Duration: 4 hours

Squiggout Engineers will be performing a software upgrade on the master backend router for the sea01 data center.

During this maintenance, customers will not have access to backend services (DNS, updates, NAS, iSCSI, etc). Customers are advised to disconnect any NAS or iSCSI mounts they may have as the connections for those mounts will be severed while the router reboots. Server to server traffic within a local vlan will not be impacted, however traffic between vlans or data centers on the private network will be impacted. Public network services will continue to function as normal. While this maintenance window is set for 4 hours, we expect no longer than 10 – 15 minutes of downtime.

Again, public network services will continue to function normally.

If you have any problems after this time frame with regard to connectivity, or if you have any questions regarding the maintenance at any point, please open a new ticket .

We appreciate your patience during this work and welcome any feedback.

Thank you

When the economy takes a downward turn, corporate IT budgets are usually one of the first casualties.  This is the case with the current recession, as evidenced by an October 2008 CIO Magazine survey in which 40 percent of 234 IT chiefs surveyed said they are cutting spending, essentially freezing new IT initiatives, if not scrapping them altogether.  

However, technology is a critical element of business, and despite the current economic climate, the need for reliable IT remains the same—especially when it comes to fundamental business applications such as email or customer relationship management (CRM). As companies across all industries face tough decisions about where to put their limited dollars, here are three key reasons why the hosted or “software as a service” (SaaS) model makes a great deal of sense.

Financing

Most companies rely on some form of financing for technology purchases (hardware or software), either through a vendor-sponsored payment plan, a specialty leasing agent or a straight bank loan. When credit markets are tight, it’s difficult for many organizations, particularly smaller ones, to secure tech financing. And tight credit markets go hand in hand with a precarious economy.

On October 27, 2008 The Wall Street Journal reported a jump in defaults on tech financing loans, coming after “years in which such loans flowed freely.” During this period, lenders regularly offered tech financing for 0 percent interest or no money down to businesses with limited liquid assets—mirroring the risky (if not reckless) approach that led to the meltdown of the subprime mortgage market. And the results have been similarly disastrous. According to the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, which represents 700 lenders, the number of equipment loans written off as losses jumped from .48 percent in September 2007 to .86 percent in 2008, a leap of nearly 80 percent. And Baytree Leasing Company LLC, which specializes in tech financings, confirmed in October 2008 that its default rate for commercial businesses is now between 1 and 1.5 percent. To give some perspective to those figures, research firm Aite Group has predicted that in Q3 2008 the percentage of real estate loans being written off as losses by the top 100 U.S. commercial banks will be around 1 percent.

As a result of the spike in defaults, specialty lenders and banks, on which companies once relied to fund their IT initiatives, are now charging higher interest rates and requiring more money down, making it much more difficult to secure financing. Long gone is the zero-interest loan. Today a standard interest rate for small businesses is hovering around 8.25 percent.   

Joining banks and tech-financing businesses, hardware and software vendors that lend money directly to customers are also toughening their terms. Many now require a significant upfront payment—often up to 50 percent for software—to offset the risk of default. (Software vendors suffer more from defaults because reselling used software is illegal. Reselling used hardware is not.)

The impact of the financing crunch on smaller businesses is twofold. First, it is simply harder to secure loans. In October 2008 the CIO Executive Council reported that nearly 20 percent of 31 CIOs surveyed postponed or canceled purchases specifically because of unfavorable credit terms, demonstrating how difficult, if not impossible, it now is for many companies to implement on-premise IT deployments—and foster growth—because they just can’t afford them. And in a down economy, while overall costs are important, day-to-day cash flow is vital. That means that even when financing is available, the jump in upfront payments can be a deal breaker for many smaller companies.

Second, when money is tight, few companies want to—or can afford to—take on unnecessary risk. And for IT executives, risk comes in the form of long-term commitment to a particular hardware or software purchase. If a company is able to secure tech financing in a difficult credit market, the costs have increased, reducing the overall ROI of the technology acquisition. That translates into increased pressure for the investment to result in a successful IT initiative.

