Managed Solution, a leading technology solutions provider based in San Diego, proudly announces its participation in Giving Tuesday by making a generous donation to the San Diego Humane Society. This contribution not only reflects the company's dedication to corporate social responsibility but also secures its place on the esteemed donor wall of the San Diego Humane Society.

Giving Tuesday, celebrated globally on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, encourages individuals and businesses to give back to their communities and support charitable causes. Managed Solution is delighted to contribute to the vital work of the San Diego Humane Society, an organization dedicated to promoting the welfare of animals and providing compassionate care.

In a unique twist to this year's Giving Tuesday initiative, Managed Solution invited its employees to nominate non-profit organizations for consideration. CEO Sean Ferrel, known for his commitment to community engagement, has personally selected ALL five charities nominated by employees. Each charity will receive a donation in kind on behalf of the employees below.

The selected charities are:

1. Youth on Their Own (Nominated by William Ford)
2. American Heart Association (Nominated by Josh Ose)
3. Teddy Bear Care (Nominated by Sarah Wolf)
4. Frosted Faces Foundation (Nominated by Alecia Wilson)
5. CASA - Louisiana (Nominated by Kat Grunzinger)

 

The company encourages other businesses to embrace similar initiatives that empower employees to make a difference in the causes they care about. By supporting multiple charities, Managed Solution aims to amplify the positive impact on communities and create a ripple effect of generosity.

About Managed Solution: Managed Solution is a leading technology solutions provider based in San Diego, offering a comprehensive suite of services, including IT consulting, cloud solutions, and managed services. With a commitment to innovation and community engagement, Managed Solution strives to make a positive impact on businesses and society.

 

For more information about Managed Solution and its philanthropic efforts, please visit https://www.managedsolution.com/culture/.

#GivingTuesday was founded by Henry Timms, Executive Director of the 92nd Street Y, a cultural and community center in New York City, back in 2012. His goal was to rally people to donate to their favorite cause on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

By Anthony Salcito as written on educationblog.microsoft.com

Microsoft is proud to partner with WE, an organization that brings people together and gives them the tools to change the world. Microsoft shares that vision and, through its technology, is helping WE accelerate their impact.

I had the privilege of attending WE Day recently in Vancouver, Canada and meeting with co-founder of WE, Craig Kielburger.

As I met with Craig, I learned a great deal more about WE and we discussed some of the ways Microsoft is working with them to expand the WE mission to reach more students and empower youth as a force for inclusion.

Q&A with Craig Kielburger, co-founder of WE

Anthony: I attended WE Day in Vancouver, BC recently, and I was overwhelmed by the energy and commitment of these students. What inspired you to build this amazing organization?

Craig: At the age of 12, I was inspired to help improve human rights for children around the world after I heard a story about Iqbal Masih, a young activist in Pakistan, who stood up against child labor. I knew I couldn’t make significant change alone, so I convinced a handful of my grade 7 classmates to join me in making a life-changing impact. That was how WE was born and, 20 years later, we are still passionate about empowering young people to be leaders of today through WE programming, such as WE Schools and WE Day.

We celebrate the incredible commitment of these students to service through WE Day, an inspiring, stadium-sized, life-changing event that takes place around the world. It unites world-renowned speakers, presenters and award-winning performers with thousands of young people and families to celebrate and inspire another year of incredible change. These are hosted in cities across North America and the UK. What’s unique about these stadium-sized events is that you can’t buy a ticket to WE Day – students earn their ticket by taking one local and one global action on causes they are most passionate about.

Anthony: Tell me about your vision for WE Schools.

Craig: WE Schools is a free, year-long service learning program that focuses on empowering students with the tools to make an impact in their local communities and beyond.

The WE Schools program has grown to include more than 12,000 schools and engages nearly a million students. WE Schools provide educators and students with the necessary tools, including curriculum and resources, to identify issues they care about and to take action. Educators can sign up at https://www.we.org/we-schools/.

This year, we are partnering with Microsoft to make the WE Schools curriculum digitally accessible through Microsoft OneNote, widening our reach and granting more students and educators around the world with access to our service curriculum. Our goal is to bring a passion for service to as many students as possible and, by 2019, we hope to triple the number of schools participating.

Anthony: How do you see the partnership with Microsoft helping advance your vision and mission?

