Welcome everyone to Getting Technology Donations Through TechSoup. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really want today's session to be guided by you, so in just a few moments we'll be asking you a few poll questions to guide us in which topics we're going to cover today. Before we do that, we want to make sure that everyone's comfortable using ReadyTalk, the webinar platform we're using today. You can chat into us any time using the box on the lower left hand corner of your screen. Let us know if you have any issues with the audio or viewing the slides. And this is also where you can ask questions. We'll be flagging them and queuing them up for our Q&A slots later on. We will be keeping all participant lines muted, so we have a nice clear recording for you to refer back to. If you lose your Internet connection, you can reconnect using the link emailed to you in your registration confirmation or reminder email. And if you registered more than an hour ago, the reminder email also will have a copy of the slides we're using today, although most of what we're going to be doing is a live demo guided by the questions you want answered. You'll also receive a follow-up email with the slides and a link to the recording of the webinar, including all of the links and resources that we'll be sharing today. And that follow-up email will come out in the next day or two. If you're hearing an echo through your computer speakers or having other issues with the audio, you can also dial in via phone using the toll-free 800 number that is listed in your registration email. You are being recorded today, as I mentioned. You'll be able to find the recording on TechSoup's webinar page within a day or two. This is also where we share all our other webinar recordings and our upcoming webinars. So we encourage you to check it out at techsoup.org slash community slash events dash webinars. You can also view recorded webinars and videos on our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash TechSoup video. And if you're following along on Twitter, you can also tweet us at TechSoup or using the hashtag TechSoup. My name is Arielle Gilbert-Knight and I'm the content director here at TechSoup. I've been here for four years and I manage the team that creates our product content, blog, articles, and webinars, among other things. I'm also joined today by Bevin Garrett who is an account management specialist in TechSoup's client services team. She helps nonprofits, libraries, and foundations navigate their way through all of the technology donation programs available through TechSoup. And she's heard every question anybody has ever asked, so this is the time to ask all of your burning questions. Also from TechSoup, helping out with answering questions in chat is Ali Bezdikian. So welcome everyone and thank you. A quick look at our agenda for today. I'm going to briefly introduce TechSoup and then we'll do some polls to help me figure out which topics you really want to cover. So then we'll focus on the topics you're most interested in which will mostly be a live demo of using TechSoup and will also include time for Q&A. And so what's listed here on the agenda slide is some topics we could cover but really most of the agenda will be set by your responses to the upcoming live polls. A few quick words about TechSoup. We are all located here in our San Francisco office, all of us being the people who are working on this webinar. We have people located in many other parts of the world. Why don't you go ahead and chat in where you're located. And while you're doing that, I'll tell you a little bit more about TechSoup. We are just thrilled to announce that as of yesterday TechSoup donations are available in almost every country in the world except for those very few where as a U.S. company we are not allowed to work. So we are now able to provide technology donations and resources across the world. And so if you're joining us from outside the U.S. or your organization has offices or branches outside of the U.S., I encourage you to check out TechSoup.global which is our new global portal for product donations worldwide. Like many of you joining us today, TechSoup is a 501c3 nonprofit. And we have over the past 20-plus years connected nonprofits, libraries, and foundations with over $5.2 billion in technology products and grants from over 100 corporate and foundation partners. All right, that's enough about us. Now we want to know what you want to learn. So go ahead and click on the screen and let us know what you most want to learn about today. And if you don't see any of the particular topics that you are interested in, go ahead and tell us about it in the chat. If somebody wants to know about hardware donation programs, somebody else wants to know about website improvements. All right, I'm going to be closing the poll in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. All right, it looks like the top topics were software donation programs followed by hardware donation programs tied with eligibility and restrictions, and then the next most popular topics were learning resources and webinars, training, and other events. So we will definitely cover all of those things, and we will also be able to touch on most likely some of the other questions that got slightly fewer votes. Thanks everybody. All right, next quick question is whether you have personally requested any donations from TechSoup on behalf of your organization. All right, the answers are coming in and it looks like the vast majority of you have not yet requested donations on behalf of your organization. So that's very helpful. Hopefully you'll have enough information at the end of this webinar to be able to do that. Close the poll. And then one last question which is, are you registered with TechSoup? Yes, no, or you're not sure. All right, it's looking like the vast majority of you are already registered with TechSoup, but there are about a third of you that either are not registered or are not sure. So we'll briefly cover registration as part of this presentation. All right, I'm going to show you a couple of quick things to get you oriented. I'm going to switch over to sharing my screen. Now let me know or let Ally know in the chat if you can't see my screen. As of yesterday, you may notice some changes to TechSoup if you've been here before. We have a new mini site and a new greeting page up in front of TechSoup that we hope really does a great job of explaining the many, many ways in which TechSoup can help you. So if you see this page, you can click Meet TechSoup to learn more about us, or you can just skip straight to the regular TechSoup that you're used to. A couple of quick things about what you can see on Meet TechSoup. This is one way to access the list of different countries that we offer donations in. So if you're from outside the United States or your organization has offices outside of the United States, you can choose your country here to learn about what is available to you in your country. There are also a number of other things that you can learn about including our community and education initiatives. And it's a really good way to just learn about the many things beyond the software and hardware donation programs that TechSoup offers. But I know that most of you were interested in learning primarily about the hardware and software donation programs. So we're really going to focus on just looking at TechSoup.org. Quick orientation. This is our home page. We have some spotlights here where we feature new and interesting donation programs. So right now we're featuring QuickBooks at the new Office 2016. And the third slot here is almost always for what our next upcoming webinar is. So this is a really great way to get a quick snapshot of what's new and exciting and interesting at TechSoup. If you go all the way down to the bottom, this is also where you sign up for our newsletters. Our newsletters come out once a week for the Buy the Cup newsletter. And Buy the Cup will include new content, technology learning resources, upcoming webinars, as well as exciting new product donations. And then twice a month we also have a product alert which is really focused on the newest and most interesting technology donations that are available through TechSoup. So if you're eagerly waiting for something to be available through TechSoup, those newsletters are a really great way for you to learn about what's arrived. If you're joining us from a library today, we also have a monthly newsletter that's just for libraries. So if you want to learn more about TechSoup and be the first to know when exciting new things happen, I encourage you to sign up for our newsletters. All right, so those of you who are not yet signed up with TechSoup or are not sure, at the very top of the website there's this big orange join button. If you just click on that, you'll be taken through the registration process. And the first step is to register as an individual.  