While 2021 hasn’t brought a definite end to pandemic-era IT challenges like many hoped, other technology predictions have held steady, largely propelled by the new remote working and hybrid workforce standard. Examples include the continued proliferation of internet of things (IoT) devices, the accelerated adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technologies, and an increased interest in software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technologies.

With that in mind, in the article below, we discuss five SD-WAN edge trends that will help IT leaders plan for what’s coming next and make informed decisions about their SD-WAN strategies, as shared by .

1. SASE Will Continue To Gain Steam

To fully take advantage of the benefits of digital transformation and a remote or hybrid workforce, enterprises need to make improvements to their WAN and security architectures instead of just focusing on one or the other. This is especially important as cybersecurity threats continue to multiply and remote workforces serve as tempting targets for bad actors.

Secure access service edge (SASE) offers the security needed to handle these evolving workforces while ensuring a consistent and enjoyable user experience for employees.

2. IoT Security Challenges Will Require New Solutions

In addition to remote workforces, the continued proliferation of IoT devices has created its own security challenges. Zero trust access and granular segmentation at the new WAN edge, which can enforce distinct security policies for each class of IoT endpoints, will be key in securing these devices and preventing them from being utilized by cybercriminals.

3. SD-WAN, SD-Branch, and SASE Will Be Essential To Edge Success

When it comes to security, a multi-pronged approach ensures that data will stay secure, regardless of the threat. By combining SD-WAN with cloud-first connectivity and steering, SASE, which provides a more direct way to connect users to business resources, and SD-Branch, which offers an easy way to simplify the branch even as IoT adoptions create new complications, enterprises can enhance their security posture while also improving operational efficiencies.

4. Edge Strategies Will Continue To Evolve As Circumstances Require

While many hoped that at this stage we would be in the post-pandemic era, the virus continues to impact enterprises and IT on a daily basis, delaying plans to return to the office and necessitating technologic creativity when designing and implementing infrastructure. Looking ahead, as we do eventually reach the end of the pandemic, enterprises will continue to utilize edge strategies to improve security and user experience for remote and hybrid workforces.

5. Enterprises Will Utilize Software-Defined Principles To Support Growth

As we’ve seen with SD-WAN, software-defined strategies are proving to be the most efficient and logical step forward for the modern enterprise. Beyond SD-WAN and SD-Branch, these software-defined principles are being applied to other areas of the enterprise, including the data center and campus LAN. To stay competitive in the market and ready for unexpected change, enterprises will need to adopt these strategies throughout their digital environments.

SD-WAN By Aruba And Silver Peak

In 2020, , the parent company of Aruba, acquired , a global leader in SD-WAN solutions. Through this acquisition, Aruba and Silver Peak are working together to provide customers with the very best in SD-WAN solutions, while also significantly reducing costs.

Silver Peak’s SD-WAN offerings will strengthen the by expanding Aruba’s cloud capabilities. Additionally, through a combination of Silver Peak’s SD-WAN and Aruba’s SD-Branch offerings, customers can simplify branch office and WAN deployments, benefiting remote workers and supporting cloud-connected distributed enterprises.

Are You Interested In SD-WAN From Aruba?

Regardless of your specific use case, Aruba offers the SD-WAN and edge computing solutions your enterprises need to be successful. By transforming WAN and security together, enterprises can discover increased benefit from their current and future investments in cloud-computing. Beyond the initial advantages of SD-WAN solutions, IT will experience additional benefits through reduced management complexity and overall lowered costs.

NEXT STEPS: SD-WAN is ideal for campus-based networks or distributed enterprises, or any enterprise with remote/branch offices. Explore the top three benefits of SD-WAN in our short video below.

The post 5 SD-WAN Edge Trends All IT Leaders Should Know appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Today’s cybercriminals are better equipped and are utilizing technology that’s more advanced by the day. With the value and importance of data only growing, protecting that data has never been more essential and enterprises need all the help they can get. With this in mind, we recently held a cybersecurity event to share information on key topics including:

• The best strategies enterprises can use to keep data safe.
• The anatomy of a hacker.
• The tools hackers utilize to gain entry to your systems.
• Cybersecurity predictions for the upcoming year and beyond.

This virtual event, presented in partnership with , featured Theresa Payton, a legendary figure within the cybersecurity and IT world. Her resume was already impressive, with executive level roles in banking technology, but she made history as the first woman to serve as the CIO of the White House. She currently leads as CEO.

In the article below, we’ll share the top three takeaways from the event that you need to know to effectively combat cybersecurity threats.

1. Web Browsing Is A Minefield

Hacking isn’t as it appears in the movies. Instead of brute forcing your firewalls or other cybersecurity solutions, cybercriminals will exploit any simple way into your digital environment. Many of these opportunities can be as simple as a user clicking on a theoretically safe link.

As shared by Theresa, things like clickbait, fake ads, and chat bots are often utilized by cybercriminals to lead your employees astray. While they may not contain malware or other nefarious programs, the demographic data that’s exposed and tracked once clicked on can be all hackers need to get started.

The ad itself or the advertising company running the ads may be genuine, but bad actors that gain access to that data can take the information gathered, such as operating system, IP address and username, and use it to build social engineering campaigns, fraud campaigns, and other carefully constructed personas to further trick your employees into opening the doors to hackers.

2. Bad Actors Are Using AI To Impersonate Key Players

As previously mentioned, today’s hackers have access to technology far beyond what their predecessors could even dream of. One of the most insidious tools being utilized is AI technology that leverages internet photos and audio to create deepfake profiles.

Deepfakes are synthetic media built using artificial intelligence (AI) to alter the appearance or sound of a piece of media, such as a video or audio recording. In the wrong hands, this technology is being used to create fake user profiles, impersonate employees, and using an executive’s ‘likeness’ to authorize fraudulent bank transfers.

As shared by Theresa during the cybersecurity event: “An international company with international lines of business needed to do a wire transfer to a vendor. The vendor sends a typical message to the CFO, who receives it and waits for the multi-factor authentication. In their case, the authentication is a phone call and voice authorization. CFO receives it [from the CEO] and makes the transfer.”

Unfortunately for this company, it was not the CEO on the phone and the transfer was fraudulent. By utilizing deepfake technology, hackers are creating a world where enterprises cannot trust what they see and hear and must rely on additional security layers, like codewords and separate lines of communication, to keep these incidents from happening.

3. We Have To Work Together To Stand Against Cybercriminals

As more enterprises fall victim to ransomware and large scale incidents wreak havoc ( being a perfect example), the cybersecurity community must come together to catch these bad actors.

Many enterprises seek to hide evidence of breaches to save face, but in doing so, they’re making it easier for bad actors to continue on with their actions. Instead, when attacks happen, information regarding it should be shared with the community in general, not just internally or only with law enforcement.

“We need international cooperation. Cybercrime has to be dealt with and we need to have an international accord that says an attack against a private sector company is an attack against all of us and it will not stand,” Theresa said.

Ensure Comprehensive Cybersecurity With WEI & Cisco

Having a trusted technology partner like WEI can help you build the right security foundation with secure tools, such as those found in We can walk you through a cyber-savvy strategy to identify vulnerabilities and take a proactive approach to risk mitigation. Contact WEI today to start a cybersecurity conversation that will deliver the security outcomes your business requires.

NEXT STEPS: Lack of visibility across your entire IT estate is often the biggest challenge when it comes to effectively securing your company from intrusion. Cisco can help you spot those vulnerabilities faster with a proactive security strategy. It really comes down to having the right tools AND frequent cybersecurity training for your employees, but let’s start at square one and take a look at what’s possible when you have full visibility!

Meet Cisco SecureX in two ways.
Watch the Demo and Read the Solution Brief.

The post 3 Key Takeaways From Cybersecurity Expert, Theresa Payton appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

As global industry evolves, digital innovation that features a hybrid, “from anywhere” business environment has become critical to modern workforces. New formats, like zero-trust access (ZTA), allow employees and external partners to utilize digital resources, no matter when or where they choose to work.

But this new approach creates complications for CISOs and other because business applications and data leave traditional corporate perimeters. Specifically, it broadens the attack surface of internal networks. Combined with evolving threats, this factor dramatically expands the risk of potential breaches.

In this article, we’ll explore how a zero-trust access approach to security featuring endpoint protection can help.

Mitigating Risk At The Edge

Conceptually, traditional security models feature “gateways” whereby permitted entry means users and devices can be trusted in perpetuity. But unpredictable and broadening access points render this traditional approach obsolete. Bad actors can steal credentials and access networks from any device, for example. This threat increases the complexity and risk of more frequent, more nuanced attacks.

ZTA is therefore critical to security as digital innovation continues. With ZTA, CISOs and other executives can ensure all users, devices, and applications are consistently authenticated, trustworthy, and managed. ZTA ensures users have only the correct frequency and depth of access as well.

