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Hi Raúl At Edge Hill University our experience of Managed Hosting (MH) has been very positive since the move, which we made in 2007. Our scheduled uptime stats for the last 3 years: 2013-14 = 100%, 2012-13 = 99.95%, 2011-12 = 99.94% Day to day we receive a responsive level of support from Blackboard Tier 1 TSMs (technical support) via an online case logging system. Their knowledge of the core Learn product is usually good – very occasionally an original enquiry might be misunderstood, but a bit of to-and-fro communication to clarify what we need gets the enquiry on the right track. When communicating in writing via Behind the BB isn’t working, the TSMs will call us to talk an issue through directly. The norm would be to get a response within 24 hours and on the majority of occasions a resolution is also found within this timeframe. I’d say enquiries needing ICM (Integration Customization Maintenance) input are slower, & Tier 1 TSM knowledge of Mobile & Collaborate is very basic so is often passed to other teams. We also receive additional support from a Service Delivery Manager and Service Delivery Engineer – who we have weekly calls with to discuss problematic issues, upgrades, patch requests, projects, etc. We take responsibility for 3rd party building blocks – this means basically “install at your own risk, with no Bb support”. There are partner extensions that are verified by Bb but again they don’t take any responsibility, so if an upgrade renders a 3rd party building block incompatible you have to work with the situation yourself (ie. talk to the developer / hope they update to accommodate any Bb changes). Bb have no objection to you installing your own Building Blocks or those provided to the community. In terms of upgrades, MH do the bulk of the work, but testing and verification for ALL integrations (SIS Framework, 3rd party extensions, custom codes, themes, settings, etc.) is something you do still have to manage. Since we moved to MH all our upgrades have been completed with less than 24 hrs service interruption. We upgraded to the APRIL 2014 release on Sunday and MH & ICM completed their work in just over 9 hours. Internally we take around 2 months to prep for an upgrade – working through issues with managed hosting support and then spend 5-7 hours on the day for post upgrade QA acceptance testing, again with managed hosting support if required (1 Manager, 6x Learning Technologists, 1 Systems Officer, and 1 PT Operations Coordinator). As others have commented, one of the biggest downsides of MH is that you don’t have full access to your data, without purchasing the DB service. This has been a frustration, but we have been able to work with MH to get reports for some essentials (eg. assignment activity & numbers of reading list links). These are provided, on a ‘best efforts’ basis, but this has generally given us what we need. Another thing to consider, is that because you don’t have direct access to the database, work that a DBA might normally do in 5 mins has to be logged with BB, and thus may involve a 5 hour delay (or even a day). All in all the investment has been worth it for us. Meg Learning Technology Development Manager Edge Hill University