We’ve Come a Long Way Baby

Looking back ten years I fondly remember our first set of large computers we purchased for our initial hosting center for eTapestry the application. We chose to go a fully managed route with a large well known nation vendor. I will keep them nameless in order to protect the guilty...

Let me explain why. In 1999 the entire SaaS (Software as a Service) model was truly in its infancy. Being a lean and mean operation in this new frontier, we thought it would be prudent to link up with a "big brother" to protect us and our newly acquired forward thinking customers. We loved this particular vendor's vivid presentation and proposal to us about meeting our every need in this new hosted world. Little did we know that they working up to a full run from a walk themselves. They did not seem to fully understand what 24 X 7 meant when it came to achieving 100% up time.

Even among our first 25 customers we found people using the system at 5 AM in the morning on the East coast of the United States to people working at midnight on the West coast. The Charity World truly never falls fully asleep. When our first partner made it difficult from time to time to keep every single one of our customers happy we knew it was time to move on to bigger and better hosting centers.

I have to compare our changes over the years to what I have done in cars starting with my first used 1967 Chevy Camaro to my Camry hybrid now. Even though my robin egg blue Camaro had a nifty little 6 cylinder engine it cannot hold a candle to the technology and efficiency of the Camry hybrid. (I love averaging 40+ MPG during my short commute to work) The differences are almost as amazing as what has occurred with our hosting center operations and sophistication!

We quickly moved from a single hosting center to multiple hosting centers. Each year we added more computers, much more redundancy and infinitely more peace of mind for all of our customers.

One of our fun additions was the purchase of a used full size stoplight to hang in our office.

This unique purchase more or less came when we were upgrading our extensive network monitoring tools. For a metaphor, think of all of the equipment used in ICU area of a top notch hospital. We decided we needed a constant visual reminder of what 100% 24 X 7 uptime truly means. This is especially true for those folks processing on-line donations and event registrations in the various time zones associated with North/South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Part of our "geek" squad, (I use the term lovingly) synched the monitoring tools with the old fashion stoplight to reflect such ongoing events like achieving a record number of users to a computer being taken off-line for servicing. (By the way, in case you were wondering those new records never happen on a Monday or a Friday nor during August...)

Our superb team of system professionals achieved another milestone this year. It was not in buying a larger number of new computers to keep up with our growing demand, but in achieving PCI certification. My pride in our tech team and in the tech teams from Blackbaud multiplied as I watched them attack and complete the numerous requirements for this top level certification. I sure would not want to attempt such an achievement with our 1999 budget, manpower and knowledge. This is quite a significant factor for our customers and their peace of mind as it relates to electronic transactions and the data associated with that ever more important part of fundraising. For those of you desiring an in depth look here you go. (There is even a video that I can safely say will not go viral!)

I could go on and on with the myriad of changes, improvements and achievements of our tech teams as it relates to our hosting centers. I think the greatest compliment I can pay them is the pure and simple fact that over 6,000 customers take what they have built for granted daily! (I mean that in the nicest manner because just like electricity we only notice when it is NOT there for us.)

Please join me in giving each and every one of them an electronic pat on the back and a huge thank you!