Technology News and Progent Solutions

Cisco introduced new products targeted specifically for small business networks and engineered to deliver high levels of protection and collaboration at a budget-friendly price. Products introduced by Cisco included the Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker, Cisco's Small Business series NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems, and the newest version of Cisco's Smart Business Communications System.

The Cisco Spam Blocker appliance is a purpose-built email security device that essentially eradicates email threats with no set up. The Cisco NSS2000 and NSS3000 Small Business Network Storage Systems are economical small-footprint NAS appliances that provide security for valuable data and allow workers to share information effortlessly. Cisco's Smart Business Communications System Version 1.4, a complete sharing and communications solution that seamlessly connects sites, employees, and clients anywhere. Cisco's current release features the industry's first wireless small-footprint IP phone with Bluetooth wireless support. To view Cisco's news release, refer to Cisco Announces Security and Collaboration Products for Small Companies.

Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker
The Spam and Virus Blocker appliance safeguards small organizations by providing extensive defense against spam, malware as well as other email attacks to secure your system and corporate data while enhance productivity. Because the device blocks spam right out of the box and updates on its own, it eliminates the expense and time with initial configuration and ongoing and management. By filtering out unwanted email, Cisco's Spam Blocker helps the throughput of network connections, application servers, and computers. The Spam Blocker is an end-to-end defense against email-born attacks by featuring a physical appliance, intelligent software, continuous patches, and product assistance in a unified package.

Key features of Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker include:

• Efficiency: Assists to ensure that email-borne attacks and junk mail are intercepted and legitimate messages are delivered.
• Ongoing self-installed patches: Non-stop interaction with SenderBase services, a network database of email security threats, ensures that your Cisco Spam Blocker appliance installs the latest patches to protect your business email.
• Easy setup and use: Easy-to-use browser-based installation wizards allow you to configure the Spam Blocker in practically any environment within minutes, providing immediate protection for your network.
• Streamlined administration: As soon as you deploys the Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker, you get spam and virus filtering with no extra hassle required from your IT group.

NSS2000 and 3000
The NSS2000 and 3000 Network Storage Systems provide the robust security and comprehensive backup features that your company requires, at a cost small businesses can afford. The Cisco NSS3000 supports up to four TB of data and as many as 15 simultaneous users on each chassis, offering the ideal answer for holding, accessing, and backing up your vital business data. As distinct from ordinary network-attached storage (NAS) alternatives, the Cisco Small Business NSS3000 delivers the advanced backup, encryption, client authentication, and high availability your company requires.

The Cisco NSS3000 4-Bay Gigabit Storage System Chassis handles any certified disk. The chassis offers a range of capabilities in a desktop-size footprint engineered for small companies. The Cisco NSS3000 Storage System enclosure also provides your company the flexibility to configure the product without any connected disk drives, to reconfigure the product easily, and to chain multiple chassis with one another, providing a platform that can continually grow with your business.

Your company can utilize the NSS2000 or 3000 to:

• Automatically back up important information from each desktop and server on your network
• Provide unified storage and sharing of key files
• Employ Continuous Data Protection (CDP) to back up automatically every version of each file saved by employees, permitting your business to recover information with ease
• Store and save digital video from your company's video surveillance cameras

Cisco Smart Business Communications System
The Cisco SBCS Release 1.4 is an easy-to-manage and comprehensive sharing and communications system that allows small businesses to interconnect at-home workers, mobile workers and office workers in separate locations to enhance their ability to interact with customers and colleagues. In Release 1.4, the affordable solution offers enhanced wireless features such as the first wireless desktop IP handset with Bluetooth, the SPA525G wireless IP device, which enables businesses to grow easily by deploying handsets in locations where traditional phone lines or Ethernet wiring is missing or cannot conveniently be added.

Other innovative components of the Smart Business Communications System 1.4 version include:

• The Cisco 520 Secure Router product to help protect the company's network and give employees safe access to the Internet and important business information remotely or locally
• Cisco's Configuration Assistant Release 1.9 to permit partners to simplify the setup and deployment of solutions designed custom for certain companies

How Progent's Consulting Experts Can Help You to Deploy Cisco Technology
Progent's Cisco consultants and Cisco CCIE engineers can help you to assess new Cisco technologies to determine their business value for your environment, integrate Cisco solutions to enhance the security and performance of your information network, and maintain Cisco products both onsite and remotely to keep your network running smoothly. Progent's consulting experts offer a variety of affordable support services to enhance the availability, security, efficiency, and maintainability of your company's IT network:

Quick Access to Cisco Registered CCIE Engineers
Progent offers convenient, quick, and economical access to registered CCIE engineers. Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts are elite network gurus who are awarded this top-level accreditation only as a result of thorough examination by Cisco. CCIEs are able to tackle even the most complicated problems associated with IT network planning, integration, repair, and management. Progent’s CCIE professionals interact intimately with Cisco in-house staff in identifying issues with Cisco's IOS platform and devising workarounds or obtaining software updates to resolve problems. Progent gives you immediate access to a CCIE by telephone so that you can receive urgent help for complex network troubles that are undermining business productivity but are outside the scope of your usual network service resources. Progent's CCIE support experts can access your environment using state-of-the-art off-site support tools in order to provide timely and affordable analysis and remediation of urgent infrastructure difficulties.

