At eGroup, we’re all about delivering successful outcomes for our customers. So we’re especially excited when we get to publicly share a successful customer project around virtualization.

For example, take International Forwarders, Inc. (IFI), a full-service international logistics management and Customs brokerage firm that manages imports and exports of products valued in the millions of dollars.

As international shipping costs and complexities have increased, the requirements for precision among IFI’s clients have grown along with them. Even small delays or problems can have a huge ripple effect in other parts of the supply chain, which puts enormous pressure on IFI to ensure its systems are always available and working properly when needed.

While there had not been a serious problem to date, after evaluating its then-current technology IFI recognized that the potential was there.

“We had a completely physical server environment, and as a result there were a lot of single points of failure,” says Bonnie Miley, IT Supervisor at IFI. “If something were to happen it could be tough to recover quickly. We wanted to get on more current technology, and after reviewing our options we liked the flexibility and expandability that virtualization offered – particularly when it came to deploying and cloning servers. We especially liked the idea that if there was a failure in one piece of hardware or host, we could move the server to another host quickly. We also wanted to find a better data backup option than the weekly tape backups we were running.”

The ultimate goal was to create a high-availability environment that ensured systems and data could be restored quickly in the event of a failure. With a small IT staff, IFI wanted a long-term solution that would be easy to manage and update.

And that’s where eGroup came in to develop and design a solution to meet IFI’s requirements. For the full scoop and details of the successful outcome, be sure to download the case study below!

Download (PDF, 271KB)

Surely the topic of infrastructure convergence will come up at this week’s VMware User Summit in Charlotte. (By the way, come see us at Booth #27, or at 2:00 p.m. in Room 213 A talking about cloud security with Trend Micro or in the Labs in Room 211 AB)

eGroup’s Technical Consultant, Jeffrey Flowers, was quoted extensively throughout CRN’s feature, “Converged Infrastructure Bets Are In: Where Are They Paying Off?”

Below is a short blurb of what Jeffrey had to say.

For customers, converged infrastructure has shifted the conversation away from the actual components in the data center to a focus on reducing infrastructure complexity, said Jeffrey Flowers, technical consultant at eGroup, a Mount Pleasant, S.C.-based solution provider.

“These conversations have shifted to one that optimizes the infrastructure and creates a much more simple-to-manage, simple-to-scale-up, and simple-to-scale-out architecture and platform,” Flowers said.

Less equipment means less cost and fewer maintenance contracts, Flowers said. “Fewer moving parts and fewer steps equals fewer administrators to manage the platform,” he said. “Streamlining the administrative and operational costs for customers allows those extra administrators to focus their attention on adding additional value to the business with other IT initiatives that simply fell to the wayside before.

Click “Converged Infrastructure Bets Are In: Where Are They Paying Off?” to hear more insight from Jeffrey.

I recently had an issue with a SharePoint Server 2007 farm where the Search service was completely ignoring an entire document library on one of the sites. It was the only issue that we were aware of at the time and it was very odd. We engaged with Microsoft to try to solve the issue. After what seemed like a very long time, we finally solved it.

The answer: Check Response Headers in IIS for your SharePoint Web Applications and ensure that the MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices header is listed with a value that matches your farm’s build number (ie. 12.0.0.6653).

The SharePoint Search service checks Response Headers to identify whether the site is a SharePoint site or not. If this Response Header is not detected, then it will be crawled like a normal site. When a non-SharePoint site is crawled, things like permissions, visibility settings, etc are ignored and some content may not be crawled at all. This was the issue we ran into.

Before adding the Response Header, our CPU was getting maxed out more than normal and crawls were taking a very long time. Now that the Response Headers are in place, the server is much more responsive and crawls take a fraction of the time that they did before!  In addition, this issue applies to SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, and SharePoint 2013.

["First Day...Four Questions" will be an ongoing blog series throughout 2013 as we on-board dozens of new team members. We want you to understand what makes our new colleagues tick. And what drives them to be "serious competitors." We hope you enjoy.]

Why eGroup?

I wanted to be part of company on the cutting edge of technology but one that is also focused on solutions for the customer and not just the selling the latest and greatest toy. Also, the culture at eGroup is amazing, they truly want you to be a “thinker” and not just a “doer,” and I really like that. After meeting everyone my first couple of days, I knew I was at the right place.

What makes you a serious competitor?

I enjoy a good challenge and I take a lot of pride in being able to solve problems. I strive to make a difference each and every day I’m in the office. Be it helping to solve an issue for a client or helping a teammate with a problem, I try to remember that my customers are both internal and external to the company.

If you weren’t in Tech what would you be doing?

I’m an avid motorcycle rider, so I’d probably be doing something in that field. Either on the mechanical side or just selling them. Anything to be in the business.

What’s your headline?

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools. – Confucius

Acryness Selects eGroup’s eCloud to Gain a Competitive Advantage

eCloud’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provides Acryness the latest in system and server infrastructure solutions

Mount Pleasant, SC (PRWEB) May 21, 2013 – eGroup, the Southeast’s leading provider of cloud, application and end-user computing services, today announced that Acryness, a document solutions company based in Mooresville, NC, has migrated its mission-critical systems and servers into the eCloud.

As a result, Acryness anticipates improvement in its competitive advantage through operational and efficiency savings. Working closely with eGroup engineers, Acryness quickly consolidated its FTP, Web, and Database servers along with its internal data processing systems into the eCloud.

Chris Jarjoura, IT Director, Acryness, said: “We were looking to upgrade our server environment as some of our systems were already in a cloud infrastructure. We took this opportunity to consolidate more of our infrastructure to a reputable cloud environment. We had an existing relationship with eGroup, but after looking at the market cloud providers, we selected eGroup’s eCloud as it offered the best set of functionality and reliability at a competitive price.”

“Acryness is a great example of a forward-thinking firm that truly believes by harnessing cloud computing it can not only improve customer delivery and service, but cut costs and reduce internal inefficiencies as well,” said Steve Rattacasa, Cloud Services Manager, eGroup. “In such a competitive market, Acryness turned to the eCloud so that it could focus on customers, solutions delivery and overall growth, not upgrading and maintaining technology.”

The eGroup eCloud is a hosted, high-performance computing infrastructure, purpose-built to efficiently maintain, protect, and deliver IT securely to businesses of all sizes. In the eCloud, customers enjoy easy and secure access to their mission-critical applications and data anytime, anywhere, on any device.