Kim Fellman:Hello everyone and welcome to today's webinar optimize your tech investment with safe and reliable cloud hosting

For your MIT system. My name is Kim Fellman I'm a marketing coordinator at JMT consulting, I'll be your moderator today and I'm excited to be hosting this session.

This webinar is brought to you by GMT consulting, we are financial management solution specialist for nonprofits and we have nearly 30 years of experience, helping nonprofits with technology and business processes for the back office.

Dan Wharton: Which is why we are covering this topic today.

Kim Fellman: JMT understands that it can be daunting to make changes to your software and we are excited to show you the options.

JMT has for migrating to the cloud safely affordably. And with as little discomfort as possible before we kick things off. Today I wanted to cover a few housekeeping items. First, today's webinar will be recorded and will be emailed to you for on-demand access, along with the slides.

Next we'd love to hear from you. During today's presentation. So if you have a question, please feel free to send it to the Q AMP. A tab at the bottom of your control panel, we will have a dedicated Q AMP. A session at the end of the presentation where we will answer all of your questions.

That you can submit them at any time.

I'd like to get us started by welcoming our speakers. Joining us is Tom Ford's Chief Operating Officer at JM t and Dan Gordon, our MIT client account manager and I will go ahead and pass the mic over to them to introduce themselves and get started.

Dan Wharton: Over to you guys. Thank you Kim. Thanks.

Across the globe, COVID 19 has forced a lot of nonprofits to rethink how their finance teams operate.

Those nonprofits with updated technology and Cloud Access and fewer disruptions on forced to work, we

Can see understand that it can be daunting to make significant changes to your software, whether it's out of fear of taking resources out of the mission or knowing about better options but not being able to make it happen.

Dan Wharton: Your fears and concerns are heard and JP has worked hard to bring you options that can reduce risk will reduce risks and offer flexible pricing.

Today, you're going to learn how to maximize those investments, you've made in your technology by migrating to the cloud, using jam sees cloud hosting partner as cloud hosting

Will show you how cloud migration options and how to lay out the least disruptive plan for migrating your MVP software into the cloud.

Quick recap. Before we get started, I do want to remind you that will be recording the session will selling you know give us about 24 hours to go ahead and get that recording out to you.

As Kim mentioned, we would love to hear from you. During today's presentation, ask questions, feel free to post those during the presentation or hold them off until the end, we have a QA session. It'll be round table for everyone.

Will be addressing everything, then I think today's presentation should take about 35 to 40 minutes

To deliver and then have you know 10 to 15 minutes to wrap up.

Alright, let's jump in. We're going to start off with a few introductions. You'll meet today's presenters and we'll look at how JM T has grown over the years.

Then we'll deep dive into cloud hosting one is a good time to migrate. Why should you migrate and how to choose the proper service provider. One of the call again with Q AMP. A from audience.

My name is Dan Wharton, and I manage roughly 350 active client accounts in the US as well as overseas. I started my nonprofit career with a below.

The distinguished gentleman to my right, Tom Thornton. He is jam tease chief operating officer.

Also best tennis player. I know he's been working with MVP for over 20 years having served middle of management roles service sales product management really everything in between.

Just to be fair to use the only tennis player. And so I don't know if that helps or hurts them regardless. I'm too scared to play ping pong with them anyway. The two of us have a combined 30 years experience with MIT and we're happy to share experiences with you today.

Well, we want to tell a story and to tell a good story. We should have perspective GMT does have over 20 years of experience in the industry or in nonprofit sector human

As shanty has grown over the years. So has our ability to support each client promptly and with personal care. We have the trust of thousands nonprofits to strive strive to offer to care expertise and innovation that attract customers for life.

JMT consulting is MIP's largest partner, just in volume but also in size.

Today's presentation focuses on MIT fun accounting. We want you to know that there are plenty of great solutions out there, James. He has gone through the vetting process gone through and met with hundreds of vendors to bring you the best in class solutions that focus exclusively on fun accounting

Accounting payroll budgeting and forecasting cemetery management AP automation document management and a whole lot more.

At JMT mission is our business.

The rest assured, everything that we do is going to lead to better processes and greater efficiency.

