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JULY 2011

EI Here and Now: Customer Service

A message from Mike Locher – The key to our success in creating long-lasting client relationships is and always has been providing excellent customer service. Our culture is built upon the Raving Fan concept of providing a “plus one” level of service to every customer every day. As we continue to grow, we have find the right people to help us deliver the promise of IT to our clients. I have been reading many customer service books lately and have shared them with my team to reinforce continuous improvement. We are constantly thinking about our clients and how we can offer a service that eases your IT pain. Seasoning a culture to provide raving fan service doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and the right people. Along the way, we maintain our focus on being able to provide our clients with an experience second to none to help their businesses operate effortlessly. We are committed to providing great customer service to each and every one of you. Thank you to all of our clients, you are the reason we can grow, you are the reason we will continue to improve!

Meet the Team: Carla Clark and the PMO team
Carla Clark – Senior Project Manager – Carla joined EI a year ago in June 2010 to help us create and implement a centralized project management system for our clients. Carla is a results driven senior project management professional with over 8 years of project management lifecycle experience. She oversees the implementation of various projects for Enterprise Integration’s customers including Rayonier, Adecco, Sea Star and others. Carla has an extensive knowledge of project management best practices (PMBOK) and has helped us develop metrics and templates for overall project management consistency and standardization. She has established project schedules, milestones and critical path analysis while monitoring scope and tracking productivity.

The Project Management Office consists of a dedicated team of individuals that focuses on governing the way a project is delivered. This is accomplished using an array of tools and templates that are developed specifically to find efficiencies to better the project lifecycle. We offer a full range of services from developing a scope of work, to implementation all the way through post implementation support. Recently completed and on-going projects include; office moves, enterprise wide VoIP implementations, application deployments and many other unique large and small scale projects.

If you have any questions about project work contact Carla Clark at cclark@entint.com

 CTO Article: Mobility, better and faster
Business Mobility

Mobility is the final topic from the top 5 predictions from the CTO of what’s hot and what’s not for your business in 2011. According to CTO, Tracey Brown, mobility is not only an important aspect of  the business but  Chief Information Officers are reconsidering branch office connectivity from being a WAN centric design to becoming an Internet mobile centric design.  With the 4G wireless foot print growing, it may soon be that MPLS WAN circuits and Dynamic Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections are a thing of the past.

Below is an example of the current 4G coverage in the US:

When a shared Business Class Internet connection costs approximately $150.00 and a MPSL circuit can cost close to $600.00 for just 1.5 megabits of data capacity, it starts to make sense to look at the 4G alternative that provides up to 50 megabits of download data capacity.   For the small branch office, leveraging 4G capacity could be very feasible; and is certainly a great option for the road warrior.

So how does a company prepare for the highly mobile infrastructure of tomorrow?  

• Consider security first.
• All connection should be SSL encrypted
• Protect your data, where ever possible keep it in your Data Center
• Consider VDI, Xen App or Terminal Services
• Improve your corporate Internet connection from the Data Center
• Consider 30% concurrency of remote users on the connection
• Plan for 300 kilobytes per user (today’s applications are graphic intensive)
• Example for 100 remote users

(100 Users * 300,000 (bits per second))* 30% concurrency = 9 megabits of Internet connectivity.  So figure on a 10 megabit Internet connection in your data center.

• The architecture does not have to be “Mobile Specific”; a good information technology design will inherently support mobile clients.
• Stay away from writing mobile specific applications unless you are selling them to the consumer market for iPhones, Androids or Blackberries. 
• It is usually difficult to please all of your employees with only one mobile device, so most companies are simply letting the employee choose his or her mobile device.
• Below is an example of the complexity around writing applications for a specific mobile device.

In the design shown below, we use the Citrix Receiver software to virtualize the remote device and transform the touch screen or other mobile interface into a functional user interface without having to write a device specific application.   

Mobile computing is a rapidly changing landscape, the iPhones and iPads of today will be the Androids and Atrix of tomorrow, or something else completely.  The technology exists today to be prepared for what the industry may provide us tomorrow. Preparing for mobility in the workplace can improve efficiency and accessibility from wherever you are.
If you have any questions about implementing a mobile infrastructure contact Tracey Brown at tbrown@entint.com

Check your UPS before the power goes out!
The importance of checking and maintaining your uninterrupted power supply

Florida summer weather is unpredictable at best - thunderstorms, hurricanes, rain storms and tornado-like winds can crop up without warning leading to power outages, data loss and business disruption. Having a disaster recovery plan for your business is important, but having an uninterrupted power supply, UPS, is equally so. UPS is vital to keeping the lifeline of your business operational during potential disasters, small or large, the summer may bring. Can your company afford to lose connectivity? An uninterrupted power supply ensures that your company stays up and running through it all.
Tips on maintaining and testing your UPS:

• Check your battery: once every six months to a year you should recalibrate your UPS’s battery sensor.
• Replace the battery: every several years
• Extend battery life: by avoiding deep discharges and minimizing the exposure to extreme heat, cold or humidity.
• Measure the accuracy: by recalibrating your UPS

Enterprise Integration offers Disaster Recovery Plan Assessments as well as evaluations of your current operational functionality. Contact Noelle LaPointe at nlapointe@entint.com to inquire about UPS.

Welcome to the Family! 

We are happy to announce another addition to our EI client family, Goodwill.

Goodwill of North Florida is a non-profit human service organization that has been serving Jacksonville since 1940.  They are comprised of about 19 locations throughout north Florida.  Among the 19 locations, their primary HQ location is in Jacksonville, and they also have six Job Junctions (four of which are attached to a store) and three military stores.

They have approximately 100 users plus additional temporary employees and volunteers so that number may fluctuate month-to-month. EI will be providing Tier one Service Desk and Remote Support as well as providing monitoring, tools, and reporting.

Welcome to EI!

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