Local hosting vs. Blackbaud hosted services

Jamie Campbell

Hi everyone, 



We have been experiencing some serious issues regarding access to our citrix files since June. Specifically - my organization has not been able to import or export using the citrix files option. I've sought out Blackbaud support on a number of occasions and our local IT team has been connected with them also but so far - no luck. 



I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue and if so, how did you resolve it? 



Also - has anyone moved to local hosting and if so - what is your feedback on this? Would you recommend? Was it a bad idea? Any feedback that you can share would be most helpful!



Thanks, 

J

Daniel Noga 2

Hi Jamie,



I don't have an answer to your first question, but I have experience working with with Raiser's Edge systems both locally hosted and remotely hosted. Given the choice and all other things being equal, I would always choose to work in a locally-hosted system. Provided your organization has the IT resources to support this, it's a much better option in my opinion; this gives you the power to decide on configuration, whether or not you upgrade to a new version and when, etc.



While I was working for an organization that had its RE: setup hosted by Blackbaud, RE: was upgraded to version 7.94 and we had no choice but to participate. That version included huge changes that inconvenienced a great many organizations in a rather poorly-implemented major upgrade to the way RE: processes address records. When I came to this organization, I warned our IT department to be careful about upgrading and in the process, I learned that 7.94 is not even available anymore to those who hadn't already upgraded. It was that bad. I know there are other pros and cons, but I don't think anyone wants to invite this to happen to their organization.



There are many angles to consider, but that one is most important to me as the person in charge of RE: for an organization.



 

Joshua Bekerman bCLO bCRE

I don't have any info regarding your Citrix issue, but we did move from Blackbaud Hosting to our own server.  It was over four years ago and a lot has changed with Blackbaud Hosting since then, so it wouldn't be fair or accurate to share why we left.  I will share that hosting our RE and FE inhouse has worked out very well for us.  As Daniel mentioned, organization IT resources to support hosting inhouse should definitely be considered and is usually a large part of the decision.  Luckily for us we have sufficient IT support and resources.  We were also able to purchase a beast of a server.  In general, if you are able to support and afford it I would recommend hosting inhouse, but it certainly comes down to each organization's specific needs.



Also, we have a lot of staff that travel and work from home and need access to RE offsite so we only have it installed on the server and everyone remotes in, including everyone in the office.  This also helps when we need to run patches or updates. Instead of having to update every workstation, we only need to do one on the server.  Users log into RE using a remote desktop package icon on their desktop so it's seemless and opens as if it's installed on their workstation.  





 

Jen Claudy

I just want to make sure you know that in order to move to RE:NXT, you must be Hosted.  And the plan is to eventually migrate everyone to NXT.  Being forced this direction is far in the future, but something to consider.



This is the first organization I've worked at with Hosting, and we just moved to it in February, about 2 weeks before going live with NXT.  Otherwise, we would have invested in a new server, separate from the organization's other servers so we could use the mobile app.  In general, provided you have the equipment and IT support, I would agree with Daniel and Josh, but I do like NXT, and am glad we moved ahead with that.

Art Bryman 2

I agree with everyone's sentiment - locally hosted is better in terms of speed and convenience, but you need to have the IT resources in place.  You also get to choose when to upgrade - and with Blackbaud, waiting is always best.  When I managed a locally hosted system, we wouldn't apply any major updates (moving from 7.9x to 7.9x+1, for example), until there were several patches available. We also wouldn't apply every patch when it was released, and would apply past patches only - unless there was some dire need to apply a patch.  The other drawback to locally-hosted systems is having to update every single workstation that had the client. The client is promoted as being able to update itself when the server is updated.  The reality is that any network with bare-bones security will prevent those updates from working.  Blackbaud also never released an admin tool to do mass client updates, and their instructions for silent installations via batch file weren't well written or tested.  

Being hosted by Blackbaud has its downsides, too.  Most external vendors' software cannot be installed.  If you run a process that takes a long time, the system will time out, and you lose that process.  We have hosted RE and BBNC, which should be an ideal situation for integration.  It is ideal, until Blackbaud forgets to restart your BBNC after maintenance, ignores the after-hours support phone line, and then takes a while to fix it - and all donation and event registration pages are offline.  You cannot save files directly to your "My Documents".  If you try to save to "My Documents", you get an error message.  Everything has to be saved either directly to your hard drive, or to a shared folder.  To get files out of the shared folder, you either need to use a circa-1995 web-based FTP interface, or use your own FTP client. Last night, I made a rookie mistake of saving a batch commit report to the desktop, forgetting that it was the server desktop.  Since I didn't get an error message, I figured it was fine.  Tried getting the reports via FTP today - no desktop folder.  Contacted tech support - nothing can be done.  Recap - saving to local "My Documents" - error message, and no go.  Saving to a black hole called "Desktop" - no error message, and no recovery.  