What Is ZTA With Endpoint Protection?

The ZTA framework features a combination of security solutions that continuously and holistically identify, authenticate, and segment users and devices seeking network and application access. With these capabilities, security teams can:

• Establish identity through multiple authentication and certificate measures
• Enable role-based privileged access
• Ensure ongoing network control through automated orchestration and threat response
• Optimize the user experience, even with rigorous security measures

Essential Zero-Trust Access Capabilities For Modern IT Security

ZTA does more than offer superior security as enterprise attack surfaces expand. Enterprises that incorporate ZTA with endpoint protection as part of their integrated security strategy also enjoy the flexibility to support their business needs, beyond traditional security models.

Three critical capabilities ZTA features that optimize security and workflows on expanded networks include:

1. Authentication for Every Device, Every Time

Unlike traditional perimeter models, a ZTA-based security strategy assumes every user and device poses a risk. In this paradigm, ZTA authenticates every device before access is authorized. Because ZTA provides a seamless experience for users, automated security features can continuously authenticate devices every time a new or familiar device requests access, without adding friction to user workflows.

2. Role-Based Access for Every User

In this paradigm, security teams continuously monitor every user, no matter the user’s apparent risk. As part of this approach, security teams have visibility into the role-based access of every user, emphasizing a “least access policy” whereby users only access resources that are necessary for their roles.

3. Asset Protection, On and Off Network

Increased remote and mobile activity among users means that there is a greater risk they will expose their devices to bad actors. In doing so, they expose organizational resources to security threats, whether they realize a risk is present or not.

The ZTA approach improves endpoint visibility to protect against the risks associated with remote endpoint devices. Endpoint security measures share security telemetry data each time the device reconnects to the enterprise network. This provides security teams with visibility into vulnerabilities and threats, as well as into missing security patches and missing updates to role-based access, when applicable.

5 Essential Features Of Today’s Leading Zero-Trust Access Frameworks

Once CISOs and other IT executives understand the rationale behind ZTA frameworks, they must understand the ZTA market and the leading features each solution provides.

Consider the following five essential features as you review the leading solutions available today:

1. Automated Discovery Classification

Network access control discovers and identifies every device on, or seeking access to, the network. The ZTA system automatically scans those devices to ensure they are not compromised, then classifies each device by role and function.

2. Zone-of-Control Assignment

The system automatically assigns users to role-based zones of control where they can be monitored continuously, both on and off network. Network access control microsegments users in mixed environments featuring vendors, partners, contingent workers, and others in addition to employees, supporting robust capabilities even as companies expand the edge.

3. Continuous Monitoring

This feature is founded on the premise that no single user or device can be trusted, even after authentication, a device may be infected or a user’s credentials could have been compromised. ZTA frameworks continuously monitor users and devices, imposing streamlined authentication at every point of access as a result.

4. Secure Remote Access

The ZTA framework provides users with safe but flexible options for VPN connectivity, improving the user experience even as it imposes more robust security features. The framework also ensures internet-based transactions cannot backflow into each VPN connection, which would put the enterprise at risk.

5. Endpoint Access Control

The framework uses proactive visibility, defense, and control to strengthen endpoint security. Discovering, assessing, and continuously monitoring endpoint risk streamlines endpoint risk mitigation, risk exposure, and compliance. The framework supports encrypted connections across unsafe networks and continuously retrieves telemetry data to measure endpoint security statuses as well.

Consider Fortinet ZTA For A Fully Integrated Security Strategy

As an IT leader, your ultimate responsibility is not only to keep your company, resources, and users secure but also to help users innovate, improve the bottom line with new efficiencies, and generally meet the needs of the business. That’s why the experts at WEI recommend to IT and security executives who are re-thinking their approach to enterprise security as risks and business requirements evolve.

Framework includes:

1. Complete and continuous control over who is accessing applications
2. Complete and continuous control over who AND what is on the network
3. Integrated ZTA solution for Fortinet Security Fabric that works on-premises and in the cloud over LAN, WAN, and remote tunnels
4. A complete, integrated solution coming from one vendor

Featuring comprehensive visibility and control across infrastructure, users, and devices, Fortinet ZTA provides security leaders with the capabilities they need to both protect enterprise resources and enable modern workforces, no matter the location of each user or device.

Fortinet is leading the way with zero-trust for the enterprise

Fortinet offers comprehensive and holistic security solutions for the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organizations in the world. From firewalls to cloud security, Fortinet ensures security without compromising performance. Here at WEI we have expertise across all Fortinet solutions and can help you evaluate and determine the best approach to an integrated security strategy that delivers on your desired business outcomes.

Next Steps: Download our eBook highlighting the right mix of security solutions for your enterprise to help protect your business from emerging threats while keeping your users productive and happy. Click below to start reading!

The post 5 Critical Features Of Your Zero-Trust Access Strategy appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Regardless of the subject, there’s no one better to learn from than the experts. With this thought in mind, we recently held a featuring Kevin Mitnick, a famous hacker and New York Times bestselling author, James Morrison, a Distinguished Technologist and a former FBI agent, and our own Greg LaBrie, an enterprise security industry veteran and our Vice President of Technology Solutions and Services.

The webinar titled “Hack Me If You Can!” is now available for , and it shared expert insights on key cybersecurity topics including:

• Common threats and tactics used by today’s hackers
• Which new technologies can improve your cybersecurity strategy
• How to turn the tables on cyberattacks through offensive and defensive security strategies

In this article, we’ll share the top three takeaways from the webinar that you need to know to effectively combat today’s evolving cybersecurity threats.

1. Identifying Your Priorities Should Be The First Step In Your Cybersecurity Strategy

In the last year and a half, enterprises around the world have been faced with a substantial, new challenges. In terms of IT and cybersecurity, the exodus to remote working, maintaining that, and the evolution of the hybrid workspace has stretched enterprise security teams to the breaking point. Unfortunately, the bad guys know it and have no qualms about taking advantage.

According to a from INTERPOL, the rapid deployment of remote systems and networks allowed criminals to take “advantage of increased security vulnerabilities to steal data, generate profits and cause disruption.”

Even now, as some companies go back to the office and others delay in-person plans, or adopt a hybrid approach, cybercriminals are waiting for their opportunity to strike and these transitional periods are the perfect target.

In addition to the confusion and uncertainty created by the pandemic and the subsequent rise in cybercrime, companies are overwhelmed as they re-evaluate their security strategy and solutions as they begin to implement a more comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.

During the cybersecurity webinar, Greg LaBrie shared how the amount of enterprise security solutions on the market and the complexity of setting up security throughout an enterprise’s digital environment is making it hard for companies to determine their security priorities. As a result, many companies end up utilizing solutions that aren’t the best fit for their needs or leave vulnerabilities by neglecting to secure certain aspects of their digital environment.

“Don’t just buy any server, but look carefully at your server. Just don’t throw any solution out there, but really look at one of these confusing acronyms like ZTNA (zero trust network access). It means you have to have endpoint protection. It means you need to have multi-factor authentication. It means you need to have network access control and identity management,” Greg shared during the webinar.

“Put those solutions in place and also have a plan B. Have a backup. Have a way that if you do get ransomware that you can recover. That you don’t need to even be concerned about paying a ransom or the threat of paying ransom.”

2. Utilize Penetration Testing To Analyze Your Cybersecurity Strategy

Once your cybersecurity strategy is in place and you’re up and running, the next step should be to test for any vulnerabilities. That’s where ethical hackers like come in.

After getting himself into some hot water utilizing his talents in not-so-legal ways, Kevin eventually began operating a cybersecurity testing company and now helps enterprises determine areas of improvement in their defense strategy.

“I think penetration testing is absolutely necessary, because how do you know what weaknesses are in your security controls? How do you know that your network services aren’t exploitable? What about your web applications?” Kevin said during the webinar.

During the course of a penetration test, teams like Kevin’s make use of strategies that today’s hackers would utilize, using their creativity and expertise to determine how a cybercriminal could gain access and then, figure out what needs to be done to remove that vulnerability.

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that give cybercriminals the keys to your digital environment.

“I can’t tell you how many times organizations we tested that have all the privileged passwords sitting there on unencrypted Excel spreadsheets on the IT drive. And that’s the first place a bad actor is going to look.”

3. You Don’t Have To Go It Alone

Just like any other predator, cybercriminals want their prey scared and isolated. Thankfully, as it is in the animal kingdom, there is strength in numbers when it comes to cybersecurity.

New security guidance is coming out every day and sharing information is one way we can get ahead of bad actors.

For enterprises, another method is to work with a partner like WEI on your cybersecurity strategy.

