|
Michael Cocanower
President, itSynergy |
Welcome
I hope you'll join us this month in an
internal celebration of achievement!
It is official as of May 8, that we are
once again a Microsoft Gold Certified
Partner. We have also added an additional
competency and specialization since last
year as well. For 2008/2009, our Microsoft
Competencies and related Specializations
are: |
- · Advanced Infrastructure Solutions
Competency (Exchange Migration and Deployment
Specialization)
- · Networking Infrastructure Solutions
Competency
- · Information Worker Solutions Competency
(Portals and Collaboration Specialization)
- · Security Solutions Competency
(Infrastructure Security Specialization)
- · Mobility Solutions Competency
We have also been certified once again as a
Microsoft Small Business Specialist.
Certification by Microsoft at the Gold Certified
Partner level represents the highest possible level
of Microsoft expertise and does not come easily. We
have to provide numerous verified customer
references (thanks to all of you who have helped
with this over the past several weeks!), have
Microsoft Certified Professionals on staff with
certifications in all of the relevant areas, meet
customer satisfaction standards and engage
strategically with Microsoft in joint business
planning.
Only the best of the best meet this bar, and we
are proud to be among that group and more
importantly proud that we can bring that level of
expertise to our customers to benefit their
businesses. I am also very proud of our team who all
have to contribute and work very hard in order to
meet Microsoft's strict standards.
Have a great month! |
|
|
4 Tips to Extend the Life of your Laptop Battery
By Christopher Elliott
Reprinted with permission from Microsoft Small Business Center
On
a recent stopover at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, I flipped
open my laptop PC, hoping to chip away at the 7,000-some e-mail
messages that had accumulated since leaving Anchorage, Alaska, four
hours earlier.
"Don't even think about
it," my laptop screen flashed back at me contemptuously (I'm
paraphrasing the error message a little here). "I'm out of juice."
And then, before I
could find an electrical outlet - Sea Tac has recently increased the
number of available outlets, by the way; finally a reprieve for
business travelers whose budget for airline club membership has been
cut - the laptop expired.
Continue |
|
|
Watch What You Install On Your
Server
By
Christopher Elliott
Reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center
Download warning: Watch what you install on your server.
Today's server
operating systems, including Microsoft Small Business Server 2003,
are so user-friendly that you could be left with the impression that
anyone with the ability to put a CD into a computer disk drive could
successfully deploy a new application.
That is the wrong
impression.
When it comes to adding
any new software - and particularly third-party applications - you
need to be extra vigilant about what you're putting on your server
and how you're doing it.
A server isn't as
forgiving as a desktop computer. Take if from someone who just spent
the better part of a week trying to recover data from a server that
had been hopelessly corrupted up by several applications that, in
retrospect, were probably incorrectly installed by yours truly.
Here are a few things I
wish I had done:
|
|
 |
System Engineering Corner
Notes
from the Network Engineering Department:
Note to readers: As our network engineers
work with all of you across our entire customer
base, they observe trends and issues that many
people have in common, or that many customers will
find helpful to know about.
This section is designed
to give them a mechanism to communicate those issues
to you, with the hope that YOU might benefit from.
|
Tech Corner
Have you ever received an 'undeliverable' response for a message you never
sent to somebody you don't know and wouldn't have sent email to? What gives? Do
you have a ghost in your computer? Or maybe you've been hacked? Has the problem
been getting worse lately?
Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done about such problems. A
trend has become very popular with spammers recently where they use
false/spoofed from addresses in their spam messages. If one were to examine the
message headers of such messages, they would be able to tell that the messages
did NOT in fact come from the address it purports to have come from, however few
ever look at the headers (or even know they exist).
The net result is that you might get a message hawking the latest stock tip
or rolex watches that appears to come from itSynergy Support. In fact, however,
we never sent you such a message. The messages you get back are caused by the
fact that when the spammer sends to a bad address, the undeliverable message
comes back to you (since your name was in the from field). Undeliverable
messages are sent to the from address without regard to the server that the
message actually originated from.
The technology community has a standard in place to prevent this type of
activity called Sender Policy Framework (SPF) that is designed to eliminate this
problem. For outgoing email, itSynergy and many of our clients fully comply with
this standard, and have SPF records as well as reverse lookup records.
Unfortunately, few companies have complied with this standard at this point
(large companies such as AOL and Microsoft are compliant, but most small
companies are not) so the problem is still rampant. Because of the large group
of noncompliant companies, we are NOT able to make our clients fully compliant
for incoming emails since doing so would block a lot of incoming messages at
this point. Making you fully compliant for inbound only takes checking a box on
your server, but we will only do this at your specific request, and with the
disclaimer that some messages will be blocked.
Unfortunately, there isn't a better answer than that. As mentioned above, the
standards are in place, but few are compliant. Until that improves, all we can
make sure of is that YOU are compliant. We then have to wait for everyone else
that you do business with and potentially exchange email with.
If you aren't sure if you are compliant and want us to check - just drop us a
note! |
|
|
May 2008
In this issue
□
Welcome
□ Extend Laptop Battery Life
□ Watch What You Install
□ Tech Corner
□ Referral Program
□ Declare War on Paper
|
|
itSynergy Referral Program
 Can we
buy you dinner and send you to the movies? How about
make a donation to your favorite charity in your name?
Earn rewards for referring new customers to itSynergy.
For more details, please
visit here.
|
Declare War
on Paper
by Jane Cage, COO, HTS
Here
at the office I refer to myself as the "Anti-Paper" . . . It drives me crazy
when I see the amount of information everyone sends to the printer when that
same information is available on the screen. In this special "green" issue of
our newsletter, it seems like the right time to talk about the vast number of
trees we kill each year because we can't get past the perception that we have to
hold paper in our hand to be certain an item is real - or on the chance we will
ever need it again.
There are three problems with relying
on paper. First, there is no fault tolerance for paper, except another piece of
paper - ironic, isn't it? Second - paper can only be in one physical location.
Both of us can't look at the client invoice at the same time. How many times
have you looked for information to find out it was on someone else's desk? Third
- paper can only be filed one way, and therefore only retrieved in the way it
was filed. That kind of limitation has real effects on how well a company can
function - should invoices be filed by number or by client?
Should they be filed
by date for easier removal to an off-site location?
|
|
|
Quote of the
month
The
trouble with learning from experience is that you
never graduate.
- Doug Larson
|
|
|
|
|
|
7310 North 16th Street,
Suite 130
Phoenix, AZ 85020-8203
Telephone: 602.297.2400
Fax: 602.297.8703
Email:
info@itsynergy.com
www.itsynergy.com
|
|