Why do faculty use the software "Blackboard"? It is becoming apparent to me that, outside my field, use of Blackboard and other LMS software is becoming extremely common. Indeed, a rash of technical problems here is making it apparent students and administrators alike seem to assume that Blackboard is the exclusive (locked) gateway to the course's content. I have had to explain that, actually, my syllabus and homework assignments are posted on the web, freely available to anyone, anywhere.

I have used Blackboard a little bit (to mass e-mail my students and to post grades) and I find it to be slow, kludgy, and buggy. I would find it painful to heavily use this software, and I find it vastly simpler to create a course website.

My question is -- what is it that drives Blackboard's popularity? Is it that most faculty do not want to learn HTML? That faculty prefer to keep their course materials private rather than public? Are there other useful features which I have overlooked? Or other factors?
Blackboard is used by the university I teach at and I used it at the university I studied at - 

Blackboard (BB) is mostly uniform. While you can customize your courses, to an extent, a student moving from one course to another using BB will already know where everything is. BB is simplistic and students have different technical abilities. 

Having each instructor learn HTML is a large order. I teach with an 80-year old man who still has a flip phone and can barely use that. Contracting someone to create the webpages would also be an issue because costs and instructors changing the courses that they teach may want to change the webpage. 

BB also has (at least where I studied and teach) a copy checker. If a student from Z class uploads the same paper to both Z and Y then when they upload it to Y the instructor is told that there is a paper within the servers (goes back 2-3 years I believe) that is x% similar to a paper submitted in course Z.