SMB

Great small business firewall from Cisco

So as a result of Cisco getting more and more into the small business world, they have finally decided to position a small business firewall in the market for the smallest of small businesses. The Cisco SA 500 series of security appliances. This is from the Cisco Small Business Pro line.

The Cisco SA 500 series comes in a variety of models, the SA 520, 520W and 540. The 520W is particularly nice because it provides built-in wireless functionality as well. The 540 is basically the version that supports the most throughput and is the higher end version of the bunch.

From using the SA 520, it is apparent from the start that it is meant to be user friendly. The entire device is configured via the GUI and there is no command line to worry aobut. If you just need a small appliance to drop into a very small business for basic Internet access and firewalling capability, this is a great solution. On top of all that it has VPN and VLAN support so you can do some business-like configuration of the device instead of just throwing in a home based router/firewall.

-RP

More Cisco gear for the SMB world!

Hello again folks! Cisco is once again bringing great product to the market place. This time hitting the SMB market with a new series of switches called the Cisco ESW 500 series.

These switches are all manageable from GUI utilities without the need for CLI. They are also priced at a great price point for your SMB customers. A lot of times when I go into SMB clients the perception is that Cisco is expensive and they instead vote to go with a different company for their switching gear. Cisco has seen the light and is now offering cheaper product in this marketspace.

The ESW 500 series is available with gigabit capability and even POE! This makes it great for the SMB company that wants to implement VOIP and reap those benefits. Cisco needs to keep releasing SMB product like this, it really will make all the others stand up and take notice! You can read more about it here.

-RP

New offerings in the switch world from Cisco

Hi folks! I have some great news from the Cisco front. Our friends at Cisco have decided to release a new version of their 2960 switches called “LAN Lite”! This is a new version of the Catalyst switch with slightly less features to bring the price point down for people who don’t need everything that the full 2960 normally provides.

This series of switch is aimed at the SMB market that needs POE switching for voice and data for unified communications. More and more we are seeing companies requiring enterprise level equipment to facilitate unified communications in their SMB networks. This isn’t easy for these SMB companies because enterprise level equipment can get quite expensive. Cisco has seen this need and is now offering the necessary equipment to fulfill these needs at a lower price by offering “LAN Lite”.

You can read more about it and compare the different versions here at Cisco’s web site. You can also go here to this other link at Cisco’s web site to read more about their offer.

-RP

Unified Messaging

Unified messaging means a lot of things to a lot of different people. To me it means the ability to communicate with people using one centralized system but with any device or means with relative ease. In this day and age, with the plethora of digital communication devices available out there today, this has become a reality.

 One of my personal favourite VOIP solutions is Asterisk. Asterisk is an open source PBX which is in my opinion the most flexible non-proprietary piece of VOIP software out there. If you haven’t heard of it, or would like ot check it out, you can get more info here. With Asterisk you can take a call anywhere at anytime and you can even get your voice mail to show up in your e-mail inbox.

One of the things that is required in Unified Messaging is instant messaging(IM). If you are running an Asterisk VOIP system, one of the good IM solutions out there is Openfire and Spark. Openfire is the server side component and Spark is the IM client that runs on your user’s desktops. This server can be easily setup and integrated with Active Directory for Single Sign On (SSO) support. Then you can install the Asterisk component that allows it to integrate with your Asterisk VOIP system! Openfire server supports the open protocol called Jabber.

 All in all this is a great solution for SMB offices that don’t want to spend too much money on a VOIP system but still require all the features of one.

 -RP