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Mark your calendar today so you don't miss any 2010 Signature Technology Network Events!
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March 9, 2010
Business Intelligence:
Microsoft Solutions for Performance Management
8:00 am - 1:00 pm
The Tower Club
Vienna, VA
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April 8, 2010
Real Time Collaboration:
Cisco Systems Changing the Collaboration Landscape
8:00 am - 1:00 pm
The Tower Club
Vienna, VA
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May 11, 2010
TO BE ANNOUNCED
The Tower Club
Vienna, VA
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Green IT Initiatives
Compress e-mails and dedupe data.
This can lead to a reduction in power usage by 30 to 40 percent.
Power down computer resources, don’t turn them off.
Aligning systems and power management can save companies 25 to 35 percent on power.
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NEWS BYTES
Windows XP with SP2 and Windows Vista RTM End of Support Information
Microsoft support for the Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Windows Vista Release to Manufacturing (RTM) operating systems will end July 13, 2010. Call TSG to discuss Desktop/Laptop lifecycle management or operating system deployments to ensure that they optimum success rates.
Flash Cookies
Talk about sticking around whether you like them or not.
Marketers have a new tracking tool call Flash cookies. Don’t be lulled into thinking that your cookie trail can be erased through your browser’s “Tools” menu “delete cookies” option. To delete Flash cookies, right-click in a Flash application (YouTube, etc.) running in your browser and find the “Advanced” button in the “Privacy” tab. It will guide you on how to change your settings to delete your Flash cookie trail.
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Visit TSG on LinkedIN to stay current with TSG news and events. Also, be sure to join STN (Signature Technology Network), a membership based group comprisd of IT Executives representing a wide array of industries that provides educational and social opportunities. The Signature Technology Network also sponsors discussion groups and blogs.
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Follow TSG on Twitter "TheSigGroup".
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TSG is leading the way at the 2010 ASAE Technology Conference as an exhibitor and presenter on Virtualization. The Conference is designed to equip associations and nonprofit organizations with the tools needed to keep pace with the rapidly changing world; to strategically use technology to better serve their members, effect social change and uphold their missions. The 2010 Technology Conference & Expo in Washington, DC brings renowned thought leaders, representing a diverse cache of technology industries, for two and a half days of networking, interactive discussion, and hands-on learning all focused around the most pressing technology issues affecting organizations today.
This is a must event for every association CIO or technologist and there is still time to register for the 2010 ASAE Technology Conference & Expo.
VISIT US AT BOOTH #520 where TSG will be showcasing Real-Time Collaboration with Cisco Systems & TSG Managed Services.
TSG is also presenting an educational track on virtualization, with 4 sessions dedicated to this game-changing technology. Stop by ROOM 206 during technology idea lab hours. TSG has invited major Virtualization Vendors HP, VMWare, Microsoft, Citrix, Symantec & APC to participate in our educational sessions and hands on demonstrations. HP will be powering the Virtualization lab with nearly $.5 Million in state of the art equipment.
Signature Technology Network® Educational Series Presents
Business Intelligence:
Microsoft Solutions for Performance Management
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
8:00 am – 1:00 pm*
The Tower Club
Vienna, VA
Microsoft has the most flexible and familiar set of performance management tools that fit the needs of every user throughout an organization—driving personal agility, team accountability and corporate alignment.
Join us as we explore some of Microsoft’s new solutions for data sharing and collaboration, and how these products change the business intelligence process. We’ll review the architectural features of Office SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft Exchange 2010 and how these critical tools allow users to capture, process and share data to support business decisions.
Who Should Attend? Washington, DC area CEOs, COOs, CIOs, and Senior Executives from companies and associations that are reviewing new technologies to improve the business intelligence process.
Register for the event soon as seating is limited. If you have any questions or require additional information about the seminar, please contact Michelle Cini (703)748-9527. Registration is required. Breakfast and Lunch Provided!
*8:00 am – 9:00 am Breakfast & Peer Networking
9:00 am – 1:00 pm Presentation (includes a working lunch)
The New Efficiency
Recap of 01-12-2010 STN Event
If you missed the January STN Event on “The New Efficiency” from Stephen Deming, Microsoft Partner Solutions Advisor, you’ll appreciate this recap.
The New Efficiency is where cost savings, innovation and productivity come together through IT to deliver operational improvements while amplifying the impact of your people. Microsoft enables the New Efficiency with Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, R2, and System Center. Starting with Windows 7, we explored the Optimized Desktop, built on Windows 7 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Optimized Desktop helps IT organizations create a manageable, secure and productive environment. We also explored available tools that simplify and enhance upgrading to Windows 7.