So you'll provide an email address and create a member name and create a nice strong, secure password that you will also remember, which is often a challenge to accomplish both of those things. And then create a security question. I'm going to say, what are you doing right now? The answer is presenting on a webinar. And this is also another spot where you can sign up for our newsletters to get alerts. And then you have to do a little bit of math. This is the last time we'll make you do math, we promise. Could continue. And I forgot to fill something out. Let's see what I missed. I already exist, RAL testing. Sorry about that. Let's see. I agree to the terms of service. Do a little more math. I'm going to think about it for a little while. And the next thing is to tell us a little bit about your organization.  And when you're going through this process, it's really helpful to have a couple of pieces of information at your fingertips, one of which is your EIN or your employer identification number. I'm just going to use a test one. And if you don't happen to have this information you can save and come back. And there are lots and lots of organizations that use this default employer identification number. So you can filter it down to a shorter list by state or zip code. And I'm going to show you what it looks like to start an organization from scratch. So let's say you don't see your organization listed here. You can go in and register your organization at the bottom of the screen. And there are a couple of really critical pieces of information that you're going to provide here. The first of which is the organization type. So your organization type, this list is not made up by TechSoup. It's an official list created by the IRS that helps the IRS define what kind of organization you are. I know a lot of the nonprofits out there do a lot of different things. So just try and pick the organization type that most closely matches your primary mission. So for example, if you are a church or other religious organization that also operates a food pantry, your primary mission might be religious activities versus services to the poor. So I'm just going to choose cultural, historical, or other educational activities. And the list of subtypes will automatically refresh based on the organization type you've chosen. The reason this organization type and subtype is so important is that each of our donor partners chooses which types of organizations they want their philanthropy to support. So in the same way that you as an individual choose what kind of organizations you want to donate to or a foundation or other grant maker chooses the kind of projects they want to support, our donor partners at TechSoup also decide which kinds of organizations they want to donate technology and other resources to. So your org type and subtype has a tremendous impact on which donation programs you are eligible for. I'm going to choose an arts education organization. And then I'm going to kind of skip over the contact information because I'm not going to save this as a real organization. But I did want to mention another really critical piece of information which is your budget. Your budget also affects which programs you are eligible for through TechSoup. Our donor partners also decide what size of organizations they want to support. So some donation programs are focused on organizations with a budget under $500,000. They want to really focus on smaller organizations for example. So the org type and subtype and budget are two major pieces of information you really want to have. The other thing I wanted to mention is that you will also be asked to enter an organization email address. And this is ideally something different from your personal individual email address. So if you have an address that's something like Information at, or Webmaster at, or In Charge of Everything at, that's the kind of email address you want to use because all of the messages about the product donations including how to access them, the keys to make your licenses work, and other account information goes to this organization email address. So ideally it's an address that multiple people at your organization can have access to, and it's also ideally one that is checked regularly. I'm just going to log out quick. And the next thing I'm going to show you is if you have questions about your eligibility or you're not really, really familiar with TechSoup, there's a great, easy way to find out which programs are available to your organization. Which is under this Get Products and Services menu, go to Check Your Eligibility, and we have this little quiz that you can take that will tell you what kind of donation program your organization is most likely for, likely eligible for. So I'm going to say I'm a 501c3 non-profit. I'm located in California. And my organization's mission this time is let's say Religious Activities. I'm a church. And my annual operating budget is $500,000. And then after you filled that in, you check your eligibility, and you get a list of all of the donation programs that that organization type and subtype and budget size are eligible for. Now if you're already registered for TechSoup, I'm just going to log in with yet another testing account. And if I'm logged in, and I choose Check Your Eligibility, I have multiple organizations that I'm associated with. So I want to check my eligibility for test, test. And there you go. So this is a really great place to just get a quick overview of the kind of donation programs that you are most likely eligible for. A couple of other ways to find out what's available through TechSoup. Also in this Get Products and Services menu, you can browse for product donations in a variety of ways. Let's say you know you want Microsoft donations. So you go to Get Products and Services, choose By Donor or Provider, and then we have a list of all of our donor partners through TechSoup. And you can just choose Microsoft from the list. And that will take you to an overview page that explains a little bit about how the Microsoft donation program works, including an overview of eligibility, and some key questions that people often ask about, the volume licensing, which I'll talk a tiny bit about later, and other kinds of licensing and other kind of products that are available. You're going to click on Browse Microsoft Products. And then you can see a whole list of all of the Microsoft products that are available through TechSoup. So if you want desktop software like Office, you can choose Office Sweets or Individual Applications. If you are interested in Windows, you would choose Microsoft Windows PC Operating System Upgrades. And then the list of products below