Raul
We went to Managed Hosting May 2013 and have no regrets. Mark was actually one of the people I consulted beforehand, and I'd agree with what he has written.
Our IT Systems people are very happy that they no longer have to worry about managing Blackboard servers and planning for upgrades, and can devote their attentions to other systems. Our users are happy because they have a reliable VLE which is there when they need it: minor fixes are applied in the small hours, when very few people are trying to access the system, and major upgrades are applied with far less system downtime than we would have needed in the past.
Andy Turner
VLE Manager
Institute for Teaching, Innovation & Learning
University of West London
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0208 231 2697
-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Raúl Castillo
Sent: 21 July 2014 17:32
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Self Hosting vs Managed Hosting
Thanks for your feedback.
Someone else :-)?.
______________________
Raúl Castillo Fernández
IE Business School
Departamento de Tecnologías Docentes
Vicedecanato de Learning Innovation
C/ María de Molina nº31 8ª Planta
28006 - Madrid
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tfno: (34) 917875134
-----Mensaje original-----
De: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] En nombre de Ceri Richards Enviado el: jueves, 17 de julio de 2014 10:10
Para: [log in to unmask]
Asunto: Re: Self Hosting vs Managed Hosting
Hi Raul,
We came the other way - we were managed hosted several years ago and came back to self-hosted.
I'd echo Mark's comments and add a few more, although quite briefly.
Some of the issues with MH is that of control, flexibility (in some ways) and integration, or it was around 5 years ago. We have a lot of integrations from Bb with in-house systems and for several of these we had to setup a dedicated VPN (which also happened to be a single point of failure) to secure the traffic. We were also very heavy snapshot users at the time, and to mirror what we did in house added quite a costly customisation via ICM.
What we found was that customisations and add-ons that are not included in the standard MH contract can start to stack up the overall costs. If you are in-house you can likely do a lot of these yourselves.
We also do a lot of direct querying of the learn and stats DB for our integrations and automated tasks which we couldn’t do when we were MH.
We use SIS these days and I'm not 100% on this one, but this likely removes the access issues we had when we were with MH using snapshot.
All I would say is get a clear picture of all of your in-house customisations, integrations, automations, etc before moving to see what you can and cannot do with a standard MH contract. If you are a vanilla user you may well find that MH works well for you.
Thanks,
Ceri Richards
Senior Systems Administrator
IT Services
University of South Wales
Room J147, Johnstown Building
http://findaroom.southwales.ac.uk/rooms/j147
/ [log in to unmask]
c +44 0(1443) 654138
-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark Hodgson
Sent: 17 July 2014 08:51
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Self Hosting vs Managed Hosting
Hi Raul,
We were self hosted and moved to managed hosted just over a year ago. The main benefit to managed hosted is that we no longer have to plan so much for each update/patch. Whenever we decide we want it applied we just raise a ticket about this and blackboard will do the job and are responsible for resolving any issues. We did not make many changes to the servers when we were self hosted so losing that access was not a big issue. Again any backend changes you would like to make or reports you would like you need to raise a ticket about. The only real con I have found to managed hosting is that at around sept/oct time as all institutions are returning then there are a lot of tickets submitted for institutions who are having problems. This means if you submit a job and it is not a level 1 or 2 then you may be waiting a few weeks for it to get done.
The only real benefit to being self hosted was that if external access was lost then the VLE still worked now if external access is lost then the VLE is not available at the College, but external access is almost always available so not too much of an issue.
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Raúl Castillo
Sent: 16 July 2014 17:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Self Hosting vs Managed Hosting
Dear all,
Our institution think of change our Blackboard Learn platform in Self Hosting to Managed Hosting.
We have some doubts about the benefits of it. For sure, we don't need all the servers we have now, the trend is "the cloud" :-P. But in the other side we have flexibility to check the database in real time and make some changes behind the GUI ;-).
So, institutions had lived the two models could give us their opinion?. pros and cons?. Things that you can do in SH and you can't do in MH and viceversa.
Thanks.
Raúl.
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