Technology News and Progent Solutions

Cisco announced innovative solutions targeted specifically for small business networks and engineered to provide a high degree of protection and connectivity for an affordable price. Products announced by Cisco were Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker, the NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems, and the 1.4 version of the Smart Business Communications System (SBCS).

The Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker appliance is a purpose-built antispam and antivirus security product that virtually eliminates email attacks as shipped. The Cisco NSS2000 and NSS3000 Small Business Network Storage Systems are economical desktop NAS appliances that provide protection for valuable information and allow employees to access shared information effortlessly. Cisco's Smart Business Communications System (SBCS) Release 1.4, a complete sharing and communications solution that seamlessly connects offices, employees, and clients however dispersed. Cisco's current version features the debut of a wireless desktop VoIP phone with Bluetooth wireless support. To see Cisco's press release, visit Cisco Introduces Networking Solutions for Small Companies.

Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker
The Spam Blocker appliance protects small organizations by offering powerful defense against spam, viruses and phishing and other email-borne threats to guard your network and corporate information while at the same time enhance productivity. Because the product stops spam and viruses with minimal set up and stays current automatically, it avoids the cost and time associated setup and ongoing and administration. By filtering out spam, Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker increases the performance of network connections, application servers, and computers. The Spam Blocker is a comprehensive solution email threats by including hardware, software, ongoing updates, and technical assistance in a single package.

Key features of Cisco's Spam Blocker are:

• Accuracy: Assists to ensure that email-borne attacks and spam are caught and business email is delivered.
• Ongoing automatic updates: Non-stop communication with SenderBase security, a network database of email safety threats, ensures that the Cisco Spam Blocker appliance incorporates the most current updates to safequard your corporate email.
• Easy installation and use: Easy-to-use web-based installation wizards permit you to configure the Spam Blocker appliance in practically any network in minutes, providing instant protection for your network.
• Streamlined management: From the moment you deploys the the Spam and Virus Blocker, you benefit from spam and virus protection with minimal additional effort demanded of your network support staff.

Cisco NSS2000 and 3000
The NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems offer the robust protection and advanced backup capabilities that your company needs, at a price small companies can afford. The Small Business NSS3000 accommodates as much as to 4 terabytes of data and as many as 15 concurrent users on each enclosure, offering the ideal solution for storing, accessing, and archiving your vital corporate data. Unlike entry-level network-attached storage systems, the Cisco NSS3000 delivers the advanced backup, encryption, user authentication, and service continuity your business requires.

The NSS3000 4-Bay Gigabit Storage System enclosure handles any certified disk. The enclosure provides a wealth of features in a desktop form factor engineered for small organizations. The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 Storage System enclosure also offers you the flexibility to configure the product without any attached hard disks, to reconfigure the product easily, and to link several chassis together, offering a platform that can smoothly grow with your business.

Your business can utilize the Small Business NSS2000 or 3000 to:

• Automatically copy important data from each PC and application server in your business
• Provide unified storage and sharing of important information
• Run Continuous Data Protection to back up unattended each revision of each file archived by employees, allowing your company to recover data with ease
• Store and save video from your video security cameras

Smart Business Communications System (SBCS)
The Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS) Version 1.4 is an easy-to-manage and comprehensive collaboration and communications solution that enables small businesses to interconnect telecommuters, on-the-road workers and office workers in separate sites to improve their ability to collaborate with clients and teammates. In Release 1.4, the affordable system has improved wireless capabilities such as the first wireless desktop VoIP phone with built-in Bluetooth technology, the Cisco SPA525G wireless IP phone, which enables companies to expand easily by adding phones in places where traditional telephone wires or Ethernet cables are missing or cannot easily be run.

Other new components of the Cisco SBCS 1.4 version include:

• The Cisco Model 520 Secure Router product to help protect a small business network and give employees safe connectivity to the Internet and important business information remotely or locally
• The Configuration Assistant v. 1.9 to enable partners to streamline the configuration and deployment of solutions designed custom for individual businesses

How Progent's Cisco-certified Experts Can Assist Your Business to Deploy Cisco Technology
Progent's Cisco certified support professionals and CCIE accredited engineers can assist your company to evaluate the latest Cisco products to understand their usefulness for your IT system, set up Cisco solutions to improve the security and performance of your information network, and troubleshoot Cisco devices both onsite and online to keep your network operating dependably. Progent's IT professionals can provide a variety of affordable services to improve the dependability, security, speed, and maintainability of your information system:

Immediate Online Access to Cisco Registered CCIE Engineers
Progent is the leading source of easy, quick, and economical help from registered CCIE support professionals. CCIEs are highly-qualified networking experts who earn this prestigious accreditation only as a result of strenuous testing by Cisco. CCIEs can tackle even the most challenging issues associated with network infrastructure design, integration, troubleshooting, and administration. Progent’s CCIE professionals work closely with Cisco in-house staff in identifying problems with Cisco's IOS platform and finding workarounds or obtaining software updates to correct anomalies. Progent offers quick access to a CCIE by phone so that you are able to receive urgent help for complex network problems that are undermining business productivity but are outside the scope of your ordinary network support providers. Progent's CCIE support experts can link to your network via advanced off-site connectivity technology in order to provide fast and affordable diagnosis and repair of critical infrastructure difficulties.

