Promedia Technology Services, Inc. has recently completed certification to become a Cisco TelePresence Video Express Authorized Technology Provider (ATP). The ATP Program is an invitation-only program involving Cisco partners who possess top-notch partner qualifications. Promedia has completed all of the necessary training programs and is now in a position to deploy Cisco’s complete TelePresence suite of products. Cisco Telepresence is a dynamic video conferencing solution that can allow for remote collaboration and increased flexibility to get the most out of your employees or bring unique learning opportunities to your students.

The goal of this Cisco program is to focus on providing a new way of working, in which everyone everywhere can be more productive through face-to-face collaboration with TelePresence Video solutions. This new certification allows Promedia’s Collaboration division to design and deploy complex TelePresence solutions unique to each environment in an effort to meet this goal. TelePresence provides high quality face-to-face interaction between remote locations, saving time and money, and making it far easier to successfully collaborate. This is a system that translates very easily to both a business and academic environment, providing opportunities to bring people together and share ideas like never before.  Promedia is excited to be in a position to offer its customers the ability to work and learn together, no matter where they are.

Promedia Technology Services, Inc. Named Americas Academic Partner of the Year Award Winner at VMware Partner Exchange 2012

Partners Across the Globe Acknowledged for Excellence in Delivering VMware Virtualization and Cloud Solutions

Feb. 15, 2012 — Promedia Technology Services, Inc. today announced that it has been named the Americas recipient of a VMware Partner Network Award in the Academic Partner of the Year category by VMware.  The award was presented at VMware Partner Exchange 2012, VMware’s annual partner event, on Feb. 14 in Las Vegas.

“We are proud to acknowledge the achievements made in 2011 by members of the VMware partner ecosystem and congratulate Promedia Technology Services, Inc. on winning a VMware Partner Network Award,” said Doug Smith, vice president, global partner strategy and operations, VMware. “Partners worldwide assemble at VMware Partner Exchange to become equipped with the tools and knowledge needed to further realize the benefits of virtualization and cloud computing – making this the leading global event for partners seeking peer-to-peer training, education and networking to enhance their business strategies and distinguish their position in the marketplace. VMware partners continue to be the foundation of our business and we look forward to the future successes of Promedia in 2012, as well as the rest of our partner ecosystem.”

“Promedia is honored to accept this award and is dedicated to creating awareness of VMware virtualization and cloud computing solutions that can enable New Jersey academics to save money, ease administration, decrease downtime and focus on their core competency, which is educating their students,” said Gene Murphy, President, Promedia Technology Services, Inc.

Partner recipients of a VMware Partner Network Award in the Americas were acknowledged by VMware in 28 categories for their excellence in performance and distinctive achievements during 2011:

• SMB Partner of the Year
• Solution Provider of the Year
• Government Partner of the Year
• Academic Partner of the Year
• Infrastructure Virtualization Partner of the Year
• Business Continuity Partner of the Year
• Desktop Partner of the Year
• Training (VATC) Partner of the Year
• Distributor of the Year
• Emerging Market Partner of the Year
• Cloud Application Platform Partner of the Year
• Emerging Products Partner of the Year
• VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP) Partner of the Year
• Systems Integrator of the Year
• Partner Executive MVP
• Corporate Reseller of the Year
• National Partner of the Year
• Rising Star of the Year
• LATAM Distributor of the Year
• LATAM Education (VATC) Partner of the Year
• LATAM Solution Provider of the Year
• LATAM Government Partner of the Year
• LATAM Systems Integrator Partner of the Year
• LATAM Best Performance of the Year
• Brazil Solution Provider of the Year
• Mexico Solution Provider of the Year
• NOLA Solution Provider of the Year
• SOLA Solution Provider of the Year

About VMware Partner Exchange 2012

VMware Partner Exchange 2012 is the leading global event for virtualization and cloud partners, bringing thousands of members from the VMware partner ecosystem together to discuss the future of the industry. With more than 170 breakout sessions and an extensive exhibitor pavilion, partners gain valuable insight on how to leverage new technologies to deliver next generation enterprise hybrid cloud solutions to customers. To learn more about VMware Partner Exchange visit www.vmwarepartnerexchange.com

About Promedia Technology Services, Inc.

