Blackboard is a leading EdTech company, serving over 150 million users in higher education, K-12, corporate and government clients across 80+ countries. Blackboard provides a virtual learning environment and learning management system which features course management, customizable open architecture, and scalable design that allows integration with student information systems and authentication protocols. It can be installed on local servers, or provided as SaaS.

Blackboard has a combination of higher education and enterprise clients in China, with a number of their global clients also being based in the China region. Being able to deploy and manage the Blackboard platform on a highly scalable and stable infrastructure in mainland China with fast global network connectivity is fundamental and essential for Blackboard to provide the best service to their clients and a great experience to the platform’s end users.

Alibaba Cloud provides Blackboard with a number of products and solutions to drive optimal performance, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Elastic Compute Service, Relational Database Service, VPC, DNS, Direct Mail, and Shared Bandwidth. Alibaba Cloud also helps to enable Blackboard through comprehensive technical training, architectural workshops, and troubleshooting. Working together on key aspects like compliance and regulatory competency for China’s cyber security law and Multi Level Protection Scheme (MLPS) 2.0 allows Blackboard to develop a key understanding of the core requirements to succeed in China.

Leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s global network solutions, Blackboard can now offer improved user experiences to clients in China that need to access learning content stored around the world. The platform in China provides students with access to responsive learning experiences, and strong local support. By leveraging shared bandwidth, the network traffic cost is reduced without sacrificing network quality which provides a better experience for clients and the business overall.