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Starting with CMD 2018, we are now offering a new way to implement CMD in your ministry! CMD can now be a fully hosted church ministry software solution. In addition to the pure convenience of letting our secure, remote servers provide hosting for both the CMD software and your data, our platform allows Mac computers to connect and use the very same CMD software that Windows-based computers have always been able to do! What are the advantages of the fully hosted CMD over the way you’ve been using CMD up till now? Here are the advantages and specifics: Now You Can Use both PCs and Mac Computers with CMD! You can access your CMD from virtually any PC or Mac computer with a good connection to the internet. You only need to install a small “thin client” module on your PC or Mac, and you gain access to your CMD and your data through the thin client. CMD itself does not have to be installed on your computer! Though CMD is still a Windows-based application, the framework of our fully hosted platform allows a Mac computer to run CMD without having to install Windows on your Mac and it works perfectly! So both Macs and PCs within a given ministry setting can now all connect to the same data and take full advantage of what CMD has to offer. Though we are still waiting on our data engine provider to finish their port of their data engine to Mac format so that we can produce the native Mac version, this fully hosted solution allows Mac users to begin using CMD right now in advance of when the native Mac version can finally be made available. For anyone who has found setting up their local system to host CMD’s data under our current networked option to be difficult or time consuming, the new fully hosted option will be a huge relief. Never again will you have to modify router settings, subscribe to Dyn.com or secure a static IP address for your church, fuss with your firewall or antivirus settings, or mess with any other issues to get your CMD data accessible to other computers. And never again will you have to be concerned about a change in your system that could throw off access to CMD. Each computer in your ministry that needs to use CMD will be able to access your own CMD program and data directly without going through a host computer at your church. All that needs to be put on each computer that will access CMD is a small “thin client” program. When run, this small program gives you convenient access to your CMD program and data on the fully hosted, secure remote servers. All you do is log in to the service, which takes you to your private CMD space where you log in to CMD as you always have. Just takes a few seconds and you are in! We Setup and Configure CMD for You When you decide to start using this service, we will do all the setup work for you, import your data, and create your user names and passwords (that you specify). All you will need to do is just start using CMD! When we have an update to CMD ready, we will automatically place the update on your secure CMD space, and make any changes necessary to your data to work with the new update. And since the subscription service is ongoing, you won’t have to worry about a new update the next year. It’s always automatically incorporated into the regular, low monthly cost for the service. So you always have the latest version of CMD without the bother of ever installing any updates. You just keep using CMD! Since CMD is now fully hosted, never again will you have to update all the computers that use CMD since all computers now access CMD directly and don’t require the CMD to be installed on a local computer. That means there’s nothing for you to update ever again! Not only does the server system itself make nightly full backups of everything, we will download your CMD backups files on a regular basis and place them in our secure storage. That gives you a double safety net for your data. Of course, you can also download your own backups files for a third place of safety if you wish. This means that even a catastrophic computer failure at your end won’t affect your CMD data in the least. You Maintain Ownership of Your Data at All Times Even though your live data will reside on the secure, fully hosted servers, the data is always yours. We don’t own it, you do. We will provide the data to you any time that you request it. We have partnered with another church software provider only for purposes of making use of their hosting platform (which allows Mac access as well). Our partner provides this same service for a number of other church software providers, and they are fully equipped to handle many more, should others request to use their services. Their system is a full-on professional hosting system with some 150 server blades with all appropriate data protection and backup power systems in place. They have a full-time staff that maintains their systems, and they do a daily reboot (usually around 3:00 am) to make sure their servers are running in pristine condition. When we set you up for the fully hosted service, a brand-new virtual server will be created for just your church’s use. When you log in, you cannot see anyone else’s server space, and others cannot see yours. As a practical matter, it’s just like having a separate computer of your own just for CMD. It’s the only thing that will be running on it! You will be allocated as much disk and memory space as will be needed for your CMD program and data. Our provider partner will not have access to your CMD’s passwords and data. Virtually all of CMD’s data tables are encrypted, and are only unlocked for use when you log in to CMD successfully. So even though your data is on their servers, it is in space dedicated just for your use, and only you will know your user names and passwords. Of course, we at Software for Ministry will have access so that we can install your updates, import your data, and help you troubleshoot any issues that you may have. But no one outside of those to whom you provide access information to your CMD and we here at SFM will be able to even know you have a CMD program installed and running in your secure server space. CMD is surprisingly quick to use even though it’s remotely hosted. While it’s not quite as fast as having both CMD and data on the same local computer operates, it’s surprisingly agile and easily fast enough to use. And, the fully hosted solution is actually much faster to use than remote computers accessing the data from offsite using our current means of remote connections. What Gets Installed on Your Computer No more will CMD have to be installed on any computer in your ministry. Since the actual program along with the data is located on the secure remote servers, all you need to do is to connect to it. You connect to your private CMD space using a small program (called a “thin client” program) that you download and install on your computer. When it runs on your PC or Mac, you provide the host connection info (which we will give you when we get you going), which is saved onto your computer. From there, a small login dialog appears where you will enter the user name and password to access your dedicated space on the hosting platform, and then you start up CMD using your CMD user name and password. It only takes a few seconds to log in and get going with CMD. With our fully hosted service, gone forever is the process of installing CMD or any updates since we take care of that for you. All you need is the thin client, which we will provide for you when we set you up. You can opt out of using our fully hosted option any time you wish. Since the data belongs to you, we will make sure you get a copy of your data if you decide to discontinue the service. If you wish to continue using CMD with your data on your local or networked computer without being connected to the fully hosted service, you will need to purchase an update to the current version.
Recovery from Computer Failures It is not uncommon to experience a catastrophic computer failure at some point. If you are self-hosting CMD, and you have not made regular backups or if you have not placed them on external media, you will lose all your CMD data and will have to start from scratch. With our fully hosted solution, all you have to do is download and run the thin client program on your new or repaired computer, reenter your host connection info, and CMD is immediately available again with all your data still intact. Since CMD and your data are safely hosted on secure, remote servers, losing a local computer has no impact on the safety of your CMD program and data. In keeping with our ministry philosophy, we have priced this service well under every other provider of whom we are aware because we want ministries of any size to be able to afford our software. This fully hosted service comes with a monthly cost to ourselves and is based on the number of concurrent connections to CMD that are made by each ministry setting. There are two options for payment:
One reason we prefer the smaller monthly charge is that it will likely make it simpler for you to just maintain an ongoing subscription much like your monthly phone bill or internet charges rather than having to go back to your board each year and ask permission for an update. The single annual check will seem large to some, but a small monthly charge just becomes part of your church’s regular routine. It’s also likely easier from a cash-flow perspective. But the choice is yours. The actual monthly subscription cost depends on the number of concurrently connected users you need to provide for. You may have many users, but likely you don’t need to provide for a connection for each of them unless they are very actively using CMD on a daily basis. For example, a ministry setting where 5 people are regular CMD users may only need 3 concurrent connections, which means that any 3 of the 5 can be on CMD at once. If you find that you constantly bump up against your available connections, you can add more at any time. You’ll notice in the cost scale below, that as you add more connections, the price per connection lowers somewhat. All prices are monthly for concurrent connections in USD:
If you’d like to demo what it’s like to use the fully hosted CMD, click here to download the file needed for a live demo of an actual CMD program that’s been installed on the fully hosted platform. If you have any additional questions you’d like to ask us about this important new service, please contact us at info@softwareforministry.com. Ready to Move Ahead? If you are ready to subscribe to the fully hosted CMD, click here to start your subscription.
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