Promedia Technology Services, Inc.  has adopted Virtualization as one of its core technologies, delivering these solutions to the academic vertical.  Over the past year Promedia has been able to leverage an Enterprise License Agreement created with NJEDge (a New Jersey Higher Education Consortium) to bring a competitive pricing model for VMware licensing and services in New Jersey to these institutions.  This agreement has served as a purchasing vehicle for these institutions, eliminating the lengthy bid process enabling them to implement virtualization solutions on demand.  Promedia and NJEDge have extended this agreement to encompass the K-12 subset of New Jersey’s Academics by including the NJSBA (New Jersey School Boards Association).  This will enable every K-12 district in New Jersey to start a Virtualization strategy.  Currently the agreement has had approximately 2 million dollars of  VMware licensing and services flow through it since its inception 1 year ago.  It has saved academic institutions on average 30% on the licensing costs.  Promedia has seen a mixture of over 30+ institutions throughout the state stand up Virtual environments ranging from large Server Consolidation and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure deployments to  Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery solutions. Promedia’s goal is to continue to increase awareness of the cost savings and benefits of VMware’s solutions to the Academic vertical.  Seminars and Educational series are continuously being delivered to the academic community both on a high level (CIO, Superintendent, Business Administrator) and a technical level (Network Administrators, Systems Administrators, Technicians) to increase awareness of the Enterprise License Agreement and the benefits of VMware Virtualization.  Our team of experienced engineers and account managers have over 25 VMware certifications (VCP, VSP, VTSP) enabling Promedia to achieve VMware Competencies in Business Continuity, Desktop Virtualization, and Infrastructure Virtualization.   The solutions Promedia is delivering enable New Jersey Academics to save money, ease administration, decrease downtime, and focus on their core competency which is educating their students. >

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Contacts:

Victor Falconieri

Marketing Manager

Promedia Technology Services, Inc.

marketing@promedianj.com

Rumson Coutry Day School is a private K-8 institution located in Rumson, NJ that has had a longstanding relationship with Promedia. Over the course of the relationship, Promedia has helped Rumson in its efforts to grow. Since 2008, Promedia has provided ProTecht Service Solutions to Rumson Country Day as well as completing several on-site upgrades to their infrastructure. In 2009, as the school added a new wing, Promedia provided extensive expertise in cabling, network infrastructure, VoIP, wireless technology, and physical security. Then in 2010, Promedia won a bid to build up a complete new infrastructure for the school, including cabling infrastructure as well as a completely revamped and upgraded data center. Solutions employed in this infrastructure upgrade included Cisco switches, Cisco wireless, upgraded VoIP technology, and ONSSI physical security solutions.

To go along with these extensive projects, Promedia has been providing managed services through the ProTecht Service Solutions division since the beginning of the relationship with Rumson Country Day. Initially, Rumson contracted Promedia’s managed services to provide on-site support twice a month, mostly for their Windows environment. As the relationship matured, Promedia was able to show their expertise and build a relationship of collaboration and trust with the school. This past October, Rumson showed their belief in the benefits of ProTecht Services by contracting Promedia to provide another 5 years of managed services, which has evolved to include not just the on-site visits but extensive monitoring and help desk services as well. These help desk services allow Rumson’s staff to call upon Promedia’s expertise and resources at any time for any necessary support. Promedia is constantly monitoring Rumson Country Day’s environment. As a result of this any problems or issues that Rumson may face, as a valued managed services customer, receive next-day priority assessment and service to make sure their network is able to run smoothly.

Dana Feldman, the Technology Director for Rumson, said, “Promedia’s people are what have made this such a valuable relationship. Not only do they provide great service, but I have never been unhappy with the way a Promedia employee has worked with us. They are knowledgeable, friendly, and they have called with concerns, ready to fix problems in our system before we even knew that the problems were there.”

