I have previously written that I think outsourcing is a viable option of IT in YWAM. Since I have been away from our base, Josiah has been doing a tremendous job at keeping things running, but there have been problems come up that have been outside of his knowledge, and in reality they would have been outside of mine as well. Had our e-mail system been outsourced these problems would probably not have happened in the first place, or they would have been diagnosed and fixed very quickly.
It seems that YWAM and other non-profits are not alone in problems like this. According to an article on ZDNet Australia, Western Australia's Department of Planning and Infrastructure (a government organization) recently had a lot of problems with their Microsoft Exchange-based e-mail systems. The author of the ZDNet article came to the conclusion that their best solution would be outsourcing their e-mail.
You can read the entire article at ZDNet - Please outsource your e-mail. It is well worth reading.
As we discussed a bit in the part article about outsourcing IT in YWAM this can included hosted solutions, such as Gmail or Google Apps for your base. Doing stuff like this, although costing money, would free up our people more to get on with Youth With A Missions mandate "To Know God and to Make Him Known".
I also want to say a public thank you to Colin Forbes for his help in diagnosing some of our e-mail problems.
Comments
Great post
Couldn't agree more. Great to hear from you again Bill.
Google Apps
Last week I set my self up with Google Apps. Not cause I have any great need to use it, but more so to try it out, see how they have it working and if it's worth it.
Some things I have learnt so far.
1. It's a real breeze to change over. They have detailed instructions on how to change you MX records for most of the major web hosting companies. It takes no time to do, and you shouldnt loose any emails in the change over.
2. Adding new users is painless. You can do it one at a time or by uploading a CSV file for bulk.
3. If you just want it for the email - signing is is'nt as easy as I was expecting.
I cant sign in to Gmail at www.gmail.com - you either have to go to www.google.com/a or if you set it up you can go to your domain startpage. This is just a personalized homepage for you domain.
I would like the ability to just sign in from gmail.com.
Thats all for now, let me know if you have any questions about Google Apps, I'll try and answer.
Steve
Outsourcing - worldview...?
Hi Bill,
Very good article - thanks. Part of the dynamic struggle we often have is how much we do 'in house' and how much we contract out.
On one extreme we can unintentionally make a distinction between 'sacred' and 'secular' - implying that one role or job is more 'holy' or more 'missions' than another.
On the other extreme we can try to do absolutely everything and end up doing most things poorly.
We are challenged to do whatever we do well and so we should. We also need to 'count the cost' before commencing projects. Many times some of our IT decisions are based on the desires and giftings of one person who is on the scene - but when he/she leaves it creates a crisis. I have seen this with network choices / server software solutions and wonder if the K.I.S.S. method (Keep it simple, stupid) had long term wisdom. Some bases have resorted to paying salaries to Accountants / Catering Managers / Network consultants... Is this the best way for us as an organisation that is committed to the concept of volunteerism (relational based support). Or have we admitted defeat and say that God cannot provide our kind of missionaries to all the tasks we are called to?
One thing we can perhaps do, and this is (as I understand) part of the YWAM CRIT vision, is to serve one another and thereby bring synergy by working together. So many times we 're-invent the wheel' rather than cooperate and share resources. Part of this synergy was displayed in having Colin help your guys from the other side of the world. Just last week a friend in Sweden was trying to help diagnose an Ubuntu Server crash in New Zealand.
Perhaps we could add a 'resource base' to a 'knowledge base' in YWAMIT?
Blessings to all!
Mike
Sweden
hitch
one thing i've encountered is that just because you're in ywam doesn't automatically mean that people will trust you if you offer help or even consider what you're offering as a viable option to them. you still have to have a relationship with someone, in order for them to even talk to you. so i couldn't go to, say, some base in argentina (just a country i picked out of thin air) & say to them, "hey, i have a great website solution for you. let me help you get you up on it or upgrade your existing site." they wouldn't give me 2 minutes to consider it because they don't know who i am, even though i might be well-documented as a ywam'er. another side to this is the people who are offering solutions vary, as do the solutions themselves. so what cooperation is there (or can be) between those people? just a little thought i had. thanks.
Chris Bischoff
YWAM Latvia, Communications
www.ywamlatvia.com
offering vs. looking for help
Hi,
it's right, if I offer someone help most likely people don't just run into my arms if they don't know me.
But what about the other way around?
What would you say if someone comes and is asking for help? Say, a Base want to outsource their email is asking your Base for help? Could a Base with a stronger IT department help out others? Would they do it? Would you do it??
How about a few Bases get together and buy a server, dedicated to email, which might be even cheaper for each individual Base then to get a server for themselves. Then the one Base of course must have a IT guy who is 100% dedicated to the email server in case of trouble. However, other IT guys from the other Bases can have remote access. No single person is always available (outreach, holiday, etc.).
The advantage is, my outsourced emails remain in a trusted (YWAM) environment.
The problem still is if, say my internet is down and I don't have the email in-house, I'm unable to deal with email until my internet is up again. If I have them in-house I still can write a reply and simply send them off when internet is up.
Just a few thoughts. Maybe not the perfect solution but I believe worth thinking about any possibilities along that line.
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
knowledge base vs. wiki
Hi!
What about a wiki? Wouldn't that be better?
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
outsourcing
Hi @ all!
