A few of our members here at IT Resource have been quite busy training over the past couple of weeks. A while back, network engineer Steve Nowak ventured off to Detroit to attend a week long training event to work on his Cisco Data Center Field Engineer certification. Just recently, network engineer Jim Baughman also returned from a week long training event in Detroit for a Cisco Data Center Sales Engineering certification. And to top it all off, sales team members Carrie Borchers and Carolyn Martin completed the Cisco Data Center Sales Account Manager training.

So what does this mean for IT Resource and our clients? Well, it means that now we can sell Cisco Data Center Unified Computing hardware as well as support it. Cisco has a great line of products and now that IT Resource can support it, we can pass that great hardware along to our clients. We have a few of Cisco’s products sitting in our Data Center now and they have proven to work well and stand up to our rigorous usage. If anyone has any questions regarding Cisco Data Center Unified Computing and possibly purchasing some of their equipment, contact Carrie or Carolyn and they would be happy to fill you in on any information they can provide!

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!

As newcomers to the world of blogging, we are thrilled to have an outlet to show the world what we’re all about as a company, and how we operate. As the chief blog writer, I'll be using this resource as a chance to explain to everyone on the World Wide Web what a great company IT Resource is, and how we help our community, customers, vendors, and friends. As an example, IT Resource recently sponsored and participated in the Del Shannon Car Show here in Coopersville, MI. We donated our time and financial energy by passing out raffle tickets, coordinating sponsors, picking our ITR trophy winner at the end of the show, and coordinating various behind-the-scenes activities to ensure the show went off without a hitch.

That's just one example of how our employees work to give back to the communities in which we live and work.

So, I personally welcome you to the first entry of the IT Resource blog and plan to provide you with exciting news & information and the occasional unbelievable IT story. Yes, its true, some pretty interesting and exciting things can happen at an IT Consulting company - like when one of our Chicago customers’ Cisco VOIP system got struck by lightning the day before the 4th of July holiday weekend - that was an interesting day, to say the least. If you've ever wondered what a VOIP system looks like after getting struck by lightning, check it out...

No fear for the lightning stricken customer - we had them up and running again the same day. Have any of you ever experienced a lightning strike or other natural disaster at work? Do tell...