Blackboard Collaborate Web Conferencing – Hosted NA-SAS Service Maintenance Notification

Important Updates:

• December 21 maintenance and customer migration activity delayed to January 4.
• Revised information for International customers currently hosted in Canada.

As previously communicated, a new North American Collaborate web conferencing environment is being deployed in Blackboard’s Managed Hosting facility in Virginia (in addition to the existing Calgary facility). This is being done to accommodate the growth in usage of the Collaborate service and to better balance the load of our North American datacenters. Blackboard will continue to maintain the existing hosting facility in Calgary, Canada, for non-US enterprise Collaborate customers. Blackboard understands the concerns and sensitivity of its customers towards data privacy, which has influenced our decision to keep non-US clients data outside of the US to mitigate any such privacy concerns. In order to provide additional time for non-US customers to make any necessary configuration changes required to continue their service from the Calgary, Canada hosting facillity. Blackboard Collaborate would like to apologize for any confusion associated with the email that was sent on December 12, 2013.

When will this migration occur?

This maintenance which was originally scheduled for December 21, 2013, will now be conducted during the Blackboard Collaborate maintenance window on Saturday, January 4 2014.

Begin Time: Saturday, January 4th, 2014 14:00 US Eastern (UTC-5)

End Time: Sunday, January 5th, 2014 06:00 US Eastern (UTC-5)

Affected Users: NA-SAS

What can I expect from this migration?

Customers being migrated to the Virginia datacenter will not have to make any changes to their systems or configuration settings. The domain name, URLs, and IP addresses of the web conferencing service will not change as a result of this move, and we expect a very smooth transition.

Please Note – All remaining enterprise customers hosted out of the existing Calgary facility will require new steps to access the Collaborate service after January 4, 2014. Additional configuration changes may also be required depending on the customer environment. These changes must be performed immediately after the maintenance window as appropriate and as described in the following Collaborate Support knowledge base articles.

• FAQ’s for data center migration on January 4, 2014
• Configuration changes needed for non-US customeers who will remain hosted in Canada

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Blackboard Collaborate Technical Support through our support portal at http://support.blackboardcollaborate.com. 

• Please refer to the North American Web Conferencing Status Page for the most up to date status of our system.
• Please refer to knowledge base article 3072 for more information on the Blackboard Collaborate notification process.

To unsubscribe to these notifications: If you have an account on the Blackboard Collaborate support portal, login at: http://support.blackboardcollaborate.com Then manage your subscriptions at: ‘My Support’ tab > ‘My Subscriptions’. If you do not have a login to our support portal, send a message to: bbcollabsupport-unsubscribe@blackboard.com with the subject title “Unsubscribe”. Please allow 1-2 business days to process.