Maxava Puts Up Another $50,000 For iFoundation Grants

July 7, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

High availability software vendor Maxava has generously opened up its checkbook and for the fourth year in a row has committed funds for the Maxava iFoundation to help support efforts to bolster the IBM i community.

The iFoundation was set up by the New Zealand company, which now has a presence around the globe, four years ago because the company’s managers wanted to actually do something to promote the community. Specifically, iFoundation makes grants to not-for-profit organizations promote the IBM i platform and support activities that are involved with the exchanging of knowledge, skills, or ideas about the IBM i platform. The grants are made up to $2,000 in size and are often used to defer costs for hosting educational conferences and workshops, to pay speaker expenses at user group and other meetings, to do marketing of the IBM i platform, or support collaboration between local businesses and local colleges and universities.

“Maxava is exclusively committed to the IBM i,” Allan Campbell, CEO of Maxava, said in a statement announcing the fourth round of funding for iFoundation. “We established the iFoundation to encourage the continuing growth of the IBM i community and the development of the people that operate within it, and we are delighted to extend our support through the Maxava iFoundation for another year.”

“Local user groups are non-profit organizations and definitely don’t have deep pockets,” explains Laura Ubelhor from Southeast Michigan IBM i User Group (SEMIUG). “It is important for members to have an opportunity to learn and grow. We are grateful for the funds we have received from the Maxava iFoundation, which have significantly impacted the learning opportunities for our local user group members and also for students: the ever-so-important next generation of resource.”

We have profiled Ubelhor’s efforts on many fronts over the years to support the IBM i community, and Maxava has profiled how SEMIUG has used iFoundation funds to help user group members get hands on experience with RPG Free, SQL, PHP, Web Query, Navigator, CLP, Ruby on Rails, and application modernization tools from Profound Logic on a IBM i machine the group acquired called the iDevcloud box by the user group.

Maxava also called out the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association (WMCPA), which got a grant last time to help finance a “Women in IT” day in conjunction with its annual spring conference.

“The purpose of this day was to help young women develop an interest in information technology as a career, and to allow women who currently hold careers in IT to share their experiences, and interact with other female IT professionals,” says Jim Buck, president of WMCPA and a familiar voice here in The Four Hundred and throughout other parts of the IBM i community. “The event was a success with over 50 attendees. The WMCPA board has decided to hold a similar event in conjunction with our 30th spring conference in March 2015.”

It is a pity that more vendors do not make similar kinds of donations, or better still, work with Maxava to pool their resources to make the pot of money even larger than the $50,000 that Maxava has ponied up for the past four years now.

It is also a pity that this notice came after we had completed our prior edition of The Four Hundred and we have been on hiatus until this week, which was after the June 30 deadline for applications. We didn’t know about it until we were already done and off to take a much deserved break. But, that said, Maxava deserves much credit for continuing to support the IBM i community. We should all put it on our calendars to look for the iFoundation announcement in mid-June of each year and remember that there is always a June 30 deadline. Maxava also deserves a lot of credit for its continuing support of the publications here at IT Jungle. Without its financial support, and that of many other advertisers of course, the service we provide could not exist. We are all, in fact, part of the same community and what is crystal clear is that Maxava understands precisely what that word means.