IT Technology News and Progent Solutions

Cisco introduced new products targeted especially for small company IT networks and engineered to provide exceptional levels of protection and connectivity for a budget-friendly cost. Solutions introduced by Cisco included Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker, the Cisco Small Business series NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems, and the latest release of Cisco's Smart Business Communications System.

The Cisco Spam Blocker is a dedicated spam, virus, and phishing filter security device that essentially eradicates email-based attacks as shipped. Cisco's NSS2000 and NSS3000 Small Business Network Storage Systems are economical small-footprint NAS appliances that provide protection for valuable data and allow employees to exchange files easily. The Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS) Version 1.4, a complete sharing and communications system that seamlessly connects offices, employees, and customers anywhere. The current version features the debut of a cordless desktop IP handset with Bluetooth capabilities. To view Cisco's news release, refer to Cisco Announces Security and Collaboration Products for Small Businesses.

Cisco Spam and Virus Blocker
The Spam and Virus Blocker protects small companies by offering powerful defense against junk mail, malware and other email-borne threats to guard your system and corporate data and simultaneously enhance efficiency. Since the appliance stops spam and viruses with minimal set up and stays current on its own, it eliminates the expense and time associated initial configuration and ongoing and management. By eliminating unwanted email, Cisco's Spam and Virus Blocker appliance helps the performance of networks, application servers, and computers. The Spam and Virus Blocker is an end-to-end defense against email-born threats by featuring a physical appliance, intelligent software, continuous patches, and product assistance in a single package.

Notable benefits of Cisco's Spam Blocker appliance include:

• Precision: Assists to ensure that email threats and junk mail are caught and legitimate email is allowed through.
• Ongoing automatic patches: Non-stop communication with SenderBase security, a network database of email safety risks, ensures that the Spam & Virus Blocker appliance installs the most current updates to safequard your corporate email.
• Easy setup and use: Easy-to-use browser-based setup wizards permit you to install the Spam and Virus Blocker appliance in almost any environment in minutes, providing instant security for your business.
• Streamlined administration: From the moment you deploys the the Spam Blocker, you get junk mail and virus protection with minimal additional hassle demanded from your network support staff.

Cisco NSS2000 and 3000
The Cisco NSS2000 and NSS3000 Network Storage Systems offer the robust protection and advanced data backup features that your company needs, at a price small businesses can handle. The Cisco NSS3000 accommodates up to 4 terabytes of data and up to 15 simultaneous clients per enclosure, provides the optimal answer for holding, accessing, and backing up your vital business data. As distinct from less sophisticated network-attached storage (NAS) systems, the Cisco Small Business NSS3000 delivers the advanced backup, cryptography, user validation, and service continuity your company needs.

The Cisco Small Business NSS3000 4-Bay Gigabit Storage System enclosure handles any approved hard disk. The product offers a wealth of capabilities in a desktop-size form factor engineered specifically for small businesses. The Cisco NSS3000 Storage System Chassis also provides your company the flexibility to configure the product without any connected hard drives, to reconfigure the product easily, and to chain several NAS chassis with one another, offering a platform that can continually grow with your company.

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

• Intelligently copy vital data from every workstation and application server in your company
• Offer unified storage and sharing of key files
• Run Continuous Data Protection (CDP) to back up unattended every version of every file archived by employees, allowing you to recover data quickly
• Record and archive digital video from your company's video security system

Cisco Smart Business Communications System (SBCS)
The Cisco SBCS Release 1.4 is an easy-to-manage and complete collaboration and communications solution that allows small companies to interconnect at-home workers, mobile workers and employees in separate sites to enhance their options to collaborate with clients and teammates. In the new release, the aggressively priced system has enhanced wireless support such as the first wireless desktop VoIP handset with built-in Bluetooth technology, the Cisco SPA525G VoIP phone, which allows companies to expand cost-effectively by installing phones in places where traditional phone wires or Ethernet cables are missing or cannot easily be run.

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

• Cisco's Model 520 Secure Router to help protect a small business infrastructure and provide workers safe connectivity to the Internet and important corporate information from inside or outside the office
• Cisco's Configuration Assistant v. 1.9 to allow stakeholders to streamline the setup and installation of solutions designed custom for individual companies

How Progent's Certified Experts Can Help Your Company to Get the Most Out of Cisco Technology
Progent's Cisco certified consultants and Cisco CCIE networking experts can help your company to evaluate new Cisco technologies to determine their usefulness for your IT system, install Cisco appliances to enhance the security and performance of your information network, and maintain Cisco products both onsite and remotely to keep your network running dependably. Progent's consultants can provide a variety of affordable support services to enhance the availability, security, efficiency, and maintainability of your IT system:

Quick Access to Cisco Registered CCIE Engineers
Progent offers convenient, quick, and low-cost support from CCIE consultants. CCIEs are elite network experts who are awarded this top-level classification only as a result of strenuous examination by Cisco. CCIEs are able to resolve the most complex problems associated with network planning, setup, repair, and maintenance. Progent's CCIE professionals interact closely with Cisco in-house staff in analyzing issues with Cisco's IOS software and developing fixes or acquiring software updates to resolve problems. Progent offers quick access to a CCIE by telephone so you can get instant assistance for tough network problems that are affecting business productivity but are outside the scope of your local network support resources. Progent's CCIE consulting experts can link to your network using advanced remote connectivity tools to provide fast and affordable analysis and remediation of urgent network difficulties.

