Artificial intelligence is becoming a competitive differentiator for enterprise security teams. Yet, many CISOs remain cautious. The concern is understandable. The risk of exposing confidential data to external AI models, the uncertainty of regulatory expectations, and the potential for hallucinations make it difficult to approve broad AI adoption. 

In a  with WEI Cybersecurity Solutions Architect , Cribl CISO Myke Lyons described how many CISOs are simply “shutting the door on AI” out of fear of data leakage and confidentiality threats. The challenge is that adversaries do not share these concerns. Attackers are already using AI tools aggressively, with no legal or governance constraints guiding their decisions. Ignoring AI does not create safety. It creates a widening asymmetry. 

Fortunately, CISOs do not need a complete enterprise AI program to begin realizing value. There is a practical starting point that delivers operational gains with near zero exposure. The most effective path forward is to focus on low risk, high return AI use cases. These are use cases that require no sensitive data, operate under human supervision, and strengthen SOC performance without introducing new pathways for loss. 

This article outlines four such starter use cases, explains why they are safe, and provides an actionable roadmap for CISOs who want measurable outcomes without compromising governance. 

Why Starting Small Is the Right Strategy 

CISOs face a deeply inconsistent landscape. On one hand, business leaders advocate for rapid AI adoption. On the other, security teams cannot ignore confidentiality and compliance obligations. Lyons notes that if he attempted to “pull the brake on all AI technologies,” he would simply leave the problem for the next CISO. The business expects progress. Executives expect clarity while boards expect a plan. What to do? 

Starting small aligns with the realities of enterprise governance. It allows teams to test AI capabilities in low risk domains, build internal muscle memory, and develop guardrails before scaling. Most importantly, it avoids the dangerous assumption that AI adoption requires perfect readiness. 

CISOs should look for entry points that meet the following criteria: 

• No regulated or sensitive data is processed. 

• AI outputs are advisory only. 

• Human review remains mandatory. 

• Workflows rely on metadata or natural language prompts rather than logs or customer data. 

• The model has no ability to take direct action against production systems. 

Use Case 1: AI Generated SIEM Queries That Accelerate Triage 

Writing SIEM queries is a persistent efficiency problem. Analysts often know the investigative question they want to ask but lack the fluency to translate it into KQL or proprietary syntax. Lyons recounted watching two analysts waste significant time banging out queries while a senior colleague coached them through each line. Their challenge was not analysis. It was syntax. 

AI eliminates this bottleneck without interacting with sensitive data. Analysts simply describe what they hope to find. The model produces a structured query they can validate and run. Because no logs are sent to the model, the data exposure risk is negligible. 

For CISOs, the value equation is compelling: faster triage, more consistent queries, and reduced training burden for junior staff. And no need to modify existing log flows or SIEM ingestion policies. For many enterprises, this use case can be adopted immediately. 

Use Case 2: AI as a Knowledge Sherpa for Internal Documentation 

A common SOC problem is the time lost searching Confluence, Jira, wikis, and ownership charts to understand an alert. Lyons described the ideal scenario. First, an alert fires. The AI immediately recognizes the application, summarizes its purpose, identifies the system owner, provides a location or business context, and presents the analyst with clarity that previously required tribal knowledge. 

This use case is low risk because it relies entirely on internal documentation. The model is pointed only at text repositories the organization already controls. There is no ingestion of logs, payloads, or regulated data. Access can be restricted to on-prem or isolated AI models, as Cribl has done, further reducing confidentiality exposure. 

For CISOs, the operational payoff is clear. The SOC becomes less dependent on hero analysts who carry undocumented institutional memory. Investigations become repeatable and auditable. New analysts become productive more quickly. And the organization retains knowledge that previously left with departing employees. 

Use Case 3: AI Supported Alert Contextualization Using Metadata Only 

Lyons highlighted an often overlooked insight. AI does not need raw data to provide meaningful support. Metadata alone can be highly powerful. Timestamps, hostnames, event categories, and source identifiers carry operational value while avoiding the sensitivity of full log payloads. Lyons explained that providing metadata only can “produce reasonable things” without exposing business critical information. 

CISOs can use this approach to introduce AI into alert enrichment without processing, configuration details, or customer content. The SOC receives streamlined contextual summaries, pattern comparisons, or priority hints while preserving data governance boundaries. 

This becomes particularly helpful in high volume environments where analysts face alert overload. AI can reduce the cognitive load without increasing risk. 

Use Case 4: AI Generated Case Summaries That Improve Investigation Consistency 

Lyons described how Cribl uses AI for a human in the loop case evaluation process. When the AI generates an investigation ticket, analysts review its accuracy. This creates a feedback loop that improves models over time while retaining human oversight. 

Case summarization is a low-risk domain because it involves small text fragments rather than full event streams. These summaries provide clarity, consistency, and time savings for SOC teams who struggle to document investigations amid high alert volumes. 

For CISOs, this also strengthens audit posture. More consistent case notes refine incident timelines, improve SOC reproducibility, and support compliance evidence without altering investigative workflows. 

What CISOs Should Avoid When Deploying Early AI 

The podcast also identifies several mistakes to avoid during early adoption. These common missteps serve as another example of why humans will always have a place in cybersecurity: 

• Do not allow AI to execute changes against production systems. Lyons is explicit that he will not use AI to block traffic, modify ports, or change configurations. 

