A critical aspect of any cloud governance program is ensuring continuous compliance with regulatory requirements and maintaining audit readiness. In this post, we’ll dive into how to implement continuous compliance on AWS. We’ll cover the shared responsibility model, key AWS services for compliance, and best practices for automating compliance checks and evidence collection.

Understanding the Shared Responsibility Model

Understanding the shared responsibility model is crucial for cloud compliance. AWS is responsible for the security “of” the cloud, while customers are responsible for security “in” the cloud. This means AWS ensures the security of the underlying infrastructure, such as the physical security of data centers, network infrastructure, and virtualization layer. Customers are responsible for securing their applications, data, operating systems, and network traffic. From a compliance perspective, this means customers are responsible for ensuring their workloads meet applicable regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, or GDPR. However, AWS provides a range of services and tools to help customers meet their compliance obligations.

The Shared Responsibility Model in an AWS Region

Key AWS Services for Compliance

AWS provides a suite of services designed to automate compliance checks and ensure audit readiness:

• AWS Config: Continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations. You can create Config Rules to automatically check for compliance with best practices and regulatory requirements.
• AWS CloudTrail: Records API calls and related events across your AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail logs provide an auditable history of actions taken on your account, which is critical for forensic investigations and demonstrating compliance.
• Amazon CloudWatch: Collects monitoring and operational data through logs, metrics, and events. You can use CloudWatch to monitor security events and set alarms for potential compliance issues.
• AWS Security Hub: Provides a comprehensive view of your high-priority security alerts and compliance status across AWS accounts. Security Hub aggregates findings from AWS services like GuardDuty, Inspector, and Macie.
• AWS Audit Manager: Continuously audits your AWS usage to simplify how you assess risk and compliance. Audit Manager automates evidence collection, making it easier to complete audits and meet compliance requirements.

Best Practices for Continuous Compliance

To implement continuous compliance on AWS effectively, consider these best practices:

1. Define Compliance Requirements: Work with your security, compliance, and legal teams to identify the specific regulatory requirements and industry standards that apply to your workloads. Document these requirements and map them to AWS services and features.
2. Implement Compliance as Code: Use tools like AWS CloudFormation and Terraform to define your infrastructure as code. Embed compliance checks and security best practices into your templates to ensure resources are provisioned compliant.
3. Automate Compliance Checks: Use AWS Config Rules to monitor your resource configurations for compliance continuously. Create custom rules based on your specific requirements or use pre-built rules from the AWS Config Rules Repository.
4. Collect and Analyze Logs: Use AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch to collect and analyze logs from across your AWS environment. Implement centralized logging and set up alerts for potential security or compliance issues.
5. Regularly Review and Assess: Regularly review your compliance posture using tools like AWS Security Hub and AWS Audit Manager. Identify gaps and remediate issues in a timely manner. Perform periodic risk assessments and penetration testing to validate controls.
6. Train and Educate: Provide training to developers, operations, and security teams on compliance requirements and best practices. Ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities in maintaining a compliant environment.

By following these best practices and leveraging AWS compliance services, you can implement a continuous compliance program that reduces risk and simplifies audit preparation.

How WEI Can Help

Achieving continuous compliance on AWS demands extensive expertise in security, compliance, and cloud operations. WEI’s Cloud Security and Compliance Services can help you design and implement a comprehensive compliance program on AWS. Our certified security and compliance experts can assist you with:

• Assessing your current compliance posture and identifying gaps
• Designing and implementing security controls aligned with regulatory requirements
• Automating compliance checks and evidence collection using AWS services
• Developing incident response and forensics capabilities
• Providing training and ongoing support to ensure continuous compliance

By partnering with WEI, you can ensure your AWS environment meets the highest standards of security and compliance, while freeing your team to focus on innovating and driving business value.

Conclusion

Continuous compliance is not just a regulatory requirement but a critical component of a robust cloud governance strategy. By leveraging AWS services and following best practices, organizations can ensure their cloud environments remain secure and compliant. Partnering with experts like WEI can further streamline this process, allowing your team to focus on innovation and business growth.

Next Steps: WEI, an AWS Select Tier Services Partner, collaborates closely with customers to identify their biggest challenges and develop comprehensive cloud solutions. WEI emphasizes customer satisfaction by leveraging AWS technologies to enhance development, maintenance, and delivery capabilities.

Download our free solution brief below to discover WEI’s full realm of AWS capabilities.

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Every day, IT leaders read articles about why their organization needs to be in the cloud. In this article, we want to lay out how the journey to the cloud has unfolded and identify how HPE continues to play a key role in defining what the cloud is becoming. While many enterprises have embarked on a cloud journey, the destination may still be on-prem.

What The Cloud Actually Is

Many enterprises advocate for a cloud-first strategy, leading to the misconception that this involves migrating everything to a nebulous, digital realm located somewhere above us. While that is one way to implement the cloud, it is an incorrect concept of what the cloud actually is.

The cloud, fundamentally, is a delivery model. It is designed and developed to access computing, storage, and networking resources in a way that ensures readiness even before there’s a demand for it. This ensures immediate availability whenever required. The cloud also aligns cost with actual usage. Instead of making heavy upfront investments in infrastructure and paying for potential future capacity that is not immediately needed, IT budgets are charged based on actual usage. This transforms IT costs into a utility-like payment model, akin to how you’re billed for water or electricity.

The core value propositions of the cloud are its delivery model and corresponding cost structure. There is just one caveat – the cloud doesn’t have be tied to a distant location that miles away from the headquarters it supports.

HPE Helped Define the Cloud

Since the cloud was first introduced, HPE has helped define it. In 2001, HP introduced their Instant Capacity (iCAP) offering, which was grounded in the principle of on-demand provisioning. Looking back on it, this was a revolutionary move. The program was reminiscent of today’s cloud concept, empowering businesses to scale their resources to meet growing demands in real time without the need to constantly buy or over provision new hardware. It sounds elementary, but HPE provided select customers with additional on-site servers in a standby mode. When a customer activated these resources, HPE would be alerted, at which point the customer was billed for that server. Subsequently, HPE would supply a replacement server to stand by for future needs. Instant Capacity would later include additional storage, memory or storage resources that could be activated when needed. This is an early and successful example of the cloud consumption model.

From there, HPE introduced self-service cloud management as companies began embracing the public cloud. Through a unified web portal, HPE customers could seamlessly oversee their entire infrastructure, facilitating the management of both on-site and cloud-based services. While the allure of the public cloud resonated with many, it wasn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Certain businesses faced regulatory constraints dictating data localization that made the public cloud less viable. Others, particularly those generating significant data at the edge, found data egress fees burdensome and economically untenable. Additionally, for some, the sheer geographical distance to the cloud services meant data transfer speeds were inadequate for their operational needs.

The question then became, how do you get the benefits of the cloud without having to go the full distance of the cloud?

HPE GreenLake filled this void by building on the principles of Instant Capacity. The objective: provide a cloud experience while keeping the infrastructure on prem or co-located. This gave HPE customers the best of both worlds. Now, enterprises can have the flexibility, scalability, and consumption-based pricing models associated with the cloud while retaining control, reducing latency, and addressing data residency concerns. In other words, you dictate where the cloud resides.

A Predictable Buffer

What HPE gave its customers in the early days was a buffer, and HPE GreenLake continues that legacy today by providing a 10 – 20% buffer to ensure that customers stay ahead of the curve. IT demands always fluctuate and are never linear in nature. As a result, a 3-5 year purchasing cycle struggles to adapt to the unpredictable ebbs and flows of demand. By delivering hardware, software and expertise as-a-Service, your business can remain in that sweet spot that works best for it. Not only can you save your capital for better uses than buying equipment outright, but your internal IT staff can focus on driving your business through continued innovation rather than perpetual planning, onboarding, and maintenance. And HPE’s commitment to innovation continues as it continues to evolve to incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning operations.

WEI As A Valued Partner

WEI has been evolving along with HPE throughout this journey. As a value-added service provider, our team is equipped to manage a wide range of tasks for you, including system patching and firmware upgrades. Should you require expert assistance in design and capacity planning, our teams have extensive experience collaborating with businesses across various industries and verticals.

Reach out to us today to discover how you can leverage the benefits of the cloud without ever leaving the building.

The post Charting Responsive Shifts In The Cloud Evolution appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

As a value-added reseller (VAR), WEI relentlessly pursues avenues to enrich the solutions our customers opt for. Our enhanced value propositions encompass installation and ongoing support services, software and hardware integration processes, solution customization, and much more. Recently, WEI added another groundbreaking value add as we to facilitate Multiparty Private Offers (MPO) for Microsoft commercial marketplace customers who purchase eligible cloud solutions. For Microsoft Azure Marketplace customers who have unused Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) funds, any qualified software purchase through MPO will count toward filling their pre-committed cloud spend.

As of this writing, WEI is just one of a handful of VARs in the United States that has earned this authorization as it is an early adopter of the MPO program.

