Small Business, Big Opportunities!

This week we are celebrating Small Business Week. Convergent Technologies Group is highlighting the ways that IT helps small businesses grow and succeed in a fast past, technology driven world. Our company was founded in 2005 as a small business right here in Richmond, Va. Over the years we have used our technology partners to grow our organization into one that supports some of the largest Enterprise Customers in the state, while maintaining a direct focus on the Small to Mid-Size Market. No two businesses are the same and whether you are a large Enterprise, or a five-person business, IT matters and is equally as important to your success. Convergent works with small businesses to provide big business infrastructures and solutions like data storage, creating a mobile environment and working to give you ease in managing multiple systems.

Storage has become a recurring conversation with Small Businesses. In today’s data driven world, even the smallest companies are creating huge pools of storage that need to reside somewhere. In most cases, this data needs to be accessed quickly and effectively because even the smallest delays to your customers’ needs can result in lost revenue. Whether you require Direct Attach, Network Attached, or SAN attached storage, Convergent has the product portfolio and expertise to evaluate the needs of your business and offer solutions that fit within your requirements and most importantly, your budget.

Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever! Statistics show that the average end user has four to five devices that they use daily. The question that everyone is asking is how to ensure a consistent work experience, no matter the device, while maintaining the highest and most up to date security that is available. If you are like me, no matter where you go for a business meeting, the first thing you do is try to find a guest Wi-Fi to connect to while you are there. This is another point of security that nearly all businesses are having to think about and react to. The balance of providing a reliable network to your employees, clients, partners and guests, while also keeping the network and your Intellectual Property is one that we are uniquely positioned to address for our customers. We have helped customers large and small secure their networks using a variety of products and partnerships. We can sit down with you to discuss your connectivity and security needs to build the right solution for your business.

The third issue that we are consistently addressing with our Small Business Partners is the difficulty in managing multiple systems in the same environment, while finding room for all the equipment to reside. Convergent recognized the trend of the industry to move towards Hyper-Converged and Cloud ready solutions several years ago and has worked to put together solutions that will reduce space, while removing the complexity of managing multi-tenant environments. We partner with vendors that understand that ease of management, along with the ability to work with Cloud solution providers is an important step for any business, specifically small businesses.

Convergent is built around recognizing trends, both in the IT industry and within our customer-base. We work to talking with our customers to get an understanding of the challenges that they are seeing in the marketplace, and how IT will play a role in meeting those challenges head on. We are well-positioned to work with Small Businesses to provide everything from consulting to hardware, all the way down to Managed Services. Let’s sit down and talk about what your business needs out of its IT infrastructure and come up with a solution that fit the need of your specific business!

Support Center Confidential

We join our story, already in progress………

By: Jeff Garell

Yeah kid, another long, slow day in the support center.  Not like the old days.  When you were either an alpha geek or you got lunch eaten by them.  But only if you brought something good though…no one likes a cheese sandwich, ya know.  Here we only have alpha geeks.  But let me continue…. 

I got memories back to working my way up from level 1..ahhh, them was the days where 12 hours was the rule not the exception.  When your adrenaline pumped like a Texas oil well….non stop and messy.   When the phones never stopped ringing and the bosses were never happy.  You could guarantee one of them big wigs would come crashing through the door looking to take out his anger on the nearest poor soul.

Those were the days, kid.  It was like the wild west, Mardi Gras, and Carnival all rolled into one.  Every day.

But not anymore….not since we got Infosight watching our backs.  Who woulda thought that some AI would steal all the fun?  That we'd provide almost 90% of the support our customers need without sweatin' our gimlet and answer calls in less than a minute.

No call tsunamis wiping us off the map like an uninhabited pacific atoll.  No mass emails that have to be run through the approval gauntlet like a guilty soul looking for redemption.   No all hands calls in the middle of the night to figure out what has bedeviled the systems.

I don't know about you kid, but I can't run through millions of data points every second….no mere mortal can.  I tried once and stumbled like a drunk on a sidewalk made of ball bearings.  Yeah kid, it's not like it used to be…..

