New Tier 3 facility to focus on affordable, secure and highly managed cloud services providing enterprise caliber IT capabilities for small and medium businesses
RALEIGH, NC, June 10, 2009 - rmsource, (www.rmsource.com) a national provider with over a decade of experience in full-service IT consulting and managed solutions, is pleased to announce a major new data center and expansion to its private cloud computing and software-as-a-service solutions. The data center will open in Q4 2009 and be located in a stand-alone facility in Durham, North Carolina.
Uniquely positioned in the market as a managed-only data center and a secure, private cloud services provider, rmsource will offer a variety of high-availability services in this new facility, but most central is the provisioning of mission critical IT infrastructure to customers at a fraction of the cost of building out their own IT Infrastructure.
The new data center will also play a key role in extending rmsource’s private cloud service according to Mark Outlaw, Director of IT Infrastructure Services – "We're passionate about avoiding the traditional hosting risks of having customers share critical infrastructure - too many have been burned by lost productivity because their hosted applications were overwhelmed by other customers sharing the same equipment. We decided a long time ago avoid those risks and took the best components of the shared cloud – virtualization, disaster recovery, flexibility, migration ease and affordability – and made it private. This ensures our private cloud customers the uptime and security confidence they need to run their business by dedicating the exact resources they need. Our engineering group then actively manages the end-user experience right down to the application level, ensuring unprecedented productivity for our clients." Services at the new Tier 3 facility will include rmsource private clouds, Software-as-a-Service, Voice-over-IP/ unified messaging, disaster recovery site hosting, and managed application servers, amongst others and will benefit from the following physical capabilities:
- SAS 70 Type II Certified
- Hurricane rated facility
- Perimeter and internal physical security
- Diverse and redundant power
- Redundant cooling systems for high density IT infrastructure
- Multi-gigabit diverse and redundant internet connectivity
- 24/7 services with SLA ranging from 99% to 99.995% uptime
- Strategic infrastructure partners: HP, NetApp, Cisco, VMware
"The rmsource focus on managing the experience from the data center to the end-user provides my employees with uninterrupted access to the tools they need to be productive while simultaneously controlling my IT costs since expanding my own data center is extremely costly and resource intensive. We're certainly looking forward to their enhanced private cloud this fall," said long time rmsource customer Eric Lewis, Network Operations Manager with Measurements, Inc.
About rmsource:
rmsource is a full service Information technology consulting, and managed solutions firm with over twelve years of experience in IT– including a range of custom software development, and business intelligence offerings – affording customers cost effective outsourcing of their business technology demands.
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rmsource Welcomes Bauscher, Inc. as a New Managed Solutions Client.
April 9th, 2009 - rmsource, Inc of Cary, NC announces that it has signed Bauscher, Inc, an international manufacturer and distributor of fine china and glassware for hotels, restaurants, institutional caterers and hospitals, to a three year managed soluitons agreement. Under the agreement, rmsource will provide Bauscher with upgraded network and server infrastructure which will be hosted and managed from a rmsource data center for a fixed monthly fee. "The current economic climate has businesses of all sizes seeking to fix their costs and to reduce their spending on IT operations", states Matt Stocking, VP of Sales with rmsource. "We're very excited about how we can help our clients improve operational efficiencies while also lowering their operating expenses with our managed services offerings."
rmsource Welcomes Johnston Ambulance Service as a New IT Consulting Client.
April 9th, 2009 - rmsource, Inc, a IT consulting and software company in Cary, NC, has been hired by Johnston Ambulance Service of Goldboro, NC to provide ongoing IT infrastructure consulting services. Johnston Ambulance is North Carolina's largest privately owned ambulance services provider with over 400 paramedics on staff. Annually, Johnston Ambulance has an overall call volume of over sixty-thousand trips and provides services for the most prestigious health care facilities in the state. rmsource is proud to have been hired by Johnston Ambulance and looks forward to working with them as a client.
rmsource Welcomes schooldude.com as a New IT Consulting Client.
April 9th, 2009 – rmsource, an IT consulting and software company in Cary, NC has been hired by schooldude.com of Cary, NC to provide ongoing IT infrastructure consulting services. Schooldude.com provides on-demand SaaS software solutions to over 860,000 education professionals worldwide.
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On 4 February 2009, Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) release 2 (R2) became available
New features include:
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Enhanced voice capabilities, such as Office Communicator Attendant with call management features to support dynamic call routing of incoming calls; automatic call distributor (response group); single-number reach; delegation; call monitoring; and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking
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Persistent group chat technology
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Desktop sharing, enabling users across Windows, Mac and Linux platforms to collaborate and use audio conferencing capabilities
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On-premises audio conferencing bridge
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High-definition video
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Support for a 64-bit operating system
RMSource’s thoughts on this technology:
We are immediately deploying this internally to get a hands-on assessment of execution of the features listed above. It’s very exciting to have a software solution that can go on any Windows/Intel server and have a fully functional Web/Video/Voice/Chat conferencing solution for such a reduced ongoing and deployment cost!
