CTG Expands into North Carolina

By Caylor Feeley

Convergent Technologies Group is proud of our growth over the last decade and our customer-focused culture. And now, we’re moving ahead in a new direction, with our recent expansion into North Carolina. 

Expanding beyond our Central Virginia headquarters will allow us to strengthen our already existing relationships, and will also enhance our ability to effectively serve a new set of clients. Convergent Technologies Group has a tradition of growing businesses in Virginia, Washington D.C. and Maryland with our IT solutions that fit our customer’s precise needs. Our expansion into North Carolina will not only grow our clientele and market reach but will provide full-service technology solutions to our customers in the region. North Carolina's economy grew from tobacco farming and textiles into a leader in modern industries, such as aerospace, biotechnology, banking and energy. The fast-growing economy and the state's thriving technology-based industries create a strong fit for CTG's presence.

Convergent Technologies Group is dedicated to cultivating positive business relationships in North Carolina and providing organizations with targeted information technology solutions, particularly in the ever-changing digital economy. Technology allows us to connect with clients wherever they are. As we have developed new relationships, we want to ensure that our clients have a local account manager who can better understand their business and market they operate in. With solutions including cloud, collaboration, data center, disaster recovery, managed services and more, we analyze our clients’ specific wants and needs to create a tailored approach that will deliver against company objectives. 

Representing us in the North Carolina region is Bailey Mountcastle, who has joined CTG as a territory account manager. A Virginia Tech business management graduate, Bailey is highly motivated and dedicated, and looks to provide every business with the most effective keys to transform its IT department into a revenue-building department. Whether you need products, services or a mix of both Bailey can recommend and deliver solutions that will benefit both your current and future technology needs. Reach out to Bailey here. 

Caylor Feeley is a junior marketing specialist at CTG.

Customer Engagement Center opens access to HPE Products, Experience

By Brandon Samuel

As an account manager, one of my roles is to make sure that I’m providing the absolute best solutions to my clients that my manufacturer partners can offer. The process of a sale can be as quick as 15 minutes – or a year or more, depending on the project at hand.

When it comes to longer-lasting projects, we often spend much time perfecting the configuration and doing rigorous testing to make sure that whatever solution is purchased will work in the client’s existing environment. This testing can require demo units to be allocated, shipped, installed, configured and tested, all of which can take several months to complete, depending on the scale of the solution.

No one can blame a client for wanting to put this level of effort into making a decision. In fact, we encourage it, even if clients might walk in thinking they already have the answers. To be a valued long-term partner, we believe in investing the resources to make sure that the solutions and products that our clients ultimately purchase will differentiate that business not just today but position them to continue building for the next five years.

Let’s face it, when it comes to IT nobody really gives it much thought unless you work on the IT team. Or worse, when the network is down and you can’t do your daily tasks. CIOs and IT directors must make sure that their staff is comfortable with a solution, both from an implementation and management standpoint. The best way to ensure that confidence is by testing their data on the solution being presented. The price and the pressure are far too great of a risk for the solution to not be fully vetted.

What if there was an easier, less time consuming, but equally thorough way? What if we could tell you that the entire process could take less than half of the normal time? Well, we can – and here’s how!

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Customer Engagement Center: New York City, New York

Located in the heart of Chelsea is the HPE Customer Engagement Center. Aside from the HPE logo on the window, you probably wouldn’t give the building a second look, but once you get inside you are in technology heaven! HPE designed this space to show the latest and greatest technologies that HPE has to offer. The goal is to show the future of both one of our primary partners and the companies we serve. 

The center was designed to allow CIOs, directors and managers to not only see the latest and emerging technologies but also to discuss their bottom line. Discussions cover how each piece of hardware and software is designed to meet a specific need, while keeping ease of configuration, deployment and management at the forefront of the conversation. High-level discussions about total cost and return on investment are always hot topics, as well as conversations about making IT teams from every organization more streamlined and focused on innovation, instead of being reactive and becoming stagnant. 

