Optimists, such as THINQ vice president Dave Egan, see an industry that's bound for longevity. "As we've seen, players will come and go, but the industry will endure." In his opinion, only a "wholesale desolation of the economy" could deliver a deathblow to the e-learning industry.

Egan notes, however, that the industry has undergone some mass consolidation, causing customers to wonder whether the company they order from today will be around to deliver tomorrow. In addition, Egan admits that the tough economy has been a distraction to THINQ's salesforce. "We focus on Fortune 500 companies, and they look at ‘How do I get more efficient?’ ‘If I have to downsize, how can I get more from the employees who stay?’" THINQ is not alone. No organization has been immune from the macroeconomic issues having an impact on business.

As for the killer zap, Egan thinks the only threat to the industry is if "e-learning, flat out, doesn't work." That would erase the credibility of e-learning in the marketplace and the credibility of any product that couldn't deliver on its promises. According to Egan, there are three categories of companies that seem to fare better. First, there are fleet-of-foot companies that deliver on promises—on time and within budget. Second, are small, persistent, innovative companies. If those companies can’t find investors on Monday, they’ll have a deal by Friday. Third, are companies that actually make solutions work because they effectively interconnect content management and LMS tools and add such benefits as testing and assessment tools.

Mark Rosenberg, author of Elearning: Strategies for Delivering Knowledge in the Digital Age and senior director with DiamondCluster International, says sales are taking longer because those responsible for buying solutions are finding it more difficult to justify the investment.

E-learning is a sophisticated system and only educated consumers can substantiate an e-learning buy. Rosenberg believes that the industry must "elevate the professionalism of people who work inside corporations, so [that] they know how to transform the training function into a business-wide enterprise learning function." Buyers need to learn how to link e-learning to business strategy, document needs beyond the course level, and build communities of practice and support for performance within the organization.

"E-learning," says Rosenberg, "is a corporate business strategy, an infrastructure investment. Because the cost is up front, senior managers want to know what they're getting for their money, and buyers need to defend their purchase in strategic terms." He adds, "[E-learning] is a paradigm shift for the training industry. It isn't just another delivery method." Not getting key buyers smart enough, fast enough could be a serious threat to industry stability.

So what's Rosenberg's vision for the future? Knowledge management. He thinks that organizations need to balance off-the-shelf products with creative, custom solutions that are uniquely aligned with the business enterprise. E-learning suppliers and developers need to find ways to integrate the way people really learn—through networks and friends as well as courseware—and deliver the technology that enables more effective learning.

Lee Maxey, Click2Learn’s chief learning officer also finds that decision-makers are taking more time. "Interest hasn't waned, but capital expenditure buying decisions are lower and slower. The US$300,000 average purchase is a hard one for folks to make. Vendors get selected, and the trigger doesn't get pulled."

Maxey speculates that the long time between sign-offs is a reflection of decision-making functions crawling up the corporate ladder. He also sees more involvement in purchasing decisions from individuals who own a particular line of business. "As business problems are increasingly addressed by e-learning, the decision-making process moves closer to the folks who control the budgets. They know where and how they need to get a return and when they need a return. These decisions tend to cut across organizations."

But like Egan, Maxey spots growth in buying trends. "We're starting to move forward as a society, seeing an economic upturn. It’s no hockey stick, but we can see indications of good growth." In addition, Maxey and Egan agree that partnerships seem to be what's making the difference. Maxey credits C2L's relationship with Accenture and Deloitte & Touche for its sophisticated understanding of big-picture business needs. The partnerships also seem to open more doors to corner offices, which is especially important when "there [appears to be] so many different people making buy decisions."

For C2L, endurance is the name of the game. It will wait for customers to embrace e-learning as an everyday event and anticipates an inevitable technological harmonic convergence. Moving toward that convergence, Maxey predicts that the next big thing in the industry may be an elegance of simplicity. He puts it this way: "I am a gardener. I know you get good fruit when you prune."

Meanwhile, Macromedia's vice president of education and learning, Patricia Brogan, may be participating in the next big convergence right now. In Great Britain, a major skills and education initiative that employs e-learning has won strong government support, personal support from Tony Blair, and international backing from that country's private sector. At a recent summit on learning objects, international learning leaders examined the educational drivers—schools, pedagogy, funding—and equally strong inhibitors. Brogan cited a study conducted by researchers at the London School of Economics that demonstrated students’ non-responsiveness to the book and more traditional forms of education, in favor of high impact, multimedia learning.

"Only convergence of business and public policy will enable e-learning to realize its potential in Great Britain, and maybe even pull U.S. education out of its middle-of-the-pack position in e-learning," says Brogan.

However, co-founder and vice president of Simulearn, Clark Aldrich, sees a serious disjunct between e-learning buyers and users. Buyers are looking at packaged courses and enterprise-wide systems and solutions, but users "love PCs, palm pilots, instant messaging, and Internet connections. These are the ‘killer apps’ of e-learning."

From Aldrich's perspective, the problem lies in the disparity between the training buyer and the training consumer. In other words, the buyer is approximately 45 years old but the end user is between 25 and 30 years old. There’s a delta between the buyer who can't make appropriate choices and the user who may be able to make better choices on his or her own.

With regards to consolidation, Aldrich sees what others have termed an industry squeeze, as Escheresque. The industry is growing and changing, but it's not necessarily getting smaller. Indeed, as companies come and go, Aldrich reminds us that market sizing isn't a useful activity. "Vendors like this information because it allows them to fight over market share. It’s a metaphor. [E-learning] is a wide-open market. At the moment, it’s hard to see the saturation point. The big enchilada is market creation, not copping market share from competitors."

But Aldrich, who is well known in his role of e-learning industry analyst, remains the most optimistic about the future of e-learning. "Many fundamental new approaches will fill the space left by the consolidations." He adds, "There’s an inevitability about learning. It will be the industry for this century, just as the automobile was for the last century. The question is how to get there, and how to bring together models for smoothness with models for customization and specialization."