Flexibility

A word commonly used by the media in a down economy is “uncertainty.” Uncertainty about the markets. Uncertainty about employment. Uncertainty about the future. Despite endless analysis and predictions from expert (and highly paid) financial pundits, the truth is that no one really knows when things are going to get better. While the frenzied speculation keeps media outlets around the world in business, speculation is exactly what it is. In July 2008 the ever provocative Huffington Post featured a blog entry by Margaret Heffernan called “The Recession Narrative: Pundits Know Nothing.”

For smaller businesses, the one certainty about uncertainty is that it demands flexibility around IT infrastructure and applications. In this case, flexibility means the ability to accommodate growth and reductions. While in-house software can scale up as your company grows, it doesn’t work the other way around. The same goes for the associated hardware.

Take Microsoft Exchange for email. If a company with 500 employees uses an in-house Exchange server, in addition to buying all the hardware (primary and backup servers, networking equipment, storage), it must also buy 500 client access licenses (CALs ), plus pay for ongoing support. Each CAL costs around $70 and is non-refundable. As the company grows, it must purchase a new CAL for each employee, even if that person is a seasonal or temporary hire for the holidays, a common situation when businesses can’t afford to staff permanent positions. Most (if not all) employees need email accounts, regardless of how long they are going to be around to use them.

For on-premise deployments of CRM software, user licenses are even more expensive. For example, a single user license for Oracle’s Siebel CRM Professional for mid-sized companies costs $350 for a base application (sales option, service option or marketing automation). Add-on modules for additional functionality run from $60 up to $2500 per module per user, and support is an additional annual per-user fee.

If that same company suddenly needs to lay off 20 percent of its workforce, it now has 100 CALs that it can’t use, plus an undetermined number of Oracle/Siebel licenses it can’t use (assuming not every employee uses all elements of the company’s CRM system). That’s a lot of money down the drain for a smaller business, especially when money is already tight.

The flexible SaaS model, on the other hand, is based around scaling the software up or down with your business. Hosted solutions allow you to add users on demand and remove them on demand. You pay on a monthly basis only for active users. And in a down economy, the likelihood of having to lay off active users goes up, which is why this approach makes sense when business is slow. 

A SaaS model also allows you to add and remove software, not just users, on demand. For example, you could lease SharePoint just for a special six-month project. Or you could decide that your business just can’t afford mobile connectivity for every user right now. In an on-premise solution, you have already paid for the functionality, so you’re in a “use it or lose it” situation. In the SaaS model, you can turn off mobile connectivity, and then turn it back on in three months when cash isn’t as tight.

The flexibility of a SaaS model also results in faster time to ROI. With in-house software, you have to buy everything, set it up, test it, etc. It may be a long time before your company sees any value from it. With SaaS, you see instant results, or at least much quicker results. This is always important, but it increases in importance in a down economy.

Staffing

While layoffs may be inevitable in a down economy, your customers will expect the same level of attention, service and quality they have always received. Successful companies recognize this and go above and beyond to preserve customer loyalty by showing them that it’s business as usual, even when it’s not.

Moving to a hosted or SaaS model allows you to reduce headcount without impacting the customer experience. How? Because it eliminates the need for expensive in-house IT experts. Going back to the example of Microsoft Exchange, proper maintenance requires at least one full-time, trained IT professional, which can easily cost six figures in annual salary and benefits. Freeing up that money will allow you to save positions that will have a direct impact on your customers.

In October 2008 the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported 2,269 companies had cut at least 50 jobs in the previous month, the highest number since the aftermath of the Sept.  11, 2001 attacks. Many economists predict that unemployment will jump from the current 6.1 percent to near 8 or 8.5 percent by the end of 2009, resulting in the highest unemployment rate the country has seen in more than 20 years.

While the accuracy of those predictions has yet to be determined, the current reality is bleak enough.  When layoffs are unavoidable, a SaaS model can help preserve the positive experience your customers have with your company.

Conclusion

In any economy, there’s no question that SaaS solutions are a smart option for smaller companies. They can be up and running quickly. They don’t require a degree in computer science to administer. They are reliable. They can scale with your business. They even reduce your organization’s impact on the environment.

