Announcing LightEdge Consulting Services

In February, LightEdge officially launched a new consulting business not only to complement and support our hosted service offerings but also to fulfill market needs that are not currently being met by LightEdge. LCS (LightEdge Consulting Services) will be managed independently of LightEdge Solutions and in many cases will provide on-premise solutions and consulting services that compete directly with LightEdge's hosted services. In other cases our two companies may work in tandem with LCS performing necessary design or hands-on work that is normally left to the client.

At the end of the day, the goal of both companies is to provide the most reliable and cost-effective IT or communications solution for your business needs - whether it is a hosted service, a premises-based implementation or some hybrid of the two.

LCS provides solutions and services in two separate categories:

• IT Consulting
• Business Continuity/Risk Mitigation Planning

  

IT Consulting

The LCS IT Consulting team has extensive experience with Microsoft implementations for SMBs, enterprises and in large-scale hosting environments. This unique knowledgebase allows the LCS team to understand the needs and drivers of companies of all sizes and apply best practices that have been learned through working with enterprise level customers to achieve maximum reliability and availability.

Windows Server 2000, 2003 and 2008
Whether your company is looking to upgrade to Microsoft’s latest operating system or just needs help to troubleshoot your existing Windows environment, LCS can assist. LCS’s Microsoft consultants are trained and familiar with all of Microsoft’s Operating systems from NT to recently released Windows 2008.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
LCS’s Microsoft-certified professionals can help your company understand the business value of Exchange Server 2007, develop a migration plan that makes both technical and strategic sense, and smoothly transition your clients to an Exchange Server 2007 messaging environment including the Outlook 2007, Outlook Anywhere, Outlook Web Access, and Unified Messaging.

Microsoft Office Communicator Server 2007 (OCS)
With rich presence awareness, software-powered voice capabilities, enterprise-class Instant Messaging (IM), and multi-party audio and video conferencing you can connect and collaborate from any location with Internet connectivity. Closely integrated with the Microsoft Office system, Office Communicator 2007 links seamlessly with the applications you use most—including Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Microsoft® Office SharePoint sites. Office Communicator 2007 provides an immediate, visual representation of a person’s availability, or presence.

Microsoft SharePoint
With SharePoint you can quickly build safe and dependable portals that assemble and present vital business intelligence from many different sources utilizing built-in mechanisms that include Wikis, dashboards, and lists. SharePoint's Report Center includes a special document database for Excel 2007 spreadsheets, Microsoft SQL reports, dashboards, and a variety of additional classes of relevant reports. LCS’s Microsoft Certified Professionals can design a SharePoint environment that will meet a business’s unique needs.

Microsoft SQL 2008
Our certified SQL Server Reporting consultants are experts at Reporting Services implementation, report development, and support. Whether you organization is in the planning stages of an SQL project or upgrading from a previous version, LCS can provide the expertise and experience to complete your project and keep your data safe.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
LCS can provide businesses a more cost-effective option to achieve business objectives than traditional packaged applications. SaaS can reduce an organization’s software expenses by providing a solution which enables companies to pay only for the licenses they use concurrently on a platform rather than the total number of system users.

Response Point Telephony
Microsoft® Response Point™ is revolutionary phone system software designed for small businesses. Easy to use and manage, Response Point is delivered on intuitive hardware from LCS - a complete solution in one affordable package.

• Set up and make changes in minutes. The user-friendly administrator software lets average PC users complete moves, changes, or additions with a few mouse clicks.
• Access features with your voice. A breakthrough voice-activated user interface lets you tell your phone what to do.
• Add up to 50 phones as your business grows. The system expands to meet your needs, with no additional licensing fees.

Business Continuity/Risk Mitigation Planning

LightEdge Consulting Services has developed a common sense approach to Continuity Planning.  The LCS team focuses on identifying the processes and resources critical to business operations – those that will shut down a business.  Next, they identify risk exposure and the associated vulnerabilities.  With this key information, they then develop a comprehensive plan to mitigate risks. 

