FIT Technologies

Cool Cleveland Interviews

Stay tuned over the coming weeks and months for more informative video clips on key IT topics such as Security, Wi-Fi, and SANs (Security Area Networks). Enjoy viewing these videos on your lunch break, or you can even forward them to your friends. http://www.FITtechnologies.net

----------Published 1.14.09----------

Fred Franks on Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
FIT Technologies

Fred Franks knows it's not a happy topic, but planning for a disaster can actually save a company time, money and reputation when things go wrong. It all starts with an IT assessment, during which the tech mavens at FIT can give your company an understanding of weakness areas and potential trouble spots. Are your files being backed up regularly? Will your computers continue running if something goes wrong? Will your accounting and email services protested from the unexpected? FIT Continuum offers guaranteed seats, so you won't be locked out when things go wrong, and you can decide how quickly you need to set response time. Shot at their cool loft offices at Playhouse Square, this video lays out all the services that FIT offers to help your business stay up and running. http://www.FITtechnologies.net

----------Published 12.17.08----------

Fred Franks on Managed Services
FIT Technologies

Fred Franks knows what his customers needs. Many companies, large and small, can't afford to have full time IT staff with expertise in every discipline at all times. That's why many of them rely on FIT Technology's team of experts to be on hand when they are needed. In this video, shot near FIT's offices at Playhouse Square in MOKO Cafe, Fred talks about how "outsourcing" any number of IT services to FIT's experts can be a very smart move for many companies. As a bonus, can you spot Cleveland's Tech Czar, Michael DeAloia, who serves as FIT's Senior Director of Business Development, in the background of the video, sipping his beverage. http://www.FITtechnologies.net

----------Published 12.10.08----------

Michelle Tomallo
Co-founder & VP, FIT Technologies

Things just keep getting better for FIT Technologies & their VP & co-founder Michelle Tomallo. FIT scored big as a runner up to the Ernst & Young for Entrepreneur of the Year, partying in Palm Springs with Jay Leno, Jack Welch & a whole list of who's whos and talking about the recent economic announcements. In these challenging times, FIT Technologies can assist their partners with an IT assessment and outsourcing of some critical IT functions. Their new partnership with Key Bank allows FIT to be able to finance their tech hardware, software & training on affordable terms. And FIT continues to work with schools on their web-based student information systems, and now offers uniforms & accessories for K-12 with their new CampusOutfitters.com. For 2009, they will continue to help customers with SharePoint implementation. Looks like everyone's getting FIT. http://www.FITtechnologies.net

----------Published 11.05.08----------

Fred Franks on Application Development
FIT Technologies

Fred Franks checks in again with Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready, spreading the good word about FIT Technologies' recent Microsoft Gold Partner certification for application development, putting them at the top of the heap. One of the products they specialize in is Microsoft's SharePoint, which can be customized to allow small companies to do collaboration, and large firms to coordinate hundreds of employees. Watch the cool video shot at MOKO Coffee & Tea in Playhouse Square, right near FIT's hip HQ in the Idea Center building. http://www.FITTechnologies.net

----------Published 10.08.08----------

Fred Franks on Storage Area Networks
FIT Technologies

Fred Franks knows his stuff. He'll tell you the difference between a LAN (Local Area Network), a WAN (Wide Area Network) and a SAN (Storage Area Network), and in this interview with Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready, he'll tell you how FIT Technologies works with clients to use SANs to make better use of their network resources. He talks about how FIT can cluster an array of hard drives together to create a very fast Storage Area Network. What would you do with all that storage? Create redundancy with your hard drives, and give your production environment a larger disk space to work in, with fast speed. Or use it to backup for your extra-large files, such as video and audio, or your high transactional database. The typical SAN is not as expensive as it once was, since hard drives have come down significantly in price. You can also backup your server environment and have it available in case your production servers go down. Who knew?

http://www.FITTechnologies.net

----------Published 10.01.08----------

Michelle Tomallo
FIT Technologies

Michelle Tomallo is fresh off her recent win, along with FIT Technologies co-founder Mickey Tubbs, as Entrepreneurs of the Year in Technology from Ernst & Young... and now she's looking forward to traveling in November to Palm Springs for the national competition. Mickey can be heard in this podcast at a recent COSE event, as she discusses the challenges that many businesses face as they grow. Michelle gives us the update on some new clients who have hired FIT to do their patented IT Assessment, which in turn resulted in FIT helping a local foundation redesign their network and purchase new equipment, and assisting with the set up of a network monitoring program for another client. FIT also won Division 1 in the ERC Health Corporate Challenge 2008, which took place June thru August. Catch the full series of FIT Flix, short entertaining videos on IT topics such as VoIP, Green IT and SharePoint by clicking here. Watch this video for the cameo by their dog, Piper, who wanders the halls at FIT Technologies. http://www.FITTechnologies.net

