Quality
Technology Solutions, Inc.
QTS
QuikNews � December 2001 � Issue 2001.12
December 8, 2001
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Welcome
to the December 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.
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IN
THIS ISSUE
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1.
QTS News
2.
Events
3.
Patches & Upgrades
4.
President�s Corner: End of Year Thoughts
5.
Special Offers & Featured Solutions
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QTS
NEWS
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QTS
HOLIDAY CLOSING MONDAY, DECEMBER 24TH
As
a thank you to our staff for their hard work in 2001, we are closing our
offices on Monday, December 24th in addition to our normal
holiday closing for Christmas and New Years Day.
QuikAssist customers will still receive emergency service if
needed, by following our procedure for off-hours technical support.
We wish our customers, partners and friends a happy and healthy
holiday season!
CUSTOMER
SERVICES DIVISION REORGANIZATION
Many
of you have worked with Lou DiTommaso, our Network Services Manager, and
Paul Sawchuk, our Customer Support Center Manager.
Since staff development is always an important goal for us, we are
making a change to make us stronger in the long-term by rotating job
responsibilities. Effective
December 16th, Lou will be switching over to manage the
Customer Support Center, and Paul will be moving to the project side of
the house as our Network Services Manager.
They can be reached at the same extensions and email accounts.
Please join me in wishing them the best of luck with their new job
responsibilities, and we will work hard to ensure this move does not in
any way negatively impact our customers.
+++
REMINDER +++
BACKUP
TAPE LIBRARIES/NEW TAPE SET FOR 2002
QTS
again reminds you that your backup tapes, particularly DDS DAT and 8mm,
have a typical lifespan of about a year of sustained use.
Our recommended practice is to change tape sets every year, and
retire the old tapes so they are available for restores before they wear
out. Now is a good time to
order a new set of 20 tapes and plan to create a new tape library on
January 1st. Also,
that�s a good time to do a test restore from tape, and mark an entry on
your calendar to do a monthly restore test each month of the new year.
+++
FROM THE WEB +++
QTS
ACHIEVES ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS PARTNER STATUS WITH SYMANTEC
12/3/2001:
QTS and Symantec today announced that QTS has achieved Enterprise
Solutions Partner status with Symantec, based on its strong commitment to
Symantec�s security products � Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition,
Intruder Alert, NetProwler, NetRecon and Enterprise Security Manager.
Read
more at http://www.qtsnet.com/stayinformed/l3_stay_pr23.htm
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EVENTS
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A
separate QuikNews Special Edition will be released in late December as we
finalize our events calendar for Q1 2001.
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PATCHES
& UPGRADES
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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 recommended by QTS:
*
Microsoft Patch for Outlook WebAccess HTML script vulnerability (see
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-057).
* Microsoft SharePoint Portal
Server Service Pack 1
*
Novell GroupWise 6 Support Pack 1
* Novell ZENworks for Servers Support Pack 1A (NetWare 6 compatibility)
QTS
is currently testing Exchange 2000 SP2 and SQL Server SP2.
CA
InoculateIT 4.x signature files are currently at version 30.53
(12/06/2001) and McAfee VirusScan/NetShield is at version 4175
(12/05/2001), and Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition is at version 31206s
(12/06/2001). Please keep your antivirus signatures 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.
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PRESIDENT�S
CORNER
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As
the end of 2001 arrives upon us, I thought it would be appropriate to
reflect a bit on the year gone by, and the year about to arrive.
I�ve been writing this column all year, since we started QuikNews
in January, and been focusing on technology issues throughout that time.
Now is a good chance to step back and look at business issues.
2001
was certainly a challenging year for most of the people I know, between
the economic downturn that affected almost all of us, to the tragic events
of September 11th and afterward.
The year certainly had its high points, and I feel like QTS
accomplished a lot in 2001 � as I�m sure many of you do for your
businesses.
The
overriding topic of discussion for most people, for most of the year, was
the economic downturn. Early
in the year, most businesses were waiting, cautiously, for the signs they
feared of the inevitable downturn. To
me, much of this was clear from 2000 and spending drop-offs that started
then. By summertime, the
downturn was continuing, with cautious (perhaps skeptical) hope for a
recovery mid-year 2001. Then,
in September events drove the economy further into recession.
I
am not an economist, and make no pretensions to be an expert in that area. But I am a History major, and one of the things I�ve
learned from my studies is the cyclical nature of events.
The same applies to economics.
As historians would say, �he who does not learn from the mistakes
of the past is doomed to repeat them.�
I�ve certainly made my share over the years, and seen plenty
more. I�d like to think
I�ve learned from them.
In
his article �Moving Upward in a Downturn� in the June 2001 Harvard
Business Review, Darrell Rigby discusses the cyclical nature of the
economy, and what successful businesses do in the downturn and the
beginning of the upswing. He observes that the consistently successful businesses are
conscious of costs at all times (not just the downturn), but make
investments strategically at all times, and maintain focus on core
competencies. During the
downturn, when business is slow, is an excellent time for strategic
investment, to get the business ready to kick into full gear as the
economy improves and customer demand ramps up.