What Does This Mean For Our Customers?

In simplest terms, customers with a cloud consumption commitment to Microsoft could review and accept private offers within the marketplace. While this approach brought discounted pricing, it added inefficiency and complexity for organizations that valued the guidance and extended services of preferred partners such as WEI. Often, companies outside the IT field often lack the professional network to build meaningful relationships with more than a handful of solution providers.

With MPO, WEI has the capability to directly procure independent software provider (ISV) solutions for customers and deliver these solutions in streamlined fashion. This eliminates multiple steps, offering a unified marketplace experience. Just like with private offers, customers’ MPO acquisitions count toward their MACC. This commitment, which involves a predetermined spend with Microsoft, grants businesses access to more favorable pricing and terms.

WEI customers can source the diverse SaaS applications essential for their business goals to better realize their strategic spending objectives. WEI Azure specialists can guide developers and IT professionals to obtain the critical technical building blocks they are looking for, responsibly, to make the most of committed spend.

What This Means For ISVs

For ISVs offering software to the Azure community, the MPO program provides a way to reach a greater number of customers and untapped markets by scaling through preferred partners such as WEI. Because WEI serves as a trusted advisor to our customers, we can quickly understand their needs and identify SaaS solutions that add value. Our customers are no different than any consumer shopper that wants their promised cashback from an enrolled cashback program, or the promised number of airline miles made through a loyalty card. With 100% of your purchase costs for eligible solutions contributing toward committed cloud spend, we can make sure you maximize as much of those pre-committed dollars.

Reasons To Consider Azure

The MPO program is a major step for Azure Marketplace, as WEI has witnessed the transformative impact of cloud migration firsthand. While WEI extends support to all prominent cloud services, including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, Azure is emerging as a popular choice. It is noteworthy that neither AWS nor Google are present within your datacenter, and with most enterprises currently operating in hybrid mode, Azure becomes a logical fit. Microsoft offers the flexibility of transferring select licenses and resources to save money. For those organizations that run Hyper-V, Azure is about the only game in town.

Financial Engineering Alongside Technology

Technology itself cannot fulfill all your business goals. A synergy between financial and technology engineering is essential to ensure the financial sustainability of your transformative cloud ventures. WEI recognizes the importance of bringing financial, IT, and DevOps leadership together to monitor and fine tune these practices in the long term.

Our seasoned Azure experts are well-versed in Azure’s technological possibilities and also its financial dimensions. They are adept at facilitating your cost and financial management endeavors using Azure’s extensive accelerators, programs, and tools. As an early adopter of the MPO program and a certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert, WEI offers customers the luxury of choice, flexibility, and scalability.

Allow us the opportunity to demonstrate how enhanced choices and tailored preferences can benefit your business. Contact our team here to get started.

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Enterprises are taking advantage of modern technology to improve customer engagement, in-house operations, cybersecurity, and in-house operations as the age of digitalization exponentially evolves. Big data analytics, AI, and edge computing have pushed IT demands higher than ever before, meaning a faster time-to-value ratio is key for success. To meet this challenge, HPE GreenLake and HPE Synergy offer organizations powerful solutions that allow them to stay digitally agile.

HPE GreenLake: Consumption-Based IT

HPE GreenLake is revolutionizing the way corporations manage their IT infrastructure with a fully managed, on-premises cloud service. By offering an as-a-Service delivery model and consistent operations, HPE GreenLake’s expanding portfolio provides enterprises with a simplified approach to managed services.

Additionally, customers can access and manage their IT infrastructure with a suite of powerful services – from data transformation to application modernization. For example, HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity service provides hybrid IT on-premise computing through a pay-per-use, consumption-based model and offers rapid scalability through an extra capacity buffer. It also presents enterprise-grade support, bringing cloud capabilities right into businesses’ operations.

HPE Synergy: Unlocking Value

HPE Synergy is an innovative platform that enables composability and flexibility, allowing users to create custom configurations for any workload. This powerful software-defined solution can be used for an array of applications from virtualization and VDI to DevOps, hybrid cloud technology, and more.

HPE Synergy is designed to accelerate time to value, unlocking revenue potential. It uses technology to create a template-based environment that can automatically adjust resources in response to changing needs. This platform also offers an efficient and automated way to improve business productivity. It seamlessly integrates infrastructure management with other IT platforms, allowing organizations to streamline their operations while enjoying improved control of their data center – 94% of customers have reported this!

[Featured Video]
Real Tech with WEI – HPE Synergy Episode

Combined Power Of HPE GreenLake And HPE Synergy

Powered by HPE Synergy, this configuration enables you to access compute, storage, and fabric resources instantly for running applications with a seamless cloud experience modified to your organization’s needs.

By combining the power of the cloud and on-prem infrastructure, organizations can run virtually any business workload with ease. This optimal solution allows companies to maximize their value per workload, streamline management processes, and reduce costs – freeing up IT teams for critical business initiatives.

There are to HPE GreenLake with HPE Synergy:

• Efficiency: These solutions offer companies a powerful combination of flexibility, simplicity, and efficiency. With these tools in place, IT teams can free up time for more important tasks while achieving 41% greater productivity with their infrastructure operations.
• Speed: With HPE GreenLake and HPE Synergy, enterprises can quickly access the IT capacity needed to launch new projects with unprecedented speed. In fact, these tools have an 80% faster time to market compared to traditional methods.
• Control: They also offer businesses an unbeatable combination of low-latency performance, strong security measures, and reduced operational costs. With these two solutions working together, companies can enjoy 35% savings on their operations while having total control over IT systems and data protection.
• Economics: HPE GreenLake and HPE Synergy can save up to 45% on IT resources. IT allows for the elimination of costly overprovisioning and reduces CapEx.

Final Thoughts

HPE is reinventing the way enterprises manage their digital infrastructures and optimize data center performance by providing them with cutting-edge solutions through HPE GreenLake and HPE Synergy. These services are helping corporations around the world save time, money, and resources while improving productivity.

At WEI, we are an HPE Platinum Partner and have experience helping Fortune 500 companies modernize their data centers with HPE Synergy. With our expertise and the power of GreenLake services from HPE, you can quickly deliver IT solutions that your business needs. To get started on this journey, contact us today to discuss how HPE Synergy fits into your environment.

Next Steps: While it may have taken the first pandemic in 100 years to do so, the transformational power of the cloud has finally been realized by IT leaders and end users. Deploy cloud-like services across your entire hybrid estate and attain greater flexibility in not only how you deploy and maintain technology platforms, but also in how you finance and pay for it as well. Learn more by reading our free tech brief, Integrating Cloud’s Power To Your On-Prem Environment.

The post Advanced Digital Infrastructure With HPE GreenLake And HPE Synergy appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Almost every enterprise across many different industries is using cloud infrastructure to help meet business goals more efficiently. Developing strategies that include multiple clouds can help with reduced IT costs and flexibility. The majority of businesses plan to implement hybrid and multi-cloud solutions to maximize efficiency. In fact, of businesses are already moving to a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy. In this article, we discuss hybrid and multi-cloud efficiency and what’s required to implement the transition to this strategy. After all, the days of single cloud use are just about obsolete for mid-size enterprises and up.

Hybrid And Multi-Cloud Efficiency

The term hybrid with multi-cloud means an organization uses a mix of on-premises along with either, or both, private and public clouds from multiple providers within their IT infrastructure. Cloud adoption is quickly becoming a necessary step in keeping up with digital transformation and evolving technologies. This means businesses will be focused on creating the best mix of public and private clouds for higher efficiency and minimized costs.

This approach is practical for many enterprises since it helps maintain and benefit from the systems and data that have been built over time. Hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure can provide greater control on data distribution options and storage for companies of all sizes. It is also a perfect solution for those looking to choose what makes sense for each component of your business. You can maintain existing platforms and integrate them with new capabilities.

Some IT decision makers may find that running cloud services with multiple providers is a challenging strategy, but it doesn’t have to be a difficult process. IT teams can use a centralized management system throughout all cloud environments no matter where the applications are operating. Both public and private cloud infrastructure run separately, so using the right technology that allows an easy transfer of applications and data between clouds is crucial.

Implementing A Hybrid And Multi-Cloud Solution

Adopting hybrid and multi-cloud solutions can seem like an intimidating undertaking. However, by planning and using the right solutions, it is actually very attainable. Here are when building your strategy:

1. Understand your core business and technology requirements. Think about the values of your business regarding moving to the cloud. This will help you look for the mix of clouds that will make up your hybrid and multi-cloud solution.
2. Select the private and public clouds that fit your needs. Take the time to learn about cloud vendor products and services along with their cybersecurity policies.
3. Develop a management approach for security, governance, cost monitoring, and resource and performance management. It is essential to build and acquire management solutions that can be used to help manage the activities and projects throughout your hybrid and multi-cloud environment with minimal disruptions.
4. Select the management technology that works best with what has been defined above.

