IT Technology News and Progent Solutions

Cisco announced new solutions targeted specifically for small business IT networks and engineered to deliver exceptional levels of protection and connectivity at an affordable price. Solutions announced by Cisco included the Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker, the NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems, and the latest version of the Smart Business Communications System.

The Cisco Spam Blocker is a purpose-built antispam and antivirus security product that essentially eradicates email attacks as shipped. The Cisco NSS2000 and NSS3000 Small Business Network Storage Systems are economical small-footprint network-attached storage appliances that provide protection for valuable data and allow workers to share information easily. Cisco's Smart Business Communications System Release 1.4, a complete sharing and communications solution that seamlessly interconnects offices, employees, and customers however dispersed. Cisco's latest version features the industry's debut of a cordless desktop VoIP phone with Bluetooth wireless support. To read Cisco's news release, visit Cisco Announces Networking Solutions for Small Companies.

Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker
The Spam and Virus Blocker protects small companies by providing extensive protection against junk mail, malware as well as other email-borne attacks to guard your system and corporate data while at the same time improve productivity. Because the product stops spam right out of the box and updates on its own, it avoids the cost and hassle with setup and continuing and management. By filtering out spam, Cisco's Spam Blocker appliance helps the performance of networks, servers, and workstations. The Spam and Virus Blocker is an end-to-end solution email-born attacks by including a physical appliance, intelligent software, ongoing patches, and product support in a single package.

Notable benefits of the Spam Blocker include:

• Efficiency: Assists to ensure that email-borne attacks and junk mail are caught and legitimate email is allowed through.
• Continuous automatic updates: Non-stop interaction with SenderBase security, an online database of email security threats, ensures that your Spam & Virus Blocker appliance installs the latest patches to safequard your business email.
• Easy setup and operation: User-friendly web-based installation tools allow you to install Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker appliance in practically any environment in 15 minutes, providing instant security for your business.
• Streamlined management: As soon as your company installs the the Spam Blocker appliance, you benefit from spam and malware filtering with minimal additional effort demanded of your IT staff.

Cisco NSS2000 and 3000
The NSS2000 and 3000 provide the dependable security and advanced data backup features that your business requires, at a cost small businesses can afford. The Cisco NSS3000 accommodates as much as to 4 TB of data and as many as 15 simultaneous users on each enclosure, offering the optimal answer for storing, sharing, and backing up your mission-critical corporate information. As distinct from ordinary NAS systems, the Cisco Small Business NSS3000 delivers the advanced archiving, encryption, user authentication, and high uptime your company requires.

The NSS3000 4-Bay Gigabit Storage System enclosure handles any certified disk. The product offers a range of features in a desktop system designed for small businesses. The NSS3000 Storage System Chassis also gives your business the versatility to deploy the system without any attached disk drives, to modify the product at any time, and to link multiple chassis together, offering a solution that can continually expand with your company.

Your business can utilize the Cisco Small Business NSS2000 or NSS3000 Network Storage Systems to:

• Intelligently back up vital data from every workstation and server in your organization
• Provide centralized preservation and sharing of important information
• Employ Continuous Data Protection to copy automatically every version of every file saved by workers, permitting your business to restore data with ease
• Record and archive video from your company's surveillance system

Cisco SBCS
The Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS) Version 1.4 is a simple and comprehensive sharing and communications solution that allows small organizations to connect at-home workers, on-the-road workers and office workers in disparate locations to improve their options to communicate with clients and teammates. In the new release, the affordable solution offers enhanced wireless capabilities such as the first wireless desktop VoIP phone with Bluetooth, the Cisco SPA525G VoIP phone, which enables companies to grow easily by deploying handsets in locations where conventional telephone wires or Ethernet cables are missing or cannot easily be run.

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

• The Cisco Model 520 Secure Router product to help guard a small business network and give employees secure connectivity to the Internet and key business information any time, anywhere
• Cisco's Configuration Assistant Release 1.9 to allow stakeholders to simplify the setup and deployment of solutions created custom for individual companies

How Progent's Certified Engineers Can Help Your Company to Take Advantage of Cisco Technology
Progent's Cisco support professionals and CCIE engineers can help your company to assess new Cisco products to determine their usefulness for your IT system, set up Cisco appliances to improve the security and performance of your network, and provide tech support for Cisco products both in person and online to keep your network running dependably. Progent's consultants can provide a variety of cost-effective services to improve the availability, protection, performance, and manageability of your IT system:

Quick Online Access to Cisco Registered CCIE Engineers
Progent is the premier provider of easy, immediate, and economical support from Cisco CCIE consultants. CCIEs are highly-qualified networking gurus who are awarded this top-level classification only after thorough testing by Cisco. CCIEs can handle even the most sophisticated problems associated with IT network planning, setup, troubleshooting, and maintenance. Progent’s CCIE professionals cooperate closely with Cisco engineers in analyzing issues with Cisco's IOS software and developing fixes or obtaining software updates to correct problems. Progent gives you fast contact with a CCIE by telephone so you can receive instant help for tough network problems that are impacting business productivity but are beyond the expertise of your local IT service resources. Progent's CCIE support experts can access your network using state-of-the-art off-site support technology in order to deliver timely and affordable analysis and repair of urgent infrastructure problems.

