From Tony Godwin:

Pay especial attention to Tony's notes at the end of page 2.

Free ACS OnDemand Webinar

Liz Young

On behalf of Wally Sale, I would like to invite you to join us for a free ACS Webinar Thursday, Nov 19th or Tuesday, Nov 24th to learn more about ACS OnDemand.

We will outline the benefits of using the hosted OnDemand solution and answer any questions you may have.


Join us for either or both events:


Thursday Nov 19th OnDemand Webinar
10:00 AM Eastern https://admin.na5.acrobat.com/_a774667115/e78495598/event/registration.html

Tuesday Nov 24th OnDemand Webinar
2:00 PM Eastern https://admin.na5.acrobat.com/_a774667115/e87351285/event/registration.html

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Liz Young
Sales Support Specialist

ACS Technologies
180 N. Dunbarton Drive
Florence, SC 29501
p / 800.736.7425 ext. 8097
f / 888.849.0451
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w/ www.acstechnologies.com

See attached PDF

The attached PDF file represents the IT -Task Force recommendation to the Communications Team at the January, 2010, meeting on January 25, 2010.

It is expected that Communications Chair, Brent Anderson, will make the presentation to the Administrative Servant Leaders.

Attending the meeting that decision was made:

Gene Prescott
Kathryn Tesh
Steve Ayers

Absent:

Brent Anderson
Tony Cooke
Joey Jeansonne

It is expected that 100% of Task Force Members will be familiar with this data before the Administrative Servant Leaders meeting.

It was also decided at the meeting that Steve Ayers, representing the TMBC staff, would communicate any desktop problems that arise in the immediate future to both Gene Prescott and Kathryn Tesh, who will then decide what action to take.

Due to the absence of Communications Chair, Brent Anderson, who had recently arrived back in Greenville after unscheduled visit to California due to death of a grand parent) Gene Prescott, Chair of the IT Task Force made the report. Since financial provisions were already included in the adopted 2010 budget, no vote was required. A report summary:

TMBC will move most of its technology activity to a hosting option provided by Automated Church Systems (ACS). Maturity of remote access software will allow staff, and potentially selective volunteers, to access needed parts of TMBC data, from any location they have a suitable Internet connection. Offsite backup at multiple locations is a byproduct benefit of the technique. Significantly less software will have to be maintained on desktops (and purchased). More consistent source of staff support for technology issues will be realized.

Following is a link to the costs involved:
http://www.tmbc.org//images/fbfiles/files/CostSummary_Hosting.pdf

In addition to the above costs, when desktops have issues not solvable by volunteers, local outsourcing assistance may be required.

The attached PDF has 'revised' ACS hosting costs. Previously, when communicating the $500 existing customer discount, it appeared the discount was to be applied $1,842 they quoted. In fact, ACS had already applied the $500 discount to a cost of $2,342 in arriving at the $1,842 quote.

In addition, effective January 1, 2010, ACS has suspended hosting Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point. During 2009 we were offered this capability with no increase in out cost. There is limited hosted access to Microsoft Word And Excel within ACS Access, but not full access as we were considering.

So either MS Office Suite will need to continue to be purchased and installed on desktops as we are currently doing, or we will have to migrate to a free, open, product suite such as OpenOffice (which I use personally). OpenOffice, developed by Sun, presumably now belongs to Oracle who recently acquired Sun. There are 'plans' to release updates to OpenOffice, but whether Oracle will provide future resources at the level of Sun is not clear.

We need to consider the revised, comprehensive, cost level. Also, while the revised amounts are still within budget, we neeed to decide how to proceed.