CTG is excited to be taking guests to the HPE Customer Engagement Center on Jan. 26. Our attendees will get to see products in a production environment, receive a hands-on demonstration and experience a tour of cutting-edge HPE technology. 

Brandon Samuel is CTG's sales manager.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving, filled with family, friends, and food! CTG has a lot to be thankful for and our employees wanted to express their many different reasons to be thankful:

I am thankful for my husband, son andd our continued blessing as a family, even if we are far apart. - Carley Wessler, SMB Account Executive

I am thankful to be a part of the Convergent family and hope to have a positive impact on the business and employees as we learn from one another. Also, I am thankful to the people of Scotland for their wonderful distilled spirits! – Charles Fowler, Director of Enterprise Sales

I am thankful for my family and friends, and their health. I am also thankful to work for great people. 

– James Kay, Accounting Representative 

I’m thankful for a successful company with enthusiastic co-workers and my health and family (and blogs)! 

– Brandon Samuel, Assistant Manager

I am thankful for the wonderful CTG staff, their dedication and all the wonderful new employees who come on board! You all make CTG what we are today! – John Monahan, Co-founder

I am thankful for my loving husband, my family, and my sweet furbabies. I am also thankful for my job with an awesome company. I don’t know where my life would be without all of these wonderful things. 

– Kristin Harley, Inside Sales Support                     

I am thankful for my first post-graduation job at CTG where I work with wonderful people and I learn new skills. I am thankful for my family who have patiently helped me as I struggle to figure out how to be an adult. 

– Caylor Feeley, Junior Marketing Specialist 

I am thankful for the opportunity I have been blessed with here at CTG. The knowledge that I have gained within this company and the relationships I’ve formed are two of the many things I’m thankful for. I’m also thankful for my home, my health, and my amazing family! 

– Grace SunDance, Administrative Assistant

 I am thankful for love, hugs, long drives on backroads, being a mom, laughter and smiles, oceans and beaches, the way my husband looks at me, kindness, milk with ice, who I have become, family time, music, fire pits and sweaters, my heart- I still see so much good in people, that I have an old soul, long walks, friendships, snow days, flowers, fresh baked cookies. 

– Chastity Loving, Purchasing Manager 

I am thankful for family and friends in my life. Most of all, I am thankful for a loving God who is always with me and for His many blessings in my life and that of those I care for.

 - Elizabeth "Beth" Foster, Inside Sales Reprsentative

I am thankful for my two awesome kids and how much happiness they bring me each and every day. I am also thankful for being able to work with the some of the best people in the world at CTG.  Our services, sales, marketing and finance teams are some of the best I have ever worked with and I am very proud and thankful to have been honored with this awesome opportunity.

– Rod Knowles, Solutions Architect 

I am thankful for my son and the rest of my family.

–Evan Joyner, SMB Technician 

I'm enormously thankful to have two beautiful, intelligent and caring daughters that have changed my life so dramatically for the better. They have plumbed the depths of my heart further than I ever thought possible. And most importantly, I'm thankful for my wife without whom I would be a much lesser man.  Who showed me that the third time really is the charm.”

–Jeff Garell, Co-founder

“I'm thankful for my wonderful family and having a passion for my chosen vocation.”

– Jeff Joyner, Senior Network Engineer

I am thankful for my family - my mother, father, sisters, my [siberian] husky boys. I am thankful for my friends and their children, and for being able to be apart of their life. I am so very thankful for my job, company, my team and CTG family. I love and apprecaite the knowledge, perseverance and views we bring together every day - we work hard, have fun and enjoy life and eachother! I am thankful for my home, my energy, my health - I am forever grateful for being here on this earth.

– Alexandra Suder, Marketing Director

Attack of the Killer IoTs?

By Jeff Joyner

Well, maybe they weren’t killers but it was definitely an attack.  

