This time last year, many of us were happy and hopeful, celebrating the turn of the decade and looking forward to a brighter future. Now as we approach the New Year, it’s hard to believe just how arduous of a year 2020 has been for so many.
Be it the lives lost to COVID-19, the worldwide quarantine that forced us to be locked inside our homes, or the rising racial tension in the U.S., to say it’s been a rotten year would be an understatement.
And yet, as we sit back and reflect on how we overcame these challenges as a global community, the human spirit shines brightly through the darkness. 2020 has forced us to take account of what really matters, what we’re thankful for, and what we’re capable of.
For us here at AvePoint, here are three things that we are thankful for in 2020:
1. Technology Empowering Us to Connect With People We Love and Care For
This year we’ve spent more time with our families, friends and colleagues. We’ve risen to the challenge of living through quarantine by getting creative and holding drive-by birthday parties and virtual events thanks to technology.
Though we’ve all missed seeing our colleagues at the office, being able to conduct meetings through Microsoft Teams and instantly share files via SharePoint has made things much more bearable. It was great to see how our colleagues pivoted to work remotely with Microsoft 365.
2. Opportunity to Serve and Make an Impact to Our Community
From supporting the Red Cross during the Australian Bushfires & Typhoon Ulysses that hit the Philippines to standing up against racial injustice in the US to lead a technology drive to support underserved communities, we are grateful that we are able to contribute and help to those who are in need.
As philanthropy, inclusion, diversity, equality, and allyship is in our DNA, we will always extend our helping hand when the need arises.
3. Enable Our Customers to Effectively Transition to This New World of Work
With an unprecedented surge in Microsoft Teams daily active users hitting milestone after milestone in this new way of collaboration while working remotely, AvePoint was able to quickly pivot strategy to best serve customers.
Offering free solutions with our #WFHReady kit through end of year, and packaging ready to go services to help customers quickly adapt, and prevent sprawl, AvePoint led the charge in taking the stress out of a very stressful time for many organizations.
While an easy decision for us to offer free products and services, our return is the commitment of our customers and their successful deployments and adoption. For example, METC Metropolitan Council was able to respond to COVID-19 Work from Home Orders by deploying AvePoint Cloud Governance simultaneously with Microsoft Teams. Washington State’s King County was also able to leverage Microsoft 365 to work remotely, and even across the world, Australia’s Moorabool Shire was able to respond to COVID-19 by expanding digital service options to drive costs down.
Not only has this year made us take a long, hard look in the mirror, but it’s proved just how adaptable we can be when the time calls for it.
All this culminated in our $2B USD valuation, built on community and the intersection of creating software that matters. We are grateful for our employees and team for consistently delivering mission-critical solutions in the face of anything.
In short, we all managed to do better than we might’ve expected this year, be it personally, professionally, or as a people in general. 2020 has been a horrible year for many, but we can look back on it now and glean valuable lessons that we can carry with us into 2021 and beyond.
How about you? What are you thankful for?
