IT Technology News and Progent Solutions

Cisco unveiled innovative solutions targeted especially for small business networks and designed to deliver a high degree of security and connectivity at an affordable cost. Solutions unveiled by Cisco were the Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker, Cisco's NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems, and the newest version of the Smart Business Communications System (SBCS).

The Cisco Spam Blocker appliance is a purpose-built email security product that essentially eradicates email-based threats right out of the box. The Cisco NSS2000 and NSS3000 Small Business Network Storage Systems are affordable small-footprint NAS appliances that provide protection for valuable information and enable workers to share information easily. The Cisco SBCS Version 1.4, a complete sharing and communications solution that easily connects offices, employees, and clients however dispersed. Cisco's latest version features the industry's first wireless desktop VoIP handset with Bluetooth capabilities. To see Cisco's press release, visit Cisco Unveils Connectivity and Collaboration Products for Small Businesses.

Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker
The Spam Blocker appliance safeguards small organizations by providing extensive defense against junk mail, viruses and worms as well as other email-borne threats to secure your system and business information while enhance productivity. Because the device stops spam and viruses right out of the box and stays current automatically, it eliminates the cost and hassle required for initial configuration and continuing and management. By filtering out unwanted email, Cisco's Spam Blocker increases the throughput of network connections, servers, and computers. The Spam Blocker represents an end-to-end defense against email-born threats by featuring hardware, intelligent software, ongoing patches, and product support in a unified bundle.

Key features of Cisco's Spam Blocker are:

• Accuracy: Helps to make sure that email-borne threats and spam are intercepted and legitimate messages are accepted.
• Ongoing automatic updates: Non-stop interaction with SenderBase security, a network library of email security risks, ensures that your Spam & Virus Blocker appliance installs the most current updates to protect your corporate email.
• Simple setup and use: Easy-to-use browser-based installation tools allow you to configure the Spam and Virus Blocker in nearly any network in 15 minutes, providing immediate protection for your business.
• Streamlined administration: From the moment your company installs the Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker, you benefit from junk mail and virus filtering with minimal extra hassle demanded from your IT group.

Cisco NSS2000 and 3000
The NSS2000 and NSS3000 provide the robust protection and advanced backup features that your business requires, at a cost small organizations can handle. The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 supports as much as to 4 terabytes of data and as many as 15 simultaneous clients per chassis, provides the ideal answer for holding, accessing, and archiving your mission-critical corporate information. Unlike entry-level network-attached storage systems, the Cisco NSS3000 provides the state-of-the-art backup, encryption, user validation, and fault tolerance your business needs.

The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 4-Bay Gigabit Storage enclosure handles any certified disk. The enclosure offers a wealth of capabilities in a desktop-size form factor engineered specifically for small organizations. The Cisco NSS3000 Storage System enclosure also gives you the flexibility to configure the system without any connected hard drives, to modify the product at any time, and to link several chassis with one another, providing a solution that can continually grow with your company.

Your business can use the Cisco Small Business NSS2000 or 3000 to:

• Intelligently back up vital information from every PC and application server in your organization
• Provide unified preservation and sharing of important files
• Employ Continuous Data Protection to copy unattended every revision of every file saved by employees, permitting you to recover information with ease
• Store and archive digital video from your video surveillance cameras

Cisco SBCS
The Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS) Release 1.4 is an easy-to-manage and complete collaboration and communications solution that enables small companies to connect telecommuters, on-the-road workers and employees in disparate locations to enhance their ability to collaborate with clients and colleagues. In the new release, the affordable system has improved wireless support including the first wireless desktop VoIP handset with Bluetooth technology, the Cisco SPA525G wireless IP device, which allows companies to grow easily by adding phones in places where traditional phone wires or network wiring is not present or cannot easily be added.

Additional new pieces of the Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS) 1.4 version include:

• The Cisco 520 Secure Router product to help guard a small business infrastructure and give workers secure connectivity to the Internet and important business data remotely or locally
• The Configuration Assistant Release 1.9 to allow stakeholders to streamline the configuration and installation of solutions created specifically for certain companies

How Progent's Certified Engineers Can Assist Your Company to Deploy Cisco Technology
Progent's Cisco support professionals and CCIE accredited network engineers can assist you to assess new Cisco products to understand their business value for your environment, configure Cisco security and communication platforms to enhance the security and performance of your information network, and troubleshoot Cisco products both in person and online to keep your network running dependably. Progent's IT professionals offer a variety of low-cost technical services to enhance the availability, protection, speed, and maintainability of your company's information network:

Quick Access to Cisco CCIE Engineers
Progent can provide easy, immediate, and affordable help from registered CCIE engineers. Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts are recognized network experts who are awarded this top-level classification only after intense examination by Cisco. CCIEs can handle even the most complex issues surrounding network infrastructure design, setup, repair, and management. Progent’s CCIE professionals interact closely with Cisco engineers in analyzing problems with Cisco's IOS platform and devising workarounds or obtaining patches to correct problems. Progent your company immediate contact with a CCIE by telephone so that you are able to receive emergency assistance for tough network troubles that are undermining worker efficiency but are beyond the expertise of your usual network support providers. Progent's CCIE consulting experts can access your network via state-of-the-art off-site connectivity technology in order to deliver fast and affordable diagnosis and remediation of critical network problems.