As shared by James Morrison during the webinar, security is being built into tools that never had it before and while not every solution is going to fit your enterprise, by talking to your IT solutions provider, you can better determine what your cybersecurity needs are.

“Modernization is not just about us tech companies trying to sell the new gadget. There are new security features built into a lot of the things that we do. So, let’s have that conversation. Don’t just ignore it because you think we’re trying to pump a product. If it’s ransomware that bugs you, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about ransomware avoidance, ransomware remediation, ransomware recovery. All of these things, but we’ve got to start with having that honest conversation. Can you afford $11 million for ransomware? Because if you think your insurance is going to protect you from it, that ship is sailing.”

Ensure a Comprehensive Cybersecurity Strategy With WEI

Having a trusted technology partner like WEI can help you build the right security foundation with secure tools like integrated with Processors, while walking you through a cyber-savvy strategy to identify vulnerabilities and take a proactive approach to risk mitigation.

NEXT STEPS: Watch the webinar for other cybersecurity pearls of wisdom as you take a closer look at strengthening your own security posture. You can also sign up for a one-on-one .

The post 3 Key Takeaways From WEI’s Cybersecurity Webinar appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

After being popularized and exploding onto the IT scene almost a decade ago, the usage and management of containers is still evolving as new and more efficient organization strategies and tools are developed.

is one such tool. It was released in 2014 and over the last several years, has grown to be one of the most frequently utilized container management platforms.

That said, its popularity does nothing to simplify its core concepts and for executives, even those with an IT background, it can be hard to understand just how important and useful Kubernetes really is.

To make the conversation easier, we’ve pulled the top four things enterprise leadership should know about Kubernetes from ‘s Kubernetes for Executives report and other sources, and shared them in the article below.

1. What is Kubernetes?

The first step to understanding the benefits of Kubernetes (Koo-burr-NET-eez) is to actually learn what it is. This is typically the part that creates the most confusion for non-technical members of leadership teams.

As described on , “Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation.”

Depending on your own technical knowledge, that explanation might seem pretty simple or it may require further explanation. To start with, what is a container and what are they used for?

In VMware’s words, “ encapsulate applications and make them portable.” Essentially, containers provide a way to keep software running under identical conditions when it is moved from one computing environment to another. As an example, this might be migrating an application from a test environment into production.

For today’s enterprises, containers offer a sort of “plug and play” method for administration, development, and distribution of applications and their relevant dependencies.

Kubernetes goes one step further and offers scalable, automatic management and administration for distributed systems at the container level and serves as a starting platform for developers, while also preserving user choice and flexibility.

2. What are the benefits?

At its core, Kubernetes is an API-based, scalable and extensible solution, supported in all major public clouds and with a growing community of open-source solutions that complement its essential features.

Among its other benefits, Kubernetes offers the following, :

• Service discovery and load balancing
• Storage orchestration
• Automated rollouts and rollbacks
• Automatic bin packing
• Self-healing
• Secret and configuration management

For a non-technical audience, Kubernetes can best be described as an automated system that eliminates many of the manual provisioning and other tasks required for container management.

Its components, which are easily replaceable to allow the system to be extended to new requirements and environments, work together to coordinate activities and react to events.

3. Why Your Enterprise Needs Kubernetes

As shared by VMware, Kubernetes benefits the enterprise at multiple levels, from the IT teams that administer the digital environment, to application developers, and all the way up to CIOs.

The bottom line is:

• Kubernetes reduces the amount of time administrators need to spend on container management, allowing them to focus on more complex and beneficial tasks.
• It allows enterprises to deliver new software and products more quickly.
• Kubernetes improves infrastructure and application availability, resulting in increased productivity at every level of the enterprise.
• It improves security by allowing application developers to play an active role in designing securable application.

4. How To Get Started With Kubernetes

Starting your journey to Kubernetes adoption can seem daunting, especially for those enterprises that have yet to fully embrace cloud computing technologies. However, the rewards of taking the leap are undeniable, especially for those enterprises the prioritize software development.

If you aren’t sure where to get started, VMware and can help you pave your way forward.

Are Your Looking For A Partner On Your Journey To Kubernetes?

VMware offers enterprises solutions that will help them manage and run consistent infrastructure, across on-premises data centers and public clouds, improving user experience and overall business operations. Their innovative approach to container orchestration offers architecture that is easy to deploy and manage, increasing enterprise agility and flexibility.

NEXT STEPS: Is your organization using containers?

Click below to grab your copy of our FREE EBOOK, “The IT Leader’s Guide to Using Containers in Today’s Digital World.”

The post 4 Things Executives Need To Know About Kubernetes appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “a company’s greatest asset is their employees.” However, they can only be your greatest asset when they have the tools they need to be successful. For this, and many other reasons, many enterprises are offering Apple products to their employees.

This is especially true as the need and desire for flexible working environments has grown. offers simplified deployment and management, all while offering superior security, interconnectivity between devices, and productivity benefits for users.

As an added bonus, Apple devices are a popular choice as personal tech devices, meaning there’s a good change your employees are already familiar with using Mac, iPhone, and iPad at home. This familiarity is an added productivity bonus, on top of letting your employees utilize devices they already know and love for work.

The Availability of New Technologies and Ease of Updates

There’s a reason why Apple is the gold standard for new and shiny pieces of tech. With frequent and significant upgrades to hardware and their signature operating systems, iOS, macOS, and now iPadOS, Apple offers your employees the latest and greatest in digital technology.

Recently, Apple announced a at , their annual worldwide developers conference. The news included the reveal of , , and All three will be available to the general public sometime this fall. In the meantime, it’s time for IT to see how these updates will impact the enterprise’s IT environment and get prepared for the switch.

Thankfully, Apple makes this easy too. While there are third-party alternatives for managing software patches and updates, Apple offers a cloud-based service called Software Update, which enables IT teams to apply security patches and operating system updates.

The service also publishes patches and updates for frequently used applications such as Safari and iTunes for added efficiency. Mac is pointed to the service by default, which automatically notifies end users of any patches and updates they need to apply, and then prompts them to execute the downloads. For enterprises, putting self-service in the hands of your users keeps them focused and productive and reduces IT support tickets.

Apple Offers Unbeatable ROI

Beyond all the previously mentioned benefits of Apple devices in the enterprise, your business will see additional savings when it comes to IT.

A found that when organizations decided to implement an employee choice program and offer Mac, they “reduced IT support costs, improved employee productivity and engagement, and improved overall security.”

By reducing the amount of time spent managing devices and responding to the help desk, Apple helps reduce overall costs and lets IT focus on more important and complex tasks.

BONUS: Read our 2-part blog series that shares the ROI highlights from Forrester’s TEI study about Mac.

Apple Helps Enterprises Keep Data Safe

Security is on everyone’s mind right now. New threats are popping up every day and the financial ramifications of a successful cyberattack just keep growing.

To help reduce the risk that cyberthreats pose, Apple has gone to great lengths to ensure the use of Apple devices in the enterprise does not pose a security risk.

Here are a few of the strategies and technologies utilized by Apple to ensure security:

• Secure startup processes
• Extensive system safeguards
• Strong passcode policies
• The Apple T2 Security Chip
• Runtime protection, sandboxing, and other tools used to ensure downloaded apps are only accessing data in pre-authorized ways

Over the last few years, Apple has emerged as an industry leader when it comes to user data privacy and security and has taken a firm stance on data protection as a corporation. Find out more about Apple’s security strategies from Apple CEO Tim Cook’s presented at the most recent Computers Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) Conference.

Apple Authorized Resellers Can Help Enterprises Get Started

Enterprises looking to implement Apple devices can work with Apple Authorized Resellers to get started, as well as utilizing them for ongoing maintenance and support. As an Apple Authorize Reseller, WEI can help you quickly and efficiently integrate Apple into your enterprise with full lifecycle support, so you can deliver the user experience your employees have come to expect.

Are You Ready to Empower Your Employees with Apple In The Enterprise?

Implementing Apple for those employees who consistently request them drives productivity, collaboration, and creativity throughout the enterprise. Many of our customers have already made the transition to a blended Windows and Apple environment that enables employees to enjoy how they use technology in their jobs. Find out how WEI can help you create efficiencies with Apple device management and how our specialized services can help you roll out a user experience that will empower your employees to do their best work. Contact WEI today to find out how we are helping our employees deploy and manage Apple in the enterprise with full lifecycle support.

NEXT STEPS: Get our official guide to everything you need to know to prepare for offering Apple in the Enterprise in our exclusive eBook below.

The post Why Apple Is Gaining Traction In The Enterprise appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Today’s IT teams face many challenges, especially as the IT infrastructure continues to become more complicated. Between the high standards for application performance and staying on top of rapidly evolving security threats, IT teams wear many hats, which are only growing more numerous and heavier as time goes on.

