Cason White’s first post over at Blogbaud.com used lover’s psychobabble to describe the relationship between the customer and Blackbaud. So let’s pretend I’m the customer talking back to Blackbaud…
“Oh Blackbaud, I remember the flowers you sent me especially when we were still dating. It was wonderful back then. You held my hands through the migration. You trained me. You said that I was the only one. So when you asked for a yearly fee, I didn’t mind. I thought it would cement the relationship we had.
But you get so jealous, Blackbaud. You didn’t want me to talk to my accountant. You kept saying that you had another one you wanted me to use. Then when I started talking to that guy who kept showing me websites, you wanted to me to talk to your website builder. And then, when I wanted YOU to talk to my new friends, you kept saying, ‘No way! It’s not secure’. So I’m left a little hurt, a little sad and sometimes I just want to tell you ‘I love you’ but only if you open up and search your feelings on the inside… Can you do that, Blackbaud? Please don’t make me choose between my friends and you.”
It looks like Blogbaud’s Cason White is actually mulling over the way customer feedback about Blackbaud products is handled by Blackbaud. And there’s a small group of vociferous Raiser’s Edge users (Peter Gulka and Paul Morriss are both frequent commenters here) there looking to grind some old axes…
The one thing that I do like to read from his post is that “there are no more excuses…. There are no excuses for not talking to us and there are no excuses for not listening to us.” Yes, and this is why many of us nonprofit techie types were not exactly pleased by Blackbaud CTO Shaun Sullivan’s remarks during the Open API debate. We would have preferred instead that he proclaim his new love of open APIs, security issues be damned.
So uh Blackbaud… show us the love. Open up that API. Will you, please? I promise that if you do, I’ll never mention salesforce.com’s use of Crispynews ever again.
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This is getting good. I know that people like Cason were well aware of what they might be opening themselves up to when they started that blog, and good for them. Things really do appear to be changing over there. If they can handle the initial onslaught of commentary, it should be fine.
I am actively trying to duplicate the DIGG interface for vBulletin so that the Blackbaud User Society can have an internal, trackable feature suggestion tool.
If Blackbaud wants to hear from the users it is therefore our responsibility to talk to them in an organized, civil, and clear manner.
The days of griping and complaining about the ivory tower are over. Let’s get to work.
Alan – Following up on the NTEN Open API Debate last fall, we are publishing a White Paper that gives an overview of what open APIs are, what they do, why software buyers in the nonprofit market should care about them, and where some of the major vendors in the space are at in regard to opening up their APIs.
So, we figured we ASK them. Here are our questions, directed at key contact at each of the vendors:
1. Does your product have APIs that allow other applications to access data from your application?
2. Do you have features that call APIs of other applications?
3. If your application has APIs, what are the technologies used by those APIs? Please give a detailed technical overview.
4. We define an ‘open API’ as one that is documented, accessible to the audience it is intended for, and there is no additional cost to access it. Are your APIs open, as we’ve defined it?
5. If they are not open according to this definition, please explain.
6. Is there documentation online? (if yes, please include the link)
7. If you don’t have APIs in your applications yet, do you plan to implement them sometime in the next year?
8. If so, when will they be released?
9. Will they be open, according to above definition?
For the purposes of the paper, we are focusing on a small slice of the market — primarily fudraising and CRM software vendors. Here is WHO we asked, in random order. These include both hosted and non-hosted application vendors.
* Sage Software
* Target Software
* Blackbaud
* Citysoft
* Getactive
* etapestry
* Salesforce
* Pledgemaker
* Convio
* Civicrm
* Kintera
* Donor 2
* Donor express
* Fundtrack
* Telosa
Two questions: Who are we missing? And what else should we be asking?
We will include vendor responses in full in the appendix. Look for the NTEN White Paper on open APIs at the end of next week.
Katrin
I’m interested in you asking the compass.net people since they’re already using Micrsoft Dynamics 3.0. I’m pretty much assuming that they’re using an API which is primarily .NET based but at least they’ve got something people can plug into. They don’t seem to be mentioned much but my earlier post of about Dynamics becoming a SaaS has piqued my interest.
Hello! Help solve the problem.
Very often try to enter the forum, but says that the password is not correct.
Regrettably use of remembering. Give like to be?
Thank you!