Not all information technology is costly. There is a wealth of free or nearly free tools available for churches and dioceses to leverage for their mission and operations.
Cloud Frontiers: A Deep Dive into Serverless Spatial Data and FME
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IT Innovations on a Church Budget
1. Innovations on a Budget
Joe Luedtke
Liturgical Publications Inc
JLuedtke@4LPi.com
@cathtechtalk
2. ⢠Introduction
⢠The Pace of Technology
Change
⢠Trends in Technology
⢠The Infrastructure Needs of
a âTypicalâ Church
⢠Innovations on a Budgetâfrom the Ground Up
⢠Network and Network Monitoring
⢠Server and Workstation Infrastructure
⢠Applications
⢠Websites, Apps, and Social Media
⢠Collaboration Tools
⢠The Wrap-up
3. Why is a Church
Bulletin Company
talking about
technology?
4. Innovation
&
Budgets
Are not mutually
exclusive ideals!
6. Technology Change and the Pace of Change
⢠I love hindsight; I just donât get it early
enough
⢠Working in the church, we do, however,
have the benefit of hindsight
⢠Techies within the church often lament
that weâre slow to adopt technology
⢠Take the glass half-full few⌠weâre
deliberate, thoughtful, and efficient in
how we do it!
7. Technology Changes that Are
Impacting the Church
⢠Innovations we are
leveraging
⢠Innovations we should
be leveraging
⢠Innovations being
inflicted upon us
9. Corporate CIOs 2010 Top Priorities
⢠Consolidate IT infrastructure
⢠Significantly upgrade DR and Business
Continuity
⢠Expand use of mobile for employees and
customers
⢠Significantly upgrade security
⢠Implement and expand use of collaborative
capabilities
12. Survey of 4,000 Catholic Churches
Operating System %
Observations:
Windows 7 19%
⢠Churches arenât as successful
Windows Vista 12%
as corporations in enforcing
Windows XP 53% standards
⢠Macs are on the rise in
Windows 2000 7%
churches and will continue to
Windows 98/ME < 1% grow
⢠The Windows 7 lag in
Windows 95 1%
churches probably means an
MACs 7% acceleration of Windows 8
when released
Linux < 1%
13. Technology Needs
⢠Internet Access
â Firewalls Commodities
â Sufficient bandwidth
â Secure and safe access for staff and parishioners
⢠File and Print services
⢠Backups and Disaster Recovery
⢠Business Applications (Finance, CMS, School ERP)
⢠Website and Social Media Sites
14. Technology Challenges
⢠Mishmash of old hardware and software
⢠PC and LAN support capabilities vary dramatically
church by church
⢠Security issues are increasing
â Religious ⌠sites were found to have triple the average # of
[virus / malware] threats than adult/pornographic sites.
âSymantec, April 2012
⢠Data privacy is becoming increasingly important
⢠Network capabilities are not prepared for growth
15. Network and Security Innovations on a Budget
⢠Separate Wireless for Staff and Parishioners
⢠Lock down staff access
⢠Segment and limit guest access
⢠Leverage Cloud-based Network Services for
Simple Security and Malware Protection
⢠OpenDNSâ$1250/yr
⢠Dyn.comâ$30/month
⢠SpamHero â Spam filtering for $5/month
for 100,000 e-mail messages
16. ⢠Open source tool
with a freemium
model
⢠Nagios XI premium
verison is free for 7
or less nodes
⢠Robust network
monitoring
⢠Event monitoring
⢠Batch monitoring
with a little effort
17. Network and Security Innovations on a Budget
⢠OpenVPNâOpen Source VPN Solution
⢠Proxy Server
⢠Squid Proxy is my personal favorite, squid-cache.org/
⢠Reduces bandwidth plus some content control and reporting
⢠Drive Encryption
⢠BitLockerâcomes with Windows 7 Ultimate or Software
Assurance Subscription
⢠Starting with OS X 10.7âFull Disk Encryption now available
18. Hardware Innovations on a Budget
⢠Virtualization
⢠Start with server virtualization and then
evaluate workstation virtualization
⢠VMWare Vsphere Hypervisor (ESXi)
⢠Free for 32 Gig of memory or less
⢠Benefits:
⢠Abstracts the servers from the hardware
⢠Move servers to solve hardware and
capacity issues
⢠Introduces simple backup and recovery
solutions
19. Hardware Innovations on a Budget
Case Study at Liturgical Publications
⢠LPiâs server infrastructure was 48 physical servers in
2009
⢠Weâre at 18 now
⢠Each of our print facilities had between 12 and 15
physical servers. Now, theyâre going down to 2
