Empowering Non-Profits: How MCC Expanded Network Visibility with Obkio’s NPM Tool for NPOs

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) has been a valued Obkio customer, using the network performance monitoring tool to ensure reliable connectivity across their global operations. However, as a non-profit organization, budget constraints made it difficult to expand their deployment.

Recognizing this challenge, Obkio took the opportunity to launch its NPO Plan—a program designed to provide non-profits with cutting-edge network monitoring at a fraction of the cost. This initiative has since helped MCC and many other NPOs enhance their network visibility, optimize performance, and continue their vital work while keeping overhead costs low.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is a 105-year-old non-profit organization that works in some 50 countries. Owned by Anabaptist church denominations in Canada and the U.S., MCC focuses on relief, development, and peacebuilding efforts, often in regions affected by conflict and crisis. They primarily work with local organizations, providing financial aid, emergency supplies, and skilled professionals to support humanitarian initiatives.

MCC first discovered Obkio’s Network Performance Monitoring Tool while searching for a reliable network performance monitoring solution to support their global operations.

With most of their work located in low-income countries where telecom services are unreliable, maintaining a stable network was critical for MCC’s staff to coordinate efforts and communicate effectively.

After implementing Obkio’s solution, MCC quickly saw its value in identifying network issues and optimizing performance across their locations. However, as a non-profit, MCC had to prioritize its funding—70% of which comes from donations—toward its humanitarian work.

When they wanted to renew and expand their Obkio’s services, budget constraints posed a challenge, even with the discounted rate they already had. That’s when Obkio’s team came to them with a solution.

At the time MCC reached out, Obkio was in the process of reviewing its pricing structure. Recognizing that many non-profits face similar budget constraints, Obkio saw an opportunity to give back in a meaningful way. Instead of volunteering time—something difficult for a tech company to do—they decided to support non-profits by offering their network performance monitoring solution at a significantly reduced cost.

This led to the creation of Obkio’s NPO Plan, designed to help organizations like MCC access enterprise-grade monitoring tools without straining their budgets. By reducing the financial barrier, Obkio helps non-profits improve their network visibility, troubleshoot performance issues, and ensure seamless operations across all their locations—including those in underserved regions with unreliable telecom infrastructure.

Since launching the NPO Plan, Obkio has partnered with numerous non-profits, empowering them with the tools they need to focus on their mission while keeping IT overhead costs low. The program is now available on Obkio’s website, allowing any non-profit organization to inquire and take advantage of this initiative.

With a global presence spanning 50 countries and 1,200 users, MCC needed a scalable and efficient way to monitor network performance across its sites. Initially, they had a minimal deployment of Obkio’s monitoring solution, but after seeing the value it provided, they decided to expand its use.

"Deploying Obkio was remarkably easy. For our internal Windows computers, it was just a matter of installing the Windows Monitoring Agents, and Obkio took care of the rest. With minimal effort, we now have complete visibility into our global network performance."

Sam Sawatzky, Director of IT for User Experience, MCC

MCC installed Obkio’s Monitoring Agents primarily on Windows machines—some on office servers and others on retired workstations repurposed for network monitoring. For international offices outside North America, they used Lenovo IoT smart servers running Windows 10 IoT, ensuring continuous and reliable monitoring. MCC also set up four Public Monitoring Agents, one in Canada, one in Asia, one in Africa, and one in the Latin America & Caribbean (LACA) region, to further enhance their visibility over the Internet.

With Obkio handling the data collection, visualization, alerting and troubleshooting, MCC was able to seamlessly integrate a comprehensive network monitoring solution without disrupting operations.

Today, MCC has deployed Obkio in 34 locations worldwide, providing much-needed visibility into their network performance while ensuring that their IT expenses remain in check. They’re planning to continue the deployment to all 50 locations.

For MCC, reliable Internet connectivity is essential to supporting their humanitarian efforts. Some of their offices are located in conflict areas where telecom infrastructure is poor, making it difficult for staff to communicate and coordinate relief projects effectively.

MCC's network is built on a Meraki infrastructure, which offered some level of monitoring, but not the granularity they needed for effective troubleshooting. While they could see basic uptime metrics, they lacked the data to pinpoint and solve network issues.

By deploying Obkio, MCC now has complete visibility of all their sites worldwide—no matter how remote or lacking in on-site IT specialists or network professionals. MCC uses Obkio primarily to monitor their Internet and telecom services across global sites, especially in areas where the telecom infrastructure is often poor.

