Michael Cocanower
President, itSynergy |
Welcome
Hard to believe another month has flown
by at itSynergy! As all of our customers
start to return from their summer travels to
focus on work and school and a strong finish
to 2007, there have been several key areas
that have been keeping all of us busy at
itSynergy.
First, our new itSynergize Spam
Management service has really taken off with
a bang. We have received OVERWHELMINGLY
positive feedback from customers across the
board that the spam faucet has been almost
completely turned off after implementation
of this new service offering. We put the
service in place for our own internal
mailboxes last week, and I personally have
gone down to an average of about one spam
message per day compared with scores before
the new service. |
The cost of the service is only $5/month/mailbox
which makes it very easy to justify from a business
perspective. Just about anyone would be hard pressed
to make a case that they wouldn't gain an additional
$5 in productivity per month by having the amount of
spam they receive reduced to almost zero. That
doesn't even speak to the other features bundled in
this service such as antivirus scanning and backup
mail spooling.
As a reminder, the setup fee for this service is
being waived for any existing customers that sign up
prior to September 1, so there are only a couple of
weeks left to get signed up and experience what's
it's like not to have loads of spam to deal with
daily.
The second and much larger project which we have
finally launched this month is our completely
revised itSynergize Managed Services family. Not
only have we completely restructured the services we
have had in the past, we have also added a host of
new services to our offering. Additionally, we now
offer each service as an individual selection rather
than predefined packages. This allows our customers
to tailor a set of services specifically to their
business rather than having to select from 3 or 4
pre-packaged offerings, and then try to fit their
needs into the selected package. We have been
talking about these new offerings with many of you
during our Recurring Business Reviews, but here is a
short sampling of what we now have available as part
of the itSynergize family of services:
- Spam Management
- Managed Backup including offsite storage and
disaster recovery capability
- Remote PC Support – allows us to share the
desktop with any PC in order to assist with
problems remotely (and therefore quickly)
- PC/Server Monitoring – similar to our
current offering
- PC/Server Management – includes the
monitoring AND all of the maintenance that can
be done remotely for a single fixed price
- Remote Mobile Device Management
- Managed Secure Access
In addition to the above, we will also have lots
of ways for our best customers to continue to
receive the greatest discounts on hourly fees, as
well as the fastest response time on any issues.
Both Dan Zaremba and I will be in touch with
those we have spoken with in the past with all of
the details of these new plans. We will also
continue to make the new plans a topic in our
Recurring Business Reviews. Of course, if you just
can't wait, feel free to call or email us at any
time, and we'll get the details out to you right
away.
Thank you as always for your business and
support, and Happy August! |
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Eight
Email Mistakes That Make You Look Bad
By Kim
Komando
Reprinted with permission from Microsoft Small Business Center
I get an awful lot of
e-mail. Sometimes, people are looking for help with their computers.
Some of it is fan mail.
Other folks are mad
about something I said or wrote. Add to this the barrage of press
releases and an occasional blast from the past when a former
classmate or ex-boss drops me a note.
After facing this tidal
wave of electronic words for several years, as well as owning my own
business, I've developed some strong opinions about e-mail and
correspondents.
Here are eight easily
avoidable mistakes you should know about to keep your image and
inbox in tip-top shape.
1.Failing to follow
e-mail etiquette. I believe in the old adage, "You catch more
flies with honey than with vinegar." There's no point in belaboring
the etiquette issue. We all know we should be polite. But here are a
few points to consider: |
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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.
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Security is always on the minds of the itSynergy Engineering team, and August
is no exception. We have been working with all of our customers for a long time
now to make their systems more secure, and having secure user passwords is a
part of that effort.
One of the most secure ways to gain access into a system is to use two factor
authentication. That is a term used to describe access that requires you to know
something and to have something. The best example is taking cash from an ATM
which requires two factor authentication. You have to KNOW your PIN number, and
you have to HAVE your ATM card. itSynergy now offers a two factor authentication
system to its customers through our new Managed Secure Access system. For many
customers, however, two factor authentication and the security it brings is too
much to bear. That leaves us with secure user passwords.