Craig: Microsoft and WE share a common vision to help students be a force for good, locally and globally. That’s why we recently launched WE are One, a campaign that educates young people about issues of accessibility and encourages them to use technology to make their communities more inclusive.

Using Microsoft products and programs, classrooms will be able to organize, collaborate and share ideas on important issues. With technology – especially tools like OneNote, and Skype – we can go from reaching a million students to millions of students around the world.

The WE are One campaign also comes with accompanying WE Schools curriculum, outlining ways to integrate OneNote, Sway, Skype and Minecraft: Education Edition into lesson plans, to help students create and share their projects. This campaign is a great example of how we are digitizing WE Schools curriculum and, as a result, reaching students all over the world.

image: https://educationblog.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/media/MoeYang_WDVAN_CRG-25.jpg

Anthony: Of course, Microsoft is thrilled to be part of WE are One because it speaks so clearly to our mission to empower students and educators to do more. Can you share an example where technology has made a difference for a student looking to make a change to help others?

Craig: At this week’s WE Day Seattle, taking place on Friday, April 21, we will be joined by Maia Dua, a 16 year-old from River City High School in Sacramento, CA. He developed a robot as a cost-effective and durable alternative to a seeing-eye dog. The self-propelled, echo-locating Seeing Eye-Bot is made of readily accessible materials, making it more available to individuals of limited financial resources. The best part is that Maia developed this bot in just four days.

Anthony: As powerful is WE Day is, not every student can attend. How can those students (and their teachers) share this powerful experience?

Craig: Following WE Day Seattle, educators and students will be able to access the WE Day recap, which includes a virtual WE Day experience with motivational speeches and performances available at their fingertips, as well as educator resources.

In 60 minutes or less, students will be able to relive the celebration of young change-makers and experience exclusive, behind-the-scenes content. The WE Day recap pairs content from the event with WE Schools action planning to bring the spirit of the WE movement to the classroom. Now, thanks to Microsoft, WE Day lives beyond a one-day event, making it easier for students, friends and family to change the world together, regardless of their location.

How you can be part of WE

Learn more about WE Schools – and sign up – at WE.org, where you can download a free kit with everything you need for a year of changing the world.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Case Study: Urban Refuge

Microsoft teamed up with Urban Refuge to bring urban refugees in Amman, Jordan, access to local assistance opportunities via a Xamarin cross-platform mobile application. Urban refugees make up 78% of the 655,000 registered Syrian refugees in Jordan and 66% of refugees worldwide. Evidence from the field shows this population has access to mobile devices, yet largely share information via word of mouth. Urban Refuge's mission is to enable access to aid by leveraging technology to address information asymmetries in the urban refugee experience.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row font_color="#ffffff" css=".vc_custom_1471641930410{background-color: #6994bf !important;}"][vc_column][vc_column_text css_animation="appear"]

Learn more about professional services provided by Managed Solution

Network Assessment & Technology Roadmap

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

To Learn More about Professional Services, contact us at 800-208-3617

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Collaborating with Cities for Sustainability

As written on blogs.microsoft.com

Throughout the week here on our blog, we’ve highlighted many ways that Microsoft is working—through our staff and with our business and nonprofit partners around the world—to bring our tools and technology to bear in addressing some of the most pressing global challenges, such as increasing access to clean and affordable water, food and energy for people around the world.

Nowhere are those challenges more acute than in the world’s cities, where increasing population is placing a greater strain on limited economic and environmental resources and forcing cities to operate with greater and greater efficiency. It is forecasted that by 2050 more than 6 billion people, about 70 percent of the global population, will live in urban areas.

At Microsoft, we know that efficiency drives sustainability, and that by working closely with cities and partners we can develop technology-driven solutions to help communities cope with increasing strains on their resources. A few years ago, I was fortunate to work on our CityNext program—a program designed to help cities better manage their infrastructure. Through CityNext, our company has helped local communities cut costs and reduce their environmental impact by optimizing their city operations and transforming their management of key resources.

In Washington state, for example, Microsoft worked with Accenture and the City of Seattle to equip buildings with smart systems that helped improve energy conservation. Through the use of sensors and cloud technology, public buildings send energy consumption data to cloud-based reporting portals, allowing building managers to more easily monitor energy use, identify potential waste and make educated adjustments to improve energy efficiency. It’s a broader application of the same technology solution Microsoft developed to manage its own energy use at our 88-acre campus in Redmond, Washington.

