Businesses such as yours need their data to be highly secure and their IT systems reliable.  We can help you increase the security features and reliability of your systems with well-supported Microsoft products.  Windows Server® 2008 and other solutions offer robust security features for servers and clients, helping you simplify security management while working to protect your network from intruders. 

Our solutions are designed to automate backups and help optimize performance to make managing desktops easier, allowing you to stay productive and worry less about downtime or losing your critical business information. Plus, they can help stop viruses and malware from infecting desktops and impacting worker productivity. 

Help keep your IT up and running and protect your data with integrated solutions and a reliable, proven infrastructure from Digital Reach, Inc.

Businesses such as yours need their data to be highly secure and their IT systems reliable. Our solutions are designed to automate backups and help fight viruses and spam to make managing desktops easier, allowing you to stay productive and worry less about downtime or losing your critical business information.

A custom tailored solution from Digital Reach can help your company:

• Keep your IT up and running. Windows Server® 2008 helps you reduce downtime, increase the performance and reliability of your systems, and protect your network from threats and intruders.

• Help protect your data. Our solutions help you automate maintenance and backup to protect critical business data. Also, they can help stop viruses and malware from infecting desktops and impacting worker productivity.

Digital Reach can help you make the most of what you already have. We offer a brief assessment over the phone to understand where your IT department is now, and help outline steps you can take to help simplify security management and ensure your protection is always up to date. Digital Reach provides the kind of delivery assurance that you expect from a Microsoft partner.
We will call within the next few days to discuss your infrastructure. Together, we can help you stay productive, so you can focus on your business.

In response to business needs, IT departments are increasingly evaluating and deploying mobile solutions, however key challenges and considerations remain.

Information Technology is a strategic asset in being able to address these challenges–and yet the IT department faces its own set of challenges, including:

Complexity
Security
Provisioning new users
Heterogeneous, siloed technology
Integrating new technology
Lack of skilled staff

Most of all, the medium-sized company is constrained in two ways:

Cash constrained.  Making trade-offs between investing in new equipment, hiring new people or investing in technology. They cannot afford busloads of expensive consultants to help with integration.

People constrained.  On the IT side, they typically have 1 to 5 IT Generalists dealing with all of the IT complexity. They do not have the specialized IT roles of large enterprises. They need the power of the enterprise but in a simple and integrated fashion.

Find out how Fractional Outsourcing with Digital Reach can help your business get the most out your IT department.

1. Better decision making with integrated, end-to-end business intelligence ( BI )

2. Improved performance from both IT and human assets

3. Improved security

4. Increased developer productivity

5. Lower overall costs

Organizations are increasingly looking for ways to lower their IT infrastructure and IT management costs while improving employee access to the right information enabling them to make strong decisions at the right time. Through the efficient use of business intelligence solutions based on SQL Server features such as Analysis Services, data mining, Integration Services, Notification Services, and Reporting Services, decision makers can unlock the business secrets that might enable their success. By using SQL Server together with tools such as Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager, your customers can gain a broad view of their opportunities, enabling them to understand their challenges better, effectively shape solutions, and quickly act on their objectives. As you know, decision-making happens across all levels of an organization, and empowering employees with powerful business intelligence solutions can help them make a greater impact on the bottom line.

SQL Server 2005 provides the power and the tools demanded by today’s strategic decision makers at a fraction of the cost of the competition. Because SQL Server’s reputation for having the industry’s lowest costs is well known, many organizations have considered moving away from Oracle. However, for many years, SQL Server, while extremely powerful, could not match Oracle’s scalability. Many customers felt they had little alternative but to remain with Oracle—that is until now.
SQL Server 2005 has reached feature parity with Oracle, even in high-end capabilities, while retaining the lowest costs in the industry. It has become the preferred solution for customers deploying business intelligence applications on the Microsoft Windows platform. It includes numerous features, such as enhanced BI, security, and scalability capabilities, that are expensive add-ons for Oracle customers. Microsoft has been able to match Oracle technology while providing the best value for the mid-sized organization.