• Do not point unrestricted AI models at full log stores. This creates unnecessary exposure. 

• Do not assume accuracy. Hallucination remains a material concern and require human review. 

• Do not deploy AI without policy guardrails, especially in environments with multi team access patterns. 

Choosing the Right Architecture for Low Risk AI 

Lyons referenced three architectural patterns that help CISOs adopt AI safely. 

• Self hosted or on prem models that process only internal documentation. 

• AI firewalls or policy gateways that enforce prompt controls and logging. 

• Metadata only enrichment flows that allow AI assistance without exposing raw events. 

WEI supports these adoption paths through SOC modernization engagements, cybersecurity assessments, and architecture advisory services. 

Closing Thoughts

Lyons shared a simple practice. Spend 15 minutes a day using AI. Familiarity reduces risk and prepares the organization for broader adoption. CISOs do not need enterprise scale models to begin. They need controlled use cases that improve outcomes without increasing exposure. Starting smaller is the safest way to move forward, and the organizations that take this path today will be the ones best positioned to secure their AI enabled future. 

Next Steps: Led by WEI’s cybersecurity experts and partnering with industry leaders, our cybersecurity assessments provide the insights needed to strengthen your defenses and ensure compliance. Whether you need to identify vulnerabilities, test your incident response capabilities, or develop a long-term security strategy, our team is here to help.

Contact WEI’s cybersecurity experts today to learn more about our assessments and discover how we can support your security goals. In the meantime,  featuring WEI cybersecurity assessments.

The post A CISO’s Guide to Low-Risk, High-Return AI Use Cases That Avoid Sensitive Data  appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

When people ask why I still invest so much time building and teaching workshops after more than two decades in this field, the answer is simple: IT infrastructure keeps getting more powerful, but it hasn’t gotten any easier. Every year the stakes rise. Hybrid cloud intricacy grows. Lifecycle decisions carry more operational weight. And now we’re integrating data pipelines, AI workflows, and GPU-driven compute into environments originally designed for much simpler times. 

That’s why IT training still matters in 2026. And that’s not just introductory training or mundane “check the box” training. I’m talking about real, hands-on engineering education that improves how teams run their data centers day to day.

Thirty-six years ago, out of a garage, Belisario Rosas founded WEI with an engineering-first mind set. Almost four decades later, that mindset remains at the center of everything we do. We hire engineers first. We empower them to invent, refine, and challenge assumptions. We built Knowledge Transfer Centers and because we believe you cannot teach (or design) enterprise infrastructure without touching the equipment yourself. 

That same engineering-first culture is what drives the workshops I build and lead today. 

Why Do I Still Teach Workshops? 

I started teaching virtualization long before formal training existed. Back in the ESX 1.5 days, most of us were learning by trial, error, and careful note-taking. There were no best practices yet, just practitioners with a mission and a lot of questions. 

That early experience shaped my view of what high-quality training should be: 

• Hands-on, not theoretical 

• Aligned to business requirements 

• Rooted in design decisions, not just features 

• Practical enough to use the next morning in production 

I’ve carried that philosophy forward across every technology evolution, from early VMware hosts to today’s software-defined datacenters and hybrid architectures. 

Even more, our customers trust us to help design and operate mission-critical environments. That means we must ensure the teams running those environments have the confidence and clarity to make good decisions. We don’t drop-ship products and wish you luck. We open, test, validate, integrate, and teach. As a result, workshops are a natural extension of that commitment. 

Why WEI Workshops Look Different 

We offer workshops because your operational outcomes depend on how well your team understands the platform you run. And we invest in the facilities to make that possible: 

• 2,500 sq. ft. Knowledge Transfer Center for in-person workshops 

• Proof-of-Concept Lab where we test real solutions exactly as they’ll run in your environment 

• Demo Lab for competitive comparisons 

• Integration & Testing Lab where we build actual stacks before they reach your datacenter 

Our engineering team’s unique value add is that we conduct architecting, tuning, breaking things safely, and rebuilding them right beside you. 

This matters because the role of IT infrastructure today is unforgiving. Downtime is expensive. Hybrid cloud misalignment is expensive. Delayed lifecycle work is expensive. 
 

A well-trained team is one of the strongest defenses against those realities. 

What I Focus On When I Teach 

No matter the subject, whether it be PowerShell, Nutanix, or VMware by Broadcom, my workshops always return to three fundamentals. 

1. Everything must map to a business requirement: If you tune a cluster, change a storage policy, or redesign a network segment, there must be a business reason. This avoids overcomplication and makes designs more defensible. 

2. Keep it simple where possible: I remind attendees constantly that every knob or toggle comes with an implication. Simpler architectures survive patch cycles, lifecycle updates, and staff turnover. They also reduce MTTR when something goes wrong. 

3. Reduce ongoing ownership tasks: Too many designs focus on deployment and ignore the next five years of operations. Workshops give us room to talk about predictable lifecycle planning, clustering strategies, policy inheritance, and minimizing touch points. 

These ideas are especially important for our VP of Infrastructure and Director of IT audience members. Training helps your team align technical choices with those outcomes. 

A Look Inside the 2026 Workshops 

Intro to PowerShell 

Most infrastructure teams are still overloaded with manual effort. PowerShell changes that. This workshop builds practical skills (terminology, scripts, modules, and VMware PowerCLI) that help teams automate repeatable tasks and shrink the margin of human error. 

