North Carolina – January Seminar Series (Raleigh/Durham & Charlotte)

REGISTER TODAY:  http://mdgi.com/conquest247/Conquest247_Jan2014_Seminars_Invite.pdf

Communicating is the one thing we do more than anything else.  We speak with each other either in person or via some mediated technology like telephone, voice, IM, text and video chat.  We create and send emails.  We produce presentations that we deliver via networked conferencing systems.  More than ever our people are away from the office working from home, hotels, customer sites, soccer fields, and the beach and everywhere in between.  The technologies that enable all of this communication must reach farther, be more readily available, and also must be more secure than ever before.

Interested in learning the true meaning of “doing more for less”?   Join us for this free seminar and learn how new technology simplifies your business needs while decreasing risk and dramatically reducing the overall cost of doing business.

CONTROL COSTS – DRIVE RESULTS – GET CONNECTED – FOCUS ON YOUR BUSINESS

• Dramatically reduce communications costs (Audio / Video / Web Conferencing / Phone System)
• Transform how your teams communicate and collaborate internally as well as with customers and partners.
• Use familiar tools like Microsoft® Office to do more and make it easier for team members to reach out to each other and get the answers they need to move the business forward.
• Reduce spend on IT infrastructure and support by consolidating communications systems and leveraging the cloud.
• Get even more value out of the Microsoft® Cloud Platform – Office 365.
• Extend the value of your existing Microsoft software investments
• On-board and retain valued employees by providing the tools they “expect” to use in today’s work environment.
• Benefit from added security, reliability, compliance and compatibility.   

Your Office In Your Pocket

Fun fact: your smartphone contains more computing power than the entire Apollo program used to put astronauts on the moon. That kind of power in your pocket means more than just playing Candy Crush: it’s the means by which technology is finally enabling business to move out of the cubicle and into the pocket office revolution—the most disruptive change to work since replaceable parts.

Since the industrial revolution, most business has been conducted in large bureaucratic settings. And there was good reason for that. Managers needed to be physically close to assembly line workers, and later VPs of companies needed to be able to roam cubicles and give out ad hoc assignments.

Information also needed to be centralized and controlled to make sure nothing was lost or stolen. Businesses ran fairly well but individual productivity was certainly held back.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, we were promised a paperless office yet technology wasn’t quite ready to handle the demands of enterprises, governments, or universities. As we all remember, hundreds if not thousands of companies rushed into the “tech bubble” claiming to have made the breakthroughs that would change everything. Almost all of these promises went unfulfilled. The technology just wasn’t there yet.

But today we are experiencing a mobility revolution that is changing the way business is conducted in almost every industry. Technology is finally ready to truly fulfill its promise to improve productivity. Seamless digital communications tools are enabling coworkers scattered around the world to conduct truly global business. Enterprise-level mobile security is enabling workers to brainstorm and collaborate in real time without the fear of data loss.

Some companies are taking advantage of this sea of change while others, slow to adapt, are being left behind or closing up shop.

The pocket office is about more than just mobility. It is a massive disruption of business-as-usual for four big reasons. Embracing the pocket office gives your business:

• Anytime, anywhere access, seamlessly across all devices
• Productivity apps that allow for content creation as well as consumption
• Full compatibility with desktop-based office suite
• Enterprise level management and security

With these tools businesses both large and small can finally give their employees the ability to work productively from anywhere, anytime. And all with tools that fit in your pocket, talk about a revolution…

Let’s face it, communicating is the one thing we do more than anything else.  We speak with each other either in person or via some mediated technology like telephone, voice, IM, text or even video chat.  We create and send emails.  We produce presentations that we deliver via networked conferencing systems.  More than ever our people are away from the office working from home, hotels, customer sites, ball fields, the beach and a million other places.  The technologies that enable all of this communication must reach farther, be more readily available and also be more secure than ever before. 

No matter what industry you are in, the mobility-enabled pocket office revolution will dramatically change the way you (or your competitors) do business. This is what disruptive change in the workplace looks like: the ability to put the entire means of production into devices the size of your wallet—or that even fit in your wallet.

