They say that time flies when you're having fun. The last 10 years have been both fun and challenging in great ways. The technology industry has changed so much since 2003. We have seen mainstream adoption of virtualization and the birth of the mobile platform. IT has changed and MCS has changed with it, but the fundamentals of our business remain the same. Our mission is to assist companies with IT or programming projects with a personal touch.
 

Microsoft has done away with Small Business Server. Over the last couple of years, the MCS tech team has recommended that small businesses move away from Small Business Server and into Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard. Small Business Server has always seemed to to a little temperamental. For most users, SBS was overkill and came preinstalled with SharePoint and Exchange. Best practices would lead us to believe that if you don't need something on your server then don't install it, but SBS forced the issue.

On, October 26th, 2012 Microsoft will officially release its new flagship OS. What does that mean for the business user? For one, PCs will start to have this OS pre-installed when shipped. For users that still want Windows 7, Microsoft will allow them to downgrade but they don't have to make that process easy. Users will have to find installation media that most likely will not ship with the PC. There will also most likely be activation hassles to deal with.
 

All MCS hosted services are now running on a double conversion power system. Better voltage = happier servers. MCS completed the upgrades last night to replace an aged line interactive system. What's the difference between a line interactive and double conversion UPS you may ask. Well, it all comes down to cleanliness of power delivered to the equipment.

As technology expands, the need to monitor it all increases as well. They say that knowing is half the battle, but we say, "Why should knowing be a battle?" Nagios Enterprises offers Nagios Core and Nagios XI as their main products. The Core version is free and open source while XI comes with support, updates, more features, and a much simpler interface for adding and maintaining your monitored services. We have recently transitioned from Nagios Core to XI for our own data center and assisted other enterprises do the same.

Last week IBM made a once in a decade announcement. They unveiled their PureSystems platform that simplifies enterprise cloud infrastructure. Expert integrated systems fundamentally change the experience and economics of IT with built-in expertise, integration by design and a simplified experience. This means that new deployments are up in a matter of hours instead of months and overburdened IT staff can get out of the weeds and become more productive. Checkout thinkMCS.com/ibm for more information.

Windstream has completed its acquisition of Paetec. As a Paetec master agent, MCS will still be able to provide the same Paetec services with little immediate change. As of right now, the biggest change is that of branding. The Paetec name is now Windstream. MCS will continue to provide telecommunications services from Windstream as well as AT&T, Comcast, Mediacom, Sprint, Global Crossing, Level 3, and others.

Get the latest news and information by subscribing to our twitter feed. Our hosting customers should follow us to get the most up to date service information. In the event of a network outage, information will be relayed via twitter. In addition, you can keep up to date on the latest business technology trends. As we add service offerings, we will tweet about them to keep you informed as to what is on the horizon from MCS.