“ProTecht for us takes the place of a person. We don’t have a full time tech support staff, so managed services for us is like having another person there at all times watching over our environment. “

Promedia Technology Services recently completed a virtualization project for the school district of North Arlington. With just under 2,000 students and over 120 classroom teachers, the school district heavily relies on their network infrastructure to provide 21st century learning environment network resources such as student and staff central databases, mail servers, file servers and many other web and applications servers. This project encompassed an effort to decrease the North Arlington Data Center physical servers while deploying VMware, Cisco and NetApp solutions to create a first class virtualization platform.

To begin the project, a VMware capacity planner test was performed on the existing server devices. This gave Promedia engineers the ability to gauge the status of the current configuration, decide how a virtualization solution could bedeployed to aid with server consolidation, and make the necessary improvements to allow the virtual infrastructure to run at an optimal level.

Promedia employed their expertise after recently becoming the 1st Cisco partner in the East and 8th in the nation to achieve the Data Center Architecture specialization.

North Arlington housed a great number of physical servers in their High School Data Center before undertaking this project. Deploying Cisco UCS C200 Series UCS servers with Netapp SAN storage, Promedia was able to reduce these legacy physical servers down to a 2+1 ESX physical server architecture. With this three physical server model, Promedia ensured a deployment of 20+ virtual servers per physical ESX host. This allowed for the virtualization of domain controllers, file servers, email servers and various other web and applications servers.

As a result, North Arlington will receive the many benefits of decreasing the hardware footprint in their data center. By moving to virtualization, the district cut costs not only on hardware purchasing and upkeep, but also on energy spending and administration. Legacy physical server environments become a costly expense leaving cooling to become the number one concern for schools. By cutting the physical environment in more than half, Promedia was able to present North Arlington with a much more cost effective solution to providing critical and necessary network resources for their students and staff.

Mike Asmus, the Technology Director for North Arlington said, “We realized we needed to update our network. The servers that we had in place were old, and they took up a lot of space and a lot of power. We considered a few different options to address this, and decided virtualization was the way to go. Promedia has a wealth of knowledge and experience with virtualization through VMware software, so we knew they could execute a project like this successfully.”

North Arlington Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Oliver Stringham indicated, “Executing network solutions that are cost effective and economize our tight facilities infrastructure are key to our current and future plans for student success. The problem solving skills of Director of Technology, Mr. Asmus, and our long standing network relationship with Promedia continue to collaboratively work to successfully visualize our goals.”

This new infrastructure of ESX host servers running virtual machines is achieved through the use of VMware vSphere technology. This technology gives an institution the ability to run multiple different types of applications and software on a single physical server. The data and applications maintained separately on many different legacy physical servers are consolidated onto a much smaller amount of hardware fully utilizing the device resources. This technology also allows the systems to be controlled seamlessly from a single console easing management and streamlining operations.

In addition to the Cisco UCS C200 Servers and VMware technology, a NetApp storage area network was deployed to store all of the virtual servers and data. The NetApp SAN provides a fully redundant system of data storage and backup, which aids in the prevention of downtime of critical applications and data. To combat failures, the vSphere technology, in conjunction with the SAN, can automatically move all of the virtual machines on the failed node to the other ESX host member server. This allows network resource continuity of all virtual servers without any work stoppage.

With the virtualization project in process, it was an ideal time for Promedia to upgrade North Arlington’s Active Directory Infrastructure and Microsoft Exchange Server to their newest editions, leveraging all of the new features and functionality. These applications will run inside the new virtualized environment providing easy access and administration with the capability to deploy new virtual servers when necessary. After finalizing the deployment, Promedia concluded this project by providing North Arlington IT with training to smooth the transition to the new virtual infrastructure.

Summer is always a busy time for Promedia Technology Services, Inc. As schools are out of session, it is prime time to employ technology solutions for K-12 school districts. One recently completed project by Promedia was the installation and deployment of a new wireless network solution for Mater Dei Prep. Mater Dei Prep is a private Catholic prepatory high school that is part of a 64 acre campus located in Middletown, NJ.

Promedia presented a robust technical solution to Mater Dei Prep, and was able to differentiate itself from other companies in several important ways. Advanced certifications and high level partner status with industry leading manufacturers such as Cisco and Microsoft enable Promedia to deliver quality technology solutions to clients in the K-12 marketplace. These certifications and a detailed network architecture design were instrumental for Promedia to secure Mater Dei Prep’s project work order.

