This is the pre-debate warmup show for N-TEN’s “Great Open API Debate” at http://nten.typepad.com/newsletter/2006/10/the_great_open_.html. Looking at the roster, I can see at least one speaker, Peter Campbell from Goodwill Industries, who has clearly understood the value of an open API. Check out http://nten.typepad.com/newsletter/2006/07/seven_questions.html for his take on open APIs. I’m really hoping that Peter will swing the bat well for our sector. Peter, my hopes rest with you.
However, everyone else on the panel is a vendor but even there not all vendors are equal. Convio and GetActive sent their co-founders which says a lot about how seriously they take this. Funny, Convio’s salesepeople always prefers to talk more about Vinod, their CEO, instead of their CTO. Their CTO has an unbelievable resume.
I’m really hoping Nick Ballenger of DIA will come through as well on the technical side and that he gets a chance to speak of the upcoming Joomla! - DIA integration that’s in the works. It’s not an open API in the sense that it can be used as a mashup but it’s wonderful news for nonprofits that are Joomla! users.
What’s interesting is who is missing… where’s Blackbaud? And where are the case management vendors? Yes, yes, I know that there’s not enough room to include everyone else (much like an acceptance speech at the Oscars) but Blackbaud has a much higher market capitalization at $1.1 billion than Kintera, (and even if they were public) Convio and GetActive combined.
Apparently, Blackbaud IS going to be there (at least my Blackbaud source thinks so). Shaun Sullivan, Blackbaud’s CTO, will be at the debate. Here’s his details:
Shaun Sullivan is the chief technology officer at Blackbaud. He has been building, designing, and supporting software solutions for nonprofits for more than 15 years. Since joining Blackbaud in 1989, he has played a key role in every major release of the company’s flagship product, The Raiser’s Edge®. Mr. Sullivan also led development of RE:NetSolutionsâ„¢, The Information Edgeâ„¢ and, most recently, Blackbaud® NetCommunityâ„¢. As chief technology officer, he leads the teams that focus on the company’s technical direction and application of emerging technologies. He graduated with a degree in management information systems from Nichols College in Dudley, MA.
Source: http://www.blackbaud.com/events/bb_conf/charleston/speakers.aspx
Let’s take a look at market capitalization for all the vendors for the debate:
Salesforce.com — $4.52 billion
Kintera — $55.43 million
Convio — private
GetActive — private
Source: Yahoo! Finance 10/17/2006
To be honest, the Little Three and Salesforce.com can really benefit from an open API as they’re already on the Web and it’s fairly trivial to create an API from the skeletons of their web applications. Blackbaud is in more trouble as they’re strictly a client-server application but who knows whether or not their “Infinity” project will take off.
For whatever reason, I think the pro-open API forces (myself included) have positioned this as a non-profit vs. CRM ASP battle when it’s much wider in scope. Basically, any application that becomes a line of business application for a non-profit should have an open API. This means applications such as Fund E-Z, Sage FAS Accounting and the New York city social services player, Foothold Technologies’ AWARDS database. I can name more names. And I’d like to see those names represented in future debates.
A list of questions I’d like to see asked would be:
- Are you or have you ever been a proponent of open APIs? (Yes, it IS like that)
- What are your reasons for not having an open API?
- Do you feel that the creation of an open API for your software is too costly or is of little benefit to your bottom line?
- Would you ever be interested in creating a Web 2.0 interface for your product?
- Are you interested in what AJAX could do for your apps’ UI?
Man, I can’t wait to be listening to this debate. Good job N-TEN for getting the ball rolling but let’s make sure this ball rolls over a lot of the smaller vendors too. The long tail of nonprofit tech vendors needs a good snap!
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What I’d definitely like to see is more of the proprietary vendors playing nicely with open source CMSes. I know that from the Joomla world, we’re more than happy to help organizations link into these systems, but that requires some effort on the side of these big CRM businesses to make this happen.
My gut instinct from a business perspective is that if open APIs that allow potential competitors (say an OSS CMS vs. the CRM vendor’s CMS) to compete against the CRM vendor’s complimentary offerings, it’s going to be a tough sell.
We’ll see!
Everyone seems to think that the CRM vendors won’t make money doing this but I believe it’s more like protecting your market share. Why are Amazon and Google and Yahoo! getting so deep into market share? It’s not because they want to open their silo, but because they want to increase its size, increasing the “stickiness” of their data. Imagine Blackbaud opened up their API and you started writing to it. At that point, your investment in BB has doubled, once in the data entry and again in the mashup. There’s no way you would leave BB. Open APIs are a win-win for everyone except the CRM vendors are still clueless about what Internet market share will mean. All we need is for one of them to break out an API and a whole new ecology would develop around that vendor. The first vendor who does an open API gets the girl, the gold watch and everything.
Blackbaud do have APIs for their products. It is not free to develop with, you have to own a license in order to write components but you are free to use other’s plug-ins in your Raiser’s Edge even if you do not have a license to develop your own.
The problem is that because it is not free to develop, few people are able to do so. Clearly Blackbaud do so and earn a lot of money from it but there are a number of independents who develop plug-ins too many of which are offered free.
David Zeidman
Zeidman Development
http://www.zeidman.info
Hey — shoot us all a link to those free Blackbaud plug-ins! Open APIs probably should be:
1. Free or low-cost
2. Using web standards (XML, PHP or some other open-source language, I’d love it to be in Ruby)
3. Be very well-documented
If all those three existed for a Blackbaud API, that would be awesome!
The free plug-ins are on my site (I would love to hear about any others out there)
http://www.zeidman.info/download.htm
1. No, the API is by no means free or low cost.
2. It uses COM based technology so you can write plug-ins in VB6, C++, VB.NET, C#, etc. So not web standards.
3. It is far from well documented. However if you own the API then you have access to BB’s knowledgbase where there is good example code.
So not really all that “Open”
David Zeidman
Zeidman Development
http://www.zeidman.info
Sometimes there is a little naiveté in these API discussions. From the CRM perspective, as pointed out above, the standard business model is to lock in customers. Basically “own” their data, but eliminate the barriers to using the data in the central data store.
This is Saleforce’s model, and it doesn’t hurt the NPO sector as long as they continue to donate their product. Basically the analog to Microsoft’s NPO donations program.
The missing piece which Salesforce and the Open Souce guys get is the concept of ecology. When people buy software from a broad range of distributors, they have readier access to all of the various tools.
Blackbaud is unlikely to publish a directory of all the tools avaliable for their platform and encourage a ecology of vendors… it would cut into their business model a bit much.
Similarly, Salesforce will never let anyone else use their code. It cuts into their business model to much. IMHO, the discussion about APIs isn’t about technology, it is a discussion about business models.