This matters because Gartner continues to report that human error drives a significant share of operational outages. When engineers leave the workshop saying, “I can script that now,” they’ve gained hours back in their week. 

Nutanix AHV 

AHV continues its rise as more enterprises adopt HCI to support hybrid cloud and AI-ready workloads. But running AHV well requires understanding storage container design, networking, template strategy, and operational lifecycle. 

This workshop is intentionally hands-on. My goal is to demystify AHV so teams can run it confidently, not just deploy it successfully. 

VCF for vSphere Admins 

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is reshaping how organizations standardize, secure, license, and lifecycle-manage their VMware environments. But the transition from traditional vSphere requires clarity. 

This workshop compares VCF and VVF directly, explains the architectural differences, and shows how lifecycle automation changes operational realities. Attendees get practical insight into subscription entitlements, design impacts, and adoption paths that avoid unnecessary disruption. 

The VCF bundle is powerful, but only when teams understand what decisions it makes on their behalf. 

Why Leadership Should Care About IT Training in 2026 

IDC recently reported that organizations with strong skills development programs experience significantly fewer unplanned outages and faster recovery when incidents occur. Those aren’t soft benefits, but rather they’re executive metrics. 

A trained team: 

• Reduces configuration drift 

• Avoids downtime through better decisions 

• Improves patching and lifecycle consistency 

• Operates hybrid environments predictably 

• Supports AI and GPU-based workloads with confidence 

• Protects uptime and reduces operational escalations 

The Real Reason I Still Teach 

After delivering hundreds of workshops, the part that still motivates me is watching someone make the connection between a design choice and its business impact. That’s when the lightbulb turns on and training becomes value. 

My goal is to make sure: 

• They understand why the platform behaves the way it does 

• They can defend their architectural decisions 

• They leave with operational confidence 

• They know WEI is there as a partner and not just another IT solutions provider 

Learn More About Our Workshop Series

WEI’s 2026 workshop series offers practical, real-world learning designed to empower your team and elevate your infrastructure outcomes. If you’re ready to deepen your technical expertise, stay ahead of industry trends, and gain the confidence to tackle tomorrow’s challenges, learn more about WEI’s full workshop series by contacting marketing@wei.com.

The post Why IT Training Still Matters: Inside WEI’s 2026 Workshop Series  appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Migrating to the cloud is more than a technical upgrade…it’s a strategic transformation. At WEI, we seek the latest insights to help our clients navigate this journey. Recently, I attended the Accelerate Your Google Cloud Migration Journey session at Google Cloud Next 2025, which delivered a wealth of practical advice, strategies, and real-world lessons for organizations considering or actively planning a move to Google Cloud. Here are my highlights and actionable takeaways from the session.

Why Migrate to Google Cloud?

The session opened with a compelling case for cloud migration, emphasizing several core benefits:

• Scalability & Elasticity: Google Cloud enables organizations to scale resources up or down to meet demand, ensuring optimal performance for end users.
• Global Reach: Deploying services closer to customers improves user experience. For example, launching new data centers in regions like Sydney helps meet local demand and reduces latency.
• Cost Efficiency: The pay-as-you-go model and server-less options like Cloud Run allow businesses to optimize spending by paying only for what they use.
• Flexibility & Advanced Tools: Google Cloud offers a suite of AI and machine learning services, giving teams access to cutting-edge capabilities.
• Reliability & Disaster Recovery: Built-in redundancy, load balancing, and backup tools ensure high availability and quick recovery from outages.
• Security & Compliance: Advanced IAM (Identity and Access Management), monitoring, and compliance tools help organizations build secure, compliant environments from the start.

Watch: AWS Security Essentials With Keith Lafaso

A Common Theme Across Hyperscalers

A significant theme from the session is that the core strategies, benefits, and challenges of migrating to Google Cloud closely mirror those found with AWS, Azure, and other hyperscale cloud providers. While each platform offers unique features and tooling, the foundational migration approaches (like rehosting (lift-and-shift), re-platforming, repurchasing, refactoring, retaining, and retiring) are common across all major providers.

The best practices emphasized for a successful migration (thorough planning, detailed inventory and dependency mapping, robust tagging strategies, and a strong focus on security and compliance) are universal requirements, whether moving to Google Cloud, AWS, or Azure.

Hyperscalers provide migration support tools and services, such as Google Cloud Migration Center, AWS Migration Hub, and Azure Migrate, offering centralized platforms for discovery, assessment, and migration management. Likewise, data transfer appliances and services (like Google Transfer Appliance, AWS Snowball, and Azure Data Box) address large-scale data movement needs for all three providers.

The drivers for migration are consistent themes in cloud adoption, regardless of the chosen provider. The importance of hybrid and multi-cloud strategies is also a common thread. Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure all emphasize interoperability, containerization, and flexible workload placement to meet evolving business needs.

In summary, the Google Cloud migration journey shares a common DNA with migrations to AWS and Azure. The same strategic principles, migration frameworks, and operational best practices apply, making lessons learned and tools developed in one ecosystem highly relevant to others. This universality helps organizations leverage cross-cloud expertise and accelerate their digital transformation, no matter which hyperscaler they choose.

Overcoming Migration Barriers

Migrating complex, customized applications (often spread across multiple data centers) can be daunting. The speaker stressed the importance of:

• Team Training: Upskill teams on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) before migration to smooth the transition.
• Inventory & Observability: Use observability tools to create a detailed inventory of applications and dependencies. Understanding what you have is essential before moving anything.

