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hardware warranty Archives - thinkCSC

May 05
0

Schools, EdTech, and Budgeting

By | EdTech | No Comments

Making the Most of the EdTech Mandates

school technologyThere are many state-mandated requirements in order to introduce technology into schools for the 2013-2014 school year. While building their budgets, virtually every district is responding to these mandates differently. BYOD (bring your own device), BYOT (bring your own technology) and 1:1 are the most common methods used. Some of the most important considerations regarding the use of devices in schools, however, are largely geared towards the 1:1 wireless scenario.

Is Your Infrastructure Capable of Handling the Devices You Choose?

As these devices – iPads, tablets or laptops – are given to students, schools must determine infrastructure readiness. The physical structure inside the schools, in regards to Internet connectivity bandwidth, must be capable of sustaining all of the devices. There are many elements that go into that.

For example, an increasing number of mobile tablet devices use a larger amount of Internet bandwidth, versus a traditional laptop that uses a local service typically hosted at the school. The more cloud services that are being used, the greater the demand on Internet infrastructure and on the bandwidth that the school district has. When a school chooses to deploy a large number of devices, the process of ensuring that the network is physically capable of providing a reliable and seamless end-user experience is complicated.

Do You Have Enough Bandwidth to Keep Everyone Connected?

Consider the amount of bandwidth necessary for your network; you want to ensure that you have sufficient internal bandwidth to sustain the number of devices you are deploying, as well as enough bandwidth to support your connectivity to the outside world. Essentially, the amount of bandwidth necessary comes down to the applications that you are using on your devices. If students are using iPads or Chromebooks, these cloud-based devices demand a substantially higher external bandwidth, as opposed to those devices that are using a local resource hosted by the school.

Addressing Security and MDM

Some schools provide the devices and let students take them home. By doing so, they then have to determine how they will continue to manage content that comes through the device. Is there still content filtering taking place outside of the school? Mobile device management – or MDM – is another infrastructure readiness issue. Once you have all of the devices, you want to have the capability to easily maintain them.

If you have to deploy application software, you want to be able to do so for a group of devices at a time or all of the devices simultaneously. If you need to filter content, change security preferences or block certain applications because of content, you want to be able to do that quickly, as opposed to one device at a time. If you have MDM in place, that significantly reduces the amount of time it takes for you to deploy, maintain and monitor your devices, at the same time ensuring that the devices are secure.

Saving Money on Device Investment, Warranty and Repair Services

In addition to infrastructure concerns related to bandwidth and connectivity of technology in schools, the cost of purchasing devices and warranties must be considered. School districts often purchase the manufacturer’s warranty and offer additional accidental damage insurance to the students – passing the cost onto the parents – on top of the manufacturer’s warranty. thinkCSC purchases from the same supplier as CDWG, so we can offer highly competitive rates for devices. As well, our warranty is less expensive, and we provide convenient device pick-up, repair and drop-off, thereby saving you time as well as money. In many cases, we can complete repairs on site.

Many district IT departments are capable of deploying technology devices themselves, but CSC can help, either with a particular portion or with the entire process. Our experience with both small and large school districts helps us steer you away from what doesn’t work and focus on what does. thinkCSC looks at the big picture, ensuring device deployments go as smoothly as possible. If you would like more information about our school technology and warranty services, please contact us.

Jan 11
0

thinkCSC and the Columbus Chamber of Commerce

By | Community Involvement, thinkCSC Leadership Series | No Comments

Building Business Community

by Tom Hastings

csc chamber of commerceWhether you are a new business owner just starting out, or you have built a successful business in Central Ohio, you must know the many reasons that make Columbus a great place to call home for your business. Geographically, Columbus is considered a hub of the Midwest; Columbus is within a day’s drive of 50% of the U.S. population.

In addition to being home to one of the finest universities in the nation, Columbus has some of the most extraordinary minds and talents in the US. So it’s no surprise to me that Forbes recognized Columbus as one of the best cities for tech jobs and also one of the best cities for working mothers. I believe part of the reason Columbus receives these kinds of accolades is because of the support business leaders receive from the Columbus Chamber of Commerce.

Columbus is a great place to live and work, and as one of the largest business organizations in Central Ohio, the Columbus Chamber of Commerce has provided support for businesses in Central Ohio for more than a century. The evidence of their results-driven purpose is clear. As a member of the Chamber, I can say first-hand that the Chamber’s many services and helpful staff has helped thinkCSC grow and thrive. By delivering the resources, services and information businesses need, the Chamber enables companies to overcome obstacles, increase opportunities and partner together to create a better Columbus.

