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Welcome to the November 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:
�
East
Air Corporation
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.
PRESS
RELEASES
QTS
EXCELS IN MICROSOFT CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEY
10/29/2004:
QTS today
announced results from Microsoft�s recent Customer
Satisfaction Survey, placing QTS within the top 5-15% of
Microsoft Certified Partners nationally with over 91% of
its customers �Very Satisfied.�
Read more at http://www.QTSnet.com/stayinformed/l3_stay_pr58.htm
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EVENTS
No
events are scheduled for December.
Have a happy and healthy holiday season!
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PRESIDENT'S
CORNER
This
month, I will be discussing a few Microsoft initiatives
that I think are of significance to most of our
customers. As
such a large company, Microsoft has a lot of messages to
convey to its clients, and unfortunately a lot of them
tend to not register because of the sheer volume of
communication, combined with the flood of information we
all receive.
Most
Microsoft initiatives ultimately get turned into
acronyms (and Microsoft is arguably the most
acronym-happy company I know), so we�ll start with DSI.
The Dynamic Systems Initiative has been in motion
for some time, and represents a very strategic effort by
Microsoft to reduce the �pain� many of us feel in
managing Microsoft systems on an ongoing basis.
Over the past ten years, technology has made huge
leaps forward, but at the same time has become
exponentially more complex to architect, deploy and
manage. In
fact, most market studies show that the cost of
maintaining existing systems consumes 70-80% of the IT
budget for most organizations.
This leaves very little room for innovation and
deployment of new technologies that can have significant
business impact.
This
is one of the major design goals of Windows Server 2003
and the related products from that family � Microsoft
has tried to make the operating system more secure, more
reliable and more scalable, so it is possible to
consolidate servers and to reduce the �care and
feeding� required to maintain servers.
The goal was to help reduce that percentage to a
lower amount, freeing more IT budget dollars for
innovation.
In
the initial stages of DSI, the key component is
Microsoft Operations Manager.
By building �intelligence� about applications
and platforms into MOM�s �Management Packs,�
Microsoft is making it easier for IT to react to events
and prevent small problems from growing into larger
ones. By
making the APIs available to third parties, and
fostering a development community, Microsoft has been
able to expand this concept further � Management packs
for MOM currently exist for Citrix MetaFrame, for HP and
Dell server hardware, for Cisco hardware, and for other
platforms.
Over
the longer term, the concept is to make applications
�self healing� and �self managing� by building
knowledge of the application into the application itself
� the application will be aware of its resource needs,
its environment, its dependencies.
By conveying this information to related systems,
the application will become intelligent and allow it to,
for example, tune itself to improve performance.
This also lends itself well to virtualized
environments.
Clearly
this relates back to other Microsoft initiatives.
The Trustworthy Computing initiative is also
about making systems more reliable and dependable, and
one can look at Software Update Service (soon to be
Windows Update Server) and Microsoft�s patch
management strategy � by making servers and PCs
�self-patching� to reduce security exposure, we�re
also making them more reliable and less
maintenance-hungry.
Web
Services also tie back strongly to DSI.
The concept of Web Services calls for
applications to move from desktop-centric,
high-maintenance profiles to server-based, web-based
code that can be modularized and more efficiently used,
re-used and managed.
Web Services provide the potential for
significant improvements in security, flexibility and
programming time, and the model is well-suited to align
with DSI�s core goals.
The
long-term strategy is focused on improving the core
products themselves, on improving management tools, and
on improving the development platform.
Part of DSI is focused on Windows and the other
commercial products � making them more self-managing,
intelligent and aware.
Another part of DSI is focused on management
tools such as MOM and SMS, and Virtual Server
(Microsoft�s new platform for running multiple server
�instances� on one hardware platform � think of it
like a Citrix server, but where each session is a server
session rather than a client session), and in fact SMS
and MOM are converging into the future �System
Center� offering where the two are more closely
integrated to make it easier to manage the whole
Microsoft environment, desktop to server.
