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Welcome to the April 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
News
- Events
- President's
Corner
- QuikSecure
Tip of the Month
- Patches
and Upgrades
- Product
Support Lifecycle Watch
- Solution
Spotlight
- Special
Offers
- Partner
Spotlight
QTS NEWS
QTS
OFFERS FREE SYSTEMS STRATEGY CHECK-UPS
Having developed this unique 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.
QTS
TO PRESENT AT NY STATE SOCIETY OF CPAS CONFERENCE
QTS President and CEO Neil Rosenberg will be presenting
�10 Steps to Secure your Business Network� as part
of the New York State Society of CPAs� �CPAs in
Industry� Conference held on June 2nd at
the Princeton Club in New York City. For more
information on the conference, please visit www.nysscpa.org/conferences/2004/pdfs/industry.pdf.
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.
SUCCESS
STORIES
NEW
YORK ROAD RUNNERS
QTS
helped this leading not-for-profit organization migrate
from a problematic LINUX-based email system to Microsoft
Exchange Server 2003.
http://www.qtsnet.com/about/success
stories/nyrr success story.pdf
PRESS
RELEASES
There
are no press releases this month.
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EVENTS
SARBANES-OXLEY
ROUNDTABLE
Medium
Business senior IT and business management are invited
to join QTS, Econium and Microsoft on Wednesday May 12th
at the Chart House in Weehawken, NJ for an Executive
Roundtable Luncheon to discuss Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
and the Microsoft Office System Solution Accelerator for
Sarbanes-Oxley. QTS will also present �10 Steps
to Secure your Microsoft Network� as part of the
event.� To register, contact your QTS Account
Manager.
WINDOWS
AND EXCHANGE SERVER WEBINARS
QTS
and Microsoft will be delivering placeware
�webinars� on the benefits of upgrading to Windows
Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003. QTS will
conduct the Exchange Server 2003 Upgrade:
Improving Security, Reliability and Performance
event on May 19th at 2pm EST, and the Windows
Server 2003 Upgrade: Improving Security, Reliability and
Performance event on May 26th at 2pm
EST. To learn more or to register, visit www.discovermicrosoft.com/webcasts.
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PRESIDENT'S
CORNER
In
addition to QTS� 12 year anniversary, April also marks
the two year anniversary of the formation of the
Solutions Alliance. For those of you who don�t
know what that is, the Solutions Alliance is a team of
five companies that work together to provide services to
our common customers, while maintaining focus on our
core competencies.
The
Solutions Alliance consists of QTS (networking and
security), Econium (application development, especially
around collaborative solutions), AKA Enterprise
Solutions (ERP/accounting, CRM and eCommerce solutions),
Wertheim Inc. (document management, document imaging and
document assembly) and the Convergence Division at
Greenwich Technology Partners (Voice over IP and Unified
Messaging). Our organizations all work together to
provide an umbrella of services to our customers, and
each of us maintain other partnerships that further
extend our capabilities for our customers.
When
we formed the alliance two years ago, it was on the
basis that in the IT industry, times have changed and it
is no longer possible to be an expert in all
disciplines. It might not even be possible to be
competent in all disciplines today. The industry
is just that broad, and is becoming increasingly
fragmented each year. Even larger organizations,
with vast resources, seem to have problems in that
regard. What tends to be the difference between
successful service organizations and
less-than-successful ones is the ability to maintain
focus on a core skill set that is in demand by
customers, and to keep that focus sharp. The
Solutions Alliance allows us to each do that, in our own
way.
Microsoft
has supported the Solutions Alliance, and in fact is
promoting it locally and beyond as a best practice.
Of all companies, Microsoft can certainly understand the
value of our alliance, since Microsoft maintains
countless dozens of products spanning a wide variety of
disciplines. And in fact, three of the five
partners are highly Microsoft-centric in our focus,
allowing Microsoft reps to know they can refer customers
to us with confidence that we as a team can successfully
build Microsoft-centric solutions to solve their
customers� business problems.
What
the Solutions Alliance does for QTS, and our partners,
is it allows us to expand our reach to potential
customers, by leveraging our common client and prospect
bases. It also allows us to each focus on our core
competencies, while providing a broad range of services
to our customers. QTS� engineers can focus on
networking and security services and solutions, without
needing to put much focus on the applications that run
above the network (when provided by Econium, AKA,
Wertheim and GTP). Of course, some level of
applications awareness is needed for a successful
project, but being able to rely on partners� staff for
the heavy lift work of programming and integrating their
solutions allows us to be that much better at what we
do.