In a recession, however, the benefits of SaaS are even more pronounced. While budgets everywhere are being squeezed or cut, businesses must continue to operate, and essential business applications such as email or CRM simply can’t be compromised if companies are to stay competitive. Neither can productivity or customer service. This puts a great deal of pressure on companies to spend their money wisely. When every penny counts more than it ever has, the cost structure and flexibility of hosted solutions, along with the fact that they don’t require expensive in-house IT expertise, make the SaaS model  an especially wise choice.

For more information http://www.squiggout.com/hosted_applications.html

As for the media, WOW it’s an Apple. Rich media streaming right to your finger tips and complete sync with iTunes.

One thing I thought was minor, was you get it out of the box and turn it on and you need to connect it to your computer with the latest version of iTunes running. Just load it and ship it, what if you did not own a computer? OK it’s minor…:)

 I rate the iPad a 10 out of 10

As part of Squiggout’s migration to its new Nationwide Backbone,  Squiggout Engineers will be conducting maintenance on Wednesday April, 28th 2010 (04/28/2010). This maintenance window will serve to migrate the public network in SEA and WDC to the new MPLS enabled network. During this maintenance, traffic will be shifted to other providers while circuits are re-terminated into new equipment.

Datacenters:

SEA – Seattle, WA
WDC – Washington, DC

During this maintenance, customers might see packet-loss, routing anomalies, and increased latency as traffic is shifted to other providers. Squiggout will be migrating the following circuits during this maintenance.

SEA:
- NTT America
- Level 3
- Global Crossing
- Time Warner Cable
- Comcast
- Seattle IX
- Google
- Public Peering to DAL/WDC

WDC:
- NTT America
- Level 3
- Global Crossing
- Qwest
- Time Warner Cable
- Comcast
- Equinix
- Public Peering to SEA/DAL
- Google

Again, during this maintenance, customers might see packet-loss, routing anomalies, and increased latency on the public network only. Squiggout Engineers will make every effort to mitigate the effects of this work during the timeframe listed above. We expect no impact to private network connectivity during this maintenance.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is critical for any business in any industry.  When used properly, CRM software can help businesses acquire and retain customer more efficiently, and build longer-term, more profitable relationships with customers than what otherwise would be possible. CRM software has until recently only been financially viable for the large enterprise, but now through the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, can be effectively utilized by both organizations big and small.  The popularity of SaaS-based CRM solutions continues to increase in the SMB market, despite the economy.  A recent SQUIGGOUT study found that 70% of SMBs consider CRM deployments a priority, a third of which are actively seeking solutions for deployment in 2009-10.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 

CRM can only be successful if everyone in the business who needs to use it, does so properly.  Since most SMBs utilize packaged Microsoft-based applications, primarily Office and Outlook, they are most likely to fully utilize a CRM system that tightly integrates with these tools.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 does just that.  Many of its most important capabilities can be utilized directly from within Microsoft Outlook, as well as other MS Office applications.

Dynamics CRM is not just a plug-in for Outlook.  In addition to its familiar user-interface, it is a powerful CRM solution that enables detail prospect, lead and customer tracking.  It facilitates customizable workflow to support the individual business processes of the organizations in which it is deployed. 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM workflow automation and analytics let your Sales, Marketing and Service staff easily share information and route tasks to provide a seamless customer experience.

Establish a 360-degree view of customer interactions, sales opportunities and buying patterns to help your sales force cultivate more profitable relationships.

Plan, implement and measure more-effective marketing campaigns by analyzing buyer trends, behaviors and offers that allow your marketing teams to track real time results and optimize Return-on-Investment (ROI).

SQUIGGOUT Private Label Dynamics CRM

SQUIGGOUT’s solution architecture provides you with standalone installation of Dynamics on a dedicated virtual private server.  This solution, which differs from the standard multi-tenant architecture most other hosting providers offer, provides you with a dedicated platform which you can customize to meet your individual customers’ needs.  Not only can you tailor your solution for your customers, thereby providing them more value than other CRM SaaS solutions, but it also provides you with an opportunity to layer valued added, high-margin customization services to SQUIGGOUT’s base solution.

