Monday, November 29, 2010

Lesotho Receives Container from MedShare with help of UPS and Aidmatrix Network

Congatulations to Medshare on their recent shipment to Lesotho. Aidmatrix is proud to partner with Medshare on such efforts as part of the Aidmatrix International Transportation Portal.



On Wednesday, November 17, 2010, a 40-foot container of medical humanitarian aid for Lesotho was loaded and shipped out of Medshare’s Western Regional Distribution Center. Through the Aidmatrix Network, a foundation that connects donors and relief organizations, UPS generously provided in-kind shipping of the container from California to the South African port. Lesotho is a tiny country in Southern Africa that actually has the 3rd highest HIV/AIDs rate in the world. The majority of the 2 million people living in Lesotho live in conditions of extreme poverty, and the rural hospitals and clinics lack basic medical supplies to care for patients.

Read the story on MedShare's website
Read the story on MedShare's blog

The New Airlink Informational Website Has Been Launched

Congrats to Airlink on their new information website. Please check out it at www.airlink-info.org. Aidmatrix is proud to be a partner of Airlink and to be able to donate this new service to this great effort. Thank you to the Aidmatrix supporters who helped make this happen.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Aidmatrix Deploys Microsoft's Windows Azure Platform (Phase 2)

Aidmatrix recently deployed our second production solution on Microsoft’s Window’s Azure Platform. This application is a Program Metrics and Evaluation solution used by one of our partners to track their clients and the humanitarian services these clientS receive at approximately 1,000 locations across the U.S. This application was an existing .Net 2.0 application running SQL 2005 which we ported to .Net 3.5, Azure SQL and Azure Compute. We migrated this application to confirm that the migration effort was straightforward and would take less than the person-hours needed to buy, build and implement a set of redundant web and SQL servers. The results of this effort confirmed that we will realize cost savings when porting applications to Azure as well as for new applications. The one major lesson learned from this effort is that there is an opportunity to develop a framework to simplify system monitoring, resource monitoring, data back and backup monitoring. We are working on this next and expect that once this is done - the monitoring and backup setup and operational costs will be lower than our in-house costs today. Congrats to the Aidmatrix team and thanks to all the Microsoft folks who volunteered their expertise to help us make this happen.

Michael Ross
Vice President - Delivery

Monday, November 15, 2010

Feeding America Launches its first Mobile Enabled Application in Partnership with Aidmatrix

With today’s workforce, mobility and access is key to employee productivity and effectiveness. Feeding America partnered with Aidmatrix to create a mobile enabled version of their ChoiceSystem – an on-line closed bidding and auction system that allows over 800+ users to bid on loads of products. This solution was launched into production on November 1, 2010. The joint team worked together to optimize the critical functionality for use on a smartphone. The members can view the loads available for bidding and see the results of the auction as to which bids they won or lost. Congratulations to Feeding America on this successful launch. Aidmatrix is honored to be able to partner with Feeding America on this innovative and socially impactful initiative.



David Grossnickle from Food Bank for New York City, Bronx, NY
“The ChoiceMobile application allows me to be more mobile to meet with food donors. By using ChoiceMobile I do not have to schedule my time around accessing the Choice System. More time spent interacting with current and potential food donors results in more food distributed to our programs."

Migdalia Otero from Island Harvest, Mineola, NY
“The experience was wonderful. The thought that I will not miss an offering anymore is exciting and the convenience of “shopping” while out on a call or meeting is fabulous. Thank you Feeding America for keeping up with Technology you get an “A+” for that.”

Maria Hough, Vice President of Logistic, Feeding America
“Our members wear many hats in their daily activities, ChoiceMobile gives them the flexibility to perform their jobs.”

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Windows Azure Platform Discovery Event

Michael Ross, VP Delivery spoke about the Windows Azure Platform Discovery Event for ISVs on November 4 about Aidmatrix’s efforts on the Microsoft Azure platform. This event was designed to help ISVs learn more about Microsoft Azure and Michael shared information about Aidmatrix’s experience in researching, developing and deploying solutions on Azure. Learn more about Aidmatrix and Azure here and here.

Read more about the event.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Aidmatrix Helps Implement Online Warehouse for CARE Zimbabwe

I recently returned from Masvingo, Zimbabwe where I helped implement the Aidmatrix Online Warehouse solution for CARE Zimbabwe. This is the first of several warehouses where they plan to implement our solution. There were 13 people attending the training – half from the next warehouse that will go-live. It was delightful having such an attentive group – all eager to learn and play with the software. Every morning, they were all in their seats ready to go - well before the scheduled time.


I also learned first-hand the importance of us having an off-line version that can be used when the internet is down. Electricity in Zimbabwe cannot be taken for granted. In fact, there were scheduled black-outs every Thursday – but we also encountered several unexpected ones. Back-up generators were not dependable. Even when power was not a problem, the internet services were not reliable. It was a new experience for me to be without internet and lights.


I found the CARE team highly professional with their logistics knowledge. They all understood the role technology plays. It was also fun seeing all of them going to their FaceBook accounts during breaks. At the end of the 2 weeks, the logistics supervisor, Juliet, said “Aidmatrix is really going to help us move to the next level of performance in our warehouse”.

Shari Temple
Managing Director - Aidmatrix Europe