There is so much activity and excitement this time of year!

• The holidays are approaching…(quickly)
• LANDesk Software is releasing v9 next week……(December 17th to be exact)
• And yet another birthday for XP???

XP has just celebrated its eight birthday (wow) and 72% of enterprises didn’t migrate to Vista, (according to Forrester Research).

With the hardware vendors no longer writing XP drivers, and XP Support ending summer of 2010….

You know you will be tasked to migrate next year….

• How are you going to migrate all your XP systems to Windows 7? 
• More importantly how are you going to do it quickly without breaking your network? 
• Over the years how many hardware platforms do you have…?(do you have to guess on that one?)
• And your end-users wants maintain their data during the migration…

Allow us to introduce you to LANDesk Management Suite v9!

With LANDesk v9 you can manage all aspects of a Windows 7 migration including planning, implementation, migration, and validation. It includes system readiness reports, it supports heterogeneous environments, it checks application compatibility, maintains existing user data, and best of all it will cut costs!

Email or call the NAI team today for more information on LANDesk Management Suite, let us help take the future headaches out of your migration plans so you can enjoy you holidays!

Take care,

Susie

Network America has been a long time LANDesk Platinum Expert Solutions Provider and has seen new versions come and go.  But with less than 30 days before LANDesk releases v9 for Management Suite and Security Suite, (26 days to be exact) we are as excited about the new capabilities in LANDesk 9 as the upcoming holidays!

Here are some highlights in the upcoming release:

• All new interface in LANDesk Management Suite that allows for different views depending on your responsibilities (license administrators can view it from a license perspective, and
managers can take an organizational or group perspective)
• The personal firewall available in LANDesk Security Suite
• And my personal favorite - the new reporting engine!

But to sum it all up, whether you’re looking for best methods to migrate to Windows 7, tracking your licenses you own or - equally important are actually using, or you need a better way to protect your endpoints, LANDesk 9 solves all of these needs and more.

While we are waiting for the upcoming release, now is the time to plan for your upgrade.  Whether you are running an older version or haven’t rebuilt your Core Server in awhile, call or visit us today at www.ldms.com, to set up your no-obligation systems management review.  Network America is  offering custom upgrade and tune-up packages to help you easily upgrade to LANDesk 9 AND enjoy your holidays.

If you have any questions about upgrading, utilizing all of the new features, enhancing your ROI or reviewing the latest best practices, contact us to discuss how we can help you!

Wishing you and your family a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday,

My best,

Susie

LANDesk Software announced this week the much anticipated release of version 9 for the award winning products, LANDesk Management Suite & LANDesk Security Suite that will be available on December 17th.

As we count down to the release here are just some of the new enhancements;

LANDesk Management Suite v9: 

An all-new interface—Users can now see and manage data in ways that meet their singular needs: IT administrators can view the network from a product perspective, license administrators can view it from a license perspective, and managers can take an organizational or group perspective.

Software normalization and inventory data improvements—Filter inventory data through a system with information on thousands of products and manufacturers. Obtain more accurate product and file recognition with normalized data that can be leveraged by LANDesk^® Asset Lifecycle Manager.

Dynamic products—Simplify asset management with version wildcarding that lets you merge multiple product versions into a single, dynamic product

Return on investment (ROI) reports—Obtain the information you need to manage licenses more wisely and reduce license costs. Additional reports help decrease the likelihood of being audited—as well as avoid being stuck with major fees in the event you are.

LANDesk Security Suite v9:

Layered security that includes a personal firewall—Ensure increased system protection and dramatically reduce the potential for effective system attacks.

Industry-leading antivirus solutions—Get amazingly fast response time to new threats, as well as a high level of detection and proactive protection.

Unparalleled remediation using a single agent—Simply and efficiently manage new devices currently not managed by the system.

Location-aware policies—Preserve productivity and reduce the chance of data loss and infection with dynamic policies that adjust security settings—including application control, anti-malware configuration, and removable storage restrictions—based on the environment a selected machine is in.

The ability to view all security activities in a single console—Increase productivity and reduce the amount of effort required to monitor all security activities on the network.

USB encryption policies—Create flexible policies that control usage of mass storage devices and make them read-only, block them entirely, or force encryption.

Compliance standards assessments—Assess and enforce alignment with compliance standards such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), SANS, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).

Stay tuned to Network America’s v9 countdown on www.ldms.com for more information as it becomes available.

But more importantly the Network America team would like to send out our heartfelt thanks to all Veterans for your service.

Susie

In this day of cutting overhead and reducing costs, could you be suffering from IT infrastructure overload?  Too many tools, agents, databases from various vendors managing several maintenance and support agreements?

