December 2013

In This Issue

NPS Update

Trivia

Ask the Expert

CCC's HOLIDAY SCHEDULE

CCC Annual Charity Poker

Avaya Order Black-out

Is VoIP Right for You?

Changing Holiday Greeting

Datacenter Security

Unitrends R7.3 Goes Beta

Datacenter Scalability

Quick Links to CCC...

Manufacturer Links Below are links to manufacturer support and/or update sites. Please note some sites may require registration.

ESI

NPSŽ Update

Current NPSŽ: 80.23%
Surveys Completed: 2173

Click here to learn more about Net Promoter Score.

Trivia

Trivia Answer

One of Star Wars most recognized (and most imitated) hallmarks is the opening "crawl" of text to start each movie. Who helped George Lucas write the opening crawl for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope?

ANSWER:
Brian De Palma

WINNERS:

Dan Kurkiewicz

_________________

New Trivia

Thirty years since its film debut, the dysfunctional family comedy "A Christmas Story" is still considered to many a must-see during the holiday season. The story follows a young boy in the 1940's, around Christmastime, as he tries to convince his parents, teach, and even his local department store Santa Claus, to allow him a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.

The setting for the film is in Hohman, Indiana, but the actual house filmed for external scenes is located in what city?

Ask the Expert
"Creating New Users in Avaya IP Office"
Moses Christian, ConvergeAssureŽ CSU Engineer

This month, Moses Christian, will walk us through, step-by-step, on how to create a new user in an Avaya IP Office system. Please note that this recommended only for customers who have administrative access to their IP Office systems and at least a basic working knowledge of system administration. If you are not familiar with basic administration it is recommended that you contact our service team for assistance at 877.790.1222 or service@ccc1.com

CCC Technologies' Holiday Schedule

The following is our schedule in observance of the Christmas and New Year's Holidays. If you should need support during days that we are closed, please contact our 24x7 support line at 877.790.1222.

Christmas

Monday, December 23rd - OPEN - Regular Business Day

Tuesday, December 24th - CLOSED

Wednesday, December 25th - CLOSED

Thursday, December 26th - OPEN - Regular Business Day

New Year's

Monday, December 30th - OPEN - Regular Business Day

Tuesday, December 31st - CLOSED

Wednesday, January 1st - CLOSED

Thursday, January 2nd - OPEN - Regular Business Day

We would like to extend our warmest wishes to you and your families for a happy and safe holiday.

CCC's Poker Elite Gather for Great Cause

The starting field before the first deal

On Thursday, December 5th, CCC held their annual holiday charity poker tournament. This years' tournament benefited ULEED.

For those of you not familiar with ULEED. It is a foundation of which CCC Senior Convergence Engineer, Joshua Rodriguez's wife, Rosalinda Rodriguez, is the Vice-President and co-founder. ULEED stands for United Latinos for Empowerment Education & Development. You can learn more by visiting www.uleed.org.

Two years ago ULEED started a Toy Drive to gather gifts for the smaller organizations that don't normally get donations from Toys for Tots and other larger organizations. They are seeking unwrapped (non-plush) toys and /or gift cards for children ages 0-18. This year the donations will benefit the children of the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance, Youth Service Project, and local Day Care Centers.

The final table

In additional to raising almost $500 for ULEED, CCC Technologies is also a donation point for new, unwrapped, non-plush gifts. If you are interested in donating, please email Kim Kiefer. We are accepting donations until end of business on Wednesday, December 18th.

Congratulations to our winner, CCC ConvergeSecure® CSU Engineer, David Flores, and runner-up ConvergeSecure® Supervisor, Danny Poull.

Avaya Order Processing Black-out Period January 10-20, 2014 - How it May Affect You

In order to prepare for Avaya's new Avaya One Source Order Processing system Avaya has announced an order black-out period beginning at 5pm Eastern Standard Time on Friday, January 10 and ending at 8am Eastern Standard Time on Monday, January 20, 2014.

Unless you are a customer in the midst of an implementation where all equipment has not already been ordered, or, if you are a customer planning to begin a project that would require order placement during January, it is important that you connect with your CCC Technologies Account Executive or Project Manager to discuss placing your order prior to the black-out period or plan your project timeline around ordering equipment January 20th or later.

This black-out period does not effect equipment orders already placed but not yet delivered. If you have any questions, please contact your CCC Technologies' Representative.

VoIP - It's Not For Everybody
Mitel Blog - 12/2/13

If you're considering a new phone system for your business, you may think that VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is the only way to go, considering all the attention it's getting these days. But it's not the right choice for every business. Here are some of the alternatives.

Traditional systems use landlines and trunks to transmit voice using analog or digital devices, which make them highly reliable (even during power outages and network interruptions). Though they can be expensive to install, most businesses already have a legacy system in place, which makes it relatively inexpensive to get up and running.

Best for businesses that:

Don't expect significant growth-adding lines down the road can be costly.
Make mostly local calls; long distance and international calls can get pricey on a traditional system.
Cannot experience shut down due to power outages or other network interruptions, like utility companies.
Don't have optimal Internet performance to support VoIP, which can experience call drops and poor call quality without it.

Hybrid systems combine the benefits of traditional and VoIP systems, allowing you to use traditional phone lines for local calls and VoIP for long distance and international calls, plus other features. A solutions engineer can help you design and implement a hybrid system to work for your business' needs.

Best for businesses that:

Require the reliability of traditional lines with the technology and features of VoIP.
Expect to make a significant number of long distance or international calls.
Have multiple offices or employees who work remotely-calls can be routed to mobile devices or remote computers easily with VoIP.
Have existing VoIP system and want to be able to use it for making calls.
Have an optimal Internet connection to support VoIP.
May require video conferencing capabilities.

ESI Tech Tip
Recording Your System's Holiday Greeting

In order to record your system's holiday greeting, you must have Administrator password access to the system. (Detailed instructions can be found in the Administrator's Manual under Function 1-6).

On any ESI phone within the system, press PROG/HELP or PROGRAM.
Stop the prompt by pressing HOLD.
Enter the Administrator password and then press #.
Access Function 6-1 by pressing 6 1.
After the prompt press 5 4 0 to select system prompt 540, which is the holiday greeting.
To record the holiday greeting, press 1. This will replace any existing recording. The system will then prompt you through the normal recording of the holiday greeting. When finished, press #.
To keep the recording, press # to accept; if not, go back to step 6.
Press # again to accept the holiday greeting.

This is the greeting that will not play when your system is put in holiday mode through the use of a programmed Day/Night key.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact Customer Support at 877.790.1222 or service@ccc1.com.

The Right Security Solution for the Datacenter
Stefanie Hoffman, Fortinet

The datacenter is the heart of the enterprise due to its central role across nearly all business processes. In some ways, there's been a reversion back to more centralized IT architecture, leveraging virtualization and cloud technologies to better enable overall business agility. As organizations look to deploy private cloud technologies and further build out next-generation datacenter architectures, the demand for scalable security solutions with integrated management will only increase.

From a firewall perspective, there are three key deployment scenarios in the datacenter: perimeter, core, and virtual. The datacenter perimeter is the egress point for external traffic, meaning robust malware and intrusion prevention scanning is required for threat detection. In the core of the datacenter, access control is the larger concern, so more traditional firewall deployments are common. Finally, most environments are at least a mix of physical and virtual resources, so inspection at the virtual layer is necessary to control east-west traffic between servers within the datacenter.