Migration Strategies: The 6 Rs

No two migrations are the same, but most fall into one or more of these strategies:

The speaker’s favorite? Re-architecting for cloud-native, leveraging containers and server-less to maximize flexibility and efficiency.

Best Practices for a Successful Migration

• Plan Meticulously: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” A robust migration plan is non-negotiable. Start by integrating observability tools like Datadog with your GCP account, providing visibility into your infrastructure, applications, and user experience.
• Tag Everything: A consistent tagging strategy (e.g., environment, team, service) is critical for organizing resources, tracking costs, and responding to incidents. If you’re not tagging, you’re doing it wrong.
• Build Dashboards & Reports: Visual dashboards and automated reports keep stakeholders informed and help teams monitor migration progress and performance in real-time.
• Establish Communication Channels: Set up channels (e.g., Slack) for incident response and ensure alerts are routed to the right teams using tags.
• Strengthen Security from Day One: Enable security tools and posture management early. Use IAM for fine-grained access control and continuously monitor for compliance, especially if you operate in regulated industries.
• Leverage Synthetic Testing & SLOs: Synthetic tests simulate user interactions, ensuring applications perform as expected post-migration. Define service level objectives (SLOs) before migrating to benchmark and improve user experience.

Final Thoughts

Every cloud migration is unique. The session reinforced that understanding your current environment, planning thoroughly, and leveraging the right tools and strategies are essential for success. At WEI, we’re committed to helping you accelerate your Google Cloud migration to minimize risk, controlling costs, and unlocking the full potential of cloud-native technologies.

Have questions about cloud migration or want to discuss your organization’s journey? Reach out to our team, we’re here to help you move forward with confidence. I’m also available to connect!

Listen: AWS Networking – VPC Architecture & VPC Networking

The post Accelerating Cloud Migration: Key Takeaways from the Latest Session at Google Cloud Next 2025 appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Are you ready to embrace the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution? Many companies are already have made significant strides, driven by the immense potential of AI. According to the IDC, IT spending is rapidly accelerating to capitalize on the AI wave. By 2025, Global 2000 organizations are projected to allocate a staggering 40% of their core IT budgets towards AI-related initiatives. For most IT companies, AI is poised to surpass cloud computing as the primary catalyst for innovation. The race is on.

Know Your AI Acronyms

Before this article reads any further, let’s make sure the common acronyms are understood. To navigate the AI landscape, it’s essential to understand:

• ML (Machine Learning)
• DL (Deep Learning)
• GenAI (Generative AI)
• LLM (Large Language Models)
• High Performance Computing (HPC)

The Insatiable Appetite of AI

Thanks to groundbreaking advancements like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other forms of GenAI, the ability to generate vast amounts of new content could potentially overwhelm the entire web. are that by 2027, 90% of the information on the internet will be created by Generative AI. This explosive growth isn’t limited to what AI creates, but what it consumes as well. Despite the remarkable increase in compute capabilities and data capacity over the past 13 years, end users are barely keeping pace with the exponential growth of AI model sizes and their proliferation. What happens if we can’t keep pace?

WEI Podcast: Becoming An Insights-Driven Enterprise With HPE Storage Solutions

What is HPC?

Why is HPC so critical? Because AI has the power to turbocharge nearly every aspect of our lives, and HPC’s underlying turbocharged infrastructure is required to make that happen. Simply put, HPC provides the high-performance computing infrastructure to support AI’s turbo capabilities.

HPC systems consist of multiple processors working together to perform tasks that would be impossible or take an impractical long time on standard computers. HPC is the backbone that enables the training and deployment of advanced AI models, particularly the computationally intensive large language models and deep learning systems as these require large datasets for training and validation.

HPC systems can process these massive amounts of data quickly and efficiently. Training complex AI models can take an extensive amount of time on regular computing systems. HPC accelerates this process by distributing the computational load across many processors, significantly reducing the time required to train models.

Challenges for AI Implementation

The challenges surrounding AI extend far beyond keeping pace with the rapidly evolving demands. Achieving true success with AI requires addressing several critical factors:

• Flexibility: AI systems must be highly flexible, with an extensible architecture that allows for continuous learning and adaptation as new data becomes available as rigid, static models quickly become obsolete and less useful over time.

• Scalability: The insatiable thirst for data in AI is only going to grow. As model sizes and complexity increase, organizations need elastic infrastructure that provides on-demand scalability to spin up additional compute resources in seamless fashion.
• Data Placement: While cloud computing offers compelling advantages for AI workloads, the data necessary to train AI models may reside on-premises, creating potential issues around latency, cost, and data movement. Intelligent data placement strategies are crucial to ensure optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

The pressure to deliver AI capabilities quickly is immense and it is a delicate balance between rapid deployment and ensuring AI systems are developed and deployed responsibly.

WEI Podcast: Adapting To The Evolving Education Tech Landscape

HPC Expertise from HPE

HPE is a leader in HPC and AI. It only makes sense as HPE has a long-standing legacy and deep expertise in designing and building some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The HPE Cray Supercomputing EX line powers several of the top supercomputing systems in the world. Their comprehensive portfolio of servers, storage, and networking solutions purpose-built for AI workloads. This includes the Apollo line of servers with support for the latest AI accelerators like NVIDIA GPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs, as well as high-performance storage systems optimized for data-intensive AI training.

