Tech Bytes: Fort Worth IT firm launches cloud product

Betty Dillard bdillard@bizpress.net

Enterhost, a provider of information technology business solutions headquartered in Fort Worth, is one of the first companies in the world to deploy a cloud-based platform from Microsoft called Lync Hosting Pack v2. The cloud phone and collaboration system is the latest addition to Enterhost’s unified communications solutions. It provides an alternative for customers seeking Lync’s features but without the upfront costs or hardware to purchase or manage.

Commonly referred to as Hosted Lync, the service is offered through Enterhost via a monthly, per-user subscription. The cloud-based version of Lync offers customers all of Lync, Exchange and SharePoint’s collaboration features, including instant message, presence, voice and video calling, conference call services, desktop sharing and whiteboarding. “Today, if a business has their applications in the cloud, their teams can work from anywhere on any device – whether it’s a tablet, a laptop, a smartphone, etc. – and be more productive than ever,” said Ben Tiblets, Enterhost co-president. “It’s time to reap the benefits of this technology, and Lync is a great place to start.”

Amon Carter and Google

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The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Nasher Sculpture Center will be adding more than 1,700 high-resolution works of art to the Google Art Project. The Art Project allows online visitors to explore the museums’ paintings, sculptures, and other objects virtually. Highlights from the 1,200 images submitted by the Amon Carter showcase work by some of the greatest names in American art, such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler, along with 200 photographs from the collection. The DMA contributed images from the Museum’s encyclopedic collection, which spans 5,000 years of human creativity. Highlights from the more than 500 works of art the DMA submitted include Sheaves of Wheat by Vincent van Gogh and a gold Sicán ceremonial mask from Peru. The Nasher’s submissions from their internationally acclaimed collection of modern and contemporary sculpture include Auguste Rodin and Mark di Suvero. The resolution of these images, combined with a custom-built zoom viewer, allows art lovers to discover minute aspects of objects they likely have never seen up close before. Visitors to the Google Art Project can browse works by the artist’s name, the artwork, the type of art, the museum, the country, collections, and the time period. www.google.com/culturalinstitute

Plaza Medical’s new device for strokes Plaza Medical Center of Fort Worth and the Texas Stroke Institute of HCA North Texas says it is first hospital in Texas, and one of the first in the United States, to use a new device to treat strokes caused by clots that cut off blood flow to the brain. The new technology treats patients who have suffered acute ischemic strokes, which are caused by a blood clot or other blockage in one of the arteries that supply blood to the brain. The Trevo XP ProVue clot-retrieval system, from Michigan manufacturer Stryker Corp., is designed to integrate into blood clots and remove them, shaving critical minutes off the process of restoring blood flow to the brain. The more quickly this can be done, the better the stroke patient’s chances of recovering and resuming a normal life, according to Dr. Vallabh Janardhan, medical director of the Texas Stroke Institute. At Plaza Medical Center, which is a designated and certified Comprehensive Stroke Center, Janardhan and the interventional neurology team were the first in Texas to use the Trevo XP ProVue for treatment of a stroke victim. “This technology will help save lives throughout the Texas Stroke Institute’s enormous service area for stroke care, which stretches across Texas and southern Oklahoma,” said Janardhan. “The technology for blockage therapies is growing rapidly and we anticipate many more such devices in the near future that will continue to increase our treatment rates.” The Texas Stroke Institute of HCA North Texas is the first “Comprehensive Brain Attack System of Care” in the United States. It has two designated and certified Comprehensive Stroke Centers, Plaza Medical Center of Fort Worth and The Medical Center of Plano, and seven designated and certified Primary Stroke Centers: Denton Regional Medical Center, Las Colinas Medical Center, Medical Center of Arlington, Medical City of Dallas, Medical Center of Lewisville, Medical Center of McKinney and North Hills Hospital. The Texas Stroke Institute, in collaboration with HCA North Texas Hospitals and the HCA North Texas Patient Transfer Center, extends support and patient care to more than 120 community hospitals and free-standing emergency departments.

Methodist Hospitals offer ER check-in technology Methodist Health System recently launched QuickER.org, a new technology that reduces waiting time in the emergency room, at Methodist Dallas Medical Center and Methodist Mansfield Medical Center. The online scheduling service allows patients with non-life-threatening conditions to select the first available time to be seen in the ER and then wait at home before going to the emergency department. When patients arrive at their scheduled time, the goal is to have a health care professional see them in 15 minutes. If the projected treatment time is delayed, QuickER users are sent real-time notifications via phone call and email so they can continue waiting at home.

Methodist Dallas is the first Level II Trauma Center in the area to offer the online check-in. Methodist Mansfield is the first hospital-based emergency department in Tarrant County to offer online check-in. “For our less emergent patients, the new service provides convenience and comfort and helps physicians have more control over the emergent care experience, especially in emergency rooms with high volumes, like Methodist Dallas and Methodist Mansfield,” said Dr. Ketan Trivedi, medical director of the Emergency Department at Methodist Mansfield Medical Center.

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SMU adds datacenter degree Beginning in the fall, Southern Methodist University will offer a first-of-its-kind master’s degree in datacenter systems engineering. The program is open to full-time and part-time graduate students and is available on the Dallas campus as well as through the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering’s distance education program. Enrollment is expected from current professionals in industry and government as well as from undergraduates in engineering, science, mathematics and business who are preparing to enter the field. About four million workers currently are associated with datacenter operations, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, and the number is expected to increase by 800,000 in 2016 and by an additional two million by 2018. The new program offers elective specializations in three technical areas: facilities, infrastructure and subsystems; data systems engineering and analytics; and computer networks, virtualization, security and cloud computing. www.smu.edu