As a result, IT must prioritize solutions that offer agility without creating undue burdens through a need for manual administration.

In the article below, we’ll discuss the ins and outs of , a platform that has recently been growing in popularity amongst IT groups prioritizing productivity and automation.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Overview

As a comprehensive solution, the includes several different products, all of which support improved IT productivity. These include Content Collections, the Automation Hub, the Automation Services Catalog, and more.

The cornerstone is , which is based on technology available in the AWX open-source community and offers enterprise-scale operations, analytics, and security, while also offering integrations with third-party systems. It allows IT teams to centralize IT infrastructure through a visual dashboard, role-based access control, job scheduling, integrated notifications, and graphical inventory management.

The dashboard provides a “heads-up, NOC-style display” and offers a simple and clean user interface (UI) for administrators, reducing visual clutter and making actions quick and efficient. As the infrastructure is automated, administrators can see real-time job status updates, with plays and tasks broken down by each machine. The status of other types of jobs, like cloud inventory refreshes, can be found in additional views within the Ansible Tower UI.

With Ansible Tower Workflows, IT teams can easily model complicated processes. Administrators can chain any number of playbooks, updates, or other workflows, even those that use different inventories, have different users, or utilize different credentials.

Ansible Tower also security logs all automation activity, including relevant information such as which user ran it and how it was customized. This information is securely stored and is viewable at a later date, or exported for company records. Ansible Tower also offers inventory synchronization with comprehensive asset tracking and CMDB source, helping ensure automated actions are aligned with the most up-to-date system state and configuration data.

Benefits and ROI of Red Hat Ansible for IT Automation

Now that we’ve shared some of the most exciting features of the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, let’s discuss the value that enterprises can gain from the solution.

In a , which featured interviews from Red Hat Ansible Tower customers, study participants cited benefits including, “the ability to meet DevOps requirements for private cloud and the ability to customize thereby making it easier for DevOps resources to be deployed rapidly and easily. They also cited business benefits such as total cost of ownership, the ability to offer standardized automation, and the fact that their developers were already familiar with and comfortable working on open-source technology.”

Other benefits of the solution, as observed by the participants, included:

• More agile IT operations.
• Infrastructure configuration standardization.
• Multiple teams brought together.
• Integration with an agile DevOps model.

In their research, IDC found that enterprises utilizing Red Hat Ansible Automation were deploying applications faster and reducing the time to market, managing IT systems more efficiently, building a strong foundation for DevOps efforts, and increasing the number of applications and features.

When quantified, these and other benefits provided by the solution were found by IDC to offer significant financial gains. When averaged, Red Hat Ansible Automation customers saw a 68% improvement in productivity for IT infrastructure management, which translated to a $460,000 staff time value.

In terms of development, Red Hat Ansible Automation customers saw a 75% increase in the number of new applications. Customers also saw a 41% improvement in the time spent by staff managing applications. IT security productivity also saw improvements, with enterprises reporting a 25% improvement in staff time.

The benefits of Red Hat Ansible Automation are clear and enterprises around the globe are taking advantage of the cost savings and productivity gains that can be found through its automation strategies.

Ready to get started with Red Hat Ansible for IT Automation?

Red Hat is a leading provider of enterprise open-source solutions for digital transformation, automation, cloud-native development, and more. Through an extensive portfolio of solutions, Red Hat is helping enterprises standardize their IT infrastructure and manage complex IT environments. If you’re ready to explore Ansible for your business, contact WEI today. Our experience can help answer your questions and we can help you find opportunities to get started with Red Hat Ansible Automation.

The post The ROI Of Red Hat Ansible for IT Automation appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

For many enterprises, devices have become the next step forward in offering employees the user experience they want. However, the implementation and administration of Mac, iPad, iPhone, and other Apple devices have created unique challenges for many IT organizations that were unfamiliar with the Apple provisioning model. As part of our commitment to helping enterprises start their Apple journey on the right foot, we’ve compiled the top 5 most frequently asked questions we receive about deploying Apple in the enterprise and our answers.

1. Are Apple Devices Secure Enough?

Security is often top of mind whenever new technology is being introduced at the enterprise, and for good reason. Thankfully, , with advanced security built into every product from the ground up.

From system security, to data security, to app security, Apple has gone to great lengths to ensure the use of Apple in the workplace does not pose a security risk.

Here are a few of the strategies and technologies utilized by Apple to ensure security:

• Secure startup processes
• Extensive system safeguards
• Strong passcode policies
• The Apple T2 Security Chip
• Runtime protection, sandboxing, and other tools used to ensure downloaded apps are only accessing data in pre-authorized ways

In fact, Apple is emerging as an industry leader when it comes to user data privacy and security and has taken a firm stance on data protection as a corporation. In case you missed it, you can watch 12-minute opening keynote presented at the most recent Computers Privacy Data Protection (CPDP) Conference.

[Featured video]
Real Tech with WEI Customer Question video series

Misconceptions of Apple in the Enterprise

2. Is Implementation More Complex?

Once the decision has been made to begin offering an Apple as a Choice program to employees, the next step is to plan for implementation. To make the process of rolling out Apple in the enterprise as simple as possible, we can break down the process into four steps:

• Preparation – This phase includes planning for integration with your network and other key infrastructure, as well as setting up any other systems that are required for deployment.
• Set Up – In this step, enterprises define corporate policies for data management and security, as well as setting up your mobile device management (MDM) solution.
• Deployment – Once preparation and set up are complete, enterprises can begin deployment and distribution of Apple throughout the workforce.
• Management – The final step of the process is ongoing management and maintenance of devices, which is made easier through the selected MDM and by partnering with an Apple Authorized Reseller, like WEI.

To guide enterprises through the process of implementation, Apple has created a which goes into detail on each of the above steps.

3. How Do Apple Devices Compare When it Comes to Administration?

Ensuring your team is prepared for maintenance and provisioning is vital to successful implementation and administration. Working with an Apple Authorized Reseller like WEI is critical here. We can educate your team on best practices and build them right into your processes. Or you can offload a lot of the administration work to WEI’s team of Apple experts.

While there are third-party alternatives for managing software patches and updates, Apple does offer a cloud-based service called Software Update, which enables IT teams to apply security patches and operating system updates. The service also publishes patches and updates for frequently used applications such as Safari and iTunes for added efficiency. Mac is pointed to the service by default, which automatically notifies end users of any patches and updates they need to apply, and then prompts them to execute the downloads. Putting self-service in the hands of your users keeps them focused and productive and reduces IT support tickets. Which leads us to our next FAQ

4. Do Apple Devices Complicate the Help Desk?

When it comes to user support, it really is only as complex as you make it. Communication with employees and offering specific instructions to users that make it clear who they need to contact with questions goes a long way to simplifying the help desk experience for both IT and employees.

Another way of simplifying the user experience for those employees using Apple devices is to utilize self-service applications, which can act like an app store where IT can post software that has been tested, an additional browser, or a plugin for their email program, etc. Approved applications like these can be installed to machines automatically with a simple click. Users know the applications are safe to use, and IT does not need to be involved in the installation process.

Plus, there is a good chance an overwhelming majority of your employees have personal familiarity with from using Mac and iPad at home and doing almost everything else in their life with iPhone. Familiarity with Apple cannot be overlooked and your employees will appreciate using a tool they know and love for work.

5. Can WEI Help Enterprises Get Started?

Absolutely! We are experts in helping enterprises implement Apple, as well as providing ongoing maintenance and support. Our enterprise IT experts will work closely with your team to streamline the deployment of the new Apple technology. We can also show you all the tools available to ease the integration of new devices into your organization, and how to best use them to your advantage. We know the best practices based on our own experience and we’ve been partnering with Apple since 2012. We can help create efficiencies throughout the entire lifecycle: deployment, provisioning, and maintenance. Our customers consider WEI an extension of their team.

[Featured video]
Real Tech with WEI Customer Question video series

How to create efficiencies when managing Apple devices for the enterprise

Ready to Start Offering Apple in YOUR Enterprise?

Offering Apple as a choice to your employees drives productivity, collaboration, and creativity throughout the enterprise. It’s true, and we wrote a whole blog post about it here! Many of our customers have already made the transition to a blended Windows and Apple environment that enables employees to enjoy how they use technology in their jobs. It’s really about providing your employees with the power of choice so they can be happier in their jobs and do their best work. and we can help you get started and answer any questions you have.

NEXT STEPS: We’re here to help you prepare for Apple in YOUR enterprise. Our eBook below is jam-packed with insights, best practices, and guides to help you prepare your team for Apple. Check out the eBook below and then reach out to our team with your questions. We’re here to offer guidance and support as much as possible as you develop your Apple device management strategy.