Adopting a hybrid and multi-cloud approach means integrating the old and the new to keep up with digital transformation and continue to build up business value. Making plans to overcome any challenges of system change can (and will) make all the difference.

Conclusion

Evolving technology has made enterprises increase their search for multiple cloud offerings that can help capitalize on flexibility and reduced costs. Businesses are also progressively heading toward digital transformation, making the adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud services increase rapidly. A recent study found that “around 56% of respondents said they’ve already adopted multi-cloud, and 80% plan to do so in the next three years.“

By using private and public cloud facilities together, companies can gain much more profit and agility whenever they perform any operation. The hybrid and multi-cloud environment can give companies choices by allowing them to determine which aspects of their business they want in each environment. If you’d like to learn more about how your company can manage your IT infrastructure and data storage, contact the infrastructure experts at WEI today.

Next Steps: Reducing complexity is a necessary step when implementing hybrid and multi-cloud systems. You can simplify your approach with hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software that can put you in charge of what goes where. Learn more about maintaining your hybrid and multi-cloud system with HCI in our tech brief,

The post How To Support Efficiency For Hybrid Multi-Cloud Environments appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Every year, enterprises make decisions regarding their technology goals, and this is largely based on where they are in their digital transformation journey. In order to facilitate a smooth transition, Nutanix offers for various enterprises. In this article we cover the six core industries where Nutanix hybrid and multi-cloud solutions can help business transformation take place.

1. Financial Services

With a rise in competition for banks and insurance companies, there is a greater need for financial service firms to invest in agile and adaptable technology solutions. They can then use the solutions to expand their organizations and create better banking experiences. Digital transformation with Nutanix offers the agility of the public cloud while maintaining control of critical resources. To reference our recent article on hybrid and multi-cloud solutions, Nutanix provides the tools to run your workloads from a single control plane on any cloud with no application re-architecting. It enables your cloud to be more agile, more scalable, and ultimately more efficient and cost-effective.

Many financial services companies realize that digital transformation with Nutanix can help create a set of cloud environments that satisfy user expectations while also maintaining the applications your business has depended on for years.

2. Federal Government

In order to meet U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidelines, many federal agencies have started datacenter modernization initiatives. One of the many benefits of utilizing Nutanix solutions is the decisive price advantage. This helps CIOs and IT leaders who need to comply with aggressive OMB regulations.

Many federal agencies depend on Nutanix for these reasons:

• Easier management
• Greater transparency
• Flexibility and availability
• Cost containment

To fulfill the challenges of managing larger amounts of data, Nutanix has the solutions needed to help federal agencies and other government organizations.

VIDEO: 3 Use Cases for Hybrid Multi-Cloud

If you are having difficulties watching this video, to view it in a new window.

3. State And Local Government

State and local governments are areas where cost-effective IT solutions are absolutely, 100% necessary. Because of strict budgets, government agencies need help building data centers and affordable infrastructure. This is where digital transformation with Nutanix comes in. According to the , “Organizations who are adopting hyper-converged infrastructure are benefitting from increased transparency of costs, greater cost control and predictability, enhanced IT agility, and many other measurable benefits.”

If you want to move your data to the cloud or modernize applications, Nutanix provides easy and intelligent solutions specifically built for state and local government needs.

4. Education

Almost every educational institution has made the transition to online learning due to COVID-19, this equates to nearly students across the globe. There is a growing need for versatility in IT infrastructure so there isn’t too much pressure on IT resources.

Educational institutions have recently discovered the power of hybrid and multi-cloud solutions. Applying Nutanix solutions gives schools the ability to improve academic outcomes while also driving new innovations and discoveries. People worldwide can more easily access internet-based classes and resources by digitally transforming. Interactive learning is also increased with better computer technology and AI-enabled methods of teaching online. Nutanix can unlock the cloud to unleash digital learning.

5. Manufacturing

Manufacturing companies focus on automation, advancement, and innovation in areas such as assembly lines and shop-floor equipment. This focus, however, can improve with better-driven data. Nutanix has the world’s most sophisticated hyper-converged technology infrastructure (HCI) that makes it easier to update new applications. The hybrid and multi-cloud solutions assist in data protection, storage, built-in automation, and multi-cloud management. All of this can maximize efficiency and eliminate manual administrative tasks.

6. Healthcare

Major hospitals are constantly looking for ways to use automation to better the lives of healthcare professionals and their patients. Digital transformation with Nutanix can help healthcare organizations with their data storage infrastructure and simplify operations with unlimited cloud resources.

New infrastructure has allowed more healthcare employees to work remotely when possible and accommodate medical delivery services. Overall, Nutanix hybrid and multi-cloud capabilities help with data insights and flexibility at a reasonable cost.

Conclusion

Developing hybrid and multi-cloud solutions can be a tremendous benefit for many industries, especially those that rely on the cloud for critical areas of their IT infrastructure. With digital transformation solutions from Nutanix, companies will receive top-notch capabilities across storage, networking, security, and application management. If you’re ready to keep up with digital transformation, contact WEI today to get started.

Next Steps: Recent years have shown how critical the need for greater elasticity really is. This has accelerated the transition to hybrid cloud architectures that utilize the appropriate mix of both private and public clouds. Today’s advanced HCI solutions are designed for this new era. Download our tech brief titled,

The post Industries That Benefit Most From Hybrid And Multi-cloud Solutions appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

These days, IT leaders are typically managing and securing their enterprise’s IT estate that is vast in size and pumping with computing power at the outer edges of the network. On top of that, employees are now dispersed across an ever-expanding remote workspace designed to replicate the primary office environment.

As a result of this proliferation of connected devices in your network, exploitable attack points and avenues are created. This opens the door for countless threat actors to pounce, which makes it nearly impossible for a traditional security system that relies on human intervention to do its job and protect your network. Undoubtedly, IT leaders everywhere are seeing that security and management duties are presenting huge challenges for today’s IT teams that currently work alone.

The Next Generational Power: Deep Learning

It’s no longer about IT boots on the ground to support your organization’s network management. Nowadays, IT support teams need to rely on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive their enterprise’s IT efforts. AI empowers software to perform a task that is on par with a human expert. Still, AI by itself is not enough. It must be paired with Machine Learning (ML), which allows systems to utilize powerful algorithms that leverage AI-driven network management systems to learn on their own without with being explicitly programmed to do so.

But even ML has its limitations when it comes to the expansive and complex enterprises of today. Deep Learning (DL) is the next evolutionary step. It applies to large data sets to draw information from countless data points that are strung across today’s immense hybrid networks. Deep Learning then parses that collected data much like the human brain does by categorizing it, learning from it, and acting upon it. The idea behind DL is simple: The more quality information you have, the better your decision making will be.

Now, imagine having the ability to analyze information that is delivered from each of your IoT devices and distributed edge devices. With boundless access to information relating to everything in your network, AI can do its job, but It’s not just about capacity – it’s about speed as well. AI-driven network systems can explore terabytes of data in just minutes, informing IT departments of abnormalities and potentially disruptive events or cyber threats long before they are humanly detected.

Envision Autonomous Network Management

Juniper’s Mist cloud services suite includes , , and to automate your IT operations for desired service levels and to ensure the continuity of workloads and network user experiences. Similar to how autonomous vehicle technology minimizes the dead time of actual driving, companies like Juniper are designing these AI-enabled solutions to create a self-driving experience for multiple aspects of the network. Many of the usual routines and tasks performed by network management administrators can be compared to driving on the interstate – there can be long periods of dead time and monotony. With Juniper, AI can take over these routine tasks and perform them just as well. Just as an autonomous vehicle ensures that its passengers arrive safely to their destination, AI and DL-driven tools ensure that network connected users have an enjoyable and efficient experience, too.

Fix A Problem Just Once

How many times have you rebooted a device to temporarily fix a problem? Network management support personnel often solve problems temporarily because they lack the information needed to properly determine the root cause of an issue. Conversely, AI uses data mining techniques to fully analyze problems by correlating events and discovering underlying patterns to determine the true root cause of a problem. Juniper refers to this as client-to-cloud root cause analysis. With root cause analysis, you can fix a problem once and for all. In fact, Juniper’s systems will learn from this analysis and self-correct similar events in the future, saving additional time and money for your team.

The Smart SD-WAN

One solution that Juniper is utilizing to gain control of today’s vast network architectures is through their automated SD-WAN solutions. Their Mist WAN Assurance service provides your IT team with deep visibility into the workloads that cross throughout your WAN’s arteries and it also offers end-to-end analysis of all traffic types. In short, Mist WAN Assurance offers:

• Visibility into WAN user experiences with application-based context
• End-to-end user impact analyses based on WLAN, LAN, and WAN telemetry data
• Automated identification and correction of gateway misconfigurations and faulty interfaces
• Health insights into Session Smart Routers, SRX Series Services Gateways, and WAN links
• Simplified configuration and deployment of Session Smart Routers

This solution is API driven, which means it can integrate and automate all network and security operations across your sites. And of course, there is Juniper security that includes the delivery of advanced next-generation firewall protection, advanced threat protection, and security intelligence that identifies underlying suspicious behavior patterns.