Cisco VoIP Phone and IP Video Phone Solutions
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified IP phone and video IP phone consultants can help your business to integrate, maintain, 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 discontinued Voice over IP products to the newest HD media phones. Progent's consultants can also assist your organization to integrate your IP phones with Cisco Unified CM, previously branded CallManager, or with Cisco Unified CM Express (CME) to create a modern IP-PBX environment for unified messaging and collaboration. Progent can deliver support with any facet of Cisco VoIP Phone integration including reviewing dial plans, resolving IP phone registration issues, setting up SIP gateways, deploying ISR routers with CUBE VoIP networking support, and designing UCS server clustering and Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) solutions for high availability. For more details on Progent's services for Cisco's collaboration technology, refer to Cisco Voice over IP and Unified Communications Professional Support.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and CallManager Collaboration
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM or Unified CM), previously branded CallManager, is the center of Cisco's communications and collaboration portfolio. Cisco Unified CM and Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express provide a location-independent IP-PBX solution by integrating tightly with applications like Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service, Unity Connection for voicemail, Mobile Connect for Single Number Reach (SNR), and Unified Contact Center Enterprise (Unified CCE) for building an advanced customer contact solution. Progent's Cisco-certified CUCM consultants can assist with any aspect of Unified Communications Manager configuration and troubleshooting in areas such as integrating Cisco VoIP phones and desktop video IP phones, designing dial plans, setting up SIP connections and PSTN calling, installing ISR G2 routers with CUBE networking support, designing UCS server clustering solutions for survivability, and integration with Exchange and Skype for Business.

Cisco ASA Firewall and PIX Firewall Support
Progent’s experienced Cisco IT security consultants provide expert PIX Firewall and ASA Firewall consulting services including architecture, configuration, 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, sophisticated attack protection, and secure connectivity services. Ranging from compact, plug-and-play desktop appliances for small and home offices to modular enterprise-grade products, Cisco PIX and ASA Firewalls offer advanced protection, high throughput, and high availability for IT systems of any size. PIX Firewalls and ASA Firewalls are based on a hardened, specially designed operating system, eliminating common OS-specific security holes.

Network Security Inventory and Evaluation Packages
Progent's GIAC, CISA and CISM-premier security engineers can deliver a range of cost-effective network security Inventory packages and network security assessment bundles created to offer businesses of any size a chance to get an independent opinion about the strength of their protection profile. These packages vary from ultra-affordable external security scan and internal network security scan options for small and midsize businesses up to a high-end security assessment solution for institutions who need comply with security standards required by state agencies or by vendors. For every security inventory or evaluation bundle, engineers with high-level security credentials analyze and report on scanned data and make suggestions for effective improvements.

Cisco SIP Connectivity Solutions: SIP Trunks and CUBE Configuration Consulting
Progent's Cisco CCIE-certified SIP infrastructure consultants and CUBE integration consultants can help your business to design, deploy, maintain, troubleshoot and upgrade Cisco's SIP infrastructure technology and Cisco's CUBE (Cisco Unified Border Element)-connected SIP trunks. Progent offers cost-effective online or on-premises support to help companies to move efficiently to a productive unified communications ecosystem that offers fast return on investment. Progent's Gold-certified Microsoft collaboration consultants can help you to set up connections between Cisco's CUBE SBC and Microsoft's VoIP and IP video applications like Skype for Business or Lync for connectivity to a SIP-based IP PSTN trunk.

Consulting and Support Consulting and Troubleshooting Expertise for Cisco Wireless Products
Progent can provide a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (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 devices and technologies and offers the identical security, expandability, and ease of management you expect from your wired environment. Progent can assist you to implement seamless interoperability between Cisco wireless technology and wireless devices and software from other vendors to offer your business the functionality you require as well as the most secure, dependable, and economical WLAN solution possible. Progent's CISA and ISSAP security professionals can advise you about how to design protection into your wireless network and into your business processes.

Simplified Administration Solutions for Cisco-based Small Business Network Infrastructure
Progent's Cisco-Premier network consultants can provide help with Cisco's management tools along with a selection of specialized third-party applications to build a complete network management solution in order to keep your environment operating reliably, fully utilize expensive resources, protect your information, revive rapidly from device failure or malicious attacks, and enable you to add or repurpose valuable components intelligently and affordably as your business grows.

To learn additional information concerning Progent's support for Cisco connectivity and security technology, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.