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Welcome to the March edition of QTS QuikNews, our
monthly e-mail newsletter. In this monthly e-mail, you
will receive an update of what's new at QTS - new
products we support, new patches and upgrades, solution
ideas and promotions to save you money, and information
about our company and our clients.
In this issue:
-
QTS and Partner News
-
Events
-
President's Corner
-
QuikSecure Tip of the Month
-
Patches and Upgrades
-
Product Support Lifecycle Watch
-
Solution Spotlight
-
Special Offers
-
Partner Spotlight
QTS AND
PARTNER NEWS
WELCOME TO NEW CUSTOMERS
QTS offers a �welcome aboard� to the following new
customers:
�
EquityOne
�
Iredale
Mineral Cosmetics
QTS OFFERS FREE SYSTEMS STRATEGY CHECK-UPS
Having developed this
award-winning engagement jointly with Microsoft, QTS
is now offering Systems Strategy Check-Up engagements to
qualified customers and prospects throughout New Jersey
and New York. This high-value, half-day consulting
engagement helps businesses evaluate how they are using
Microsoft technologies and identifies best practices and
recommendations for how to best deploy Microsoft
technologies in a business. For more information on
this no-charge engagement, contact your QTS Account
Manager or visit
www.QTSnet.com/SSCU.
QTS IS HIRING!
QTS is recruiting for senior level technical personnel,
as well as entry and senior level sales
staff/telemarketers. If you know anyone who might be a
good fit, please have them submit their resume to Liz
Meechan, our Office Manager. Liz can be reached at
lmeechan@QTSnet.com, or (973)984-7600 x223.
MICROSOFT CASE STUDIES
MICROSOFT PUBLISHES CASE STUDY FOR QTS WINDOWS 2003
IMPLEMENTATION AT ARROW GROUP
Manufacturer Saves Time and Reduces Costs with
Simplified IT Administration. For the Case Study, visit
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies/
CaseStudy.asp?CaseStudyID=16416
QTS
SUCCESS STORIES
BLUME GOLDFADEN
QTS
migrated
this law firm from Novell NetWare and GroupWise to
Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003 to provide
better integration and new mobile user capabilities.
http://www.qtsnet.com/about/success stories/blume
goldfaden success story.pdf
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EVENTS
QTS,
Microsoft and Good Technology are hosting a
CxO Luncheon on Wednesday,
April 13th. This is a lunchtime event at the
South City Grill in Jersey City, NJ (adjacent to the
Newport/Pavonia PATH
station) is for IT Directors, CIOs
and CFOs in organizations with 50 or more users. The
focus of this strategic event is on Mobility
Solutions for Professional Services, and will
include presentations on Microsoft�s mobility strategy,
the fundamentals of wireless technologies, how
GoodLink Server extends
Microsoft Exchange securely to Windows Mobile devices,
and how to properly secure remote access to network
resources. For more information or to register, contact
your QTS Account Manager or click
here.
QTS�
partners Interdyn AKA and
Microsoft are hosting a lunchtime event on Thursday,
April 14th at Ruth�s Chris Steakhouse in New
York for IT Directors. This event, Microsoft
Business Solutions Media Industry Executive Lunch,
is for senior IT and Business Management staff working
in the publishing/media industry. Attendees will learn
how Microsoft Business Solutions technologies, including
Microsoft CRM, Great Plains and
Axapta, are being used by leading media
organizations to enhance their business. For more
information or to register, contact your QTS Account
Manager or click
here.
QTS,
AKA Enterprise Solutions and Microsoft are hosting a
CIO Luncheon on Tuesday, April 19th.
This is a lunchtime event at the C-Side Caf� in Jersey
City, NJ (adjacent to the Exchange Place PATH station)
is for IT Directors, CIOs
and CFOs in organizations with 200 or more users. The
focus of this strategic event is on Microsoft�s efforts
around systems management (the Dynamic Systems
Initiative) and desktop integration of Office with
Microsoft�s back-end systems (Microsoft Business Portal
and Information Bridge Framework). For more information
or to register, contact your QTS Account Manager or
click
here.
QTS
and its partners Interdyn
AKA and ISS Group are hosting a half day seminar and
networking event entitled Microsoft Solutions for
Manufacturers: How to Improve Competitiveness by
Increasing Productivity and Reducing Cost, on
Friday, April 22nd at Microsoft�s Iselin NJ
office. The event will include a presentation on
current trends in the manufacturing industry, as well as
presentations on how to improve productivity and reduce
costs through Microsoft�s ERP, CRM and Secure Remote
Access solutions. The event will run from 9am to 1pm,
with lunch served from noon to 1 in an informal
networking forum where you can share ideas and questions
with other attending manufacturing businesses and the
presenters. For more information or to register,
contact your QTS Account Manager, or click
here.