Cisco VoIP Phone and IP Video Phone Integration
Progent's Cisco VoIP phone and video IP phone experts can assist your business to configure, manage, and debug Cisco IP phones, desktop video IP phones and wireless IP handsets. Progent offers support for all models of Cisco's IP phones from legacy Voice over IP devices to the newest media phones. Progent's consultants can also assist your organization to integrate your VoIP phones and video IP phones with Cisco Unified Communications Manager, previously known as CallManager, or with Cisco Unified CM Express (CME) to build a an advanced IP-PBX environment for unified messaging and company-wide collaboration. Progent's consultants can provide expertise with any facet of Cisco VoIP Phone integration including designing dial plans, solving IP phone registration issues, setting up SIP gateways, deploying ISR routers with CUBE VoIP networking capability, and designing UCS server failover and Cisco SRST systems for survivability. For more details about Progent's services for Cisco's Unified Communications solutions, go to Cisco IP Telephony and Unified Communications Consulting Expertise.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and CallManager Collaboration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM), formerly named CallManager, is the core of Cisco's communications and collaboration portfolio. Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Unified CM Express provide a modern IP-PBX solution by integrating closely with unified messaging applications that include Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service, Unity Express for voicemail management, Mobile Connect for Single Number Reach, and Cisco Contact Center Express (Unified CCX or CCX) for building an advanced customer contact solution. Progent's Cisco-certified CUCM and CallManager consultants can assist with any aspect of Unified Communications Manager support and troubleshooting in areas that include integrating VoIP phones and desktop video IP phones, designing dial plans, setting up SIP trunking and PSTN support, deploying Cisco ISR routers with CUBE support, creating UCS server failover systems for survivability, and integration with Exchange Server.

Cisco ASA and PIX Firewall Support
Progent’s experienced Cisco IT security consultants offer expert PIX Firewall and ASA Firewall engineering services covering infrastructure design, configuration, and management of Cisco firewall and Cisco security technology. The PIX and ASA Series of Cisco firewalls delivers strong user and software policy enforcement, mutlivector attack protection, and safe connectivity services. Ranging from compact, easy-to-install desktop devices for small and home businesses to modular gigabit products, Cisco PIX and ASA Firewalls offer advanced protection, performance, and excellent reliability for network environments of all sizes. PIX and ASA Firewalls are based on a hardened, specially designed platform, eliminating common OS-specific security gaps.

Security Inventory and Audit Packages
Progent's CISA, CISM and CISSP-certified security engineers can deliver a variety of cost-effective security Inventory bundles and network security evaluation bundles created to offer businesses of any size an opportunity to get an impartial opinion about the effectiveness of their protection environment. These packages range from low-cost external network security scan and internal security scan options for small companies up to a high-level network security assessment package for institutions who have to comply with security standards required by government agencies or by vendors. For every security assessment bundle, engineers with high-level security accreditations analyze and summarize collected data and provide recommendations for effective remediation.

SIP Infrastructure Solutions: SIP PSTN Trunks and Cisco CUBE Integration Consulting
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified SIP infrastructure experts and Cisco CUBE configuration consultants can assist organizations of any size to plan, deploy, maintain, troubleshoot and enhance Cisco's SIP infrastructure technology and Cisco's CUBE-based SIP trunks. Progent can provide cost-effective online or on-premises support to assist businesses to migrate smoothly to an advanced unified communications environment that delivers fast ROI. Progent's Gold-certified Microsoft unified communications experts can assist you to establish connections between Cisco's CUBE Session Border Controller and Microsoft's VoIP and IP video platforms like Skype for Business Server or Lync Server for access to a SIP-based IP PSTN trunk.

Consulting Consulting and Troubleshooting Services for Cisco Wireless Products
Progent can give you access to a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) or certified CCNP to help you to develop a comprehensive wireless network design and implementation plan that integrates a broad array of wireless products and technologies and provides the same security, expandability, and ease of management you demand from a wired network. Progent can assist you to implement seamless integration between Cisco wireless technology and wireless devices and software from third-party vendors to give your company the features you require as well as the most protected, dependable, and economical WLAN system available. Progent's CISM and CISSP security professionals can show you how to design security into your WLAN and into your company's processes.

Automated Administration Tools for Cisco-powered Small Business Networks
Progent's Cisco-Premier network management consultants can provide assistance with Cisco's network management tools along with a variety of specialized third-party products to build a comprehensive management automation strategy in order to keep your environment operating smoothly, conserve expensive resources, protect your data, revive quickly from hardware failure or malicious assaults, and enable you to expand or reassign valuable components intelligently and economically as your company evolves.

To find out additional information concerning Progent's consulting expertise for Cisco connectivity and security technology, phone 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.