Fastest 50 Companies in Manitoba

On March 20th, 2008 Broadview Networks was recognized by the Manitoba Business Magazine as the 4th fastest growing company in the province over the last year. Broadview is very proud of our recognition in the Manitoba business community. Read on for more details about this exciting Broadview announcement!

Customer Portal Announcement

Broadview unveils a new customer web portal that provides important information at our customers' fingertips in a centralized, easy to view screen. Quotes, licensing, support, work order history, and account statement information is available in our secure customer portal.

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1

With the release of Service Pack 1 of any product, focus in the IT community often turns towards increasing acceptance and wider deployment, and Service Pack 1 for Exchange Server 2007 is no different. Service Pack 1 brings new features and improvements to Exchange.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is a complete customer relationship management solution that provides organizations with the capabilities that they need to gain and retain key competitive advantage in today's business world.

Server 2008 Feature Review: Hyper-V

Hyper-V is a powerful server role in Server 2008, marking Microsoft's entry to the hypervisor-based virtualization market boasting improved performance over past products, and supports a wide array of guest operating systems, including 64 bit systems.

Broadview Media

DNS Part II - Managing DNS Managing public DNS records and hosting the service records can sometimes be confusing; Broadview Media can help with Domain Registrations, DNS Hosting, and we can assist in managing changes to existing DNS records regardless of the registrar or DNS Host.

Manitoba Business Magazine is the leading source of business news in the province of Manitoba. This is the 21st anniversary of The 50 Fastest-Growing Companies Survey, and Broadview Networks ranked 4th on the list this year.

On March 20th, 2008 Broadview Networks received the publication's certificate of achievement at the annual gala awards dinner. Broadview is very proud of our recognition in the Manitoba business community.

"Broadview Networks is focused on creating and maintaining the essential IT infrastructure that businesses depend on. By understanding a customer's business requirements, Broadview is able to deliver effective solutions whether it's addressing Business Continuity, Security, Virtualization, Unified Communication, or Data Storage," said David Reimer, Director of Business Development with Broadview Networks.

Broadview Networks is a 100% employee owned organization that has established itself as a trusted provider of quality IT solutions offering superior expertise and exceptional service to the Manitoba business community. Working alongside both Technical and Business Professionals, Broadview's philosophy is one of collaboration and teamwork. In January 2008, Microsoft listed Broadview first in Manitoba and within the Top 10 in Canada out of 9400 Microsoft Partners. These listings are based on competencies, certifications, and customer satisfaction.

Broadview Networks would welcome an opportunity to show you why we are one of the fastest-growing companies in Manitoba. Please contact us.

Broadview has unveiled a new web portal that provides information important to customers in a central, easy to view screen. Broadview is always seeking to offer additional value to our customers. A web portal that centralizes key information like invoices and work orders and provides real time status on projects, simplifies the customers experience of doing business with Broadview.

The Customer Portal provides the following customer information:

Quotes - Provides a list of all quotes. Quotes can be viewed directly from the list and filtered by new, this month, last month, etc.

Stock on Order Report * - Will provide details around your product order such as order and delivery date.

Licensing - Provides a list of your organizations licenses including license date, description, and expiration date.

Managed Services - For those customers that are on a Managed Service like Preventative Maintenance, this lists all Preventative Maintenance reports.

Support Centre - This provides a list of all tasks you have requested from Broadview's Technical Services Department. Basically it is an interactive "to do" list which allows you to set priorities to your tasks. It will indicate how many days old the task is and the current task status (ie. incomplete, completed, deferred, on-hold and cancelled). If you open the task and update the description, notification is automatically sent to our Customer Service Supervisor for immediate attention. This is a subscription-based service.

Project Status - Your project implementation schedule is viewable here which is updated real time ensuring you always have current status on your projects.

Work Orders - This lists all of our work orders with date, job name, Technician who performed the work, hours, and work order #. Work Orders can be opened to view the details on the original work order completed at time of the job.

Sales History * - This will provide a list of all your invoices.

Pre-paid Statement - For customers that purchase blocks of time, this provides your current statement details so you always know how many hours you have remaining.

* indicates functionality that will be coming shortly.

If there are additional features that you would like to see added, please let us know and we'd be happy to try and accommodate.

Please contact Sales or your Account Manager at 984-9897 to gain access to your customer portal - a password will be provided upon request.

Broadview has unveiled a new web portal that provides information important to customers in a central, easy to view screen. Broadview is always seeking to offer additional value to our customers. A web portal that centralizes key information like invoices and work orders and provides real time status on projects, simplifies the customers experience of doing business with Broadview.

The Customer Portal provides the following customer information:

Quotes - Provides a list of all quotes. Quotes can be viewed directly from the list and filtered by new, this month, last month, etc.

Stock on Order Report * - Will provide details around your product order such as order and delivery date.

