IT Technology News and Progent IT Solutions

Cisco unveiled new products intended specifically for small business IT networks and designed to provide exceptional security and collaboration for an affordable cost. Products unveiled by Cisco included Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker, the Cisco Small Business series NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems, and the newest version of the Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS).

The Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker appliance is a dedicated antispam and antivirus security device that essentially eradicates email attacks with no set up. The Cisco NSS2000 and NSS3000 Small Business Network Storage Systems are affordable small-footprint network-attached storage (NAS) appliances that offer protection for valuable data and enable workers to share files easily. The Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS) Release 1.4, a complete sharing and communications system that easily connects offices, employees, and customers anywhere. The current version incorporates the industry's first cordless desktop VoIP handset with Bluetooth support. To read Cisco's press release, visit Cisco Introduces Networking and Security Solutions for Small Companies.

Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker
The Spam Blocker appliance protects small companies by offering powerful protection against junk mail, viruses and worms and other email-borne attacks to guard your system and business information while at the same time enhance productivity. Since the device stops spam right out of the box and stays current automatically, it eliminates the cost and hassle associated setup and ongoing and management. By filtering out spam, Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker helps the throughput of networks, servers, and workstations. The Spam Blocker represents an end-to-end defense against email attacks by featuring a physical appliance, intelligent software, continuous patches, and technical support in a single bundle.

Key benefits of Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker appliance include:

• Accuracy: Assists to ensure that email-borne attacks and spam are caught while legitimate messages are delivered.
• Ongoing automatic updates: Non-stop communication with SenderBase services, an online database of email security threats, ensures that your Cisco Spam Blocker appliance installs the most current patches to protect your corporate email.
• Easy installation and use: Easy-to-use web-based setup tools permit you to configure the Spam and Virus Blocker in practically any environment within minutes, providing instant security for your business.
• Effortless management: As soon as your company installs the the Spam Blocker, you benefit from spam and malware protection with minimal additional effort demanded from your IT group.

Cisco Small Business NSS2000 and 3000
The Cisco NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems provide the robust protection and comprehensive data backup features that your business needs, at a price small organizations can afford. The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 accommodates up to four TB of data and up to 15 concurrent users per enclosure, provides the optimal answer for storing, accessing, and archiving your mission-critical corporate data. Unlike less advanced NAS systems, the Cisco NSS3000 delivers the advanced backup, cryptography, user validation, and high availability your business requires.

The NSS3000 four-Bay Gigabit Storage System Chassis supports any certified hard drive. The product provides a wealth of capabilities in a desktop-size footprint engineered for small businesses. The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 Storage Chassis also offers you the versatility to deploy the product without any attached drives, to reconfigure it easily, and to link several NAS chassis together, offering a solution that can smoothly grow with your company.

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

• Automatically copy important data from each desktop and application server in your company
• Offer unified preservation and sharing of important information
• Employ Continuous Data Protection to copy unattended each version of every file archived by workers, permitting you to recover files with ease
• Store and save video from your surveillance system

Cisco Smart Business Communications System
The Cisco SBCS Release 1.4 is an easy-to-manage and comprehensive sharing and communications solution that enables small organizations to interconnect at-home workers, mobile workers and office workers in separate sites to improve their ability to communicate with customers and colleagues. In Release 1.4, the aggressively priced system offers improved wireless support such as the industry's first wireless desktop VoIP handset with built-in Bluetooth, the SPA525G VoIP phone, which enables companies to expand cost-effectively by deploying phones in places where traditional telephone lines or Ethernet wiring is missing or cannot conveniently be added.

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

• The Cisco 520 Secure Router to help protect a small business network and give workers safe access to the Internet and key corporate data any time, anywhere
• The Configuration Assistant v. 1.9 to enable stakeholders to simplify the configuration and deployment of solutions created specifically for individual companies

How Progent's Certified Professionals Can Help Your Business to Deploy Cisco Networking Technology
Progent's Cisco consultants and CCIE accredited engineers can assist your company to evaluate new Cisco technologies to determine their appropriateness for your IT system, set up Cisco solutions to improve the security and efficiency of your network, and troubleshoot Cisco devices both in person and online to keep your IT network operating dependably. Progent's consultants offer a variety of low-cost technical services to enhance the reliability, protection, speed, and manageability of a small business information system:

Quick Online Access to Cisco CCIE Engineers
Progent delivers easy, immediate, and economical support from registered CCIE consultants. Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts are highly-qualified networking experts who earn this top-level classification only as a result of thorough examination by Cisco. CCIEs can tackle the most complex issues surrounding IT network design, configuration, troubleshooting, and support. Progent’s CCIE experts cooperate intimately with Cisco in-house staff in identifying problems with Cisco's IOS platform and developing fixes or obtaining patches to resolve anomalies. Progent gives you immediate access to a CCIE by telephone so that you can get instant help for tough network problems that are undermining worker productivity but are outside the expertise of your ordinary network service providers. Progent's CCIE support experts can access your network using advanced remote support tools to provide timely and cost-effective analysis and remediation of urgent infrastructure difficulties.