Simplistic Communication

Juniper breaks down the complexity of your enterprise and makes it manageable. It also retains this newfound simplicity within its communicative interface through the magic of , the virtual network assistant that utilizes a conversational interface thanks to natural language processing. In the same way you can tell the autonomous car where to go, you can ask Marvis questions about the wired, wireless, or SD-WAN components of your network. Marvis serves as the SDN orchestrator of you network on a 24/7 basis. With Marvis, your network is never left alone or unmanaged.

Conclusion

The growth and evolvement of networks have outpaced the human ability to manage them. Because your network operations are mission critical in today’s digital world, IT leaders can’t afford to fix a problem once it’s happened. You need to anticipate it ahead of time by enabling the ability to self-correct. That is why companies are transforming their enterprises to AI-driven networks in which structured and unstructured data can be used to make network predictions and create tomorrow’s self-driving network. This is not science fiction – it is real and available from Juniper.

NEXT STEPS: To better understand why AI should be the next step in your digital transformation journey, download and read our new white paper, It uncovers:

• Network operational benefits
• Where IT leaders stand after incremental implementation of AIOps
• Business areas where AI flourishes

The post Enhance Network Management With AI Technology appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Deciding that cloud adoption is what’s best for your enterprise is a positive first step toward digital transformation; however, transforming to a cloud-based infrastructure requires more than just an understanding of the technology. It’s important that as you proceed, you understand the best practices in cloud adoption and how to overcome the common barriers associated with the process.

Follow These 7 Cloud Adoption Best Practices

1. Define The Cloud. Before you can begin the process of moving to a cloud environment, you must first determine what the cloud means to your enterprise based on your needs and goals. Whether you view the cloud as automated virtualization on premises, using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), or using the native capabilities of public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud provides a different operating model for IT where infrastructure becomes code and functions become fully automated.
2. Determine Why The Cloud Is Right For Your Enterprise. One of the biggest obstacles enterprises face in the cloud adoption journey is acceptance by their people. To help you gain the confidence of your team and encourage this culture shift, it’s imperative you outline and share the reason why deploying cloud-based infrastructure is the right choice. Before you begin cloud initiatives, openly discuss the hidden issues and fears, understand and agree on the desired outcomes, and establish a shared vision. For example, are your security and governance groups involved at an early stage? People are more willing to accept change when they know why it is being introduced and how it will help them.
3. Is The Timing Right? Even if you know moving your enterprise to a cloud-based infrastructure is the correct course of action, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do it right now. From pre-existing vendor contracts to internal changes, there are many reasons why waiting to proceed with your cloud adoption journey is the best call. To experience the greatest deployment success, you need to ensure your enterprise is in a sound spot operationally and financially to handle the changes that lie ahead. Remember, this transformation will have an impact on all aspects of the organization.
4. Establish A Cloud Business Office. Power inevitably comes with great responsibility. Once you decide when you will begin your journey to a cloud-based infrastructure, the next thing you need to establish is a cloud business office (CBO) that will direct and guide the decisions and communication for your cloud programs. Think of it as a governing body.
5. Understand Your Cloud Economics. While this may appear to be an obvious part of the process, more than 50% of enterprises don’t take time to thoroughly evaluate the business case for moving forward with cloud adoption processes. To fully understand the cost of moving your enterprise to a cloud-based infrastructure, you need to look beyond the hard costs of ownership to the soft costs – quantify intangible benefits such as the impact of productivity and faster software cycles.
6. Execute Well. Transformation takes time, so don’t worry about boiling the ocean right away. Turn your burners on low and pick a few areas to focus on as you begin your cloud adoption process. Once you know what you are going to concentrate on first, don’t be afraid to hire a partner to aid your team. One barrier to successful cloud adoption is having the right people in the right places throughout the deployment. Your IT team is focused on the mission-critical programs that support everyday operations; let someone with the skills, time, and knowledge do the heavy lifting of the transformation to cloud-based infrastructure. It is not about “Us vs. Them.” There is plenty of work for everyone!
7. Keep Learning. The cloud is all about agility, lessons learned, and additional improvements. Whatever applications, operations, or services you end up migrating to the cloud, make sure you foster a company culture of continuous learning to keep getting the most out of your cloud adoption journey.

Ready To Move Your Enterprise To Cloud-Based Infrastructure?

Avoid the common barriers often faced in the cloud adoption journey; contact WEI today to find out how HPE can be your partner in moving to a cloud-based infrastructure.

Next Steps: Download WEI’s executive brief titled, to find the middle ground between CapEx and OpEx.

The post 7 Cloud Adoption Best Practices to Follow appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

According to , 92% of organizations adopted a multi-cloud approach in 2021. Cloud strategies allow your enterprise to increase flexibility, consistently update, foster greater agility, and enable rapid innovation. However, there are a number of common cloud adoption mistakes enterprises struggle with due to the lack of proper cloud strategy, planning, and governance mechanisms.

In this article, we identify the top seven cloud adoption mistakes and provide a roadmap to help your enterprise avoid them.

Top Seven Cloud Adoption Mistakes

As many organizations adopt the cloud, there are small mistakes being made that prevent them from developing a strong cloud strategy. Here are the top seven mistakes enterprises often make while adopting the cloud:

1. Maintaining an old infrastructure mindset.
2. Absence of upfront governance policies.
3. A lack of control provisioning resources.
4. Underutilizing the “pay-as-you-go” model.
5. Forsaking continuous cleanup.
6. Not pursuing a DevOps culture.
7. A lack of automated remediation capabilities.

Your Roadmap To Avoid Cloud Adoption Mistakes

Cloud adoption can be challenging; however, having a successful cloud strategy can make your transition as seamless and manageable as possible. The following roadmap can prevent your enterprise from making costly cloud adoption mistakes.

1. Change your mindset: Understand that your existing infrastructure may be incompatible with the cloud system. Assess what you have, your existing data center, and your business objectives and link them to your cloud adoption strategy.
2. Create customized governance policies: To prevent uncontrolled cloud spending and enable more accurate resource planning for each business unit, your enterprise must define each core governance structure and clearly articulate its processes.
3. Gain control over the provisioning process: Your enterprise must perform application and infrastructure vulnerability assessments regularly. Additionally, it’s imperative to have an established security checklist to ensure vulnerabilities don’t increase.
4. Utilize the “pay-as-you-go” model: Investing in a cloud management platform will help your enterprise save costs by tracking underutilized resources and identifying recurring expenditures.
5. Eliminate wasteful resources: Organizations must develop a “consume or eliminate” process. Using as-a-Service platforms makes managing the cloud more efficient by allowing you to monitor all resources to determine if they’re underutilized.
6. Incorporate a DevOps culture: Reduce manual effort and increase reliability within your IT and engineering teams with a culture that values DevOps. Enterprises experience higher business value and better alignment with IT through breaking down silos and building flexible, software-enabled infrastructures.
7. Understand cloud compliance and security: Take a security-first approach with a cloud infrastructure that sustains business continuity and compliance. This lowers costs, minimizes risks, and reduces complexities in the infrastructure.

How Nutanix Can Prevent Cloud Adoption Mistakes

Nutanix Beam is a multi-cloud governance service that provides enterprises deep visibility and rich analytics. It monitors your cloud consumption patterns and proactively identifies idle and underused resources. The solution also provides one-click fixes for cost optimization and security compliances across your cloud environment. This solution also identifies vulnerabilities in real-time using policy-based automation to resolve potential threats before they become concerns.

Beam will allow your enterprise to gain complete visibility, optimization, and control over your cloud consumption to ensure cost governance and security compliance. With Beam, you’ll have a successful cloud strategy that gives your developers the freedom to experiment and scale with ease, provision on-demand IT resources, and focus on rapid IT service delivery.

Here at WEI, we’re a trusted, independent resource to help vet cloud technologies, architectures, and the growing world of cloud service providers. We help enterprise IT teams to outline exactly what they need for an efficient, cost-effective cloud strategy. Contact WEI today to find out if Nutanix Beam is the best solution for your enterprise’s cloud strategy.

Next Steps: The recent challenges presented by the global pandemic showed how critical the need for greater elasticity really is. This has accelerated the transition to hybrid cloud architectures that utilize the appropriate mix of both private and public clouds. Today’s advanced HCI solutions are designed for this new era. Download our tech brief titled,

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Today, enterprises need to quickly adapt to ever-changing market and consumer demands in order to achieve a successful (and robust) digital transformation. Adopting a hybrid cloud strategy will allow you to meet the evolving expectations of customers and drive your organization further forward.

In this article, we discuss current cloud environment challenges, identify a key solution that meets modern-day demands and expectations, and touch on how the solution supports your organization’s strategies for the future.