QTS
and Microsoft
are hosting a seminar entitled Why Renew: A Review
of Benefits, Available Promotions and Microsoft Product
Roadmaps and Key Initiatives. Join
us for this informative, 2 hour event to learn why your
organization should renew or upgrade into Microsoft
Software Assurance through the Open License Value
program. Microsoft and QTS will review the benefits of
Software Assurance (it�s more than just new version
upgrades!), discuss available promotions that can save
you money, and review the roadmap for upcoming product
releases and features. We will also present on key
Microsoft initiatives such as Trustworthy Computing
(Microsoft�s security efforts) and the integration of
Microsoft�s Business Solutions offerings. This event is
focused on customers deciding whether to maintain their
Software Assurance coverage, but will provide valuable
information to any Microsoft customer! Join us for lunch
on Wednesday May 4th at the High Lawn
Pavillion in West Orange,
NJ. For more information or to register, contact your
QTS Account Manager, or click
here.
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PRESIDENT'S CORNER
Over
the last three months, I�ve been meeting with many of my
clients to review their goals and priorities for 2005
and to work with them in developing an integrated plan
to work together to achieve those goals (note to those
customers of mine I haven�t done this with � call me�).
We try to be strategic and proactive in this area, often
helping customers with development of their IT budgets
and planning the technologies that can best meet their
business� needs.
One
of the recurring themes I�ve been hearing over and over
(and over) again this year, far more than in prior
years, is an emphasis on uptime and systems
availability. In prior years, this was somewhat taken
for granted. To the relatively limited subset of
companies where the IT Director or CIO had goals for
uptime and availability, those goals were usually
self-imposed rather than imposed by their management or
business leadership. But this year, for some reason,
things seem to have shifted. Whether it is because of
downtime and incidents last year,
or simply increased awareness of the value and business
criticality of its systems, more and more businesses are
imposing clearly defined requirements for uptime on the
IT Department � much more so than I�ve ever seen in the
past.
Email is the leading item. Business are realizing just
how absolutely critical email is, and what the impact of
downtime would be (or in some cases, has been). In many
cases, I�m now hearing from customers what I�ve been
saying for years � that an email outage is actually
worse than a phone system outage, because it�s less
obvious and the potential for lost information is
greater. We�re finding a strong level of emphasis
starting here, then moving to
the phone system and key database applications, then the
rest of the infrastructure. The fact that this is
typically coming as a mandate from senior business
management shows how much our industry has matured over
the last few years.
Sometimes the emphasis is on Disaster Recovery � and
this is important. But often it is on the reliability
of the core network itself. And often I find that
companies jump to Disaster Recovery without ensuring
they have a highly reliable network as a foundation.
They�re somewhat separate, but related. Disasters can
be devastating � 90% of businesses that suffer them
don�t recover � but the chances of a network outage
short of a disaster are far greater. And, with a
properly designed network, far easier to prevent.
So,
this month and next, we�ll run through another �ten
steps� exercise � Ten Steps to Build a Highly Available
Network. Because of the amount of information I�ll be
presenting, we�ll break this into two columns. So, for
our first three steps, here goes.
Starting with the network infrastructure, it is
important to have redundancy and/or spare devices for
your switches and your communications equipment.
Optimally, you will either have one or two models of
switches. In smaller networks, your switches should all
be identical, so failure of one can be easily remedied
by rearranging switches. In larger networks, you�re
likely to have a �Core� switch or switches at the
backbone of your network, linking everything together,
and �Access� switches for the user and device
connections. They�ll probably be different models, but
if the models for each of these roles are consistent
it�s easier to pop in a spare unit without a lot of
reconfiguration headaches. You can go with a �cold
spare� approach of having an unused device on the shelf,
or a �hot spare� where the redundant switch(es)
are live and if there is a failure, traffic is re-routed
to the backup. In smaller networks, you might keep one
or two old hubs or switches so that if a primary device
fails, you can rearrange the connections and put that
old device back into play to make up for lost ports,
even if they�re slow. But this should be planned and
tested � the middle of a downtime crisis and its
associated pressure isn�t the best time to start
unplugging and reconnecting a tangled mess of wires.
For
telecommunications links, redundancy is critical. This
is a network component that is fairly likely to have
failure during the course of a year � and those failures
can be crippling. For your Internet connection, this
can result in loss of email for hours or days, loss of
remote access, disconnection of remote VPN sites, or
loss of eCommerce connections to clients or partners.
Each year, the stakes seem to get higher and higher.
So, start with a redundant set of Internet connections
(I�m assuming you�ve got T1 or better connections for
this), which can either be bonded for increased
performance (more expensive) or just a passive link
ready for failover (less expensive). Most major carrier
offer this type of service for less than the cost of two
lines in the latter configuration � AT&T calls it �MARO�
while MCI calls it �Shadow T1� service. These services
leverage the BGP protocol to handle re-routing of
inbound traffic over the second line in the event of
failure. You can also do two connections to two sites
and tie this to disaster recovery � for example a client
of ours has a NYC headquarters and a major secondary
office on the west coast, so by putting the second T1 on
the west coast, if failure of the NYC T1 occurs, all
inbound traffic is re-routed to the secondary location
(where the disaster recovery servers with the replicated
data are).