refreshes to show you what's available through TechSoup. A couple of other things to highlight. On many pages in the TechSoup website, there will also be a list and the right sidebar of related educational and supporting content. So for example, on the Microsoft page you can see we have an article about what's new and different in Office 2016, and some blog posts that are about the history of the TechSoup donation program as well as some related webinars. So these pages provide you with both the access to the product donations as well as some additional supporting content to help you choose and use the right things for your organization. Also under Get Products and Services, you can look for particular categories of products. So if you choose by category or solution, you can see you're really looking for hardware, let's say, then you would go to Computers and Electronics. And this page will show you all of the hardware that's available through TechSoup. And you can choose from this dropdown which kinds of hardware you're interested in. And the section underneath here will refresh to show you everything that's available. One last way to browse the catalog is by organization type. We have pages that are specifically geared towards different types of organizations that include the most relevant and interesting product donations that they're eligible for as well as additional related resources. So for example, if you're joining us from a foundation, we have a Foundations page that includes relevant donations and information for your organization type. The other way to find content and products on TechSoup is through the search box at the top. So you really want QuickBooks, let's say. You search for QuickBooks. And the search results will show you on the left. It will show you product donations first. But you can also access articles, webinars, and blog and community resources related to QuickBooks as well. I'm going to talk a little bit more about the Microsoft Software Donation Program. So one thing to note is that when you look at Microsoft products, you'll see that they don't actually have versions or years associated with them. So the version that's currently available through TechSoup is Office 2016. And for Windows, it's Windows 10. But one of the really cool things about getting technology donations through the Microsoft Donation Program at TechSoup is that you actually can access the current version of the software or one version behind. Yes, so the previous version as well. So when you actually go to download and access your Microsoft donation, you can choose the current version or the previous version. Another nice feature that's available is that you have free upgrades within two years after your donation request. So if a new version of Office comes out in the next two years, you can upgrade to that new version for free. Another feature is that you can also downgrade if you want. So for example, you've implemented Windows 10 and then you discover to your chagrin that your donor management database just isn't compatible with Windows 10 because it's an older system that you're using. You can actually downgrade through the Microsoft program to a previous version as well. There are a number of other benefits available along with the free upgrade and downgrade options through the software assurance program including the ability to access the software in multiple languages to get what's called a multi-language pack. Some of the programs also have the option to install the software on a home computer in addition to your work computer. And there are also a ton of e-learning or online learning and training options available through the software assurance program. I'm going to look quickly at a specific product. So let's pick Office Standard. If you click View Details, it will take you to the very detailed product page all about Office. And you can see here at the top that it's currently available and that the admin fee is $29. So TechSoup charges a small administrative fee for managing the donation program. This revenue, this money, this admin fee goes to TechSoup not to Microsoft. And this is how TechSoup keeps in business. This is how we are able to offer and manage the donation programs but also how we're able to bring you educational resources and programming like this webinar today. When you're looking at the product page, you also want to make sure to check if you're supporting multiple organizations that you are requesting for the right one. So let's say you are the IT person for multiple branches. You want to make sure that you're making the request for the right organization. You also want to read through the description of the product, the system requirements, which will tell you what you need hardware and software-wise in order to run this program, and also double-check the rules, eligibility, and restrictions. So for example, for Microsoft products, there's a two-year cycle and within that two-year cycle organizations are limited in the number of products that they can request. And there's also additional detail here about the types of organizations that are eligible for the Microsoft donation program. So if you have requested a donation and at some point you were told that you were not eligible for it, details about what kind of organizations are available are listed here. I'm going to go ahead and put it in my cart. So click Add to Cart. And you can see up here I have one item in my cart now. I'm going to click on the cart to step through a couple of pieces of checkout. So I can double-check here. Yes, I do actually want this one license of office. It's going to be $29. I'm going to proceed to the Restrictions check. And this is where the magical systems behind the scenes at TechSoup look at your organization type, subtype, and budget as well as your donation request history. And those magical systems behind the scenes will then tell you and confirm that you are in fact eligible for this donation. And this is one of the things that's very different about getting technology through TechSoup is that it's not really like an Amazon where it's just an online store where you can just go and order whatever you want. There are a lot of back-ended processes and a lot of checks that need to happen before a donation request can proceed. So I'm going to click Proceed to Restrictions Check. And it says we've checked the products in your cart and nothing is flagged, which is great. So I'm going to click Proceed with Donation Request. And there are a couple of other steps. You have to agree to some particular agreements. And many of these are dictated by our donor partners who want to ensure that the organizations that they're supporting are aligned with their philanthropic areas of focus. So I'm just going to click I agree and Proceed with Donation Request. And you'll get some information at this stage about the next steps in the process. So about how you'll be accessing the donations, what kind of communications you'll be getting, as well as the key thing of the organization email address, which is this is the email that's going to get all of the information about the donation request. So this is an opportunity to double check and make sure that this is actually going to the right email. And it's an email address that you're checking. I'm going to Proceed. And you can pay by check or by credit card. If you pay by check, you won't receive the donated product until we've received and processed the check. And I'm going to stop here because I don't have a fake credit card that I'm going to use. I'm just going to go back to the main page. This might actually be a good time to stop and see if there are any questions. I can't actually see the chat when I'm sharing my screen. So let me switch back. Mike Murphy asked if Ghana is eligible for donations. And Ghana is in fact