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Consulting One Achieves VMware Enterprise Partner Status

 

Following 3 years of VMware partnership, and more than 7 years worth of VMware enterprise implementation knowledge, I'm happy to announce that Consulting One has now been elevated to VMware Enterprise Partner status. This positions us as one of only 20 partners at this level in Queensland, and one of only 8 that have also completed Infrastructure Virtualisation competencies. We're continuing with two further competencies - in Disaster Recovery and Desktop Virtualisation which will uniquely position us one of the most qualified VMware Enterprise Partners in Queensland.

The process to become an enterprise partner involved numerous activities across the organisation - from technical project implementation reviews, sales and technical pre-sales training and customer account management with a focus on post-sales support, and of course LOTS of exams.

At the end of the day, what's the benefit of all of this for our customers? Apart from the plaque to hang on the wall and a sticker to place on our window, it ultimately proves our commitment to keeping our skills current and relevant, and improving our services offerings in the right areas. VMware (and some of the other up and coming contenders in the server and desktop virtualisation field) have already revolutionised the way we're thinking about IT infrastructure today, and the server and desktop virtualisation movement is becoming even more compelling daily. This is especially true for the SMB marketplace who stands to gain the most bang-for-the-buck from these technologies. It's often said that if you're virtualising your infrastructure already, you're 75% done with your Disaster Recovery planning. I think that's a fair statement.

We're proud of our achievement and no doubt I'll be thanking my team for their efforts in the form of cakes, or lunches, or some other kinds of bribery that haven't been thought up yet. With SysAdmin Appreciation Day on July 30 there may be too many cakes this month!
 

Windows 7 Release to Manufacturing

 Windows 7 has just been released to manufacturing and is scheduled for a public release on October 22. Of course, we've been running the release candidate now on about half of our internal computers and we have to say that we're pretty impressed with it, and we're relatively confident that customers receiving it on new PCs won't want to downgrade to Windows XP. Don't despair if you've just bought a new system from us, any Lenovo or HP System purchased from June 26 onwards is eligible for a free upgrade. If you have any concerns at all, or would just like to hear about what's new in Windows 7, talk to us today.
 

2009 Great Endeavour Rally Wrapup

The 22st Great Endeavour Rally has drawn to a close and it has turned out to be their biggest ever fund raising year - with the final figure to be confirmed but event organisers are blown away.

This year's rally closed in Townsville on Friday the 24th July, where all cars assembled at Endeavour Industries for morning tea and to organise a convoy to the official finish line at Strand Park, with the top 30 cars leading the procession. Cars remained on display for a few hours for the general public to come down and get involved. 

There was a great crowd to welcome everyone and it kicked off a good night for the formal ceremony and celebrations, where trophies were handed out and the rally’s unique award winners were announced.

Congratulations to locals Dan and Deb Heinemann for winning their classification and finishing 22nd over all out of 140 cars! Check out the Rally4Charity website to read their story.
 

Rally4Charity.com.au is now live

Not long now until the Great Endeavour Rally for 2009 kicks off. We're sponsoring one of the local teams through charity website development this year so make sure you check out the Rally4Charity website. Make a donation while you're there, it's good karma!
 

Microsoft Gold Partner

 After three years of Microsoft partnership I'm proud to announce that our company has now been awarded Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status in the Microsoft Partner Program. This makes us one of only around 35 partners at this level in Queensland and we believe the only one anywhere in Regional Queensland. Even fewer of the 35 are also Small Business Specialists, a designation that we are also proud to hold.

To become gold certified we had to meet rigorous criteria - a certain number of staff with Microsoft qualifications (all of our technical staff are Microsoft certified of course), demonstrated ability in areas of competency through project work, and specialisation in various technical fields. Our first specialisation is in "Advanced Infrastructure Solutions". We have several other specialisations underway at the moment also.

So what does Gold really mean? Apart from the plaque to hang on the wall, it means that we have even better access to Microsoft technical support and Microsoft resources in general. We'll have earlier exposure to new technologies and products and access to the same software licensing tools that the very large consultancies have.

We're proud of our achievement, and I'd like to thank the rest of my team for their efforts in pulling this together. We had set it as a task to complete by the end of 2009 and we pulled it off almost six months early.

Please, enjoy your weekend, we might head off and have a beer to celebrate!