We have been practically forcing secure passwords on users at customer sites
for several years now, but have received a lot of pushback as people complain
the passwords are too hard to remember. To that end, we thought we’d offer some
tips on how to make a secure password for yourself. As a reminder, a secure
password consists of at least one of each of the following:
- Uppercase letters
- Lowercase letters
- Numbers
- Symbols
That might sound complex, but there are a few simple tricks that can be used
to take something easy to remember, and make it secure:
- Substitute symbols for letters. For example, use @ instead of a, !
instead of i, or $ instead of s.
- Substitute numbers for letters. For example, use 0 instead of o or 3
instead of E.
- Use a phrase that is meaningful to you, but that would be hard to guess.
A great trick is to use a short phrase that describes a quarterly goal you
have.
- Capitalize the first letter of individual words in a larger phrase.
Taking all of these tricks together, here are some great examples of secure
passwords:
- For someone with a dog named Rover: MyD0g!sRover (My Dog is Rover)
- For someone that wants to lose 10 pounds: L0se10Pound$ (Lose 10 Pounds)
- For someone looking forward to vacation: V@cati0nInAugu$t (Vacation in
August)
- For someone who is sick of secure passwords: IsTh!sSecure? (Is this
secure?)
These are all great examples of extremely secure passwords that are virtually
impossible to guess, and yet easy for someone to remember. Using these
techniques, it is also much easier to come up with a nearly endless list of easy
to remember yet secure passwords. Enjoy! |
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August 2007
In this issue
□
Welcome
□ Email
Mistakes
□ Tech Corner
□ SmartPay
from Microsoft
□ Microsoft Office 2007
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SmartPay from Microsoft
Take your business to the
next level with IT solutions that keep you competitive. There is no
reason to postpone technology needs because of budget concerns. SmartPay from Microsoft® Financing gives you the payment
flexibility to purchase your IT solution today without a
budget-breaking upfront cost.
Take advantage of SmartPay and choose an introductory 12-month payment option
of $50, $100, $200, $500 or $1,500, followed by regular monthly
payments aligned with your loan agreement. Bundle 100% of the
software and services your business needs to remain competitive into
a single financial investment.
You don’t have to
burden your budget and tie up your credit; instead you can conserve
your capital and remain competitive in the business world. IT
financing solutions have never been this simple. Offer valid from
July 2, 2007 - June 27, 2008.
For more information or
an application, please feel free to contact us at itSynergy
from
Evan J. Leonard, CHIPS
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Microsoft
Office 2007
The
Microsoft Office Suite plays a central role in how we
work today. Given the importance of these products in
our work, when should you upgrade to Office 2007? Here are the risk areas that you should
consider:
•Office
2007 uses a different file format than 2003.
Inevitably we will soon have some amount of both
formats being sent & received by internal & external
contacts. While there is an Office 2007 compatibility pack for Office 2003, some of the
Office 2007 features are not backwards compatible.
•Training is a very significant factor with Office
2007. Surprisingly, especially the case for power
uses. These highly skilled types must now re-learn
where various commands and menus are that they had
memorized for many years and this will be
frustrating for them.
•While
Office 2007 will run on older hardware, it will run
slower than 2003 unless you have Vista grade hardware with 2GB of RAM. (note that
you do not have to have Vista to run Office 2007).
•Change
can be difficult, so always factor in the change cycle within your organization.
If you are
comfortable with these considerations, the benefit of
moving forward is to benefit from the enhancements from the new Office Suite. We have
included various articles about Office 2007 for your
convenience.
Within the
Office Suite, Outlook and Excel are probably the mostly
highly used components and both have significant
capabilities. Therefore, we have also included some tips
and trick articles for these key products. Finally,
Microsoft provides good help and how-to’s and on-line training courses on their products and HP provides a range of on-line training that also
include Microsoft products.
Quote of the
month
"Do
or do not. There is no try"
Yoda, character in the movie,
The Empire Strikes Back
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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 |
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