SQUIGGOUT’s Private label Dynamics CRM solution can be sold as a stand-alone offering, or may be combined with other SaaS services including hosted Exchange.

Pricing

Dynamics CRM is available for a monthly fee of $650.00.  This includes the CRM software on a dedicated virtual private server, 5 users and 5GB of included disk space.  There is a one-time setup fee of $650.00.  Additional users are available for $45.00 per month, and additional disk space is available in 1GB increments for $25.00 per month.

 An enterprise-grade backup Exchange email system for just $6.50 per user per month!

 Why Business Continuity?

Email is critical for keeping your business running, however, most small and medium businesses operate in-house email servers that are not designed for high availability. While a hosted Exchange solution is the best option to provide enterprise-class email at a small business price with multiple tier-4 datacenters, premium infrastructure and continuous email backup, there may be reasons why a company may stay with an in-house solution. In this case, using Squiggout’s Business Continuity Service can provide a standby, enterprise-grade Microsoft Exchange server-based system that even small to medium-sized businesses can afford allowing you to continue sending and receiving emails when your in-house Exchange server is down. It’s a low-cost, no-hassle way to supplement your in-house server to ensure your business can always run.

 Why Squiggout?

Squiggout’s Business Continuity solution is fully integrated with your on-premise Exchange server. This makes it easy for your users to switch to Squiggout’s Business Continuity Service when your Exchange server is down. Unlike other solutions, Squiggout’s Business Continuity solution is MS Exchange-based, and provides you with a robust Outlook Web Access interface. The solution also synchronizes email, calendar, contacts and personal distribution lists, so you always have all the information you need. Best of all, you can login into the solution with your existing email username and password since the solution allows automatic synchronization via our DirectoryLink product.

Why use an Exchange-Based Solution?

Microsoft Exchange is the backbone of most business’ email and collaboration platforms. Microsoft Outlook is the cornerstone of most workers’ desktops. Far beyond email, they use it for calendaring, scheduling task management, contact management and even as a file/document management system.

Squiggout’s solution is designed to keep your workers productive and your business running when your Exchange server is down. Providing a web-based Outlook interface, the solution enables workers to immediately access all their Outlook information through a familiar interface with the same login credentials. The solution is far more effective in keeping workers productive than other, non Exchange-based solutions that only offer a basic Web interface.

 How does the SQUIGGOUT Solution Work?

1. Point your MX record to Squiggout.
2.  Your email arrives to Squiggout’s datacenters from the Internet where it is filtered by SpamStopper to remove viruses and SPAM. (SpamStopper can be disabled if it not needed.)
3. Email is forwarded to your in-house Exchange server. 
4. Content-Sync, an important piece of the Business Continuity solution, securely synchronizes emails, calendars, contacts and distribution lists back and forth between your Exchange server and Squiggout’s Business Continuity Solution. DirectoryLink, another piece of the solution, synchronizes your Active Directory with Squiggout’s, so you can use the same log on credentials for both your Exchange and Business Continuity solutions. 
5. Outgoing email is sent straight to the Internet from your in-house Exchange server. Note: Your user experience is not affected at all (i.e., you can continue to access your mail via whichever mail client you normally use with the same configuration). 
6.  If/when your in-house Exchange server fails, you simply need to select a button to activate Business Continuity via the control panel and have your users connect to Squiggout’s Business Continuity Solution via OWA to access their email, calendars and contacts. 
7. If/when your in-house mail server is back up, you simply need to select a button to deactivate Business Continuity via the control panel and all the data (e.g., mail, calendar, contacts, etc.) is automatically and instantly re-synced  back to your in-house mail server.

Synchronize Everything

Unlike other solutions  Squiggout’s Business Continuity Solution continuously synchronizes all your email and PIM data with your Exchange server. The important information you need to run your business is always available and up to date, regardless of which system you’re using.

Turnkey Hosted Solution

Squiggout’s Business Continuity solution is a fully hosted service. There is no hardware or software to install, configure or manage. SQUIGGOUT hosts the solution in four world-class datacenters with premium equipment from Dell, EMC and Cisco. SQUIGGOUT provides you a 99.999% uptime guarantee so that your standby Exchange server will always be available for you.

