TheWikiBoat & DDoS attacks today!

For those of you who haven't seen this yet, you'd be well advised.  Now while it looks like they're going to be attacking MAJOR corporations, it does make me want to ask the question of you...

When was the last time you updated your firewall?  If you've got a Cisco firewall, is your Smartnet up to date?  When was your last firmware installation?  Many more questions as well.  There's always a solution, and if you aren't sure, ASK US.  We've got backend experts on Cisco (gold certified), HP (primary partner), Sonicwall (they're owned by Dell now)...and heck I can even talk to you about Meraki's options.

Most important thing is that you're up to date, and protected...no matter how big your company is.

Let me help you...let's talk about it.  Click the contact button, or give me a call  (541 351 8845).

:)

"Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall..."

SURPRISE!

I was going to post this when I first found out about it last week, but I wanted to wait to make sure it was going to go through.  But, now it looks like Dell's acquisition of Sonicwall is going to happen sometime in their 2nd fiscal quarter (before the end of July) of this year.  Estimates run the price around 1-1.5 billion for Dell to now own the plucky networking company.

Much like what happened with KACE, things should only look better for Sonicwall, being able to actively sell into Dell's already large customer base is a great thing.  I know that as a sales rep, after KACE became a part of Dell, working with them became a breeze...not just for me, but for clients too!

Also, if you haven't heard, Western Digital will be buying Hitachi Global Storage...and that deal is currently in the works.  However, they have to sell off quite a bit of stuff to rival Toshiba, to make up for this near-monopoly on hard drives that WD is creating.  The Dell-Sonicwall thing I can understand...this WD & Hitachi thing may not go through...it just has screaming bad juju written all over it, because it will give them a 49% market share on all internal drives produced.

Keep your eye on the marker and what's going on here.  For those of you hoping Hard Drive prices are going to come down...there's a possibility that with this acquisition, they'll either come way down...or never will.

(Granted, I am a pundit on things like this, and this is just my opinion on the matter.)

Note:

Someone asked me "Mike, where are the deals?  Why don't you publish deals more often on this site?"  My answer is that it can take away from the information presented here.  But, I will always bow to client pressure...so here's some HP notebook deals that don't match the article.  ;)

Smart Buy EliteBook 8460p Intel Core i5-2410M 2.30GHz Notebook - 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 14" LED-backlit HD, LS DVD+/-RW SuperMulti, 56K Modem, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth, Webcam, TPM 1.2, Fingerprint Sensor, 6-cell Li-ion HP EliteBook 8460p - Core i5 2410M / 2.3 GHz - Windows 7 Pro 64-bit - 4 GB RAM - 500 GB HDD - DVD SuperMulti DL - 14" HD anti-glare wide 1366 x 768 / HD - Intel HD Graphics 3000 - Smart Buy Sku #8320737 Price $879.98

EliteBook Mobile Workstation 8560w - 15.6" - Core i5 2540M - Windows 7 Pro 64-bit - 4 GB RAM - 500 GB HDD HP EliteBook Mobile Workstation 8560w - Core i5 2540M / 2.6 GHz - Windows 7 Pro 64-bit - 4 GB RAM - 500 GB HDD - DVD SuperMulti DL - 15.6" HD+ WVA anti-glare wide 1600 x 900 / HD+ - AMD FirePro M5950 - Smart Buy Sku #8784405 Price $1,249.97

EliteBook Mobile Workstation 8760w - 17.3" - Core i7 2820QM - Windows 7 Pro 64-bit - 8 GB RAM - 750 GB HDD HP EliteBook Mobile Workstation 8760w - Core i7 2820QM / 2.3 GHz - Windows 7 Pro 64-bit - 8 GB RAM - 750 GB HDD - DVD SuperMulti DL - 17.3" Full HD WVA anti-glare wide 1920 x 1080 / Full HD - NVIDIA Quadro 3000M - Smart Buy Sku #8788770 Price $2,759.99

If you have any questions...give me a call!
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Regaining Control of Your Network

This just came across my desk, and I apologize for the last minute feel of it.  The folks at SonicWALL are holding a webinar on Thursday March 8 at 11am PST called "Lighting up Your Entire Network to Improve Performance & Productivity"

Following on my prior points about the Consumerization of IT, and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), they're going to talk about how you can lose control over your network, and how to solve it. (With their products of course.)  This webinar is going to be hosted by Jan Sijp, Director of Product Marketing at SonicWALL (see?), and Mike Patterson, Industry Expert and CEO of Pixar.  They're going ot talk about the need to better understand what's going on under the hood of your network, and why flow-based network and application traffic analytics are good tools to gain insight.

You can register for this webinar here.  If you've got an hour this is a good topic.

Meraki is also doing their webinar about their new Security Appliances on Wed March 7 at 11am here, and on March 13th, they have a discussion on BYOD and how that'll affect you as well.

 

Who says you don't have enough to do? ;)