Today we are announcing important news to help our users and distributors to better cope with our software acquisition, activation, and learning processes during this difficult time. We do hope that everyone is staying safe, and we are thankful for the important work that you are doing in serving your communities.

TEMPORARY WORK-FROM-HOME LICENSES

With a lot of our users working from home, many are not able to access their workstation or move the dongle and installation to a computer they are using at home. During this time we want to help however we can in balancing solving cases and keeping safe.  For this reason, we are offering to our users who have a license with an active SMS (software maintenance and support) plan, the possibility to further install our software on other machines and activate it with a temporary digital license that will work until the end of May.

In order to request a work-from-home license, please contact our technical support, indicating your dongle serial and the email address of the user who needs access to the license.

If you are not a user yet, or your SMS has expired, don’t worry, feel free to contact us anyways and we’ll evaluate options to best help your organization.

ONLINE TRAINING

In order to continue to provide training to our users during this current state of emergency where travel is impossible, we are very excited to announce that we are now offering official online training sessions. The training will be live with one of our experienced trainers. We have already added the first classes to our training schedule, with more coming soon.

DIGITAL LICENSES

Effective immediately, we are providing digital licenses for all our products. Digital licenses will be our default option going forward.

Currently, most of our products have been protected by a USB dongle. However, shipping a physical component for our software is becoming increasingly complicated and risky at the moment:

• We need to ship the parcel. We are working from home, but some of us need to go to the office to prepare the dongle shipment and to deliver it to the courier. If there are no alternatives, this can be done, but I’d rather have our colleagues stay at home for their safety and the safety of our community. Please note that Italy now is in full lock-down, most industrial and commercial activities must be closed if employees are not working from home, and we are allowed to go out only for strict necessities or emergencies.
• The customer (end user and/or distributor) needs to receive the parcel. Similar risks as above for our customers. With millions of people around the world starting to work from home, finding someone available to pick up the parcel is another complication.
• The shipping may be delayed. People can’t go out, so they are buying a lot online and couriers are overwhelmed with the amount of merchandise they need to move, clearly causing further risks for their personnel. We see that several of our shipments are experiencing quite a bit of delay, compared to our normally very efficient turnaround time.
• Users need to work from home. Several of our users are currently working from home, and accessing the dongle or the computer they left in the office can be a problem if they need to use our products.

It has been a rather sudden decision, but for all the reasons above we decided to switch to digital licenses as the default license for the time being. What does it mean?

• We don’t need to ship anything. Everything will be accessible electronically.
• Faster access to your license. As soon as we process the order, you should be able to download and install the license.
• Installation or activation wherever you are. Whether you are in the office, on the field, or at home, you can download and activate the software without the need for the dongle as long as you have available seats on your license.

Please note that USB dongle licenses will still be available as an option, but only if explicitly requested when placing an order: by default we will provide digital licenses. If you really need the dongle, you need to clearly specify this request and you should be prepared for the fact that shipping can take longer than usual for the next weeks or months.

As usual, if you have any questions on digital licenses, temporary work-from-home licenses, or need more information about online training, please feel free to contact us.

Be safe everybody.

A lot of our users, partners, and friends reached out to ask how we are doing during this difficult moment with COVID-19 in Italy. Thank you for thinking and caring about us, this means a lot to us. In general, the situation is quite surreal. We are allowed to go out just for groceries and other necessary items, or to go to work, where working from home is not possible. 

At Amped, we are doing everything possible to keep us, our families and communities safe.

Even before the increase of cases and the complete lock-down, as a precautionary measure, I asked everybody to work from home as much as possible. We have all been working from home for three weeks already. At the moment, everyone in Amped and our families are OK, and we are doing everything possible to keep it this way. They say the peak in Italy will be this week, so in our “virtual” office we are all keeping in touch with frequent calls and funny memes in chat, just to keep it easy in this difficult time.

Because of all of this, we had to put on hold various events and training sessions that were already scheduled. We are monitoring the situation for the ones coming up in the next months, but for now, and for later, our main priority is the health and safety of our team and our users.

We know our users were excited to attend the Amped User Day we scheduled in Birmingham, UK on September 21, but unfortunately, we decided that it would be better for everyone if we also postponed this event for a later, safer time. We will let you know when we set a new date for it.

Other than that, we are fully functional: software development, sales operations, and technical support operations are working as usual. If we have conference calls, you might hear some children screaming in the background… but that’s about it.

While I hope it will not happen, I am truly afraid the virus will spread in many other countries like it did in Italy. Please be careful and do not underestimate the risks and the recommendations provided by your local governments.

Be safe everybody, #andratuttobene #everythingwillbefine

Take care,
Martino