In addition to the proactive mitigation of risks and their impacts on the operations, LCS works very closely with the client to develop a plan containing the guidelines necessary to resume and sustain those critical operations if an unplanned outage does occur.

Business Impact Analysis
Information gathering and formal inspection to determine the businesses risk factors and attempt to monetize the cost of the risk vs. the cost to mitigate.

Continuity Planning
Planning related to the human and operational reactions to an unforeseen business interruption.

Disaster Recovery Planning
Planning focused on redundancies and recovery options related to the company’s mission-critical applications, hardware and communications.

Scenario Drills/Exercises
Reinforcement of the plan’s execution through structured, facilitated exercises, by gathering business unit and IT teams in a room to play out the response and recovery actions to a hypothetical event.

Maintenance Programs
Incremental ongoing updates to the BC plan to ensure that it meets the company’s changing need.

 

For IT or Business Continuity Consulting, contact your Account Executive or call 877-771-3343.

You are invited to a Storage Seminar at Principal Park

EMC and LightEdge would like to invite you to a fun and informative event related to Backup and Replication of your company's critical data. With business data storage rates growing exponentially, many businesses are looking for new storage opportunities that may reduce the company's storage footprint, improve backup response time or reduce the complexity of the corporate storage platform.

Meet us at Principal Park to listen to experts from EMC discuss storage challenges and best practices and learn more about the LightEdge Managed Backup and Recovery offering.

April 22, 2009
Breakfast 8:00 - 9:00 a.m.
Presentation 9:00 - 11:30 a.m.
Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Iowa Cubs Game 12:00 - ?

Continental Breakfast and Lunch will be provided

Stay for the Iowa Cubs game

Agenda

RSVP Required

Located at:

Principal Park
One Line Drive
Des Moines, IA 50309

Click for Directions

Sponsored by:

Mark Minasi Conference 2009
April 19-22, Virginia Beach, VA

One of our LCSs senior consultants, Stacy Hein, will be presenting at the Minasi Forum Conference April 19th to April 22nd 2009 in Virginia Beach, Virginia at the Virginia Beach Resort Hotel and Conference Center. Mark Minasi is one of the premier server consultants and authors in the world and holds this annual conference in preparation for the larger conferences he will be presenting in (e.g. Tech Ed. & Tech Mentor Conferences) 

Stacy will be presenting “SQL Server for the Server Guy”.  The paper and presentation will tackle some common issues for installing, configuring, troubleshooting and fixing common issues encountered with SQL Server in the a variety of environments.   The presentation is aimed at assisting server administrators who may not have a SQL resource readily available.

Stacy has been a SQL Server DBA for 8 years working for major avionics, insurance, and financial companies.

Business Continuity Stuff
David E. Fulton, LCS

STUFF…Americans love it!

We have stuff we don’t want, stuff we don’t need, stuff we don’t use, stuff we can’t afford. But sadly, many organizations put misplaced faith in the ability of their companies to survive, in STUFF (duplicate servers, mirrored tape arrays, alternate work space) rather than people and planning!

Many times, we see organizational continuity delegated to the IT staff. No question about it, in today’s business environment the IT staff is critical in serving their internal business clients with the tools and technologies required to perform all of the essential processes required to run ad grow a business. However, to rely solely on technology as your life boat in a disaster is a disaster.

Now, I am not suggesting that technology components are not critically important to the recovery of business operations in the event of some type of disrupting occurrence. But I am evangelical about the importance of developing a recovery plan, before any investments in technology are made. And more importantly, this is business recovery not technology recovery. Business Continuity should be an operational responsibility, not a burden to the IT executive.

When developed properly, a Business Continuity Program will identify not only the essential processes a business must continue performing in the event of a business disruption and the key personnel required to perform those tasks during a crisis, but also the tools and technologies required and the costs associated with downtime through a Business Impact Analysis (BIA).

This is a STUFF buyers dream! With the information provided by a BIA, not only can the business process owner and the technical support staff identify the most essential processes to build resiliency, they are also empowered with solid financial information to justify purchasing new STUFF.  Investing in recovery solutions? Good for you! Follow a roadmap to business continuity and your trip, in the event you ever have to take will be smooth.  