The mission of ConQuest Technology Services is to provide and support these technologies, constantly improving upon how well we can adapt them to each clients’ requirements, and their future needs to help them identify and innovate new ways in which mediated communication technologies can drive new business opportunities and greater success.

Debbie Brandt

Marketing Manager

ConQuest Technology Services

 

Microsoft Lync Overview

 

Microsoft Lync is an enterprise-ready unified communications platform. Lync connects people everywhere, on Windows 8 and other operating systems including mobile devices, as part of their everyday productivity experience. Lync provides our customers a consistent, single client experience for presence, instant messaging, voice, video and a great meeting experience.   Many of our customers appreciate that Lync users can connect to anyone on Skype, enabling rich communication with hundreds of millions of people around the world.

How it works

Work Anywhere

Lync allows our customers to communicate securely and stay connected with colleagues and their customers, from virtually wherever they chose to work.

Lync across Devices

Our customers’ employees can switch among devices as they choose based on their needs. Lync offers familiar and consistent user experience across PC, phone, browser and tablets.

Connected Experiences

Lync connects millions of people, their communications and the applications they use every day – together. This is particularly helpful to our customers as many have national as well as global employees and customers.  Multiparty HD video conferencing brings life and expression to Lync Meetings.  This is a useful feature because road warriors feel more engaged in meetings.

Simpler to Manage

Lync is a dependable platform for all real-time communications. A single system reduces complexity in Enterprise IT.  This allows our customers to remain focused on doing business and not worrying about their infrastructure.

Deployment Flexibility

ConQuest Technology Services allows customers who are using Lync to reach their vision of unified communications – on their timeline following their specific blueprint.

Lync Server Features

Lync Unified Client	Lync 2013 provides a single,   unified client for real-time communications, including voice and video calls,   Lync Meetings, presence, instant messaging, and persistent chat. Having a   single UC client application instead of multiple applications simplifies   deployment, adoption, and support.
Lync Windows 8 App	Lync is optimized for touch on   Windows 8 (both x86-based Windows8 and Windows RT) and takes advantage of   Windows 8 “touch first” capabilities to provide fast, natural,   hands-on control of communications across a variety of devices and architectures.
Lync Web App	The Lync Web App allows PC and   Mac users to join a Lync Meeting from within an HTML5-based browser, and   delivers a full Lync meeting experience, including multiparty HD video, voice   over IP, instant messaging, desktop, application, and PowerPoint sharing.
Lync Mobile Clients	Lync Mobile Clients are   available for Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, and Android.
Single Click Conference Join	Joining a Lync Meeting   requires only a single click or touch, whether from an Outlook meeting   reminder on a Windows PC or from the calendar or meeting pane on Windows   Phone, iOS, and Android devices.
Presence	See the availability status of   a contact with visual presence indicators. New presence states include:   Presenter (while laptop is connected to a projector) and Working Elsewhere   (to indicate physically out of the office yet working).
Contact Card	A dynamic card that displays a   contact’s high resolution photo, their presence, status note, location and   organizational details and is consistent across Microsoft Office   applications.
Lync Meeting	Previously known as   “online meeting”, Lync Meetings provide capabilities to interact   with people through multiparty HD video, audio, instant messaging, and   content sharing.
Meeting View	Meeting View options are   designed to bring content and people together while optimizing the Lync   Meeting experience for every individual participant’s needs. The Meeting View   is selected by the participant.
Multiparty HD Video Gallery	Continuous view of multiple HD   video streams or contact card photos in conference displayed in a gallery   format. Photos replace active speaker video when video is unavailable.   Gallery controls enable participants to select video stream of interest, see   participant name and identify active speakers.
Persistent Chat	Organize or participate in   topic based virtual rooms where workgroups or designated colleagues meet and   collaborate in real-time. Discussions are searchable and persist over time   enabling efficient information sharing.
OneNote Share	OneNote Share allows users to   create and share OneNote digital meeting notes within a Lync Meeting,   reducing possible errors caused by later transcription and simplifying   communication and follow-up.
Exchange Archiving	Using the Exchange Online   archiving, you can store all you emails, instant messages and Lync Online   meeting contents, then easily search them using Exchange e-Discovery   compliance.
Lync Federation	Lync Federation extends   unified communications securely over the Internet to customers, suppliers,   and partners using Lync.
Skype Connectivity	Skype Connectivity enables   presence sharing, instant messaging (IM), and voice calling with the hundreds   of millions of people around the world who use Skype.
Server Role Consolidation	Lync can reduce the number of   server roles by co-locating roles which were previously deployed or managed   separately, allowing for simplified deployment and management.
Scale and High Availability   Improvements	Lync Server front-end   architecture has been redesigned allowing a larger number of active users in   one pool while improving high availability capabilities that can help lower   total cost of ownership.
Active Monitoring	Active Monitoring gives Lync   administrators the ability to monitor pools, servers, networks across   different datacenters through the public internet.