Creating connections to people and information is essential for finding solutions to business issues. The Columbus Chamber of Commerce plays multiple roles, acting as business coach and advocate as well as providing a strong voice to elected officials.

Here at thinkCSC, our emphasis is on technology. I believe that the initiatives taken by the Columbus Chamber of Commerce over the last several years have directly contributed to Columbus receiving recognition as a city known for its tech jobs.

When most people think of the Chamber of Commerce, they think of a traditional institution, a civic staple, something that one’s involvement with is considered an admirable civic responsibility. And it is. But the Chamber is also a pro-active, evolving organization of community development. When you pull back the bureaucratic curtain, you can gain first-hand experience of the passion the Chamber embodies. This drive is the kind of attitude that is behind real community-based involvement and in-depth holistic activism.

The Chamber prioritizes the needs of our local economy, employing the experience and expertise of its members, to implement a road map guiding Columbus businesses to success. thinkCSC is pleased to be involved with helping The Columbus Chamber achieve its goals.

Nov 11
0

Physical Security Goes Digital

By | Cloud Services | No Comments

thinkcsc phys securityWhen you’re talking about physical security, the first thing that might come to mind is the “rent-a-cop” who drives around in his jeep, flashing a light on your building to make sure there are no hooligans hanging around. Of course, we’re not living in an 80s movie, and hooligans have been replaced by high-tech digital criminals. In this technological age, even physical security has become a digital endeavor – and one most businesses should consider, especially if they store valuable or sensitive data. What is digital physical security? Digital physical security covers everything from video surveillance to security systems, key card access systems to IP cameras – and it is the IP camera that is really revolutionizing the physical security industry. There are several advantages to choosing IP cameras over analog.

No Cables Required

Analog video provides composite outputs and requires you to run video cable through the walls between the camera locations and back to either a closed-captioned TV system or a digital video recorder. IP cameras, however, function more like IP phones, where the device uses network traffic instead of an analog signal in order to deliver feed to a network video recorder (NVR). In other words, with an IP camera, you can send the video to a monitor without running a bunch of cable to do it.

Offsite Monitoring Capability

IP camera security offers companies a much more robust system with the power to capture and save data. An IP camera security system allows you to capture the data in order to keep a history of your surveillance. It offers you the the capability of playing back the recorded data, and you can search for specific data if you need to. It can be delivered to an offsite monitor because you can deliver the video over your network and not have it hardwired to a closed-caption system.

High-Quality Video

One of the biggest advantages of the IP camera is the quality of video. You can think of the difference between analog and IP cameras as you would think of the difference between standard definition TV and HDTV. The resolution of an analog camera is D-1. The IP camera has a new H.264 video codec (the video encoder scheme). Commonly seen codecs are mpeg and QuickTime, but the codec for an IP security camera allows the video feed to be compressed in such a way that it does not affect the quality of the video but substantially affects the size. This ability to compress the video without losing quality makes it possible to send that video stream over the internet and over your network without having to use too much of your bandwidth to do it. It is a major evolution in physical security.

Superior Flexibility

The main reason to choose IP camera security instead of analog is flexibility. An analog camera uses a DVR, and DVRs are fixed appliances. It’s no different than the cable service you have at home for your television, which, until recently, required you to have a DVR for each TV – what you stored on the DVR in your living room could not be watched in your bedroom, and vice versa. When it comes to network security, an analog DVR is just like your old cable-box DVR, where you were locked to that one device for recording. There is no way to access one camera system from another device. There might be remote viewing software, but it still is locked to a DVR.

Every analog camera physically has to have a cable run to the back to the DVR system. You might have 30 – 40 cables running to the DVR from all of the analog cameras, and each building would have to have a separate system. Because IP cameras are network devices, instead of running hundreds of feet of cable, we can use switches to plug in the IP camera cables. The camera grabs an IP address just like your computer or VoIP phone would, and you are able to access the network and use NVR software on a server or a virtual server and – and here’s the critical point – access that feed from wherever you are. It makes adding additional IP cameras incredibly easy, and you can add cameras (just like VoIP phones) in a variety of different locations but have them feed back to the same NVR system. Corporate offices can monitor the physical security of their regional branches. The ability to funnel your physical security monitoring from your IP camera over the internet and utilize that network to access your video streams from a remote location is a real game-changer in physical security.

thinkCSC offers a cloud-managed hosted IP camera security service to safely archive and access your video from anywhere. For more information on IP camera security and how thinkCSC can help you, please contact us.