Why not join us on Tuesday November 10th for a technical presentation of LANDesk® Management Suite?  Learn first hand about the award winning solution that allows you to see, manage, update and protect your enterprise all with a single agent, single console, and single database.

LANDesk® Management Suite lets your IT staff automate systems management tasks. No
management solution is more complete, more integrated or easier to use, whether your
systems are inside or outside the corporate firewall, or at one location or many.

Realizing a rapid time to value is critical to smart business practices and according to
IDC (Quantifying the ROI Benefits of Integrated Systems Management), on average, an organization can recoup its investment cost for LANDesk® Management Suite in just 90.5 days and enjoy an average return on investment of 846% over three years.

From cost cutting saving’s benefits including software license management, power management, and automated patch management, LANDesk Management Suite provides all of these while leveraging your existing investments in database, application and directory service technologies. And it works across heterogeneous IT environments for minimal impact on your network, servers, and personnel.

Don’t be tricked by other solutions who require additional infrastructure, multi consoles, or view systems management is an after thought.

To learn more please visit us at http://www.ldms.com/Products/LANDesk/landesk_management_suite.html

Happy Halloween!

Susie

Admit it, deploying new applications can be a hassle. You’re never sure whether or not you’ll “break” your environment, or if you do “break” it, how quickly and effectively you’ll be able to roll it back to a pre-deployment state. You can end up impacting you user productivity—not to mention their happiness with fielding numerous complaints. Worse, you may have to stop and do regression testing to fix problems created by new applications. And you may have to spend time and and additional budgets to create a testing environment.

With LANDesk®Application Virtualization will enable your enterprise to seamlessly run multiple applications—even different versions of the same application—on individual systems without installing anything on or making changes to a client’s registry and file system, without installing agents on the client or a server, and without installing device drivers. You give your users conflict-free access to the applications they need while maintaining secure, clean, stable user desktops and complete control.

Because LANDesk® Application Virtualization runs each application in its own environment you eliminate application conflicts. Two versions of the same application can run on the same PC without conflicts, even where virtual and non-virtual versions exist. There’s no need to redevelop applications or upgrade to a new OS. 

With the benefit of saving thousands of dollars most companies spend per desktop per year managing applications plus the saving on the cost of maintaining secure, locked-down desktops.

You reduce or eliminate the time needed for regression testing and analysis of end-user support requirements in order to minimize the downtime caused by DLL and other application conflicts. And you alleviate the costs of the intensive planning and user support needed for new applications.

A quick recap:

• True Isolation
• Client-Less Architecture and Instant Zero-Footprint Deployment
• Security (Runs applications exclusively in user mode with no kernel-mode code or device drivers)
• Saves money, time, frustration

Please join the Network America team next week to learn more via a web meeting September 15th @10:00 am EST.  Visit our main page for more information and registration.

LANDesk® Application Virtualization integrates with LANDesk® Management Suite or be purchased as a stand alone application.

Looking forward to seeing you next week!

-Susie

Deploying new applications can be a hassle.  You're never sure whether or not you'll "break" your environment, or if you do indeed "break" it, how quickly and effectively will you be able to roll it back to a predeployment state?

With LANDesk Application Virtualization, you have the power to create virtual applications using true isolation capabilities and:

• Minimize OS migration risks and hassles - including Vista - with true isolation for testing before you implement.
• Save time with easy, client-less, conflict free application deployment and rollbacks
• Improve user satisfaction by reducing application conflicts
• Reduce infrastructure requirements and costs with no-client or server components to manage.
• Improve your enterprise security with the power to transparently run applications in user-mode on  locked-down machines.

The most common issue we have run into of late has been with IE7, with using LANDesk Application Virtualization  we were able to run both IE6 for legacy applications and IE7 on the same machine.

Join us for our upcoming Network America "LANDesk Lunch & Learn" being held on Thursday March 19th @ 12:30 Eastern to learn more about LANDesk Application Virtualization, see the product and have the opportunity to ask technical questions on best practices.  If you would like to register for this virtual LANDesk Lunch & Learn please email me @

For more information on LANDesk or our Lunch & Learn series, visit our web-site www.ldms.com or check your email for the latest Network America Newsletter announcing dates and topics coming to your email soon!

As always we want to hear from you on what would help you the most - please email me with ideas of things that the Network America team can do for you!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

-Susie

We spent quite a bit of time this year working on value propositions for saving IT dollars with automation from LANDesk Software.  But more importantly at THIS moment - you can't blame budget cuts for being empty handed on Saturday!

(Yes - Valentine's Day is this coming Saturday)

Last year I provided some helpful links (I thought) for restaurants and jewelry and of course flowers.  So this year I polled my fellow gals and we have some awesome suggestions that are not costly and will gain you instant ROI.

