IT Technology News and Progent Business Solutions

Cisco announced innovative solutions targeted especially for small company networks and designed to provide exceptional protection and connectivity for an affordable price. Solutions introduced by Cisco were the Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker, the NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems, and the newest version of the Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS).

The Cisco Spam Blocker appliance is a dedicated email security device that virtually eliminates email attacks right out of the box. Cisco's NSS2000 and NSS3000 Small Business Network Storage Systems are affordable small-footprint NAS appliances that offer security for important information and allow employees to share files effortlessly. Cisco's SBCS Release 1.4, a full sharing and communications system that easily connects offices, employees, and clients anywhere. The latest release incorporates the industry's first cordless small-footprint VoIP phone with Bluetooth wireless support. To view Cisco's news release, visit Cisco Announces Connectivity and Collaboration Solutions for Small Companies.

Cisco Spam Blocker
The Spam Blocker safeguards small organizations by offering powerful defense against spam, viruses as well as other email attacks to guard your network and business information while improve productivity. Since the device stops spam and viruses with minimal set up and updates on its own, it eliminates the cost and hassle required for initial configuration and continuing and management. By eliminating unwanted email, Cisco's Spam Blocker increases the throughput of network connections, servers, and workstations. The Spam and Virus Blocker appliance is an end-to-end defense against email-born threats by including a physical appliance, intelligent software, continuous updates, and product support in a unified package.

Notable features of the Spam Blocker include:

• Efficiency: Helps to ensure that email attacks and spam are intercepted and legitimate email is accepted.
• Continuous automatic patches: Non-stop interaction with SenderBase security, an online database of email safety risks, makes sure that the Spam & Virus Blocker installs the most current patches to protect your corporate email.
• Easy setup and operation: Easy-to-use web-based setup tools allow you to configure Cisco's Spam Blocker appliance in practically any network within minutes, providing instant security for your company.
• Streamlined management: From the moment your company deploys the the Spam and Virus Blocker, you get spam and malware filtering with no extra effort demanded of your network support group.

Cisco Small Business NSS2000 and 3000
The Cisco NSS2000 and 3000 Network Storage Systems offer the dependable security and advanced data backup features that your company requires, at a price small companies can afford. The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 supports as much as to four terabytes of data and up to 15 simultaneous users on each chassis, offering the optimal solution for holding, accessing, and backing up your vital business data. Unlike less sophisticated network-attached storage (NAS) systems, the Cisco Small Business NSS3000 delivers the advanced backup, cryptography, user authentication, and high uptime your company requires.

The Cisco NSS3000 4-Bay Gigabit Storage System Chassis supports any certified hard disk. It offers a wealth of features in a desktop form factor designed specifically for small companies. The NSS3000 Storage enclosure also offers you the flexibility to configure the product without any connected disks, to reconfigure the product easily, and to link multiple chassis together, offering a solution that can continually grow with your business.

You can use the NSS2000 or NSS3000 Network Storage Systems to:

• Intelligently copy important information from every PC and server in your company
• Provide centralized storage and sharing of important information
• Employ Continuous Data Protection to copy automatically each revision of each file archived by employees, permitting your company to restore data with ease
• Record and save video from your company's video surveillance system

Cisco SBCS
The Cisco SBCS Version 1.4 is an easy-to-manage and comprehensive collaboration and communications system that permits small businesses to interconnect telecommuters, mobile workers and office workers in separate sites to improve their ability to communicate with clients and colleagues. In Release 1.4, the affordable system offers enhanced wireless features such as the industry's first wireless desktop VoIP phone with Bluetooth, the Cisco SPA525G IP phone, which enables businesses to grow cost-effectively by adding handsets in places where conventional telephone wires or network wiring is not present or cannot conveniently be run.

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

• Cisco's Model 520 Secure Router to help guard a small business network and provide workers safe connectivity to the Internet and key corporate data from either side of the firewall
• The Configuration Assistant v. 1.9 to permit stakeholders to streamline the setup and installation of solutions designed custom for certain businesses

How Progent's Cisco-certified Experts Can Help You to Take Advantage of Cisco Networking Solutions
Progent's Cisco-qualified support professionals and CCIE accredited engineers can assist your company to evaluate new Cisco products to determine their usefulness for your IT system, install Cisco solutions to improve the protection and efficiency of your information network, and troubleshoot Cisco devices both in person and online to keep your IT network operating dependably. Progent's IT professionals can provide a variety of affordable support services to enhance the availability, safety, efficiency, and maintainability of a small business IT network:

Immediate Online Access to Cisco CCIE Certified Network Engineers
Progent is the leading source of convenient, immediate, and cost-effective support from CCIE Certified consultants. Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts are recognized network gurus who are awarded this prestigious classification only after thorough testing by Cisco. CCIEs can handle the most sophisticated problems encountered with IT network planning, implementation, repair, and service. Progent's CCIE consultants cooperate intimately with Cisco in-house staff in analyzing problems with Cisco's IOS platform and developing fixes or acquiring software updates to correct problems. Progent can provide quick access to a CCIE by telephone so that you can receive emergency assistance for tough network problems that are affecting worker productivity but are beyond the scope of your usual IT support providers. Progent's CCIE consulting professionals can link to your network via state-of-the-art off-site support tools to provide timely and affordable diagnosis and remediation of critical infrastructure problems.

