Good planning stems from a clear understanding of the big picture.  Oftentimes, technological issues are resolved ad hoc, which in the long run leads to dissimilar technologies that do not or will not work well together.  Ultimately, poor upfront planning leads to a greater expense when down the road it becomes necessary to correct the past impromptu technological choices.

It is crucial that upfront planning occur before technology is deployed.  Such planning, however, not only involves a great deal of time, but more importantly, requires the expertise, knowledge, experience, and an understanding of the issues at hand.

To help off load the time, effort, and expense required to implement an efficient plan, we will work directly with your personnel in an effort to understand your issues.  Once we have an understanding of your requirements and your budget, we compare your immediate needs with the big picture and advise you on the best technological solutions available in meeting your current needs, while keeping the window open to your future requirements.  It is never too early or too late to set up and work within a plan. 

One of the challenges that face an organization is evaluating and understanding available software and system technologies and then choosing the products that fit the requirements of the organization.  On the surface, a particular product may seem to fit the need, but under the covers, the product may be incompatible with current systems, have certain hidden future costs, and may ultimately be difficult and expensive to maintain. 

We have the appropriate knowledge and experience to evaluate and choose the best software and systems products for your present and future requirements.  Employing this knowledge helps illuminate the costly mistakes that can be made now and that can lead to a less than complete or satisfactory system in the future.

Wired and Wireless: Just as the Internet connectivity has become crucial, so has connectivity between computers within your location.  Connectivity provides resource sharing such as printers and files, along with shared access to the internet. The question isn’t if you’re going to connect your PCs, its how are you going to connect your PCs. We provide the knowledge necessary to connect your systems via wired or wireless networking and ensure connectivity and security.

The task of deployment and management of new computer systems is one of the most burdensome and time consuming duties of a network administrator. It can take several hours to install and configure a business system. A properly implemented installation and configuration system will greatly reduce the total time in deploying even one PC (from 4 hours on average to as little as 20 minutes per PC). Your TCO (total cost of ownership) is much lower when a system is configured to perform an automatic method of installation and configuration as each new PC is added.

We can provide the necessary expertise to create an environment, using existing Microsoft Windows 2000 services, which will automatically deploy, manage and recover the installation and configuration of your systems throughout the network and ensure the rapid deployment of PCs, identical to each other in installation and configuration. This method is not only cost and time efficient, but it assures that all PCs deployed have all the necessary systems applications and appropriate configuration.

A user’s ability to access their on-site work environment, unique software, database applications, or files from any on-site location or from any laptop or remote off-site location, can be a tremendous time saver and convenience.  When properly configured, employees can have access to their files and data and web based access to email at anytime and from any location. 

We can configure your network system to enable an individual user to log onto any computer, locally or remotely, and have access to his/her desktop -- his/her computer environment, his/her applications and files. For example, an accountant can log on to a Sale’s Department PC and be presented with the accountant’s desktop environment, files and applications, with sales and other environments securely removed from access. Any authorized employee can log onto any computer, on-site or off-site, and have access to his/her ‘office’ desktop environment, files, data, email, etc. An administrator can log with his/her computer at home, and access all databases, word files, or Line Business application that he/she would normally access in the office. This system gives all employees full or partial access to their data, applications, and desktop environment from a remote location 24 hours 7 days a week.

In today’s computing environment, you must think about system security.  Threats to your system come in many forms, such as viruses in an email, inappropriate web content, and unauthorized access to your local network.  Your security requirements can be broken down into two distinctive types.

Network Security

Once your network is connected to the internet, it is vulnerable to a multitude of outside threats, such as the seemingly harmless browsing of your network to malicious attempts to destroy your systems and data.  A firewall can be deployed to help prevent these threats.   However, firewalls are only as good as their configuration.  We bring the necessary experience to help properly protect your network from the realities of unauthorized network traffic.

Virus Protection

Every one of your users can access infected files, email, or web sites, thereby causing your unprotected network to be infected by a virus.  Because file servers, email servers, and the web server require virus protection geared specifically for each server’s unique function, we recommend the proper installation of virus protection at the server level as well as the user’s PC.    We can help identify the proper virus protection for your system and ensure its proper configuration. 

Even with the appropriate virus protection software on your system, nothing is better than knowing how a virus infects a system and how a system’s users are vulnerable to virus attacks.  We can provide the proper education to your company's personnel on how virus infections occur so that the next time a user encounters a questionable situation, the user will have the appropriate knowledge to handle it. 

Despite the best of preventative maintenance, systems fail on occasion.  When proper disaster recovery procedures are not in place on a system, failure results in the irretrievable loss of important data and files.  In many cases a traditional file based backup is not adequate in protecting the integrity of your data.  Most email and database applications have unique requirements to properly protect these systems from data loss. We can configure recovery programs that not only help protect important data, but also minimize the down time of critical servers.  We can also ensure that the proper hardware is in place to prevent unnecessary destructive system failures.

RRK Associates can provide a full range of web services, from design and creation, to management and hosting.  We have full time web developers and graphic artists at our disposal to help design and create a professional website.