| McGraw-Hill announced at 9.30pm December 12, it’s plans to restructure several business units, including Lifetime Learning. The recent challenges of the eLearning markets, compounded by a soft worldwide economy, have lead McGraw-Hill to the decision this week to wind down and close McGraw Hill Lifetime Learning and Xebec McGraw-Hill.
The intention is for Xebec to cease full business operations by the end of January 2002. Between now and the end of January XMH will not be taking on any more custom/bespoke nor internet/hosted contracts or orders.
At this stage, the plan is understood to be that all Xebec product (CD & Online) will be withdrawn from the market. However, we understand that McGraw-Hill have already been approached by a number of potential ‘asset’ purchasers.
eLearnity Comment :
As one of the largest established UK e-learning content players, this is a significant casualty of the difficult market conditions. Xebec had invested significantly last year in growing and developing its capabilities including a hosted provision with LMS and expanding its custom content and consulting activities. The demise of Xebec will be a sad loss to the UK e-learning industry. There would also seem to be a significant opportunity for one of the larger players to consolidate their e-learning content position by acquiring the Xebec product line.
This announcement also reflects a continuing struggle by the major publishers to understand and engage with the corporate e-learning market place. Whilst all the major publishers have a significant content asset, few of them have made significant and concrete long-term attempts to bridge into e-learning from their core publishing business. Thompson with the acquisition of NETg may lead the pack but we are still unconvinced of their ability to turn this into a compelling market position and emerge as one of the key drivers of corporate e-learning.
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