Modern Cloud Solution Challenges

With organizations attempting to achieve digital transformation in the post-pandemic era, many IT environments currently consist of both cloud-native and legacy assets. This creates additional challenges for IT departments as some workloads aren’t appropriate for public cloud and edge-in solutions. In addition, many enterprises need greater space for their assets and want to move away from data center management and the rising costs associated with it.

According to (TBR), many enterprises have adopted a holistic infrastructure strategy that unifies on-premises and cloud-based assets. This moves them to an outcomes-focused strategy that enables organizations to rapidly turn raw data into key insights that support larger operational goals.

The Hybrid Cloud Solution

Whether your enterprise is moving to an outcome-focused strategy or prefers a more conservative approach focused on keeping high-security, high-value workloads on-premises, chances are you’re seeking a cost-effective as-a-Service consumption model. HPE GreenLake with Equinix provides your enterprise with access to the foundational infrastructure needed to scale and achieve optimal performance, speed, and flexibility. Additionally, HPE GreenLake with Equinix delivers a consistent hybrid cloud experience with hardware infrastructure, adaptable services, APIs, management, and operations – regardless of your enterprise’s current cloud maturity.

According to TBR infrastructure and platform customer research, 38% of respondents are optimizing their existing IT infrastructure by integrating and interconnecting it with cloud services. Transitioning from strictly on-premises to a cloud model gives you a significant advantage, as enables you to modernize workloads and reap the benefits of a cloud experience without upfront investments. HPE with Equinix helps you evaluate your individualized, strategic hybrid cloud road map, and cost management, enabling evolution and transformation that meet your on-demand needs and expectations. Additionally, the solution allows you to build infrastructures adjacent to the clouds and networks you need, thus creating a best-of-breed hybrid cloud architecture.

How You Can Drive Digital Transformation In Your Organization

To achieve digital transformation for your organization, HPE GreenLake with Equinix provides a fully managed option that enables your IT department to move from data to insights quickly, while optimizing overall infrastructure usage to support cost savings and performance improvements. Your enterprise can consume infrastructure in a cloud-like model while driving strategic business outcomes that will allow your IT department to fast-track its digital advantage.

How HPE And Equinix Support A Future-Proof Digital Strategy

cloud services provide your team with a powerful foundation to drive digital transformation through an elastic as-a-Service platform that can run on-premises, at the edge, or in a colocation facility.

enables you to access all the right places, partners, and possibilities you need to accelerate business decisions and growth. Your enterprise can scale with agility, speed the launch of digital services, deliver world-class experiences, and multiply your business’s value.

The combination of HPE and Equinix allows your enterprise to future-proof your IT investments by building vendor-neutral architectures that:

• Remove data lock-in from an egress cost perspective
• Comply with regulations around privacy through in-region data handling
• Provide better performance and manageability with proximity to ecosystems and multiple clouds
• Ensure secure and private access to their infrastructure with an optimized network design
• Provide access to data marketplaces for enhancing enterprise AI models or monetizing corporate data sets

Interested In Cloud Solutions?

With everything IT departments need in cloud-based models, it’s important to find the solution that best fits your organization. When it comes to cloud-based options, WEI is a trusted, independent resource to help vet cloud technologies, architectures, and the growing world of service providers. Contact us at WEI to discover which specific cloud method will be most successful for your organization.

Next Steps: WEI can help you ask the right questions to get the right answers in strategizing creative ways to fund your IT transformation. You can start this process by identifying the middle ground between OpEx and CapEx.

The post A Hybrid Cloud Solution That Successfully Meets Modern-Day Demands appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

On September 28, 2021, HPE announced a for HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform. This platform provides customers with unmatched capabilities to power digital transformation for their applications and data.

These modernizations will further accelerate HPE’s transition to a cloud services company, and give customers greater choice and freedom for their business and IT strategy in the hybrid work environment.

This announcement represents HPE’s entry into three large, high-growth software markets – unified analytics, data protection, and Adoption Framework.

What The New Cloud Services Are

The three new offerings, which add to the growing platform of HPE GreenLake cloud services, allow customers to innovate with agility at lower costs.

The new innovations are as follows:

• : Open and unified analytics cloud services to modernize all data and applications everywhere – on-premises, at the edge, and in the cloud. HPE GreenLake for analytics will be available in the beginning of 2022.
• : Disaster recovery and backup cloud services to help customers address ransomware head-on and secure data from edge-to-cloud. HPE GreenLake for data protection will be available in the beginning of 2022.
• : A comprehensive, proven set of methodologies, expertise, and automation tools to accelerate and de-risk the path to a cloud experience everywhere. The HPE Edge-to-Cloud Adoption Framework is available now.

How HPE GreenLake Analytics Are Optimized For Hybrid Environments

This is HPE GreenLake’s first cloud-native unified analytics and data cloud services optimized for hybrid environments. The analytics enable customers to accelerate modernization initiatives. They are built to be cloud-native which avoids complex data migrations to the public cloud. Now analytics and data science teams can leverage the industry’s first cloud-native solution on premises, scale up Apache Spark lakehouses, and speed up AI and ML workflows.

Included in the new are:

• HPE Ezmeral Unified Analytics: Modernized analytics and data lakehouse platform optimized for on-premises deployment.

• HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Object Store: Kubernetes-native object store optimized for analytics performance, providing access to all data sets within edge to cloud.
• Expanding HPE Ezmeral Partner Ecosystem: Delivers a rapidly growing set of successful solutions from ISV partners that enable customers to build their analytics engines.

How HPE GreenLake Data Protection Innovation Protects Customers’ Data

Within the September 28 , HPE entered the rapidly growing data protection As-a-Service market with HPE GreenLake for data protection. The new cloud services are designed to modernize data protection, overcome ransomware attacks, and deliver faster data recovery.

The new include:

• HPE Backup and Recovery Service: Backup as a service offering that provides policy-based automation to backup and protect customers’ virtual machines across hybrid cloud environments, eliminating the complexities of managing backup hardware
• HPE GreenLake for Disaster Recovery: HPE plans to deliver Zerto’s industry-leading disaster recovery as a service through HPE GreenLake to help customers recover in minutes from ransomware attacks.

How HPE Adoption Framework Accelerates Cloud Experience

HPE has also a proven set of methodologies and automation tools to enable enterprises to take a data-driven approach to achieve the optimal operation model across all hybrid work environments – the HPE Edge-to-Cloud Adoption Framework.

The HPE Edge-to-Cloud Adoption Framework leverages HPE’s expertise in delivering solutions on-premises to meet a broad range of business needs for customers across the globe. HPE has identified multiple critical areas that enterprises should consider and measure to accomplish an effective cloud operating system.

Are You Interested In HPE’s New Cloud Services?

HPE is a global edge-to-cloud company helping organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data. Built on decades of reimagining and innovating, HPE delivers unique, open and intelligent technology solutions. HPE’s new cloud services for the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform allows customers to accelerate innovation, deliver compelling experiences, and achieve high-level business outcomes. If you’re ready to make the change now, contact WEI to begin building a custom solution for your business.

NEXT STEPS: this executive brief to learn the power of the OpEX model for IT investments and find the middle ground for future It investments.

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Within the “CIO’s As-a-Service playbook,” it explains how the previous consumption-oriented model of the public cloud system changed everything. However, the previous consumption-oriented model required IT to buy service and resource capacities themselves, which introduced new risks for CIOs. These limitations were identified when contrasted with the scalability and cost efficiencies of the cloud. IT wants to deliver the public cloud experience their users crave, yet some workloads cannot make that transition and must remain on-premises for many reasons.

As-a-Service not only removes complexity, but it also speeds business outcomes and creates cost savings typically only seen with public cloud. The As-a-Service model enables rapid development of hardware, software, and services anywhere and anytime.

Basics Of The As-a-Service Model And How It Works

The As-a-Service model is an on-demand service available in a pay-per use format. There is no upfront capital investment; instead, CIOs utilize resources and pay for what is actually being used. Usage is determined based on metering technology, with units of measure aligned to the hardware and/or software being consumed.

The As-a-Service model mimics the public cloud experience, but in your own environment or co-location facility. In traditional environments, it’s difficult to predict how much infrastructure will be needed but with the new model it is now easier to scale up or down on-demand. Most organizations over-provision for storage capacity, according to . With the improved forecasting and use of IT resources, the As-a-Service model makes a significant difference.

With this model, companies can get the same cloud experience everywhere – in their on-premises data centers, at the edge, and in multi-cloud environments. CIOs can operate, manage, and control multiple business units and environments from one location. Companies are quickly shifting to hybrid cloud environments, where the workload placement can be determined on a best-suited basis. As a result of these changes, integrating, managing, and gaining visibility across newly complex IT infrastructures has become a challenge, making the As-a-Service model attractive to many enterprises.

Why Invest In The As-a-Service Model?

