The first product will be for an arts and cultural application. “It is not Raiser’s Edge or Financial Edge. It has components of both,” he said. That would include CRM, fundraising, accounting, calendaring, store, membership and ticketing, among other functions. Currently, a museum might have eight databases to provide all of the application services it needs. Chardon said the system is designed to provide 360-degree view of customers via an integrated database that touches on all interactions with customers. The first versions are expected to debut in the second half of 2010 in a SaaS-only version aimed at new customers. Raiser's Edge is the fund-raising application that provides the bulk of Blackbaud's business, while Financial Edge is its accounting program.
BLACKBAUD MOVING TO COMMON DATABASE
Blackbaud’s next generation of products, generation eight, turns from offering a variety of separate applications for each market in favor of a single application that provides a variety of functions from the same database. CEO Marc Chardon told attendees at this week’s Thomas Wiesel Technology & Telecom Conference that Generation 8 is built on Microsoft .Net 3.5, moving away from the client-server architecture.