Cisco Voice over IP Phone and IP Video Phone Integration
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified IP phone and video IP phone experts can assist you to configure, manage, and troubleshoot Cisco VoIP 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 products to the newest HD media phones. Progent's consultants can also help your organization to integrate your IP phones with Unified CM, originally known as CallManager, or with Cisco Unified CM Express to create a modern IP-PBX ecosystem for unified messaging and company-wide collaboration. Progent can provide support with all aspects of Cisco IP Phone integration including reviewing dial plans, solving IP phone registration issues, configuring SIP trunking, installing ISR G2 routers with CUBE internetworking capability, and creating UCS server failover and Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony systems for survivability. For additional information concerning Progent's expertise for Cisco's collaboration technology, visit Cisco VoIP and Unified Communications Consulting Support.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and CallManager Collaboration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager, formerly named CallManager, operates as the foundation of Cisco's collaboration portfolio. Cisco Unified CM and Unified CM Express offer a borderless IP-PBX solution by integrating closely with unified messaging apps that include Unified CM IM and Presence Service, Unity Connection for voicemail management, Cisco Unified Mobility for Single Number Reach (SNR), and Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) for building a highly automated customer contact solution. Progent's Cisco-certified Cisco Unified CM consultants can assist with any facet of CUCM configuration and troubleshooting in areas that include integrating VoIP phones and desktop video IP phones, designing dial plans, configuring SIP trunking and PSTN support, deploying ISR routers with CUBE support, designing UCS server failover solutions for high availability, and integration with Exchange Server and Skype for Business.

Cisco ASA Firewall and PIX Firewall Consulting
Progent’s experienced Cisco network security consulting professionals provide high-level PIX and ASA Firewall consulting services covering infrastructure design, configuration, and management of Cisco firewall and Cisco security solutions. The PIX and ASA Series of Cisco firewall products delivers strong user and software policy enforcement, mutlivector attack defense, and safe connectivity services. Ranging from economical, plug-and-play desktop devices for small and home offices to modular enterprise-level products, Cisco PIX and ASA Firewalls offer advanced security, performance, and excellent availability for IT systems of all sizes. PIX Firewalls and ASA Firewalls are based on a proven, purpose-built operating system, eliminating possible OS-specific security holes.

Security Inventory and Evaluation Packages
Progent's GIAC, CISA and CISM-certified security engineers can deliver a variety of budget-friendly security Inventory service packages and network security assessment bundles created to offer businesses of all sizes an opportunity to receive an objective opinion about the strength of their protection profile. The packages vary from ultra-affordable external network security scan and internal network security scan options for small and midsize companies up to a high-end network security assessment package for corporations who have to comply with security standards demanded by government regulators or by customers. For each security assessment bundle, engineers with top security credentials evaluate and summarize scanned information and make suggestions for efficient remediation.

SIP Connectivity Solutions: SIP PSTN Trunks and CUBE Integration Expertise
Progent's Cisco-certified SIP infrastructure consultants and Cisco CUBE integration experts can assist organizations of any size to design, integrate, manage, debug and upgrade Cisco's SIP infrastructure technology and Cisco's CUBE (Cisco Unified Border Element)-connected IP PSTN trunks. Progent can provide cost-effective remote or onsite expertise to assist companies to migrate efficiently to a productive unified communications environment that delivers accelerated ROI. Progent's Gold-certified Microsoft unified communications consultants can assist you to set up connections between Cisco's CUBE SBC and Microsoft's VoIP and IP video applications such as Skype for Business Server and Lync Server for access to a SIP-based IP PSTN trunk.

Consulting and Support Consulting and Troubleshooting Expertise for Cisco Wireless Solutions
Progent can provide a certified CCIE or Cisco Certified Network Professional to help you to develop a comprehensive wireless network design and implementation strategy that incorporates a broad array of wireless appliances and technologies and offers the same protection, expandability, and manageability you demand from a wired environment. Progent can help you to implement transparent interoperability between Cisco wireless technology and wireless devices and software from other suppliers to offer your business the features you need as well as the most secure, reliable, and cost-effective wireless networking solution available. Progent's CISA and ISSAP security specialists can show you how to design security into your wireless network and into your company's processes.

Simplified Management Solutions for Cisco-powered IT Networks
Progent's Cisco-Certified network management engineers offer help with Cisco's network management utilities alongside a range of powerful third-party applications to create a complete management automation strategy to keep your network operating reliably, fully utilize expensive resources, protect your data, recover quickly from device breakdown or deliberate assaults, and allow you to add or reassign valuable resources intelligently and affordably as your company evolves.

To find out additional information concerning Progent's consulting and support services for Cisco networking and communications products, phone 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.