What
this does for our customers (and prospective customers)
is it provides a �safe choice� for those looking for
solutions that have already had a positive experience
with one of the partner companies. A QTS customer,
for example, interested in Microsoft CRM can be
confident when being referred by QTS to AKA Enterprise
Solutions that they will receive the same level of skill
and service from AKA that they have come to expect from
QTS. Some of our customers have experienced this
multiple times with QTS partners, and it removes a high
level of risk from their IT decisions, since the
services and advice of a partner company can often make
or break a project.
The
process of building this �virtual organization� has
been a learning experience, and I�m sure there�s
more to go. Since we started, we�ve had two
changes, one due to a partner being purchased and
another due to an incompatibility of direction and
�corporate cultures.� The latter is actually
extremely important, since if we want customers to feel
comfortable with referrals, the organizations need to
behave similarly, with a generally common set of
motivations. With our current group, this largely
equates to providing a well-planned and implemented
solution with strong support in an ongoing
relationship. I have been pleased to find that our
partners have similar focus on planning, project
management, documentation and a consultative focus,
which is very important.
Over
time, I�m sure there will be more changes. Our
industry, even though it tends to run in historical
cycles, is constantly changing. And that means
that each partner company, and the Solutions Alliance as
a whole, will no doubt have to periodically re-invent
itself. But because of the underlying nature of
our relationships, the fundamental nature of the
Solutions Alliance, and how we all leverage it to serve
our customers and improve our businesses, should be able
to continue. As long as our mission and our
organizational cultures remain in line, dealing with
change will just be part of the game.
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 partner for Voice/Data
Convergence, the Convergence Division of Greenwich
Technology Partners. Greenwich Technology Partners
("GTP") provides highly specialized consulting
and engineering services in the IP telephony and unified
messaging areas. These "Convergence"
services often generate significant financial savings to
our corporate customers by increasing employee
productivity and reducing telecommunications expenses.
One
of the difficult decisions facing IT managers and CIO's
today is how to maximize the current data architecture
and realize economies of scale throughout the
organization. When faced with a transitional event, such
as building a new office or upgrading the voice or data
network, many IT professionals evaluate and select the
path of convergence to reach these goals. A converged
network, which voice, video, and data are integrated on
the same network, provides several advantages to the
organization. A converged network reduces administrative
and staffing costs, network infrastructure costs, and
improves employee productivity. It also allows for much
rapid deployment of new applications, such as unified
messaging and personal communications assistants. For
these reasons, and many others, convergent technology is
becoming a reality, and not just a thought.
How
is GTP able to provide a competitive advantage to our
customers? First, all GTP convergence consultants
have significant telecommunications and data networking
expertise. GTP has parlayed that knowledge to provide
complete convergence services. Second, GTP's methodology
is unmatched in the industry. GTP offers true economic
value to clients by mapping cutting-edge technologies
such as IP telephony and unified messaging to its
clients' business requirements, then delivering
reliable, effective, and scalable solutions. Third, GTP
has aligned ourselves with leaders in the convergence
arena. GTP is one of the most successful integrators of
the CallXpress and RightFax solutions by Captaris, and
is an AVVID partner of Cisco in the IP Telephony
Specialization. Investments in this technology, such as
a state-of-the-art IP Telephony lab in Whippany,
position GTP for the tremendous growth predicted in this
industry.
Unified
messaging is a portion of IP Telephony, and a core
business solution offered by GTP. GTP's UM suite is
comprised of two software packages, CallXpress Voice
Mail and RightFax LAN-based faxing. By integrating each
into a client's existing groupware solution, clients are
able to provide one message store for all message types
- email, voice mail, and fax mail.
Faxing
is no longer completed at the fax machine; users simply
send and retrieve faxes from their groupware client.
Similar to faxes, voice messages are retrieved at the
desktop. Providing email text-to-speech access to a user
via a mobile device completes unified messaging.
QTS
and GTP work together to build solutions that provide a
competitive advantage for our clients. QTS builds out
the data infrastructure, and GTP provides the voice
components to complete the converged network.
For
more information on Greenwich Technology Partners'
Convergence Group, please view their web site at
www.greenwichtech.com, email Mike Waresk at
mwaresk@greenwichtech.com,
or call him at
973-576-1620.
Or, contact your QTS Account Manager.
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