----------Published 9.17.08----------

Fred Franks on Network Security
FIT Technologies

Fred Franks hones in on one of the most overlooked areas of a company's IT environment: the security of the business's technology network. Some of the areas that many companies overlook: e-commerce transactions, file sharing, Internet access points and all those iPods, mobile phones and thumb drives that have become so ubiquitous and potentially worrisome to an IT manager. What can you do? As a first step, your company can put a firewall between your network and the Internet, and add some anti-virus & spam filtering. Larger companies can consider an IDS, or an Intrusion Detection System, which looks at all your traffic trends to see if anything fishy is hitting your web server. Fortunately, FIT Technologies offers a tech audit to get a comprehensive feel for potential issues to analyze potential vulnerabilities and risks and way to mitigate them. They also offer security monitoring systems, to which FIT can remotely log in to check that everything is copacetic. We're breathing easier already. http://www.FITTechnologies.net

----------Published 9.10.08----------

Fred Franks on Voice Over IP
FIT Technologies

Fred Franks is the cheerful voice behind FIT Technologies, where he serves as Director of Managed IT Services. Why so cheerful? Maybe because he's helping FIT's clients utilize VOIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol, which is a relatively new way of putting your corporate voice and telephone service right over the Internet, saving your company money and opening up a whole world of new features and tweaks. Want unlimited visual voice mail (like the iPhone? VOIP can do that. Want to have all your voice mail sent as audio attachments to your email, where you can check them at your leisure and in whichever order you choose? VOIP can do that. No wonder Fred is so happy. http://www.FITTechnologies.net

----------Published 7.09.08----------

Fred Franks on Application Development
FIT Technologies

Fred Franks knows that whether your company needs a new software application built from scratch, or if they want an off-the-shelf program customized to do more, the tech team at FIT Technologies can build out the necessary software. Often a company finds themselves using numerous applications that don't play well with each other, and dealing with the frustration of lost time and inefficiencies. Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready speaks with Fred outside FIT's Playhouse Square location about his company's specialties in application development.

It may be well worth it to look into a software integration effort to allow your teams to work together effectively. Small or large companies can take advantage of FIT's expertise in industries such as education, banking, retail, e-commerce and professional services. http://www.FITTechnologies.net

----------Published 6.18.08----------

Michelle Tomallo
FIT Technologies

Isn't it great when a fantastic local company does well. FIT Technologies vice president and co-founder Michelle Tomallo spoke with Thomas Mulready of Cool Cleveland about not only their relatively new location in the Ideacenter building, but also their new collaborative working relationships with Ideacenter, Playhouse Square Management, and the Playhouse Square Foundation. FIT Technologies has made great progress in the past few years, having doubled their revenue from '05-'06, then again from '06 to '07, to their current size of about $14M, and recently having been nominated as a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year Award Ernst & Young. You'll soon hear about their involvement in a local tech incubator that is being launched in the region, although much of this remains top secret. They are working with Tri-C's new Corporate College location in Solon, and they are opening up discussions about a wireless mesh in Youngstown. As for community involvement, FIT Technologies continues to be involved in fundraising and contributing to recent events such as the Cleveland Professional 20/30 Club's recent Velocity event. One of the ways that FIT assists clients is with an initial IT Assessment, where they come in and look at a company's networks, desktops, phone systems, and security set-up, then develop a recommendation of best practices. As a company, FIT Technologies has moved from a focus on the schools and educational industry to financial services, law, health care and other industry sectors. Now they are helping to advise real estate developers on how to get their buildings wired for wi-fi in order to attract tenants and residents. http://www.FITTechnologies.net

----------Published 6.11.08----------

Fred Franks on Help Desk
FIT Technologies

It's your worst nightmare: your computer system is down, you're in the middle of a critical task, and you can't get hold of anyone. Maybe that's why FIT Technologies started up their Help Desk, with the capabilities to manage your technical support 24/7/365. Whether it's problems with your desktop computers, laptops, servers, PDAs or peripherals, it's always good to know there's one number to call to get your problems addressed. As FIT Technologies' Director of Managed IT Services, Fred Franks explains to Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready, many issues can be resolved right on the phone, since the FIT Technology Help Desk personnel have seen many of these problems over the years. If not, the issue can be escalated to experts in specific tech knowledge areas. If necessary, personnel can be dispatched to your location to handle the issue onsite. That sounds better than a nightmare to us. FITTechnologies.net