How did we get our start well JM T was founded back in 1991 by a nonprofit finance professional self Jacqueline empty. So that's the name

Jackie was, I think it was three or four full as a nonprofit finance person she left and started the consultancy she'd been a customer for several years. She even implemented a few software.

Programs and technology implementations. But at the time, she just wasn't thrilled with the overall customer experience. So with that in mind.

She took her lifelong

Passion for nonprofits.

And decided to found the consultancy and again that happened almost 30 years ago now, we have regional offices in Austin, Texas or commentary Nashville, Tennessee, Jackie and much of the support

Staff is and parish in New York, where a lot of this. A lot of our customers knowledge from

no coincidence that MIP is headquartered right down the road here in Austin. And yes, the barbecue is better.

Come on.

Here is a small sample of our clientele.

Take a look at some of the names that you see here. And you should notice a theme. They're all nonprofits and they're all over the map. When it comes to mission driven activities and of the 2000 organizations that we've served over the years.

Nearly 800 of them are still active. So great retention approximately 250 of those are hosted in the cloud.

Does this mean that the remaining 550 so organizations are housing their own accounting software internally on the server. Not necessarily.

Many of them are using things like remote desktop or virtual private networks to make a remote connection to the to the organization software.

So hosting is not for everyone, no GMT can absolutely will absolutely provide you with an understanding of what is required.

What options do you need away when you need to factor and help you determine a path to move forward. Remember here at JM t we put your needs. First, let me help you find the best solution available.

It resources can can be broken down into a couple of categories personnel and infrastructure landline personnel is all about keeping the lights on.

Many nonprofits under certain size. Let's say maybe 5 million annual operating budget. I have already

Many of those already elected outsource it to a third party pretty common. It's makes a lot of sense. A lot of the business to focus more on delivering mission.

Infrastructure is more about hardware and software servers and Microsoft licensing networking applications data storage support contracts.

Now if you lack any of these lack in any of these areas, your ability to work efficiently is going to be greatly diminished by

The inadequate tools that you are using some organizations use software like remote desktop and VPN like we mentioned to connect

This would allow you to work from home, but there are drawbacks. You often hear about slowness or lags when using remote desktop or virtual private network.

So that goes back to the type of hardware that you're running internally can also go back to some of the software. They're using

There's also a ton of maintenance involved with the solutions. Now you're paying extra and it overhead most or all of these can be offset by migrating to the cloud.

Excuse me.

The last and probably most compelling reason to migrate is the paradigm shift your board has decided to outsource it it's happening along and if it happens to you, you have the option to invest in your own IP resources or you can contract service providers, which is better for you.

Keep one thing in mind. You don't want to select an IT consultant who doesn't have any experience with MIT never heard of the program find someone who does

Or the other applications that are using this is something that absolutely can, and probably will lead to trouble.

Anyway, but to take break here and he had the presentation over to Tom

Tom Thornton: Thanks, Dan. Size of the pause there. Well, I figured out how to unmute my microphone.

And setting the stage, Dan. I'm going to take you through a little bit of a some of the criteria that we used at JMT We were in a situation this year where we needed to evaluate and select a new partner for hosting our MIP clients. So, you know, we have our previous partner had some challenges via ransomware and the and the fallout from that and we were under a bind where we really needed to provide

Not just a capable, but also reliable secure solution for our clients who wanted to host their MIT fun accounting

And so we did a lot of research and looked at a lot of different options out there and we we felt like it was really important to be

Thorough and methodical about and make sure we really understood what was the right criteria for selecting a hosting partner. So Dan, if you'll advance to the next slide.

You know, I'm going to take you through five different things that you really ought to be evaluating as you're considering a hosting provider and these are the ones that we used. First of all, for the experience and reliability of that partners really important

You know, how long have they been providing this type of it outsourced it service where they can host your application and provide that remote access for you. So, as if it were running on your own network.

Not only that, but not just hosting applications, generally speaking, but similar applications Windows client server applications like it might be that run on sequel server that requires similar infrastructure and maintenance.

That reliability piece comes in the form of this needs to be at least as reliable, if not more reliable than it would be if you're running it on your own network. And so, you know, access to statistics that are

Reliable making sure that they've got contractual uptime grip guarantees to make sure that there's a

Service credits in the event that they fail to meet those guarantees.