RMSource still uses a Cisco VoIP/Microsoft UC solution as its goto solution, however OCS R2 can secure CHAT, and could truly eliminate the need for expensive external conference bridge and web conferencing services.
OCS R2 also has a great chance at being the default SOFT PHONE for all telecommuters.
Details
Microsoft's Published Retail Costs:
http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/en/us/pricing-licensing.aspx
Microsoft Published Capabilities:
- Enterprise Voice
Learn about the software-based VoIP component of Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
- Audio/Video/Web Conferencing
Discover how Office Communications Server 2007 R2 delivers integrated audio, video, and Web conferencing.
- Group Chat
Read how Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat allows users to have topic based, multi-party discussions that persist over time, which allows information sharing and discussions as a group.
- Instant Messaging and Presence
Learn more about the rich presence and instant messaging functionality in Office Communications Server 2007 R2 that allows real-time text-based communication, which helps to reduce turnaround time and increase productivity.
- Public Instant Messaging Connectivity
See how your users can communicate quickly and efficiently, sharing presence and instant messaging (IM) with users of Microsoft Windows Live Messenger, AOL, and Yahoo! public IM service providers.
- Mobility
Find out more about how Office Communicator Mobile 2007 R2 extends users’ work identity, as well as IM presence information, to mobile devices, giving users real-time communications capabilities when they are away from the office.
- Operations
Learn more about the Office Communications Server 2007 administration experience, and deployment and interoperability options.
- Platform Extensibility
Discover how you can take advantage of the extensibility features of Office Communications Server to achieve flexibility and deliver compelling solutions to your users.
Microsoft Published User Interfaces
- Office Communicator
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 is a unified communications client that increases productivity by allowing users to communicate easily with others nearly anytime, anywhere, using a range of communication options that include instant messaging (IM), voice, and video. Integration with programs across the 2007 Microsoft Office system—including Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Groove, and SharePoint Server—gives information workers many different ways to communicate with each other with a consistent and simple user experience.
- Office Communicator Web Access
Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access (CWA) 2007 R2 is an enterprise messaging client that requires only a Web browser. The 2007 version of Office Communicator Web Access delivers virtually anywhere access, rich presence, and enterprise instant messaging (IM) that helps people quickly find and communicate with each other, extending the reach of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 R2 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
It is designed with a look and feel similar to the desktop version of Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2. By taking advantage of existing infrastructure investments, the 2007 version of Communicator Web Access minimizes cost while making it easy to deploy, manage, and scale.
- Office Communicator Mobile
Learn how the Microsoft Communicator Mobile 2007 R2 is an enterprise messaging client for mobile devices. The 2007 R2 version of Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile offers enhancements and new features that provide you more flexibility and control when using your mobile device.
- Office Communicator Attendant
Learn how Office Communicator 2007 R2 Attendant delivers an intuitive call management experience that helps administrative assistants, receptionists, and front-line business professionals handle and manage large numbers of simultaneous calls.
- RoundTable
Learn more about Microsoft RoundTable—an advanced collaboration and conferencing device that delivers an engaging meeting experience.
- Devices
Learn more about the many devices—including headsets, speakerphones, and webcams—that help make using Office Communications Server 2007 R2 easy and intuitive.
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I’ve had several customers ask us whether it’s practical to update those legacy systems which have been continually modified over the years, but have become outdated technology wise. The answer is not always clear however, there comes a time when it is no longer cost effective to keep a legacy system going. If at any time you feel like you’re losing your competitive advantage by keeping a piece of software that is obsolete, it should be replaced. I see so many companies fall into the trap of 'It just works and we don’t touch it' scenario that they lose the ability to change as your business and customers evolve. The ability of any organization to change and adapt to a new business process is a premium, and this is where legacy systems show their age...
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Today, a new customer came to RMSource for some help... A long running problem was crippling the performance of their legacy and modern applications. For almost a year their internal teams had chased the issue but found no root cause. So many possibilities had been suggested and modifications tried that troubleshooting had completely overwhelmed them. We were able to come in with a fresh set of eyes and no predisposition to take a pervasive look into the infrastructure. Everything looked great from the surface... best in breed network and server equipment all less than 2 years old, but after so much troubleshooting components were left in disarray. We found many small problems but no smoking gun... Finally after peeling back the onion we found it! It was a single line of configuration in the firewall.
After putting that in context with all our other discoveries it looks like the mistake was made at initial implementation. A flaw in the baseline of any infrastructure can be almost make success impossible!
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Today, one of our manufacturing clients today made the comment that we were way ahead of anything they had seen to date. A project manager for the company made the comment of “This is what I call agile development”, as we put our frontend™ product to the test of making changes to the application in real-time with a group of 8 sales people. During the meeting I made the changes using our frontend™ builder while our project manager conducted their initial software review. Not only did they see the changes they visualized in minutes but they could walk through the process of adding and saving data from an actual working system with these new changes. I think they were amazed at how fast this process was and I began to realize that this is the focal point of our software – way better for them to see “agile development” live then to hear us talking about it!
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