In case you have not yet heard, the new office of Covenant Technologies has produced a variety of relevant technology resources at affordable prices. Convergence 365 was unveiled it at Midwinter. Covenant Offices Director of IT, Joe Geary, states: “Partnering with Convergence 365 has created an exciting and unique opportunity to deploy numerous enterprise-grade technologies across the ECC, in hope of increasing our missional effectiveness serving Jesus Christ.”
Check it out for yourself; I’ve included this link for those of you involved with the communication and data management technologies of your church: http://www.convergence365.com/
I wasn’t at the Mindwinter presentation so I went to the above link. However, I can’t figure out what this is all about.
Report This Comment
04.05.11 at 12:09 pm
All of our churches have technology needs. Historically, each church has been on its own to explore various technology solutions and figure out how best to deploy them. When standing individually, each church has no negotiation power to drive down price and increase benefit. When standing together, as a denomination of 800+ churches, there is an opportunity to negotiate price discounts, create opportunities that would have otherwise not been available to smaller churches, increase vendor responsiveness, and consolidate resources to investigate and support a wide variety of technology solutions. So … being in information technology together is a good thing.
While the Information Technology group at Covenant Offices (i.e. Covenant Technologies) is large enough to explore technology solutions that are needed across all of our churches, and large enough to negotiate the best price with various technology vendors, it is not large enough to directly support 800+ churches. That’s where Convergence 365 comes in. Convergence 365 was founded by the owners of two very successful firms (one being a telecommunications company and the other a hosting/cloud company) with a heart for serving Christ. Convergence 365 was formed for one purpose: To serve as the support arm of Covenant Technologies, in helping our churches with technology.
As such, the Covenant Technologies group (at Covenant Offices) is responsible for:
* Identifying Common Technology Needs
* Evaluating Various Vendor Solutions
* Negotiating Best-Price / Best-Support Contracts
* Managing Vendor Performance
* Monitoring Proposals
* Directing Convergence 365 Support Activities
And Convergence 365 is responsible for:
* Providing a Single Point of Support (for all technologies we deploy)
* Managing Licenses
* Creating Proposals
* Coordination across all Vendors
* Implementing Solutions (hosting / backups / training / installation / support)
The key objectives to this new cross-denominational technology focus are to:
* Provide solutions that are less-expensive than what churches could individually attain.
* Ensure that most products have no up-front costs.
* Provide solutions that have favorable terms of use.
* Leverage vendor partnerships to provide a high degree of personal care and support.
* Free-up resources and increase connections, allowing churches and the denomination to increase their focus on Christ’s calling.
For more information about the Covenant Technologies / Convergence 365 relationship, please visit: http://convergence365.com/covtech/
For more information as to the initial set of technology solutions currently being offered, please visit: http://convergence365.com/solutions/
Merely click on the “Take the next step” link under any solution you are interested in, and someone will be in touch with you to discuss in detail.
I hope that helps,
Joe Geary
Director of Information Technology
The Evangelical Covenant Church
Report This Comment
04.11.11 at 4:12 pm