There are three value propositions for the As-a-Service model. First, in the “CIO’s As-A-Service Playbook“ Jason James, a CIO Net Health professional states, “In the next 12 to 18 months, many CIOs are going to focus as heavily on cost optimization as they are on digital transformation.” By paying only for the capacity that is actually used, CIOs can get a better handle on budgeting and forecasting and avoid the risk of over-provisioning resources.

Second, a study by found undoubtedly faster time to market among users of As-a-Service models. The ability to quickly scale on demand brought efficiencies in meeting deadlines. Additionally, it enabled business units to develop products, applications, and launch new projects even faster than before.

Finally, by optimizing costs and speeding project delivery, IT organizations can focus on more strategic tasks. In the “CIO’s As-A-Service Playbook Paige Francis, a CIO at the University of Tulsa states, “It seems by eliminating the need to manage the hardware piece and the budget piece, more time can be spent on focusing on our users, carving out exactly what they need – without having to spend time worrying about the transition period of one piece of hardware to the next piece of hardware.” Francis also explained that the beauty of the As-a-Service model is when companies can quickly deploy infrastructure and optimize their data centers for fast delivery.

How HPE GreenLake Works With As-a-Service

Many enterprise’s applications and data aren’t appropriate for the public cloud. They are still on-premises for a variety of reasons – security, compliance, governance, or legacy entanglement issues. However, this doesn’t mean these workloads can’t achieve the same cloud experience. Enterprises are switching to more hybrid cloud experiences like HPE GreenLake.

On June 18, 2021 HPE announced plans to offer by 2022. HPE GreenLake offers a wide range of cloud services delivered to your data center, co-location facility, or edge location. It provides the agility and economics of public cloud with the security and performance of on-premises IT. With HPE GreenLake, companies can centralized operations and insights across their entire hybrid IT estate using the As-a-Service platform.

works by allowing you to choose your cloud services. They offer a wide range of pre-configured services like VMs, storage, compute, data protection, or SAP HANA. Additionally, you only pay for what you consume. This allows CIOs to free up capital and gain financial flexibility for their business units to take on new ventures and operations. HPE GreenLake allows you to scale with ease with an installed buffer of capacity.

Are You Looking To Transition Into An As-a-Service Model?

HPE is a global technology leader focused on developing intelligent solutions that allow customers to capture, analyze, and act upon data from edge to cloud. HPE enables CIOs to provide a seamless cloud experience everywhere with its As-a-Service model. If you’re ready to make the change now, contact WEI to begin building a custom solution for your business.

NEXT STEPS: Read our blog on other new announcements at HPE.

The post How HPE’s “CIO’s As-A-Service Playbook” Improves The Business Environment appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

How much data is your enterprise creating and what are you doing about it? For most companies, data is being created, and subsequently stored, at faster and faster rates. However, many enterprises lack the tools to properly utilize and take advantage of their data, especially those that are still struggling with just the part of the equation.

As technology has advanced, we’ve moved from storing information on tapes to disks and now, in modern times, the cloud. By utilizing the cloud for data storage and processing, enterprises gain great benefits, but no solution is without its costs.

The main issue comes when the data stored on the cloud needs to be utilized by services on-prem or in the data center. is helping to solve this problem and liberate enterprises from the confines of data siloes with their new Keep reading to learn how this solution is redefining cloud data storage.

Find Freedom In Data Management

While a vast majority of enterprises are utilizing the cloud for some amount of data storage, few have utilized it for critical file data, often citing difficulties in moving it one way or the other. As a result, the data lives separately than the applications that need it, reducing the effectiveness and utilization of this data. To get around this problem, some IT teams have re-built workflows to use data while it’s in the cloud, but this comes with its own set of problems.

The bottom line is there hasn’t been a simple solution to solve these cloud data storage and utilization issues… Until now.

Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3 allows IT teams to fluidly move data to and from Amazon S3 with just a few clicks, simplifying the cloud storage process and streamlining interactions with other Amazon Web Services as well.

“I like to think of [Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3] as the easiest way for customers to put their file data to work with all the amazing marketplace apps and cloud native services on AWS,” said Qumulo Technical Marketing Manager David Sniderman, with ESG Senior Analyst Scott Sinclair. “Our file system is designed to help users take advantage of the cloud’s scalable infrastructure for high performance data processing and content creation. Shift lets customers take that data, wherever they create it, and use it with AWS Cloud Service.”

With Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3, Qumulo customers, whether cloud native or creating data on prem, can take that valuable file data and use it with Amazon’s full suite of cloud services.

Why Enterprises Choose Qumulo Shift For Amazon S3

In addition to this simplified data management, enterprises will experience a variety of other benefits, including:

• Improved data availability for your users, wherever they might be located. In a time when many businesses are utilizing remote or , this is a benefit that cannot be overestimated.
• Realtime visibility and control over data and users. Potential issues can be found quicker and any decisions that must be made regarding the management of data will benefit from a full and accurate picture of the current data environment.
• Better data reliability and protection. Thanks to Qumulo’s distributed file system, which aggregates and protects cloud storage, enterprises never have to worry about files lost in the cloud. Secondary copies of data are created by native replication, which adds an additional layer of data protection.
• Lowered total cost of ownership (TCO). In comparison to legacy solutions, Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3 costs less and offers a higher percentage of provisioned capacity.
• Flexibility. Qumulo offers a flexible deployment model, allowing enterprises to create the environment that best suits their performance and capacity needs.

At the heart of it, is making it easier for enterprises to keep their data next to their applications, allowing it to be utilized to meet business objectives.

Are You Interested In Qumulo Shift For Amazon S3?

As a leader in data management, Qumulo is trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major film and animation studios, and some of the largest research facilities around the world. From building smart cars, to vital disease research, enterprises around the world are changing the way they store and utilize data thanks to Qumulo. Our team has experience implementing Qumulo for enterprise companies that process and analyze vast amounts of mission-critical data across several industries. today to learn more about how Qumulo can quickly add value to your data storage environment and strategy.

NEXT STEPS: Check out our latest infographic which shares 7 ways Qumulo is making cloud data storage radically simple. PLUS it includes a case study example of how one of our customers found success leveraging Qumulo with AWS. Click below to learn more.

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Have you ever felt that something was too good to be true? Something that appeared to solve every problem without sacrificing anything in return? You might think there’s a hidden catch somewhere, but when it comes to cloud services with , it really is that good.

In a time when enterprises are asking more of IT than ever before, a solution that can provide a cloud-like experience with on-premises control, and can do it while reducing costs and complexity, is exactly what these organizations need to be successful.

Before we delve into exactly how HPE GreenLake and HPE Synergy work together to deliver increased value to HPE customers, let’s discuss the highlights of each solution on its own.

HPE GreenLake Brings The Cloud To You

HPE GreenLake is a fully managed, scalable cloud infrastructure service, which offers enterprises an as-a-Service delivery model for on-premises infrastructure. More specifically, it offers IT-as-a-service to simplify IT with consistent cloud operations

In designing GreenLake, HPE has cast aside the one-size-fits-all approach to supported technology by allowing enterprises to choose the most appropriate supported HPE or third-party technology. HPE also offers flexible pay-as-go models and makes it easy for enterprises to scale to their exact needs without worrying about costs.

HPE GreenLake has a variety of use cases, from data transformation and unlocking insights, to application modernization and offering a cloud-like experience on virtual machines. Thanks to its built-in flexibility, enterprises can utilize HPE GreenLake to fulfill their exact needs instead of making do with the rigidity found in competing options.

HPE Synergy Can Power Any Workload Within The Hybrid Cloud

HPE Synergy, a composable bladed infrastructure, can power any workload on a single infrastructure and can run both traditional and cloud-native workloads, reducing management complexity and cost.

Its compute models offer IT the ability to make use of processors that consume higher levels of power, and provide a larger number of cores than past systems. This allows HPE Synergy to run applications that require higher performance CPUs, and more memory configurations.

HPE Synergy also simplifies the firmware and driver distribution process, while offering automatic updates for a single frame or group of frames from a single management point.

[Featured Video]
Real Tech with WEI – HPE Synergy Episode

HPE Synergy and GreenLake Together

Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of each solution on its own, let’s talk about how they work together.

When combined, the two allow enterprises to run almost any business workload on one cloud-like platform, without sacrificing the control of on-premises infrastructure. They help enterprises optimize value per workload, simplify management, reduce costs, and allow IT to focus on business initiatives instead of just keeping the lights on.

, the benefits can be broken down into four main categories:

• Efficiency: HPE GreenLake cloud services with HPE Synergy frees IT staff from routine tasks, consolidates IT into a flexible, simple platform, and improves productivity for infrastructure teams by 60%.
• Speed: Together, the solutions allow for faster deployment time and offer a 75% faster time to market than other solutions.
• Control: By utilizing HPE GreenLake cloud services with HPE Synergy, enterprises can meet low-latency performance needs, secure IT and data, and enjoy a 35% lowered cost of operations.
• Economic: In addition to the aforementioned operations savings, enterprises will also see reduced costs by eliminating overprovisioning, reducing overhead, and a reduction in the costs associated with IT resources.

