CP INSIGHTS:   Customer Appreciation Event & Managed Services I would like to thank each and every person and business that attended our Customer Appreciation Event and Open House. Over 130 people visited our offices and enjoyed seeing the changes we have put in place to serve our clients better.

I’m sure having great food, drinks and lots of giveaways didn’t hurt either! Attendees enjoyed seeing our new Help Desk area, Network Operation Center and Conference Room. I also want to thank our vendor partners who helped make the event a great success (N-able, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Ingram Micro,  APC, MX-Logic, Sonicwall, Cisco and Lenovo). If you missed the event we still can provide a tour of our facility. Simply contact any of the associates here at Connecting Point, and we will be happy to provide a tour for you.

One thing that really impacted me from the Open House was the fact that many people exclaimed something sounding like, “I didn’t know you guys could do that." The answer is “Yes” we can do that! Connecting Point has been delivering remote managed services as our primary support mechanism for nearly five years. However, it seems to be a pretty well kept secret. We have incredible capability to not only manage networks remotely, but to provide end user desktop support from our Help Desk and NOC. The overall goal of our managed service offerings is to save clients money on support costs and make their networks more productive. We have seen this to be true over the last five years.

The services that are available from our Help Desk and Network Operations Center are as follows:

• 24x7 Network Monitoring
• Patch Management
• Email Management
• Managed Firewall/Managed Security
• Remote Backup and Business Continuity
• Managed Client Desktop and 24x7 Help Desk
• Asset Management
• Managed Bandwidth and Content Filtering

Additionally, Connecting Point employs a Managed Service Consultant whose responsibility is to truly act as a virtual chief information officer for our managed clients. His job is to meet regularly with our managed accounts and analyze data, highlight technology direction and work in cooperation with the client to identify future IT direction. Our Managed Service Consultant is an extremely important benefit for our managed accounts.

We would relish the opportunity to discuss any or all of the above offerings with you. We are confident that we can save your company money and improve your network productivity and resiliency.

The first day of April began for most Connecting Point employees like any other day. But for Ted Warner, aka “Tin Man”, his arrival at the office was anything but normal. On the floor, a trail of wadded up tin foil led from the front door to his office. As he arrived at his door, he saw his reflection in the tin foil covering the door. Then as he opened the door to his office, he was nearly blinded by the light reflecting off his desk and chairs, which had also been meticulously covered in tin foil.

In fact, everything on his desk, including his computer, phone, pens, papers, and even the individual pieces of candy in his candy jar were wrapped in foil. He picked up his reading glasses to better survey the damage. . . alas, they were foiled too. Fortunately for those responsible for this April Fool’s prank, Ted has a healthy sense of humor and found the whole thing amazing. However, he does miss his Blue Tooth headset, which he must’ve mistaken for a foil wad and accidentally threw away. The foilers beware. . . Ted promises revenge next year!

On a more serious note, the big event for Connecting Point this month was our Client Appreciation Open House on April 3rd, which was a great success. The entire Connecting Point team, along with a few vendor partners, was on hand to host over 130 current and potential clients. Everyone was treated to a sumptuous buffet of hors d’oeuvres and beverages while enjoying a tour of our newly remodeled conference room, help desk and NOC areas. They had the opportunity to meet the help desk and technical engineers who remotely handle their technology and to see the machinery behind the services. In addition, they met some of the vendor partners who help us provide the services and equipment that help them run their businesses more smoothly. Much thanks to our vendor sponsors; Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, N-able, MX-Logic, Ingram Micro, Sonicwall, APC, Lenovo and Cisco. While the open house was supposed to last from 4:30-6:30PM, the last guests and vendors were here ‘til 8:30, which must indicate they all had a great time!

Super Stars***For the 2nd month in a row, Kristi Bauer was a winner in the Super Stars drawing, this time not as a Nominator, but as a Nominee for her help with the Open House. Kristi (along with others) was busy throughout the event greeting guests, taking pictures, drawing names for the give-away’s and then tracking down the winners to award their prizes. With so many people in the building, that was no easy task. Kristi was also a winner in our NCAA Basketball pool, so she should probably think about buying lotto tickets! Jenaya “I-Never-Win-Anything” McGowan was also a double Nominee this month, however, she won the $50 Nominator award. No more whining, Jenaya! Congratulations, ladies.

In 2005 a survey of internet users, found that 44% of employees wasted more than two hours online each day. Whoa. . .  There’s a productivity killer if I ever heard one.

By the way, how’s your bandwidth? Running slow? Are your critical web based applications running like the Mississippi River; very slow?

What do those two things have to do with each other? Well, users who waste time on the internet usually are listening to radio stations, watching videos and downloading content. All of that takes up your internet “pipe” and decreases the speed of your connection. Wouldn’t it be nice to control that somehow?

You can; it’s called network composing. The PointCare Network Composer allows you to control who and when an employee accesses the internet from your network. This Network Composer is unique in that it was built from the ground up to be a deep packet scanning and controlling device. This means that you can stop individual users from hogging all the bandwidth while prioritizing mission-critical applications, so they have the resources they need to go fast.

It allows you to block individual websites by category, URL, user or group of users and actually allows you to set up times that users can access certain sites. Now that’s all well and good, but that doesn’t do anything for those pesky videos and radio stations, does it?

The CP Network Composer can also prioritize your bandwidth by application. This feature allows you to give very minimal bandwidth to those videos and downloads and maximum bandwidth to your critical business applications. You can even control bandwidth by user, so the President of the company can have all they want, and the accounting department can only go to accounting websites.

The Connecting Point Network Composer boasts an extremely robust reporting system. It also has the most robust anonymous proxy controls available. Its active technology is always scanning for the latest proxies, so you don't have to manually maintain a black list. Its HTTPS content controls keep users safe - even if they do manage to connect to a secure proxy.

Oh, one more thing. It can monitor machines in real time, allowing for faster troubleshooting. Watch the machine you think is having issues on the network and actually see and capture the traffic in and out of it.

This solution is so robust, it can easily monitor instant messaging traffic, if needed and actually see what a user is saying via IM.

Now add to all of this that you don’t even have to manage this device. It can be managed from the Connecting Point Network Operations Center (or by you, if you wish), and all updates and system maintenance are included. Give Connecting Point a call today to learn more about this exciting service.