eXact learning solutions argues that the current industry trends in corporate learning include:

• organizations strengthening their focus on learning-content management
• the adoption of rapid content production
• the growing importance of "searchability" of content, version control, content reuse, and interoperability of learning-content-management systems (LCMSs) with other business systems.

According to Donato Mangialardo, Director of Marketing and Product Strategy at eXact learning solutions, there is also some confusion in the market between the characteristics and use of LCMSs and learning-management systems (LMSs).

"An LMS focuses on eLearning process management and content delivery-" says Mangialardo. "An LMS is software for planning, delivering, and managing learning events within an organization, including online, virtual classroom, and instructor-led courses."

"The focus of an LMS is to manage students, keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities. It performs administrative tasks, such as reporting to instructors, HR, and other ERP systems, but it isn't used to create course content.

On the other hand, an LCMS focuses on the authoring and management of reusable eLearning content. LCMS technology can either be used in tandem with an LMS or as a standalone application for learning initiatives that require rapid development and distribution of learning content."

"An LCMS is designed for managing learning content across an organization's training development areas", he continues. "It provides developers, authors, instructional designers, and subject-matter experts with the means to create and reuse eLearning content and reduce duplicated development efforts."

In Mangialardo's opinion, an LCMS must offer:

• legacy content ingestion, indexing, and storage - accepting pre-existing content from sources like Word, PowerPoint, Flash, raw media files, and other forms of legacy content. Any digital resource or existing content should be able to be imported from the file system, external databases, and third-party applications to enable its reuse.
• interoperability with LMS and business systems, following industry standards including IMS Content Packaging, IMS QTI Lite (for assessments), and SCORM 1.2 / SCORM 2004 specifications. Content needs to be described (indexed) according to IEEE IMS 1.2 or LOM metadata formats and according to IMS VDEX for content classification.
• rapid authoring and assembly capabilities and model-based automation of content production
• the maximum reusability of learning content
• project management
• content management

"There are two main integration strategies between LCMS and LMS solutions that are widely adopted", explains Mangialardo. "The first is where content packages and resources are manually moved (published) in batches from the LCMS to a third-party LMS by using the file system."

"However, we've noticed that this common integration strategy doesn't really address the need for a content-centric solution within a distributed architecture", he adds. "The best solution is a single digital repository (single source) with distributed content management that is implemented by what we call 'level 3 dynamic linking and publishing' integration in our LCMS solution."