By combining the flexibility of the cloud with the control of on-premises infrastructure, all wrapped up in an IT-as-a-Service package, HPE is offering enterprises a new way to meet challenges head on and turn IT into a source of innovation.

Are You Interested In HPE GreenLake Cloud Services With HPE Synergy?

As a global, edge-to-cloud company, HPE is helping enterprises around the world implement solutions that improve productivity and reduce costs. In combining HPE GreenLake with HPE Synergy, they are helping enterprises take control of their digital infrastructures.

Did You Know? WEI is an HPE Platinum Partner and we have extensive experience implementing HPE Synergy for Fortune 500 companies. If data center modernization is on your roadmap, to start a conversation about how HPE Synergy can fit in your environment AND ask us how HE GreenLake services can help you deliver IT services to the business FASTER.

NEXT STEPS: Learn 6 tips for mitigating financial risk and maximizing operational reward with Composable Infrastructure in our FREE white paper below!

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One of the greatest challenges faced by today’s enterprises is managing their ever-increasing volumes of data. Over time, the volume, location and importance of data have all evolved, and legacy solutions can no longer keep up.

Enterprises need a solution that can offer the support for not only the volume of data, but also differing file types, data locations, applications, and workloads. To meet this need, Qumulo has built a that directly fulfills the data-related needs of today’s enterprises.

In this two-part series, we are discussing the top 8 reasons should be a part of your cloud strategy. Check out part one for the first four ways that Qumulo is helping enterprises manage data.

5. Qumulo is a leader in data storage

Beyond the many customer reviews and testimonials in favor of the solution, Qumulo has also been recognized as a leader for the third year in a row in the .

by 2024, “large enterprises will triple their unstructured data stored as file or object storage on-premises, at the edge or in the public cloud, compared to 2020.”

For this and many other reasons, it’s more important than ever for enterprises to take charge of the way their data is handled, stored, and utilized.

6. Immense return on investment

Data management is often a time and resource sink, with many hours of administration needed from IT to properly secure and store it. For this reason alone, brings customers immense ROI just by reducing the amount of time typically needed by IT to administer the data platform.

Because Qumulo is programmable and infinitely scalable, Qumulo lets customers take advantage of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to move data as needed, making sure your applications and users have access whenever they need it.

Additionally, as helps enterprises simplify data management, customers will find that in addition to cost and time savings, the enterprise will be able to better utilize data to direct and improve business objectives.

7. Qumulo provides freedom of choice

When it comes to cloud computing, enterprises rarely utilize just one cloud platform. Qumulo supports this by offering customers the and the ability to choose environments on public cloud, in the data center, or at the edge.

File data can be integrated with any application on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and customers are not locked in with one specific vendor or infrastructure.

8. Qumulo lowers operational costs

In addition to the massive return on investment that Qumulo offers to customers, it also lowers operational costs in general. Data storage costs are lowered as customers use the full capacity of their storage, and there is no penalty for small files. This means that customers utilizing Qumulo in their data center will have more storage and less cost per-rack.

Other cost savings come from reduced staff time for data management and reduced hardware maintenance costs, as well as cost-effective performance supported by AI and machine learning.

Qumulo is revolutionizing data management

When building , Qumulo zeroed in on exactly what challenges IT professionals face when it comes to data management and set out to address them. With this customer-first approach, Qumulo is changing the data management game and transforming the way enterprises view data.

With the smarter data management provided by Qumulo, enterprises can see in real time what is happening with their data and make better business decisions. Should problems arise, the platform offers the visibility IT teams need to diagnose and fix them, instead of just buying more storage as a stop gap solution.

Are you interested in Qumulo?

As a leader in data management, Qumulo has helped enterprises around the globe manage over 200 billion files. From building smart cars, to vital disease research, enterprises around the world are changing the way they store and utilize data thanks to Qumulo.

This blog post is part of a 2-part series about the benefits of leveraging Qumulo for enterprise data management. If you missed the first post, click here to read part one.

NEXT STEPS: Continue reading about Qumulo in our tech brief below to learn how Qumulo is enabling high performance productivity across distributed enterprises and remote workforces.

The post 8 Reasons Qumulo Should Be Part Of Your Cloud Strategy, Part 2 appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

When it comes to challenges faced by today’s IT organizations, there are few as universal as data management. In the last two decades, the volume of data that enterprises are expected to utilize, secure, and manage has increased exponentially. The location of that data has also changed, with much of it moving to the cloud or hybrid environments.

Raising the stakes even further, the value of data has increased as well. An enterprise that isn’t making use of the data it has, isn’t securing it properly, or isn’t ensuring users have access to the data they need to be productive will fail.

To stay on top of this constant flow of data, enterprises require a solution that can offer the support for not only the volume of data, but also differing file types, data locations, applications, and workloads.

In this two-part series, we’ll discuss the top 8 reasons should be a part of your cloud strategy. This first article will share our first four reasons. (Read part 2 here.)

1. Qumulo simplifies management of enterprise data

Complexity is a major factor in the amount of time and resources IT must dedicate to data management. When it comes to managing cloud data, which may exist in a combination of private and public clouds, it gets even worse.

With Qumulo, enterprises gain a unified data management experience across on-premises, private, and public environments, offering , regardless of scale.

Several key features, including the ability to migrate applications to the cloud without rewriting/refactoring, the ability to automate DevOps workflows with advanced API, and a quick and easy setup process, all contribute to this simplicity.

Enterprises who make the switch will immediately see and experience the time and cost benefits of Qumulo’s simple management system.

2. Manage the full data lifecycle

To fully take advantage of the data collected by the enterprise, it can’t be inert. Data has its own lifecycle and through Qumulo, enterprises can manage each stage of it.

The cycle, , is as follows:

• Capture – The data is first captured by the enterprise
• Interact – The data begins to be interacted with by users at the enterprise
• Transform – The data is utilized and transformed for use by the enterprise
• Publish – The data is published for consumption by the enterprises target audience
• Archive – After running its initial course, the data is archived for later use or reference

With Qumulo, enterprises can manage data throughout its lifecycle with a single solution, giving IT unparalleled visibility across the enterprise and making it easy to find and catalogue individual pieces of data as necessary.

3. Proven in every industry

Data management is a problem for every enterprise, regardless of scale or industry, and Qumulo can assist with them all.

Whether your enterprise is in healthcare, media and entertainment, manufacturing, or anything in between, Qumulo can provide the cloud data management solution you need to be successful.

4. Qumulo has a broad range of use cases

Just as Qumulo can provide for enterprises in every industry, it also has a broad range of use cases.

Beyond just helping enterprises manage business data, Qumulo has a wide range of use cases from helping customers analyze data to develop new technologies, to providing support for video surveillance systems responsible for student safety, to supporting aerial imaging that is key to disaster response.

More than just data management

As detailed above, . By engaging with Qumulo, you can finally tap into the true potential of the data you collect and utilize it to not only inform your strategic decisions, but completely transform the way you do business.

Stay tuned for part two of this article series where we will discuss the next four reasons Qumulo should be part of your cloud strategy.

Are you interested in Qumulo?

As a leader in , Qumulo is trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major film and animation studios, and some of the largest research facilities around the world. From building smart cars, to vital disease research, enterprises around the world are changing the way they store and utilize data thanks to Qumulo.

This blog post is part 1 of a 2-part series about the benefits of leveraging Qumulo for enterprise data management. Continue on to part 2 here >>

NEXT STEPS: Learn 7 ways Qumulo can meet your data needs as you grow and scale in our tech brief below, “Critical Data Storage for a Distributed Enterprise.”

The post 8 Reasons Qumulo Should Be Part Of Your Cloud Strategy, Part 1 appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

It seems like everyone is going hybrid these days when it comes to enterprise architectures. According to Gartner, 75 percent of midsize and large organizations will have adopted a multi-cloud and/or a hybrid IT model by now. The reason is pretty simple, while 97 percent of IT decision makers confirm a positive experience with the public cloud, not everything can go there. Unfortunately, there are issues such as security, compliance, and the uncomfortable uncertainty of managing your stuff “up there” wherever that place is, that prevents companies from the public cloud experience for all. If everything could reside in a public cloud however, what a wonderful world it would be.

The inequality within hybrid models

The adoption of a brings about a lot of flexibility. It lets you choose where to host your applications, workloads and resources. But with hybrid architectures, many organizations quickly discover an unsettling consequence, inequality. While the public cloud is a panacea for matters such as scalability, rapid deployment time, resource utilization efficiencies and reduced startup costs, many of your critical applications that remain on-prem continue to be saddled with the typical restraints as was exemplified in a recent survey by 451 Research that examines the typical cloud experience through the lens of 1,001 “on the ground” practitioners. Here are a few of the key findings from that report that illustrate the ongoing challenges of the on-premises model:

• Scalability and agility were the biggest worries, with 80 percent citing that deployment times are too slow.
• Capacity planning was a major challenge for 71 percent of IT leaders, with 92 percent acknowledging a wait time of 30 days or longer to get new capacity installed.
• 83 percent of enterprises are still using fixed-capital models for on-premise capacity, reducing the agility of budgets and innovation.