With Obkio, MCC can now:

• Gain a clear understanding of which sites have the weakest connections and where upgrades are needed to ensure better telecom services for their teams.
• Continuously track Internet and telecom performance to spot connectivity issues before they impact critical operations.
• Identify problem areas such as slow downloads, failed video calls, and other connectivity issues, ensuring staff can work without disruption.
• Use data-driven insights to advocate for necessary network upgrades, ensuring that poor network conditions don’t hinder their mission.
• Ensure they’re receiving the telecom services they’ve paid for from their Service Provider, guaranteeing the necessary connectivity for their teams.
• Monitor and maintain operational efficiency, enabling MCC to deliver vital aid and support in areas with challenging network conditions while keeping costs low.

Using Obkio, MCC has gained full visibility into the performance of their network, helping them make data-driven decisions and ensure that connectivity issues don’t interfere with their mission.

Obkio's Network Performance Monitoring tool has proven to be an invaluable resource for MCC, providing important network and Internet insights that help improve their global operations while maintaining overhead costs, so they can focus on using their funding on what really matters.

The primary benefits MCC gains from using Obkio include:

• Added visibility into all their worldwide sites: As they don’t have local IT teams at each site, Obkio allows them to monitor and troubleshoot issues remotely, ensuring that no site is left without the attention it needs.
• Ease of Use: The platform is intuitive and easy to integrate into daily workflows, allowing MCC’s IT team to focus on network performance without being overwhelmed by complexity.
• Remote troubleshooting capabilities: With limited on-site IT support in certain regions, Obkio’s tools provide MCC’s IT team with the insights they need to manage and resolve network problems from afar. This is especially helpful when working to diagnose intermittent issues with ISPs located where there are no onsite technical staff.
• Data to compare telecom services with their ISP: The ability to measure network performance against the services provided by their ISP allows MCC to ensure they’re getting what they’re paying for. This data helps them advocate for better service when needed.
• Cost optimization: With Obkio’s insights, MCC can identify areas where they need to invest in higher-capacity Internet services, ensuring their budget is spent wisely without overspending.

The added visibility and remote troubleshooting capabilities ensure that MCC’s IT team is equipped with the right tools to keep staff productive. This support is crucial in ensuring their IT infrastructure is strong enough to handle their demanding humanitarian work. By keeping operational costs low and performance high, MCC can continue to focus on its mission without network issues slowing them down.

"At MCC, we have a strong culture of cost efficiency, and until now, each country office has managed its own Internet contracts independently. However, with the visibility Obkio provides, we can now identify when connectivity issues are impacting our operations. For instance, it’s no longer acceptable for a team to endure poor internet due to budget constraints in a specific country. Obkio enables us to troubleshoot problems and redirect resources to improve our telecom services and ensure smooth operations globally."

Sam Sawatzky, Director of IT for User Experience, MCC

Ultimately, Obkio helps MCC optimize their technology investments, ensuring the best possible service and performance without compromising on their mission to support those in need around the globe.

Exciting new features are on the horizon for MCC as part of Obkio’s expanding Network Performance Monitoring features. While MCC is planning to deploy Obkio in even more of their locations, they’re also able to benefit from new and improved features.

One of the upcoming features is Microsoft Teams Monitoring, which is set to be released very soon. While Obkio already offers Microsoft Teams monitoring, the upcoming update is designed to take it to the next level.

MCC has about 400 people relying on Microsoft Teams as their main telephone line. These users are accustomed to the reliability of traditional phone lines, so when issues arise—especially voice-related problems—they can quickly identify and voice concerns. The new Microsoft Teams monitoring will provide MCC with deeper insights into their network's performance, specifically related to Teams calls, making it easier to pinpoint and address any disruptions.

Another key feature that will significantly benefit MCC is the improvement of Obkio Vision: Visual Traceroute tool with automatic correlation. Many of MCC’s sites only have access to Level 1 support staff, who typically lack the in-depth network expertise needed to interpret complex data. With this new feature, MCC will be able to analyze the data more easily and gain actionable insights. The feature will not only help MCC understand the root causes of connectivity issues but also guide them through the next steps to resolve problems efficiently, without requiring advanced network knowledge on-site.

These upcoming updates will further empower MCC to provide better services to their teams across the globe and continue their essential humanitarian work with even fewer roadblocks.

MCC’s partnership with Obkio has significantly enhanced their ability to monitor and optimize network performance across their global sites, ensuring their teams can continue their critical humanitarian efforts without network disruptions.

By leveraging Obkio’s easy-to-deploy, cost-effective Network Performance Monitoring tool, MCC now has full visibility into the network and telecom performance of the world site sites, helping them to troubleshoot issues remotely and make data-driven decisions about where to invest in better Internet capacity.

Obkio’s NPO plan has played an invaluable role in helping MCC balance cost efficiency with the performance needed to carry out their mission, making it an essential tool for both their IT team and the larger organization. Through this collaboration, MCC can ensure that their teams around the world stay connected and continue making a positive impact in communities facing adversity.

Are you an NPO looking for Network Performance Monitoring to improve your IT operations?

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