Technology News and Progent Business Solutions

Cisco unveiled innovative solutions targeted especially for small company networks and engineered to provide high levels of security and connectivity for a budget-friendly price. Products introduced by Cisco were Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker, Cisco's Small Business series NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems, and the newest release of Cisco's SBCS.

The Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker is a purpose-built email security device that virtually eradicates email-based attacks as shipped. Cisco's NSS2000 and NSS3000 Small Business Network Storage Systems are economical desktop network-attached storage (NAS) appliances that provide security for valuable information and enable employees to access shared files easily. The Cisco SBCS Release 1.4, a full collaboration and communications solution that easily interconnects sites, employees, and customers however dispersed. The latest version features the industry's debut of a cordless small-footprint Internet Protocol (IP) phone with Bluetooth support. To view Cisco's press release, refer to Cisco Unveils Connectivity and Collaboration Products for Small Businesses.

Cisco Spam Blocker
The Spam and Virus Blocker protects small companies by providing powerful defense against junk mail, viruses and phishing as well as other email threats to guard your network and business information while at the same time improve productivity. Because the device blocks spam with minimal set up and updates on its own, it does away with the cost and hassle required for setup and continuing and management. By filtering out unwanted email, Cisco's Spam Blocker appliance helps the throughput of network connections, application servers, and computers. The Spam and Virus Blocker appliance is an end-to-end defense against email attacks by including hardware, intelligent software, continuous updates, and technical assistance in a unified bundle.

Key features of the Spam Blocker appliance are:

• Efficiency: Assists to make sure that email-borne attacks and spam are caught while legitimate email is accepted.
• Continuous automatic updates: Constant communication with SenderBase security, an online database of email safety threats, ensures that your Spam & Virus Blocker appliance installs the most current updates to protect your business email.
• Easy setup and operation: Easy-to-use browser-based setup tools allow you to install the Spam Blocker appliance in nearly any network in 15 minutes, providing immediate security for your network.
• Streamlined administration: From the moment you installs the the Spam and Virus Blocker, you benefit from spam and virus filtering with no extra effort required from your IT staff.

Cisco NSS2000 and 3000
The Cisco NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems offer the robust protection and comprehensive data backup features that your business requires, at a price small organizations can handle. The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 supports as much as to four terabytes of data and up to 15 concurrent users on each chassis, offering the ideal answer for holding, sharing, and backing up your mission-critical business information. As distinct from ordinary NAS systems, the Cisco Small Business NSS3000 delivers the state-of-the-art archiving, cryptography, client authentication, and high availability your organization needs.

The Cisco NSS3000 four-Bay Gigabit Storage System Chassis handles any certified disk. The enclosure offers a wealth of features in a desktop-size system designed for small organizations. The Cisco NSS3000 Storage System enclosure also offers your company the versatility to configure the system without any connected disks, to reconfigure it easily, and to link multiple chassis together, offering a platform that can smoothly expand with your company.

Your business can use the Cisco NSS2000 or 3000 to:

• Automatically back up vital information from every workstation and server in your organization
• Offer unified preservation and distribution of key files
• Run Continuous Data Protection to copy unattended each revision of each file archived by workers, allowing your company to restore information with ease
• Store and archive video from your surveillance system

Cisco SBCS
The Smart Business Communications System Version 1.4 is a simple and complete collaboration and communications system that allows small companies to connect at-home workers, on-the-road workers and office workers in disparate locations to enhance their ability to collaborate with customers and teammates. In the new release, the affordable solution offers enhanced wireless capabilities such as the industry's first wireless desktop VoIP phone with built-in Bluetooth technology, the Cisco SPA525G IP device, which allows companies to grow cost-effectively by adding handsets in locations where traditional phone wires or network cables are missing or cannot easily be run.

Additional innovative pieces of the Cisco Smart Business Communications System 1.4 version are:

• Cisco's Model 520 Secure Router product to help guard the company's infrastructure and provide workers safe access to the Internet and key corporate data from inside or outside the office
• The Configuration Assistant v. 1.9 to permit partners to simplify the configuration and deployment of solutions designed specifically for individual companies

How Progent's Certified Professionals Can Assist You to Deploy Cisco Technology
Progent's Cisco consultants and CCIE network engineers can assist your company to evaluate new Cisco technologies to understand their appropriateness for your environment, set up Cisco solutions to enhance the security and efficiency of your information network, and troubleshoot Cisco products both onsite and online to keep your IT network running smoothly. Progent's consulting experts can provide a variety of low-cost services to improve the reliability, safety, speed, and maintainability of your company's information network:

Quick Access to Cisco CCIE Engineers
Progent is the premier provider of convenient, immediate, and affordable support from CCIE Certified engineers. CCIEs are elite network experts who are awarded this top-level certification only as a result of thorough examination by Cisco. CCIEs can handle even the most sophisticated issues associated with network infrastructure planning, configuration, repair, and management. Progent’s CCIE experts cooperate intimately with Cisco in-house staff in analyzing issues with Cisco's IOS software and finding fixes or obtaining patches to correct problems. Progent your company quick contact with a CCIE by phone so that you are able to get instant assistance for complex network problems that are impacting business productivity but are beyond the scope of your local IT service providers. Progent's CCIE consulting professionals can link to your network using advanced remote support tools to provide timely and cost-effective analysis and remediation of critical network difficulties.