Now that we got Infosight watching everything, hoovering up all of that performance data from every device around the globe, we just sit back and wait for that AI to tell us what to do or what to go figure out.  Ya see, if it sees a problem that it already knows about, it'll send the emails but only to those admins that might be affected, it'll do the updates, it'll …. It'll take care of it like Tyson took care of Spinks in '88.

And if it don't know what to do it tells us where to start lookin'.  That's why we're here, son.  If one of dem customers call, we look at what our AI friend shows us and can find the answer lickety split, ya know?   Dat's why this here room is mostly empty…we don't need no level 1 or 2 fellas.

And ya know what?  This thing is spreadin'.  It ain't just gonna be our Nimble storage that the AI sees.   Quicker than a wink it'll be watching over 3PAR and I hear RMC too.  Imagine all of those systems - getting that support like ours do.  Those boys in the ivory tower are already countin' their dough with how much more productive people will be.

So that's the story, kid.  As John McClane once said, "Welcome to the party, pal".  I hope you brought a good Phillip Marlow book to keep ya entertained.    Keep yer head down and eyes open and don't bother trying to beat that AI.  Our competitors can't even get close to it, like it's a flamethrower on Guadalcanal, so you got no chance.

See ya tomorrow, kid….and Merry Christmas…

Thankful

While we wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving, CTG employees share what we are thankful for this year.

Grace SunDance, administrative assistant:

I am thankful for the growth and courage Convergent has given me. Being a part of a supportive, successful, and generous company is truly a blessing. I am enormously thankful for my family, my tremendous friends and my amazing fiancé, Aaron.

Elizabeth "Beth" Foster, inside sales representative:

I am thankful and blessed to have a great family. I am thankful that I work with some of the most talented and dedicated folks in our industry. I am thankful more than anything for my Lord, Jesus Christ and what He has done for me and the miracles that happen every day. He gives me strength when mine fails; He gives me insight when my vision is clouded and gives me Joy, Grace and Peace in turbulent times.

Carley Wessler, smb account executive:

I am thankful for my two gorgeous children, they always keep me smiling and make life beautiful and for my amazing husband who keeps me grounded, happy and loves me unconditionally.  I am also thankful to work with the amazing Convergent Technologies Group team who keep work challenging, entertaining and ensure we remain leaders in IT.

Charles Fowler, director of sales:
I’m thankful for France and Scotland.

James Kay, accounting representative:

I am thankful for my family and the health that I have. I am also thankful for my son Andrew who has brightened my life. 

Jeff Joyner, network architect:

I’m thankful for my family.

Brandon Samuel, sales manager:

I am thankful for most things, including my family, friends and wonderful CTG family!

John Monahan, co-founder and president:

I'm thankful for my staff, another successful year for CTG and my family and friends.

Chastity Loving, purchasing manager:

I am thankful for everything amazing in my life. I am so blessed and my heart is always so full!

Rod Knowles, solutions architect:

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, old and new friends, family, my job and my health.  

Evan Joyner, smb technician:

I am thankful for my son, my family and my friends. 

Alexandra Suder, marketing director:

I am thankful for my incredibly awesome and loving family - far and near - especially my mother, father, sisters and my brother-in-law. I am thankful for my boyfriend who helps me in so many ways. I am thankful for all of the good energy, happiness, and health I am blessed with. I am thankful for ALL of my wonderful friends and their children, and for having a part in their life. I am thankful for my job and my team. I am thankful for my home. And I am forever grateful to God and for being here on this earth.

Jeff Garell, co-founder and vice president:
I'm thankful for my wife and for our two beautiful, smart, talented and caring daughters.

Jeff Garell Selected into HPE’s Worldwide Partner Ambassador Program

The Worldwide Partner Ambassador Program for Solution Architects brings together the top Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) product and solution engineers and executives, with top Solution Architects from our HPE partners. The benefits of the Partner Ambassador program for Solution Architects for both HPE and the Partners is to deepen the relationship to foster better collaboration and communication and to influence future technology direction at HPE.

