Firm uses Web as virtual classroom

The Internet came along at just the right time for WBT Systems, a former UCD campus company that hitched its star to the Web and as a result is enjoying expansion.

Growth for the company has been rapid since its establishment in May 1995, said Ms Clodagh Duff, marketing director of OEM publishing at WBT Systems. "Basically what we are doing is using the Web as a virtual classroom. We really were the first tool out there to utilise the Web for distance learning," she explained.

Timing was everything in this regard. "We evolved from post graduate research at UCD," Ms Duff said. Researchers in the Department of Computer Science won EU support in 1988 for a project to develop software that would support distance learning, at a time when the Internet was in its infancy. "As the Web became more apparent they decided to look at it not in traditional distance learning terms (simply moving files back and forth) but as an environment in which to carry out the education."

Locked into step with the vast potential of the Web, it was not long before the commercial opportunities became obvious and a campus company was established in 1995. This was the same year that the research team won an Apple Enterprise award at PC Expo in New York for its prototype Web educational server. Its first commercial product, the TopClass Server went on the market a year later and by September 1996 it was available on five different system platforms.

Since then it has been something of a commercial roller-coaster ride for WBT Systems. "Because you are dealing with the Web it is moving very fast. This is a completely new industry. We are learning every day what the market wants and the whole thing is evolving," Ms Duff said.

TopClass Server has been sold into 40 countries with the US accounting for 70 per cent of the installations. The huge US market warranted the establishment of a base in San Francisco in 1997 for sales and marketing, where 12 people are now employed. Another 35, including 20 software specialists, are based in Dublin for product development and European sales.

Turnover during the current fiscal year is on target to reach $1.87 million (£1.24 million), Ms Duff said, but the target two years hence is $25 million. The client base stands at about 500 but is expanding on both sides of the Atlantic.

The TopClass Server is a piece of software that allows the user to create a classroom environment on the Web. It allows registration, tracks student progress and grades, how often students access the site and provides chat forums. "We don't provide the content we provide a structure and a framework facility, a management tool for distance learning," Ms Duff said. "It is a serious piece of software. It is in continual development and we are also developing a whole class of products for the client base."

Users licence the product on an annual basis and so benefit from these updates. The company has individual users - for example professors who want to supplement what goes on in the classroom and in tutorials by using the Web - but also much larger educational users.

The State University of New York (SUNY) has signed a five-year contract with WBT. It is using the TopClass Server to deliver distance learning facilities for some of its 400,000 students and also to offer supplementary learning options.

Another growth area for the company is through alliances with educational publishers. Late last month it announced a new agreement with Macmillan Education & Training, a division of Macmillan Publishing in the US. Macmillan will use WBT's products to offer a web-based courseware line called METRO, Macmillan Education & Training Online.

WBT Systems already had a similar licensing agreement with another US publisher, McGraw-Hill.

But despite successes in these areas, Ms Duff predicted that the corporate market was "where our significant growth will take place". WBT Systems has recently signed a deal with Dow Chemical which employs 40,000 people. A pilot training programme based on TopClass Server is under way and is due later next month.