Industry Opinion: Why I'm Optimistic About Blackbaud's Acquisition of Convio

Clearly it will take a while to understand the implications of the announcement and much longer to observe how the acquisition and subsequent integration — strategic, operational and technological — unfolds. But I'll risk it and offer two initial thoughts:

1. The acquisition represents a colossal reshaping of the nonprofit technology landscape.
2. There's lots of reasons to be extremely optimistic about the result.

Why it's big
If you're reading this article, you probably already know why the move is huge. But allow me to recap for a moment, with apologies to product managers at both companies for vastly oversimplifying the systems involved. Blackbaud is the de facto nonprofit technology standard when it comes to back-end systems. Simply put, it's a Raiser's Edge world out there. But its cloud products haven't gained as much traction, and its offering is a mixture of various home-grown and acquired solutions, from eTapestry to Kintera to NetCommunity to Sphere.