Update
Martyn Rollason, Regional Director for Customer Services at Anthology has responded to this blog. You can see his response here.
What’s happened?
On 29th September 2025, Anthology, the company that owns Blackboard, Ally, Illuminate and a range of other platforms, announced they had filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Here’s Anthology’s official statement.
What’s Chapter 11?
A chapter 11 filing in the US is designed to protect a company temporarily when it gets in financial difficulty so it can get its business in order without having to worry about the people it owes money to calling in their loans immediately and closing the company.
It’s a bit different from “going into administration” which we’re more familiar with in the UK. In that case, new court appointed administrators are brought in to reorganise the company and its finances. With “Chapter 11” the company’s current management remain in charge.
Anthology will either emerge from Chapter 11 after a maximum of 180 days with a new business model and more sustainable finances or they may file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy if they have been unable to reorganise the business and finances to the satisfaction of their creditors. This effectively winds up the company.
Sources
https://www.uscourts.gov/court-programs/bankruptcy/bankruptcy-basics/chapter-11-bankruptcy-basics
Is our Blackboard VLE at risk?
There is no immediate risk to your use of Blackboard as your VLE.
There are a range of possible outcomes that may affect Anthology platforms during and after this period of bankruptcy protection.
The picture is complicated by the fact that Anthology has a large suite of products that may have co-dependencies. The products that Anthology are saying they will retain as part of the restructure are their Teaching and Learning product family:
- Core (including Blackboard)
- Premium
- Anthology Ally
- Institutional Effectiveness
Those they seek to divest (sell) are in these product families:
- Enterprise Operations
- Lifecycle Management
- Student Success
See this page for a list of what products fit into these categories.
For more detail and further commentary, see these posts by Phil Hill and Neil Mosley.
What action should you take?
The person in your organisation responsible for managing the relationship should speak to your Anthology representative as soon as you can.
They will have official information about this that you can share with other stakeholders in your organisation.
Ask your representative to be explicit about what this means for your specific instance of Anthology products.
We have provided a set of points to discuss with your rep below which are a combination of suggestions from colleagues across the sector, collated by Lawrie Phipps, Jisc’s Senior Research Lead, and shared with us. This isn’t an exhaustive list of the potential areas for clarification and some may not be relevant to you, but it’s a good place to start:
Service continuity
- Ask for confirmation that your current Blackboard environment and SLAs are unaffected during the Chapter 11 process.
- Confirm any planned change-freeze windows or service milestones you should be aware of (dates and scope).
- Make sure your hosting model is on record and obtain written confirmation there is no change to data location.
Data protection (UK GDPR)
- Obtain confirmation that Anthology will continue to meet its UK GDPR Article 28 obligations as your data processor throughout the process.
- Get clarification of sub processor stability (no changes planned; if changes are anticipated, please provide advance notice and details).
- Confirm that no organisational changes arising from the restructuring will alter how your personal data is accessed, processed, or transferred; if any changes are envisaged, please outline controls, locations, and safeguards.
Product roadmap
- If applicable, ask for a short note confirming roadmap continuity for Learn Ultra and Ally through financial year 2025–26, including any material changes to release cadence or feature priorities.
Scope clarifications (divestitures)
- Confirm that your contract does not rely on services in the units due to be sold (Enterprise Operations, Lifecycle Engagement, Student Success). If there is any dependency, request information on the impact and proposed mitigations/novation path.
Customer communications & documentation
- If they haven’t already provided one, request a formal customer letter explaining the implications for existing university clients.
- Request any court-stamped documents or official statements to place on file for procurement and audit purposes.
Exports and exit-readiness
Confirm that your content and data export capabilities (courses, assessments, gradebook, analytics) remain available and unchanged during the process.
Risk Management
It’s good practice to have the possibility of a business-critical platform provider filing for bankruptcy, or rapidly revamping their business model on your organisation’s risk register. We recommend reviewing your current risk mitigations.
Additional help
Our colleagues at UCISA are watching this situation closely and will be an important source of guidance and support.
At Jisc we’ll follow the developments and update our advice accordingly. Your Jisc Relationship Manager will be able to help.