And most importantly, not just you know what the vendor tells you, but do they have actual customers that are referenced double. Do they have testimonials. Do they have people out in the marketplace.

Saying that they actually put their money where their mouth is. So these are experiencing reliability is number one, you can go the next slide and

Number two is that they have to have that that scale and capacity to be able to handle a lot of clients Dan was mentioning that the number of

MIP clients the JMT supports is a lot, you know, the hundreds that are currently running on prem, but we have, you know, we have about 100 that we are supporting right now that are hosting

In one form or another. And so to be able to take on a lot of clients quickly without any of those clients.

Feeling like they're overwhelming the hosting providers capacity. So it was important for us to find a partner that had the scale and redundancy, to be able to provide not just

Capacity, but also the infrastructure and

And fail over capability so that it would

Be resilient. And so, you know, things that we looked at unnecessary. You know how many customers. Do they have and are they in this industry.

You know, are they operating out of a single data center.

In your hometown, are they operating out of multiple data centers and multiple geographies.

And that data center infrastructure is really important. You've, you've heard about certain certifications that data centers must that they frequently talked about their

SSA 1617

audits and certifications. These things are all about. Do they have the physical environment, security, environmental controls and other measures in place to provide a highly resilient hardened infrastructure for their customers that they're hosting

Is also really important. We stood up over 20 clients on this new platform in the space of a couple of weeks. And so being able to handle

onboarding lots of organizations simultaneously without a service level drop is a big, important thing

responsiveness and the form of support and making sure that we can not only

troubleshoot problems in a timely way but also just

For a client who has a sense of urgency to get up and going, they can stand up a server for a client in about four hours from the time that that request goes through. They're very, they have to be very quick.

And then finally, some of our clients are running really big, complex configurations, not just MIT but and I p plus three or four other applications with integrations with custom reports with other

Customization so that environment. And so it can't just be a cookie cutter configuration that has to be able to deal with clients who have very, very nuanced needs in terms of their hosting requirements.

You can go to the next slide in.

Having gone through the the

Very, very difficult ransomware scenario with many of our clients. Earlier this year, security and threat mitigation was extremely important understanding their security model, making sure that there was no

You know, getting hacked was a very, very low probability through things like multi factor authentication.

Making sure that have both hardware and software firewall technology in place to to keep nefarious actors out of their network data encryption, making sure that outside of this that nothing is getting intercepted

Do they have tools and policies and procedures in place to prevent attacks, whether they're brute force or some of the other style.

Attacks like distributed denial of service attacks and things like that.

They take it even further. Do you have the ability to restrict who can even access based on their physical location through the IP IP address restrictions.

And then finally, anybody who's used a windows based computers for any length of time knows that.

Are your security policy has to be staying current and making sure that you're on the latest version that you're applying all the security updates.

on a timely basis to make sure that any exploits that have been discovered are addressed. And so once again our hosting provider has to be on top of that and addressing these things proactively, not just at our request.

Then you want to go to the next slide.

And the worst case scenario, something bad happens, you know how quickly can we get back to work. This is another thing that impacted us in our

In our troubles earlier this year with our previous partner, is that how quickly can I get back to work with clients. Unfortunately, he went weeks.

Without access to their MIT weather data. And so making sure that there's a process procedures protocols in place to make sure that not only is data being backed up but that's

Because the customer actually have access to their data. Can they can, they have a copy of it for safekeeping on a periodic basis.

Is that data being backed up off-site, you know, the metaphor, we're lucky, is what if the data center got hit my immediate or what would what that

As far as ransomware and malware obviously making sure it's not just

Being able to recover if you get hit from it. But what are we doing to prevent it on the front end.

Another term that was really important is the restore point objective, the restore point objective is if there's a catastrophic failure.

Of the server or servers. That's hosting your data. How quickly can they have you back.

Working again. And so just about every hosting provider you'll talk to you will be able to answer this question, but you want to ask, you know, what is the restore point objective for the service that I'm signing up for and so

And this is really once again in the event of a catastrophic failure, where the server that was running your software is not going to turn it back on.

How quickly can I get working again and for the partner we selected that was about 10 hours, which is actually pretty fast. If you think about it, if the, if there was no hope of recovery. That's it. That's like a worst case scenario situation.

