Blackbaud Sphere Hardware Update for 2012

As you may already know, Blackbaud has plans to upgrade and enhance Blackbaud Sphere’s hardware infrastructure this summer! This scheduled maintenance will be on Sunday, June 17, 2012 beginning at approximately 12:00 a.m. ET. This time was selected due to its lower system usage to have minimal impact for your organization.

Upgrading the hardware to improve performance for our customers is part of Blackbaud’s continued support and investment in the Blackbaud Sphere platform. We are targeting a 6-hour maintenance window for the hardware upgrade which means that during this period visitors to your Blackbaud Sphere websites will see a maintenance message. Please know that we will continue to review our plan with the hopes of reducing the overall maintenance window.

Impact Overview:

• The scheduled maintenance is Sunday, June 17, 2012. We are not expecting maintenance before that date.
• This maintenance window applies to all Blackbaud Sphere customers.
• There will be a downtime period for your Blackbaud Sphere website of up to 6 hours.
• Visitors to your Blackbaud Sphere website or any pages running on Blackbaud Sphere will receive a system maintenance message that reads, “This web site is currently undergoing planned maintenance for system upgrades and enhancements. Normal service will be returned by 6 A.M. U.S. Eastern Daylight Time on Sunday, June 17, 2012. We apologize for this inconvenience and look forward to your return visit.”
• Immediately following the upgrade your Blackbaud Sphere system will return with improved performance.

If you have any questions or concerns, please create a case. For more information about Blackbaud Sphere product updates, please subscribe to Knowledgebase solution What is a Blackbaud Sphere maintenance release or feature release? (BB730784).

You can keep up with us on Twitter by following @bbsupport; we use the hashtag #bbsphere when we discuss Blackbaud Sphere. Take a look at our Twitter Guide for more info.