October 18, 2005, Orlando, FL, EDUCAUSE 2005 – Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) and Microsoft announced today at the EDUCAUSE 2005 annual conference, a joint development project intended to help academic institutions achieve a higher degree of integration and interoperability between their respective portal and collaboration products. The project will result in tighter integration between The Microsoft Office System and The Blackboard Academic Suite™ via standards-based integration of The Blackboard Community System™ and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.