There’s no doubt, that from the on-prem world, the grass looks a lot greener on the other side of the fence. And so lies the conundrum. How do IT decision makers balance the need for greater agility, and improved provisioning times that you typically get from a cloud experience while maintaining security and control of their resources? In the end, most IT leaders play it safe, which creates unnecessary 40-50 percent server capacity and lost opportunities.

Consumption-based IT

What IT leaders need is a cloud-like experience on-premises. Doing so would eliminate the blaring gaps that exist when comparing the on-prem experience to that of the public cloud. But is that even possible?

Here’s some good news at a time when good news is at a premium! You actually can have high resiliency, scalability, and effective capacity utilization while still remaining secure, compliant and in control. It’s a new cloud-like financial model referred to as consumption-based IT and it is available today through HPE GreenLake services. While you may not have heard of GreenLake, you have certainly heard of its parent company, HPE. So popular is the idea of transforming your on-prem environment to a public cloud-like experience, that GreenLake is HPE’s fastest growing business. With 10 years of experience as a market leading IT-as-a-Service provider, GreenLake has demonstrated to its customer base that you can have the cloud experience everywhere.

How the HPE GreenLake model works

There are definite reasons why the public cloud experience is superior to the on-prem strategies of most enterprises today. Public clouds are comprised of the latest equipment and service catalog technology. All of it is administered by experts in their field who utilize best practices, operational techniques and orchestration to ensure optimum performance. This what you get with GreenLake. You can achieve that cloud-like experience with the latest technology from HPE such as HPE SimpliVity, HPE Synergy, Nimble Storage and ProLiant Gen10 servers. They also incorporate third party software and services including Docker, Hadoop, SAP HANA, Nutanix AHV, VMware Cloud Foundation, Microsoft Azure and AWS. Multi-vendor flexibility without the lock in, that’s nice! All of this is then managed by them, while ensuring that you are calling the shots. By handing over the administrative burden to dedicated specialists, your own IT department can focus on business objectives and value added projects.

Four steps for adopting ITaaS with HPE GreenLake

The GreenLake blueprint involves the following essential steps to adopting an IT-as-a-Service experience across your entire enterprise.

1. Define the right mix to remain in control of your complete enterprise according to your current business needs
2. Implement in-place scalability and on-demand processes in order to stay ahead of business demand, while only paying for what you use (this is key!)
3. Optimize skill sets within your organization by offloading management of your hybrid environment to HPE GreenLake Management Services
4. Access your operating model to simplify IT, while providing increased security, visibility and flexibility at the same time

Greater cash flow and cost visibility

The GreenLake model is a pay-per-use model. No longer do you have to play it safe with excessive and wasteful capacity that approaches 40-50 percent for the average enterprise. By eliminating overprovisioning and upfront capital expenditures, HPE customers are seeing an average cash flow saving of 30-40 percent on average after adopting the GreenLake consumption-based IT model. On top of everything else they offer, GreenLake’s metering and analytics software helps customers determine the true cost and profitability to each of their allotted IT services.

Talk to WEI about consumption-based IT

There is nothing new about the concept of consumption-based IT. What’s new is that it is no longer just available in the public cloud. It’s available for your on-prem data center as well. If you want to learn how eradicating the inequality of workloads and performance within their hybrid architectures, then talk to WEI where we can introduce you to the GreenLake model, as well as the concept of having the best of both worlds at your doorstep.

Pay-per-use models are looking to be the future of IT cost models, ask us how your business can start reaping the benefits. Send me a message on LinkedIn to start a discussion, or contact our team here. We look forward to helping you find opportunities to move your business forward in the most cost-effective manner.

You might be interested in our white paper about implementing a hybrid IT model and how to overcome some of the common challenges we’ve seen across enterprise organizations. Click below to read more.

The post What You Need to Know about Consumption-based IT with HPE GreenLake appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

WEI often works with clients in both areas of backup and disaster recovery at the same time. We find it’s often beneficial for them to be part of a single strategy since the function of backup and DR relates so closely together (recovering from some sort of event). They do have slightly different goals, however. With backup, you might be looking at a smaller data loss, such as accidental deletion or corruption of files.

With DR, you might be looking at a wider event, such as the loss of a facility, or loss of systems. Considering both backup and DR together as one strategy is helpful because it influences where you place data, where you place your disaster recovery location, and how much it costs to achieve the results you want (in both CapEx and OpEx). Both sides of backup and DR should be factored together. They may ultimately be part of one comprehensive solution.

Let’s take a look at a few common scenarios you should factor in to your backup strategy.

Backup Scenario #1: File Restores

It should come as no surprise that the most frequent restore need comes from users wanting to restore individual files. Most of the time, people have to recover from human-error events. They may have to recover a deleted file, a deleted database or an accidentally deleted email. These tend to require the backup administrator to go back in time no later than 7 days to retrieve and restore an earlier version of the file from the backup set. More commonly, we see people needing to go back to yesterday, last night or the backup from two hours ago. Having to go back later than a week, two weeks or even six months is more often a rare occurrence.

In these cases, only storing a few days’ worth of backups on local storage often covers this type of failure scenario. If your organization stores these types of backups in the cloud and gets requests for earlier than seven days ago, you may need to build in more cost to restore. Not only can this type of cloud-based restore cost you more money, it may also take you longer.

Backup Scenario #2: Server Corruption

If a server becomes corrupted, many clients tell us, “Well, we’re just going to fail over to DR.” Many don’t realize all of the implications of doing that. For example, many customers’ networks are not set up to fail an individual component or an individual server from one location to the other. Some major network changes have to happen first when a server fails from one site to another. It does no good if the server comes up in your DR site but nobody can get to it because the network isn’t configured.

A client may tell us they are really concerned about recovering quickly from server corruption, a server crash, or a ransomware attack like CryptoLocker. Based on that concern, it can change how we architect backup and DR. We may opt to have client backups sitting on fast storage so that recovery can be fast and easy. In this case, though, we may also recommend storing those backups for only 2-3 days in order to reduce the cost on that type of storage. Then, after that first few days, we may recommend tiering the backup data. This can involve sending the backups to another storage tier that stores them for 30 days.

This type of scenario might involve a holistic and hybrid backup solution that involves more than one vendor. Rarely do we find one vendor who meets all of a company’s backup or DR requirements in one solution.

Sample Scenario #3: Virtual Server Environments

This scenario also dovetails with Scenario #2. This is because so many server environments are now virtualized. The proliferation of virtual server environments brings with it new opportunities to streamline and improve backup and DR operations. Unfortunately, this proliferation also brings with it new risks: Multiple virtual server environments may now exist on a single physical server. If something happens to that physical server, its downtime impact may be much more far-reaching.

Depending on the individual recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) for each virtual server environment, WEI may recommend replicating some servers offsite to a cloud provider, while other data is handled differently. There are also newer technologies that handle virtual environments differently than traditional backup applications that were built for the physical world. Some of these methodologies may make sense, like the use of virtual machine full image backups that no longer require individual backups or backup agents for each virtual server.

Protecting business data is always #1

If you’re using laptops, PCs, or cloud software to share and store critical data, this could cause problems on two fronts. First, in today’s workplace, employees expect 24/7 access to files and data from any location and on any device. If you’re not providing this capability, well-meaning employees often resort to “shadow IT” to maintain productivity. But if these are outside the control of IT, they leave files open to attack, and your business open to liability. Second, it’s not a matter of if devices will crash or get lost or stolen, but when. And while it can be challenging to make sure that everything is backed up and you’re ready for disaster, it’s also absolutely critical. If data loss could put you out of business for a few hours, or a few days, it’s time to consider a better solution.

with Windows Server and Microsoft Azure Cloud Services provide two use-case options. Configurations optimized for file data provide a central repository for files and data with fast performance so employees can collaborate more easily and securely. Configurations optimized for backup and disaster recovery help minimize downtime by protecting data and making it fast and easy to recover when disaster strikes. Both offer edge-to-cloud computing solutions with the ability to extend your on-premises solution with flexible, secure hybrid cloud options.

Luckily, HPE’s solutions for file and backup are simple to deploy, manage, and support. They’re a one-stop shop for packaged solutions including HPE ProLiant servers, storage, software, services, and top-selling options, all tested, optimized, and validated with Windows Server and Azure Cloud Services. They are based on HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers that are equipped to meet the needs of midsize businesses. They are ideal for the midsized enterprise in that they are equipped with sufficient CPU, memory, and storage resources to enable the server to be used for file and print, backup and recovery, and hybrid file and backup.

Next Steps: Learn more about how to effectively plan for hybrid backup strategies in our white paper below.

The post Critical Scenarios to Consider for your Backup Strategy appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.