HPE Slingshot

Unlocking the full potential of real-time AI hinges on blistering speed. Enter HPE’s Slingshot – a cutting-edge interconnect technology that supercharges their high-performance computing (HPC) and AI solutions. With , HPE’s HPC systems can efficiently handle the massive computational requirements of training the largest AI models and running the most complex simulations in parallel. This interconnect is a key enabler for HPE to deliver powerful, turnkey exascale computing solutions that can tackle the most demanding AI and HPC workloads.

How About AI-as-a-Service?

For those who prefer an on-premises as-a-Service model, HPE GreenLake for AI and Analytics delivers a cloud-like experience for AI/ML and analytics workloads across on-premises, edge, and public cloud environments. This expansive solution allows on-demand scaling of AI/ML infrastructure and capacity and provides customers access to HPE’s expertise in AI/ML, HPC, cloud, and edge computing.

HPE GreenLake offers a complete AI infrastructure stack, including high-performance computing, accelerated storage, interconnects, and AI/analytics software and expertise. This enables companies to build and scale AI initiatives with a cloud operating model that combines security, performance, and easy hybrid cloud management through HPE’s as-a-service offering.

Don’t Forget What WEI Can Do For You

Don’t get left behind in the AI race. Leverage HPE’s advanced technologies, talent, and expertise to accelerate your progress and ensure your AI vision becomes a reality. If you need help defining your vision, contact the AI technology experts at WEI. They can listen to your unique business needs and help you map out a course and strategy to get you started.

Next Steps: Whether you’re a CEO, a business owner, a manager, an IT administrator, or a language translator, it’s crucial to understand AI and how to leverage it in your role. In our free white paper titled, discover a deeper understanding of AI and identify the critical role of High-Performance Computing (HPC) in managing extensive datasets and advancing sophisticated machine learning models.

The post Addressing The Common Challenges Of AI Implementation To Unlock Its Full Potential appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Businesses constantly pursue strategies to enhance their IT infrastructure and leverage data-driven insights to drive growth and innovation. With the rise of insights-driven enterprises, the importance of unlocking the full potential of business data has become increasingly evident.

As businesses embark on this modernization journey, they face various challenges, particularly in areas such as security and data management. To shed light on these burdens, WEI works alongside industry experts to gain valuable insights on data utilization and cybersecurity to guide customers to meaningful IT modernization.

Understanding Pain Points And Embracing Modernization

In a recent WEI podcast focused on IT infrastructure modernization and its critical role in leveraging business data effectively, experts Matt Leal, Shawn Murphy, and former White House CIO Theresa Payton discuss the practicalities and strategic importance of data modernization.

While the benefits of modernization are undeniable, challenges like cybersecurity loom large. Shawn Murphy, Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at WEI, emphasizes these burdens:

• Expanding Threat Landscape: With cloud computing, remote work, and SaaS services, the attack surface has become much larger and is constantly changing. This makes it harder to pinpoint what needs protection.
• Data Proliferation: The increase in data collection leads to an extensive attack surface. It could overwhelm security teams with information and hinder their ability to analyze it effectively.
• Inability To Stop All Breaches: News reports may highlight some breaches, but the reality is likely much worse. The FBI estimates that in losses. This doesn’t account for unreported breaches or losses like damaged reputation or privacy violations.

“Proactive measures are crucial,” Murphy explains, as WEI focuses its cybersecurity solutions heavily within the prevention phase. He also highlights the importance of developing useful metrics to measure the effectiveness of cybersecurity initiatives.

Additionally, Matt Leal, Presales Solutions Architect at WEI, shares the importance of a holistic solution. “While some industries are more advanced, any organization can progress with the right support. Our customers span various industries. Each has its own challenges, but we provide tailored solutions to overcome them.” Murphy adds that healthcare, for example, has specific data privacy regulations that may hinder cloud adoption. However, partnering with a Value-Added Reseller (VAR) like WEI can help organizations navigate these complexities and accelerate modernization.

Theresa Payton, former White House Chief Information Officer and currently the CEO at , emphasizes the importance of human-centric stories in aligning technology initiatives with business strategies. She believes that understanding the human element is crucial for successful secured digital transformation.

In this context, a strategic and holistic approach to IT modernization takes center stage. Prioritizing robust cybersecurity measures becomes essential to safeguard and enhance business operations.

To connect technology effectively with people, she suggests the following:

• Prioritize The Human Element: Understand who you serve and their needs. Whether it’s employees, customers, or any other user group, identify their goals and challenges.
• Position Technology As A Solution: Instead of merely listing features, explain how technology addresses specific needs and improves the user experience.
• Tailor Your Message: When communicating with executives, frame your message around “secured digital transformation” that supports the human user story.

By keeping the human element at the center and demonstrating how technology serves it, organizations can bridge the gap and ensure that technology empowers the people it’s meant to serve. Understanding your audience and enhancing user experiences are critical steps in achieving organizational goals through advanced solutions.

The Crucial Role of Secure Data Storage

Data-driven insights are now the cornerstone of a successful business strategy. In fact, research shows that enterprises leveraging these insights are . However, complexities mentioned by Murphy can arise from data collection, analysis, and infrastructure management. Trusted partnerships with experienced technology providers, such as the case between HPE and WEI, can be crucial in navigating these hurdles.

