS customers leaving for other vendors – Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges selected Instructure’s Canvas LMS in the spring, and Michigan State University selected Desire2Learn’s Learning Suite in the summer – there is an interesting question of whether ANGEL is still a viable LMS solution, at least for current clients.

ANGEL was created at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis in 2000, and after a successful 9 years Angel Learning, the company behind ANGEL, was purchased by Blackboard in May 2009. Shortly after the purchase, Blackboard announced they would place ANGEL in end-of-life status by 2014. This decision to end ANGEL, along with a similar decision for WebCT product lines, has been fueling a large percentage of the LMS market churn over the past 2 – 3 years (more from WebCT than from ANGEL, however).