QuikNews October 2002 E-Mail Newsletter




Quality Technology Solutions, Inc. QTS QuikNews – October 2002 – Issue 2002.10 October 28, 2002 ************************************************************************ Welcome to the October 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. As a QTS client, a prospective client we have had discussions with, or a “friend of QTS,” you have been automatically added to our newsletter distribution list. To unsubscribe from this mailing please see the instructions at the bottom of this page, or call your QTS Account Manager. Please do not respond to this e-mail. This is an unmonitored account. ********************************************************************** IN THIS ISSUE ********************************************************************** 1. QTS News 2. Events 3. Patches & Upgrades 4. President’s Corner 5. Partner Spotlight: Altara 6. Special Offers & Featured Solutions ********************************************************************** QTS NEWS ********************************************************************** CAPTARIS DISCONTINUES RIGHTFAX 7.0 Captaris has announced that support for RightFax 7.0 will be ending on October 31, 2002. Versions 7.2, 8.0 and the new 8.5 release are currently supported. Contact your QTS Account Manager to discuss upgrade options if you are a RightFax customer. +++ FROM THE WEB +++ QTS LAUNCHES QUIKSECURE SECURITY ASSESSMENT SERVICE 10/28/2002: QTS today launched its new QuikSecure™ Security Assessment service offering, providing customers with a comprehensive review of their business' security posture. Read more at http://www.QTSnet.com/stayinformed/l3_stay_pr33.htm ********************************************************************** EVENTS ********************************************************************** No customer events are presently scheduled. QTS will resume its Seminar Series in January. ********************************************************************** PATCHES & UPGRADES ************************************************************************ Call the Customer Support Center to have us apply QTS-standard patches and keep your systems current. The following patches have been recently released and are generally recommended by QTS: * None – no major service packs released or recommended Also, please check http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/current.asp for applicability of Microsoft Security Bulletins to the products in use at your environment. Contact your QTS Account Manager if you would like our Customer Support Center to monitor these bulletins for you and advise with recommendations for your environment upon release of new bulletins. Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition signature files are currently at version 41025d (10/25/2002). CA InoculateIT 4.x signature files are currently at version 40.06 (10/24/2002) and 6.x signature files are currently at version 23.58.07 (10/25/2002). McAfee VirusScan/NetShield signature files are currently at version 4230 (10/23/2002). Please keep your antivirus signatures, and your scan engines, current! If you do not have your system set up to automatically distribute updates from your server to your PCs, please call your QTS Account Manager or the Customer Support Center. Some patches can cause problems, especially in combination with other software programs or patch levels. Please talk to us to verify whether we see any possible problems in your environment before patching your systems independently. We make best efforts to test patch combinations but cannot guarantee compatibility between software and hardware manufacturers’ products. ************************************************************************ PRESIDENT’S CORNER ********************************************************************** Each time I meet with a new prospective customer and learn about their business, it continues to reinforce to me how absolutely reliant businesses have become on technology. Email is a great example – years ago, most businesses would have classified email downtime as an annoyance, and a few hours’ outage would not be a major issue. Today, in the world of Internet communications, most of our customers would classify an email outage as being as damaging as having the phone system down – as the Internet has taken its place as a medium for critical customer, partner and supplier communications, the systems that perform these functions have moved from the periphery to the heart of the business. Many businesses we work with, when asked to classify the impact of downtime on various functions of their business, system by system, have rated the majority of these functions as Critical – an hour of downtime often has severe financial impact, in both hard and soft costs, to the business. For these systems, it is critical that their availability and reliability be maximized. This ties in from multiple angles – design, implementation, ongoing management, security, and disaster recovery. Clustering is the topic most frequently associated with High Availability. Clustering normally involves two or more servers with a shared storage device (typically a Storage Area Network, but not always – HP offers a shared SCSI storage cabinet and a two server/cabinet bundle that brings down the entry point to one affordable for many mid-size businesses). The critical data from the servers resides on the shared storage, and in the event of a server failure, the second server “picks up” the data and makes it available seamlessly to the users. For truly business-critical systems, such as database servers and in some cases mail and file servers, the cost of this type of solution is often far outweighed by the impact of downtime and disruption. However, this is only one element of High Availability, just like your servers are only one (admittedly critical) part of your network. Could your network withstand failure of your backbone switch? What if your Internet router failed? Your firewall? Your