Data security should be a paramount concern from the very beginning, meticulously woven into every aspect of the infrastructure, from the initial capture of data all the way through to its disposal. By prioritizing data security throughout the entire process, businesses can ensure they’re building a foundation of trust with their customers and stakeholders.

The concept of “secure by design” aligns with this need. It means cybersecurity is built into technology from the start and seamlessly aligns with business objectives. As we delve into the challenges faced by organizations like yours, our experts also explore the critical security considerations surrounding data storage. Leal reinforces this by pointing out that “modern solutions are often the most secure,” underlining the importance of embracing innovation to combat evolving threats.

One such secure and adaptive modern solution is HPE Alletra. This storage platform is designed for the complexities of the modern IT landscape, functioning as an ally against data breaches. Built on the sturdy foundation of and powered by 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, the Alletra series delivers on performance, scalability, and crucially, security.

By assuming breaches will happen at any time, organizations can build stronger systems. This means having good checks and balances, clear rules for data, and even special techniques to protect it.

While data security is important, Payton argues organizations have a bigger responsibility to protect everyone involved. This means thinking about how data affects people, the risk of breaches, and what they owe those who trust them.

The best companies practice a culture of “care” for data. This ensures it’s always used and stored ethically and responsibly. Organizations need to ask, “Is this data really needed, or are we just collecting it because we can?” A culture of care makes companies consider the ethical side of things too.

Final Thoughts

The key to success in today’s digital world lies in embracing innovation, leveraging data effectively and responsibly, and prioritizing far-left cybersecurity throughout your operations. Navigating modernization isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. WEI can help by offering tailored solutions and expert guidance for businesses, from implementing cutting-edge technologies to developing robust cybersecurity strategies.

Reach out to our experienced team for more insights and assistance on your modernization journey.

Next steps: In a digitally connected hybrid world, security is a shared responsibility. The weakest link can potentially expose everyone connected. That is why HPE has created a vision to make security an inherent part of all operations as it manages more than two million devices and over one exabyte of data through its expansive HPE GreenLake platform.

In this , we identify: 

• Hybrid’s impact on cybersecurity
• HPE’s vision of security
• Siloed vs. shared security
• New approaches to cybersecurity talent
• Creating your own talent pipeline
• Resilience through Zero Trust

Download:

The post How Data Storage and Security Drive IT Modernization appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Picture yourself as the proud owner of a classic car, a vintage beauty you’ve painstakingly restored with a significant investment of resources. It’s more than just a car; it’s a symbol of your dedication. Data, like your classic car, is a business’s most valuable asset. Just as you wouldn’t leave the car exposed to the elements, you need to securely store and protect your organization’s information.

You wouldn’t just throw a tarp over your precious vehicle. You would place it out of the elements, away from opportunists who might see your car as an easy steal. Managing and maintaining mission-critical applications demands that same level of care and protection for your data. This is where HPE Primera comes to the rescue.

Unmatched Data Storage And Performance

When looking for a data storage solution, your enterprise needs to prioritize operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness. HPE Primera stands out by offering cloud-like agility, unified data management, and new standards for resiliency and performance in an enterprise storage solution. It possesses a set of features well-suited for the modern data center environment, such as:

1. Extreme Resiliency

HPE Primera provides a 100% Availability Guarantee to ensure your data’s constant accessibility. Think of it like an easy-to-operate and reliable garage for your classic car. With automatic weekly updates and upgrades, downtime is minimal, and your data stays secure and intact.

2. Intelligent Operations

Investing in a vintage car demands a garage capable of proactive issue resolution. HPE Primera, powered by HPE InfoSight, an AI-driven intelligence platform, excels in this regard by resolving storage problems in real-time. This, in turn, reduces workloads and eliminates human errors to ensure continuous data safety.

Additionally, the HPE Primera OS offers advanced data services with simplicity and enhanced resiliency for mission-critical applications. Unlike monolithic operating systems (OS) that pose upgrade risks and necessitate node reboots, HPE Primera utilizes a services-centric OS which allows for independent deployment, upgrading, and restarting of each data service.

3. Timeless And Cost-Efficient Storage

HPE Primera provides guaranteed data reduction ratios at a flat support price, with a technology refresh every three years. This eliminates the need for costly upgrades and ensures businesses benefit from updated data storage technology.

4. Scalable Architecture

HPE Primera’s modular design offers flexibility and customization for modern businesses. It seamlessly scales to meet evolving requirements, just as your garage flexes to store more tools that contribute to maintaining your car collection.

Its container-based architecture offers:

• Streamlined multi-node configurations and provisioning.
• Effective management of both traditional and next-generation applications.

As a result, these guarantee a seamless I/O for predictable performance and low latency.

5. Hybrid Cloud Capabilities

HPE Primera is equipped with the following features to manage and migrate various workloads, including:

• Seamless integration and mobility of mission-critical apps (such as SAP HANA, VMWare, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server) to primary, secondary, and private/public cloud tiers like AWS, Scality, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
• . Businesses can restore data in mere seconds, rather than minutes or hours.

6. Security

HPE Primera prioritizes data privacy and compliance. By default, it encrypts your data and employs tamper-evident security measures to maintain data integrity. This system not only secures your data, but also actively detects and alerts you to any unauthorized access or tampering attempts.

7. Green Storage Solution

HPE Primera is not just a high-performance garage. With its , the appliance operates with minimal carbon footprint and has lower cooling costs than other Tier 0 storage solutions.

