Giving Back Feels Good
Written on July 13, 2012.
Giving back to the community feels great – and it’s the right thing to do. I was privileged to partner with the Coffee Coaching team and HTG to take part in an Extreme IT Makeover benefiting Mission Arlington, an Arlington, TX, non-profit. The day-long-event was captured on video, and I admit that part of the fun was hamming it up for the cameras.
Mission Arlington is a ministry that provides assistance to individuals and families in the Arlington area—up to 1,000 people a day come to the mission for help meeting a wide variety of needs. Until the Extreme IT Makeover, the mission operated on a bare-bones IT service, running some 50 used workstations joined together with eight desktop towers running server software – and no wireless. Not a perfect infrastructure by any measure, but Mission Arlington was doing the best they could with what they had.
That was before the trucks and buses rolled in from Extreme IT Makeover. The makeover brought together contributed technology from Intel, Microsoft, HP, and the donated skills and energy of some 100 volunteers from the HTG – all spearheaded by Networking Results, a Arlington-based VAR and longtime HTG member, which was responsible for the IT makeover’s design and installation. The new infrastructure took Mission Arlington from its set of PCs pressed into duty as servers to two HP* ProLiant Gen8 DL360 servers, powered by Intel® Xeon® 5600 series processors and running Microsoft* Small Business Server 2011. The mission also received new HP desktops and laptops with Intel® vPro™ Technology to provide increased security and remote manageability.
Now, Mission Arlington can focus on its services and ministry with faster and easier access to information, plus make use of more tools and resources for reaching and serving people in need, all while trusting that its data is safe.
It’s terrific that all that good will and high energy has been preserved on video – it’s a great example of what can happen when people and organizations work together for the benefit of others. We were able to provide Mission Arlington with the perfect IT architecture for their needs, so they can better serve their community.
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.