1. How Can Exiis Corporation help keep down the cost of IT? Exiis Corporation is a team of highly trained, experienced, Microsoft and Cisco Certified Professionals. Professionals who receive constant training and updates on new products and technologies are able to deliver cost-effective solutions with less down-time and less billing hours than many of our competitors.
2. How much should I budget? Exiis Corporation’s unique “Pay-As-You-Go” billing model allows you to determine the exact amount of time you want to invest into your IT support budget without the need of costly recurring monthly contracts and high retainer fees. You pay only for the project at hand with no additional obligation from your organization.
3. Do you support mixed network environments? Our team consists of support professionals from a variety of disciplines including: Linux, UNIX, Sun Solaris, Macintosh, and Oracle. You are not limited solely to a single operating system. Exiis Corporation is able to integrate all these platforms into your environment utilizing a number of tools and network services.
4. Our network is constantly going “down”; what do you suggest? Network monitoring is an important aspect of any information technology environment. Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) is an ideal, enterprise-class monitoring tool that keeps a constant watch over your entire network, reporting to a central management console. Built-in and customizable agents allow alerts to be issued whenever there is a potential problem on your network, allowing network support professionals to respond proactively before a mission-critical event occurs.
5. How can you assist us when moving to a new facility? Moving to a new facility is always an excellent time to re-evaluate your current infrastructure requirements. Our Microsoft and Cisco Certified network engineers can assist you in the designing, implementing, and deploying your new infrastructure—assisting in matters such as wireless, networks, IP Telephony, and integrated, Unified Messaging systems.
6. Do you offer security consulting services? Security is a huge concern for most network administrators, especially when the network consists of mixed operating systems such as: Linux, UNIX, Macintosh, Solaris, and Windows. Specially certified CISM Network Professionals can assist in evaluating your network environment, discover special legal and regulatory compliance issues, and assist in making your network safe, secure, compliant.
7. Do you offer Data Center services? We offer a wide array of Data Center Services from Web hosting solutions, Microsoft Exchange hosting, and SharePoint hosting services. In addition to these very popular application services, we can also offer professional fault tolerant solutions and high availability to other mission-critical server applications.
8. What other Security Services do you offer? Exiis Corporation offers extensive security audits, assessments, and solutions from CISSP Security Consultants, Cisco Certified CCIP, and Microsoft Certified Security specialists. From a local infrastructure standpoint, we can provide advanced configuration of Cisco routers, Barracuda Spam Filtering, Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server, and a host of other anti-virus, spam, and firewall devices. We provide “best practice” recommendations for network management, security, authentication, Active Directory, and physical security practices.
9. Do you offer custom SharePoint Server solutions? We have extensive experience with the planning, implementation, and deployment of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) offerings. Microsoft SharePoint services are used on a daily basis at Exiis Corporation—we literally know SharePoint inside-out. When it comes to custom workflows, Business Data Catalog, regulatory compliance and custom branding—no one touches and pushes SharePoint to its limits as much as our development team at Exiis Corporation.
10. How can we be sure our UNIX environment is secure? Securing your UNIX environment is a bit trickier than a Windows environment because system administrators can make core changes to the operating system—changes they may not know caused an issue. The lack of a “centralized” update center and a loose group of UNIX administrators attempting to push out security updates as they occur is often overlooked by administrators on a day-to-day basis. Because of these variables and lack of centralized knowledge sharing, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has granted CISSP Certified Professionals with specific credentials in the area of Linux and UNIX security practices. By providing your organization with these certified professionals, your UNIX environment will be assessed utilizing the most complex and up-to-date tools, methodologies, and best practice recommendations.
11. What considerations are taken into account when securing a network environment? Keep in mind all network security practices share common requirements. For example, by following the items listed, your network will be very safe and secure—with the exception of operating system specific “known issues”, almost all network infrastructures follow these guidelines:
a. Access Control and Auditing
b. Accountability (Ethics, Instigations, Legal)
c. Administration
d. Application Development (Secure Code)
e. Architecture (LAN/WAN/Telco)
f. Audits
g. Continuity Planning
h. Data Encryption
i. Operations Security (Processes)
j. Password Requirements
k. Physical Security
12. What are your communication processes for reporting on project status? Exiis Corporation has an extensive project management methodology that provides for advanced communications between the client and the company. Built upon Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) Products and Technologies, together with Microsoft Customer Relations Manager (CRM), each client is assigned their very own SharePoint portal site where they can log on and view project status, open and closed cases, invoicing, network information, computer repairs and more. By centralizing all work into a single SharePoint Portal site, all engineers can review work performed in the past, continue work on open items, and provide documentation of all work performed. The centralized document library allows for uploading screen shots, white papers, and other items to store and communication with the client 24/7. By providing these tools, the process of knowledge transfer to the client is completely automated and available to them whenever they need it the most.
13. What type of consulting and support services do you offer for larger organizations? Exiis Corporation offers many benefits to larger organizations where network administrators and managers may be local subject experts on the applications they support but may need additional assistance in applications they do not support on a daily basis. By augmenting additional knowledge requirements, larger organizations can utilize our services when they need them the most, without the need to hire additional, full-time administrators for a short-term project. Some of the areas Exiis Corporation can better assist larger organizations are:
a. Active Directory Planning, Support, Repair
b. Continuity Planning and Availability
c. Data Center Resources and Hosting
d. Disaster and Recovery Planning and Services
e. Fault-Tolerant Network Solutions
f. Microsoft Customer Relations Manager (CRM)
g. Microsoft Exchange Server, Planning, Deploying, Migrating, Upgrades
h. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
i. Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM)
j. Microsoft SQL Server
k. Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS)
l. Microsoft Windows Server Integration
m. Infrastructure Build-outs, expansions, moves
n. Network Management and Security
o. Troubleshooting of complex routing issues, Cisco products, network balancing