A couple of weeks ago, on Oct. 21, a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack was executed against a DNS provider named Dyn. This attack affected the Internet traffic for prominent web sites such as Twitter, Pandora, Netflix, Pinterest, Spotify, PayPal and PlayStation Network. In some cases, access was shut down completely.

Domain Name Service (DNS) is like a phone book for the Internet. DNS translates human readable text (such as your website name, like www.ctgva.com) into Internet addresses (which are numeric, such as 72.10.49.31) that devices connected to the Internet can understand. In a nutshell, DNS providers deliver this translation service. 

A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is an attempt to prevent legitimate users from accessing information or services. The primary method is to flood a particular website’s Internet connection, exhausting the resources of a router, firewall or server, thereby shutting off access to anyone else. With a DDoS attack, you find it more difficult to defend yourself and your business. Instead of the attack coming from a single device, a DDoS attack enlists an army of network devices to do the same thing. Tens of thousands or more devices, all working together to cut off a company’s resources. Even the largest companies find it difficult to defend against.

So, who owns the network devices used in these attacks? In this particular example, large numbers of webcams were used. Why would webcams launch an attack on a DNS provider? What did Dyn do to the webcams?

This is where it gets interesting.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a phrase used to describe all of the various Internet-connected devices we have today, which includes video game systems, home thermostats, security cameras, smart phones, and much more. In many cases, these devices come with passwords that are never changed and/or weak protocols enabled for active use. Sitting behind a firewall doesn’t necessarily mean that the device can’t be reached.

A protocol that runs on most home routers/firewalls is Universal Plug’n’Play (UPnP).  When enabled – and it is by default – UPnP allows devices on the inside or protected part of your network to request ports be opened and forwarded to them without any user intervention. Why have this protocol? Because it’s easier on people who might not be as technically minded. Your best security practice is to disable UPnP on home routers/firewalls. After disabling, test all internal device that rely on the Internet to ensure disabling UPnP didn’t disrupt any connections. Leaving UPnP enabled makes things easier but compromises home network security.

Meanwhile, what can be done to make these devices less vulnerable to being turned into “zombies” and used in attacks against unsuspecting victims? Vendors need to tighten up the security on IoT devices during manufacturing, long before these devices hit the retail shelves. Additionally, manufacturers must make ready updates to correct security holes in the products already in service. Consumers should create strong passwords (16 characters or more with mixed case, numbers, symbols) to replace the widely documented default passwords all too often left on devices connected to the Internet.

We know cyber security is seemingly daunting, so let us help. Contact Convergent Technologies Group through our website to have all the right resources to defend against cyber attacks. 

Jeff Joyner is a senior network engineer at Convergent Technologies Group.

3. Docker Delivers Innovation to Container Strategy

By Rod Knowles

So, what exactly is Docker? Docker is an engine that enables any application to be encapsulated as a lightweight, portable, self-contained entity or, as they’re more infamously known as, containers – an approach we discussed in the previous post. It also allows for the standardization of packaging applications and all of their dependencies for rapid development and deployment.

Employing Docker enables DevOps and IT organizations to provide continuous integration and deployment. This gives developers the power to not only build code but, to test their code in any environment type and as often as possible to catch bugs early in the development life cycle. With Docker, development teams can perform 13 times more software releases than what they now are achieving and cut the time needed to determine and resolve issues.

Earlier this year, I attended HPE’s Discover, an annual customer conference in Las Vegas, NV. Though most of my trip is eluding me at this time, I do remember two things: feeling like I was the star of a bad crossover movie between Groundhog Day and The Hangover and the announcement of the strategic alliance between HPE and Docker. 

Yes, it was like a marriage made in heaven, more memorable and electrifying than Cory and Topenga, Chandler and Monica, or Howard and Bernadette. I mean really, the number one leader in worldwide server shipments, HPE, teaming up with the leader in containerization, Docker. 