Oct 11
0

Run Windows on Mac with Virtualization

By | MAC for Business | No Comments

csc_virtualizationVirtualization got its start on the PC side, but did you know the same functionality works with Macs? Running a Windows application on your Mac allows you to access features on a number of products not available to Macs. Parallels Desktop is just one of several solutions available for running Windows on Macintosh hardware. Depending on your business needs, virtualization can open up the best of both Mac and PC worlds in a simple, efficient way.

Setting up virtualization isn’t complicated, but you’ll still need to install Windows with a disk. With this method, you install it in an application – a kind of shell inside of your computer. People with virtualization sometimes have the false impression that they are protected from viruses or that viruses are less prevalent. Virtualized Windows can still get attacked. From the moment you put Windows on your computer, your Windows environment can become infected just as easily as if you were using a PC. When you run Windows on Mac, you also have to do maintenance and software updates on both sides separately.

At thinkCSC, we use Parallels or Fusion to run Windows-only business applications, so we have to keep them open all day. The same goes for Act! contact databases and any number of products that don’t have a Mac client. Another reason to use virtualization on a Mac is that sometimes the Windows version is better. For instance, QuickBooks for Mac has yet to receive feature parity with QuickBooks for PC. Many people prefer to go ahead and run QuickBooks inside their virtual machine (VM), so they get all the features and functionality that the Windows version has.

Boot Camp is another viable, but imperfect, option for running Windows on Mac hardware. Essentially, it entails holding the alt key down to boot off of a Windows CD, installing it directly onto the hard drive. Macs even allow you to partition your drive, so half can be allocated for Mac and the other half can be for PC. To do this, you hold down the alt key and hit ‘Okay’ to boot into either Windows or Mac. The problem with doing this is that Apple doesn’t optimize their Windows driver. The battery in a MacBook would last two hours using Boot Camp, whereas it lasts up to five hours when running virtualization with Windows inside of it.

Companies today don’t operate in cookie-cutter environments; every business needs customization. So,the more versatility available, the better. While the technology for PCs and Macs often runs parallel, performance is not always equal. Virtualization makes it fast and easy to run a Windows application on your Mac whenever you want to.

If you’re wondering whether or not Mac is right for your business, contact thinkCSC today for a free consultation.

Aug 11
0

Disaster Recovery That Works in the Real World

By | BDR | No Comments

Sometimes the best way to address solutions for business continuity of computer network systems is by example. Picture this recent real-life situation: a local school district learns a back-to-school lesson involving safe storage of vital network data under the secured services of thinkCSC’s disaster recovery software. Fortunately, the lesson had a good outcome.

In this teachable moment, the virtualization software environment operating the school system’s multiple servers ran out of data storage space, essentially crashing all the servers. The data wasn’t actually lost; the servers were just basically offline and inaccessible, creating a major roadblock for teachers, administrators and students to accomplish much of anything. Normally the downtime for restoring multiple-server functionality would be several days. However, the school district had thinkCSC defending its network, and the solution for backup and disaster recovery — commonly known as BDR — was fairly simple.

thinkCSC’s BDR solution, bundled into a rack-mount box that can be conveniently placed in any room, only requires power and a network connection for initial startup. In an emergency situation, one that requires image-based backup and a timely solution to restore business continuity, this BDR system can actually activate incapacitated servers in a virtual environment until the original server platform can be repaired or replaced.

For the school system, it was just a matter of activating and turning on two or three of its 10 servers in what’s called a “virtual boot,” which expedited the backup process in just a few hours without having to engage in full data recovery or restoring, something that usually takes days to complete. Consequently, everyone was up and running in less than a day, without any further interruption to their daily routines; all the while, the more extensive server reconfiguration was being addressed. After all, education must go on!

It is important to note that we offer several levels of backup from which to choose. You can back up only files, and you can also select image-based backup or full BDR. There are certain levels of restoring, too. You can simply restore files and images, or you can choose to restore the entire network. You can also temporarily turn on the system, which mirrors a premiere level of disaster recovery, because you don’t have to wait around for the full restore time to be functional.

From a business continuity angle, here’s another teachable application of BDR. A small business of nearly 20 employees had recently contracted managed services for IT support. A week after installing a BDR system, the company’s one server completely crashed. Prior to that protective installation, though, replacement of the server was recommended, but due to budgetary constraints, the decision was delayed. Nevertheless, the deployment of thinkCSC’s BDR a week earlier safeguarded the company’s data storage in a virtual environment for more than week following the server crash, while new equipment was on order.