Prior to receiving Mater Dei Prep’s approval to install a new wireless network, Promedia’s IT engineers, architectural designers and specialists conducted a walkthrough of the campus. This walkthrough provided an opportunity to complete an assessment of the wireless network (strengths and weaknesses) and provide suggestions and recommendations that included enhanced systems security and increased broadband speed that would benefit Mater Dei Prep. Following the detailed assessment, Promedia’s team of engineers developed the optimal design and configuration for the new wireless network that would deliver the best possible solution for Mater Dei Prep. The proposed configuration included 44 network access points, which represented one access point per classroom. In a meeting with Mr. Jeff Platenyk – Director of Technology and Mr. Steve Sciarappa – Principal, Promedia was able to effectively communicate the features and benefits that would be realized, once the proposed wireless upgrade was implemented.

Mater Dei Prep currently provides a tablet PC to each student. This 1 to 1 tablet PC program has been in place for 5 years. The tablet PC and embedded software provides students with the applications and programs that are used during their learning years at Mater Dei Prep.

Mater Dei Prep decided to upgrade their wireless network once they realized that the proliferation of educational apps in the cloud and the growing use of the internet in education would over time cause their network to be in jeopardy. Promedia configured a wireless network that allows all Mater Dei Prep students to take full advantage of their powerful devices in every classroom throughout the school.

In addition to the tablet PCs, Mater Dei Prep maintains several network printers that are tied to the wireless network. Through the new wireless network, students can choose to print a document from anywhere in the school and pick up their paper copies at a designated location. Another important element that was a part of Mater Dei Prep’s decision making process was Promedia made sure that the proposed network was highly scalable to allow for future wireless technologies.

Mr. Platenyk said, “Promedia was instrumental in providing our School with a top tier wireless network architectural design and solution. We’re pleased to have Promedia as a partner, as their entire team is all about customer focus and quality results.”

Ultimately, Promedia upgraded not only the wireless system, but also the network switches accompanied by a Cisco wireless controller for monitoring and managing the new wireless network. Cisco technologies were used in all of these critical areas. Promedia leverage it’s expertise and advanced certifications in Cisco technologies to deliver a reliable, seamless and efficient wireless network. One of the key facets of the project was the consolidation and reduction of the number of switches Mater Dei Prep required. Post implementation, Mater Dei Prep has appreciated a cost savings and streamlined their network for the benefit of its 350 plus students and faculty team.

One additional element of this project was Promedia’s ability to utilize all of its relationships to bring the best solutions to Mater Dei Prep at the best price point. Promedia was able to deliver competitive financing for this project which allowed Mater Dei Prep to stay within their budget while providing them with a top tier wireless solution.

In summary, Promedia’s technical expertise and excellent customer service came together to provide a positive experience in upgrading Mater Dei Prep’s network.

“We are pleased to have discovered and selected Promedia Technology Services, Inc. for this critical project. As our student body, faculty and administration teams continue to grow, so does our technology base need to expand. Finding a quality preferred vendor was indeed a great challenge and in the end our school was rewarded by making the right vendor choice. Promedia delivered what we asked for, and we look forward to a long lasting partnership,” said Mr. Platenyk.

Promedia’s NJEDge VMware Enterprise licensing agreement has been featured in the May/June edition of the NJSBA school leader magazine.  This article emphasizes the benefits of adopting virtualization technologies for New Jersey school districts.  It breaks down the features and benefits of virtualizing both you server infrastructure and your desktops.

Link to Article: Virtualization Solutions, Real Savings

Promedia Technology Services, Inc. has just been recognized for receiving the highest possible distinction that a partner can achieve within the Cisco Channel Partner Program. Through the use of their Cisco Partner Access Online tool, Cisco is able to assess partner performance based on a customer satisfaction rating. As of the last measurement period, Cisco has recognized that Promedia has been able to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction. A special star under the Promedia name in Cisco’s Partner Locator indicates this high level of service and satisfaction to customers, Cisco personnel, and other partners. Promedia is honored to accept this distinction and will strive to continue to provide excellent service to all of our clients in the future.

Please take a look at the press release for this agreement:

Press Release – May 5th, 2011