We talked about geographic redundancy either get data center in Chicago, have a data center in Northern California have a data center and Texas. And do I have the ability to

Have all over support to one of those other data centers, if one of those data centers were for whatever reason to not give a little

Redundant equipment is important to this is not just a storage, it's processing, it's

All of the environmental equipment, whether that's power supply, whether that schooling, all of that equipment needs to be redundant because you don't want a single point of failure anywhere in the environment that you're working in

And then

You know, once again, we're talking about the infrastructure of a business or nonprofit and so different organizations operate in different geographies and with different operations operating hours. And so, in the event of an outage. You know, when is support accessible. And for us, that had to be 20 473 65 and that's the case with partner we selected next slide them.

All right, most importantly, and the reason we're having this call is that it really needed to be a partner that would work well for the customers or clients, as we call them that we serve, which are MIT and accounting users.

So being able to quickly spool up a production environment for a client that will be optimized for running MIT MS sequel server that houses its data.

Being able to customize that environment for specific use cases. I use my Caray is drill point and use other add on applications that work with MIT, can I host those as well.

Does that have the ability to for customization. We have some clients who have done some very specific things on their sequel server to do

Custom integrations or to modify certain behavior at MIT and and can that be supported with the hosting partner. And so once again it's

We're not just talking about hosting provider, but we're talking about an MIT hosting provider that can provide incremental value to people who are using MIT fun accounting as their fund accounting solution, then you want to move to the next slide.

Alright, so let's talk about Dan already mentioned that we still ended up liking as cloud hosting. There's a lot of different reasons why we chose to work with them. First of all,

You know, our

Background check on them, came back clean. They were actually had an excellent

reputation for quality performance and reliability. They're very, very big in the in the Intuit QuickBooks, and tax software world where they've established their reliability.

They have a 99.9999% uptime guarantee and what the reason that's important. And that's a lot of nines, by the way.

The reason that's important is that if they fall short of their uptime guarantee they start crediting back you're boosting fees and so

Their service level agreement is really robust and it really is designed to hold themselves accountable for delivering an extremely reliable, consistent service.

They do this supporting over 20,000 customers and 40 countries worldwide.

They like I said specialize in postings, small, medium sized business accounting software applications like it might be QuickBooks sage and lots of other different

small and mid market accounting software applications.

We talked about the infrastructure security and disaster recovery.

Requirements that you should be paying attention to. They checked every box.

They have shown a tremendous amount of willingness and flexibility and they're

They're just approach to supporting GMT, and our MIT clients and what we've entered into is with with them as a partnership. We're not just referring clients to the service. But we've actually partnered with them where aces providing the infrastructure and

Foundation for what we're doing and GMT support team is actually working directly with you as the client to help you get your hosting environment provisions set up your data.

Restored in that environment and we're supporting you on an ongoing basis in your use of MIT in this environment. So and if you'll go to the next slide.

So a couple things about their platform. I want to call it specifically. First of all, they work in at least seven last, last I checked, it was seven. But they said they were actually getting another one.

Going seven different data centers across the US. So that geographic redundancy, all of which are SS a 16 type two SOC two certified Tier three tier four data centers. So these are top of the line. Very, very robust secure

Infrastructure data centers. I mentioned the multi factor authentication. This is that thing where that you know you haven't logged in a long time and make you

Punch in a code that got texted to your phone in order to log in. This is an essential security feature. And if you don't have that today, you should. And this is something that everybody has the option to activate in their a social environment. I mentioned the uptime guarantee

They have all kinds of hardware, software and human protocols in place to help prevent

ransomware malware and other types of nefarious things happening to your data.

We talked about the importance of the redundancy, not just in terms of hardware, but just making sure that that fail over support is available in the event that there is a catastrophic failure at a single point in their infrastructure.

Also, the other important thing is that each user operates in an isolated environment. So what that means is, is that even though you're

you're hosting environment, maybe in the same data center with another as customer if that other as customer

Makes some mistaking is victimized in a phishing attack and ends up giving you know somebody, the ability to load some malware onto their environment because you're isolated within the ACE environment, the fact that that other customer got infected will not affect you.

Finally, the other thing that we had just felt like was essential is that we, we wanted to make sure that our clients had access to their data.

