MORGANTOWN, WV – M&S Consulting, an enterprise shared services and cloud systems integrator has achieved the Silver Solution and Verified Government Partner status with Atlassian, a leading provider of collaboration, development, and issue tracking software for teams. Since 2002, M&S has been delivering premier enterprise consulting solutions in commercial, government, and higher education. Now, they bring their proven expertise in DevOps, Agile, and ITSM, to continue advancing the power of collaboration through leading products including Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, Bitbucket, and more. We also bring critically important experience and expertise from building productive, effective, happy project teams for many … Read More
Growing Orthopedic Institute Gains Modernization, Security, and Flexibility through Migrating to the AWS Cloud
The Orthopaedic Institute of Ohio (OIO) faced the challenge of refreshing legacy hardware while planning for the increase in capacity of several upcoming acquisitions. To solve these challenges, OIO asked M&S Consulting to evaluate and create a strategy for its cloud alternative. We recommended Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a good fit for their needs and provided a strategy that would migrate over 90% of their servers to the cloud. The primary business applications for OIO are Patient Electronic Medical Records and Imaging solutions which are vital to the success of treatment. To support migrations, we created a set of … Read More
Accounting vs Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software
Today, businesses have to manage multiple types of data from multiple sources, all while managing a myriad of business processes. To meet these challenges, businesses rely on software to support their accounting and process requirements. In this article we will discuss the differences between software choices; specifically, Accounting software and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, as well as how this relates to the difference between “reporting” and “analytics”. Accounting software simply provides core financial information; basically, a snapshot of “what happened”. This software is tailored specifically for accounting, to be used by the Accounting and Finance departments. Enterprise Resource Planning … Read More
Thank you for joining the 2020 work-from-home experiment (whether you wanted to or not)
You already know the situation we’re in: we have all been plunged into the world’s largest work-from-home (WFH) experiment with very little time to adapt. This grand experiment has changed the rules for almost every working situation. Workers and companies that already had the ability for effective remote work are finding new challenges, now that seemingly everyone has joined the party. We have been refining the way our company works remotely since we began in 2002. Knowing how to get started, what’s important, and having the ability to reduce friction for your workforce will help you navigate through this time … Read More
The Big Shift: Converting Academia to Online Education
Higher education institutions have shuttered doors and shifted to remote learning for the remainder of the spring semester. Although students and parents will give most institutions a pass for this semester’s technological struggles, discontent will become increasingly vocalized as new, fully online sessions begin. Meanwhile, instructors that are struggling to effectively migrate their content to a usable online format likely will not have time to focus on pedagogy, leading to dissatisfied students and instructors, resulting in attrition among both, and ultimately impacting an institution’s livelihood. The success or struggle of many academic institutions in the wake of COVID-19 may depend … Read More
We care and want to help
How are you feeling? Do you and your organization have what you need? We understand that the current situation has likely given rise to additional stresses and concerns for you, your family, your community, and even your organization. We’ve been working under the same pressures and wanted to give you some updates on M&S. Although this situation is certainly unique, the ability to work remotely isn’t new to us and we are happy to leverage our experience to help you through the transition. We’ve worked hard to equip our team with an established and robust infrastructure that has been successfully … Read More
Develop a Better Data Sharing and Integration Strategy
Today’s higher education institutions are facing a multitude of challenges around data analysis, security, and increasingly hybrid architectures. The issue of how to balance ongoing security challenges while connecting cloud and on-premises applications is common across institutions. These challenges may lead many organizations to develop an integration strategy to help in the alignment of these increasingly complex architectures. However, limiting the focus to only integrations can become overly technically focused. Instead of developing an integration strategy, institutions should instead take a holistic approach to data sharing and develop an information strategy. As information is a valuable asset for organizations and … Read More
Taking Advantage of Our Higher Education AWS Standard Plays (Begin Your Journey to the Cloud)
Is your institution moving to the cloud? Are you adopting a cloud strategy, such as Cloud First, where the institution takes the plunge and jumps in with both feet, or perhaps an Opportunistic Cloud or Experimental Cloud strategy where they test the waters with select projects? Perhaps your institution has instead elected to stay out of the cloud entirely and to simply watch from a distance. Each of these strategies can be appropriate in the right context, but adopting a cloud strategy that works for your institution should be a priority. With any of these strategies, you need to ensure … Read More