Ironically, I decided to apply the 2012 hotfixes today (to solve some other issues hopefully) and that killed backburner entirely 
Just had to roll back to 2008 myself.
I have looked into Deadline a bit, and use the free version to run a couple of nodes for Krakatoa, but I found it was a bit cost prohibitive and BB has been running well for me for the last couple of years. Might have to reconsider…
/b