Through a joint worldwide enterprise agreement covering sales, engineering, go-to-market, support, services and knowledge sharing, HPE and Docker are collaborating to help customers transform and revolutionize their data centers to benefit from a more agile development environment. At the core is HPE’s Docker-ready server program, which ensures that HPE servers are bundled with Docker engine and support. This will enable customers to build distributed applications that are portable across any infrastructure. 

By combining the strength of the leading cloud infrastructure provider and the leader in containerization, HPE and Docker will deliver infrastructure solutions and an application portfolio, fully supported by HPE. By 2018, more than 50 percent of new workloads will be deployed into containers in at least one stage of the application life cycle. The joint HPE and Docker alliance will deliver unique and value-added solutions and services including but not limited to: Docker-ready HPE servers, Docker-ready Converged and Composable HPE systems, enterprise-grade consulting services and 24x7 Docker support. 

With up to 90 percent of IT budgets being consumed by app testing, configuration and distribution, businesses need a better way to support hundreds of daily builds using a continuous deployment/integrated DevOps model. The partnership between HPE and Docker provides just that.

I know by now, most of you must be wondering how do I get started with this container thingy so I can stay ahead of my competitors and bring ideas to fruition at the speed of light. The answer is ingenuous. Get in touch with an HPE Platinum Partner. 

Not just any partner, but one who values your business, employees, customers and your success just as much as you do. Convergent Technologies Group is one of a few exclusive HPE Platinum Partners that can help you and your IT organization transform to a hybrid infrastructure. 

Together with HPE, CTG has the resources and expertise to get you started today on changing the way you turn ideas into world-class applications and services for your customers. Whether you’re looking for an enterprise-class infrastructure, ready-to-run containerized applications or assistance in designing and implementing your DevOps strategy, we’re your one-stop call.

Rod Knowles is a solution architect with Convergent Technologies Group.

2. Ease Pressures on Your DevOps Environment

By Rod Knowles

DevOps is the transformational effort to create harmony and productivity between development and IT operations teams, a topic we started to explore in our last post. 

The adaption in creating DevOps does not come without its own challenges. The lack of agility/portability and a plethora of operational inefficiencies usually leads to oppressed productivity, a loss of the competitive edge and, more importantly, unhappy developers. Nobody – and I mean nobody – wants unhappy developers. (It’s almost as bad as taking away their beer and Xbox controller.)

Server virtualization is the ability to run multiple operating system images – at the same time, on the same hardware. Server virtualization utilizes a software layer called the hypervisor. It is this hypervisor that emulates the underlying hardware, which includes (but is not limited to) the CPU, memory, network and I/O. While the performance of this virtual operating system usually isn’t equal to the performance of running on true hardware (though I have seen some applications and systems perform better when virtualized), this does allow for greater flexibility, control and reduced operating costs. 

You’ll find two types of hypervisors in use today:

•  Type 1 hypervisors run on the host system hardware.They control the hardware resources and manage the guest operating system. Those include VMWare ESXi, Citrix XenServer and Micrsoft Hyper-V.
• Type 2 hypervisors run within a formal operating system, usually LINUX, Windows or MacOS. This type of hypervisor runs as a distinct second layer while the operating system runs as a third layer just above the hardware. Some of those VMWare Fusion, Virtual Box and Parallels.

Containerization is the ability to encapsulate an application in a container within its own operating system. Containers are more streamlined and lightweight than VMs so you may be able to run six to eight times as many containers as VMs on the exact same hardware – which can help you reduce capital and operational costs. 

Containers include the application and all its dependencies - but they share the OS kernel with other containers. They run as an isolated process in user space on the host operating system. Virtual machines include the application and all of its dependencies, as well as an entire guest operating system ­­­– which could be hundreds of GBs in size. 