In Finland, Microsoft worked with the City of Helsinki bus team and our tech partner CGI to develop a smarter transit system. We utilized the city’s existing warehouse systems to create a cloud-based solution for the collection and analysis of travel data. The city was then able to leverage this data to reduce its fuel costs and consumption, increase travel safety, and improve driver performance. These efforts also helped the city’s bus system compete for riders in a market already crowded with private vendors because of its enhanced efficiency.

In addition, in China Microsoft Research Lab Asia created a mapping tool called Urban Air that allows users to see, and even predict, air quality levels across 72 cities in China. The tool leverages big data and machine learning to provide real-time, detailed air quality information, to help inform local decision-making by both residents and governments. Citizens can easily check outdoor conditions via a mobile app that is used about three million times per day. And governments can use the data to figure out where traffic or factory production is causing the most pollution, and then take steps to help mitigate it.

Our work with cities and local communities continues to evolve as new opportunities arise. As we wrap up Earth Week here on Microsoft Green, we want to highlight a few recent examples of how our company and its employees are supporting local sustainability efforts in cities such as Chicago, Boston and San Francisco.

Chicago

In Chicago, Microsoft is helping the city design new ways to gather data and properly utilize predictive analytics in order to better address water, infrastructure, energy, and transportation challenges. Last fall, City Digital kicked off a pilot program to create an underground infrastructure mapping (UIM) platform that generates, organizes, visualizes, and stores 3D underground infrastructure data to help inform city planning.

Boston

In Boston, Microsoft is working to help spread information about the variety of urban farming programs in Boston, and the potential of AI and other technology to increase their impact. Microsoft’s Aimee Sprung is a member the Board of Overseers at Boston’s Museum of Science and recently spoke on a panel about “The Future of Your Food.”

San Francisco

In the Bay Area, Microsoft is working closely with our partner Athena Intelligence to use their data processing and visualization platform to gather valuable data about land, food, water and energy in order to improve local decision-making.

 

MJHS celebrates nearly 110 years of care and innovation with modern Office 365 workplace

By Stuart Geller as written on blogs.office.com

Since “The Four Brooklyn Ladies” founded the MJHS Health System (MJHS) in 1907, we have grown into one of the largest not-for-profit health systems in greater New York. One of my challenges is to ensure that the values of a nearly 110-year-old healthcare provider are reflected in the 21st-century technology we use. With Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based business tools, our employees work productively in today’s digital world, while preserving the innovative, culturally sensitive healthcare services that are part of our history.

Before we settled on Exchange in the cloud, we used another product as our on-premises messaging and collaboration platform. This system had significant email reliability issues and storage limitations. We needed cloud-based business productivity tools that aligned themselves with the highly-regulated healthcare industry, where we are required to meet HIPAA standards. We evaluated G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Work) but chose Office 365. First, Microsoft signed a Business Associate Agreement, something that Google was unwilling to do at the time. And we were more than satisfied that Office 365 met our strict standards around security and compliance, in everything from email retention to archiving and eDiscovery. We also use Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection that bolsters our defense against malware and phishing emails. It’s great to see Microsoft offerings evolve to keep pace with swift changes in the threat landscape.

At the enterprise level, it’s important to use technology that works in the language of the industry. Our employees are familiar with Microsoft offerings, and the ease of transition to the new business tools was a great incentive for us. Not only does Office 365 ensure that we will always be on the latest version, but the interoperability of the different components of the suite is efficient and effortless, improving productivity.

We pride ourselves on delivering innovative, sensitive patient care in the home. Our mobile health workers carry Windows-based devices and now they can use Office 365 to access the information they need to do their work, without returning to the office. With Office 365, mobile access to all our technology resources is easier than ever, which means more time interacting face-to-face with our clients.

We are seeing increased interest in video conferencing across MJHS with Skype for Business Online, especially for board meetings and presentations. We are piloting the PSTN conferencing capabilities, and we are excited to make the most of the newest functionality, particularly Dynamic Conference Codes, which eliminates overlapping conference calls and protects the privacy of each meeting. By eliminating existing superfluous conferencing solutions, we expect to reduce our costs in this area by 80 percent.

And by consolidating other third-party providers, for mobile device connectivity, archiving and eDiscovery capabilities, we have further simplified our administration and significantly reduced our overall costs. With Office 365, these types of services come standard, and once again allow us to acquire great functionality with a reduction in costs.