The Ambassador program allows selected partners:

• Participation, in monthly Partner Ambassador calls hosted by technical experts
• Enhanced access to information
• Participation in a virtual Partner Ambassador Community with HPE business units and HPE Solution Architects to ask questions, provide feedback and share experiences
• Opportunities to meet directly with HPE Business Unit Executives, Lab Engineers, and HPE Ambassadors at the annual Worldwide Partner Ambassador Summit

Congratulations Jeff!

Aruba ClearPass Part 2

Is your business prepared? Today’s organizations face a complex IT infrastructure, more exposed to cyberattacks than ever. The Internet of Things, an always-on mobile workforce and BYOD make visibility into your network more challenging and critical.

Identifying what’s on your network is a never-ending challenge. Not only do you need to prevent malicious users from gaining access, you have to protect against unauthorized devices and applications.

Businesses today embrace the idea of anywhere, anytime connectivity, but often ignore the need for secure network access control. Many employ a “laid back NAC” solution. Others choose the same vendor for security and network infrastructure. Both these approaches give the illusion of security, even compliance, but in reality, leave extensive security gaps.

As an Aruba ClearPass expert and partner, Convergent Technologies Group can help you reduce time spent identifying devices on your network, enforce policies, and protect your network. We will help you address questions, like:

• What’s on my network?

• How do I simplify mobile security?

• Can I limit mobile devices without limiting productivity or increasing security risks?

• How do I unify internal and external security tools?

Get started by taking this brief assessment to help you determine your network’s level of security and see how your business might be at risk. To enforce security standards throughout your enterprise, you need secure enterprise network access control (NAC). 

Aruba ClearPass is changing the NAC space, helping companies understand what’s on your network and keeping your information secure. This is an important first step in building a strategy to take control of what’s connecting to your network to keep your data secure and your business safe.

For more information about what the Aruba ClearPass solution can do to defend your network, contact Convergent Technologies Group at sales@ctgva.com or 804-353-5307.

Aruba ClearPass Part 1

By Jeff Joyner

Network Access Control or NAC has been around for over a decade, but there are many organizations where this technology has yet to be embraced.  This may be changing thanks to the trend of BYOD (bring your own device).  Companies who want to have more control with the devices allowed on their network are turning to NAC to provide this type of security solution.  The HPE/Aruba ClearPass platform is a best-of-breed product that will provide granular control of wireless and wired access and be able to grow as your company grows.

Say you want to allow employees the ability to connect their personal tablets or laptops to the corporate network where you control which resources can be accessed.  And you want to make sure these devices have appropriate security software installed and updated.  You also have contractors on site that require wired and/or wireless connectivity to the network and need to have access to specific resources during business hours only.  ClearPass can do all of this and much more.

Guest wireless is often offered with either an open (no password) network or with a password that rarely gets changed.  ClearPass can automate individual password generation per user with limitations on bandwidth and time-of-day access if preferred.  You can also force guests to request access with approval from an internal user (manager, receptionist, etc).

ClearPass is flexible in that it works with many vendors, so you don’t have to rip out your current switching environment to make this solution work.  It also supports multiple operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS and Android.

For more information about what the Aruba ClearPass solution can do for your network, contact CTG Sales at sales@ctgva.com or 804-353-5307.



Jeff Joyner is a network engineer at Convergent Technologies Group.

A New Compute Experience: An Exploration of HPE’s Gen10 Servers

By Rod Knowles

Is your business finding it difficult to adapt to industry and marketplace shifts, analyzing the customer experience and/or innovating products and services rapidly?  If so, then you’re probably not thinking about, or have a plan in place for your digital transformation.  In today’s economy, digital transformation is the key to a businesses success and remaining ahead of the competition.  Through 4 key transformation areas:  Protecting the digital enterprise, Empowering the data-driven organization, Enabling workplace productivity and Transforming to a hybrid infrastructure, companies can increase profits, agility, flexibility, employee productivity and the customer experience while reducing costs and risk.  For businesses to thrive and easily adapt to their digital transformation, they need a computing environment that will deliver a Hybrid IT infrastructure providing agility, security and economic control.  HPE’s new Gen10 server line accomplishes just that.  Automation, optimized performance of workloads, secure compute lifecycle and flexible capacity are just a few of the benefits your company can gain from switching to an HPE Gen10 server.  In the next few sections, I will break down the benefits on the Gen10 line as its related to agility, security, and economic control.