You’ll find several distinct advantages to using both containers and/or virtual machines. Containers are maintained at the application level, use less storage, memory and compute, have a considerable faster boot time, run on any infrastructure (cloud, physical and virtual) and require fewer OS instances to maintain so you’ll find lower OPEX and CAPEX costs. Virtualization allows for a single physical server to run and behave like many virtual servers and encompasses everything that is on a physical machine, allowing it to be flexible. It’s mature and established, resulting in a vast knowledge base of use cases, solutions and support, can run a wider range of operating systems and results in lower infrastructure costs. 

Using containers comes with disadvantages as well. Container technologies are advancing extremely fast. At times, it’s hard to know which technology you should us and you might end up purchasing from a less-established vendor. In addition, there are some perceived security concerns with running applications in containers - specifically around kernel exploits, DoS attacks from other containers, container breakouts and poisoned images downloaded from the internet. Virtual machines are not free from having their own set of drawbacks as well. They are much slower to share, require more OS licenses to purchase, are hard at times to size appropriately and require more OS patching and time to maintain. 

Containerization is moving forward fast. More applications are becoming containerized, which creates thousands of container images to validate, scan for vulnerabilities and deploy.Orchestration mechanisms like Docker Swarm, which allows for a pool of Docker hosts to be turned into a virtual Docker host, are becoming more available as well. Cloud-native development platforms like Docker Datacenter and HPE Helion Cloud Native Application Platform are becoming increasingly popular. They allow for developers and IT operations to collaborate more efficiently bringing security, policy, and controls to the application life cycle without sacrificing agility or portability.

Next time, we'll dig a little deeper into one of the hottest container resources in the market today.

Rod Knowles is a solution architect with Convergent Technologies Group.

1. Look Around: The Idea Economy Is Here

By Rod Knowles

Several weeks ago, as I was engulfed in watching yet another exhausting and ludicrous presidential debate, I was wondering why I wasn’t watching re-runs of “Beverly Hills 90210.”

My kids, on the other hand, were clueless. They were involved in a lengthy, unfathomable and meaningless conversation. If you have kids, then you already know they weren’t actually talking to each other – they were communicating through their mobile devices. They successfully had a 90-minute conversation without any dialogue, whatsoever. The only people talking in the room were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, which sounded to me more like Mrs. Donovan – Charlie Brown’s teacher.

It was then that it became apparent that my kids might never actually talk to each other, as long as brilliant minds continue creating mobile interaction applications. SnapChat, Twitter, TeleGram and Wickr are just a few that they use. My children relentlessly add and remove applications faster than anything I have ever witnessed. They also don’t seem to have any patience in dealing with applications that are slow, buggy and/or just don’t work. Whether it be their iPhones, tablets, laptops, whatever, it really doesn’t matter, they are consistently looking for the latest, cool app they can use and share with their circle of friends.

It’s here, the Idea Economy. 

Some experts would say that change is coming; I believe it’s already here. Businesses must evolve and adapt, or they will perish similar to 8-track tapes and the bubble gum that used to come in my Topps baseball card pack. 

Some businesses are already adapting. They have realized that its not enough to just take an idea and turn it into a product or service: They must be faster than their competition to be successful. 

Others still face development and IT operational challenges. The inability to develop, secure, deploy, monitor and maintain a quality application is becoming more difficult as consumers want things faster. Time is the biggest enemy companies face today. 

Moving faster and staying ahead of the competition necessitates several changes to traditional IT organizations:

• Instituting practices that emphasize collaboration and communication between developers and other IT professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes (DevOps).
•  Efficiently scaling and managing resources while ensuring industry-leading availability and redundancy through the use of server virtualization technology.
• Increasing the frequency of software releases through continuous integration and continuous deployment while reducing operational and capital expenditures by containerizing your applications.

Today, almost all businesses are software companies. Applications, including mobile, are becoming more critical for almost any business to succeed and stay ahead of its competitors. If your application fails, so does your business. 

But what does that mean in your day-to-day world? Stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog.

Rod Knowles is a solutions architect at Convergent Technologies Group.