Cisco Voice over IP Phone and IP Video Phone Solutions
Progent's Cisco-certified IP phone and video IP phone experts can assist your business to integrate, maintain, and troubleshoot Cisco VoIP phones, video IP phones and wireless IP phones. Progent offers expertise for all models of Cisco's IP phones from legacy VoIP products to the newest HD media phones. Progent's IP telephony experts can also assist your organization to integrate your IP phones with Cisco Unified Communications Manager, originally known as CallManager, or with Unified Communications Manager Express (CME) to create a modern IP-PBX environment for unified messaging and company-wide collaboration. Progent can deliver expertise with any facet of Cisco IP Phone integration including designing dial plans, solving IP phone registration issues, setting up SIP trunking, installing ISR routers with CUBE internetworking support, and creating Cisco UCS server clustering and Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony systems for survivability. For additional information about Progent's engineering help for Cisco's collaboration solutions, refer to Cisco IP Telephony and Unified Communications Consulting Services.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and CallManager Unified Messaging
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), originally named CallManager, functions as the foundation of Cisco's collaboration platform. Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express offer a location-independent IP-PBX solution by integrating closely with applications like Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service, Cisco Unity Connection for voicemail, Cisco Unified Mobility for Single Number Reach, and Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) for building a highly automated customer contact center. Progent's Cisco-certified CUCM and CallManager experts can assist with any aspect of Unified CM setup and debugging in areas such as integrating Voice over IP phones and desktop video phones, designing dial plans, configuring SIP connections and PSTN calling, installing ISR routers with CUBE support, creating Cisco UCS server failover systems for high availability, and integration with Exchange Server.

Cisco ASA Firewall and PIX Firewall Consulting
Progent's certified Cisco network security consulting professionals provide expert PIX and ASA Firewall engineering services including architecture, configuration, and management of Cisco firewall and Cisco security solutions. The PIX and ASA Series of Cisco firewall products delivers strong user and application policy enforcement, sophisticated attack protection, and secure connectivity services. Ranging from economical, easy-to-install desktop appliances for small and home businesses to modular enterprise-grade products, Cisco PIX Firewall and ASA Firewalls offer a high level of protection, high throughput, and excellent availability for IT systems of all sizes. PIX and ASA Firewalls are based on a hardened, specially designed operating system, minimizing common OS-specific security holes.

Security Inventory and Audit Packages
Progent's CISA, CISM and CISSP-premier security engineers can provide a range of budget-friendly network security Inventory service bundles and network security evaluation service bundles designed to give organizations of all sizes a chance to receive an impartial opinion about the quality of their protection profile. These packages range from ultra-affordable external network security scan and internal network security scan packages for small and midsize businesses up to a high-end security assessment package for corporations who have to comply with security levels demanded by state agencies or by vendors. For every security assessment bundle, engineers with top security accreditations evaluate and summarize scanned data and provide suggestions for effective improvements.

Cisco SIP Infrastructure Solutions: SIP PSTN Trunks and CUBE Integration Expertise
Progent's Cisco-certified SIP trunk consultants and Cisco CUBE configuration experts can assist organizations of any size to plan, deploy, manage, debug and upgrade Cisco's SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) connectivity solutions and Cisco's CUBE-connected IP PSTN trunks. Progent can provide cost-effective online or on-premises support to help companies to move smoothly to a productive unified communications network that offers accelerated ROI. Progent's Gold-certified Microsoft unified communications experts can assist you to set up interfaces between Cisco's CUBE SBC and Microsoft's rich media platforms like Skype for Business Server or Lync for access to a SIP-based IP PSTN trunk.

Consulting and Support Consulting and Troubleshooting Expertise for Cisco Wireless Solutions
Progent can give you access to 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 devices and technologies and provides the identical protection, scalability, and ease of management you demand from a wired network. Progent can help you to achieve seamless integration between Cisco wireless technology and wireless devices and software from other suppliers to give your business the features you require as well as the most secure, dependable, and economical WLAN solution possible. Progent's CISM, CISSP, and ISSAP security professionals can show you how to build security into your wireless network and your company's operations.

Automated Management Solutions for Cisco-based IT Networks
Progent's Cisco-Certified network management consultants offer help with Cisco's network management utilities along with a selection of specialized third-party applications to build a complete network management strategy to keep your network operating smoothly, conserve limited resources, protect your information, recover quickly from device failure or malicious attacks, and allow you to expand or repurpose network resources sensibly and economically as your company evolves.

To learn more information about Progent's support services for Cisco connectivity and communications products, phone 1-800-993-9400 or see Contact Progent.