Cisco VoIP Phone and IP Video Phone Integration
Progent's Cisco-certified IP phone and video IP phone consultants can assist you to integrate, manage, and debug Cisco IP phones, video IP phones and wireless IP handsets. Progent can provide support for all versions of Cisco's IP phones from legacy Voice over IP devices to the latest HD media phones. Progent's IP telephony experts can also assist you to integrate your VoIP phones and video IP phones with Unified CM, previously known as CallManager, or with Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (CME) to create a an advanced IP-PBX ecosystem for unified messaging and collaboration. Progent's consultants can deliver support with any facet of Cisco VoIP Phone integration including reviewing dial plans, solving IP phone registration issues, setting up SIP gateways, installing Cisco ISR routers with CUBE internetworking capability, and designing UCS server failover and Cisco SRST solutions for high availability. For additional information concerning Progent's offerings for Cisco's collaboration solutions, go to Cisco Voice over IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications Consulting Help.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and CallManager Collaboration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM), originally named CallManager, is the foundation of Cisco's collaboration solution. CUCM and Cisco Unified CM Express provide a borderless IP-PBX by integrating tightly with unified messaging apps such as Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service with Jabber support, Unity Express (CUE) for voicemail, Cisco Unified Mobility for Single Number Reach (SNR), and Unified Contact Center Enterprise (Unified CCE) for creating a highly automated customer contact center. Progent's Cisco-certified CUCM and CallManager consultants can help with any aspect of Unified Communications Manager configuration and debugging in areas such as integrating VoIP phones and video phones, designing dial plans, configuring SIP trunking and PSTN calling, installing ISR routers with CUBE networking support, designing UCS server clustering solutions for high availability, and integration with Microsoft Exchange Server.

Cisco ASA and PIX Firewall Consulting
Progent’s experienced Cisco IT security consultants offer expert PIX Firewall and ASA Firewall engineering support including infrastructure design, integration, and management of Cisco firewall and Cisco security solutions. The PIX and ASA Series of Cisco firewalls delivers strong user and software policy enforcement, mutlivector attack protection, and safe connectivity services. Ranging from economical, easy-to-install desktop appliances for small and home businesses to modular gigabit appliances, Cisco PIX Firewall and ASA Firewalls provide a high level of security, high throughput, and excellent reliability for network environments of any size. PIX Firewalls and ASA Firewalls are based on a proven, specially designed operating system, eliminating common OS-specific security gaps.

Security Inventory and Evaluation Packages
Progent's CISM and CISSP-premier security engineers can deliver a range of cost-effective security Inventory bundles and network security assessment service packages designed to offer organizations of any size an opportunity to receive a professional opinion about the effectiveness of their protection environment. The packages range from ultra-affordable external security scan and internal security scan packages for small and midsize businesses up to a high-end network security assessment solution for corporations who have to comply with security standards required by government regulators or by vendors. For every security inventory or evaluation bundle, engineers with high-level security accreditations analyze and report on collected information and provide suggestions for effective remediation.

SIP Infrastructure Solutions: SIP Trunks and CUBE Configuration Expertise
Progent's Cisco-certified SIP trunk consultants and Cisco CUBE configuration consultants can help your business to design, integrate, maintain, debug and upgrade Cisco's SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) connectivity technology and Cisco's CUBE (Cisco Unified Border Element)-connected IP PSTN trunks. Progent offers affordable online or onsite support to help you to move efficiently to a modern communications ecosystem that offers accelerated ROI. Progent's Gold-certified Microsoft collaboration consultants can assist you to configure connections between Cisco's CUBE Session Border Controller and Microsoft's rich media platforms such as Skype for Business Server and Lync Server for access to a SIP PSTN trunk.

Consulting Consulting and Troubleshooting Services for Cisco Wireless Infrastructure
Progent can provide a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert or certified CCNP to assist you to develop a comprehensive wireless network design and implementation strategy that integrates a wide range of wireless products and technologies and offers the identical protection, scalability, and ease of management you demand from your wired network. Progent can assist you to implement seamless interoperability between Cisco wireless technology and wireless devices and software from third-party suppliers to offer your business the features you require plus the most secure, dependable, and economical wireless networking solution available. Progent's CISM and CISSP security professionals can show you how to build protection into your WLAN and into your company's operations.

Simplified Management Solutions for Cisco-powered IT Networks
Progent's Cisco-Premier network consultants can provide assistance with Cisco's network management technology along with a variety of specialized third-party applications to build a complete management automation solution in order to keep your network running reliably, conserve expensive resources, protect your information, recover quickly from hardware failure or deliberate attacks, and enable you to expand or repurpose valuable resources intelligently and affordably as your business evolves.

For additional details about Progent's consulting expertise for Cisco networking and communications products, call 1-800-993-9400 or see Contact Progent.