⢠Each server runs at less than
50% capacity
⢠VCB Backups copied to the
other server nightly
⢠No hardware maintenance
⢠LOM / iLO / ipmi
20. Hardware Innovations on a Budget
Case Study at Liturgical Publications
⢠Old workstations make great dumb terminals
⢠Reuse donated or old equipment while creating at least
OS-level standards
⢠Remove the hard drives, Optical drive, and fans and you
have a dumb terminal
⢠Remote access, remote updates not available on the
VMWare server
⢠Lowers support cost and centralizes administration
⢠Augment VMWare with remote desktop solutions:
⢠I love Citrix, but itâs expensive
⢠Openthinclient.org with VMWare Vsphere is a free
alternative
21. Hardware Innovations on a Budget
⢠Cloud-based Backup Solutions
⢠Dropbox
⢠Mozy
⢠Disk-based Backup Systems
⢠Disk mirroring
⢠Disk-to-disk backups with physical swapping
22. ⢠Benefits
⢠Access your data anytime and anywhere
⢠Syncs your files to all your devices
⢠Backs up your files to the Web
⢠Costs:
⢠Free for < 2 Gig of data
⢠100 Gig is $99 / year
⢠Team Dropbox starts at $795/year
23. Cloud-based Computing
⢠Removes infrastructure support, OS support, application
upgrades
⢠Anywhere, anytime access
⢠Pay-as-you-go and pay-as-you-grow service
⢠Browser-based, does not require anything but a Web
browser to run. Should be mobile enabled
⢠No upgrades to perform. Youâre always on the latest
version
⢠Backup and Disaster Recovery become the vendorâs
responsibility
24. Application Innovations on a Budget
Software as a Service (SAAS)
⢠E-mail is a core communication requirement that many churches have not yet
addressed
⢠Churches should not:
â Have their staff use their personal e-mail addresses
â Try to implement their own e-mail server
⢠Churches should:
â Leverage readily available cloud-based e-mail services
⢠GmailâFree via Google Apps for Non-profits
⢠Office 365â$4/user/month
â Leverage diocese e-mail services if theyâre available
â If not using a cloud-based email, look at outsourcing SMTP services to companies
like SendGrid
25. Application Innovations on a Budget
E-mail Newsletters
⢠E-mail Marketing
Programs make
an rich HTML e-
mail and e-mail
list management
simple
⢠MailChimp is my
favorite as itâs
free for lists under
2,000
⢠VerticalResponse
and Constant
Contact are good,
cost-effective
alternatives
26. Church Management Systems are
Moving to the Cloud
⢠Theyâre just starting to move to the Cloud
⢠Marketing hyperboleâCMSâs that claim
theyâre in the Cloud by offering Terminal
Services or Citrix-based solutions
⢠ParishSoft is potentially the only Catholic-
focused CMS that currently offers a Cloud-
based solution
27. Application Innovations on a Budget
Websites
Websites:
⢠Are you really still hosting your own website?
⢠Remember itâs not an IT Development Project itâs an
ongoing Content Management responsibility.
⢠For the âaverageâ church, donât build your own. Leverage
one of these providers:
http://catholictechtalk.com/website-builders/.
28. Application Innovations on a Budget
Collaboration Tools
Parishioner Engagement:
⢠Yes, you should have a Facebook Page, but for
marketing your diocese or church
⢠Look to parishioner engagement-focused systems like
LPiâs WeGather (free) or FlockNote ($13â$100/month)
for more
⢠Online Giving â What does your diocese recommend?
29. Application Innovations on a Budget
Collaboration Tools
Collaboration Tools:
⢠Diocese Video Conferencingâgreat idea, but start with Google+
Hangouts first
⢠Getting the budget for a good video conferencing system is easy
compared to changing your culture to use it
⢠For IT Projects, check out Redmine.org
⢠Extend this group here
â Where do you all connect and share information online?
â Any plans for CTMag discussion forums?
30. The Wrap-up
⢠Open Source, SAAS, and Cloud Computing bear serious
investigations in many areas
⢠Donât be an âearly adopter.â Strive only for silver or
bronze
⢠Remember software is sold not purchased. Do your
homework before making a buying decision
⢠Leverage hindsight by looking at what corporations and
other non-profits have already done
⢠Share with each other. You have a strong community
here. Figure out how to connect online; not just connect
once per year