John Petote Nominated and Confirmed as Newest Board Member of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project

JOHN PETOTE NOMINATED AND CONFIRMED AS NEWEST BOARD MEMBER OF THE UC SANTA BARBARA ECONOMIC FORECAST PROJECT                                                                      John Petote, CEO of the Santa Barbara based IT firm, CIO Solutions, has recently been elected to join the Board of Directors of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project.   Santa Barbara, CA, January 19, 2010 --- John Petote, CEO and owner of <a href="/">CIO Solutions</a>, a Santa Barbara based IT support, management and consulting firm has joined the Board of Directors for the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project. This nomination and confirmation came in late October and Mr. Petote is looking forward to being involved with such a reputable and prestigious group. Mr. Petote has owned and operated <a href="/">CIO Solutions</a> since its conception in 1986 therefore bringing over 20 years of business experience to the project. Mr. Petote joins many distinguished members of the community including Craig Zimmerman (<a href="http://www.towbes.com/">The Towbes Group, Inc.</a>), Peter Jordano (<a href="http://www.jordanos.com/">Jordano’s, Inc.</a> / <a href="http://www.pacificbeveragecompany.com/">Pacific Beverage</a>), Michael Pfau (<a href="http://www.reickerpfau.com/">Reicker, Pfau, Pyle and McRoy, LLP</a>), Jason Spievak (<a href="http://www.greatpacificcapital.com/">Great Pacific Capital, LLC</a>), and Bob Tuler (<a href="http://www.radiusgroup.com/">Radius Group Commercial Real Estate</a>). To view a full listing of the Santa Barbara County Board of Directors for the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project see their website, <a href="http://www.ucsb-efp.com/">http://www.ucsb-efp.com/</a>.   The UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project was established in 1981 to provide Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties reliable information regarding economic, demographic, and regional business trends. The <a href="http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/">Department of Economics at UC Santa Barbara</a> was the original proponent and sponsor for the project but the project has since become a self-supporting and community-sponsored research program. The program is research-oriented and uses the information gathered to publish detailed economic and demographic forecasts which are then distributed to California communities via the Internet, publications, and events which are held across the State and throughout the year. For a complete schedule of events and available downloads, visit the project’s website, <a href="http://www.ucsb-efp.com/">http://www.ucsb-efp.com/</a>. The program also offers a variety of services including consulting services, forecasting services, and surveying services. The UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project is vital to the business owners in the Tri-County area because it provides valuable projections of future economic activity in the local area.     CIO Solutions provides enterprise-class IT management and consulting services to the Tri-Counties. In addition to providing IT support, CIO Solutions also specializes in implementing and maintaining VoIP phone solutions. CIO Solutions services a wide variety of clients and prides themselves on their flexibility and adaptability. Visit their website <a href="/">www.ciosolutions.com</a> for more information or contact them to schedule an appointment, 805-692-6700.   Contact: Hannah Rich, Marketing Coordinator CIO Solutions 805-692-6700, ext. 105 www.ciosolutions.com

2010-01-19T18:36:53Z

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john-petote-nominated-and-confirmed-as-newest-board-member-of-the-uc-santa-barbara-economic-forecast-project

