The following interview with Blackbaud's president and CEO Marc Chardon and Jay Love, president and CEO of eTapestry was recently featured on the Baudcast, Blackbaud's recurring podcast. Having taken place one month after Blackbaud announced its acquisition of eTapestry, the discussion focused on the progress of the partnership.

This is a condensed transcript; to listen to the full podcast, visit www.blackbaud.com/baudcast or www.etapestry.com.

Will eTapestry continue as a separate product and company, or will clients be required to migrate to a new system?

Marc: Blackbaud acquired eTapestry precisely because they are the leader in serving customers who want an on-demand fundraising solution. When Jay and I were talking about this combination, we were really clear that we wanted to have the product continue on and the company managed independently as a wholly-owned subsidiary, based in Indianapolis. I fully expect both solutions will serve important market needs for many years to come.

Jay: Let me begin by stating that for the eTap customers, there's no plan at all in the future for asking them to change anything. We are delighted to be a part of the Blackbaud family of companies. Blackbaud brings so much to the eTapestry customers and to our hundreds of partners. Some of the key things that come to mind for me are: immense resources; financial stability; top notch products to integrate to, and I might add perhaps that will work in both directions; economies of scale for our hosting centers; and the ability perhaps to allow eTap products to be sold and supported in other locations around the world.

And I understand, you've also seen some progress with this partnership already with some of your customers converting to the WealthPoint solution?

Jay: We had a solution for allowing our customers to access prospect research information online, and when we found out there was a need in a very short time period to bring the Blackbaud WealthPoint offering into the fold for us, we actually saw both of our technical teams jump into action and bring that product and the full integration with the eTapestry application to fruition in less than a week.

Marc: I think it is great proof of the quality of both of our technical teams that we could get the Wealth-Point offering integrated to eTapestry within a week—that's pretty astounding.

Our next questions come from Peter Gulka, "Chief Bus Driver" at Blackbus, the Blackbaud User Society.

He asks: What is the drive behind the acquisition of eTapestry; in other words, what is the direction Blackbaud wants to head that would be served by acquiring rather than internal development?

Marc: First, Jay and his team have been developing and growing this business for seven years. So, if we were going in the on-demand direction, which I believe Blackbaud must do, we had a very clear choice of either combining with the leader or trying to catch up from behind. Combining with the leader made more sense.

The question about why be in the on-demand segment is also an interesting one. There are 200,000 charities that raise under half-a-million dollars a year, and many of them don't want an IT infrastructure—they want a simple, on-demand solution.

To Jay, Peter asks: How will eTapestry clients be supported going forward?

Jay: Our same level of support and implementation functions that we have been providing over the last seven to eight years will remain identical. Our team is going to remain and, in fact, grow faster here in Indianapolis. We don't plan on making any changes as far as moving folks in one direction or another.

One other thing, too, is that we plan on sharing ideas and concepts with all of our counterparts in both Charleston and Boston. We hope by doing such in regard to implementation, training and services, that the best-of-breed practices will emerge throughout the entire organization.

Holly Ross, who was recently appointed to become the executive director of NTEN (the Nonprofit Technology Network), submitted the following question:

How are you planning to integrate eTapestry into your product suite? Are you keeping some or all of the product features?

Marc: eTapestry will continue to evolve independently, and I've asked Jay and his team to listen to what their customers need and decide what features to add to eTapestry offerings as they make sense to them.

Jay: We have a multi-year roadmap in place now with the various functions customers have asked for, as well as consultants and industry leaders that we hope become part of the product as we continue to evolve it and move things forward.

Our next questions come from Allan Benamer, founder of the NPTech Blog "Confessions of a Nonprofit Executive Director."

He asks: eTapestry was written in Java but Blackbaud uses Microsoft's .NET framework. How do you propose to make these products work together?

Marc: Web services interfaces are a wonderful thing! The back-end technology differences in the Internet world matter very little. Java and .NET mash up and integrate deeply in many real-world applications. The users never know what part of the service is happening with a Java machine and what part is happening on some kind of .NET background. Our Infinity platform is a service-oriented architecture; it underlies all of the next generation of our products, and it's designed to integrate seamlessly through web services.

eTapestry has a good web-services interface, as we just proved with the WealthPoint integration, so I expect that we will integrate Blackbaud solutions to eTapestry, only in response to what customers tell the team in Indy. For example, the combined team is already evaluating possible scenarios where we might integrate subsets of our Internet offering, Blackbaud Net-Community—the content management of the web transaction processing technologies, into eTapestry—but that's very early in the process. We're looking at it, and we're going to listen to the eTapestry customers to tell us what we should do and in what order.

Also, to Jay: How will Blackbaud and eTapestry overcome the differences in philosophy with regard to customer approach and technology?

Jay: We've all been pleasantly surprised in just how much alike our care and handling of customers are. There's a genuine interest in the success and happiness of every customer, whether they are big or small. As you approach customers, that size really comes into play. We don't handle a large national account in exactly the same manner as we would a small account with just a single user. The entire approach for making the implementation a success is quite different for those two different entities. I think we'll continue to approach that in the same way and keep getting the tips and ideas that we can pick up from other parts of the Blackbaud world of companies.

With regard to the technology, it will depend on how deep inside you want to drill. Most customers, especially those wonderful end users of either product, have no idea really what the back-end database is, nor do they really care. To them, the products lines are looking more and more alike as time moves on. They really function as web-browser user interfaces with numerous drill downs within that interface, so from the outside looking in—from an end-user perspective— those look very much the same. The key for all of our customers is that the integration points need to be easy to use and seamless.

Our next set of questions came from Robert Weiner, who runs a San Francisco-based consulting firm and serves as a moderator on TechSoup.

He asks: Doesn't eTapestry compete with the hosted version of Raiser's Edge?

Marc: There has been a very modest amount of competition between the two organizations—maybe a handful of times a quarter compared with hundreds and hundreds of new customers per quarter that Blackbaud and eTapestry sell to. When you see that little competition, it is because in many ways our customers know what they want to buy before they start looking.

Also, to Jay, what if any changes will eTapestry clients notice?

Jay: We have no plans for any different pricing policies that are any different than our past procedures. Perhaps the effect of being part of a well-known and respected company and larger company like Blackbaud will allow us to achieve even better economies of scale and work to the advantage of our customers as we march forward.

We see so many other advantages for the customers, too. The Blackbaud R&D processes are among the best—if not the best—in this entire sector. We hope that plays out for enhancements and changes and further integrations that our customers will be able to take advantage of.

And Marc, can you describe the impact the combined efforts of Blackbaud, eTapestry, and the Target companies will have on the nonprofit marketplace?

Marc: Being able to offer integration and a broader view of the constituents is going to be very valuable to our customers. These two organizations are the best at doing what they do. Target is the best at high-volume direct marketing constituent views, and eTapestry is the best at ondemand database views of the constituent. Bringing those two together will give our customers a seamless way of being able to support their constituencies and grow their fundraising over time.

The Baudcast features stories about Blackbaud products, services, customers, and the nonprofit industry. Join Blackbaud employees and customers as they share their knowledge in these free nonprofit and technology-focused podcasts. You can download the .mp3 file directly from www.blackbaud.com/baudcast, subscribe to the RSS feed, or even access them via the iTunes Music Store.

FOR INFORMATION

Blackbaud
2000 Daniel Island Dr.
Charleston, SC 29492
(800)443-9441
solutions@blackbaud.com
www.blackbaud.com

eTapestry
6107 West Airport Blvd.
Suite 120
Greenfield, IN 46140
(888)739-3827
info@etapestry.com
www.etapestry.com