 WelcomeIt's summer time in Phoenix with temperatures over the 100 degree mark, but that hasn't slowed down the pace of activity at itSynergy!
There is so much happening this month that we almost need TWO newsletters to tell you about everything:
- We have switched vendors for the newsletter mailing. Microsoft has discontinued their newsletter service, so we have switched over to Constant Contact. If you have any feedback (good or bad) about the new vendor, please let us know!
- We have moved the date of our monthly newsletter. In order to avoid conflicts with everything else that happens at the end of the month, we will now be sending the newsletter out mid month. We're a little late this month due to the vendor change, but you can expect to receive our newsletter around the 15th of every month instead of at the end.
- We have added a new member to our team! We are VERY excited to introduce Camille Huang to everyone. She will be starting June 1 as a Network Engineer, and I know she'll be a GREAT fit for our team and our customers.
- As promised at the beginning of the year, we are launching our new spam service this quarter. We have several customers that are in the deployment stage now, and will announce full details of that service next month. We have been getting VERY positive feedback so far.
- Our Recurring Business Reviews with customers kicked off this quarter, and have gone very well so far. If yours hasn't been scheduled yet, stay tuned.
- We have finalized our "Rain Maker" program which provides for revenue sharing with referral sources that generate significant revenue. This program is by invitation only, and we have already recruited our first few members into the program.
As we continue to progress on these initiatives and others, please be sure to continue to give us your feedback. Although we are very excited about the new services we are providing, we will never rest on our laurels and assume we are 'good enough.' It is your feedback that continues to motivate and drive us to new heights we never thought imaginable.
Enjoy the newsletter!
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Is VoIP Right for Your Business?
More and more businesses tired of racking up high telecommunications bills are turning to the Internet for their phone service.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services enable businesses to conduct calls across the same network to access the Internet and get email - and at a fraction of the cost of traditional voice networks. However, VoIP developers have been focused on quality and reliability versus security. Therefore, if you choose to adopt VoIP, it is up to you to take the proper steps to secure it.
Background and benefits
The technology behind VoIP has been around for a few years; early incarnations of VoIP were plagued by spotty service, muddled and dropped calls. Only in the last few years has VoIP service improved enough to make it sufficiently reliable and stable for business use. In fact, businesses are finding that a well-planned and implemented VoIP system can provide call quality and reliability that rivals mobile phone or landline calls.
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| System Engineering Corner
 Notes
from the Network Engineering Department:
Note to readers: As our network engineers work with all of you across our entire customer base, they observe trends and issues that many people have in common, or that many customers will find helpful to know about.
This section is designed to give them a mechanism to communicate those issues to you, with the hope that YOU might benefit from.
In our last newsletter, we promised a discussion of the options available to you once you've made the decision to expand your storage space. There are essentially 3 options, and each has pros and cons:
1. Purchase Additional DAS (Directly Attached Storage). This is a fancy way of saying buy more hard drives. The hard drives can be either internal (they are installed inside the server case) or external (they are installed in an external housing and then connected via a cable to your server). In many cases, some type of card may have to be installed in your server in order to connect the external storage. You may also need a new cable for additional drives installed inside the server. Internal drives are usually the least expensive option, but the catch is that many servers simply don't have enough power to allow you to add the storage you need. When adding storage, you want to make sure to maintain the hardware redundancy you have today, which means you need to add at least two and preferably 3 or more hard drives. Many servers simply don't have the space for the additional drives, and many of those that do don't have the power to run them.
2. Purchase a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. This is essentially a separate piece of hardware that acts much like a server and has very large hard drives. Manufacturers like Dell make Windows Storage Server devices which have an operating system that is fully compatible with your Windows network, and yet scaled down and optimized to only perform key functions like file and print sharing. NAS is often a good option when you simply can't add DAS to your server because of power or space requirements.
3. Implement a SAN (Storage Area Network) solution. Many of our medium business customers are implementing iSCSI SANs which is a bunch of alphabet soup that simply means a VERY large hard drive that is attached to one or more servers via special high speed connections. Servers see a SAN as a local hard drive (as opposed to a NAS which is seen as a separate device on the network). That offers additional flexibility such as the ability to run programs or databases on the SAN, even though the program files may reside on a different server. A great example of a SAN application is your Microsoft Exchange email. You can run Microsoft Exchange on a Windows Server, but put the large email databases on the SAN. SANs allow for tremendous configuration flexibility, allowing you to dynamically allocate disk space to connected servers as needed at any time. The downsides to SANs are cost and complexity - they come with plenty of both.
Regardless of the solution you choose, make sure you've carefully planned out the new storage space on your network, especially in the area of backup. Many people forget that when you significantly expand your storage capacity, you will likely need to expand backup capacity at the same time so that you can protect all of your data.
Of course we are here to help, and as with any project we do we will bring all of our experience across a wide base of clients to the table to help make sure your expansion is implemented without a hitch.
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May 2007
In this issue....
□ Welcome
□ VoIP Right for Business?
□ Tech Corner
□ Outlook Anywhere
□ Get Email Addresses
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Outlook Anywhere
Remote access of Exchange-based email is a requirement of most mobile workers. In the past, Outlook Web Access provided some, but not all, of the functionality of Outlook. Remote users who wanted to use their native Outlook software were forced to use a VPN connection to access the corporate network. VPN's, however, are more complex to configure and enable access to more network services than are required for simple e-mail access.
Outlook 2003 and 2007 now offers a simpler alternative to VPN connections - RPC over HTTP (which Microsoft has mercifully renamed "Outlook Anywhere"). With this feature, users can have security-enhanced access to their Exchange Server accounts from the Internet when they are working outside your organization's firewall. Users do not need any special connections or hardware, such as smart cards and security tokens, and they can still get to their Exchange accounts even if the Exchange server and client computer are behind firewalls on different networks. The user runs the same Outlook used inside the network and has all of Outlook's functionality enabled including shared calendars, contact lists and public folder access.
Outlook Anywhere runs on Windows XP and Vista and requires Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, 2007 or Microsoft Small Business Server 2003. Take advantage of Outlook's power and flexibility outside your office with Outlook Anywhere. Contact itSynergy today for more information on this feature or to help implement it in YOUR business.
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7 Ways to Get Customers' E-mail Addresses (legitimately)
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By Monte Enbysk
Reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center
If you're like most small-business owners, you need a generous supply of potential customers' names and e-mail addresses to effectively market your offerings online.
The good news is you don't have to deceive or spam people into getting them. The bad news is that too many others have already taken that route, giving online marketing a shady reputation.
Unlike the offline world, where consumers get junk mail daily and simply toss it into the recycling bin, unwanted e-mail messages offend people and trigger nasty replies. People are more protective than ever of their e-mail addresses.
"Spammers have made it bad for the rest of us," says Derek Scruggs, founder of Escalan.com, a Boulder, Colo.-based marketing consultant. So you shouldn't be one yourself; there are enough already out there.
Scruggs is an expert on permission-based e-mail marketing, and has written a separate article for Microsoft Small Business, "10 rules for successful permission-based e-mail marketing," which I refer to in this article. (See link under "Related Articles.")
So, after following Scruggs' permission-based rules, how do you build your database of names and e-mail addresses?
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7310 North 16th Street,
Suite 130
Phoenix, AZ 85020-8203
Telephone: 602.297.2400
Fax: 602.297.8703
Email:
info@itsynergy.com
www.itsynergy.com
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