Technology News and Progent Solutions

Cisco announced innovative solutions targeted specifically for small business IT networks and designed to deliver outstanding protection and connectivity at a budget-friendly cost. Solutions unveiled by Cisco included Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker, Cisco's NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems, and the newest release of the Smart Business Communications System (SBCS).

The Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker appliance is a dedicated email security device that essentially eliminates email-based threats with no set up. Cisco's NSS2000 and NSS3000 Small Business Network Storage Systems are affordable small-footprint NAS appliances that offer security for valuable data and enable workers to exchange files effortlessly. Cisco's Smart Business Communications System Release 1.4, a complete sharing and communications solution that easily connects offices, employees, and clients anywhere. Cisco's latest version features the debut of a cordless small-footprint VoIP handset with Bluetooth wireless capabilities. To read Cisco's news release, refer to Cisco Unveils Connectivity and Collaboration Products for Small Companies.

Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker
The Spam and Virus Blocker protects small companies by providing extensive protection against spam, viruses and phishing as well as other email threats to guard your system and corporate information while improve productivity. Since the product stops spam with minimal set up and stays current automatically, it avoids the cost and hassle with initial configuration and continuing and management. By filtering out unwanted email, Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker increases the performance of networks, servers, and computers. The Spam Blocker is an end-to-end solution email-born attacks by including hardware, software, ongoing updates, and product assistance in a unified bundle.

Key features of the Spam and Virus Blocker appliance include:

• Efficiency: Assists to make sure that email attacks and spam are caught and legitimate email is delivered.
• Ongoing self-installed patches: Non-stop interaction with SenderBase services, a network database of email security risks, ensures that your Spam & Virus Blocker appliance installs the most current updates to protect your business email.
• Easy installation and operation: Easy-to-use web-based setup wizards allow you to install Cisco's Spam Blocker in almost any environment within minutes, delivering immediate security for your business.
• Streamlined management: As soon as you installs the Cisco's Spam Blocker, you benefit from junk mail and virus filtering with minimal additional effort demanded of your network support group.

Cisco NSS2000 and NSS3000
The NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems provide the dependable security and advanced backup capabilities that your business requires, at a cost small organizations can afford. The NSS3000 supports as much as to four terabytes of data and as many as 15 concurrent users per chassis, offering the ideal solution for storing, accessing, and backing up your vital business information. Unlike ordinary NAS alternatives, the Small Business NSS3000 provides the advanced archiving, encryption, user authentication, and fault tolerance your business requires.

The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 four-Bay Gigabit Storage System enclosure supports any certified hard drive. The enclosure provides a range of capabilities in a desktop-size system engineered specifically for small companies. The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 Storage System enclosure also gives your business the versatility to configure the product without any attached drives, to modify the product at any time, and to link multiple chassis with one another, offering a solution that can smoothly expand with your business.

You can utilize the Cisco Small Business NSS2000 or NSS3000 to:

• Automatically copy important information from each workstation and application server in your business
• Provide centralized preservation and distribution of important files
• Employ Continuous Data Protection to back up automatically each version of every file saved by workers, permitting you to recover files quickly
• Record and save video from your surveillance cameras

Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS)
The Cisco SBCS Release 1.4 is a simple and complete sharing and communications system that enables small organizations to connect at-home workers, mobile workers and employees in disparate locations to improve their options to interact with customers and teammates. In the new release, the aggressively priced solution has enhanced wireless support including the industry's first wireless desktop IP phone with Bluetooth, the SPA525G VoIP phone, which allows businesses to grow cost-effectively by installing phones in locations where traditional phone wires or Ethernet wiring is not present or cannot conveniently be run.

Other new pieces of the Smart Business Communications System 1.4 version are:

• The Cisco 520 Secure Router product to help protect a small business infrastructure and provide workers secure connectivity to the Internet and key business data wherever they are
• The Cisco Configuration Assistant v. 1.9 to enable stakeholders to streamline the setup and deployment of solutions designed custom for certain businesses

How Progent's Consulting Engineers Can Assist Your Company to Deploy Cisco Technology
Progent's Cisco certified support professionals and CCIE engineers can help your company to evaluate the latest Cisco technologies to determine their appropriateness for your IT system, install Cisco security and communication platforms to improve the protection and efficiency of your information network, and maintain Cisco devices both in person and remotely to keep your IT network operating dependably. Progent's consulting experts can provide a range of low-cost services to improve the dependability, security, efficiency, and manageability of your company's information network:

Immediate Access to Cisco CCIE Certified Engineers
Progent is the leading source of convenient, immediate, and cost-effective help from Cisco CCIE engineers. CCIEs are elite networking experts who are awarded this top-level classification only through intense testing by Cisco. CCIEs can tackle even the most challenging issues associated with network design, deployment, repair, and support. Progent’s CCIE professionals interact closely with Cisco engineers in identifying problems with Cisco's IOS software and developing workarounds or obtaining software updates to correct problems. Progent can provide fast access to a CCIE by telephone so that you are able to receive urgent assistance for tough network problems that are impacting worker efficiency but are beyond the expertise of your local IT service resources. Progent's CCIE consulting experts can link to your network using state-of-the-art remote connectivity technology to deliver fast and cost-effective analysis and remediation of critical network problems.

