Spam Protection? What product should I use?

Earlier this week, a different service provider (Out of Big Bend, WI) called up Sensible Gurus looking for some help. On one of their customers machines they installed the ESET Spam protection and Anti-Virus Suite. Exchange was none too happy, after a bunch of magic we did get Exchange to a point where mail was flowing again.

Two other service providers (one in New Berlin, the other in Wauwatosa) in the area that I know of only sell Barracuda Devices for Spam Filtering. The Barracuda is a hardware device that sits in front of the mail server checking each piece of mail before it is delivered to the mail server.

And finally a number other Service Providers in the Greater Milwaukee and Waukesha Area use the UTM Devices (Such as Fortinet, Sonicwall, or Untangle) to filter the Spam at the Firewall Level.

We, at Sensible Gurus LLC, feel that these solutions, while they work, are not in the best interest for the customer. Sensible Gurus used a hosted based mail scrubbing service that not only filters the spam offsite, but also archives for disaster recovery, system outage, or even compliance.

In all of our competitors solutions, the junk mail is still being delivered to the mail server, and in many times being bounced back. This uses up precious bandwidth. In one office of 5 computer users, switching to our Anti-Spam solution freed up over HALF of their bandwidth!

With the Sensible Gurus Anti-Spam Service we also remove the possibly of blacklisting of the customers IP Address when the server or internal computer gets compromised and starts sending out spam! Because our Anti-Spam filters both incoming and outgoing messages and is sent out from our hosted location, it doesn't matter if your internal IP address is ever blacklisted!

The Remote Access to our backup mail server is a lifesaver in the event of a natural disaster! As our Hosted Servers are located in multiple locations our customers mail is accessible even if their internal mail server is underwater (as was the event in the local flooding)

Shoot us an e-mail as sales@sensiblegurus.com to discuss your mail security and continuity strategy!

2nd Grade in New Berlin, WI is shorting their students

This is in regard to the Ronald Regan School in the School District of New Berlin. As part of the school district that Sensible Gurus is based in (and more importantly where my kids go to school) I thought I would share this e-mail I received. We, at Sensible Gurus, feel that education is very important, and not something that should be shorted. After all, these are the people that will be choosing our retirement home!

The Website for the New Berlin School district is http://www.nbexcellence.org/ and the motto is "Expect Excellence" if this is the Excellence that I'm Expecting, I'd hate to see what mediocre is.
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I'm not sure if you have heard - as of last week, the plan for 2nd grade was to go down to 4 classes. Since there are 112 students, this means there would be 28 kids in each class. That is too many. That means there would be an extra 6 kids in each class. The teachers already struggle to fit in all the curriculum - how are they going to teach another 6 kids and provide the individualized attention that is needed? In my opinion, they are still learning the basics and are still too young in 2nd grade to have that many kids in a class.

I've received a couple emails over the weekend from other parents and here is the plan:
Sorry if you've already received this from someone else - just trying to get the word out!

1st step--call Christine Cody and let her know your thoughts. There are 112 kids in the grade with a good amount with IEP's. Ask her how they will be assisting the teachers? 28 kids per class is too many. Let her know your thoughts. My guess is that she won't be able to tell you much. The good thing is that 28 of 30 teachers were reinstated to the district; however this doesn't guarantee the we will have 5 classrooms.

2nd-after your call/email to Christine, call Joe Garza (asst. superintendent) and tell him that we need 5 classrooms.

3rd-call each one of the board members.

In the meantime, call and email the classmates and get them to do the same. the only way to move things forward is to tell them that we are not going to be happy with 4 teachers.
Open house is Thursday...we gotta get moving!

All Email addresses and phone numbers can be found on the district webpage.