Finally, the development tools are being refined
and enhanced to make it easier to build DSI-compliant
applications, alongside the training and education
efforts and the documentation of best practices that has
to go alongside any change to development tools.
For
more information on the Dynamic Systems Initiative,
visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/dsi/default.mspx.
Shifting
focus now to the desktop, most people are not aware of
Microsoft�s Office Solution Accelerators. These
are free software products, developed by Microsoft for
its Office customers, that allow you to deploy (and
customize) pre-build web site templates for sharing
information and working collaboratively.
They run on IIS/Windows Server and typically
leverage Office 2003 as well as other components such as
SharePoint and InfoPath.
There are presently Accelerators for
HR/Recruiting, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance tracking,
Proposal development, Six Sigma and others, and
Microsoft has made them available to you for free to
help speed your deployment of solutions for these
challenges.
For
more information on the Office Solutions Accelerators,
visit http://www.microsoft.com/office/solutions/accelerators/default.mspx.
This
was a �first stab� by Microsoft at taking the
integration between its products to another level, and
it gets deeper and better.
Microsoft is working on another initiative,
called the Information Bridge Framework, and has
recently made this toolkit available to developers.
Think of it as �glue� that links Office 2003
as a front-end with various back-end systems and data
� ERP programs (like Microsoft Great Plains, SAP and
others), Accounting, supply chain, CRM, etc.
It allows common tasks to be automated and become
more intuitive. For
example, suppose a customer service rep needed to write
a letter to a customer acknowledging an inquiry about a
product. With
Information Bridge Framework, the user could from within
Word or Outlook pull up the appropriate template and
have it auto-fill the customer information and other
relevant data. A
process that might before have taken minutes of labor
can potentially be done in seconds � or to the extent
the content requires further customization, at least can
be streamlined. I
saw this demonstrated in July in pre-release format at
the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, leveraging
Word along with Microsoft CRM and Great Plains, and it
was very slick and effective.
For operations with repetitive processes, such as
sales and service and accounting, this can be very
powerful and can create numerous efficiencies.
For
more information on Information Bridge Framework, visit http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/iwp/ibf/default.mspx.
I
trust that you have found these observations helpful.
My intent here was not to �sell� you on a
product or a solution, but make you aware of these
opportunities and possibilities, and help to clarify and
focus Microsoft�s message.
Most of you are in small to medium sized
businesses and don�t have the time to keep up with and
understand all this.
Hopefully this helped.
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 its knowledge management and
ebusiness solutions partner, Econium.
Econium is a Gold-Certified Microsoft Solutions
Provider that builds technology solutions that promote
information sharing, distribution and collaboration
across teams of people.
Econium delivers real time collaborative
solutions in web conferencing, application sharing and
content distribution, high quality video conferencing,
telephony integration with phone systems, portals and
presence information to help clients reduce travel costs
and improve team communications.
The end result is a more agile and effective
organization. They
have delivered vertical solutions for sales and
marketing teams around brand portals and digital asset
management, and have provided portals and repositories
for healthcare companies, consumer packaged goods and
government & not-for-profit organizations.
Econium
is a four year old firm that is made up of seasoned
business technology experts who focus heavily on
understanding the business processes and needs
initially, then applying solutions that will leverage
existing technology investments.
They work with a variety of collaborative
technologies including Microsoft SharePoint Portal
Server and Windows SharePoint Services, Live
Conferencing Server and Live Meeting Server, Office
System 2003, Exchange, SQL Server and Content Management
Server. Their clients include Kraft Foods, Pfizer
Pharmaceuticals and Adams Candy.
Econium
is headquartered in Northern New Jersey and also has an
office in New York City.
Econium
relies on QTS to create the technical infrastructure on
which its solutions run.
Econium develops and deploys solutions which are
geared toward lowering the costs for companies to
manage, distribute and share the information they need
to conduct business.
For
more information on Econium please view their web site
at www.econium.com,
email them at sales@econium.com,
or call 973-812-9691.
Or, contact your QTS Account Manager.
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