If you've ever encountered a problem with your server, computer, hardware, or IT needs in general, chances are you called our office and spoke to one of our Help Desk experts. Over the last year we've been steadily increasing the presence of our Help Desk in an effort to provide our customers with the best possible service. Our Help Desk is currently staffed by three IT experts, all of whom are happy and ready to quickly serve you, and have different areas of expertise including Microsoft procecsses, general hardware, and system backups.

With the objective of being more responsive to our customer’s needs, our Help Desk personnel will:

- Triage all incoming queries and service requests

- Quickly resolve issues that don’t require escalation

- Escalate and expedite issues to the appropriate resources within IT Resource (Sales, 2nd Level Support, your Lead Engineer)

- Provide documentation and follow-up to ensure a smooth process

Leveraging the talent and skill of our Certified Help Desk personnel enables you to receive the best service possible, without having to understand who to call for what. Whatever your issues are, feel free to call IT Resource at 616.837.6930, or send an email to help@itrw.net and one of our friendly Help Desk staff members will take it from there.

People profiles give you a chance to meet our staff - the folks you may deal with on a regular basis here at IT Resource.

I’ve worked in the computer world for several years. Whether it has been with a company or on my own; I’ve come across a large number of infections that can render a computer useless. Recently, the creators of these viruses have become more clever in disguising their viruses to the user; particularly, in the naming scheme. Names like Anti-Virus 2011 or Windows Anti-Virus 2012 can trick people into thinking they’re real programs, when in fact, they are viruses themselves.

Some may be asking, ‘What are you doing to keep up with the ever changing technology world?’ Even if they’re not asking, they should be. Keeping up with technology change is almost as difficult as sneezing with your eyes open or waking up in time for work! Kidding on that last one of course... But in reality, technology is always changing and if we want to appeal to our current and future customers, we need to keep up with the times! 

Fortunately enough, IT Resource has a team currently working on a project that will bring us up to present date with the latest in new technologies. Also, I happen to be on that team, so I know exactly what’s going on. My hope is to keep everyone updated as best as I can and keep everyone informed on the changes we’re making to better our company. Look for some exciting things in the future!

People profiles give you a chance to meet our staff - the folks you may deal with on a regular basis here at IT Resource. 

Official Title: Office Manager

But this title sounds much snazzier: Overseer of Official Office Operations

What do you do at IT Resource, and what certifications do you have: My primary job is handling the accounts receivable and accounts payable. I also help the employees with various things such as purchasing business cards and handling cell phone contracts, and I deal with our health insurance and 401(k) plans.

What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail? Run a sub 4 hour marathon

Do you have any hidden talents? Not really, the only thing I can come up with is I've been an avid scrapbooker for over 14 years and I used to teach scrapbooking classes.

What is the best part about working at ITR? Knowing we are providing good employment to our people, and helping them succeed to their full potential.

How long have you worked at ITR? Since 2001

What do you want to be when you grow up? A world traveler would be nice. I might want to get a passport one of these days!

What is the most interesting job you’ve ever had that was not IT related? Fresh out of high school I worked as a customer representative for an astrological software company. I had some interesting conversations with some far out people around the globe. "Does that numerology program really work...?" 

Tell us something your colleagues don't know about you: I won the 1987 mock election for class headbanger. Go hairbands! I still like rock music and have my XM radio set to Octane.

A big topic right now in the personal and business world is phones. Several years ago there were only a few options to choose from, but today, anyone can pretty much pick what best suits them. So, what is the best choice? Which one runs the quickest? Which one works the best with my infrastructure? There are a lot of aspects to look at while searching for perfect phone.

The first question to ask would be ‘Does my company support it?’ If the phone is for personal use then this question is pretty much void, but not all businesses support all phones. For example, Blackberry has completely separate server software your business can run to make it easier for them to manage emails, contacts, and even instant messaging.

The smart phones of today can do pretty much anything! They can access the internet, receive email, perform navigation functions, and run various applications. The Apple iPhone has the largest App Store with roughly 500,000 third party applications available. Of those half a million, 25% are free to install (Wikipedia, 2012). As of July 2011, the Android Market had 250,000 available Applications with about 57% of them being free (Wikipedia, 2012). Blackberry and Windows phones also have some variation of an App store, however they are significantly smaller. If applications are important then either an iPhone or an Android phone would be the choice to make.

Personally, I carry an Android phone. I had one of the first to come out and it’s still running strong. However, there are plenty of iPhones, Blackberrys, and Windows Phones that last just as long. Updates are provided regularly to each type of phone and support is not lacking. Android, Apple iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Phone all support exchange so everyone can rest assured that they can access their work email on the go. While Windows Phone and Blackberry may have a little better integration, iOS and Android both support it just fine.

In the end, it’s all about what the employer supports and personal preference. Windows Phone is small, but working its way into the market, while Blackberry started out as the largest business orientated phone, but is quickly dropping due to more options. Take the time and do the research, and a great phone can be in hand soon!

Our hard work has finally paid off! We recently earned an Advanced Unified Computing Technology specialization from Cisco, a worldwide leader in networking. Achieving this specialization allows us to design, sell and implement Cisco Data Center solutions, which includes Cisco blade centers and some Nexus product lines. Offering this service will enhance our clients’ abilities to fully utilize Cisco solutions throughout the entire data center – from networking and security to servers and virtualization solutions.

Gary Lutz, co-owner of IT Resource, is excited about the new certification and what it will bring to enterprise level businesses, as well as education and government agencies. “We are not new to medium and large-scale data center design and implementations, having designed several casino, public sector and enterprise data centers. But, with the addition of Cisco’s Unified Computing Technology certifications, we now have all the major technology areas covered, including Security, Networking, Voice, Storage, Servers and Virtualization, and can offer these end-to-end solutions to our clients.”

To acquire the specialization, we were required to complete additional training and pass several certification exams in the areas of Unified Computing and Data Center solutions by system engineers, field engineers and sales teams.

Just one more way we can provide awesome products and services to our customers!

Remember our company wide weight loss challenge? The goal was simple - see who can lose the largest percentage of weight in 3 months. We're one month in and so far I'd say we're doing pretty well. Our staff has lost a combined total of...drumroll please.... 68 pounds!!

How have we done this, you might ask? Well, for starters, we've taken a group approach and introduced healthier options for our company lunches.

Look at all those vegetables! This lunch was much healthier than the usual fast food, and it tasted better. Plus, we were all able to avoid the late afternoon dull, tired feeling that so often accompanies not-so-healthy take out options.

We polled our staff to find out what other ways they were going about their weight loss. We found the top three answers to be exercise, portion control, and using websites/apps to keep track of their calorie intake.

I'm really excited to find out how many pounds our staff will shed over the next month. 68 pounds is a fantastic start - let's keep up the great work!