The post Top 5 FAQs About Apple and Mac In The Enterprise appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Even as employees return to the office, just as many are choosing to stay remote. As a result, many enterprises need solutions that can provide specialized security for remote workforces.

Unlike in an office setting where IT can effectively control the who, what, when, where, and why of device usage and network access, remote workforces present unique challenges. To keep corporate data secure, these challenges must be addressed with strategies that have been developed with remote workers in mind.

Remote work environments also require cloud-based security, an additional challenge when selecting the perfect solution. The benefit is that cloud adoption makes all your security controls, including network, email, endpoint, identity, access management, authentication, and others “follow” remote employees wherever they go, rather than remain confined to an often irrelevant on-premises environment.

Three Areas To Address For Remote Workforces

While security is always a priority for enterprise IT, there are several specific areas of concern that must be addressed when it comes to ensuring security for a remote workforce.

These areas of concern can be broken down as follows:

• Email security – Today’s enterprises are dependent on email for communication. In a remote working scenario, especially when it’s unexpected, email can become the primary way employees share important and oftentimes confidential information or documents. As a result, email is frequently targeted by cybercriminals and should be prioritized when it comes to security for remote workforces.
• Device security – When employees are working from home or other remote locations, the security of their devices should be carefully considered. Not only is it important to ensure that devices cannot be accessed by those without the proper login credentials, it’s equally important that employees know what they can and cannot use their devices for.
• Insider threats – One of the largest threats to enterprise security comes from within. Employees that lack the proper training to spot cyberattacks or who are unclear of the security risks that certain behaviors create offer cybercriminals an easy way past your security.

How To Address Areas Of Concern With Mimecast

Enterprises in need of security solutions created with remote workforces in mind need look no further than Offering cloud-based , and web security, Mimecast can help enterprises secure their environment and prevent cyberattacks from succeeding.

Mimecast’s cloud-based Secure Email Gateway offers protection for employees using any cloud or on-premises email platform and defends against spear-phishing, whaling, malware, spam and other attack types. By combining custom applications and policies with multiple detection engines and intelligence feeds, Mimecast offers the first line of defense for email-dependent enterprises.

When it comes to online activity outside of email, Mimecast’s cloud-based web protection at the DNS level prevents malware attacks and inappropriate web use regardless of whether employees are at the office or at home. It also helps mitigate shadow IT risks from cloud app usage. Best of all, it integrates with Mimecast’s email security for consistent cyber protection.

Should an employee still somehow encounter a cyberthreat, Mimecast offers the training they need to learn how to spot suspicious activity and respond appropriately. Mimecast’s security awareness training reduces the risk of human error and helps IT minimize the impact of insider threats by adding an extra layer of protection against cyberattacks.

Long term remote work causes the lines to blur between home and work life for many employees, but with Mimecast’s security awareness training, you can positively impact security culture throughout the enterprise and help employees internalize critical cybersecurity concepts that help keep your data safe.

Want to learn more about Mimecast’s Security Solutions?

Mimecast helps companies protect their employees, intellectual property, customer data, and brand reputations by providing comprehensive, cloud-based security and compliance solutions that mitigate risk and reduce the cost and complexity of creating a cyber-resilient organization. It is an ideal option for hybrid workforces now and into the future. If you have questions about how to get started with Mimecast, today.

NEXT STEPS: How we secure our enterprise has changed drastically in less than one year, especially for those managing a much larger network of devices and remote workers. Find out what your security strategy might be missing with our tech brief below, “.”

The post How Mimecast Ensures Security For Remote Workforces 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.

Each Friday you can expect to see a new “Industry Info to Know” blog post from WEI consisting of a roundup of articles from industry experts, analysts, and our partners that we find insightful and helpful. We will also include links to industry news that you need to know about, news that will impact your business so you can plan ahead for it. We all need to help each other right now, we’re all in IT together.

As a team of trusted advisors to your company, we put a lot of effort into perfecting our practice. We are continuously learning, testing, and expanding our expertise across all facets of the enterprise IT landscape. That being said, we have an obligation to stay ahead of trends, look forward to the future of IT and provide insights to help our customers navigate the ever-evolving IT landscape.

There were a lot of great articles that caught our attention this week. Let’s take a look…

Industry News Insights

Remote access needs strategic planning right now
Regardless of the length of the current pandemic disruption, IT must plan for situations in which it will have to support a large distributed workforce. This Network World article discusses why IT pros should start work on a better remote-access architecture, focusing on secure access service edge (SASE).
Read more

Nutanix DR Multi Site Recovery
In a world where uncertainty is certain and IT disasters don’t come with a warning, IT leaders cannot afford to take the risk of not being prepared. Learn about how Nutanix supports three major DR topologies, with details for multi-site disaster scenarios and recovery workflows.
Read more

One of the goals of NetOps and DevOps teams is to optimize the application experience, but complex infrastructure and dynamic application flows pose challenges. In this post from Cisco, learn how Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with Google Cloud simplifies workflows by automating the tasks needed to deliver a better application experience.

How do you create a consistently functional remote work environment when faced with inconsistent home internet connections that your employees are using? This article from an HPE VP shares six best practices that can help you significantly improve the overall functionality of your remote work environment in the face of inconsistent last-mile connections.

This CIO.com article shares how corporate IT at Oshkosh Corporation has shifted its mindset from supporting core technologies to one that is more closely in tune with business objectives and customer needs. Plus, learn about 5 keys steps for digital transformation that helped them transition the business.

Cisco’s 2020 Global Networking Trends report provided a glimpse into what that future means for IT networking professionals. This article discusses new jobs that will emerge to address changing IT needs such as business translator, network guardian, network detective, and more.

This pandemic has reshaped the economy, the workforce and how technology supports all of it. CIOs are now looking to the future to prepare for the lingering effects it will have on business technology. See what CIO Dive has pulled together as some of the most pertinent stories to emerge from the last two months.

Industry Conferences Update

We are actively monitoring the status of industry tradeshows and conferences and will provide updates as they come in. We’ve been referring to this helpful roundup from SDxCentral: .

Assess your remote worker strategy today

We are finding that companies are all over the gamut when it comes to preparedness for remote workers at scale. WEI has experience and expertise in VDI and Desktop as a Service solutions from the industry’s leading vendors. We invite you to take us up on a VDI assessment or VDI Health Check up today.

How can we help?

We’ve been in tight communications with all customers and are providing peace of mind with the mantra, “Whatever you need, we’ll make IT work.” And we’ve answered the call, helping our customers with everything from supplying equipment, parts, cloud advice, architecture design, VDI, networking support, remote monitoring, staff augmentation services, and so much more… Contact us today to learn how we can help your business.

NEXT STEPS: Explore our other editions of the ‘Industry Info to Know’ Blog Series:

• Industry Info to Know – 05.01.20 Roundup
• Industry Info to Know – 04.24.20 Roundup
• Industry Info to Know – 04.17.20 Roundup
• Industry Info to Know – 04.10.20 Roundup
• Industry Info to Know – 04.03.20 Roundup
• Industry Info to Know – 03.27.20 Roundup

Subscribe to our blog using the form on this page to ensure you get a copy of this weekly email each Friday in your inbox.

The post Industry Info to Know – 05.08.20 Roundup appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

In part of one this two-part blog series, we discussed the recent study by Forrester Research outlining the economic impact of Macs in the enterprise. The study showed that while the initial purchase price of a Mac is $500 more than a comparable PC, its true cost is actually $50.25 less over a 3-year product cycle once hardware and software costs are accounted for. The disparity in costs is even more pronounced once supporting costs such as provisioning, deployment, help desk tickets and energy are factored in. Forrester found the resulting cost savings to be $678.56. In the end, TCO matters far more than the initial price tag.

Little cost savings that add up big returns

In part one of this two-part blog post, we outlined some of the substantial savings that seven companies realized in provisioning and support costs after allowing their employees to transition to Macs through recently implemented employee choice programs. The appreciated cost savings was experienced from many other facets as well though.

For instance, a Mac requires less energy to operate, 50 percent to be exact. Not only does that mean lower energy costs per device, but it also means greater productivity as users can operate on battery for longer periods of time. Decreasing the dependency on power cords means that work can get done whenever and wherever it needs to.

Saving time translates into saving money

PC users are used to waiting. In fact, PC users spend 5 minutes per day just waiting on tasks such as wake or reboot. Compare this to who only spend 1 minute per day. All in all, the study went on to show that Mac users regain 48 hours of improved productivity per year. Now multiply this recapture of time by the average hourly wage of your employees. Then multiply that figure by your number of employees. Forrester goes on to estimate that organizations comparable in size to those that participated in the study can expect 10,000 users to choose Macs the first year of the program. This is based on a 10 percent transition rate the first year, which increases to 20 percent and 30 percent in years 2 and 3 respectively. In business, minutes can quickly compound into serious savings.