We discovered the power of Windows Server 2008, R2 new and improved management tools such as Windows PowerShell, and extensible command line shell and an associated scripting language to control and automate system administration tasks. Server 2008, R2 Power Management has powerful tools such as the Processor Power Management Engine and Core Parking that significantly enhance power efficiencies while lowering power consumption. Server Manager, for local and remote server administration, provides the Best Practice Analyzer tool that validates configuration information and improves compliance.
Microsoft’s System Center Management solutions can help you capture and aggregate knowledge about your infrastructure, policies, processes, and best practices so your IT staff can build manageable systems and automate operations in order to reduce costs, improve application availability, and enhance service delivery. The family includes Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager, Virtual Machine Manager and Essentials 2007.
You can review the briefing from the STN event on Linkedin.
A CULTURE OF EXCELLENCE
TSG Solution Case Study
Comprehensive Health Services (CHS) has more than 30 years of established trust in meeting the workforce health needs of major corporations and government agencies. They are the industry's largest independent provider of onsite health centers, nationwide exam programs and rapid-response medical readiness teams.
As an independent provider of workforce health care, Comprehensive Health Services offer objective treatment and better care for your employees. They focus on measuring and tracking results to maximize the effectiveness of every health care dollar spent, while ensuring employees have the best treatment options.
Their innovative solutions are transforming health care to achieve today's requisites for large employers–better quality care, with smarter utilization of every health care dollar.
Overview:
CHS has an existing Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) based Wide Area Network that interconnects all of their major offices and facilities and provides connectivity to their AT&T co-location facility where their major applications and systems are located. Their Wide Area Network that provides transport for data, Citrix Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) traffic, voice, and video services was experiencing latency and saturation during peak business hours. CHS was rapidly expanding their organization with new officers, new clinics, and new applications that were compounding the limitations of their existing bandwidth. They concluded that they needed to increase the bandwidth to all of their major locations and within their AT&T datacenter to accommodate the growing demands being placed on their MPLS Wide Area Network. Increasing this bandwidth was an expensive proposition requiring the purchasing of additional routers and resulting in a long term increase of recurring carrier expenses.
Solution:
The Signature Group, Inc. (TSG) designed and implemented an alternative solution based on the Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) WAN accelerators. This solution included the implementation of Cisco WAAS accelerators at all of their primary offices and their AT&T datacenter. Additionally, TSG re-engineered the Quality of Service (QoS) configuration on the existing WAN to prioritize and reserve bandwidth for their latency intolerant traffic. The solution consisted of the following:
> Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) WAN accelerators
>> Cisco WAE-674 WAN Application Engines at all major locations
>> Cisco WAVE-574 Central Management Appliance
> Re-engineering of the QoS configuration on the existing MPLS Network
Benefits:
This new infrastructure allows for TCP transport optimization and local bit level caching of all frequently accessed data preventing the requirement to transmit this over the MPLS network and allowing users to access this information at near LAN speeds. The solution also allowed all non-encrypted data to be substantially compressed prior to being transmitted across the WAN. The combination of local caching and compression reduced the burden on the existing WAN and more than doubled their effective bandwidth, provided near LAN speed access to traditional data while also prioritizing mission critical traffic and protocols.
Cost Savings - As measured over a three year time period the WAAS solution will cost CHS less than one third of the cost they would have incurred if they had selected the original approach of increasing the MPLS WAN capacity and bandwidth. If measured over a longer time period, the cost advantage is even greater because the increased bandwidth has a recurring cost component and the WAAS solution does not. Furthermore, the increased bandwidth solution would offer only temporary relief because as CHS continues to grow, the latency and saturation problems would eventually reappear. The WAAS solution is much more robust in its ability to support growth.
Enhanced Productivity and other Benefits – Users are now able to access traditional data at near LAN speeds increasing their productivity and decreasing wait-time while information is downloaded or uploaded to the centralized AT&T datacenter. This allows users to process information faster and increases the overall productivity of the organization. Performance of mission critical applications including e-mail, SQL databases, and web based applications has also been substantially improved. Latency intolerant applications such as Citrix, voice, and video conferencing have been prioritized over other traffic, significantly improving the performance and reliability. The network has become more stable and resilient due to local bit level caching which has eliminated problems associated with e-mail storms and large downloads that traditionally impaired network performance.
CHS is now considering expanding the WAAS solution by installing software agents on all laptops and remote users to provide the same caching and compression benefits that are now available to network based users and interconnected offices/facilities.
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