This allows for �smooth acceleration� during the upswing, a
time when everyone will be too busy to take on major, business changing
initiatives. As Rigby points
out, �Failure to strengthen a company during a downturn can leave it in
a much tougher position afterward.�
He also notes that �Companies that fell behind in the first two
phases (of the downturn) require serious rehabilitation in this last phase
if they hope to survive another downturn.�
Simply cutting spending during the downturn is not a solution.
Coming
back to our economy, it seems we are past the �bottoming out� stage
and on the early stages of recovery.
All major economic indicators are slowly climbing, and have gone
back above the levels they were at before September 11th.
Consumer confidence measures are on the rise.
A
recent article in Computer Reseller News, one of the periodicals I use to
keep up with my industry, makes some interesting observations based on the
recent Comdex show. The
author, Robert Faletra, notes that the general tone and pace of the show
indicated that businesses were expecting a recovery to solidly begin in
early 2002, with a somewhat slow first quarter, then steady incremental
improvements in each succeeding quarter.
He and those he talked with at Comdex feel we are at the beginning
of the upswing, just as the tone of the show last year forebode this
year�s tough economy and industry changes.
Similarly to Mr. Rigby, he recommends retooling and strategic
reinvestment to companies like QTS now, before it�s too late.
But in my industry, the stakes are particularly high due to the
fast pace of change and the changing industry landscape.
Many of the companies I knew as competitors or partners five years
ago are out of business, bought out or reorganized and refocused, and the
winds of change continue strong.
From
QTS� perspective, we�ve been executing on our own plan since last
year. We�ve been focusing since late 1999 on retooling our sales
organization, and developing a more consistent marketing focus all of this
year. We saw the
changes occurring in our industry in 2000 and started building our
Internet Security practice a year and a half ago, forming top-line
partnerships with Check Point Software, Cisco, Symantec, RSA Security and
others as we developed this part of our business.
We�ve also looked at core competencies and moved or stayed out of
areas that don�t fit, instead building best of class partnerships with
similar companies like Stratis Group, Wertheim, CALC and others so each of
us can focus on our core business. QTS�
strong customer relationships and our Customer Support Center and
QuikAssist/QuikAlert services allowed us to weather the storm this year,
to the point where Q4 of this year looks to be our strongest quarter in
quite some time. I feel this
is the result of continued strong support revenues (customers still need
their networks up and running, even in an economic slowdown), strategic
customer upgrades, and continued growth of business in our security
practice. We�re seeing
customers increasingly looking at 2002 and saying where they want to be,
and in Q4 many started the plans to get there.
We�re positioned for the upswing, based on our focus and
investments during the downturn.
How
about your business? What are
you doing now, during the downturn, to position your business for the
recovery in 2002 and the upswing in 2003?
What technology initiatives, or business initiatives, are truly
strategic such that if you implement them now, in 2002, you�re
positioned for the second half of the year for the inevitable, cyclical
recovery and upswing that will occur?
For
those of you interested in these articles, see http://crn.channelsupersearch.com/news/CRN/31527.asp
for the CRN article, and the Harvard Business Review article can be
ordered for $6 at http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/prod_detail.asp?R0106F.
I�m always interested in keeping a current pulse on peoples�
perceptions of the economy and how technology impacts their business, so
feel free to give me a call or send me an email sharing your thoughts.
If we can help you plan for the upswing, all the better.
As
always, feel free to email me your comments or thoughts at nrosenberg@QTSnet.com.
Thank you for your attention and feedback during this first year of
our QuikNews newsletter, and have a happy and healthy holiday season!
Neil
Rosenberg
President & CEO
Quality Technology Solutions
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SPECIAL OFFERS & FEATURED SOLUTIONS
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MICROSOFT
OPERATIONS MANAGER 2000 PROMOTION
Microsoft
Operations Manager is Microsoft�s tool for managing Windows 2000 and
.NET servers and services, and can be extended with add-ons from NetIQ to
provide a complete SNMP network management solution.
Under a promotion running through April 30, 2002, MOM Base
Processor Licenses and Application Management Pack Processor Licenses are
available for $349 each, compared to a normal price of $849 and $949
respectively.
CHECK
POINT REPORTING MODULE PROMOTION
Check
Point Software is offering a free Reporting Module with purchase of a
FireWall-1, VPN-1 or FloodGate-1 module or gateway.
Contact your QTS Account Manager if you are interested. This promotion expires December 27th.
CHECK
POINT COMPETITIVE UPGRADE PROMOTION
Check
Point Software is offering a 50% discount on FireWall-1/VPN-1 in
conjunction with a competitive trade-in of a similarly sized Cisco or
Network Associates firewall. Contact
your QTS Account Manager if you are interested.
This promotion expires December 27th.
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�2001 Quality Technology Solutions, Inc.
This site last updated 08/31/07
� 1999 Quality Technology Solutions, Inc.
76 South Orange Avenue Suite 302, South Orange, New Jersey
07079
telephone: 973.761.5400
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email: info@qtsnet.com