Improved employee performance and retention

The productivity gains realized by Mac conversion is due to more than just reduced startup times however. Because the hardware and software operate in seamless cohesion with one another, the machine operates better, thus reducing employee frustration and nonacceptance. It also improved employee engagement which led to improved retention rates. In fact, employees who chose a Mac showed a 20 percent improvement in employee retention rate compared to their fellow PC users.

This recognized boost in productivity has been found elsewhere too. In an article published in , IBM, after implementing a Mac program four years prior, realized a savings of $543 per Mac compared to a PC (a figure very similar to the Forrester Study). They also found that Mac users tended to close sales deals that were 16 percent larger on average than Windows users. Mac users were also 17 percent less likely to leave IBM. No one will debate the expensive cost of employee turnover.

Great security translates into direct cost savings

No article comparing computer platforms would be complete without mentioning security. According to benchmark research conducted by the Ponemon Institute in 2018, the likelihood of a data breach within an organization is 14 percent per year. The Forrester study showed that this likelihood was reduced by 50 percent per device when switching to a Mac. One of the study participants noted they had as much as 90 percent fewer security incidents on their Mac devices. The Mac has a fundamentally more secure architecture than the PC thanks to its T2 security chip that provides the foundation for encrypted storage and secure boot capabilities.

While the Mac is more secure, logic says that the increased level of security should cost more. Again, not the case. The Mac’s security first architecture and included security features negate the need for some of the additional endpoint security licenses that are required for comparable PC deployments. The Forrester study reported a savings of $40 per year, per machine in additional endpoint security licenses. Better protection at lower cost. Apple certainly has their own way of doing things.

Invest in employee happiness

It is rare that a product that so many crave has a lower cost of ownership. By implementing an employee choice program, you can please your employees that embrace their preferred brand, as well as the bean counters that keep track of the nickels and dimes. Except we are not talking about nickels and dimes, we are talking about hundreds of dollars per device. Macs breed happiness, loyalty and heightened productivity, all for less money than comparable machines that exhibit lower benchmarks across the board. Give your employees the choice they want and give your company the ROI it demands.

Questions about implementing a Mac as a Choice program in your company? As an Apple authorized reseller, WEI can help. Learn more about our experience and the white glove services we provide by reading our Apple Services brief below, and contact us to start a discussion.

The post Forrester Study shows that Macs are Actually Less Expensive appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

An article in the New York Times dated March 18, 2020 says it best, “Tech can make remote work miserable.” As companies across the country send their employees home to work remotely in an effort to keep them safe and abide by government orders, millions of employees new to the idea of working from home are realizing the tech headaches involved in it. An astonishing 50+ percent of the U.S. is now working from home according to the latest estimates. That’s roughly 85 million people. While the involved numbers should be a surprise, the fact that many of these users have poor or inadequate wireless at home to utilize for work shouldn’t be.

Questionable Wireless is Nothing New

For road warriors and on the road work veterans, the importance of high-performance wireless connectivity has been a known requirement. In a conducted back in 2012 by Hotels.com, the #1 most valued hotel amenity was WiFi. Now think about how the demand for fast dependable WiFi has changed in just 8 years. Many hotel and other complimentary WiFi services are supported by consumer-grade WiFi routers. While non enterprise grade wireless devices are certainly ample for checking one’s email, supporting large file transmissions and online video streaming is an entirely different matter. Even hotel conference rooms can’t always accommodate today’s essential video web conferences. We operate today in a highly dynamic mobile world, which means that high performance wireless dependability is essential for senior executives and other mission critical personnel that are operating in a remote model today.

Aruba Delivers Expected Environments for the Unexpected

The recent current events have shown us the true scale that disruption can occur for businesses today. Businesses cannot afford to shut down in the case of imminent events whether it be natural disasters, man-made events or even pandemics. The ability for company personnel to operate from remote and temporary workspaces has been proven essential. But as so many internal IT departments have discovered first-hand, you cannot manage what you don’t know about. The word “unmanaged” is another word for vulnerable. Wireless networks that are unmanaged are not just prone to slow performance, but security threats such as hackers and malware. Today’s current events have made it clear that companies need a solution that turns unknown and unmanaged remote wireless into known, managed and fully secure wireless. That is what Aruba has done.

Introducing Aruba Remote APs (Aruba RAP)

Aruba’s Remote Access Points product line wasn’t just unveiled yesterday. Companies have been utilizing Aruba RAP solutions prior to the challenges we face in 2020. That is because Aruba understands the needs of the modern workforce of today, and that of tomorrow. Aruba designed their RAP series of products with the aim to not just give network access to remote workers, but to bring the network to remote locations. This means that no matter where an Aruba RAP is located, it serves as an extension to your network.

Total Manageability

Aruba Remote Access Points makes the use of standalone access points in temporary work environments a thing of the past. Aruba’s RAP series can be fully managed by your company’s wireless controller through a secure IPSec tunnel through the web. This includes zero-touch provisioning as well so your workers do not need the direct assistance of an IT professional for setup. For greater flexibility and near limitless scalability you can manage RAPs through Aruba Central, allowing you to manage at any location, from any location. Your employees can easily connect their approved devices to the corporate WiFi network over persistent VPN for secure access from anywhere. With Aruba RAPs, anywhere means anywhere; home, a hotel, customer location, anywhere.

Not Just Wireless, but a Complete Network

Employees depend on more than just wireless. Their location, however temporary, needs to be a virtual office today, which is what Aruba RAP is all about. The Aruba RAP product suite offers local gigabit ethernet ports, including one PoE port. This allows an employee to connect a local printer or power a VoIP phone. The coming RAP 500H series even supports IoT environments.

Security and Speed

Aruba RAPs offer wireless performance up to 1.5 Gbs of maximum wireless throughput, but speed is of little benefit if it isn’t secured. Aruba integrates NSA approved and military grade level security into their product architectures. This is why the U.S. Army relies on Aruba for command post network communications when moving or jumping base locations. Integrated Aruba RAP ethernet ports also support DOT1x for additional security. When remote workers are out of their remote workspaces, they can still connect to the corporate network through their phones or remote devices using Aruba’s virtual intranet access (VIA) client.

Manage Your Remote Workspaces with Aruba RAP

While the challenges that have forced companies to adapt temporary workspaces may be temporary in themselves, the transition to remote work architectures is not a fleeting transition. The dependency on remote workers is being highly accelerated, and those companies that can adapt their network architectures for this new paradigm will possess competitive advantages over its competitors when the next disruption, whatever it is, comes about.

NEXT STEPS: Want to learn more about Aruba’s Remote Access Points? Contact us today to find out how this solution can work for your remote workforce.

The post Enable Secure, Remote Connectivity with Aruba RAP appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

The driver that wins the big race does not get as much credit for the win if he simply drove the fastest car on the track. After all, logic says the driver should win. A recent trend in data storage has been to migrate to all flash array storage solutions. Flash drives are certainly faster than HDD disks. For those enterprises that implement AFA storage arrays, performance is definitely fast, which it should be using the logic of the fastest racecar. However, there are companies that are achieving ultrafast performance without having to pay the premium price for high performance storage media. Now that is real innovation.

The high cost of Flash Storage

While SDD may be the fastest disk on the street, it does not make AFA a best alternative. Just as the fastest car on the track is also most likely the most expensive one, AFA storage solutions are costly. A single SSD disk is more than an HDD. The price differential for a single disk may be negligible, but the more storage you need, the more that price differential multiplies. Now imagine if your organization utilizes 100 petabytes of data. Suddenly that price differential is spiraling upwards in the same exponential fashion as your . Despite its costliness, many storage vendors are introducing AFA solutions as the easy way to increase the turbo performance to your storage.

Not all data is equal

This does not mean that SSD is not a viable solution. You certainly have some data that you can justify the need for flash storage. However, that is key term, “some”. Every company has a data profile that emulates a triangle. The small share of data that justifies high-value high-performance resides at the top. The wide base of the triangle represents the majority of your data that consists of lesser value. It can also tolerate greater latency. This is why despite the appeal of performance, AFA solutions still only account for 15 percent of the total footprint of external storage capacity sold today.

Do not confuse speed with innovation

Storage innovation equates to more than just speed, and hardware innovation is not the only approach to deliver it. Infinidat is proof of this. In fact, Gartner names Infinidat as a leader in the 2019 Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage. Gartner does not designate you a leader just because you have the fastest hardware. They do so because you deliver innovation on multiple fronts. Infinidat set about to create a solution specifically designed for petabyte storage environments, one that does more than just store bits and bytes, but provides a competitive edge for petabyte enterprise environments. The result was the creation of an entirely new approach to building and scaling storage infrastructure called the array.