T1 or Internet circuit? What other single points of failure within your network, what is the likelihood of failure, and what is the financial impact on your business if that component were to fail? Having a redundant Internet connection may make sense, if you are worried about losing the circuit, but do both circuits tie into a single firewall? Assuming your systems are protected properly from single component failure, the last element of this equation is backup and disaster recovery. As the business value of the systems continues to go up, the ability to restore the data and systems to functionality in as rapid a manner as possible is correspondingly critical to a business. Most businesses follow the most basic element of this, by rotating backup tapes offsite – in the event of a disaster, at least the irreplaceable data can be brought back. Disappointingly, many companies don’t make this process a priority, though, and don’t either manage the tape rotations properly or ensure full backups are available on a single tape. Sometimes they have fireproof safes, but don’t bother to put the tapes in during the day. A relatively small percentage of businesses, even larger ones, tend to take backup management as a serious priority, rather than the mundane chore it is treated as by most others. Disaster Recovery relates to High Availability in terms of the speed with which systems can be recovered to working order – either at an offsite Hot Site (or a Cold or Warm site that isn’t fully operational), or within the facility onto new hardware if needed. If disaster does strike, in the form of an environmental disaster, terrorism or something as basic as a failed air conditioning unit, it is important to have a suitable level of redundancy built into your systems, and a clear plan for switching over to the new systems. What is suitable? I’d say that depends on the value of the systems to your business – look at business impact, financially, and you’ll come to the answer. Over the last year, we’ve been working on rounding out our service offerings to help mid-market businesses in these areas, and we’re almost done. We’ll be announcing our QuikRecover offerings later this year, and already provide availability review services to help you find the weak spots in your infrastructure. Hopefully, working together, we can help ensure that the business impact side of this equation never becomes an issue for you. As always, feel free to email me your comments or thoughts at nrosenberg@QTSnet.com. Thank you. Neil Rosenberg President & CEO Quality Technology Solutions ********************************************************************** PARTNER SPOTLIGHT: ALTARA ********************************************************************** This month QTS is spotlighting its business solutions partner, ALTARA. ALTARA (formerly DMS Technology Solutions) is a national solution provider that focuses on accounting and financial business software (also known as ERP software), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. With over 12 years of business management system implementation experience, ALTARA's expert staff can deliver customized solutions that fit your unique business needs. From core financials to manufacturing, distribution and Point Of Sale, your growing organization can be leveraging today's technology in no time. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, ALTARA implements and specializes in Microsoft Business Solutions and applications. Microsoft Business Solutions (formerly Great Plains Software) provides leading SMB and enterprise applications, with integrated modules for all aspects of your company's back office needs. On the CRM side, ALTARA implements Microsoft CRM, which delivers integrated customer management power to your sales, marketing and service teams while offering complete and seamless integration to your back office information. ALTARA has 5 offices serving satisfied clients in NJ, NY, PA, Minnesota, San Francisco, Santa Clara & Sacramento. QTS and ALTARA work together for our customers to build new solutions that create competitive advantage, reduce costs or create opportunity - with QTS providing the infrastructure and ALTARA the software solutions, in a highly integrated fashion. For more information on ALTARA please view their web site at www.altara.com, email them at sales@altara.com, or call 973-326-9090. Or, contact your QTS Account Manager. ********************************************************************** SPECIAL OFFERS & FEATURED SOLUTIONS ********************************************************************** SYMANTEC SECURITY SOFTWARE Symantec is offering a 10% discount on many of its security software programs (Intrusion Detection, Vulnerability Management, etc.) to customers who purchase a Vulnerability Assessment utilizing Symantec’s NetRecon software, from QTS. Contact your QTS Account Manager for more details. ********************************************************************** To Comment on this newsletter, send an email to QuikNews@QTSnet.com. ********************************************************************** To Remove yourself from this mailing list please send a reply to this message with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject field. Or call or email your QTS Account Manager. ********************************************************************** To Subscribe to this Newsletter, tell your friends and colleagues to go to http://www.QTSnet.com/QuikNews. ********************************************************************** To View an archive of all QTS QuikNews editions, please visit http://www.QTSnet.com/stayinformed/QuikNews/QuikNews_Index.htm. ************************************************************************ ^{ã 2002 Quality Technology Solutions, Inc.} This site last updated 10/28/02 © 1999 Quality Technology Solutions, Inc. 76 South Orange Avenue Suite 302, South Orange, New Jersey 07079 telephone: 973.761.5400 fax: 973.761.1881 email: info@qtsnet.com