Sadly, with a move to NXT requiring Blackbaud hosting, local hosting, or alternate hosting, isn't an option.  Even though NXT solves so many users' complaints, it creates new issues for those having to move to Blackbaud hosting.

Jen Claudy

I haven't looked into this yet...and am pretty well set with saving to a "Blackbaud" folder on my local Desktop (using the folder helps to prevent me from accidentally saving to the random Desktop or My Documents folders in the black hole).  This is a post from another thread:

Re: Moving to Hosted - What Tests Should I Run?

Posted by Aaron Rothberg on Jun 13, 2016 9:16 am

If you want to access your network drives from a hosted instance, simply call up support and let them know. From what I understand they made this feature available about 6 months ago, but they chose not to advertise it to anyone. I made that request about two months ago and within a couple of days I could access all of my locally mapped network drives from Hosted Raiser's Edge. Occassional my drives don't correctly display in RE, but when that happens I simply log out of RE, log back in, and my drives are there again. Happens maybe once a month.

Art Bryman 2

This is the first time, in a long time, that support agreed that I found a bug, and will do something about it:

 

Hosting engineers are currently aware of [this issue] and are working on correcting [it]. They have reached out to our programmers who are in the process of trying to "hide" the virtual desktop with hopes that this will be corrected soon, if not with the next product update. 

Faith Murray

We have not moved to NXT largely because of the hosting issue. We prefer to keep our files locally hosted, and we have an excellent IT staff to maintain it. Our IT keeps "uber" security, so our files locally hosted are more secure than they would be on the cloud. Also, like others on this thread, our IT waits to install each update until there has been at least one or two patches created to fix the bugs that always come with a new release. Local hosting may also be cheaper, depending on your modules and circumstances, or if you have a large database, because you aren't charged per constituent record. And you can still remote from home if you wish using the RE: Anywhere feature. 

Deb Dressely

There is another option!  Concourse Hosting gives you the benefits of control over upgrades and patches and allows you to work with other vendors but relieves you of the technical responsibilities.  They are reliable, dependable, friendly and knowledgeable.  We've been hosted for about a year now after having been hosted previously by Blackbaud.  The speed is much better and we haven't been timed-out or kicked out.  Saving files to the hosted site is also much easier.


Deb

Heather Kantor 3

We were hosted onsite, and moved to Concourse last year, and then to Blackbaud hosting this year with NXT. Hosting onsite was a bit of a load on our server, and our IT folks were happy to have it moved. We liked Concourse, but really wanted to move to NXT and Concourse doesn't handle that. We are very happy with hosting, and especially happy with NXT. 

Jill Freidmutter

We looked into hosting because our servers were becoming obsolete. It was way more expensive to be hosted than to buy a new server. We also looked into NXT, but the cost per record is a large jump for us. We have a lot of deceased records (we're a hospice and have a record for any individual who received a donation in their memory) and inactive records. We could probably purge some records, but figuring out which is daunting, so we're sticking with self-hosting for now.  

Genette Yogi

Deb Dressely:

There is another option!  Concourse Hosting gives you the benefits of control over upgrades and patches and allows you to work with other vendors but relieves you of the technical responsibilities.  They are reliable, dependable, friendly and knowledgeable.  We've been hosted for about a year now after having been hosted previously by Blackbaud.  The speed is much better and we haven't been timed-out or kicked out.  Saving files to the hosted site is also much easier.


Deb

Hi Deb~


We have been hosted by BB for less than a year (EE, FE, RE) and the lag issues are frustrating to the point that we're now considering moving back to local servers.  (I will ask if our tech team has researched the third party hosting vendors.)  

My question to you is about the process of moving off of the BB servers - was it easy?  Was there any maintenance that needed to be done before or after the move?  Anything else that has come up since your post that you wouldn't mind sharing?


Any feedback would be appreciated!


Thanks,


~Genette