Local hosting vs. 3rd party hosted vs Blackbaud hosted services - March 2017 - any updated comments?

Genette Yogi

Calling on any db mgrs or tech gurus~


We have been BB hosted less than a year (in Boston) with EE / FE / RE - and the productivity time has gone down drastically in all modules - too many to list.  As for RE NXT, after discovering that not all of our soft credits are included (yet), one our gift officers quipped that NXT is now 'an expensive phone book' and our Business Office has issues with running the FE NXT reports.  We are at the point of exploring going back to local servers but would like to know if anyone has more recent suggestions or comments in two areas:

1. Local servers vs 3rd party hosted servers vs BB hosted servers
2. What to look out for before/during/after leaving a BB hosted server - stuff that is not detailed in the kb 

As the RE db mgr, there were many things that fell on me during the initial conversion (my bad for not checking this forum).  I am commited to support the overall needs of the school, however I am also looking to be more proactive this time around (gathering those golden nuggets of 'experience' from this group). 


So yes, if tech people have contributions, please provide your 'techy-insider knowledge' (stuff that would fly over my head) and I will share with our tech team. 


Have a wonderful weekend!


~Genette

 

Steven Cinquegrana 2

Genette Yogi:

Calling on any db mgrs or tech gurus~


We have been BB hosted less than a year (in Boston) with EE / FE / RE - and the productivity time has gone down drastically in all modules - too many to list.  As for RE NXT, after discovering that not all of our soft credits are included (yet), one our gift officers quipped that NXT is now 'an expensive phone book' and our Business Office has issues with running the FE NXT reports.  We are at the point of exploring going back to local servers but would like to know if anyone has more recent suggestions or comments in two areas:

1. Local servers vs 3rd party hosted servers vs BB hosted servers
2. What to look out for before/during/after leaving a BB hosted server - stuff that is not detailed in the kb 

As the RE db mgr, there were many things that fell on me during the initial conversion (my bad for not checking this forum).  I am commited to support the overall needs of the school, however I am also looking to be more proactive this time around (gathering those golden nuggets of 'experience' from this group). 


So yes, if tech people have contributions, please provide your 'techy-insider knowledge' (stuff that would fly over my head) and I will share with our tech team. 


Have a wonderful weekend!


~Genette

Hi Genette,


Hmmm, a sticky one, yes?


To state the (probably) obvious:

Self-Hosted: Pros: Complete control of your data, full access to the back-end with SQL, ability to install plug-ins, VBA access, etc. Cons: Complete responsibilty for your data(!), cost of infrastructure and on-going maintenance/staff/back-ups, etc, security issues, PCI compliance, risk of power outages.

BB-Hosted: Pros: stable, secure environment, care-free day-to-day, automatic product updates, free API for RENXT (Sky); Cons: Cost, data access limitations/restrictions, automatic product updates(!).

3rd-Party-Hosted*: Pros: Most of the benefits of Self-Hosted without many of the Cons, eg back-ups, security, cost. Cons: a higher degree of maintenace, responsibilty for updates, etc than BB-Hosted.


* I include dedicated third-party hosts such as Concourse (disclaimer: we are Concourse partners) and generic cloud hosts such as Amazon AWS.


We run a very small suite of test servers (on tiny Gigabyte BRIX boxes) along with some VMs and it's carefree and lo cost/risk for us, but then we don't have any data that we care about or users (apart from developers).


I'll put my cards on the table and say that, were it I, I would probably go for, in order, third-party hosted - either dedicated or generic - followed by Blackbaud-hosted, followed by self-hosted. My overriding prerequisites are 1) access to data, 2) cost of ownership and 3) risk, not in any specific order.


I hope that helps.

 

Gina Gerhard

Just to add a bit to the conversation, you also may want to consider (if these are important to you):

• which option will give you the ability to have a 'sandbox' for testing
• which option will allow you to pick/choose which version you want to upgrade to (and not automatically upgrade you to the latest)