Now
that you�ve got the Internet connection covered,
remember to look at the firewall and any perimeter
devices. Our goal is to eliminate single points of
failure. Most of the firewall vendors that cater to
medium-sized or larger organizations offer failover or
cluster configurations of their firewalls, including
Cisco, Check Point, Symantec and Microsoft. A partner
of ours, Rainfinity, offers
software for Microsoft and Check Point that does this as
well as providing load balancing and redirection of
inbound traffic. A less expensive approach is to have a
�cold spare� firewall pre-configured and ready to swap
in if problems occur. Remember, though, that networks
change over time, as do firewall configurations. In the
event of a crisis, a firewall with a year old
configuration isn�t likely to work properly on your
current network. Also, configurations on all key
devices should be backed up regularly via TFTP or file
copy to a safe location.
For
telecommunications links, redundancy needs to be built
into the links and the devices. Routers should ideally
be the same models (even if that means more expensive
routers) and in larger networks a cold spare should be
maintained, with all configurations backed up via TFTP.
ISDN backup should be considered as a whole separate
path, so if the Frame/T1/MPLS goes down, something is
available even if it�s low bandwidth (but watch the
configuration � unintended dial-up charges can be
lethal!). For Frame Relay or similar networks, consider
partially meshing the network rather than running all
traffic through a central point � for example, if all
your Frame traffic runs through the NJ headquarters, set
up DLCIs pointing to the
Chicago office and have these paths �down� until NJ
becomes unavailable. The network � and the routers �
should be tested for proper failover functionality on a
regular basis (for all of these items).
Power protection is an often overlooked area that
relates back to network infrastructure. I often find in
smaller businesses that two or three servers sit on a
single UPS, with no smart shutdown/restart enabled. The
more equipment you have on a UPS, the less battery power
each device has in the event of failure. Each server
should ideally have its own UPS, and UPS size needs to
be scaled to the power load of the connected devices,
ideally for 30 minutes or more of runtime. All servers
should be configured for smart shutdown and restart in
the event of power failure � we�ve seen many cases with
our clients on �QTS-standard� networks where an
overnight power outage wasn�t even noticed, because
everything was functioning normally the next morning in
spite of the outage. Often overlooked is switches,
routers and communications devices � these provide the
critical links to your servers and data. Plus, bad
power can run through a switch, or a wiring plant, and
wreak havoc with a network�s communications (plus damage
equipment). Make sure all switches and communications
equipment is on a UPS � even if there isn�t much battery
backup, at least the equipment is protected from surges,
brownouts and dirty power.
Next
month, we�ll explore the remaining 7 key areas where you
can take steps to maximize the uptime and availability
of your network and its applications and data.
As always, feel free to email me your comments or
thoughts at
nrosenberg@QTSnet.com. Thank you.
Neil Rosenberg
President & CEO
Quality Technology Solutions
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PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
This
month QTS is spotlighting
Wertheim Inc., its partner for document management,
document imaging and document assembly solutions.
Wertheim Inc. is a premier provider of document
management systems (DMS) and office automation
solutions, and one of the top business partners in the
region for both Hummingbird and Interwoven. These
systems enable organizations to increase profits, and to
improve their work quality and the level of
professionalism exhibited to their customers and
partners via their electronic documents.
The
company assists clients in all areas of document
management technologies, from initial planning through
final implementation, and also provides preventative
maintenance and audit services. Because of their
extensive experience, they have a unique ability to
provide consulting expertise in the area of best
practices and benchmarking with regards to document
management, document imaging, document assembly, and
knowledge management systems.
The
entire staff at Wertheim Inc. has perfected a style of
interaction which gains accolades up and down the firm's
client list. Put most simply, clients like them. Their
roster of successful engagements includes clients new to
document management, as well as organizations who needed
to upgrade to the newest versions of existing document
and knowledge management technologies. Their approach
to customers and technology is very similar to QTS'.
Wertheim Inc.'s commitment to document and knowledge
management led to the creation of a robust line of
software products. These applications were written to
help manage and administer Hummingbird and Interwoven
environments by providing cost-effective alternatives to
many tedious tasks required in order to maintain a
healthy system. Their �Winc�
suite of products work with your document management
system to facilitate the synchronization of key document
data across multi-library environments; simplify the
process of granting security to users; and provide a
robust array of DMS administrative utilities.
Wertheim Inc. is a leading regional service provider,
and clients benefit from their depth of experience with
the product offerings of Hummingbird (DOCS Open/PowerDOCS/
DM5), Interwoven (WorkSite/WorkSite
MP/TeamSite), as well as
document assembly systems from
SoftWise and HotDocs,
and document imaging systems from
Kofax and eCopy.
While QTS continues to build, enhance and support
networks, this partnership will significantly extend our
capabilities and the total range of services that we can
offer clients.
For more information on Wertheim Inc., please visit
their web site at
www.wertheiminc.com, email them at info@wertheiminc.com,
or call 212-413-8600. Or, contact your QTS Account
Manager.
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