Colorado?s Cherry Creek School District Improves Communication and Collaboration for Mac Users with GroupLogic?s ExtremeZ-IP?

Arlington, VA (PRWEB) March 31, 2011

GroupLogic?, the industry?s leading provider of software products that unlock the power of new enterprise platforms, and Colorado?s Cherry Creek School District today announced that the school district?s successful implementation of GroupLogic?s ExtremeZ-IP solution is driving exponential improvements in successful communication and collaboration between key stakeholders using Macintosh computers, including teachers, administrators, and students.

As Apple?s enterprise traction continues to accelerate?IDC recently reported Apple?s 19th consecutive quarter of market share growth?fueled by direct purchases by companies, school districts and other organizations, as well as the consumerization of IT, more and more Windows-based organizations are struggling to integrate Apple products into their IT ecosystem. GroupLogic?s ExtremeZ-IP product is designed to easily and quickly integrate Macintosh computers into a Windows Server environment, eliminating the operational roadblocks presented when education and enterprise users can not access files and other essential workflow information in the same seamless manner, if at all, as Windows PC users.

After the Cherry Creek School District went through extensive virtualization and consolidation efforts in 2010, reducing its 140 servers comprised of XServe and Windows 2003 to four Windows 2008 servers, IT staff experienced an onslaught of Mac-focused service requests and network problems from the more than 7,500 district Mac users. IT was overwhelmed and looked to GroupLogic?s ExtremeZ-IP product to help them ease management, simplify file access and rapidly deploy.

?The schools were very unhappy?the troubles we were experiencing had a direct negative impact on the classroom and was interrupting instruction,? says Cindi Hotzinger, Senior Network Administrator and Server Team Lead at Cherry Creek School District in Colorado. ?Now, after the ExtremeZ-IP deployment, the upwards of 1,500 Mac users connected to the network at any given time can access files and content with the same speed and ease as PC users, while our IT staff is freed-up to focus on other priorities. This just wasn?t possible on a centralized network before the ExtremeZ-IP deployment.?

?The issues experienced by Cherry Creek School District?s IT department, students and staff are not only common, they?re spreading rapidly across enterprises, campuses and networks of all shapes and sizes as trends such as Apple in the Enterprise and the consumerization of IT continue to take hold,? says GroupLogic Vice President of Product Management Anders Lofgren. ?Our products were created in anticipation of these trends and are designed to quickly and permanently establish streamlined integration previously unknown in mixed platform environments?all at an affordable cost and in a rapidly deployable nature.? ????

Cherry Creek School District currently serves 51,000 students in its 60 schools, and is staffed by 8,000 teachers, administrators, and support personnel.

About GroupLogic

GroupLogic? (http://www.grouplogic.com) helps enterprise and education IT organizations simply and securely integrate diverse computing platforms into enterprise environments, connecting employees to enterprise files, content and assets to facilitate a more productive and efficient work environment. With more than two decades of experience, GroupLogic leads the marketplace in helping IT organizations effectively and easily manage the integration of Apple products into the enterprise ecosystem. Whether IT organizations are looking to integrate existing Apple assets, purchase additional Apple hardware like Macs and iPads, or want to take advantage of the hardware costs savings that accompany the adoption of IT consumerization, GroupLogic enables IT organizations to easily and securely manage the rapid integration of diverse platforms while ensuring resources are optimized. GroupLogic enables the enterprise to focus on what is really important ? competitive differentiation, improved employee productivity, mitigated risk and reduced costs. GroupLogic?s proven products?ExtremeZ-IP, ArchiveConnect, and MassTransit?are in use by some of the world?s most innovative companies, including Christie?s, International Greetings and Omnicom Group.

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Bitrix Enriches Enterprise 2.0 with Cutting-Edge Communication and Collaboration Features

Alexandria, VA (PRWEB) May 8, 2010

Bitrix, Inc. (bitrixsoft.com), a technology trendsetter in business communications solutions, announces the availability of Bitrix? Intranet Portal 9.0, the most ambitious release of the company?s Enterprise 2.0 solution for effective collaboration, communication, social networking, workflow and knowledge management for small and medium-sized businesses. The avalanche of new features reflects the increasing demand for the Enterprise 2.0 environment to reach a new level of sustainable business operations and bridge organizations with their customers, partners and employees.

SMBs sorely need cost-effective solutions to create productive internal workspaces and solid communications with external parties. Unfortunately, the market offers either over-priced, over-featured enterprise-level suites or lightweight or single-purpose products covering a limited number of tasks. ?Our latest release carries a number of top-notch innovations and a perfectly balanced mix of features that offer customers a Swiss-army-knife solution with the industry leading ?value-for-money? rate,? said Dmitry Valyanov, President of Bitrix, Inc.

Write, speak, watch

Bitrix Intranet Portal 9.0 now provides a full range of business-oriented communication opportunities. In the new version, the blogs & forums and instant messaging features are reinforced with video conferencing and e-mail processing.