Final Thoughts

As the volume of data continues to grow, managing and maintaining mission-critical applications for your business requires high-performing and resilient storage solutions. HPE Primera is a comprehensive service that seamlessly combines cloud storage’s agility with high-end storage system performance and security.

This intelligent choice is perfect for businesses seeking efficient and reliable storage solutions. Whether you require a platform for intensive applications, hybrid cloud capabilities, data privacy, or energy efficiency, HPE Primera has you covered. Contact the storage experts at WEI and take the first step to secure your data and unlock your business’s full potential.

Next steps: In the meantime, download our free tech brief,

The post How HPE Primera’s All-In-One Solution Transforms Your Data Storage Game appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

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

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

What Does This Mean For Our Customers?

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

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

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

What This Means For ISVs

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

Reasons To Consider Azure

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

Financial Engineering Alongside Technology

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

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

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

The post What WEI’s Microsoft MPO Authorization Means For You appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Hybrid work, hybrid vehicles, hybrid energy and of course, hybrid cloud. It is a hybrid world as the hybrid transformation is affecting so many aspects of our lives. For enterprises, the shift to the hybrid cloud didn’t happen in isolation. It is the result of multiple, incremental changes across business and technology:

• Companies are evolving from centralized data storage to enterprise-wide data distribution.
• They’re shifting from complex on-premises management to streamlined, cloud-based oversight.
• Security teams are moving from a patchwork of individual devices and add-on solutions to integrated, core security systems.
• Businesses are replacing rigid, traditional operational models with flexible, as-a-service offerings.

The transition is a holistic adaptation to a world that demands greater flexibility, improved efficiencies, and accelerated innovation. The question is, how do you provide the same streamlined experience of the cloud across all facets of your IT estate?

Being Proactive: Data-Driven Business

Being data-driven offers companies a crucial advantage as data provides actionable insights into customer behavior, market trends, and operational efficiencies that are enabling organizations to make more informed decisions. It empowers them to anticipate market demands, tailor products or services, optimize supply chains, and improve customer experiences. According to a recent study, data-first-led organizations are:

• 49% more productive in terms of service innovation than their non-data-centric competitors.
• 20x more likely to beat their competitors to market by multiple quarters.
• 11% more likely to beat their revenue goals by 10% or more.

Becoming a data-driven business requires data-driven modernization, an approach that elevates data as the pre-eminent organizing principle for the business. This requires having the ability to apply the right resources to host, analyze and manage it all. HPE is providing the next generation of servers to meet the needs of data-driven organizations with their premier Gen 11 line. As we dive into their capabilities, IT leaders are finding that HPE is the for SAP Hana and Microsoft SQL Servers today.

Why Compute Matters

The most important resource when it comes to data is compute. Computing power is the primary force for organizing, processing, and retrieving an organization’s assets and data as it provides access to critical information regardless of where it resides. You need computing power that not only meets the current needs of your data-driven organization, but also the needs of tomorrow. To future-proof your business, you need to future-proof your server infrastructure. Enter HPE’s Gen 11 servers, designed to be the bedrock of a modern, hybrid cloud environment.

A Universal Cloud Experience

IT guru or not, people like the simplicity and convenience of the cloud. If your enterprise deploys a hybrid cloud architecture, you want cloud experience from data center, to edge to cloud so that you get the same level of serviceability for all servers. That is not an unrealistic expectation, as HPE’s next-gen ProLiant servers are engineered to deliver the same cloud experience regardless of consumption model. Whether you choose to get GEN11’s computing power through a traditional infrastructure purchase or through a pay-as-you-go model with HPE GreenLake, you gain status access to server health and firmware status within a single admin portal. By streamlining the management experience, server admin teams can pivot from reactive monitoring to proactive administration that automates tasks that used to be manually implemented.

The Power of AI

HPE’s ProLiant Gen 11 servers are engineered to do more than just automate tasks. They are fine-tuned to elevate AI capabilities across the enterprise. Specifically designed to capitalize on the AI revolution, these servers offer 33% more GPU density per unit to handle graphic-intensive and AI workloads compared to the previous server generation. This enhanced computing power is bolstered by a 50% increase in CPU cores, enabling more efficient workload consolidation. Not enough? HPE engineers doubled the I/O bandwidth to meet the demands of high-performance applications. All these advancements make Gen 11 an ideal choice for organizations aiming to scale AI operations.

Setting The Bar High

Just how high has HPE set the bar? Its new server generation has set 43 records along with 28 new world records for its HPE ProLiant Gen 11 line. These records involve measurements of not just computing power, but also energy efficiency. Setting these kinds of records is necessary to help ensure that companies break their own marks when it comes to data creation and analyzation.

Integrated Security

From silicon to software, that is the new mantra regarding today. Security is not an add on, nor are they bolted on. It’s integrated from design, to manufacturing, to delivery. Security is also simplified thanks to the iLO6 Security Dashboard that offers administrators a user-friendly tool that streamlines security and empowers them to effortlessly fortify their server infrastructure against potential threats. HPE has also integrated the Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM) as a security standard that provides a uniform and secure method for these components to identify themselves, establish secure communication channels, and execute authenticated commands. Other security inclusions are a silicon root of trust, firmware validation and platform certificates, all of which help to collectively ensure the security and integrity of your server environment.