Both of these disaster recovery examples point to the importance of having both basic file and image-based backup systems in place 24/7. Equally important, the value of having multiple levels of BDR protection cannot be overstated, either, including off-site data storage solutions. Off-site data replication provides ultimate data protection for clients and serves as valued assurance that data losses will not occur.

Feb 11
0

To Mac or Not to Mac: Making the Right Decision for Your Business

By | MAC for Business | No Comments

macbook proDue to the overwhelming success of Apple products such as the iPhone and iPad, more and more consumers are faced with this dilemma – whether to continue using a PC or to make the switch to Mac. In recent years, it seems that Apple has marketed Macs with this in mind. If they can hook you with one of their popular, ancillary products, you might think it appropriate, as Apple’s website suggests, to “make the ultimate upgrade” and buy a Mac.

Of course, if you have your own business, or if you are in the process of starting one, the stakes are much higher because the choice you make will determine both your everyday productivity and the ongoing support services you will need to make it work. It is easy to get swept up by clever marketing or even that colleague of yours who insists that Mac is the only option. However, making an informed decision is always best. Included here are several things you will want to consider before choosing Mac for yourself and/or your employees.

First, you should reflect on whether the end will justify the means. The hard truth is, if you are in an office environment and have a Windows Server and Windows-based apps, switching to Mac may entail more than you are really prepared for. For instance, you may find that your current business software is not compatible with Mac and has to be replaced. To sidestep this problem, a lot of Mac users decide to run virtualization on their computers, allowing them to choose which OS, Mac or Windows, they want to use at any given time. Yet, virtualization itself can lead to additional support costs and security issues. The moment you put Windows on your computer, your Windows environment can get infected just as easily as if you had a PC.

So when is it smart to choose Mac for a business environment? Generally speaking, if your business is small, web-based and your primary needs involve web, email, productivity, and file access, there is no reason why Mac would not be more than suitable. Apple’s hardware is infused with user confidence, and for good reason. You will definitely have fewer security and configuration problems. If price is a concern, you might consider the MacBook Air, which cannot be matched in the PC world for all that it offers. Unfortunately, the larger your business, the more complex a transition to Mac could become, requiring much more in the way of support services.

All that said, the decision to use Macs or PCs for your business needs may not be as straightforward as you’d like. Based on our broad history with the Mac platform, thinkCSC can help you determine which route is best for you.

Nov 08
0

4 Keys to Choosing the Right Mac Service Provider

By | Hardware & Warranty Repairs | No Comments

macserviceproviderFor the most part Macs run well, but like any technology, eventually they will fail. When that time comes, the odds are you will not be able to fix it yourself. You are going to need some professional help in order to get your system back in working order.

To complicate matters, you can’t just hire any technician. You need to deal with someone who knows how to work with Macs – and a PC technician just won’t cut it. Macs have a unique system architecture that require specialized knowledge. Even the best Windows tech could end up doing more harm that good if they issue the wrong commands through Terminal, which provides the technician nearly unlimited access to the core of the system.

So, how do you pick a good Mac service provider? There are four basic credentials you should look for that will help you to decide which service provider is the one that can meet your needs.

1. Experience

When it comes to getting your systems repaired, experience matters. You need a service provide who is familiar with the system but every company’s marketing department is going to tell you that they are the best company to meet your needs. Only by talking to their customers and finding out how they have handled problems in the past can you ensure that the service is responsive, friendly and able to meet your needs. Never use a service that cannot provide you with references.

Remember, this is IT. Technology changes quickly. You’re not looking for a company with 50 years of experience. In fact, IT companies that last longer than five years are doing really well. One good example is CSC, which has been in business since 1992. Not a lengthy history when you compare it to a brand like Kellogg’s, but it is an impressive span for an IT services provider.

2. Apple Certifications

When you are choosing a company you need to be sure that the providers who will be working on your systems with have the appropriate Apple certifications. These credentials, issued by Apple, show that the people who will be servicing your systems have demonstrated the knowledge and the skills needed to work with your systems to the satisfaction of the Mac makers themselves.

3. Apple Authorized Repair Center

Apple Authorized Repair Centers come with a guarantee that the service will be done right. Even more important, using an Apple Authorized Repair Center is a guarantee that the service will not void your warranty.

4. Managed Services

A number of problems with your system can be avoided simply by making sure that your system gets the monitoring that it needs on a daily basis, and the maintenance that it needs on a monthly basis. A company that provides its customers managed services simplifies that process and helps to prevent problems before they happen. This kind of service gives you what you don’t know you need but can’t live without.

CSC has a well-trained staff of Apple-certified technicians available to help you with all of your Mac service needs. Schedule service for your Mac with us.