Well, like with everything, some people have good experience and no trouble at all, while others have nothing but trouble. There are many companies out there who are working with MS Exchange server just fine. On top of all things that potentially could go wrong, we are a christian missions organization. What it has to do with that topic? Well, Steven once said that he believes if we were not a christian missions organization we would not have all the problems we have, and I fully agree with that. We need to face the fact that we are attacked by spiritual forces in every area, also our IT.
Guess what outsourcing will change to these kind of attacks. Nothing, simply nothing.
However, I understand that when we don't maintain the (parts) of IT on our Base then we don't need to deal with the problems since we, most likely, don't have access to the hardware, anyways. At least not physical access.
I've been reading through the 2 relevant articles on ZDNet and some thoughts came to my mind.
Unlike with their Laptops I never heard anything bad about Dell server. I, however, keep asking myself if having 4 Dell server at 4 different locations is the right setup. Also, it's nowhere mentioned how old the hardware is. Next question came to mind was, was it a good decision to use MS software for a department with 1700 employees? Knowing that even MS themselves are using a few Unix servers I need to ask the question if this setup was even capable to cope with the work load at all. In the ZDNet article it's mentioned that this department was afraid to lose data since they don't have a strategy for emergency recovery. Well, that has nothing to do MS, Unix, outsourcing, etc. I know that I don't have a backup for my emails, so if I have a hardware failure it's my own fault.
Well, if I'm "outsourcing" my emails I can expect the the company that hosts my emails is having a backup and a emergency recovery plan. The question is, what do I want to pay for that service and what kind of service do I actually expect? If I have my website hosted at a provider I can also use the email service they provide for me. Most likely POP3 but I can set my email client to not delete the messages, so I have a copy at the provider. If I want more than that I probably need to pay for more service. If I have my website hosted on Base it's probably a lot more expensive to outsource my email.
However, with outsourcing comes also the question about security. Since it's not a secret that Google is scanning through everything that is going through their service I really need to question if that would be the right way to go. There are, of course, potential security risks with having everything in-house. But in worst case I can pull the plug from the modem and then nothing more gets in or out of my network. There is no way for me to stop Google or any other company to give away details about my communication, for example, with a Base, project partner, Missionary in a "Missionary unfriendly" country, etc.
I believe that YWAM's "To know God and make Him know" also means that we, as IT guys, have to do everything to protect those who are using computers but are not geeks and are not security conscious. Due to the fact that most people are users, and many times have no understanding of how all that stuff works on a technical level, we are the ones of have to make sure that the non-techies are save in their work. It's not a shame to not be a techy, to not know everything about how a computer works, to know the potential security risks, simply not everyone can. Just like not everyone can be an accountant or what ever else. But those who know more about it need to invest their time, knowledge and skills.
If outsourcing is the best for a situation, so be it. But I'm a bit afraid that outsourcing seems to be the easy going way but at the end it might not be it in every situation. Security is not the only issue to think about. What if the internet is down for a day? If you don't have your email in-house you can not access them and no one can deal with what came in over night. If you have it in-house you can write a answer and send everything off when your internet is working again.
Something else what also might be possible but probably almost no one thought about is, how can we as YWAM Bases work together? Are there bases who have a strong enough IT department so that bases who want to outsource their email can do that with the help of another base?
I don't think that there is a more or less "holy" work. The question is, what is your calling?
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo
Interaction & Training vs Outsourcing
I'm not against outsourcing, but I have concerns about it. Small and medium size companies are likely to at some stage being bought by bigger companies which affects services and support, most of the time to worse. An example is our ISP (it's not an outsourcing situation but paints the picture well). Our ISP was a mid-sized company in the UK and had one of the best services and support when we signed up with them many years ago, a few years ago they were bought by a broadband giant and service has become really bad. To top that up they've messed up so badly that they sold the IP address of some of our servers (with RDNS registered in their systems) and network to different costumers and it took a week of constant talks with their support for them to look into it and after that it took another week fot them to start working on it. So outsourcing could go through the same problems.
One thought to throw into this conversation about outsourcing would be "Interaction & Training". We in IT within YWAM have started to interact and it's good and we need to intesify this interaction, any ideas welcomed. Also we need to think about training. Reproducing (clonig could be an option) some of the guys we have in IT within YWAM would be a great answer to our IT staff needs. A combination of Interaction & Training could be the answer for a lot of our IT infrastructure deficits.
IT training
Hi @ all.
As I said before if outsourcing is the way to go in a situation then so be it. However, it can not be the only solution to IT related problems we have in YWAM. But we're all, more or less, depending on IT on our Bases. Well, I guess what most Bases (not necessarily every Base) have and struggle with is a website, email and local network to share files/information. If a Base doesn't have that they most likely don't have problems with IT since server, server applications, databases, etc. require a network. But that's not what you start with, anyways.
Before you have that need of a big database you have the need of a email, I believe.
IT, however, is a lot more than websites and email. I guess we all know that. It's a huge area and imho not only in YWAM but in most churches underdeveloped. Since a fairly long time I have a training course on my heart that addresses exactly this issue. I haven't written down anything too specific so far but I should be able to write down a brief summary of my vision/thoughts pretty quickly.
If you are serious with a training course in IT then please contact me. I know that what I have in mind is not possible for me alone. I don't have the answer to all questions, I'm not the big IT or web guru. But I do believe that God gave me a vision about a training course in this area.
So, if you are serious about it please contact me at: [steve "at" wieditz "dot" com] and tell me what you think, what your vision is, etc. We even can make a new blog entry for that, if necessary. I would like to hear from others what you are thinking about that.
Greetings from the MatriX,
neo