Cisco VoIP Phone and IP Video Phone Integration
Progent's Cisco VoIP phone and video IP phone experts can assist your business to integrate, maintain, and troubleshoot Cisco IP phones, desktop video IP phones and wireless IP handsets. Progent can provide support for all models of Cisco's IP phones from legacy Voice over IP products to the latest media phones. Progent's IP telephony experts can also assist your organization to integrate your IP phones with Unified CM, previously named CallManager, or with Unified CM Express (CME) to build a an advanced IP-PBX ecosystem for unified messaging and collaboration. Progent's consultants can provide expertise with any facet of Cisco VoIP Phone integration including designing dial plans, solving IP phone registration issues, configuring SIP gateways, deploying Cisco ISR routers with CUBE internetworking capability, and creating Cisco UCS server clustering and Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) systems for high availability. For more details concerning Progent's offerings for Cisco's collaboration solutions, read Cisco VoIP and Unified Communications Professional Services.

Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco CallManager Unified Messaging
Cisco Unified Communications Manager, originally branded CallManager, acts as the heart of Cisco's communications and collaboration platform. CUCM and Cisco Unified CM Express provide a borderless IP-PBX solution by integrating tightly with apps such as Unified CM IM and Presence Service with Jabber support, Unity Connection for voicemail, Cisco Unified Mobility for Single Number Reach (SNR), and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise for building an advanced customer contact solution. Progent's CCIE-certified CUCM consultants can assist with any aspect of Unified Communications Manager configuration and debugging in areas that include integrating Cisco VoIP phones and desktop video phones, designing dial plans, configuring SIP connections and PSTN calling, installing Cisco ISR routers with CUBE support, designing UCS server clustering systems for high availability, and integration with Microsoft Exchange Server and Skype for Business.

Cisco ASA and PIX Firewall Support
Progent's experienced Cisco network security consultants provide expert PIX and ASA Firewall consulting services covering architecture, integration, and management of Cisco firewall and Cisco security solutions. The PIX and ASA Security Appliance Series of Cisco firewalls delivers strong user and software policy enforcement, mutlivector attack protection, and safe access services. Ranging from compact, plug-and-play desktop appliances for small and home businesses to modular gigabit appliances, Cisco PIX and ASA Firewalls offer a high level of security, high throughput, and high availability for network environments of all sizes. PIX and ASA Firewalls are based on a proven, purpose-built platform, minimizing possible OS-specific security gaps.

Network Security Inventory and Evaluation Packages
Progent's CISM and CISSP-certified security consultants can deliver a range of budget-friendly network security Inventory service packages and security assessment service packages created to offer businesses of all sizes a chance to get a professional opinion about the strength of their security profile. The packages range from ultra-affordable external security scan and internal security scan packages for small companies up to a high-end security assessment solution for corporations who have to meet security standards demanded by government regulators or by customers. For every security assessment package, engineers with high-level security credentials evaluate and report on collected information and make suggestions for effective remediation.

Cisco SIP Infrastructure Solutions: SIP PSTN Trunks and CUBE Configuration Expertise
Progent's Cisco-certified SIP trunk consultants and CUBE configuration consultants can help your business to design, integrate, manage, debug and upgrade Cisco's SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) infrastructure technology and Cisco's CUBE (Cisco Unified Border Element)-connected SIP trunks. Progent can provide affordable online or on-premises expertise to help companies to move smoothly to a productive communications ecosystem that delivers accelerated return on investment. Progent's certified Microsoft collaboration experts can assist you to establish connections between Cisco's CUBE Session Border Controller and Microsoft's VoIP and IP video applications such as Skype for Business or Lync Server for access to a SIP PSTN trunk.

Consulting and Support Consulting and Troubleshooting Expertise for Cisco Wireless Infrastructure
Progent can give you access to a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert or certified CCNP to help you to develop a comprehensive wireless network design and implementation plan that integrates a wide range of wireless products and technologies and provides the identical protection, scalability, and ease of management you expect from your wired environment. Progent can assist you to implement transparent integration between Cisco wireless products and wireless products from third-party suppliers to give your business the features you require plus the most protected, dependable, and economical WLAN system possible. Progent's CISM and CISSP security consultants can show you how to design security into your wireless network and your company's operations.

Simplified Management Solutions for Cisco-based Small Business Network Infrastructure
Progent's Cisco-Certified network consultants offer help with Cisco's management technology alongside a range of powerful third-party products to build a complete management automation solution to keep your network running reliably, fully utilize expensive resources, protect your information, recover quickly from hardware breakdown or malicious assaults, and enable you to add or repurpose valuable resources sensibly and affordably as your company evolves.

For additional information concerning Progent's consulting and support services for Cisco connectivity and communications products, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.