Do You Drive a Hybrid?

Windows IT Pro, October 02, 2008

Hybrid is a term that you find in many contexts. Hybrid vehicles are hot items in the auto world. And there are hybrid bicycles and food from hybrid crops. But whatever the context, hybrids are models that fit a special situation.

What about IT—where does “hybrid” fit into our world? Microsoft’s Software plus Services is one hybrid, and its cousins cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) could also be components in hybrid IT solutions that combine offsite services and onsite hardware and software in a way that makes the most practical sense for a company.

Hybrid IT solutions are looking better all the time. Hybrid solutions can reduce cost for IT departments that need to extend services while profits and budgets are down. Doing more with what you have is the order of the day. And often there is little chance of adding more personnel and getting them trained to support these new offerings.

The WAN is hot in a slow economy

by Susan Fogarty, Editorial Director, Networking Media, TechTarget

In today's economic climate, IT departments are under extreme pressure to produce better results for a lower cost. Fortunately, there are many options for savvy IT professionals to pursue, including server, storage and desktop virtualization; moving applications to the Web with service-oriented architecture (SOA) and cloud computing; and using software as a service (SaaS). These technologies were already on the rise, but the depressed economy is accelerating their adoption. In fact, most enterprises are implementing or considering more than one of them to increase productivity while potentially saving money.

However, all of the aforementioned options rely on a healthy wide area network (WAN). In a distributed environment, there is even more demand for WAN resources, which are usually tight to begin with. That means WAN managers will need to invest in the WAN and appliances and tools to ensure that they are using all WAN resources to the fullest. Simply increasing bandwidth will raise costs and not necessarily provide adequate performance levels.

WAN-intensive projects require WAN-specific planning and expertise. In a recent survey of SearchNetworking.com members, respondents said the most challenging aspect of WAN networking was application performance at 28%, followed at a distance by managing and predicting traffic at 19%. Seventy-two percent said they could use more education on managing applications on the WAN, and 82% thought supporting applications on the WAN would be more important to their company in 2009 than 2008. In addition, readers planned to put their money where their mouths were, even though our survey was conducted in November, after the October market crash. At least 60% expected to increase spending in the areas of WAN optimization, WAN performance management tools, application acceleration, backup on the WAN, and WAN security.

Applications on the WAN require consistent and differentiated performance, and networking professionals in distributed enterprises must learn to deliver that to remain competitive in their fields. Old methods of capacity planning and siloed network management are ineffective and waste precious budget. Networking professionals must become proficient in applications management, embrace technologies like WAN optimization and application acceleration to better utilize their WAN links, be sure their network security systems are flawless, and learn to interact with the other IT departments that influence WAN performance.

There's no doubt the WAN is more critical than ever before, and more complex than ever before.

Gartner Says Eight of Ten Dollars Enterprises Spend on IT is "Dead Money"

Orlando, FL, October 9, 2006 — Too many IT organizations and too much IT spending is not contributing directly to business growth, according to Gartner, Inc. In fact, eight out of ten dollars that companies spend on IT is “dead money”.

Gartner analysts explained the challenge facing IT during the opening keynote address “The New IT Investments Powering Productivity and Growth” here at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is being held October 8-13. Gartner analysts said IT leaders must be able to show the business value they bring to their organization.

IT Spending Rising Despite Recession Fears
By Allan Alter, 2008-01-23

Worldwide IT spending is rising 3.3 percent as CIOs stay focused on process improvement and attracting new customers.

Companies are increasing IT spending and expanding the CIOs' role beyond IT.

According to the Gartner 2008 CIO Agenda study, the average worldwide IT budget increase after weighting is expected to go up 3.3 percent, a slight increase from 2007's 3 percent. IT spending will rise 3.3 percent in the U.S., 3 percent in Europe and 4.5 percent in the Asia/Pacific region. The survey was conducted by Gartner Executive Programs, a membership organization for CIOs. The study included 1,500 CIOs in 33 countries and 23 industries.

