A jump in third-quarter revenue for online course-management system Blackboard Inc. is a result of the company’s monopoly on Web-based class scheduling, experts said.

Blackboard brought in $98.4 million during its third quarter — a jump of more than $6 million since the second quarter.

The announcement came as no surprise to Adrian Sannier, vice president of ASU’s University Technology Office, who said Blackboard has been able to obtain an 85 percent monopoly in the course management software industry.

Blackboard manages ASU’s course list along with those of more than 2,000 colleges and universities nationwide. The company is successful most likely because of its ability to acquire many small companies under its umbrella, Sannier said.

“They have managed to achieve an amazing market position and have figured out how to transfer that into revenue,” Sannier said. “So you have to tip your hat off to them for that.”

Michael Stanton, Blackboard senior vice president of finance and investor relations, said the company has been affected by the economy, but to a lesser degree than others.

“In difficult economic times, education budgets are trimmed but the magnitude of the cuts tends to be more muted than the traditional corporate enterprise,” Stanton said in an e-mail.

The move to online education is going to be very popular in the future, said Philip Regier, executive vice president and dean of ASU’s Online and Extended Campus.

“Right now Blackboard is the leading [course-management system] out there,” Regier said, adding that Blackboard’s only competition right now seems to be Moodle, an open source course management software program that is growing quickly.

Blackboard’s situation is counter-cyclical, he said — software companies like Blackboard actually do better when the economy is doing worse.

“What we had over the past year was huge pressure on universities when money was being taken out [of the budget],” Regier said. “So universities had to move more toward online learning ... than they would have if the economy was not so bad.”

Digital journalism senior Jeremy Rudy, who is developing an alternative program to Blackboard, said the company’s revenue stream is not surprising right now, but called it the “innovator’s dilemma.”

“[Blackboard] is so big and they make so much money doing what they’re doing right now that there’s a high risk in doing anything differently,” Rudy said. “They’re not going to be changing anytime soon, and that’s a detriment to the students.”

The main problem Rudy said he sees with Blackboard is that it targets the University and administration rather than the people who use it most: students.

“Future innovation is not going to come from companies like Blackboard because Blackboard has little need to innovate,” Rudy said. “The only way technology such as this can function is if it’s targeting the students, not the schools.”

For now, Rudy said it appears Blackboard’s monopoly makes it safe from outside companies. However, eventually the number of innovative companies coming up with new products could threaten it.

“[Blackboard] doesn’t understand the changing needs and expectations that the students have today,” he said. “What’s happening is that students and professors are opting out of what schools provide today and finding something on their own outside the school.”