eligible for donations. Go to TechSoup.global and choose Ghana from the list of countries and you'll be able to see what organizations in Ghana are eligible for. We have also gotten some questions about who to contact if you have questions about the process at any stage, registration, or finding out who is on your account, which leads me to I can share information about how to get more help from TechSoup. So I'm going to switch back over to sharing my screen. If you have questions about your account or the status of your donation request or you're having trouble navigating through TechSoup, you can go under Support and choose Contact Us. And here's the contact information for our very fabulous Customer Service Department. You can talk to very, very nice people like Bevin who is here in the room with me. And you can call or email to get your questions answered. We also offer a wide variety of other ways to get additional help, one of which is our community forum. So once you're registered you have access to participate in our forums which are staffed by friendly and extremely knowledgeable volunteers who are happy to answer your questions. So if you have questions about databases or questions about websites, I encourage you to pop into our forums and ask your questions there. And very nice, very smart people will help answer them. We also have many self-service educational resources. So at the top of the site under Resources we have articles. We have a blog. And we also have, as I mentioned, a Webinars page where we show all of our upcoming events, the most recent upcoming event which is this event right now, other upcoming events. And we have a calendar, a community calendar of events in various places, all educational, all focused on nonprofits, and down at the very bottom we also have an archive of all of our previous webinars. And you can browse for those by category. So for example, you really want to learn how to use QuickBooks. You can choose the Accounting category and watch a replay of our really excellent QuickBooks for existing nonprofit users or QuickBooks for new nonprofit users Webinars. We also have, as I mentioned, a blog. And we have a number of writers internally, but also external writers, guest writers who are nonprofits themselves and sharing their advice and expertise. So this is a great place to go to learn about technology news, latest things in the TechSoup donation program, as well as advice that you can use at your nonprofit such as ways to improve your year-end donation pages. It's all practical and it's all directed at a nonprofit audience. If you're the kind of person who likes to learn in person, we also have a program called NetSquared which is a volunteer community of nonprofit techies who organize and host usually monthly events locally all around the world. So if you are interested in meeting, connecting with, and learning from fellow nonprofits, this netsquared.org is a great way to find out which groups are near you and see if there's one happening in your area. You can search by location. So I'm going to show San Francisco. And there is in fact a local group, two of them, San Francisco Tech for Good and DataKind SF Bay Area. So I can see upcoming events that are local, in-person, nonprofit oriented events where I can go to learn more about various technology topics. The poll results also indicated that people were interested in learning more about our hardware donation programs. So I'm going to show you where to find the main categories of hardware. Talk a little bit about what's available as well as some special programs that we have recently introduced. So I think I showed earlier the computers and electronics page where you can go to browse the catalog of hardware that's available through TechSoup including networking hardware. We have a constantly evolving group of products available in our hardware donation programs. So we have at least a quarterly update to our refurbished computer program which is hardware that has been factory refurbished by our reputable and skilled refurbishment partners. So it works as well as a new computer and has usually a, depending on the product, a one to three year warranty from our refurbishing partners. We also have some special offers that are other ways to access hardware including one that's especially cool which is the JourneyEd program. Now if you have worked in the past at a school, you may be familiar with JourneyEd. JourneyEd for a very long time has been offering discounts to educational organizations. And they just recently expanded in partnership with TechSoup to offer those same discounts to nonprofits and libraries. And JourneyEd has thousands of products available, software, hardware, office supplies, AV equipment, etc. And you can get access to their catalog of discounted products through TechSoup for a $10 admin fee. Like with anything else, the prices on JourneyEd you should double check against a quick Google search or look on Amazon to see if you're getting the best deal. But on the whole JourneyEd is a great way to be able to access products that aren't actually in the TechSoup catalog. It greatly expands what options you have available to you. So they have among other things, they do have hardware and tablets as well as Apple products which we don't always have available through TechSoup as well as things like Camtasia from TechSmith, CorelDRAW, VMware, and other products. So this is just a quick shot of the kinds of things that you'll be able to access through the JourneyEd program including hardware. We also have a relatively new TechSoup subscription offer called Boost. Through Boost you get access to discounts on hardware and special hardware deals as well as to zero admin fee products. So the admin fee is usually a small percentage of the retail value of a product. But through Boost you don't have to pay admin fees on select products. Right now we're focusing on a variety of fundraising products. So for zero admin fee you'll have access to creating an online e-store to sell products through Shopify. You get access to discounted rates for credit card and debit card processing through Dharma Merchant Services. You can get access to mobile optimized websites and text to give plans through Connect to Give. And you can do t-shirt sales for fundraising through Teespring. And there are a variety of other products available as well. And this, like our hardware donation program offerings, is constantly evolving. We're constantly trying to offer the best and shiniest and new and exciting things through the Boost program. You also get access to special discounts and expertise including right now a discount on Foundation Center proposal writing courses. So if you are in the business of writing grants, which many of us are, that's a great resource for your organization as well. Okay, I'm going to switch back to ReadyTalk now and just skip through the slides. These are just screenshots that I had just in case something went wrong. I'm going to skip through a couple more. I'm going to pause for questions again, see if there are any questions that haven't been answered yet or that would be helpful for other people to have answered. Somebody had additional questions about the donation programs globally. So if you're from outside the United States or requesting donations on behalf of an organization outside the United States, the registration process will look a little bit different. And the information that you'll be required to have with you is different. So in the US, the main identifying number is your employer identification number. In other countries that number will be different. So if you're requesting donations for a country like Ecuador, the information that you would provide at that time is whatever the legal identifier for your organization is in that country. And the form