SMBs Plan to Spend to Increase Productivity and Efficiency
By Leslie Hague, FocusOnMSP Editor

Even as the worldwide economy falters, small- and medium-sized businesses remain optimistic about their future. And while SMBs expect revenue growth, they are increasingly looking for a good investment on IT infrastructure and services - solutions that will grow with them and increase the business’ productivity.

Those are a few of the findings from the recent study, CompTIA SMB IT Spending Trends Study: Optimism amidst a Challenging Economic Environment. CompTIA surveyed 772 IT decision makers at SMBs in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada in September for the study.

SMBs expect an average of 11 percent revenue growth in the next year, and are planning to spend 7 percent more on their IT budgets. Eighty-five percent plan to hire new employees in 2009, while 40 percent plan to open a new location.

Hosted Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007

Hosted Office Communications Server 2007 streamlines communications by enabling you to easily communicate in real-time, with colleagues through a variety of methods from a single intuitive interface. With enterprise-class Instant Messaging (IM), rich presence awareness, PC to PC voice capabilities, integration with a full hosted PBX voice platform and multi-party audio and video conferencing, you can connect and collaborate from any location with Internet connectivity.

Productivity
Business is easier with the right tools and the ability to collaborate with other members of the team. Hosted OCS is the universal communication tool that bridges instant messaging, e-mail, voice, video and web conferencing to provide a dynamic forum for discussion, sharing and making decisions in real-time - regardless of location.

Simplicity
The user interface is extremely intuitive with color-coded presence indicators, simple icons and drag and drop functionality. Users can quickly add and categorize users within their contact list and begin an IM session by double-clicking a name in their contact list.

Seamless Options
Hosted OCS has the flexibility to enable your staff to communicate on their own terms. Users can begin a conversation with Instant Messaging and then seamlessly transition to voice, video or screen sharing as the conversation progresses. Mobile users can take advantage of Communicator Web Access and Communicator Mobile to remain connected to their contacts regardless of where their work may take them.

Standard Version Includes:

• Secure "real-time" corporate Instant Messaging
  
• Dynamic Presence Indicators let you know when colleagues are free
• Seamlessly switch from one communication to another
• PC-to-PC voice and video
• Rich text formatting supports "cut and paste" functions from many Microsoft applications
  
• Integration with other Microsoft applications
  
• File Transfer
  
• Mobility options
  

Premium Version Includes

• Full LightEdge Hosted PBX Integration
• Click to dial from Hosted OCS
• Presence Indication when on a Hosted PBX call
  
• Live Meeting web conferencing
  

>>Learn about Hosted Office Communications Server 2007

Contact LightEdge for more information and a proposal for your business needs.
877-771-3343

Hosted Microsoft SharePoint

Hosted SharePoint allows you to quickly create rich document and information sharing portals for your business without the need for any outside programming.

• Document Management
  Secure central repository for all share documents in the office with functionality for check-in, check-out, version history and alerts when items are modified.
  
  
• Corporate Intranet
  Complete with announcements, Blog, discussion groups and RSS feeds.
  
  
• Project Management
  Run your department more effectively with a shared hub of information including assigned tasks and status reporting.

Call 877.771.3343 or info@lightedge.com to learn more

Hosted Microsoft Live Meeting

Microsoft Office Live Meeting is a hosted web conferencing service that connects audiences for online meetings, training sessions, software demonstrations and remote collaborative initiatives. With meeting attendees participating from their PCs, you can deliver a presentation, kick off a project, brainstorm ideas, edit files, collaborate on whiteboards, and negotiate deals at a fraction of the cost and without the hassle of travel.

• More Collaboration. Less Travel
  Get more done with fewer face-to-face meetings by limiting your need for travel.
  
  
• Engage your Audience
  Deliver multi-media presentations including presentation slides, live and recorded video, application sharing and audience feedback tools.
  
  
• Easy for any Meeting Size
  Whether you are collaborating with a colleague in another city or presenting a business model shift to the entire company, Live Meeting is easy to simple to use.

Call 877.771.3343 or info@lightedge.com to learn more