• Flowers, we aren't really expecting you to drop $75.00 for a dozen roses this year.  Run out on Friday to your local florist or grocery store, and pick up a nice bouquet of flowers nothing too expensive and drop by her work/home/school to bring them to her personally on Friday.  Gives her bragging rights! 

• Restaurants can also be expensive, why not a romantic picnic?  In your living room! Run by the grocery and pick a nice bottle of wine, cheese, crackers, strawberry's and definitely something Chocolate!  Light a couple of candles and you have nice evening with You and your undivided attention.(Turn off your PDA please - and don't rush to your computer for at least a couple of hours-that goes for the TV too!)

• With this year falling on Saturday - you could always bring her breakfast in bed...Get up a little early, tend to the kids, bring your sweetie breakfast and let her enjoy a nice relaxing morning!

• Let's face it no woman in the world would say no to jewelry, for those of you that can afford to spend some money this year, there are some really beautiful options for under $100.00 at http://www.ice.com/. 

• And lastly for you guys that ran out of time or money, we are here to help!  We prepared some love coupons for you that you can print off and give to your honey!  These are as good as gold - especially when she can use her coupon to have you take out the trash! http://www.ldms.com/holiday/thelcb_na.html

Watch for newsletter tomorrow, we are focusing on LANDesk Security Suite and Patching.  LANDesk provides a complete HIPS offering, protection for Internet only connections, black listing and more.  We will have online demo's and best practices for Security Suite and Patch over the next couple of weeks and you can sign up via our newsletter.

Happy Valentine's Day!

-Susie

Hi Everyone,

Network America is hosting a LANDesk Administrator training in Florida February 25th 26th & 27th.  The focus is hands on training with using v8 SP2.    Whether your new to LANDesk or looking to refresh your skills, this class is for you.For more information please visit our training page at http://www.ldms.com/Company/eventsignup_training.html.

This is a three day lab setting with experienced LANDesk Certified Engineers targeting agenda items such as:

- LANDesk Core Server configurations and optimization

- Software License Monitoring

- Provisioning

- Software Distribution

- OS Deployment and more.

Looking forward to seeing you in Florida! 

Also always looking for feedback on best ways to help YOU, if you have suggestions we want to hear from you our phone numbers and info forms are listed on the main page.

Thanks!

Susie

Welcome back to work!  Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and more importantly, you were able to come back! 

With tight times, cut backs and high-tech IT firms laying off over 20,000 workers in November alone, IT jobs are in survival mode.  In other words: You're no longer a techie helping the business; you're a businessperson who uses tech to boost the bottom line.

The most reliable path for self-preservation? Transition your focus from technology to business value and business needs. The more quantifiable results you offer the more indispensable you become. How long and how much did it cost your company for that last Office 2007 deployment?  What about patches and security threats, costs for your IT guys to visit each desktop to update?  Speaking of desktops and equipment, do you know where your assets are and how they are being used?

Now more than ever you deploy efficient IT.

Let NAI and LANDesk help you solve those problems.  From world class system management, security and patch protection, effective asset management, and enterprise service desk solutions.  We have the expertise to deliver the right solutions and the ROI that you need now-on time and on budget.

Do you already own LANDesk products?  Email me   so I can have our LANDesk  Services team schedule a customized tune up and training to make sure your gaining as much from your investment as possible.

This is the time for you to get a handle on the projects you own and show your organization that you can expand your efficiencies, reduce your expenditures and maintain the rep your IT organization owns.

Expand your capabilities and change the corporate attitude towards IT!

Sincere regards and hopes for a successful 2009

Susie

Today's IT is hectic: user problems and complaints are never ending, team is reduced with either cut backs or holiday vacations, projects are mounting, a server just crashed today, and your boss wants that report tomorrow by 9:00 am on what your budget needs are for 2009. 

Yep, we know...

Have you had a chance to upgrade to the latest LANDesk Management Suite version? Are your patches up to date?  Do you perhaps have some tickets open with LANDesk support that you haven't had time to update and trouble shoot on your end? Or maybe you have some new members of your team that could use training and best practices tips on using LANDesk?

Yep, we know...

Let the veteran NAI LANDesk Certified team help with our year end tune up packages.  We offer either remote packages to onsite upgrades and training, with custom packages for any environment and budget.  You made the investment in LANDesk, let's work together to make sure your getting the most from your purchase.

LANDesk provides incredible software solutions for today's IT needs, but with any software package it will require maintenance from time to time.   Email me atfor more information on support packages and pricing options to help you get one more task off you list!

Wishing you my very best for this holiday season,

-Susie