should help guide you as to which ID number we're actually looking for as you're going through the registration process. We also had a couple of other questions about whether how licensing works. So the question was about if you order one quantity of something, is that good for one computer or multiple users? In general, the products are one license per user, meaning if I order one copy of Microsoft Office, that is good on one computer. If I want multiple people to be using Microsoft Office, I have to order multiple copies of it. There are some exceptions, and those should be clearly spelled out in the product pages. So for example, QuickBooks from Intuit, there is an option to have a one user license or a three user license. So if you want multiple people to be using your QuickBooks, you can get the three user version of QuickBooks. But each product page should describe how many people are able to use that product that you've ordered. But generally speaking, it's one product per person. We also had some questions about whether people have to write any proposals or anything like that to get donations. They do not. All you have to do is fill out the registration information. And if you are a 501cp3 nonprofit or a public library, and you meet our donor partners eligibility requirements, you can access the donation program through TechSoup. And even if you are not eligible for certain donations, all of our educational resources are freely available to any kind of organization, anywhere in the world, anytime. We also had a question about whether there is a limitation on the number of purchases per year. And in most cases, the answer is yes. Our donor partners will often limit the number of products that you can request per year. And if the product page itself, I will actually go back and show one of them. Let's look at Morton this time. The product page itself under rules, eligibility, and restrictions will usually describe how many products can be requested within a certain time period. So for example, in the case of Norton Security, one Symantec Norton Security product and up to 20 licenses can be requested within a fiscal year. So if you have questions about whether you can still order additional requests, additional donations, do check out the rules, eligibility, and restrictions. And if you aren't quite sure off the top of your head how much you've ordered in the past, you can also review that. I just clicked on my email address up here at the top of the screen. And that takes me to my TechSoup profile. Within the TechSoup profile, it will show me the organizations that I am associated with. And it will also show me where I am in the process of being validated as an eligible nonprofit. So in my case, the qualification status here is qualification pending because I'm not a real nonprofit. I work for a real nonprofit but this is just a test organization. So if your status says qualification pending or some other status, this will help you understand kind of where you are in the process of becoming eligible for the donation program. You'll also be able to access your donation request history through your member profile. So if you just click on donation request history, this is where you'll see your previous donation requests. I don't have any because I haven't actually done any orders through TechSoup but they would all be listed here along with the request number, date, the organization you requested it for, and the status. And the request number is a really handy thing to have access to because if you call our customer service people, one of the first things they're going to ask you is for your organization ID number, but also for your specific donation request number. So you can always access that here. The Microsoft donation program, Microsoft by far our biggest and most generous donor partner when I said we, TechSoup had facilitated $5 billion of donations. Microsoft is responsible for about four of those Bs in the billions. So Microsoft also has some very specific rules about how many donation requests you can get over a two-year cycle. So we've given additional information about Microsoft donations that you can access through the Microsoft donation center, including the rules at a glance, and information about when your Microsoft donation cycle starts and finishes. And a good clear summary here of how many products in your total allotment you have used and how many more are available to you. We also have additional support resources available that we encourage you to check out, one of which is frequently asked questions about the product donation program. Lots of additional information available here to help explain some of the occasional complexities of the TechSoup donation program. As I mentioned before, you can also find contact information for our customer service department. And when you call or email them, they greatly appreciate it if you have your employer identification number, tax ID number, and or TechSoup donation request number when you get in touch with them that helps them help you more quickly. We also have additional resources once you've requested a donation through TechSoup under support using your donation. For our biggest and most popular donation programs, we have curated content or gathered together content to help you make the most of your donation. So you can check here to find additional resources and training materials to help you make the best use of your donation because we don't want you to just access technology. We want you to use it enthusiastically and efficiently to support your mission. All right. We have about five minutes left. I'm going to do a last check to see if there are any unanswered questions. Oh, we have a hard one that I don't know the answer to. Bevin, somebody has asked whether the donations through TechSoup are reported to the IRS for tax purposes. If so, do they get a yearly form to report such benefits? I actually have not had that question before. It is a donation, so I imagine that you might want to keep the confirmation page that's sent out after you place a request just for reference. And if you do find that this issue comes up, you'll have something to go back to. Once you place a donation, you'll receive a confirmation email. And there's also a confirmation page that's prompted that prompts you to print out for your records. So if you do find that you are being asked for additional information from the IRS, definitely go ahead and reference that confirmation page. But again, I'm actually not sure about that 100%. So we can confirm that, and we'll be able to follow that afterwards. And also you get a prize for stumping Bevin. We have a couple of other last minute questions. One was about whether you need to pay the admin fee for each product. Yes, each product has a specific admin fee associated with it. So if the product is $10 and you need four of that product, the total admin fee that you would pay is $40. And another related question is whether the admin fee is refundable. What happens, Bevin, if people change their mind and no longer want the product? So it's important to really review the product page before you place a donation request. 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at Big Data SV 2014 is brought to you by headline sponsors WAN Disco. We make Hadoop Invincible and Actian Accelerating Big Data 2.0. Okay welcome back everyone we're live here. We're here for Big Data SV, we're covering all the action here live. All the thought leaders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, venture capitalists, also covering the Stratoconfer's going on right behind us at the Santa Clara Convention Center. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angle. This is the Cube. I'm joined by my co-host Dave Vellante, co-founder of wikibon.org. Our next guest is Michael Sandoval, the CEO of a TGO. Welcome to the Cube. Thank you. So welcome on. Tell us first about the company and share the folks. You're from Washington, Seattle area. Talk about the company and what you guys do. Sure. So first of all we're Seahawk fans of course. Seattle you know is clearly the second Silicon Valley if you will. So a lot of our former Microsoft folks we founded a teaser back in 2005 and the idea was how do you take and tap into the exponential growth on data given all the heterogeneous environments and so we decided to kick a company off that really attacked that from a platform perspective. Talk about how old you guys are when you started. What's the backstory on the company? Yeah so 2005 is when we kicked the company off. So we've been around a while and it was really the long-term approach to how you change the 21st century big data. You know I think the challenge is a lot of companies are coming out and you know they're new to the big data you know arena. So the thinking about things in a perspective of applications on Hadoop or attack the specific problems. We really took the long road five to ten year plan on building a platform that could go into heterogeneous environments and extract out the data leaving everything where it is and then actually realize the patterns out of that data rather than trying to look for specific patterns. So it's a different approach. You know Dave and I were talking on the intro about the comparisons of web 2.0 to big data the market I'll see there's some trigger points in between one early on away great recession but it's really a bigger than that one there's some business model opportunities one with the growth and two it's hard right so you can't just whip up a start up and jump into the in these platform games because it's pretty complicated. Some cases maybe if you're doing you know maybe the point solution but to build the platform in that space is pretty difficult. Could you just share your perspective of some of the things of why it's hard. What are some of the hard problems you guys are solving and what's the benefits to those. Sure so when we look at the you know the data across the world clearly your data sits in its native states and everyone you know in the 20th century was using specific tools and I knew when I was a young kid my father said you know use the right tool for the right job and the problem is a lot of the problem is today a lot of these companies are you know taking specific data mining approaches or machine learning approaches or all this typical 20th century approaches with statistical you know methodologies basing in statistics or whatever I can go through all the technology but the reality is all of our customers think of data as very specific and valuable to their business so how do I take and approach that for each and every customer that doesn't take a bunch of professional services so you got to find a way to extract the the meaning out of the data for the specific application for the specific customer if you start with a problem first you have a small set of customers you can go attach to so we have to take a approach that you get in there quickly and realizes the value out of the customer's data and then help them actually discover the value in their data so it's basically what you're saying is it's a hard problem is you can't just go in and propose something new that's going to be foreign to these guys you have to go into their legacy environments and adapt absolutely you can't go with a hundred million dollar proposal to spend you know 50 guys in 18 months to do professional services you know activity to aggregate their data some of the clients in the market all these other scenarios that you typically see some people are still hanging out of those days so now you guys are a platform play right you partner with acting can you describe sort of what you actually what the solution actually looks like sure so when we think about the platform there's lots of layers to how you take in and approach the marketplace so when people talk platforms often they think in terms of do I have restful API's can I expose it for people to build applications off of that you have to go even deeper when you're talking about the data residing in native you know states and data silos you've got to attach to that in the infrastructure layer so when you have great in infrastructure analytic companies like Acton you know they're going out and they're finding new ways to connect to that data to use that data and we're you know doing some of that and adding lots of connections in that as well but we really focus on the analytics layer so what can we do in a hybrid system across all types of analytics whether it be you know traditional machine learning natural language processing inferencing so deductive and inductive processes you go on and on about the diverse approaches but that's what we do and then we together build this vertical platform if you want to call it that that exposes all the application availability for all of our different customers in different industries so we've got people in government we've got people in health care you've got people in retail consumer marketplaces we have to be able to attach to all those forms of data and in those heterogeneous environments so do you go after specific use cases in specific industries or as a platform player you more opportunistic yeah we we have focused to quite a bit on the health care space and in last 12 to 18 months so in that space there's significant problems whether it be the transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 which a lot of the payers and providers are mandated to do this calendar year October 2014 and that's shifted twice because a lot of companies were out there helping them to to realize this 20,000 codes to 155,000 codes they haven't had the appropriate technologies to actually migrate these you know health care providers and payers so we are sorry to interrupt that's a that's a is that a compliance use case or is it more of a sort of execution and be able to right it's a little of all all of the above you have clearly you know hip a compliant data that you have to attach to you have standards and and and law that's requiring you to code the encounters with doctors in this new in this new ICD-10 international coding standards so when you look at the compliance meets all the regulatory you know rule set and you look at all the various data from pharmacies to payers to providers to dentists all of these people are trying to trans you know transition their data and it's not as simple as let's say moving my paper files my and using OCR technologies to move to a EMR you've got to use something that can actually take action on that data so when you look at unstructured data how do you do that when you have different disparate data systems and all the healthcare you know providers you know hospitals and clinics and small dock offices how am I going to access that when they don't even know and their IT people don't know where the data sits and so you've got to find a quick way to go across to all that and expose it so there's lots of healthcare examples there's lots of examples and financial services you know Dodd-Frank and and compliance scenarios like that that we're going after as well so that's as well and I would imagine back to healthcare for a minute that the EMR piece there's probably a meaningful use component of the ROI that if you could show meaningful use you're actually going to get paid right absolutely so when you think think about you know population health you think about your things hopefully transitioning 2020 to individualized healthcare and you look at ACO measures to you know scenarios around you know what's really going on in the administration and the readmittance scenarios that are going on right now so