Because databases are typically critical and costly IT assets, they often serve as a focal point for efforts to cut costs and improve efficiency. Oracle has long held the reputation of being the most powerful database available, but it also has a well-earned reputation for being extremely expensive. Beyond the obvious cost savings, the tight integration between SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 embodies and advances the trend towards data-driven application development. More and more Web sites, for example, dynamically present content based on a variety of factors such as user interests. This new world of development demands a fundamental alteration in how database administrators and developers interact with databases and with each other.

So SQL Server is the right alternative to Oracle not just for the obvious reasons of cost and high-end capabilities but because it is the embodiment of a new development paradigm that will enable the creation of substantially more powerful applications with less time, effort, and cost.

The demands of an always-on work environment that spans geographies and time zones is ever-increasing the pressures on IT departments to provide rich, connected capabilities across the infrastructure, while protecting both the environment and its confidential data from intrusion and disruption. The infrastructure optimization process helps organizations transform their IT infrastructures into strategic assets, reducing system complexity and providing greater operational flexibility. As a result, IT managers are able to:

Control costs:
Reduce hardware, utility, and space expenses for data-center operations
Reduce application compatibility testing for major deployments
Reduce training expenses and free up costly IT personnel forhigher-value use
Increase system uniformity, to avoid conflicts and accelerateproblem resolution
Prevent security breaches and subsequent clean-up efforts
Reduce remote site visits in branch operations

Improve service levels:
Reduce service interruptions from security breaches
Maintain a robust disaster recovery process, to avoid service interruptions and speed recovery
Avoid desktop configuration conflicts and accelerate help-desk resolution
Quarantine out-of-compliance remote systems and legacy line-of-business (LOB) applications

Drive agility:
Increase flexibility and ability to adapt to changing business conditions
Rapidly provision new capabilities
Dynamically assign resources to demanding workloads in near real time
Employ zero-touch self-provisioning and automatic configuration
Streamline and accelerate software deployment

The vision of infrastructure optimization is to help customers realize the value of their investments in IT infrastructure, to make the IT infrastructure a strategic asset that supports agility within their organizations, and ultimately to help customers create an infrastructure for a people-ready business.

For more information about how your business can benefit from the infrastructure optimization process, contact Digital Reach!

Coming in the second half of 2008, Windows Small Business Server (Windows SBS) 2008 represents the next-generation integrated server solution for small businesses (up to 75 users or network devices). Part of the Windows Essential Server Solutions family, Windows SBS 2008 offers a targeted combination of technologies and management capabilities for your small-business. Streamlined installation and management functions can improve your operational efficiency, while helping you grow your business capacity at a cost-effective price and a manageable pace.

Slated for general availability later this year, Windows Essential Server Solutions are much easier for small and midsize companies to implement and manage than separate products. In response to customer and partner feedback, Windows Essential Server Solutions provide flexible pricing and licensing that offer substantial cost savings over purchasing individual products like those included in the solutions. Examples of licensing improvements over the current Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 product include these:

• Customers will be able to purchase single client access licenses (CALs), so they will pay only for the exact number of employees using the product.
 
• Customers can cost-effectively purchase a mix of Standard or Premium CALs, as appropriate to the technologies that individual employees are using.
 
• CALs now apply to other copies of Windows Server, SQL Server or Exchange Server on the network, eliminating the need to purchase additional CALs.

Also, Small Business Server 2008 Premium Edition includes additional Windows Server 2008 Standard technologies with SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition for Small Business, making it an ideal platform for critical business applications.