 

More and more of our customers are looking for solutions that allow them to connect anytime, from anywhere and most importantly using any device.  Today everyone has their own personal choice of mobile devices – with Lync our customers can meet their business needs and provide alternatives to their employees that enable them to stay connected and productive.

 

Tom Sullivan

Director of Sales

ConQuest Technology Services

“THE LAWYER OF THE FUTURE”

As the oldest and largest criminal defense law firm in Florida with over 200 years of combined experience, Robbins, Tunkey, Ross PA knew that it was time to investigate their options related to leveraging evolving technology to better serve their clients.

For the past 36 years they have defended client’s charges with the full range of state and federal crimes.  As their practice grew from the many successes they have had over the years they represent not only Floridian clients but have now expanded their practice with presence throughout the nation.

Joe Nascimento, Attorney At Law fully understood the value of deploying new, leading-edge solutions and had some very specific benefits he was looking to gain to improve communications with his clients and fellow partners.  As the practice expanded he needed to support his increasing mobile tendencies enabling him to gather needed information quickly to make better decisions faster.  Of utmost importance was the protection of client information on the mobile devices now used across the firm.  As a criminal defense law firm they pride themselves on being there for clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

From a business standpoint they needed to reduce risk and operating costs.  They wanted to reduce spend on IT infrastructure and support by consolidating communications systems and leveraging the cloud.  They could not expose themselves to downtime and knew that leveraging cloud services and redundant solution architecture would support their requirements.  Data protection is of the utmost importance so they were looking for a means to protect data by encrypting it any and all of the time.

That’s when Joe called in ConQuest Technology Services.  We are based in Miami, Florida with national reach. We are a Microsoft Managed Partner with Gold-level competencies focused solely on core Microsoft communication technologies.  After our first meeting Joe realized that our certified professionals have deep knowledge and expertise in such technologies as Microsoft Office 365™ cloud services, Microsoft Windows Azure™, Microsoft Exchange and the powerful new unified communications suite Microsoft Lync®.   He knew that by working with us he could dramatically improve the firm’s objectives efficiently with dedicated, trusted, always available support services.

Joe shared with us that since the firm offered 24×7 availability it was imperative that service remained available as close to 100% of the time as possible.  Coupled with always on service his goal was to provide this as inexpensively as possible.  

Based on Joe’s vision of how he wanted the business to operate he understood that the way to accomplish this would be through the use of Microsoft Exchange as a hosted service.  He was comforted by knowing that we would serve as a remote third party provider managing all backend services for a flat monthly per user fee.  The advantages of this approach for organizations that want to leverage the benefits of Exchange are that uptime of the Exchange infrastructure can be very high and the cost of managing Exchange can be reduced significantly.  Similar to the majority of law firms practicing today, Robbins, Tunkey, Ross PA did not have the expertise or an in-house, dedicated IT resource.  We were quick to assure Joe that the use of a hosted Exchange service would allow them to focus on their clients and not their IT infrastructure.