Obtaining a more agile infrastructure

Manual IT operation processes can be slow and error-prone.  With the new iLO5, being introduced in all Gen10 servers, you will be able to accelerate maintenance tasks, at scale, with automated scheduling and rollback.  iLO5’s RESTful API helps automate and operate server components in all Gen10 servers from staging and updating the server BIOS, iLO, Secure Boot and TPM.  With iLO5’s intelligent provisioning, IT departments can perform initial setup tasks 22% faster than with previous versions of IP on Gen9 servers. Gen10's new Intelligent Systems Tuning can harness the power of the next generation of Intel Xeon processors and balance workloads which allows you to run more workloads on more cores, up to 28 on Intel's New Xeon Platinum processors, resulting in reduced licensing costs and more power/cooling efficiency. Couple that with HPEs new NVDIMMs to utilize the fastest persistent memory available, while realizing the real-world benefits of memory backup power, OS & Application support, reduction of database licensing costs and the fastest tier of storage on HPE Servers.

Increasing security awareness and control

Gen10 security, a better way to stay one step ahead of increasingly sophisticated attacks and protect your business utilizing the world’s most secure industry standard servers. Let’s talk about that for one quick moment, “The World’s Most Secure Industry Standard Servers”.  As recently announced at HPE Discover 2017, HPE engaged InfusionPoints to conduct an independent assessment of the security of the Gen10 Server’s hardware and platform firmware against three of HPE’s competitors. The test consisted of attacks against physical interfaces, platform firmware, and network interfaces.  The results showed that HPE Gen10 servers are a significant step ahead of their competitors and that HPE’s introduction of silicon root of trust will set new standards in providing auditable control of the integrity of platform firmware.

The new Gen10 family of servers provides a host of security features:  firmware protection, run time attack detection, behavioral risk mitigation, data protection, compliance planning and End of Life disposal.  HPE’s new firmware protection is backed by HPE’s own silicon fingerprint unique to each and every server.  With HPE’s silicon root of trust, Gen10 servers WILL NOT boot unless the firmware matches the fingerprint and is protected through the entire supply chain: manufacturing, distribution, shipping, configuration, and installation. It’s locked and HPE is the only vendor who can do this.  When the server boots, millions of lines of firmware code run and verify before the operating system even boots.  Additionally, the firmware is checked every 24 hours verifying validity and credibility of UEFI, CPLD, iLO, IE and ME and reports any malware or compromised code.  Firmware can also be checked and validated on drives, NICs and other HPE server options containing firmware. When a detection of compromised firmware is discovered, the ability to send alerts and quickly recover to a good known state can be set to occur automatically or you can choose to take the compromised server offline.  The ability to recover other server settings can also be recovered as well as the future ability to recover operating systems. 

HPE’s Gen10 servers also offer advanced machine learning that identifies any malicious behavior.  Think of it like this:  The system endlessly trains itself and learns behavioral patterns.  It then analyses and identifies changes in these patterns that may relate to suspicious activity and informs you if there is a threat.  This advanced machine learning technology utilizing Niara’s behavioral analytics protects your organization from inside attacks.  Gen10 servers are protected from inception to their demise. When your server(s) are being disposed of, its embedded data cannot be reconstructed or accessed any longer, forever, utilizing enhanced data protection and encryption.

Managing Your Time and Money Productively

In addition to the Gen10’s server line agility and security features, Economic Control helps you control costs with over-provisioning, out-of-control public cloud costs and the pressures of transforming without the appropriate budget.  Utilizing HPE Flexible Capacity will help align your costs with monthly usage and requires no upfront payments.  Pay only for what you use and scale in minutes, not months.  If you're currently a legacy Gen9 server owner, there are several options for transitioning to a Gen10 server by utilizing one of HPE’s investment models for transforming from legacy IT to a hybrid IT model.

For more information on HPE Storage and Networking, please contact Convergent Technologies Group at 888-353-5307 or via our contact us page

 Rod Knowles is a solution architect with Convergent Technologies Group.