Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Gorczycki 
Nora,
I tried to get the answer at all possible levels in Blackbaud, from developers, sales representatives, forums etc.
Shaun announcements, however vague,during conference had dates attached but in the presentation published at conference web site all dates were erased.
Some other presentations related to new technologies and future of RE (apart from Shaun's and the two presented by Andrew Mosawi) were like bunch of boys presenting their hobbies and favourite toys.
This is not a way of presenting the future development of the product.
Fundraising is a mature market and it has to be treated seriously.
Andrew
Andrew, to be honest I felt I was incredibly frank at the conference and answered every question head on. I can't even recall one question or point that I dodged. Now, I understand not everyone could be at the conference, and more info will continue to be released.
I outlined every key aspect of our platform direction:
- Move away from Oracle
- Migration to App server based architecture from client server
- Discussed that RE8 was at least 18 months out,especially given how hard we need to work to make a "shrink-wrap" migration
- I made it very clear that we are investing in Reporting Services for our future reporting technology, and moving away from Crystal
I personally made the decision to remove dates because when something is 18+ months away, I really am not comfortable with something on a slide being construed as a release announcement. As we approach certainty we will release more info.
In addition I have posted a publicly available LIVE demo of the next generation for all of you to access directly, and post screen casts that demo exercising the new technology as well as releasing code as open source for any folks that want to do something with today's APIs. I actually think that represents an unparalleled level of openness in the sector.
I agree we need to be more transparent and feel we have made amazing strides in this area. As I noted in my recent labs post more info is coming. We just want to be as responsible as possible with information we formally release. If I release a date and a customer purchases hardware and services based on that date and we miss it for whatever reason, the consequences are quite serious.
Respectfully,
Shaun