----------Published 5.07.08----------

Fred Franks on Green IT
FIT Technologies

Did you know that the data IT Center is the highest per-square-foot cost that many companies incur? Between the cost of computers and servers, manpower and the energy to power the data center, it's surprising how much of a company's resources go towards keeping up their data center. In this overview of Green IT practices, Fred Franks, FIT Technologies' director of managed IT services explains virtualization: how FIT can take multiple servers and additional components and is able to consolidate them on a single platform, saving energy and, of course, cost. Fred's analogy is this: instead of having all your different applications running separately (like individual cars on the highway), virtualization can combine many of those apps on one server (like putting them on a bus), thus saving time, energy and money. In this video interview with Thomas Mulready of Cool Cleveland, Fred also talks about how some of the newer data center these days augment their power by utilizing the latest technology such as solar panels. He also asks why many companies have all their computers and servers running all night and all the day, when FIT can help locate a lot of that data in a smaller footprint, then have unused components automatically shut down overnight and save up to 90% of space, power and cost to do the same work. Go green! FITTechnologies.net

----------Published 4.09.08----------

Fred Franks on Managed IT Services
FIT Technologies

Most companies have an IT department. But many of them might save money and increase their productivity if they let someone else manage their IT functions. FIT Technologies' Fred Franks talks with Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready about the many reasons their clients use FIT for what they call Managed IT Services. FIT manages the desktops, networks and servers for their clients, large and small. Modest-sized businesses may not want to keep an IT staff on salary full-time, or they might find that their small staff doesn't have the expertise in the wide range of technology that FIT can offer, often with remote access. For larger clients, FIT Technologies might place a number of tech personnel onsite, to be available around the clock. Service levels can range from basic monitoring and maintenance, to break/fix and emergency response to full-time personnel on staff. http://www.FITtechnologies.net

----------Published 3.26.08----------

Michelle Tomallo
Co-Founder & VP, FIT Technologies

Michelle Tomallo has helped lead her company through a lot of changes recently. Not only did they grow from an organization of 3 to 65 employees in their original Elyria HQ, they then expanded even more with a move to the Idea Center at Playhouse Square in Downtown Cleveland, and have brought on 75 NEOhioans, for a total of 160 employees both here and around the country. Their revenue has doubled each year for the past 3 years, to $14M in 2007, but the biggest change might be their name, from SchoolOne to FIT Technologies, reflecting their growth in the corporate market.

With a solid base serving the K-12 educational market with technology support, application development, disaster recovery and IT services, now they are applying their knowledge and capabilities to a wider range of industries: banking & financial services, professional service firms, creative agencies, non-profit organizations and others. Michelle pops down to the dance studio on the first floor of the Idea Center building to speak with Thomas Mulready of Cool Cleveland about their recent growth and their plans for the future. http://www.FITtechnologies.net

----------Published 3.19.08----------

Fred Franks on SharePoint
FIT Technologies

When SchoolOne changed their name to FIT Technologies, it was an acknowledgment that their business model had evolved from the K-12 educational market to the wider sphere of business clients. One of the new technologies that FIT has assisted their clients with is the web-based collaboration and document management platform SharePoint, which allows anyone who has access to the web the ability to share workspaces and documents, as well as applications such as wikis and blogs. Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready spoke with Fred Franks, FIT's director of managed IT services, about how SharePoint works for large or small firms and non-profits with various approval paths to store and give access to standard MS docs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint with a robust search capability. http://www.FITtechnologies.net

----------Published 2.13.08----------

Fred Franks
IT Assessment by FIT Technologies

When SchoolOne recently changed their name after eight years of serving the public & private K-12 education markets, they acknowledged that their business had grown to become an important IT provider to not only schools and the educational niche, but also to the larger corporate market as well. Their new moniker, FIT Technologies, also indicates their philosophy in customizing solutions for each and every client. An important element in that customization is their unique IT Assessment service.

Their Director of Managed IT Services, Fred Franks, spoke with Cool Cleveland's Thomas Mulready recently about the types of clients that can use a FIT IT assessment, the most common weakness areas found in the assessment process, and what exactly is included in that 20-30 page evaluation. FITtechnologies.net

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