Licensing - Provides a list of your organizations licenses including license date, description, and expiration date.

Managed Services - For those customers that are on a Managed Service like Preventative Maintenance, this lists all Preventative Maintenance reports.

Support Centre - This provides a list of all tasks you have requested from Broadview's Technical Services Department. Basically it is an interactive "to do" list which allows you to set priorities to your tasks. It will indicate how many days old the task is and the current task status (ie. incomplete, completed, deferred, on-hold and cancelled). If you open the task and update the description, notification is automatically sent to our Customer Service Supervisor for immediate attention. This is a subscription-based service.

Project Status - Your project implementation schedule is viewable here which is updated real time ensuring you always have current status on your projects.

Work Orders - This lists all of our work orders with date, job name, Technician who performed the work, hours, and work order #. Work Orders can be opened to view the details on the original work order completed at time of the job.

Sales History * - This will provide a list of all your invoices.

Pre-paid Statement - For customers that purchase blocks of time, this provides your current statement details so you always know how many hours you have remaining.

* indicates functionality that will be coming shortly.

If there are additional features that you would like to see added, please let us know and we'd be happy to try and accommodate.

Please contact Sales or your Account Manager at 984-9897 to gain access to your customer portal - a password will be provided upon request.

CRM 4 is the best Microsoft CRM yet!

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is a complete customer relationship management solution that provides organizations with the capabilities that they need to gain and retain key competitive advantage in today's business world.

CRM 4.0 is the result of extensive Microsoft research and represents a product that is based on the feedback from customers who use CRM.

What's new in Dynamics CRM 4.0

• Improved End-User Benefits
• Dynamic Data Connections in Microsoft Office Excel
• Multi-Tenant Installations
• Improved Availability and Performance

Improved End-User Benefits

User interface improvements make Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 even easier to use and make it simpler to complete tasks with fewer clicks. New benefits to end users include AutoComplete, so they don't have to type the same information over and over, along with advanced searching, support for bulk execution and closure of campaigns, and improved mail merge. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 also enables users to customize their Navigation Pane to give them fast access to information they need and data relevant to their specific work role.

Other refinements include tools to create reports from their CRM data without IT support; advanced functionality that enables users to create, find, and implement workflows; more consistent offline user experience with offline reporting and customization; and improved synchronization.

Dynamic Data Connections in Microsoft Office Excel

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 supports dynamic data connections with Office Excel spreadsheet software so users can work with CRM data using familiar productivity tools. Import dynamic CRM data into Office Excel from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and refresh it from live CRM data while they work using easily accessible controls in the Microsoft Office ribbon. This allows them to take advantage of the data analysis tools of Office Excel for work with their CRM data.

Multi-Tenant Installations

In the past, a separate server installation of CRM was required for each customer. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, which is built on a multi-tenant architecture, organizations can run multiple distinct instances of Microsoft Dynamics CRM on a single server.

Because Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 supports multiple instances of the product installed on the same physical hardware, multiple customers or business organizations can have their own distinct Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation. This not only makes it easier to manage those customers, it makes better use of server hardware and improves overall operations costs.

Improved Availability and Performance

Businesses want their CRM data accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 includes significant enhancements to availability, performance, and scalability to ensure that your CRM data is available when it's needed, without interruption.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 supports clustering for solution components, including Microsoft Exchange Server, CRM Web Services, and load balancing. The e-mail router has received several performance and scalability enhancements, including parallel processing of inboxes and better support for enterprise deployment scenarios. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 also has better performance in Wide Area Network (WAN) environments, transferring only the data that needs to be transferred over slow connections. With support for SQL Server mirroring, an additional copy of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database is maintained, so that in case of database failure, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system can switch databases automatically and with minimal disruption.

Drive Consistent and Measurable Everyday Improvement

Dynamics CRM 4.0 can help organizations bring Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service teams together to help deliver improvements in everyday business processes. Marketing professionals can leverage CRM tools to help conduct marketing actions and report against activities while getting a clearer view of customers. Sales can manage leads and opportunities to actively identify customers and sales activities. And customer service professionals can respond faster to service issues and requests. Combining these benefits across all customers that an organization deals with can fast become a key in improving customer and staff retention, and a Dynamics CRM 4.0 organization has the tools at hand to measure and reward these improvements.

The launch of Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 product line has brought many new features to the Windows Server environment, and arguably, none are more significant than the Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technology that is included in the 64 bit versions of the server operating system.

When Windows Server 2008 released earlier this year, a beta release of Hyper-V came bundled with versions of the server operating system. More recently, Microsoft released a Release Candidate version of Hyper-V, bolstering the company's claims that they are set to deliver the final code product within 6 months of the release of Server 2008 (which was late February of this year).

Compared to past virtualization products from Microsoft, Hyper-V represents the maturation of their virtualization solution, and it marks the company's entry into hypervisor-based virtualization engines. Improved performance, and support for 64 bit clients are two of the most significant advantages of Hyper-V over the earlier Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 product line.

About Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008

• Scenarios
• Key Features
• Virtualization in your Server Room

Usage Scenarios

One fundamental use of virtualization is to help consolidate servers on a single physical system; this permits the isolation of roles while pooling the available physical resources, enabling reduced lower total cost of ownership from an acquisition and operational perspective.

Quick migration, live backup, and configuration support for clustering capabilities provide disaster recovery and business continuity options to virtualized environments. Rapid and reliable solutions can help ensure minimal data loss and downtime that are not always available in physically based environments.

Testing the waters is the most common first-step that businesses take in introducing virtualization into their environments. Using virtualization enables IT staff to become familiar with both the virtualization technology, while also investigating most any scenario in a manner that minimizes the risk of testing in their production systems. Hyper-V specifically maximizes the ability for a business to utilize test hardware while reducing costs.

Key Features

• 64 bit Architecture. Hyper-V is based on a 64 bit micro-kernelized hypervisor architecture.
  
• Broad OS Support. Hyper-V supports running different types of operating systems, including 32-bit and 64-bit systems across different server platforms, such as Windows, Linux, and others.
  
• Symmetric Multiprocessors (SMP) Support. Run up to four processors in a virtual machine environment in order to take full advantage of multi-threaded applications in a virtual machine.
  
• Network Load Balancing. Hyper-V includes new virtual switch capabilities, enabling the configuration of Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) Service to balance load across virtual machines on different servers.
  
• Virtual Machine Snapshot. Hyper-V provides the ability to take snapshots of a running virtual machine so you can easily revert to a previous state, and improve the overall backup and recoverability solution.
  
• Scalability. Supporting multiple processors and cores at the host level and with improved memory access within virtual machines, it is possible to scale the virtual environment to support a greater number of virtual machines within a given host. And quick migration permits scalability across multiple hosts.

Virtualization in your Server Room

Virtual Machine technology is an exciting technology that has the ability to transform and alter the cost of IT infrastructure if implemented correctly. Ensuring an efficient use of hardware, and implementation of management solutions for virtual machines can help an organization get an improved position on the total cost of ownership of the virtual solution. If your company is considering going virtual for any of the reasons outlined in this article and you have questions or if you require implementation or support, please contact Broadview Networks.

Managing public DNS records and hosting the service records can sometimes be confusing; making changes usually involves contacting a DNS host and might involve contacting a Domain Registrar if there are changes required.

Do you need to make changes?

As discussed last month, there are many different types of DNS records, and there are times when you might want or need to make changes to public records. Commonly, DNS changes are needed when your business changes Internet Service Providers (ISP's), or when you are adding a new service or preparing to perform a migration of some kind that will affect your company website or email.

For example, if your business is planning the migration of email services from your ISP to an internally hosted email server such as Exchange Server inside your network, you will have to make a change to your domain's MX record to reflect the move of the mail service. Changing the MX record hosted at your DNS Host enables other computers on the internet to find your new mail server, thereby allowing delivery of mail for your domain to your mail server. If your DNS record wasn't changed, email for your business would never find your new server.

In another example, it is typically common to modify existing records when making changes to services like websites – when you are making changes to your company's website that involve moving the site from one server to another (or from one host to another), modifying existing records are necessary.

Who do you contact?

The DNS Host for any domain is the organization who manages the Name Servers that are authoritative for that domain. Frequently, DNS hosting is provided by the same company that performed the Domain Registration (when you purchased your domain). It is very common for the company's Internet Service Provider (ISP) to host DNS as part of the internet service, especially when the service is "business class".

After determining where your DNS is hosted, contacting the DNS Host will provide you with their preferred method of ordering changes. For some hosts, emailing a request to their DNS Hosting team is the fastest and easiest way to make changes (common when your host is an ISP). Other hosts provide a web-based interface that allows you to securely log in and manage your DNS records whenever you want. Either way, changes made to your domain DNS entries require secure access – after all, you wouldn't want just anyone to be able to make changes to your domain records, would you?

How fast does it happen?

Changes made to your DNS entries are typically made immediately; it takes time, however, for your current records to expire on any system that has recently cached a copy of your DNS entries. If a record is cached, it is saved for a period of time that might extend as long as a few days. For this reason, when planning any changes to your internet service or web hosting arrangements, it is wise to make considerations for ordering the changes to your DNS records – planning ahead can help ensure a smooth transition from one service to another which can avoid issues with mail delivery or website failures.

How can Broadview Media Help?

Broadview Media can coordinate domain name registrations and we can host public DNS records for any new domain registration or for any transferred domain name – if your domain is already hosted with another DNS host, Broadview Media can assist in the transfer of your records to our managed DNS servers. For more information about new domain registrations or DNS hosting questions, please contact Broadview Media.