it's not as simple as checking the box and saying did a patient have congested heart failure and are they over this this age there's all these symptoms that may be in the infrastructure data and how do you realize those actually take and use as a signal and a predictive measure in order to in real time you know realize when a patient is checking in that they may have a problem and may may readmit if I don't walk walk through to a different workflow than the general populace Michael talk about you mentioned consulting before that people don't want a hundred million dollar proposal you've been in that industry you've had a lot of space of Microsoft say large large experience in the enterprise and deal with customers so two questions one is David I always love the services angle and how disruptive the new technologies can either shorten the cycles get the time to value faster so the question is what things you see on the time to value in this new market with big data and on the deployment side in terms of acceleration the cycle of concept to deployment and two is it truly vertical where everyone talks about big data being a very vertical approach where in the old days you have to carve out a vertical and go deep and be you know kind of focused on one vertical where you start to see vertical solutions with kind of a horizontal platform it seems to be what you guys do so comment on the time to value cycles of you know services delivery implementation and then talk about the vertical impact is that still a mega trend with the vertical focus those domain experts those are really two big questions yeah I will say unfortunate unfortunately it is a trend to go deep in vertical and I think the problem then is and I've had one of our government clients describe it as you know a bodybuilder scenario you know big body application on little legs to do and so a lot of scenarios like that with lots of professional services using using those old scenarios of I'm gonna throw you lots of people will figure out how to customize this and and be in your business all day long for the next few years I think now when you look at the cost effectiveness of you know cloud-based technologies and platforms to be able to go across the data and realize the patterns out of that data you know more more automatically we are finding scenarios in one of our clients MD on quoted publicly last year they process two-thirds of the healthcare claims in the private space in the US and when you look at at their scenario a lot of the big boys that you mentioned earlier that typically go in professional services in those deep you know analytic solution you know verticals they couldn't get there in a long period of time we got in there in a matter of a week and realize the data for what they were trying to accomplish and their quote was we did in 130th the time and 130th the cost and I think the other quote was before others could even come up with a plan and so I think it's a brave new world to the 21st century is about using computers and software in in any type of environment to realize the getting to the value you guys got to the value while everyone's kind of eventually rearranging the deck chairs on the proposal you guys essentially kind of chop it down into little chunks is that kind of you see it yeah I don't know about shopping around down a little chunks you're trying to connect all the data and depending what those chunks may be you don't want to have to use a bunch of professional services people in order to in order to you know figure out which hypotheses and what questions you're going to step in first then ETL the data and then go oh gee now we got this new data can you add that to that yeah a month later we'll go through this whole process yet again you want to do that in real time you want to be able to when you look at predictive measures you want to build this in forecasting but you also want to realize what's going on at the moment in time in real time so some will argue that's a great business model professional services create a bigger problem that you come back in and and solve which is kind of an old model and that's why we you know we talked about this notion of disrupting the old model which is you know getting to the value faster versus being dependent upon you know the the professional services drug and so that's interesting when you look at the research that we've done a wikibon at the still the bulk of spending in big data goes to services so Michael I want to ask you you hear a lot about you know these conferences like Strata about being a data-driven organization and you know data is the new oil these bromide what are you seeing in the customer base our customers truly transforming to be data-driven what does that mean to organizations and and how specifically are you helping them get there yeah a lot of the customers say that you know they have so much value in their data and I ask what are you doing with your data well we can't really access it right now so they become data hoarders so so they are data-driven and when we look at our mission which is compassion technology for a wiser planet and tying back to John's earlier question is you want people to make the wise decisions on the data you want the data speak for itself to expose itself and use it to actually you do more with less with the people if you will so how could I take the same professional services where I put 50 people into an account and put two people in that account and take the 48 and put them across a number of other accounts I think that's where we need to go so the companies are data-driven today they realize that they have to change they fundamentally have to shift to using their data but also what data might give them lift or optimize their data so if I can realize those patterns out of that not just my hypothesis or your hypothesis in being in the business but what does the data speak and what other information that might be in the marketplace that actually can edge on to that they give us more power in the marketplace and that is really becoming a data driven well I remember you know the Harvard Business Review articles in the sort of early 2000s about you know gut feel oftentimes you know beats you know Trump's data and that that is flipped I mean I think in general but at the same time for an organization to become data-driven they've got to do some things at the back end it's not just technology right it's other things what are you seeing in advising your clients in terms of organizational changes that they have to make are they putting a data czar in charge like a chief data officer I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit well I think the the the owners of the data in the past have been the IT staff and so how do we take and and shift that to the line of business people who are actually trying to take action on the business and so is it really in your best interest to try to you build a large IT staff and and use them to you know govern and help you through the hypothesis process to discover what's in your data and what how your business operates so I'd like to see those resources shift to the business side of the equation and maybe shift all that IT out to the cloud and something that can actually be you know actionable here and now so when you talk about big data being you know you know fundamental problems in volume and variety and velocity the cloud if I can spin up a thousand servers to go take action on this new analytical exercise I can actually do something that can affect my business today rather than taking a bunch of people IT order a bunch of servers and go through the traditional processes so that that is shifting John I talk a lot about the this role of the chief data officer we have a partnership with the folks at the MIT information quality group and they have a conference