Cisco Voice over IP Phone and IP Video Phone Integration
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified VoIP phone and video IP phone experts can help your business to configure, manage, and debug Cisco IP phones, desktop video IP phones and wireless IP phones. Progent offers support for all models of Cisco's IP phones from legacy Voice over IP devices to the newest media phones. Progent's IP telephony experts can also assist your organization to integrate your VoIP phones and video IP phones with Cisco Unified CM, originally branded CallManager, or with Cisco Unified CM Express (CME) to create a an advanced IP-PBX ecosystem for unified messaging and collaboration. Progent's consultants can provide expertise with all aspects of Cisco VoIP Phone integration including designing dial plans, solving QoS, configuring SIP gateways, deploying ISR routers with CUBE internetworking capability, and designing UCS server clustering and Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) solutions for survivability. For additional information on Progent's expertise for Cisco's collaboration solutions, visit Cisco IP Telephony and Unified Communications Consulting Expertise.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and CallManager Collaboration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), formerly branded CallManager, is the foundation of Cisco's collaboration solution. Cisco Unified CM and Cisco Unified CM Express (CME) provide an advanced IP-PBX by integrating closely with unified messaging applications that include Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service with Jabber support, Cisco Unity Express for voicemail, Cisco Unified Mobility for Single Number Reach, and Unified Contact Center Enterprise (Unified CCE) for creating an advanced customer contact center. Progent's Cisco-certified CUCM experts can help with any aspect of Unified CM configuration and debugging in areas that include integrating VoIP phones and desktop video IP phones, designing dial plans, setting up SIP connections and PSTN calling, deploying ISR G2 routers with CUBE networking support, designing Cisco UCS server clustering systems for high availability, and integration with Microsoft Exchange Server and Skype for Business.

Cisco ASA Firewall and PIX Firewall Support
Progent’s experienced Cisco network security consulting professionals offer high-level PIX Firewall and ASA Firewall consulting support covering architecture, integration, and support of Cisco firewall and Cisco security technology. The PIX and ASA Series of Cisco firewall products delivers robust user and software policy enforcement, sophisticated attack defense, and safe connectivity services. Ranging from economical, plug-and-play desktop appliances for small and home businesses to scalable gigabit products, Cisco PIX and ASA Firewalls offer advanced protection, performance, and excellent reliability for IT systems of all sizes. PIX Firewalls and ASA Firewalls are based on a hardened, specially designed platform, eliminating possible OS-specific security holes.

Security Inventory and Audit Packages
Progent's CISA, CISM and CISSP-premier security engineers can deliver a variety of cost-effective network security Inventory packages and network security assessment bundles created to offer organizations of any size an opportunity to get a professional opinion about the effectiveness of their security environment. The packages vary from ultra-affordable external network security scan and internal network security scan packages for small companies up to a high-end security assessment solution for institutions who have to meet security levels demanded by government regulators or by customers. For each security assessment bundle, consultants with high-level security credentials evaluate and report on scanned data and provide suggestions for efficient remediation.

SIP Connectivity Solutions: SIP Trunks and Cisco CUBE Integration Consulting
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified SIP trunk consultants and CUBE configuration experts can help you to plan, integrate, manage, troubleshoot and upgrade Cisco's SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) connectivity technology and Cisco's CUBE-based SIP trunks. Progent can provide cost-effective remote or on-premises expertise to assist companies to move smoothly to a modern unified communications environment that offers accelerated ROI. Progent's Gold-certified Microsoft unified communications consultants can help you to set up interfaces between Cisco's CUBE Session Border Controller and Microsoft's VoIP and IP video applications like Skype for Business and Lync for connectivity to a SIP PSTN trunk.

Consulting and Support Consulting and Troubleshooting Expertise for Cisco Wireless Products
Progent can provide a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert or Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) to assist 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, scalability, and ease of management you expect from your wired network. Progent can help you to achieve seamless interoperability between Cisco wireless technology and wireless products from third-party suppliers to give your business the features you require as well as the most secure, dependable, and economical WLAN system possible. Progent's CISA and ISSAP security specialists can show you how to design protection into your WLAN and your company's processes.

Automated Administration Tools for Cisco-based Small Business Network Infrastructure
Progent's Cisco-Premier network consultants can provide help with Cisco's network management utilities along with a variety of specialized third-party applications to build a comprehensive management automation solution in order to keep your environment operating smoothly, conserve expensive resources, protect your information, revive quickly from hardware failure or deliberate assaults, and allow you to expand or reassign valuable components sensibly and economically as your business grows.

For additional details about Progent's consulting and support services for Cisco networking and security solutions, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.