Customers can create a number of virtual video meeting rooms according to their license terms, make online room reservations with real-time status display in the public calendar and initiate either an instant peer-to-peer video call or a click-away video conference for up to six participants. This feature is available both for internal and external communications and requires a simple browser plug-in.

Thanks to the integrated Send&Save? technology, organizations can solve a major headache associated with the fact that email remains the main business communication tool. Correspondence is usually dispersed among user mailboxes without proper archiving and sharing, thus leaving no significant footprint after employee dismissal. The new feature duplicates email in the intranet, stores messages in dedicated discussions with shared user access rights and indexes it for the D.I.G. enterprise search engine.

The integrated SMTP server sorts incoming email to dedicated discussions in Bitrix Intranet Portal and delivers notifications about group announcements, replies and new topics back to user inboxes. This way, employees can leverage the workgroup collaboration even without logging into the intranet portal.

Security above all

Bitrix Intranet Portal 9.0 makes a huge step forward in security with the improvement of the integrated PRO+PRO? security framework, which goes far beyond traditional intranet protection. Thanks to the new anti-virus module, the product prevents malicious code distribution to end users and provides both detection and disinfection capabilities for automatic purging of infected code. In combination with embedded backup and integrity control, the web anti-virus dramatically amplifies the overall product security, minimizes downtime, and ensures industry-leading business continuity and reputation protection.

The module performs real-time HTML code scanning, identifies and cuts suspicious iframe and javascript blocks, and informs the website administrator about the detected threat. It combines rule-based behavior blocking and signature-based anti-virus technologies to combat, with 90% efficiency, both known and unknown malware which other systems would simply pass along to site users.

Business process management

Confirming its status as a technological pioneer in Enterprise 2.0 business process management, Bitrix has added a number of important enhancements to this module. Bitrix Intranet Portal 9.0 allows for more effective business process design and monitoring by leveraging new collaborative and fundamental features.

Now, a process can be initiated with regards to a document or a routine activity, owners can modify the process at any stage of its implementation, users can receive assignments directly to their calendars and tasks as well as receive notifications via instant messenger or e-mail. The business processes visual constructor received new functions like issue escalation and decision-making timeout, while the product is now equipped with additional templates for typical activity like business trips and vacation request handling.

Equipped with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and extreme ease of use, the module provides businesses an opportunity for significant improvement of intranet ROI by boosting employee productivity, internal interoperability, and user satisfaction.

Last but not least

Bitrix Intranet Portal 9.0 experienced several other enhancements which are spearheading the evolving Enterprise 2.0 market and driven by user demand. The product enables automatic visual representation of organization?s structure with details received directly from Active Directory or entered manually. The user interface was endowed with extended tooltips when browsing employee profiles. The workgroups appearance has changed, offering more comprehensive control, monitoring, intuitive navigation and customization with full support of tags and tag-based search.

Bitrix Intranet Portal 9.0 supports the latest versions of the most popular browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera for PC and Mac. The product contains the capability of smart connecting of huge data storages to make them available for intranet users in a matter of seconds. The photo gallery module underwent a major revamp, allowing better image uploading, adjusting and presentation.

Customers also receive extended customization options to craft their solution according to certain business needs. Organizations can create their own private and public grids to present a unified display of data scattered among multiple sources and reflecting heterogeneous information stores like partner lists, knowledge bases, etc.

?Wrapped in a highly-customizable mashup-style user interface, Bitrix Intranet Portal 9.0 offers a very attractive employee workspace which makes adoption of this intranet solution fast and painless, as described by users themselves. As a result, businesses can easily capitalize on the social dimension of work and leverage profound employee involvement,? said Dmitry Valyanov, President of Bitrix, Inc.

Pricing

Customers can purchase a 25-User Base Pack (starting from US$ 1799) and the necessary number of user licenses exceeding 25 (US$ 40 per user). Options for unlimited users and a special offer for Hosting Providers are also available.

Upgrade options

Users of previous versions of Bitrix Intranet Portal are entitled to a free upgrade to any edition of version 9.0 if they have purchased within the last 12 months or are subscribed. The upgrade is only one click away ? it can be done in realtime and fully automatically using the SiteUpdate module.

Availability

Bitrix Intranet Portal 9.0 is available immediately. The product can be purchased from Bitrix partners or online.

Support

The price of Bitrix Intranet Portal 9.0 includes a one-year subscription for technical support and updates. Further yearly renewals can be purchased for 22% of the product price.

Additional Resources

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About Bitrix, Inc.

Bitrix is a privately-owned company developing an advanced business communications platform to bridge SMBs with their customers (Internet), partners (Extranet) and employees (Intranet). Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Alexandria, VA, Bitrix now incorporates 70+ staff, 30,000+ customers and 4,000+ partners worldwide. The customer list includes Hyundai, Volkswagen, Panasonic, Gazprom, Xerox, PricewaterhouseCoopers, DPD, VTB, Samsung and Cosmopolitan. Localized into 13 languages, the company?s products are distinguished for their pioneering technology, unique security features, extreme performance capacity and unmatched ease-of-use.

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