Another issue that Joe wanted to get control over was management of data.  He indicated that information on clients and prior cases, internal communications, legal briefs, documentation on new laws / rulings and legal forms were stored all over the office and unfortunately some of it was housed on individual associate’s desktops and saved in people’s email messages, or even worse only paper copies were available.  He knew that there had to be better options so that the team had access to timely information.   There was also the need to adhere to document retention schedules.  Because of the chaos in managing the paper flow in the office he knew that a rationale mechanism had to be available to help them manage their data.  He felt if he didn’t investigate his options his alternative would be unmanaged, exponential data growth, higher costs and greater risk.

That’s when we discussed SharePoint because I knew from the first three pain points that Joe cited that SharePoint would resolve his documentation management needs plus provide even greater value and cost savings.  SharePoint delivers both a high quality solution that stimulates and delivers user participation, and the tools for highly secure, well-managed content.  With SharePoint companies democratize content management and improve organizations by providing content management to all employees and compliance across all documents.  This leads to better, faster and more secure processes that can be managed through a familiar environment, integrated into business collaboration infrastructure, and built on a trusted and extensible platform.  So in essence, Joe benefits from driving participation across all employees to avoid chaos and end-user resistance, ensure compliance by avoiding risk by controlling unmanaged content, including Social content and lastly save costs by avoiding high costs of point solutions, especially when not needed.

Jon Sastre

CEO and President

ConQuest Technology Services

 

To contact Robbins, Tunkey, Ross PA for your legal matters please visit their website at: http://www.crimlawfirm.com/index.php

For a free consultation on your telecommunications needs and available options, contact ConQuest Technology Services at www.conquest247.com or call 305-374-8788.

Learn more about the Professional Ethics of The Florida Bar Association endorsement of the use of Cloud Computing

http://www.floridabar.org/tfb/tfbetopin.nsf/SearchView/ETHICS,+OPINION+12-3?opendocument

 

What Our Customers Are Saying

“I applaud the efforts of the Conquest team to get this product rolled out. They really stepped up to get this done.  In my 4 years on the board they have been the only organization to step up with tech resources to help us deploy systems. I’ve heard a lot of grousing over the years about our systems which are far better now than before.   The realization of the effort required and coordination with teams & schedules has been huge and largely goes unrecognized.  A great big thanks to the Conquest team for this effort.

President & Chairman – Industry Association

“The cloud services, anywhere access, and support of modern devices, leveraging ConQuest Technology Services we now have the flexibility to better meet the needs of our employees.”

Head of IT Services, Engineering Firm

“The level of service at ConQuest Technology Services is fantastic. Having been a customer for many years, I am consistently impressed by the professionalism of every staff member I have come in contact with. Thank you!”

Office Administrator, Animal Hospital

“In this day and age, it’s hard to find a company you can trust. ConQuest Technology Services was recommended to me by a friend, and now I know why – the quality and support of their Help Desk is simply amazing.  They are so committed to my business, to me and my employees.  Only one phone call away day or not, it’s not a problem, they have always served me well.”

Business Owner

Franchise Operation

“We consider ConQuest an extension of our team.  We have been working with them for eight years now and have no intention to deal with another provider.  Their expertise helps us to circumvent issues before they become a major business disruption.”

Sr. Systems Administrator, Nation-wide Manufacturing Company

“ConQuest gave us peace of mind.  Working together to establish a concrete IT strategy our final selection was to implement Windows Azure.  Azure provides scalable, durable cloud storage, backup, and recovery solutions for our precious data. It works with the infrastructure we already had to cost-effectively enhance our business continuity strategy as well as provide storage required by our cloud applications including unstructured text or binary data such as video, audio and images.  We benefit from all this thanks to ConQuest.”

CFO, Leading Insurance Company

“We implemented Exchange Online working with ConQuest, we can now avoid the cost of additional Exchange Server deployments at new office locations.”

Manager-Infrastructure Services, Global Pharmaceutical

“We like to be on the leading edge and ConQuest helps us stay there.  With Office 365, we will always have the latest version.  By partnering with ConQuest as our advisor we do not have to worry that cost will prohibit us from giving employees access to the latest capabilities.”