Cisco Voice over IP Phone and IP Video Phone Integration
Progent's Cisco-certified IP phone and video IP phone consultants can assist you to integrate, maintain, and debug Cisco VoIP phones, video IP phones and wireless IP handsets. Progent can provide support for all models of Cisco's IP phones from discontinued VoIP devices to the latest HD media phones. Progent's consultants can also help you to integrate your VoIP phones and video IP phones with Unified CM, previously known as CallManager, or with Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express to create a an advanced IP-PBX environment for unified messaging and company-wide collaboration. Progent can deliver expertise with all aspects of Cisco IP Phone integration including designing dial plans, resolving QoS, configuring SIP trunking, installing Cisco ISR routers with CUBE VoIP networking capability, and creating UCS server failover and Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony solutions for high availability. For more details on Progent's services for Cisco's Unified Communications technology, visit Cisco VoIP and Unified Communications Professional Help.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and CallManager Unified Messaging
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), formerly branded CallManager, is the foundation of Cisco's communications and collaboration portfolio. Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Unified CM Express offer a borderless IP-PBX solution by integrating with apps that include Cisco Unified CM IM and Presence Service with Jabber support, Cisco Unity Connection for voicemail, Cisco Unified Mobility for Single Number Reach, and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise for building an advanced customer contact center. Progent's Cisco-certified CUCM experts can help with any facet of Unified CM setup and troubleshooting in areas that include integrating Voice over IP phones and video IP phones, reviewing dial plans, setting up SIP trunking and PSTN calling, installing ISR G2 routers with CUBE support, creating UCS server failover solutions for high availability, and integration with Exchange Server and Skype for Business.

Cisco ASA and PIX Firewall Consulting
Progent’s experienced Cisco network security consulting professionals offer expert PIX Firewall and ASA Firewall consulting support including infrastructure design, integration, and management of Cisco firewall and Cisco security solutions. The PIX and ASA Series of Cisco firewalls delivers robust user and software policy enforcement, sophisticated attack defense, and secure access services. Ranging from economical, easy-to-install desktop devices for small and home offices to modular enterprise-grade products, Cisco PIX and ASA Firewalls provide a high level of security, performance, and excellent reliability for network environments of all sizes. PIX and ASA Firewalls are based on a hardened, specially designed platform, eliminating common OS-specific security holes.

Security Inventory and Audit Packages
Progent's CISM and CISSP-premier security engineers can provide a variety of budget-friendly security Inventory packages and security evaluation bundles created to offer businesses of any size an opportunity to get an independent opinion about the strength of their security environment. These packages range from ultra-affordable external security scan and internal network security scan packages for small and midsize companies up to a high-end security assessment solution for enterprises who need meet security standards demanded by government agencies or by vendors. For each security inventory or evaluation bundle, consultants with top security accreditations evaluate and summarize collected data and make recommendations for efficient remediation.

Cisco SIP Infrastructure Solutions: SIP PSTN Trunks and CUBE Configuration Expertise
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified SIP infrastructure experts and CUBE integration consultants can help you to design, integrate, maintain, troubleshoot and enhance Cisco's SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) connectivity technology and Cisco's CUBE-connected SIP trunks. Progent can provide cost-effective online or on-premises expertise to assist you to migrate efficiently to a modern unified communications environment that offers fast ROI. Progent's Gold-certified Microsoft unified communications consultants can help you to establish connections between Cisco's CUBE Session Border Controller and Microsoft's VoIP and IP video platforms like Skype for Business and Lync Server for connectivity to a SIP PSTN trunk.

Consulting and Support Consulting and Troubleshooting Services for Cisco Wireless Technology
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 wide range of wireless products and technologies and provides the same protection, scalability, and manageability you expect from your wired environment. Progent can assist you to implement seamless interoperability between Cisco wireless technology and wireless products from other suppliers to give your business the functionality you require as well as the most protected, dependable, and economical WLAN solution available. Progent's CISA and ISSAP security specialists can show you how to build security into your WLAN and into your business processes.

Automated Management Tools for Cisco-powered Small Business Networks
Progent's Cisco-Premier network management engineers offer help with Cisco's network management technology along with a selection of specialized third-party applications to build a complete management automation strategy to keep your network operating reliably, conserve limited resources, guard your information, revive rapidly from device failure or deliberate assaults, and enable you to expand or reassign valuable resources sensibly and economically as your business evolves.

For more information concerning Progent's consulting expertise for Cisco connectivity and security products, call 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.