eGroup Achieves Seven New Competencies and Specializations in Q3

Latest Microsoft Corp., EMC and Cisco expertise benefits growing customer base

MT. PLEASANT, S.C. – October 2, 2012 – eGroup, the Southeast’s leading provider of cloud, application and end-user computing services, today announced that several members of its team of engineers and consultants have achieved seven new competencies and specializations in Q3 2012. The latest proficiencies are based on EMC, Cisco and Microsoft technologies.

“The eGroup team works hard to be both broad and deep – it’s a hallmark of our success – and the well-rounded expertise we have on staff is rarely matched in the industry,” said Mike Carter, Principal, eGroup. “But, when you’re designed to support extremely capable corporate IT teams with a ‘faster, better, cheaper’ approach, having the ability to go wide and deep with respect to technology knowledge is essential. We feel our success in achieving these competencies reflects the investments we’ve made towards understanding and delivering the ‘big picture’ for our clients.”

Microsoft

To earn the numerous Microsoft silver competencies, eGroup professionals successfully demonstrated expertise through rigorous exams, culminating in Microsoft certifications. Microsoft also interviewed eGroup customer references for successful implementation and customer satisfaction.

• Silver Content Management – Attaining the Microsoft Content Management competency demonstrates partner expertise offering collaborative solutions that help customers maximize efficiencies and help ensure compliance across a wide variety of documents. Equipped with exclusive training, the latest software and support on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 technologies, partners can help their customers take advantage of opportunities, such as business value consulting, change management, architectural design, digital asset management, and Web design and development, all of which can help develop a more profitable business.
• Silver Digital Marketing – Attaining the Microsoft Digital Marketing competency demonstrates partner expertise in developing rich Internet solutions. Equipped with exclusive training, the latest software, and support on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites and Microsoft Silverlight, partners help their customers secure a unified platform for intranet, extranet and Internet sites. This enables customers to create engaging user experiences, cut costs, enable rapid development, and offer interactive search and personalization.
• Silver Hosting – Attaining the Hosting competency is exclusively for partners that specialize in hosting solutions and maintain their own datacenters or act as a reseller or agency of services hosted by Microsoft, providing agreed-upon service levels and customized hosted offerings and consulting for common customer scenarios. Equipped with exclusive training, the latest software and support, partners help customers offset the cost of maintaining critical business applications with scalable hosting solutions.
• Silver OEM – Attaining the OEM competency demonstrates expertise in design and delivery of quality hardware solutions. Equipped with exclusive training, the latest software, and support on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems for the Microsoft platform, partners help customers optimize their assets and technology investments.
• Silver Search – Attaining the Search competency demonstrates partner proficiency in deployment of solutions that can index various types of data and efficiently conduct complex searches. Equipped with exclusive training, the latest software and support on Microsoft SharePoint 2010, partners are equipped with the tools needed for improving the search experience across desktops, mobile devices and the Internet.

EMC

eGroup professionals completed the EMC Global Services Implement training paths of Data Domain Specialist and NetWorker Specialist. This is an important step as an EMC partner as only individuals who have successfully completed EMC Global Services training and mentoring may deliver installation and implementation services to enterprises.

The certifications enhance eGroup’s already authorized capabilities to implement and configure solutions based on Data Domain, EMC NetWorker, EMC Atmos and EMC Disk Library.

Cisco

In Q3, eGroup renewed its existing Advanced Data Center Architecture Specialization.

• Advanced Data Center Architecture Specialization – This specialization recognizes eGroup as having fulfilled the training requirements and program prerequisites to sell, design and deploy comprehensive Cisco® Data Center solutions. The specialization provides role-based training in three essential areas: Unified Fabric for optimizing data and storage needs; Unified Computing for streamlining data center resources and uniting network, computational, storage and virtualization platforms; and Unified Network Services for advancing the way application delivery and security services are provided in the data center network or computing environment.

eGroup’s solutions drive customers’ cost containment, revenue growth, and service objectives by addressing challenges associated with mobility, access to critical applications and data, and security. eGroup’s expertise and core competence is focused in three distinct areas: Cloud Services (public and private), Application Services, and End-User Computing.

Click here to download a PDF of this release.

Ran into an issue today where we could not connect via HTTPS to the ASDM on a 5512X ASA. We had issued the following comands:

ASA(config)#http server enable
ASA(config)#asdm image disk0:/asdm-661.bin

but it still would not connect. Internet Explorer was not giving any errors, but Chrome was showing the following: Error 113 (net::ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH): Unknown error.

Turns out the issue is that the ASA did not enable the ciphers that my browsers were trying to use. To fix the issue you must issue the following command:

ASA(config)# ssl encryption aes256-sha1 aes128-sha1 3des-sha1

This will fix the issue. Hope this helps!

I was reading through the latest announcements from Cisco and I thought this was cool. It is a new cloud platform on the Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers that “..simplifies how consumers connect, control and interact with their connected devices, including personal entertainment and home appliances”. Its a cool read and I think one of the best features is that they are creating a new Linksys developer community

“Cisco also announced the opening of its Linksys Developer Community to assist app developers interested in working with Cisco to expand the Cisco Connect Cloud home network platform for Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers. More information can be found at here and at http://developer.cisco.com/web/ldc.”

Allowing third parties to create apps for the home network could take the home network in a direction not seen before. Read more here:

http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=926061

I am back again after just passing the final CCNP exam, the TSHOOT exam 642-832. This one was a bit different since most of it was simulations. I only had three questions that were the typical multiple choice. The rest were simulation questions. You could look at any of the devices and use show commands, but you cannot make any changes. You have to identify on what device the problem is located on, then you have to say what category the issue is in (DHCP, BGP, EIGRP, etc), and then choose what you would do to fix it. This is a test where you have to know what you are doing and what commands do what. There really isn’t a good way of studying other practicing on Cisco devices and troubleshooting in either the lab or the real world. Here is what I used though.

First off, again I used CBT Nuggets. Here is the link:

http://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training-videos/series/cisco-ccnp-tshoot-642-832

Again it is definitely on the pricey side, but Jeremy went through a bunch of different sims and showed how he goes about troubleshooting issues and what commands you would use to fix them. Very helpful.

After watching the videos I then read the Cisco Press 642-832 Official Certification guide.

http://www.amazon.com/TSHOOT-642-832-Official-Certification-Guide/dp/1587058448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340677230&sr=8-1&keywords=642-832

This was helpful in that it went into a bit more detail in some areas then Jeremy did. Without Jeremy going through the labs first though it would not have been as easy to understand everything the first read through.

The rest of it was practicing using GNS3 and troubleshooting issues in the real world.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Cisco has refined the virtual desktop, including voice and video, and refined the offering into their Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) solution.

Delivering desktop and workspace virtualization, VXI is an end to end solution that capitalizes on the converged network infrastructure for a much improved user experience, that includes (1) virtual desktop, (2) video, (3) access from any device – anywhere, and (4) voice.

This is the first solution to cominbine virtualized collaborative workspace and the virtualized data center into an experience that raises the standard for virtualized desktop solutions by delivering any application to any device an any workplace environment – while providing security and control.

 Some of the key benefits of VXI to consider are:

• Open & Controlled Operations – provides virtualization-aware control of security and support for high availability and business continuance
• Personalized & Pervasive User Interactions – delivering customized, consistent virtual workspace
• Agile & Efficient Service Provisioning – quickly deploy new apps while optimizing resource utilization 

To Learn More – Please visit: http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/trends/virtualization/index.html