Cisco VoIP Phone and IP Video Phone Integration
Progent's Cisco IP phone and video IP phone experts can help your business to configure, manage, and troubleshoot Cisco VoIP phones, desktop video IP phones and wireless IP handsets. Progent offers expertise for all models of Cisco's IP phones from discontinued VoIP devices to the newest HD media phones. Progent's consultants can also help your organization to integrate your VoIP phones and video IP phones with Cisco Unified CM, formerly named CallManager, or with Unified Communications Manager Express to build a modern IP-PBX environment for unified messaging and collaboration. Progent's consultants can provide support with any facet of Cisco VoIP Phone integration including reviewing dial plans, solving IP phone registration issues, setting up SIP trunking, deploying ISR G2 routers with CUBE VoIP networking support, and creating UCS server failover and Cisco SRST systems for survivability. For more details about Progent's technical support for Cisco's collaboration technology, visit Cisco Voice over IP and Unified Communications Consulting Services.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and CallManager Unified Messaging
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), formerly named CallManager, acts as the center of Cisco's collaboration solution. Unified CM and Unified CM Express provide a modern IP-PBX by integrating with unified messaging apps such as Cisco Unified CM IM and Presence Service, Unity Express (CUE) for voicemail management, Mobile Connect for Single Number Reach, and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise for creating a highly automated customer contact solution. Progent's CCIE-certified CUCM and CallManager consultants can assist with any facet of Unified CM setup and troubleshooting in areas such as integrating Cisco VoIP phones and video IP phones, reviewing dial plans, configuring SIP connections and PSTN support, installing ISR G2 routers with CUBE support, creating UCS server clustering solutions for survivability, and integration with Microsoft Exchange Server and Skype for Business.

Cisco ASA Firewall and PIX Firewall Support
Progent’s certified Cisco network security consulting professionals offer high-level PIX and ASA Firewall consulting services including infrastructure design, integration, and management of Cisco firewall and Cisco security solutions. The PIX and ASA Security Appliance Series of Cisco firewall products delivers strong user and application policy enforcement, mutlivector attack protection, and safe access services. Ranging from compact, easy-to-install desktop appliances for small and home businesses to modular enterprise-class products, Cisco PIX Firewall and ASA Firewalls offer a high level of protection, performance, and high reliability for network environments of all sizes. PIX Firewalls and ASA Firewalls are based on a hardened, purpose-built operating system, eliminating possible OS-specific security holes.

Network Security Inventory and Audit Packages
Progent's CISA, CISM and CISSP-premier security engineers can provide a variety of cost-effective network security Inventory bundles and security assessment service bundles designed to give organizations of all sizes a chance to get an objective look at the quality of their protection profile. These packages range 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 solution for enterprises who have to comply with security levels demanded by state agencies or by customers. For each security assessment package, engineers with top security credentials evaluate and summarize scanned information and make suggestions for effective improvements.

SIP Connectivity Solutions: SIP PSTN Trunks and CUBE Integration Expertise
Progent's Cisco-certified SIP trunk consultants and Cisco CUBE integration consultants can assist your business to design, deploy, maintain, troubleshoot and upgrade Cisco's SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) connectivity technology and Cisco's CUBE-connected IP PSTN trunks. Progent can provide affordable online or on-premises expertise to assist you to migrate smoothly to a productive communications ecosystem that delivers accelerated ROI. Progent's Gold-certified Microsoft collaboration experts can help you to establish connections between Cisco's CUBE SBC and Microsoft's VoIP and IP video platforms like Skype for Business Server and Lync Server for connectivity to a SIP-based IP PSTN trunk.

Consulting and Support Consulting and Troubleshooting Services for Cisco Wireless Technology
Progent can give you access to a certified CCIE or Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) to assist you to develop a comprehensive wireless network design and implementation strategy that incorporates a wide range of wireless appliances and technologies and provides the identical protection, expandability, and manageability you demand from your wired network. Progent can help you to achieve seamless interoperability between Cisco wireless products and wireless devices and software from other suppliers to offer your business the features you need as well as the most protected, dependable, and economical WLAN system available. Progent's CISA and ISSAP security specialists can show you how to design security into your WLAN and your business operations.

Automated Administration Tools for Cisco-powered Small Business Network Infrastructure
Progent's Cisco-Certified network engineers can provide help with Cisco's network management utilities alongside a variety of powerful third-party products to create a comprehensive management automation solution to keep your environment operating smoothly, fully utilize expensive resources, protect your data, recover rapidly from device breakdown or malicious attacks, and allow you to expand or reassign valuable components intelligently and economically as your company evolves.

To find out more information about Progent's support services for Cisco connectivity and communications technology, call 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.