The Four Brooklyn Ladies could never have imagined how much healthcare would change in the past century. However, it’s great to know that with IT tools like Office 365 we can ensure that their core values of cultural sensitivity, service and compassion are still at the forefront of our service to the community.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][vc_single_image image="9783" img_size="full" alignment="center"][vc_column_text]

Habitat For Humanity: Smart tech allows flexibility and growth

As written on microsoft.com

Habitat for Humanity of Omaha builds about 45 homes a year for families living in substandard housing, and it’s growing steadily in donations, volunteers, output and programming. Yet its old patchwork of overstuffed shared directories, reliance on spendy outside vendors and trouble managing three locations limited growth and monopolized the budget.

Something had to change—and quickly—to keep up with the organization’s expansion. Through the cloud-based application suite, the community-building nonprofit can now

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

More homes for families thanks to in-house technology

Taking control for less money

Office 365 grants Lynn easy control over administrator features, such as creating and deleting mailboxes and delineating access to certain files and programs—steps that used to require going through a vendor, paying to put in tickets and waiting hours for a call back.
These changes make work easier for employees, but more importantly, they create a wider ripple effect, he says. “Habitat for Humanity of Omaha is making a huge difference in our community, and one or two additional families are able to purchase interest-free new homes each year because of the partnership with Microsoft.”

Organizing effortlessly in the cloud

Before they started using Office 365 Nonprofit, employees accessed a shared directory on a server. “It was chaos,” Lynn says: Only one staffer could open a file at a time, annotating changes took special steps and documents would disappear—requiring employees to manually poke around for MIA folders.
Today, the team collaborates with SharePoint and OneDrive, which make it simple for multiple users to edit at once. And those phantom documents? They’re a thing of the past. “I have much better control now,” he says.

Staying productive out of the office

Habitat for Humanity of Omaha is just one of more than 1,400 affiliates nationwide, so employees often travel to conferences. But setbacks from business trips are especially problematic when they delay settling a family in a new home. With mobile applications and cloud storage, though, Habitat for Humanity travelers can work just as efficiently as if they were at their desks.
“When I work remotely, I’m on the same files and programs as if I were here in the office,” Lynn says. “It beats coming back to hundreds of unread emails!”

Saving time with smart spreadsheets

The nonprofit has always been Excel-driven, with employees using spreadsheets to track their daily work, monitor budgets and add links or shortcuts to speed up entering data. The problem? Files were moved or altered, links were broken and multiple versions of the same document made work confusing.
“With OneDrive and SharePoint, we’re able to avoid duplicate copies, and I can lock down who can see them in view-only and who has total rights,” Lynn says. “The efficiencies gained from better collaboration and process improvement saves us thousands.”

Onboarding new employees—fast

Entering data in the cloud also made it easier to bring new employees up to speed, says Oscar Duran, Habitat for Humanity of Omaha’s program director. Before, new staff accessed spreadsheets on personal desktops or in emails, and they didn’t have a uniform system for coding projects. Discrepancies added extra work for Duran because he had to sift through mountains of data to find what he needed.
Now, the team uses SharePoint’s Lists feature to enter and codify information. “It works as a centralized database,” he says. “It also gave us the opportunity to institutionalize the terminology we use, so that as new staff comes in and out, they’re accessing databases and changing statuses in the same way.”

Accessing files in a flash

OneNote’s powerful search function has solved an age-old problem for the nonprofit: “People say, ‘I remember working on that but I can’t remember which spreadsheet it was,’” Lynn says.
No longer. He puts every document he touches, including PDFs, into OneNote and relies on it every day (“It is my brain!” he jokes), knowing he can quickly find and access whatever he needs. Lynn says he’s watched his own productivity skyrocket, now that he doesn’t have to sink hours into painstakingly searching through servers.

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Running better meetings

OneNote has revolutionized meeting notes, Lynn says. A designated note-taker types minutes in a shared document so everyone can add their own thoughts later, freeing up everyone else to focus on contributing to the meeting.
Staff also use Lync’s desktop-sharing ability to stay connected without leaving the office. Employees can see a colleague’s computer screen during a virtual meeting, and the feature helps IT staff troubleshoot a glitchy program remotely. “It’s given me remote access, which is much more efficient,” Lynn says.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

CDI: Training the next generation of tech-savvy leaders

As written on microsoft.com

CDI (Center for Digital Inclusion), an international technology literacy organization headquartered in Brazil, doesn’t merely train youth to search the internet, say, or create a Word document; it also teaches problem-solving skills and social tools that empower its young participants to thrive in our hyper-connected world.

