The CompTIA MSP Partners Trustmark is a vendor neutral, business-level credential, designed to qualify and differentiate organizations providing remote IT services via a managed service business model. This credential identifies the MSPs that demonstrate a commitment to providing managed services in a competent manner and strive toward industry best practices. It serves as a reference to the quality of the services these companies provide and the commitment they make to their clients. To receive the MSP Partners Trustmark, an IT service organization must agree to a code of conduct, provide customer references, and submit an application covering a detailed list of criteria.

BostonCSE Corporation is enrolled in the MSP Partners Trustmark program through 12/16/2014

BostonCSE Corporation was allowed to visit the Intronis DataCenter located in Somerville. Intronis is the best file and folder backup company that we have tested (5 different companies in all). We have now seen the insides of a major data center and know where our backed up data is located and have an even better understanding on how their own internal replication processes. I can officially say that I have never felt better about the safety of all our client information. The only question at this time is: “If you are not using us for your backup, what are you waiting for?” A huge Thanks to Intronis for their patience, we look forward to many more years of working together.

The Lenovo Mini Wireless Keyboard (N5901) is a very small form factor keyboard with an integrated scroll mouse. It fits right in the palm of your hand and you can easily use your two thumbs to press the keys. It can be used as you full time keyboard (though i suspect you will want to continue using a full sized keyboard for actual work), but i have found that it works amazing well when used on a TV screen (or larger sized screen) to view movies and videos or just surf the web while sitting on a couch (or even in bed). The keyboard also has an on/off switch and connects using a small USB Bluetooth Dongle. Check out our review: http://www.bostoncse.com/?p=4036 to see how it can be used with a wireless HDMI adapter to create the ultimate Computer room.

I am attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles this week and learning about the new Microsoft products. Things were off to a great Start when I met with Eric Ligman, Director of Partner Experience in the Worldwide Partner Group. the even continued with the learning of all the furure products that are coming out, like Multipoint Server (2.0), which will replace Terminal Services in the coming future. Once again Windows 7 stole the show for me as it is truly the best Operating System Microsoft has released. Also a big one is Small business Server 2011 which we hope to deploy to many of our clients in the coming months.

Managed IT services are the technology solution of choice for large businesses, but many small and medium businesses remain resistant to considering this approach. Below are five reasons you may want to change your mind.

Reason #1: You need to control costs. In today’s economic environment, IT budgets have been slashed—but a cut in IT spending doesn’t come with a cut in demand for IT services. As a result, you have to do the same amount of work with fewer resources. Although managed services might cost more in the short-term, they cost far less in the long term once you account for the domino effect of lost productivity and customer dissatisfaction.

Reason #2: IT complexity is increasing. The breadth of information technology a company requires places small- to mid-sized businesses at a distinct disadvantage. Equipment is constantly upgraded in the market, and new IT-related specialties are emerging in a variety of areas, from telephony to networking. It’s difficult for small businesses to maintain the expertise necessary to properly manage these new technologies.

Reason #3: You’re more dependent than ever on IT. At the same time, companies have become dramatically more dependent on IT in the past few years—and increased use of IT leads to increased outages and greater loss of productivity.

Reason #4: Your existing solutions are inefficient. In today’s world, a one- or-two person in-house IT department or consultancy simply cannot handle the occasional IT breakdowns that are bound to occur. In many cases, employees have to wait in line to receive help. As a result, not only are your employees less productive, their morale is also decreased—and unhappy employees are less productive employees.

Reason #5: You need to maintain compliance. More and more companies are finding themselves subject to regulatory compliance, from Sarbanes-Oxley to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)—and most small businesses don’t have the resources to fully understand the requirements of these regulations, let alone comply with them.

Of course, the best reason to consider managed IT services may be that IT isn’t your specialty. If managing IT infrastructure has absolutely nothing to do with your core competency, why wouldn’t you outsource it to an expert? By implementing managed services, you can utilize your internal IT resources for other purposes, such as supporting your strategic business objectives.

Every so often we attend events that are supposed to help us become better. We do tend to focus on Technical events, but sometimes we do sales training. What can be frustrating is when we take time out of our day to attend an even and it does not pay off. This can be the event’s fault, but also our own: not being prepared mentally. This event was one of those. We felt as though they were more excited to push vendors on us than to teach us the better sales methodology. We perhaps should have been more patient, but when you are taking time out of your day, you want to get to the point and get results. By 11am, they were running over an hour late, and simply skipped over one of the session, saying they would make it up in the afternoon. That is when we gave up and went to see a client nearby and just spent and hour with them asking how things were going. This in our minds, was more valuable than anything they could have told us in that meeting.

Today BostonCSE installed a Cisco UC320W phone system at one of our client sites. It was nearly a flawless installation (we did have to do a factory reset once). The step by step configurator walk through is nearly flawless (couple of bugs will get worked out in the next release, we hope). The phone system was put in place to replace a Syspine Response Point system (Microsoft’s quick attempt to see if they wanted to be in the phone sector). The call quality is incredibly improved, some of the best i have heard. Here are the items used in the installation:

The UC320W phone system (part # uc320w-fxo-k9). Supports up to 25 users. If your company plans of having more users, this system will not work for you. We replaced the 8 port gigabit that was in place with a ESW500 series switch (part # esw-520-8p-k9). This powers the 5 phones in their office. For the phones, we used standard SPA500 series (part # SPA504G).

BostonCSE would definitely recommend this phone system to small business. It is very easy to install, configure and setup. It does not currently support remote workers (a user that would connect this phone at his house and be able to connect) but we are told that is in the pipeline for a future release.

We attended the Intel/Microsoft “Building Solutions Together” event today, and what FUN we had!

In the morning, we built a Desktop with the following specs: Intel® Core™ i7 2600K, Intel® DH67CLB3 Desktop Board, Antec*  Skeleton Chassis, Blu-ray Optical Drive, Crucial* 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit, Intel® Solid State Drive 320, 80GB, Microsoft Window 7 Professional. The case is very cool and this desktop is recommended for heavy gamers. We are thinking of using it as a Audio/Video server (Thank you Blue ray Drive!).

In the afternoon, we stepped it up a notch with a Server build: Intel® S1200BTL Server Board, Intel® P4304 Server Chassis (pedestal), Intel® Xeon® E3-1240 Processor, 16GB Memory Kit (4 X 4GB) ECC UDIMMS, 2@1TB SATA HDDs, DVD-RW Optical Drive, Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 Standard. This creates a very nice entry level server. We would definitely recommend adding a couple drives and going with RAID5/6, but that’s no problem since that chassis can hold up to 4 3.5 drives.

Every few month, one of our Vendors, ConnectWise, invites their partners for the North East to get together and learn about new features and best practices for their software. The goal is always to walk out with at least 1 new method that we want to implement “yesterday!” This meeting was no different and we will soon be adding customer feedback when we close a ticket and offering a drawing each month for the clients who complete them. This will allow us to find out how our customers rate us and what they thin we can do better. So starting in June, make sure to fill out the form to be entered to win a iPod touch 8GB.

Learn how to improve your backup system: http://ow.ly/3hfdz