IMC positioned in Visionaries Quadrant of Magic Quadrant for Corporate Learning Systems

Saarbrücken, 25 September 2009 – IMC AG, Europe’s leading provider of learning technologies, today announced that it has been positioned in the Visionaries quadrant of the 2009 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Corporate Learning Systems (CLS). This year’s Magic Quadrant evaluated 17 CLS providers worldwide according to their completeness of vision and their ability to execute that vision.

Dr Wolfgang Kraemer, CEO of IMC, is happy with the placement by market analysts Gartner. “We believe the positioning of IMC Learning Systems in the Visionaries quadrant further reflects the appreciation that is shown towards our products and services,” he said. “More than 500 clients with over 3 million users worldwide in businesses, organisations, universities and schools benefit from using our Learning Solutions to increase their productivity in learning management, to make their business processes more efficient and therefore to gain a decisive competitive advantage in the slowly improving economic situation.”   

According to Gartner, visionary providers are “forward-thinking vendors, but their performance has not given them a leadership position. These vendors are differentiated by their product innovation, but they have not achieved the completeness of solution or the sales and marketing success required to give them a high profile.”

“Since the foundation of the business we have continuously promoted internationalisation, and have recently opened an office in Sydney, Australia. Through the exploitation of new markets and the development of a partnership network, the range of uses for our Learning Technology for new target groups is growing. The flexible and totally user-orientated pricing model of our CLIX Software as a service solution offers maximum cost transparency for clients.” Depending on type and characteristics, users don’t have to be colleagues of the client: often SaaS solutions can be used as a platform to transfer knowledge between clients’ companies and their business partners.  CLIX Start, aimed at medium-sized clients, and the presentation recording tool LECTURNITY 4 are two successful examples for the provision of services to new target groups. From 2010 the newly developed CLIX Learning Suite will be on the market.     
Gartner states that “the CLS market has shifted from a relatively narrow software market focused on supporting training or e-learning to the creation of broader social learning platforms. These platforms make learning more integral to the actual work that people do. In particular, advanced learning and development (L&D) programs now focus on increasing business performance and creating communities of learners who teach each other, often on the job within the task that the learner needs to perform.”
“At IMC AG we established our range of products and services in line with these developments at an early stage,” says Kraemer, looking confidently ahead. “IMC Learning Solutions include components from Learning Management, Authoring, Performance and Social Learning. Alongside our first-class content creation and consultancy services, they represent a comprehensive solution portfolio, with which IMC will continue to be extremely competitive.” 

About the Gartner Magic Quadrant:
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2009 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.