The Toy Mountain Campaign is an annual holiday drive held in coordination with the Salvation Army, Bell Media and other corporate sponsors. Now in its 23rd year, Toy Mountain has provided toys to countless families in need enabling their children to share in the joy of the holiday season.

In the months of November and December, Canadians across the country are challenged to "Help build a mountain of toys!" as the campaign is featured on CTV's national news broadcast.

In a departure from the usual gift-buying office traditions like "Secret Santa", the AVAware team has chosen to initiate a new tradition to celebrate the holiday season. Instead of buying gifts for each other, everyone decided to purchase children's toys on behalf of Toy Mountain.

For more information on the Toy Mountain Campaign,
please visit: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toy-mountain

From the Desk of the President To Our Friends and Valued Customers, Once again that time has come when many of us look back on the past year and reflect on the events that brought us to this moment. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first release of AVAproject back in 1999. When one recognizes the amount of development and evolution that our flagship product has undergone over two decades, they cannot help but be inspired. Not just by the technology, but by the contributions and insights brought by so many talented developers and dedicated users. AVAware continued to build upon the technological foundations we've established with AVAproject, AVAproject Fusion, and our cloud-enabled platform. We look forward to several new product releases in the beginning of the new year, including integrations with additional ERP platforms, support for virtual desktop environments and brand new version of AVAproject for 2019. In addition to product development, AVAware launched a brand new media department responsible for enhancing communication and product training. Expect to see the first releases from this team in January. This has certainly been an eventful year at AVAware. The challenges we faced, both the successes and the difficulties, serve to remind how fortunate we are to have faced them together. I am particularly fortunate to have been able to face them with a team of professionals that never cease to impress me with their talent and dedication. All of us at AVAware wish to thank our valued clients, vendors and corporate partners for all their past and ongoing support. From our family to yours, we wish to extend our best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season and a very prosperous new year. All the best! Paul S. Kirsch President & CEO AVAware Technologies

Twenty years ago a revolutionary piece of detailing and estimating software was born.

In a few short weeks, we'll all be welcoming the arrival of 2019. At AVAware, this coming year marks the anniversary of a very auspicious event - the initial release of AVAproject.

Originally entitled "AVAproject 99" as was the traditional naming convention for Windows based applications at the time, AVAproject brought a number of innovative design elements to the detailing and estimating process; elements that have come to be imitated in other software packages over the past two decades.

The most notable innovation was that of a building a project around a collection of 'visual openings schedules', that would allow related information such as hardware groups and elevation drawings to be linked to them. Typical DOS based packages of the day were dependent on a 'headings-based' take-off, making it exceedingly difficult to estimate doors and frames in the absence of a final hardware schedule. AVAproject, with its unique Windows based user interface, made it possible to schedule project information in virtually any sequence. Fully customizable schedule sheets could be configured on the fly, enabling users to effortlessly switch between their preferred layouts and their company's standard presentation styles.

Before there was AVAproject, there was AVAcad; the first and still most powerful CAD package ever created specifically for the architectural openings industry. AVAcad was seamlessly integrated into AVAproject from the first release. Elevations could be imported directly into the openings schedules, modified

or created from scratch right from within AVAproject. Even elevation thumbnails could be displayed right on the schedule; any changes made to them (or their applied lites and louvers) were instantly reflected in the perfectly scaled "live" thumbnails.

Over the course of the past twenty years, AVAware's flagship product has continued to grow and evolve with new features and innovations being added each and every year. AVAproject has now been implemented around the world and by thousands of users. We are grateful to all our clients for their gracious support and ongoing feedback. It's because of them that we've been able to continue innovating.

AVAware software applications are designed to be deployed using a distributed application model. In other words, software is installed directly on individual users' PCs and runs locally. This model provides the greatest amount of flexibility in terms of deployment, security, fault tolerance and the ability to run in a "disconnected" state when away from a network connection. It's a time-tested and reliable model that is also used by Microsoft's Office and ERP applications as well as companies like Adobe.

In recent years there has been increased interest, especially from larger distributors, in deploying "virtual desktops" and having applications run from shared servers.

The platform is especially compelling for I.T. staff as they are able to implement company-wide deployments while only having to maintain a single installation.

AVAware has recently released new versions of AVAproject, AVAcad and AVAproject Fusion that support virtualized desktop environments such as Microsoft 'Remote Desktop Services' ("RDS", formerly known as 'Windows Terminal Services' ) and Citrix. Users are able to access applications installed on shared servers and authenticate using a brand new cloud-based licensing model.

Companies contemplating a centralized deployment model should be aware that the convenience benefit does come at an ongoing cost.

Application performance is typically reduced as all users are essentially "sharing" the processors of one or a group of servers; and of course network and connectivity issues can leave users unable to access their applications.

That being said, the choice of deployment model is one that's dependent on a number of factors, including user count, physical distribution of those users and specific capabilities of the network environment. As such, this licensing model is only available to users that have a minimum user count and compatible network configurations.

Anyone interested in exploring deployment in virtual environments are advised to contact AVAware Customer Service to discuss in detail.

We welcome any questions, comments or suggestions about any topic mentioned in this edition of AVAwire. Please visit our website for more information, or contact us directly at (416) 239-9099.