Yet a disjointed IT system hindered communication, slowed down operations and ultimately held back the Rio de Jainero-based nonprofit. To upgrade, CDI applied for and received Office 365 Nonprofit, the full-spectrum tech solution provided for free or at a drastic discount to qualifying nonprofits, as well as help implementing it. In just a handful of months, Office 365 has supercharged the nonprofit, helping CDI to

• get more done—in less time and for less money,

• deepen its training and education,

• strengthen an ever-expanding network of local partners,

• create consistency across a global brand, and

• build relationships through tech-powered communities.

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

“Imagine a world in which individuals use technology to build a more free and just society. CDI is extremely grateful to Microsoft for working with us to build a big utopia, which we see as an e-topia.” - Marcel Fukayama, CEO of CDI Global and leader within Brazil’s B corporation

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Technology builds a “more free and just society”

Channeling stronger relationships

“The adoption of Yammer has was an extremely inspiring process for us, of connection and engagement with our community of educators,” says the CEO, who has also written two books about using business for good.

Librarians in 46 cities across Brazil have turned the internal social media hub Yammer into a thriving network. Users post news, take polls, publicize events and share best practices—all activities that create a supportive and informative online community. The result: more engaging programming for the youth CDI serves. What’s more, Yammer provides a central location for CDI employees to communicate with program participants and even applaud the most active users in the group, encouraging others to dive deeper into the organization’s offerings, too.

Just as the nonprofit teaches educators and young people to use tech to achieve their goals, the updated IT solution of Office 365 powers CDI’s mission. “Imagine a world in which individuals use technology to build a more free and just society,” Fukayama says. “CDI is extremely grateful to Microsoft for working with us to build a big utopia, which we see as an e-topia.”

Plugging in to efficiency

CDI employees know a thing or two about efficiency: In just two decades, the organization has reached more than 1.6 million young people. But its leadership knew they could make an even bigger impact with a streamlined, cloud-based IT system.

Now they can. Office 365’s storage has given the nonprofit control of its data—and its budget. “The implementation of this technology has helped us to maximize time and resources,” explains Marcel Fukayama, CEO of CDI Global and leader within Brazil’s B corporation community. In fact, the cloud storage alone (to the tune of 1 terabyte per user) saves the IT department $15,000 a year—funds better spent on lifting up teens through tech.

Plus, they trust Office 365’s financially backed, guaranteed uptime to always have access to its lesson plans, training modules, fundraising spreadsheets and just about everything else that makes the organization run.

Offering long-term support

“Skype is used broadly across our programs, overcoming limitations of distance and time”— boosting the amount of ongoing support CDI can offer to employees and partners throughout Latin America and Portugal, says Fukayama. For example, CDI will use video conferencing for one-on-one mentorship in its new program that trains public school teachers, which will help the nonprofit serve an additional 15,000 students in technology-poor schools.

The face-to-face contact via webinars and online meetings also strengthens relationships among employees spread out over thousands of miles, who don’t often have the opportunity to meet in person.

Forging a stronger network

Fukayama calls OneDrive—the cloud-based storage and collaboration tool—a “catalyzer of co-creation.” Sharing documents through the platform encourages employees to work together on automatically synched files, integrating more people’s insights and leading to a more cohesive team.

What’s more, “Local facilitators and NGOs now have free access to learning content and methods from an international network, which would normally require huge investments in infrastructure.” That way, satellite offices and partner organizations use CDI’s tried and tested methodology so anyone working remotely doesn’t have to invent their own approach.

Establishing consistency

With more than 800 offices across 15 countries, maintaining consistency in methods, message and operations is vital. Office 365 helped CDI rise to the challenge. All employees access the same files and training curriculum in OneDrive no matter where they work, and facilitators easily tap into the materials they need from the community centers and schools where they teach. That way, leadership in each country’s home office knows the instruction meets the same high standards, Fukayama says.

Another benefit: The centralized database ensures permanent access to important files that may otherwise be lost when employees move on.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]