SQUIGGOUT’s Business Continuity Benefits

• On-demand access to your email, calendar and contacts, even when your mail server goes down

• Turnkey solution, no hardware or software purchase, configure or manage

• Protection against fire, flood, hurricane and other severe weather

• Continuous, bi-directional synchronization ensures both systems are always up to date

• Full synchronization of email, calendars, contacts and personal distribution lists

Pricing and Getting Started

Squiggout’s Hosted Business Continuity solution is available for just $6.50 per user per month. There are no setup fees, synchronization fees, or service activation fees. It is a far more economical and secure way to keep your email always running than an in-house high-availability or disaster recovery solution. For more information and a free, no-obligation quote, please contact us to learn more.

Contact SQUIGGOUT at 888-883-2754 to learn more on how you can prevent your business from losing time and money to email downtime again. http://www.squiggout.com

Business Productivity Suite features

Microsoft Exchange 2007

The core of Business Productivity Suite is Microsoft Exchange 2007, a powerful email server and collaboration platform that enables the advanced sharing capabilities of Microsoft Outlook.

ü  Business-class email with your domain(s)

ü  Delegate access – enable others to read mail, and send mail on your behalf.

ü  Personal and Shared contacts, calendars and tasks

ü  Public folders

ü  Scheduling tools

ü  Premium anti-virus and anti-spam tools

ü  2GB of pooled storage space per user

ü  Free download of Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2008 for each user

ü  Outlook Web Access

ü  Offline access

ü  Global Address List

ü  Personal and shared distribution lists

Office Communications Server 2007

Office Communications Server 2007 integrates with Exchange 2007 to add secure messaging and presence capabilities.

ü  Secure Instant Messaging & group chat

ü  Person to person voice and video chat

ü  Chat archive through MS Outlook

ü  Real-time presence capabilities through Communicator, MS Outlook, SharePoint and Web client

ü  Free download of Communicator client for each user

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

SharePoint is a web-based

ü  Document Storage and management

ü  Check-in/check-out

ü  Blogs and wikis

ü  Application templates

ü  Project management

ü  1GB storage

Control Panel

Our award-winning, web-based control panel for managing your Business Productivity suite account and settings.

ü  Role-based access

ü  User management

ü  Real-time provisioning of mailboxes, wireless devices and add-on services

ü  Storage management

ü  Audit-log

Enterprise Infrastructure

We host one of the largest and most sophisticated infrastructures for Exchange, SharePoint and OCS2007 in the world from multiple top-rated data centers.

ü  All Dell Servers

ü  Cisco networking infrastructure

ü  Dell/EMC SAN storage

ü  Load balancing and clustering for maximum performance and high availability

ü  Multiple high-bandwidth Internet connections

ü  Redundant power supplies and environmental controls

Business Productivity Suite benefits

Efficient Communications

Business Productivity Suite facilitates fast and efficient communications among your team, especially across multiple offices and geographies. Utilize email, voice, and instant messaging for the optimal interaction for each situation. Leverage presence capabilities to immediately identify who is available, and when unavailable colleagues are scheduled to become free.

Better Collaboration

The Business Productivity Suite helps teams work better together. Everyday tasks including meeting scheduling, document editing and versioning, and project management that normally consume unnecessary time can now be accomplished quickly and easily.  Business Productivity Suite facilitates workflows for common processes to help your team collaborate efficiently.

Anywhere Access

We offer many choices for accessing your Business Productivity Suite applications and data. From access through desktop clients, to web clients, to mobile devices, including BlackBerry Smartphone’s, you can access the information you need, regardless of the devices you use. And with Microsoft Outlook 2007, you can even access your cached emails while offline.

No Capital Investment

The Business Productivity suite is delivered to you as a service through world-class data centers, which you can access from anywhere, anytime. You do not have to invest in any hardware or software, or pay for a long and costly deployment. For a low monthly fee, the entire service is delivered to you as a turnkey solution, ready to go from the start.

Flexibility

The Business Productivity Suite is flexible to adapt to the needs of your business. With no annual contracts or any hardware or software to purchase, we do not lock up you or your money. You can easily add or remove users as needed to scale up or down with the needs of your business.