At any time, and so there is a service available is optional, but it is a service. A lot of people have heard of I drive is one of these cloud backup services where

You can actually set it up to where a copy of your accounting database as well as the related files from your mindshare and other things that you have going on in your hosting environment can all be backed up on a periodic basis to a secure web service called I drive, which will

You can then have access to you securely to have access to that data should you need it. And so

A lot of our clients who were impacted by that ransomware attack. Earlier this year, really wish they had something like this, because if they did.

Their recovery could have been as simple as a while just installed, I might be on my own server then and restore my backup and I'll be back to work.

They didn't have that. And so as resulting they were at the mercy of that hosting provider and their ability to recover from the ransomware attack.

Let's see. I think we got one more here. So, so we're recommending ACE began, and we selected to work with them and we hope that you'll consider working with our partnership.

This is something that gives you just a tremendously greater amount of flexibility and your deployment of MIT, then you can with it might be class. So you may know community brands has MIT cloud, which is kind of their new

Cloud version of MIT and say, well, why don't I just use that. And for some clients, you know, we've actually got a lot of clients who use it if all you want to use as MIT.

That's fine. And you can do that, but if you want an IP to work with something else. So if you want to do anything custom or if you want to have

You know options in terms of how you're deploying it you really get one version. And it's just MIT. And it's kind of a walled garden and MIT cloud. So if you need more than that. You really ought to look at

The JMT as hosting option.

It also gives you control over when upgrades happening. So one of the things that's a benefit of being on a service with JT is that if you don't want to. So right now there's brand new MIT release that just came out here in the last couple of weeks.

If you don't see anything compelling in that version upgrade that makes you want to install it right now.

You can elect not to do it. You can say, you know what, I'll just wait for the end of the year when the update for 1099 comes comes up, I'll do that one. So you have greater control as to when these upgrades happen for your organization.

It also gives you an opportunity to have a single member to call as far as getting support for your MIT system which encompasses both MIT and the hosting environment itself are saying support line at GMT.

Will help you. Rather, the issue is how do I do this thing and MIT or it's why am I having this weird behavior in my hosting session.

I talked about some folks want to host more than just MVP. And so I have some HR software or I have a fixed assets application outside of MIT that I use. Can you host that and the answer is absolutely yes.

We talked about customizing your database or integrations.

And then, once again, I just think that there's a really compelling story behind a cloud hosting and their reputation and the level and quality of service that they bring to the table.

So these are all things. I think you ought to consider as you're thinking about listening. The end. I have one more slide or my hand it back to you here.

Dan Wharton: It's, I think I've got, I've got this next section.

Tom Thornton: Well that's it for me.

Be sure to type your questions into the Q&A if you have any. And we'll cover those at the end here.

Dan Wharton: Awesome. Thanks.

I'm gonna pull up a couple reference points. First, Forbes published an article earlier last month, which talked about how the pandemic is forced enterprises to adopt cloud technology more rapidly than they ever have before.

Selecting learn the benefits outweigh the risks. There's great quote from the article.

Cloud computing has never been more important it is already enabled companies to continue operating seamlessly with just 10 or 15 years ago the pandemic could have easily brought the business process and productivity to a halt.

Another reference marketplace published an article

Actually a couple weeks after that Forbes article and how companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google stand to benefit the most from these recent changes.

When asked why and the other highlighted key benefits that apply to organizations of all sizes, the first big benefit is the ability to scale the use of public cloud means that you can scale your applications as the needs dictate

Flexibility is a huge benefit migrating multiple applications to the cloud means you can find your way to get them to communicate with each other so much easier task with the advent of cloud.

And integration tools that things like API's web services, things like that. Another thing marketplace point out was that some organizations have been a little reluctant to adopt cloud, or at least a

couple examples think financial services and government agencies, they have to prepare a bit more but even they're starting to make significant strides towards cloud adoption.

Best news of all is with all of these competitors buying for your business. The cost of cloud services overall has actually decreased.

So it was being a cost. You may be wondering, you may be wondering how hosting fees are determined what are the variables are there any upfront fees to consider.

All I don't think this is going to blow your budget.