What Infinidat delivers

Infinibox utilizes hybrid architecture that incorporates HDD disks as well as an allotment of SSD drives to deliver the right mix of media storage. Don’t associate the integration of HDD with decreased performance however. In fact, Infinibox is faster than AFA storage. How is this possible? Through innovative design that incorporates DRAM caching as well a machine learning algorithm called Neural Cache that uses I/O history to recognize data correlations in data access patterns in order to optimize future performance.

Infinibox delivers more than just high throughput and microsecond latency. Its single 42U rack provides over 8PB of effective storage capacity. Infinibox maximizes disk utilization through highly efficient thin provisioning, continuous space reclamation, space-efficient snapshots and inline data compression. Those enterprises that require more even more capacity but have unpredictable future growth can take advantage of Infinidat’s flexible consumption option called (COD). With COD, companies only pay for the storage presented to their storage and applications. When more storage is needed, they simply pay for it to have added capacity unveiled.

Infinidat created Infinibox from the ground up for high availability and reliability. It’s self-healing architecture incorporates a hardware redundancy design of (n+2) that helps enable rapid recovery form any component failure. Its resilient design can withstand the failure of up to 12 drives and provide reliability at a level of seven nines.

Security is another aspect in which Infinidat separates itself from AFA solutions. Encryption and traditional approaches to data reduction by nature do not coexist for AFA designs. Infinidat overcomes this challenge by incorporating a approach towards encryption. Thanks to 30 years of collective innovation, Infinibox is able to deliver reduced TCO objectives for both encrypted and non-encrypted data.

Economics at petabyte scale

Large companies are always trying to leverage their inherent economies of scale to their own advantage. Infinibox allows companies to unify their data center-scale pools of storage to overcome the conflicting desires of faster and less expensive performance. With a power load of only 4 watts per usable terabyte, Infinidat customers can quickly garner significant power savings in addition to reduced disk media costs. Savings is also achieved by consolidating the storage footprint through data reduction. When you add it all up, it is no wonder that CFOs as well as CIOs are embracing Infinidat to help them build competitive advantages by attaining superior data services while coinciding realizing substantial cost savings in operational costs. For petabyte enterprise environments, you no longer have to scale your budgets in the same exponential fashion as your data capacity growth. With Infinidat, you can be the first to cross the finish line, without breaking the bank.

NEXT STEPS: Find out why CIOs and CFOs love Infinidat in this video.

The post Infinidat Delivers Petabyte Scale, Performance and Innovation appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

The digital workplace is in, and the days of Windows’ dominance and employees working from a single, stationary device are out. This new strategy champions flexible, employee-centric technology, and processes to aid productivity and unlock the potential of individual employees, teams, and organizations.

It also means that enterprises must adapt to these new types of connections, and are expanding to include new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) which is emerging as the best way to secure information, handle growing complex threats, and evolve productivity tools. But despite that, still face a challenging future as they work to find ways to keep the digital workplace strategy successful.

5 Critical Requirements For A Successful Digital Workplace

The increased use of company-owned and personally-owned devices to access company information and conduct business has led to the development of a set of requirements that will help companies plan and implement their digital workplace strategy.

1. Putting Employee Experience First

Building a strong design culture around the employee experience is critical to meet the demands of business, as well as the ability to keep corporate data secure. If teams and individuals believe that IT gets in the way and slows them down, they are more likely to avoid adopting the digital workplace tools and services designed to protect them.

IT must design and deliver the productivity experience employees will use, taking into account the devices and form factors employees use throughout the day, and the locations they will be working from.

2. Delivery Of Applications – Anytime, Anywhere

Any application, anytime, anywhere. It’s a big ask that doesn’t just mean accommodating the latest and greatest technologies of the digital workplace, but also the 12-year-old Windows app, internally developed Java-based apps, and old Excel apps with outdated macros. You can’t deliver an employee experience if you can’t deliver all of the applications they need to get their job done – and without that, employees will go back to fending for themselves and avoiding IT for new apps.

3. Device Management

Device management has been extended to every device operating system: Windows, , Chrome, Android, iOS, and flavors of embedded Linux. There is no question that, in the near future, every enterprise-managed or personally-owned device accessing corporate data will be connected to a management platform.

Device management is a necessary requirement for the digital workplace. It’s the only way to deliver consistent experiences in a perimeter-less work environment by having real-time context of the devices used to access the apps and data employees need to do their best work. Device management helps secure access management so there is only one app and one place to go. It also ensures unified endpoint management for a consistently great user experience that is also highly secure.

4. Manage Experience And Security

So far, each of these requirements has built off the previous one. Start with the employee experience that extends across all devices and locations, then ensure that all their apps are accounted for, and leverage modern device management to make sure you can deliver and protect those apps across all endpoints and locations.

However, IT can’t proactively drive a successful employee experience in the digital workplace if they can’t measure the adoption of it. This is where insights come in. Scour your data for patterns and trends, identify potential gaps in experience of security, and make recommendations for future changes.

5. Automate To Succeed At Any Scale

As the digital workplace expands, expect managing the user experience and security to become more complex. To be able to handle the scale, automation is critical – from onboarding a new employee or device to deploying apps, releasing , or automating remediation steps to assure an employee’s device is compliant with policy. All of this must be possible without generating help tickets that require manual action.

Automation assures that operational costs are minimized, while removing gaps that could result from inconsistently applying security policies or leaving devices in non-compliant states for too long.

The Digital Workplace Is Here to Stay

Implementing and maintaining an employee-focused digital workplace is critical to supporting new business initiatives and fostering better ways to connect people with data. IT leaders need to lead the charge toward a more efficient, user friendly, and secure digital environment. Contact WEI today to learn how we can help your enterprise incorporate the five requirements outlined here.

A video you might be interested in…

In this episode of Real Tech with WEI, Chief Architect, Dave Fafel, talks about mobile device management (MDM) solutions and the role they play in managing enterprise devices, from laptops to smartphones to mobile scanners.

The post 5 Key Elements Of A Digital Workplace Strategy appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

According to a report by Gartner in 2016, 50% of CEO’s expect their industries to be substantially or unrecognizably transformation. The underlying scope of this proclamation is that the companies that successfully compete in this new economy will have substantially or unrecognizably transformed themselves as well. These IT leaders expect change, dramatic change. They are faced with the immense task of augmenting their organizational processes and shifting the cultural mindset towards innovation. The key to success here is leveraging the power of digital technologies to create that change. There are two choices today, adapt to change or create it.

So what are the benefits of this transformation that seems to be so imperative today? How about the ability to be proactive instead of reactive and gain unprecedented efficiencies and value for customers?

A classic example of this modulation to a proactive organization is how businesses support the physical products they sell such as automobiles and appliances. Fifty years ago, automotive and appliance repair required a sense of instinct and an element of trial and error. It might even take more than one attempt to actually fix the problem. Thanks to the computer revolution, automobiles and appliances soon had built-in computer sensors, which gave the mechanic or technician the all-important error code to help eliminate guesswork. This eliminated the time required to fix the product and decreased the displacement and inconvenience of being without it. In the proactive digital world, the onboard computer within your devices will connect to the Internet and alert the technician of an impending component failure. The technician will then call you and schedule a visit before it even breaks. That is what proactive value is.

The Benefits of Digital Transformation

The Internet of Things, or Internet over Everything, plays a major role in the digital transformation the world is undergoing. IoT helps create real time data streams that provide greatly enhanced experiences for customers. However, the process of digitizing your organization provides major benefits internally for organizations as well, such as:

• Increased internal collaboration as employees can now openly communicate across departments and between business functions. Frontend point-of-sale employees can now interconnect with engineers and programmers on the backend.
• Shorter development times for products and services allowing them to get into the hands of customers faster; thus shortening the time to value.
• Streamlining operations in order to attain efficiencies and savings in your two most limited commodities, time and money.
• Allowing researchers to focus on innovation and creativity rather than repetitive efforts by utilizing the tools of digital automation.
• Cultivating a culture of innovation due to increased levels of work empowerment as employees can now witness the results of their substantive efforts.
• Taking advantage of unprecedented levels of data mining that can provide key performance indicators through digital dashboards, allowing management to change existing processes, products, services and even business models in record time in order to take advantage of newly recognized opportunities.
• Faster levels of geographical expansion can now take place, exposing the organization to new customers and opportunities.

According to an MIT study, companies that have embraced digital transformation are than their average industry competitors are and enjoy a 12% higher market valuation. Similar studies have shown a 9% increase in revenue through their employees and physical assets as well as similar attainments in higher market valuation ratios. Another study conducted by IDG Research services found that 92 percent of IT and business leaders said their organization’s competitive strategy calls for digital transformation initiatives. What’s more, 90 percent called digital business “a top IT priority” for the next one to three years. Some 44 percent called it their number one priority!

