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.

A Recap of HPE Discover 2017

Charles Fowler

This past week I attended Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) Discover 2017 in Las Vegas, NV. Discover is HPE’s annual customer and partner conference where HPE showcases new products and services. The conference lasts 3 days and is broken up into focus areas and general sessions. This was my first year attending as a partner rather than a HPE employee. The experience was not much different other than I hosted 4 clients vs the average 12 clients while employed at HPE which made it a bit more relaxing and fewer logistics for sure.

The general session concentrates on HPE’s direction and how they are solving the current needs of a digital world. This year’s general session focused primarily on Hybrid IT, Generation 10 Servers, and Project New Stack. Meg Whitman, HPE’s CEO, is focusing her efforts on 3 key areas: Digital Transformation, Hybrid IT, and the Intelligent Edge. These are all areas where Whitman sees the potential for tremendous growth in a world where everything computes. HPE’s recent acquisition of SimpliVity and Nimble were also mentioned in her keynote but, were not primary topics of conversation. There was a hint that those two technologies may be instrumental in HPE’s composable infrastructure solutions of the future. Whitman stated that HPE has seen a 30% revenue gain in all-flash storage last quarter and they are expecting that number to grow with the acquisition of Nimble. Whitman said while cloud computing is certainly a fit for some companies, HPE can deliver those same services in a hybrid cloud at a fraction of the cost. HPE believes more and more people are moving away from the cloud due to lack of control, security, performance, or cost. Whitman was not recommending that customers pull the plug but rather invest in a hybrid model that has all the benefits of the public cloud without some of the pitfalls. Additional cost savings may be realized using HPE’s Flex Capacity consumption model, which was also discussed in multiple keynotes and breakout sessions during the week. 

The Intelligent Edge was another focus area for Whitman, claiming a 30% increase in Aruba revenue over the last consecutive 7 quarters. As a partner, and former HPE employee, I can attest to that growth as I have seen a huge amount of Cisco customers moving over to Aruba, both on the wired and wireless networks. Aruba has jump charged HPE’s network business with no signs of it slowing down. While Aruba has mostly been present on the network edge, they will be releasing a new core switch that will be available for purchase soon. Whitman’s point about the intelligent edge was that everything will one day be internet connected, placing more importance on the edge that supports those devices. The internet of everything (IOT) is well underway.

Whitman next introduced Clark Golestani, Global CIO and President of Emerging Business at the pharmaceutical behemoth Merck. Golestani was very complimentary of the products and services provided by HPE. He went on to say that he was doing business with HPE based on the quality of their products, capabilities to support his company, ability to respond, and security. Golestani emphasized Merck’s pathway to hybrid cloud stating that Merck could not risk their business or the welfare of their clients on a cloud only model, supporting the hybrid direction Whitman announced during her keynote. 

Next, Whitman introduced Antonio Neri (Exec VP and GM of HPE’s Enterprise Group). Neri focused on the complexity of Hybrid IT. He mentioned HPE’s commitment to simplify hybrid IT by helping customers define the right hybrid mix using Pointnext software, power the right mix utilizing the HPE ecosystem, and optimize the right mix with consumption models. The point being, companies will now have a mix of traditional IT, private cloud, and public cloud. The challenge will be managing all 3 of those efficiently.

Neri introduced Alain Andreoli, SVP and GM of the HPE Data Center Infrastructure Group. Andreoli spoke about the new Generation 10 Proliant servers, touting the inherent security features built in to the silicon of each new Gen10 server. Neri touted HPE as being the first to incorporate this into their servers. He also spoke about active protection and recovery, a technology that constantly monitors the server for malicious behavior through machine learning. Neri mentioned Niara, a recently acquired security company, as being behind some of these security improvements. There was also mention of an end-of-life security feature that would make it impossible to recover data from retired servers.

All in all, it was a great event. It was a good mix of education and entertainment. Getting ahead of what is coming can never be a bad thing. It would have taken me weeks to learn everything I was able to cover in just few days at HPE Discover. The shear amount of equipment and resources they dedicate to this event is amazing. While I find the breakout sessions useful, it is the technology expo and the keynotes I enjoy the most. My purpose for attending is to learn about existing and future technologies, and a general understanding of how these are being applied to make a positive difference in our everyday lives. If you have not attended HPE Discover, I recommend you consider attending in the future. As the Director of Sales at Convergent Technologies Group, it would be my pleasure to host you at the 2018 Discover.

Cheers

CTG and HP Secure Printing