I don't want to make any assumptions and I can tell you that it wouldn't take take long to figure out for sure if you want to obtain a free quote simply email us here at cam at JM T consulting and see the email address in the bottom ca N G and T consulting com

Give you a second here to jot it down.

When you email us just expect us to turn around and ask a couple questions. We just have a few basic questions that are variables that play into the

Ongoing monthly cost per hosting as well as any potential upfront.

One time setup fee, so to speak.

Alright, Camus JM T consulting com, by the way, that's a way to get ahold of really anyone here. If you're not sure

who to talk to a GMT, you've got an IP related issue, just go ahead and email that that address will will route it internally and you'll hear from us very quickly.

So we're pretty much at the end of the presentation. What happens next.

I don't have any prizes to give out. But hopefully you did find some information value true value and the information that you receive today.

There's also lots of potential, the pursuit of happiness talking about your happiness, we suggest that you pursue your interest, find a partner with a proven methodology.

We can help you find the right answers a recipe for success, if you will. Now we're biased, but we think AMC as that recipe and we can share it with you.

We're here to help you find the after place as well you know that our team will be contacting you next week.

Talking about the webinar. Why did you register look up to the request in the first place. What were your expectations. How are you going to use this information where we go from here we're happy that you joined us today, and we want to be there with you in the future.

All right, Kim. Let's open it up for questions and answers. Any, any comments, anything

Kim Fellman: So thank you, Dan. And Tom

And if any of you guys have a question, drop it in the Q&A tab.

And we'll get it answered.

So we didn't have any questions come through yet.

Dan Wharton: Okay, let me jump in there was something that Tom said that I can give an example. You know, what are the key differences between

Our couple of key differences between what you might find in the eighth Cloud versus an IP cloud first and foremost, you do not have the ability to create on demand backups, meaning there's no button that says backup MIP in the MIP cloud.

iCloud is is unique to ace, but that's something that you cannot do within, within that cloud environment.

Another Biggie that you know came was a recommendation earlier, but some folks don't don't consider

Don't place as much importance on it as they probably should multi factor authentication, that's not available in the MIT cloud either not knocking it just simply saying that there was two key differentiators that you may and should consider when selecting like cloud service providers.

Kim Fellman: Okay, so can you guys clarify.

How long it takes to get started if someone was interested?

Tom Thornton: Sure, I'll take that one. There's a few there's a little bit of administrative stuff on the front end and his team.

Would work with you to gather the necessary necessary information and get the the service.

Provision from a contractual standpoint. Once that's done,

Then we can start the actual technical process but

What we're telling people, is it takes about 24 hours from the time that you've got all your paperwork in and the payments arrangements are made.

For them to be able to go through the entirety of the technical process of provisioning your environment. So that means

That they'll get a copy of your data, they'll install the software and a your own provision hosting environment, they'll get it configured. Part of the reason it takes about 24 hours is that they don't allow data onto their network without going through a very, very thorough

testing process to make sure that it's not infected in any way with malware or any other problem that would

Just not be good for their service.

Once it passes that test.

The environments usually already set up the software is installed. It's just a matter of restoring the data in the appropriate place.

At that point, it's a matter of creating user logins and testing to make sure that the environment. Everything appears to be working

And we start rolling that out to your team and those logins are tested by you.

The data is validated by you to make sure that it looks like it's the right data, the right copy of the data was provided and restored.

And then you're you're off to work. There's usually other minor things, making sure printing set up properly and that you're able to print reports and checks and things like that. But that's usually just a couple of minutes to validate

Kim Fellman: Awesome. Thank you.

So it doesn't look like we have any questions. So we can go ahead and wrap this up guys have any final words for everyone.

Any final words.

Dan Wharton: Exactly. Thanks for joining. Stay safe.

Kim Fellman: Great. So thank you Tom and Dan for your time today and we hope you all enjoyed the presentation. If this is something you're open to learning more about as it relates your organization. We'd love to meet with you individually.

You can contact us through the email Dan put up on the side earlier, or you can respond to the email day that we're going to send out with the recording.

And the slides and that will go straight to Dan as well so you can also join us for future webinars and by you can view those by

Going to our website, JMT consulting com and clicking on the training and Events tab. So this will conclude our webinar and I hope you all have a great day.

Bye bye.