Senior Systems Administrator, Local Government Agency

“Thank you ConQuest – with the architecture of Exchange Servicer 2013 – we have tripled everything:  bandwidth, processors, memory, resilience and availability.”

IT Manager, County Hospital

“It costs us a considerable amount to guarantee 99.9% uptime for our Exchange Servers.  With Exchange Online, ConQuest has helped us reduce costs and we gain time to perform other tasks.”

CEO, National Bank

“Thank you for being such an awesome business partner to us! We appreciate how you enabled us to drive costs out of our business while improving efficiency to heights we didn’t know were available.”

Managing Partner, Law Office

“I appreciate how fast the Professional Services Specialists are to respond to our questions and issues… quick and thorough and explain everything in a language we understand.  Way to go ConQuest”

CFO, National Retail Chain

“The ConQuest Help Desk is exactly that a help desk, one call and they have me back up and running.”

Office Administrator, Medical Facility

“Conquest provides an ideal structure for my firm and I. Consistent and predictable costs, immediate response to any request for support.”

IT Specialist, Civil Engineering Firm

“I can’t give enough praise about the ConQuest Technology Services team.  They understood from the get-go I didn’t have much IT experience and had no clue what was available.  I did know that our associates were always on the go and that our current telecommunications system just wasn’t working for us anymore.  Well they recommended we go with Microsoft® Lync®.  Lync allows our associates to communicate securely and stay connected with colleagues, clients and government agencies from virtually wherever they are working.”

Office Administrator, Multi-location Child Care Services

“We found their flexibility, responsiveness, and technical skills better than anything we could have ever expected.”

Network Administrator, Manufacturing

“Thanks for another infrastructure project thoroughly completed. I know that is your standard and nothing new. It’s so unusual in this field.”

Dir. of Technology, Educational Institution

Webinar – Office 365 Means Business

OFFICE 365 MEANS BUSINESS – YES BIG BOLD BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION

Reduce Capital and Travel Expenses, Gain Greater Collaboration and Productivity, Improve Employee Engagement and Provide a Differentiated Customer Experience.

WEBINAR OVERVIEW Communicating is the one thing we do more than anything else. We speak with each other either in person or via some mediated technology like telephone, voice, IM, text and video chat. We create and send emails. We produce presentations that we deliver via networked conferencing systems. More than ever our people are away from the office working from home, hotels, customer sites, soccer fields, and the beach and everywhere in between. The technologies that enable all of this communication must reach farther, be more readily available, and also must be more secure than ever before. CONTROL COSTS. DRIVE RESULTS. GET CONNECTED. FOCUS ON YOUR BUSINESS. ■ Dramatically reduce communications costs (Audio / Video / Web Conferencing / Phone System) ■ Transform how your teams communicate and collaborate internally as well as with customers and partners ■ Use familiar tools like Microsoft® Office to do more and make it easier for team members to reach out to each other and get the answers they need to move the business forward. ■ Reduce spend on IT infrastructure and support by consolidating communications systems and leveraging the cloud ■ Get even more value out of the Microsoft® Cloud Platform – Office 365 ■ Extend the value of your existing Microsoft software investments ■ On-board and retain valued employees by providing the tools they “expect” to use in today’s work environment ■ Benefit from added security, reliability, compliance and compatibility

REGISTER TODAY Webinar dates and times: Tuesday, December 10 10:00am EST 786-871-5481 Conf ID 80149 » Connect via Microsoft Lync Thursday, December 19 3:00pm EST 786-871-5481 Conf ID 78727 » Connect via Microsoft Lync PRESENTERS Benjamin A. Tosado Founder and Principal at ConQuest Technology Services Ben Jaeger Microsoft Unified Communications Specialist

© 2013 ConQuest Technology Services. All Rights Reserved.ConQuest Technology Services is a Microsoft Partner with Gold-level competencies focused solely on core Microsoft communication technologies. Our thoroughly trained and certified professionals who have helped us earn our Gold competencies have deep knowledge and expertise in such technologies as Microsoft Office 365™ cloud services, Microsoft Windows Azure™, Microsoft Exchange and the powerful new unified communications suite Microsoft Lync®. For more information please visit www.conquest247.com or call 305-374-8788.

