May 2008 - Direct2Dell

Truly invested in the betterment of the California school system and catering specifically to California’s County Offices of Education (COE), at least half of Escape Technology’s employees have previously worked in the public school environment. Escape views itself as part of the school business community, sensitive to the demands and challenges school districts face.

Many school districts today are held back by out-of-date and disorganized processes like manual budgeting and the use of multiple systems for reports, and COE’s are in charge of providing school districts in each county with more appropriate systems. Building and providing COE’s with consolidation tools like finance, HR, and payroll applications, Escape says the most beneficial thing it offers to fight such challenges is time and efficiency.

“Competing systems don’t have the breadth of Escape, where we manage all the business and HR functions of a school district,” said Bob Towery, Escape Technology CEO. “With other systems, districts end up with many homegrown solutions to manage information resulting in the failure of their core system and the duplication of information several times. Elimination this problem, our software and training services offer a vehicle for school business to be a lot more efficient.”

Escape uses completely up-to-date hardware and software to help users truly utilize the power of their desktops, laptops and servers. School districts that migrate to Escape’s software experience a much more responsive and user-friendly system, resulting in lower training costs for the school as well as higher productivity.

For over 24 years Escape has molded its technology and offerings to provide school districts with the most proficient and easy to use software available and, as Bob states, “truly better the world of school business.”  Discussing his company’s future, Bob says “now that we have developed a completely new School Business Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, with a true Windows front end and Structured Query Language (SQL) back end, our challenge is to continually advance the functionality around the needs of our users. We plan to do this for years to come.” 

If you have questions about Escape Technology or are interested in its software and services, please comment here or contact Escape directly.

For the third year in a row, Dell Norway has kicked off its annual recycling initiative and competition, gjenVINN.no.

3,300 schools all over Norway are invited to collect as much old IT equipment as possible during the collection period, May 20 to June 6. The school that collects the most, per student, wins 15 Dell PCs, runner up gets five Dell notebooks, and third place gets a Dell projector.

At the launch event, the Norwegian Minister of Government Administration and Reform Heidi Grande Roys officially opened the competition at Kampen elementary school in Oslo. The minister emphasized the importance of IT tools in the education, but also said that it is extremely important that old equipment must be collected and handled in a safe and environmental way.

Over the last two years, students from all over Norway have collected an amazing 500 tons of used IT equipment. This is an impressive amount and we’re proud to be one of the companies behind this initiative. Dell has made a commitment to be the greenest IT company on the planet, and this initiative is Dell Norway’s way to extend our global plans on a local level.

In Norway we’re proud of the significant environmental progress we've made so far, both locally and globally, but we know there's still much more to do.

More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26569905@N06/

Rob Williams just published a post over at the DellShares blog that provides some insight behind our Q1 Earnings.

Founded in 2003, TechMD started just like any other IT service company. However, as soon as co-founder Mark Perez realized that his company was truly bettering the community with its service to non-profit clients, he knew TechMD had found its niche.

“Most non-profits were being poorly serviced by companies that didn’t understand their needs,” said Mark. “We saw the difference we could make by helping non-profit clients use technology to better serve their mission. Now, 85% of our customers are not-for-profit businesses.”

TechMD, a Managed Service Provider (MSP), offers clients a full service virtual IT department, previously unavailable to the non-profit sector and at a rate they can afford. Rather than spend valuable resources on IT employees, TechMD provides businesses with unlimited monthly IT services for a low, monthly fee. “We do this by leveraging cutting edge hardware and software solutions,” said Mark. “We allow our clients to focus on their mission while we focus on their technology.”

Mark attributes the evolution of remote technology as a main factor in TechMD’s success. At its start, TechMD employees had to drive all over town “putting out IT fires,” and this set-up was not highly effective or efficient. Now, with state-of-the-art software, TechMD connects to clients’ systems remotely scanning for and fixing potential issues before they turn into big problems. Thanks to the implementation of this technology, TechMD has greatly reduced time and costs associated with having to be physically present at a client’s office, and in turn can offer great rates to non-profits who really need them.

TechMD and the other nine finalists will receive a Dell business-class laptop, and TechMD plans to donate this laptop to the Make-a-Wish Foundation, one of the charitable organizations TechMD serves. “When I heard that TechMD was going to donate the laptop to Make-A-Wish Orange County,” said Make-a-Wish Foundation’s Executive Director, “I was truly moved. The laptop will go to a deserving child to make their dream come true.”

To watch a video on what other customers have to say about TechMD, visit TechMD’s Web site.

If you are a non-profit in Orange Country, Calif. and interested in the IT services TechMD provides, please comment here or contact TechMD directly. If you are an MSP, also check out Dell’s PartnerDirect managed services certification and our new Channel Blog.