every year on the on the CDO the chief data officer and they've put forth the premise that the CDO should not report into the CIO it's really a parallel type of path independent type of path in particular health care government financial services some of the areas that you're in a seem to be getting momentum around that that thinking I wonder if you're seeing something similar or is it sort of early days are you seeing real examples of data czar as a chief data officers emerging running parallel to to we're not even parallel but independent of IT we are we're seeing a lot of transition I want to say a lot a new transition in let's say 10% of our clients that are going to those type of scenarios there are more they're empowering the the you know the former business leads the VPs of you know operations and sales and what not to become those data czar's rather than leaving all that power in the CIO's hands unfortunately I think there are a lot of customers still of of the large professional services organizations that still believe in the old philosophies and I think that will shift over the next 10 years now that brings up a security question how does the security model change when you start thinking about data being the main driver when you think about platform to help me address some of my data challenges what are your thoughts on security would you guys you know doing there what's your angle and approach to security clearly fundamentally security and privacy have to be built into your platform from the get-go it can't be an afterthought so it's not an add-on function or feature that you turn on and off it's something has to be fundamental to your to your data process so so we are including that within the platform as is acting and together we're able to deliver that from infrastructure all the way through the applications so in the last couple of months we did 10 billion HIPAA compliant transactions in the cloud and a lot of the CIOs go well you know we can't do our compliance we can't do our you know our HIPAA transactions in the cloud we can't move to the cloud for this reason or that reason then you could fundamentally work with them for maybe a couple of months to get them over those you know 20th century prejudices and realize that actually you can do this and maybe even bet better than the traditional security measures they have within their own infrastructure so how do you guys don't if you can talk about the way you compete we've talked about a platform we talked about the partnership with acting how do you compete in the marketplace what's your unique advantage is it a case where you're sort of coming in with a platform and others are coming in with point products and you're differentiating that way I'm sure that's part of it but I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit specifically in terms of you know when you win why do you win right well I would say that as I talked a little bit earlier a lot of the big data companies that are out there are solving specific you know one-off problems and they're and they're really good at those problems they're they're going out and solving something specific for financial services something specific for government something specific for health care but when you have a platform you have to be did agnostic you have to go into any hitter genes environment and be able to expose those patterns so our unique advantage is to help those companies actually get a foundation under them that it deals with privacy deals with security reduces their their you know need to use professional services when they go into sort of organizations and conversely when you look at acting on ourselves where they go in across the infrastructure and attaching this data and doing the you know various analytics and we go on top of that to do you know deep analytics and expose this for application vendors and big data that kind of relationship is is really how we're piggybacking it so we're building solutions with a lot of partners even even some of the the likely suspects and big data that are mainly professional services now are looking to us to use the platform to get more out of the professional services people and win these deals that have repeatable technology so sort of new new new alliances and partners like a final question for you as we wrap up here given all your experience you've had in the industry we kind of pinch ourselves we've been around so long like we've seen the cycles before you've been at Microsoft the growth has been well documented companies story history and now as new leadership what is your vision for the future why are we such an interesting time what is the inflection point why is it so publicious why is it so hot there's a lot of growth that we were coming in the early segment give your personal perspective on why this time of these trends can be why is it so important why is there so much disruption why is there so much activity right so you know we came out of the 20th century with a big industry around computers and software and that was fabulous and relational databases took us so far we all know the exponential growth of data and you could talk about that and how it's impacting things but the reality is and we've all heard the quotes you know in the between the beginning of time and the end 2000 in the next you know a couple days will generate more data than you know all those years combined right so what is the real challenge the real challenge is that we have a growth of people we have a growth of industry around the world and lots of new ideas that leverage you know information and the challenge with generating data data is not necessarily information if you can't make use of it it's not information it's not knowledge it's not wisdom so all these you know talks about big data and the challenges with that is how do you go into any environment no matter what language no matter what data type no matter what protocol what no no matter what the infrastructure may be and expose and give an advantage to optimize that specific business and that's the challenge and that's where we're going with it with the 2020 plan if you will for all the companies out there in the exhibit hall strata you know there's always you know the startups are there you know and some will win some will lose it's kind of like the you know that expression when you go to college look to your left look to your right those people might not be there for the for the competitive nature of this market what is what is what does it mean to be successful what do these guys have to do to stay around some will tap out and and drop out of the race if you will in this market valuations are high the stakes are high great opportunity in the growth what do they need to do to be successful what does the company to do to really go the long haul well much like acting and let's use you coming together you need a team this is a big world a big data space and it takes more than one company to go solve these problems so that's my first piece of advice second is when you look at all the various analysts reports that are out there most of the the companies are tackles from professional services which is not necessarily repeatable so you need to take a lot of that knowledge and put it into your technology and your software and differentiate yourselves and so that's I think a key advantage and those who will succeed you know become the oracle if you will of the 21st century Michael thanks for joining us inside the queue we love the big idea is this what the queue is all about and we'd like to stream those ideas and knowledge if it's not being used it's not a knowledge the data is not being used as critical critical opportunity the growth is there great valuations great market opportunity this is the cube right back with our next guest after the short break