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COVID 19 Disruption: Microsoft Resources

The spread of the COVID-19 virus has impacted the lives of countless people around the world.

Our thoughts are, of course, with the families and loved ones of the victims, those who are suffering today, and the selfless caregivers who are working tirelessly to treat them and to eradicate this disease.

Beyond these, many more lives have been disrupted by the COVID-19 outbreak due to travel and public gathering restrictions, interruption to important services and the challenge of remaining productive while working from remote locations.

At Microsoft, we can empathize with this disruption as thousands of our employees are currently working remotely due to the outbreak, including many of our employees in the US.  In fact, I’d like to share a letter written by one of our employees, Lily Zheng, who has shared her experience working remotely in Shanghai.

Inspired by Lily’s story, we have been focusing on how we can help those who are facing the challenge of working in different ways and to ensure that organizations can continue forward despite these challenges.

Many organizations, agencies,  and learning institutions effectively accommodate high volume remote work today using Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft solutions.  We want to ensure that all of our customers are aware of these same solutions right now and that customers can access deployment, training and support resources their employees may need to begin quickly using them.

To help do this, we want to be clear that Teams is available to you. If you’re currently not licensed for Teams, we can provide you with a free six month offer of Office G1 that includes Microsoft Teams.

Additionally, here are resources that we are making available to help you get started right away:

AI for Healthcare
If your teams are working on any AI for Healthcare projects, we may be able to offer free Azure credits.
  • Donate Masks or other healthcare items – can’t do
  • Currently I can’t donate hardware (but if this is a need, please put the request in as you see the need arise. We are looking at ways of refurbishing hardware to release for critical needs)

Nothing is guaranteed, but if we don’t ask, we won’t get. I would be happy to engage and connect our community to the right resources at Microsoft.

Thank you for all that you are doing.

 

I hope that these resources are valuable to you in this challenging time.  If you’re interested in getting Microsoft Teams activated for your organization or have any questions about these offers, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

We plan to add more offers and resources like these in the coming weeks that you can follow here.

Thank you.

Sparking Technology in Wisconsin,

Michelle Schuler

Manager Microsoft TechSpark Wisconsin | Corporate, External, & Legal Affairs | Microsoft Corporation