Fully Managed Service

The Business Productivity Suite is delivered as a fully managed service. Your monthly fee per user includes all hardware and software, a highly-available infrastructure hosted from multiple world-class data centers, premium 24×7 support, security, and maintenance and upgrades. We focus on providing you the best possible turn-key service so you can focus on your business.

Freedom of Choice

We offer you the greatest breadth of choices for using the service. Windows, Mac or Linux; BlackBerry smartphone or iPhone, we let you use the platforms and tools you need for your business with the Business Productivity Suite.

Simple Set up, Migration, and Management

Our award-winning control panel is a powerful web-based control panel that gives administrators and end-users the flexibility and control they need to manage the service, settings and data. We also provide tools for user synchronization and bi-directional data migration to help you configure your service and start benefiting from it as quickly as possible.

You Have a Choice in Productivity Suites

We believe in the power of choice.  Use the table below highlighting major differences between Business Productivity offerings to identify the solution that best meets your needs.

 Reliability, Uptime and 24/7 Monitoring and Management

We offer 99.999 percent uptime, which means less than six minutes of downtime a year, as well as the industry’s first 100 percent data protection guarantee.

 Our customer’s data is replicated in real-time twice in one data center and at speed-of-wire a third time to another of our geographically dispersed data centers.  For added protection and rapid point-in-time restores, regular database “snapshots” are taken in each data center.  This architecture protects customer data in the event of hardware failure, database corruption or even a catastrophic data center loss.  Because data is replicated across “live” working data centers, customer access to the full functionality of their Exchange environment in the event of a disaster can be restored in a timely manner. 

 Add-on Features

We offer a complete range of add-on features including hosted BlackBerry and ActiveSync for Windows mobile devices so you can instantly activate email service for your handheld. Rather than spending thousands of dollars on your own server, you can use our managed service for just a few dollars a month.

You can also add SharePoint 3.0 for document collaboration; Office Communications Server 2007 for increased productivity through secure instant messaging; and file sharing and archiving – from simple message journaling to keep an exact copy of all your message, to compliant archiving, which fulfils regulatory requirements from the main U.S. regulations—HIPAA, GLBA, SOX, SEC, FINRA and FRCP as well as other state/federal requirements).

PC or Mac

Many Exchange hosting companies do not offer both Outlook (for PC) and Entourage (for Mac) support. We offer a free download of both, so your staff can use either PCs or Macs, or both. We also offer free Outlook Web Access which allows your users the ability to access their email online from anywhere in the world.

Strict Security and Compliance     

Squiggout adheres to the industry’s strictest regulations for security and compliance. We are PCI compliant and SAS 70 Type II audited.

• SAS 70 Certification: SAS 70 is an auditing statement issued by the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), officially titled “Reports on the Processing of Transactions by Service Organizations.”  SAS 70 defines the professional standards used by a service auditor to assess the internal controls of a service organization and issue a service auditor’s report.
• PCI Compliant: As a Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant company we meet the guidelines set forth by the major credit card companies as a guideline to help organizations that process card payments prevent credit card fraud, hacking and various other security issues. A company processing, storing, or transmitting credit card numbers must be PCI compliant or they risk losing the ability to process credit card payments.

This means we got it right. Our new Exchange 2010 system is awsome! I am very proud of it.

The client then told GD that they can stick it and GD said that they will restore the files at no charge. What that tells me is that GD will try to screw you out of money first even though they where wrong.  At this point the client wanted to just get the authorization codes for both domains and leave GD. GD stated that this would cost $50.00 to get the authorization codes. These domains are still in redemption and can be moved for a simple transfer fee or free.

All I can say is that GD needs to screw about 2 milion more people so we can get ride of their stupid super bowl commerical and Squiggout can host them on a system that our clients are in control of. This is the reason why I started Squiggout. 

This was a non profit org, I can only imagine what they do to commerical accounts. 

Thank You Go Daddy for screwing customers it makes my job easier. This information was told to me by my new client and is only one side of the story, a story which I know is true. Shame on GD for screwing customers. So be warned, a cheap price comes with a royal screwing.