2010-02-03T20:37:12Z

5 Reasons Why it is Easy to Do Business with CIO Solutions By: Hannah Rich, Professional Service Coordinator  It has never been easier to do business with CIO Solutions. From the end-user to the CFO we have made it our top priority to make doing business with CIO as enjoyable and cost-effective as possible. Many of these improvements have come been in direct response to customer request. Some of the things that CIO has done to improve their service offerings include: adding our Central Support department, allowing service requests to be submitted via email, providing customers online access to account information, creating a dedicated department for customer service, and establishing the most competent and professional engineering team in the Tri Counties Area. 1) When a client calls Central Support, they will be immediately connected to an Engineer and their problem will be resolved(95% get resolved in 30 min or less). We pride ourselves on providing support with friendly, knowledgeable, and capable agents. By creating the Central Support department we have been able to give our customers immediate access to a qualified engineer and solve most problems in a fraction of the time as an onsite visit. Call and experience the world class service of our Central Support team at 805-692-6709. 2) When we restructured our service department we tried to think of the most convenient and flexible ways for our clients to request support. In addition to a phone call we also have developed a system that allows clients to create service requests via email.. This allows our clients to quickly send assistance requests and be sure that the request won’t slip through the cracks or go unnoticed.  responded to in a timely matter. 3) Another way that CIO is making it easy to do business is the release of their Customer Portal. The Customer Portal allows clients to log in and securely access all their account information online. They can check on updates, send status updates, and even submit tickets through the Portal. The Customer Portal is a great way for clients to be intimately involved with CIO on their own time. 4) While almost every company states that customer service is a top priority for success, CIO understands that in this industry, and community, keeping customers satisfied and therefore loyal is the only way to succeed. Based on this commitment to excellent customer service CIO has a dedicated customer service team. This team consists of individuals who are intimately involved with all aspects of the company and therefore are able to assist clients on a variety of issues. We want our clients to know that they can call with any suggestion, any piece of feedback, and any complaint, whatever the issue we are here to assist and resolve. 5) Lastly, it is easy to do business with CIO Solutions because of the amazing engineering team we have developed over the years. Our engineers operate as a team. We have developed communication venues in which the engineers constantly update their peers on projects, issues and other relevant information. The engineering team is characterized by flexibility; this flexibility ensures that clients will always be taken care of, no matter what. Thank you for all who have contributed to the new and improved CIO Solutions. We look forward to doing business with you! Visit our website today to check out the new face of CIO Solutions at <a href="/">www.ciosolutions.com</a> or call our office to schedule an introductory meeting 805-692-6700.      3

2009-10-02T16:44:34Z

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5 Reasons Why it is Easy to Do Business with CIO Solutions

2009-10-24T20:07:30Z

CIO Solutions is now certified and authorized by Microsoft to sell and support Microsoft Online Services in addition to helping clients migrate to these cloud-based services.  CIO Solutions has been implementing Microsoft Solutions in the Santa Barbara and Tri Counties area since 1986 making Microsoft Online Services a natural fit. Microsoft Online Services helps customers cut the total cost of ownership associated with premise-based solutions by allowing customers the flexibility to migrate portions of their Microsoft infrastructure to the cloud. “It’s not a fit for all of our clients, but it makes a lot of sense for some, especially in the SMB space” says Andrew West, CTO of CIO Solutions. “In Santa Barbara, most small business have few choices while maintaining relatively complex server and email environments. Microsoft Online Services offers these companies the choice to remove some of those complexities, effectively moving capital expenditure spending to operational expenses.  We recognize the benefits that the cloud has to offer, and CIO Solutions is ready to pass on those advantages to our clients today." 2

2009-08-21T00:00:51Z

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Santa Barbara Microsoft Online Services: Now Sold Through CIO Solutions

2009-08-21T00:00:51Z

by Andrew West, CTO Some days at work are definitely more notable than others, and today is one of those exceptional days. We've been providing fully-featured virtualization solutions to our clients for a number of years now, mostly with VMware's ESX (now called vSphere in version 4 of the product line).  Traditionally, these solutions were reserved for organizations with "a lot" of servers (5 or more) and or more IT budget, since features such as vMotion - the real-time migration of a virtual server from one physical server to another with zero downtime - were only available if a pricey shared storage solution was available.  That was then, this is now. An ingenious company (now one of our partners) called StorMagic has developed software (SvSAN) that enables the use of local server storage as shared storage amongst your virtual host servers, i.e. we can load up an HP server with relatively inexpensive hard drives and make that storage available to all virtual host servers.  Not only that, but we can mirror this storage to another similar server so that an entire host server running your virtual servers could fail and everything would automatically fail over to your second host server.  In short, we can now run up to approximately 15-20 servers on just 2 physical servers AND still provide full operational functionality automatically if one of those physical servers fails for whatever reason. This is a huge deal and is worth writing home about.  Cut your server hardware costs, energy bills (electricity, cooling), save space, make your servers portable and fully redundant, and spend more time working on your business rather than working in it.  It is a quad-win all around!  If you've been hesitant to virtualize, SvSAN is the key to finally get you where you know you need to be. You can download and test SvSAN for free <a href="http://www.stormagic.com/SvSAN_reseller.php?reseller=ciosolutions">here</a>.  Use promo key CIOSolutions09   2

2009-08-13T20:22:41Z

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Virtualization for Everybody, Finally!

2009-08-13T20:22:41Z