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Letter From CEO - Vic Shepherd
For many of us, summer is the time to take vacations and catch up on our rest and relaxation. We hope you found time to take a break over the past few months as we now move into the busy final half of 2004.
In this issue of Connected!, we highlight how a West Michigan brokerage firm maximized its IT resources to focus on helping customers make the best financial decisions. We also feature an important update on Microsoft's Windows XP security patch and how your organization can use it to protect your systems.
We appreciate your business, and we look forward to helping your business prosper through the rest of 2004.
Vic Shepherd
President & CEO
Business Solution - Security and Speed Case Study: Centennial Securities
Centennial Securities (www.centennialsec.com) is West Michigan's largest independent brokerage firm, specializing in needs of the individual investor. Centennial's success in serving individual customers depends on having a safe environment for its network and a reliable, secure connection to the Internet.
The company was internally managing its WAN and outside connections. As the company upgraded their connectivity from dialup to ISDN, management realized that it could better serve its customers' financial needs by outsourcing these functions.
"We are here to help individual investors with their financial needs," said William C. Alsover, chairman of Centennial. "Being unable to trade or serve our customers due to downtime is simply out of the question. We would prefer to spend our time on what we do best - helping our clients with their financial needs. We needed a company which spent their full time on technology issues."
Centennial begin investigating options to provide reliable Internet connectivity as well as a stable home for its network and Internet connections. In addition, Centennial required a secure environment and firewall to protect the financial information of its customers under strict requirements of the financial services industry.
Finally, Centennial required a flexible solution that allowed an outside IT vender to manage the network and the company-owned T1 connections.
Alsover said that Centennial looked at other vendors, but found none were able offer solutions as flexible and comprehensive as those from EagleNet.
"We were looking for a local provider that had a wide range of services, and kept up on changes within the market," he said. "When we began investigating, we found EagleNet could provide our business with what we were looking for."
EagleNet began serving Centennial providing Internet connectivity via an ISDN line and email. Today, EagleNet provides full co-location services for the company's WAN and also maintains a secure firewall for Centennial's T-1 Internet connection.
"We knew that Centennial needed a flexible solution to meet its needs," said Vic Shepherd, EagleNet CEO. "In addition, they required the best security available for their network, as well as completely reliable and secure connections to the Internet."
Shepherd said he was confident EagleNet could handle Centennial's stringent requirements for connectivity because EagleNet's Internet backbone has never been down. With three redundant fiber connections to the Internet, EagleNet can quickly reroute data in the event one provider - or even two - have problems.
In addition, EagleNet has multiple power backup systems, including a high-capacity mini-turbine generator on-site to provide electricity in the event of extended power outages.
"I found that the EagleNet staff was willing to spend the time to set up our system, and work with our people to get it functioning properly," said Alsover. "We would recommend EagleNet to any company with similar needs."
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