Obviously, digital transformation is far more than simply digitizing data streams, products and services. Just as important is the ability to manage the processes that create, enable, manage, and deliver them. The entity that makes all of that possible is the cloud.

Where Organizations Stand Today in the Digital Transformation

Business leaders across the board are aware of the race to digital transformation. Some industries are more vulnerable to disruption than others are currently. Where a company is in the transformation process is often based on just how vulnerable their industry is to disruption. Not surprisingly, B2C organizations have made the greatest strides towards this end goal. According to CIO Magazine, 63% of B2C industry leaders are planning to enhance their online experience and 46% are looking to improve their mobile offerings. In addition, any industry with an inherent low barrier to entry is far more willing to embrace all phases of digital transformation.

Today, 90% of organizations claim to have a digital transformation strategy; however, a study done by Oxford University found that only 16% of companies feel that they have the ability to successfully implement it. published a similar finding last year citing that while 84% feel they currently lack the means, 40% feel that they will still meet their targeted achievements within the next three years.

The truth is that all organizations are at different levels of digital maturity. Challenges that are impairing the maturity process include:

• The skills gap required to implement the required processes
• The dependence on large legacy infrastructures that are costly to transform
• A lack of vision to know just where and how to go about the transformation process
• The inability to let go of legacy technology and infrastructure
• Lack of budget and resources to fund necessary projects

Although 90% IT and decision makers report to be on course to achieving digital transformation, the truth is that most companies are at a crossroads with one foot in the digital world and one still comfortably resting in the past world of legacy technologies.

How the Hybrid Cloud Expedites Digital Transformation

The cloud is the change agent that is digitizing the world. Whether we are discussing IoT or mobile devices and applications, the cloud is the common thread that binds them together. The cloud is the universal ecosphere that provides the services that all of these devices and apps rely on to be “smart.” It is also the collector and storage mechanism for the petabytes of data that these devices collect as well.

“Cloud computing is the agent of digital disruption,” stated Alex Hilton, CEO of the Cloud Industry Forum. “We can see that there are significant benefits to be had by businesses that pursue both in tandem.” The Gartner research group also agrees that cloud computing is one of the most disruptive forces since the early days of the digital age and estimates that will collectively spend more than $1 trillion dollars on it within the next five years.

The reason is simple. Only the cloud can provide the necessary coverage to:

• Service customers regardless of geographic location
• Enable storage and processing resources to share and collect data
• Support IoT and mobile environments
• Provide backup and DR solutions that are flexible, yet inexpensive

The end goal of transitioning to a hybrid cloud is to achieve total flexibility in the hosting and transfer of services and resources. In the beginning, the hybrid cloud provides a way to accelerate the transition to realize the speed and agility the cloud offers while still maintaining control of resources which are dictated by compliancy and security factors.

The traditional concept of the hybrid cloud is a private cloud in an internal, on premise data center coupled with a public cloud. A common use of this coupling is to handle burst level capacities during times of peak demand. Indeed, the ability to scale up and scale down enables digitalization without the burden of overprovisioning, which in today’s competitive environment is unsustainable. The hybrid cloud can be a unified collection of multiple public clouds and private clouds, all seamlessly connected together that mitigates risk and vendor lock in. With one foot in the cloud and one foot on premise, the hybrid cloud allows organizations to achieve the proper balance they need.

Choosing a cloud option is no longer a choice between public or private. It is about developing the right cloud strategy with the right costs, services and characteristics. Talk to an IT services and solutions provider like WEI to ensure your cloud strategy will achieve the digital transformation goals of your organization. Our cloud experts have vast knowledge of and experience with the technology options and public cloud vendors you may be considering as part of this strategy.

Next Steps: Is your organization ready for hybrid cloud? Have you already implemented a solution? Refer to our for tips for success. Download it today!

The post The Benefits of Digital Transformation are Realized with Cloud appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Information Technology as a Service (ITaaS) represents a change in paradigm when it comes to managing IT. When you treat IT as a service provider, you can ensure that your enterprise has exactly the right amount of hardware, software and support to fit the unique and changing needs of your business. You’ll find that you are more agile and able to deal with whatever comes up. And, you’ll find that, under an ITaaS model, you’ll save time and money, dramatically improving your bottom line.

Switching from the traditional IT model to ITaaS requires changes in how your IT department (and the business) as a whole operates. By implementing your ITaaS strategy in a smart and controlled way, you can ensure that the transition is smooth, everyone knows what to expect and your business is in the best position to thrive now and in the future.

5 Benefits of IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS)

1. Standardization
2. Cost Predictability
3. Self-service
4. Scalability
5. Increased Productivity

Let’s explore the details of these benefits and the implications for your IT environment, your processes, and your company culture.

1. Standardization

To be efficient and effective, it is important for IT to not be in the business of providing customized one-off solutions for their customers. Instead, your IT operations needs to offer a standardized set of services specific to the needs of the business. It sounds simple enough, but without a set of standardized services and the financial cost predefined, departments will make requests and just assume they’ll get done by IT without understanding potential staffing needs or time involved.

Standardization isn’t just of the services offered by IT but of the process, too. You’ll more than likely need technology tools to help with setup and administration of the change to ITaaS. This goes with the self-service aspect described above. The quicker you can mature a standard process, the more easily it will be for you to deploy additional services. Refactor what you know into standardized parts and you’ll be well on your way to a successful transition.

2. Cost Predictability

One of the biggest advantages of ITaaS involves the ability to leverage a chargeback model for services. Instead of the IT department getting a budget, each department gets part of what was IT’s budget allocation. Then, any time the IT department is called upon to resolve a problem, they then bill back the business unit that needed their services. This allows the tracking of who actually needs and uses the IT services as well as how effective IT is at delivering them.

A key benefit of this chargeback model is that if a department can find the same service elsewhere for a lesser cost, they’re not forced to go through the IT department. This potential for a loss of business for the IT department motivates them but it also frees them up to not have to support everything the different business units need. It generally opens the door to better planning.

3. Self-service

Before thinking about self-service IT, it is important to understand what services will be delivered:

• Simple services: order more storage capacity
• Bundled services: order computer with OS, VM, Storage, and Network
• Tiered services: offering different service assurance levels
• Metered services: order time/resource usage
• Complex services: order a whole multi-tiered application

Keep in mind that services don’t have to be purely IT based. Consider a service to on-board a new employee. Their new vm or computer setup is just one piece of a bigger pie that includes desk assignment or ordering office furniture.

Once you understand what’s in a service catalog, you can figure out how to get there from a self-service perspective. The idea of self-service is to offload repetitive tasks. So, there may be some infrastructure changes that need to be put in place so that current manual tasks can be automated. Now that the foundation is in place, services can be requested to expand operations, provision/deprovision resources, or any of a number of tasks. Typically, much of this is done through the cloud so that anyone, anywhere can request a service (provided they’re running through the VPN if remote).

4. Scalability

A key part of moving to ITaaS is virtualizing the infrastructure environment. You’re not downsizing or outsourcing, you’re just making it less relevant where somebody is, or who does something. You’re creating levels of service such that if something is simple, the first level of service can handle it. If they can’t handle it, they pass it off to a second level. This allows you to better define the staffing needs because you’re not relying on the more advanced engineers to handle the simpler problems. As each level gets busier, you scale accordingly. Need a separate set of resources for another business need? Engineers won’t need to be shared.

Parts of the are done with the help of remote management tools. Have a user who needs help removing some malware? Nobody needs to walk down the hall or to the next building. The user can relinquish control to the remote support center. Lose a mobile device? IT can remotely wipe it. Putting the tools in place for IT to scale their support enables users to focus on business needs.

5. Increased Productivity

The move to ITaaS creates the need for the IT department to act more like they offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to the internal company departments. They’re no longer a cost-centric group that keeps asking for more budget. Instead, they need to become nimble to the needs of the business users and company. It isn’t just infrastructure management that needs to be dealt with but the ever changing real needs of their customers.

With the help of the scalability, self-service, and standardization advantages previously mentioned, the change to ITaaS creates an environment that is more responsive to their users. The tools, mechanisms, and processes that are adopted practically push people to an increased productivity automatically. Instead of focusing on the du jour, the company can focus more on the latest strategic business needs. It isn’t just the IT personnel who will be more productive after moving to ITaaS, but the business as a whole, too.

Don’t be left in the dust. Consider moving your to the ITaaS model sooner rather than later. You’ll soon be able to reap all the benefits and rewards of having a highly modernized operation.

Next Steps

Moving to the IT as a Service model is less fixated on technological advancements and more focused on people, internal processes, and changes to the overall IT organizational culture.

Check out our FREE infographic to help you prepare for the ITaaS model — .

The post Are you ready for IT-as-a-Service? 5 Benefits of ITaaS. appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.