Designed for small businesses, Windows Small Business Server 2008 is an affordable, integrated server solution that helps you protect your business data, increase productivity and present a more professional image to customers – giving you the tools you need to help grow your business capacity. More Small Business IT Solutions

As the scope of security threats on the Internet have increased, security professionals at Google have an increased responsibility to adjusting to this new state of security on the Internet.  Google is constantly working to gain the upper-hand to threats online and to understand how these threats affect their customers and the Internet community. Google has helped to define the way people do business online.  But in this ever-changing environment that does not mean that Google is immune to the complexities that an online world can bring.

One way Google is doing this is by monitoring how its users are using Google Apps.  Google Apps are Google’s online applications and include word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications. The applications host all of the users’ data online and enable users to share documents with virtually anyone, inside or outside their organizations. But because the applications exist online, they are subject to any number of known and unknown application-level attacks and Web threats, making security a thornier problem than usual.

Google doesn’t want to be the company that tells people what to do and what not to do.  Their business is built on quality of results.  Google encourages IT security professionals to look at the ways in which they secure their own companies and see how they can introduce a more open experience while still emphasizing security.  Read more about this at: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1315867,00.html

Understanding where your business is in the security lifecycle allows Digital Reach to prepare a solution to ensure your network is secure. Early intervention allows you to be proactive in addressing network computer systems security.  Learn more.

Internet attackers looking for ways to compromise a growing number of computers have brought back SQL Injection.  Researchers are noticing a growing number of websites that have been compromised by a mass SQL Injection that take advantage of weak website apps and then use those sites as a launch pad to infect their website visitors with malware.  The concern is that there are a number of sites on the web that are vulnerable to an attack of this nature.  The attackers can access easily and quickly find new targets to attack.

The Asprox Trojan is an example of this SQL Injection.  Researchers have observed it being distributed by a spam botnet.  This trojan is related to a password-stealing trojan known as Danmec. The infected PC will download a binary that searches Google for websites that contain specific search terms and launch a SQL Injection attack on those sites.

Read more here: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1314697,00.html

Protect your companies computers with Digital Reach Managed Services. 

The Abobe Flash Player has a zero day defect that is currently being targeted by attackers across the world who have set up over 200,000 webpages for exploitation of the defect.  The vulnerability could be exploited to cause a denial of service ( DOS ) situation.  It is reported that Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115.0 and 9.0.124.0 are at risk.  The defect occurs when the flash player tries to process a harmful swf file.  Symantec and McAfee are reporting that different exploits are crafted to exploit the different versions of Adobe Flash and that the exploits exist for both IE and Firefox.  Users should visit www.adobe.com to download the latest version of the Adobe Flash Player to protect themselves from this attack.

Digital Reach, Inc. delivers IT solutions designed to help your business perform more efficiently and with more productivity.  Learn more about Digital Reach.

Source: Citrix - Enterprise Management Associates

This EMA white paper provides a prescriptive and practical guide for IT decision-makers who are interested in learning more about desktop virtualization, how and whether it applies to their organization, and what they need to do next to take advantage of the extraordinary benefits this technology can provide. This paper provides a non-technical introduction, and explains the major benefits to business and IT, including: greater productivity; better, faster, cheaper management and support; improved security and compliance; balance of control and usability; high availability; improved performance; extreme workforce mobility; and maximized resource utilization.

Three Key Phases to Implementing Desktop Virtualization
by EMA

Disaster planning has traditionally involved protecting the data center and its assets, attending to the data, the software, and the necessary hardware. In times of disaster however, even when disaster plans function flawlessly, the prospects for business continuity are often grim. Why? Because when it comes to business, the people involved are still the most important element. Now, new technologies and services are available to en­sure that after a disaster the people involved in the day-to-day planning and running of a business have the same level of access to data, services, and all other necessary corporate resources as they had before one. In addition, even during the most exacting times companies will be able to reach out to their employees and provide them with needed services to get them through the hard times.

Is your network protected?  Digital Reach can review your current disaster plan or implement a new one.  Contact Digital Reach, Inc. to learn more.

Workforce Continuity During Times of Disaster
by EMA