Blackboard Inc. Renews Their Contract with Parature’s Customer Support Solution for a Third Consecutive Year (email this article)

MCLEAN, VA, December 6, 2004 - Parature (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), the leading provider of on demand support software, announced today that Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB), a leading enterprise software company for e-Education, has renewed their contract with Parature to continue to provide quality customer support to its global customer base. In their third year utilizing Parature, Blackboard has grown their user adoption to 20,000 visitors to their support portal and 29,000 knowledge base articles viewed last quarter alone.

“To help meet the individual needs of our customers, Blackboard has proactively expanded its support offering,” said Craig Chanoff, Vice President of Client Support for Blackboard. “We recognize that our clients have unique preferences when it comes to product support and the Parature eService module had been instrumental in assisting us to provide a wide variety of support services to our customers.”

Blackboard and Parature have developed a deep working relationship over the past three years. “Parature has been an innovative partner to Blackboard,” stated Chanoff. “They have been extremely responsive to our new and advanced feature requests, and the dedication to the software is proven through their product road map. Parature has nourished a great relationship with us by listening to our needs and implementing them accordingly.”

"Clients like Blackboard, who renew year after year, are a testament to our commitment for establishing strong relationships with our clients,” commented Duke Chung, CEO of Parature. “We believe these relationships drive the innovative process for delivering pioneering support technologies to the marketplace.”

About Parature
Parature, the leader of online support software, enables companies to improve their internal and external support, while reducing costs. Through its suite of modules, Parature allows companies to provide critical self-servicing information on a 24x7 basis via the web, resulting in reduction of inbound support load and therefore reducing support costs. Continually growing, Parature serves industry leaders such as Hewlett Packard, Rothschild and Wharton Business School. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, Parature can be found on the Web at www.parature.com.

About Blackboard
Blackboard is a leading provider of enterprise software applications and related services to the education industry. The Company's product line consists of five software applications bundled in two suites, the Blackboard Academic Suite (TM) and the Blackboard Commerce Suite (TM). Blackboard's clients include colleges, universities, schools and other education providers, as well as textbook publishers and student-focused merchants that serve education providers and their students. Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices and staff in North America, Europe and Asia.