LAS VEGAS, July 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) and Kaltura, (www.kaltura.com), developer of the first open source video platform, today announced a partnership to distribute Kaltura's rich media solution within the Blackboard Learn(TM) platform. With the partnership, Blackboard Learn users can now activate and try out the Kaltura Video Blackboard Building Block(TM) to experience Kaltura's full range of advanced video and rich-media capabilities for both desktop and mobile devices, without leaving their existing Blackboard® environment.

The announcement was made at BbWorld®, Blackboard's annual user conference being held in Las Vegas this week. With the partnership, Kaltura becomes a Blackboard Premier Partner(TM) in the Blackboard Partnerships Program(TM).

"We are honored to enter this partnership with such a leader in education technology," said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura's Chairman & CEO. "Hundreds of universities and colleges across the globe are already using the various video tools and applications in Kaltura's Cross Campus Media Suite, including 15 of the top 20 schools in America. We look forward to expanding our reach further through this partnership with Blackboard, while allowing educational institutions to enhance their learning results by using integrated video inside the LMS."

The Kaltura Video Blackboard Building Block supports Blackboard Learn 8, 9.0 and 9.1. It adds a full layer of rich-media functionality integrated throughout the Blackboard Learn platform. With it, students and instructors can add video to a course, submit a video assignment, view lecture videos, see a playlist of campus events, access video from the library and build a personal media library inside their Blackboard® course.

"We are seeing a surge in demand for rich media functionality in the education space, for teacher and student generated content as well as for lecture capture and other sources of campus media," said Matthew Small, Chief Business Officer at Blackboard. "By partnering with Kaltura, we are ensuring that our clients have access to a comprehensive rich media toolset at the click of a button."

The integration includes the full capabilities of the Kaltura Open Source Online Video Platform, allowing users to work with images, videos, and audio as easily and intuitively as they would use text documents in their courses. In addition, administrators have full access to the Kaltura Management Console, a full-featured media management console, which allows further control of the system and allows use of rich media across other Kaltura applications, such as Kaltura MediaSpace(TM).

About Blackboard Inc.

Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) is a global leader in enterprise technology and innovative solutions that improve the experience of millions of students and learners around the world every day. Blackboard's solutions allow thousands of higher education, K-12, professional, corporate, and government organizations to extend teaching and learning online, facilitate campus commerce and security, and communicate more effectively with their communities. Founded in 1997, Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

About Kaltura

Kaltura provides the world's first Open Source Online Video Platform. Over 120,000 media & entertainment companies, enterprises, SMBs, educational institutions, service providers, platform vendors, and system integrators use Kaltura's flexible platform to enhance their websites, web-services, and web-platforms with advanced customized video, photo and audio functionalities. Kaltura's features and products enable to easily deploy custom workflows involving video creation, ingestion, publishing, management, syndication, engagement, monetization and analysis. The free community-supported self-hosted software and source-code is available for download at http://www.kaltura.org. A commercial version of the software can be obtained at www.kaltura.com along with Kaltura services such as streaming, hosting, transcoding, analytics, ad serving, support and maintenance packages, and professional development. Founded in 2006, New York-based Kaltura is also a founding member of the 'Open Video Alliance' (http://www.openvideoalliance.org), a coalition of organizations dedicated to fostering open standards for online video. For more information: http://www.kaltura.com, http://www.kaltura.org and http://exchange.kaltura.com/.

Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for Blackboard and other statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," and similar expressions, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our Form 10-K filed on February 18, 2011 and Form 10-Q filed on May 9, 2011 with the SEC. In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of July 14, 2011. The Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause the Company's views to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to July 14, 2011.

SOURCE Blackboard Inc.; Kaltura