1400 Biscayne Blvd., Suite 206 Miami, FL 33132 305-374-8788 www.conquest247.com

Webinar – When Good Business Becomes Extraordinary Business

Webinar – When Good Business Becomes Extraordinary Business

http://mdgi.com/conquest247/Conquest247_Dec2013_Webinars_Invite.html

The Lync Room System (LRS)

If reports from educators, research analysts and health care professionals are accurate, workers spend a minimum of 70% of their work week in meetings with executives upward to 80% of their time.  And let’s face it, meetings are an oft-dreaded reality of the workplace.  But you have to have them for brainstorming and productivity.

Business today is fluid.  Many workers because of the nature of their positions are simply not in a brick-and-mortar setting.   And they expect to use devices of their choice from anywhere.  Whether they are in the field, making sales and service calls, attending off-site meetings, traveling, working from home or on vacation they want to be connected.  Many of our customers have satellite offices on a regional, national even international basis emphasizing the need for superior collaboration tools allowing access from anywhere, at any time using their device of choice.  There are a hundred reasons why people aren’t sitting at their desk with the convenience of gathering around a conference table at the end of the hall.

Having the ability to collaborate is a key pre-requisite to productivity and business success.  Germany started using video conferencing around 1930 and then in the 70’s AT&T wowed the market with the launch of the Picture Phone®.  But there were consistent human and business pitfalls.

• Humans appreciate eye contact
• People are appearance conscious
• Remote workers feel isolated –  out of sight out of mind syndrome
• Signal latency distortion
• You can lose 8 to 10 minutes of the meeting setting 2-way video up
• Not all employees are trained or use it infrequently
• Hard to manage (video, audio, content shown)

Microsoft tore the boundaries down by introducing Lync Room System which is delivered by strategic partners like ourselves a Microsoft Managed Partner with Gold-level competencies.  It’s a meeting room solution consisting of integrated hardware and software optimized to join Lync meetings. With Lync Room System you can join an online meeting with one touch and be ready to collaborate with remote attendees in seconds. It has all the equipment you need for great meetings:

1.       High definition touch displays (1080p) for showing video and enabling collaboration. Lync Room Systems are available with 1 or 2 front of room touch displays depending on your room size

2.       High definition video camera for capturing the room in full 1080p resolution

3.       Wideband audio for clear sound from the room and to the room

4.       Table-top touch meeting console to enable the meeting controller to manage the meeting without distracting the other attendees

The Lync Room System Edition software, which is a full Lync client optimized to bring the immersive meeting experience to a meeting room setting. It makes joining meetings as easy as on your PC and breaks down the barrier between in-room and remote attendees. Being able to see content and high definition video side by side makes remote collaboration more effective.

When joining the meeting, content and video are automatically shown on large screens. You can easily launch an interactive whiteboard for immersive collaboration with in-room and remote attendees. Using the console, you can switch between different views and manage meeting content, as well as add remote attendees if needed.

As more and more meetings involve remote attendees, the capabilities and expectations of these remote attendees must align for optimum performance.  Over time, we’ve heard from many of our customers who are dissatisfied with their current videoconferencing experience that they wish it would just work and be as easy to use as their desktop.   In addition, we are meeting more and more clients that are just now deploying video solutions as a key metric in ensuring team members have a consistent, effective collaboration tool with global reach.

The Lync Room System for Microsoft Lync enables our customers to participate in active, collaborative work sessions from almost anywhere – and this is what businesses around the world are looking for.  Call us today at 305-374-8788 and learn how the Lync Room System can transform your team’s collaboration efforts.

 

Benjamin A. Tosado

Vice President of Professional Services

Conquest Technology Services