Conclusion

The world has changed to make way for a hybrid world that is driven by the intelligent use of data. Make sure you have the servers that were designed excel in that new world. With the line of HPE ProLiant servers, you can be assured that the transition to hybrid is worth it.

Next steps: The future of data storage is here with the HPE Alletra Storage platform supporting both block and file stores, along with the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform that enables workload administration and data protection from a single-pane-of-glass. Learn more by downloading our free tech brief, Eliminate Costly Data Silos For Data-First Modernization.

The post HPE ProLiant: Compute Engineered For The Hybrid World appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

The retail industry has rapidly changed in recent years, embracing offline, online, and hybrid shopping as the new norm. Technology has thus become an essential factor in the success of retailers, which puts significant pressure on them to keep up with the latest tools and reconsider their approaches. To align their current infrastructure with the evolving landscape, retailers must focus on networking as a central aspect of their efforts. This entails an aggressive adoption of digital transformation through cloud computing and omnichannel retailing, modernization of inventory management, and implementation of advanced data loss prevention systems.

The Role Of SD-WAN In Retail Digital Transformation

To overcome challenges and capitalize on opportunities for growth and innovation, retailers acknowledge the need to adapt their networks in response to the dynamic environment. This includes addressing issues such as:

• In-store scaling challenges
• Limitations in real-time bandwidth availability
• Performance problems with in-store applications
• WAN issues associated with the adoption of cloud-native and cloud-first architectures
• Security breaches and PCI compliance guidelines
• Point-of-sale network failures

Resolving these issues is crucial for enhanced customer experience, and retailers increasingly rely on their networks to deliver more value. With the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in recent years, it is no surprise that SD-WAN solutions are adopting these trends, highlighting the significant role AI will play in optimizing network performance and enhancing operational efficiency for retailers.

AI-driven SD-WAN: The Next Generation In Networking

As a result, a flexible and modern networking infrastructure like an AI-driven SD-WAN emerges as the ideal solution for the retail industry’s digital transformation. cites three key benefits of next-generation SD-WAN solutions and what makes them an attractive choice for retailers to effectively meet the rapidly changing demands of business operations:

Cost

The widespread adoption of SD-WAN has significantly impacted pricing, leading to increased competitiveness and affordability. Compared to traditional tunnel-based alternatives, next-generation SD-WAN offers a substantial price advantage. The combination of higher adoption rates, competitive pricing, and cost-effective solutions further enhances the value of SD-WAN for the retail sector.

By leveraging intelligent routing, dynamic bandwidth allocation, and advanced algorithms powered by machine learning, SD-WAN optimizes network traffic. This level of automation eliminates the need for costly manual configurations and reduces operational expenses associated with outdated approaches.

As acknowledged by , the cost savings delivered by AI-driven SD-WAN solutions make them an attractive investment for the retail industry, empowering stores to allocate their resources strategically and assign more funds to business growth and innovation.

Security

With the proliferation of data sources and the subsequent rise in network vulnerabilities, retailers find themselves in dire need of robust network and data protection measures. Recognizing this pressing demand, modern SD-WAN solutions have ingeniously integrated comprehensive security capabilities, marking a significant leap forward in future-proofing retail networks.

Artificial intelligence embedded in these solutions proactively identifies and neutralizes potential threats, which preempts cyberattacks before they manifest. With AI-driven SD-WAN, retailers know their valuable data and network connections are shielded behind an impenetrable fortress. This allows them to focus on what truly matters: delivering exceptional customer experiences through efficient business operations.

Scalability

It’s no surprise that 81% of retailers worldwide have acknowledged the effectiveness of SD-WAN in deploying and scaling quickly. Not only does this technology offer cost-effective solutions, it also ensures that performance, reliability, and availability are not compromised. Retailers can confidently navigate the ever-increasing demands of the digital retail landscape and propel their businesses forward into a prosperous future by embracing AI-driven SD-WAN.

Final Thoughts

For the retail industry to keep up with changes in customers’ shopping experiences, retailers should consider adopting next-gen SD-WAN and carefully assess how it fits their network requirements and goals. This assessment, which WEI can provide, identifies specific needs and challenges, such as enhancing application performance, boosting security, or optimizing network costs. Once the decision to embrace SD-WAN is made, retailers should prioritize selecting a solution that seamlessly integrates with their current infrastructure and applications.

As a longtime solutions provider for fixed retail locations, WEI is committed to empowering retail businesses with dynamic and innovative systems that evolve alongside their operations. If you’re unsure about adopting SD-WAN for your enterprise, it’s advisable to consult WEI for a thorough network assessment and personalized guidance. Our recommended solution offers a comprehensive suite of tools to help retailers seamlessly deploy , effectively navigating network integration and scalability.

Next steps: Managing the IT estate of any digitally transformed organization is challenging. And while there are companies that boast many mission-critical business processes, the institutions of higher education also face challenges. Our experts dive into the overriding challenges that higher education institutions must overcome and how Juniper Networks can assist.

The post How AI-Driven SD-WAN Can Boost Retailers’ Digital Transformation appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Delivering a personalized and efficient shopping experience to customers is crucial in today’s competitive retail landscape. Whether customers are shopping online or offline, achieving this goal requires retail organizations to take strategies. To successfully create this in a hybrid cloud era, retailers must meet these four key requirements: 

• Setting up a heightened Wi-Fi connection for employees
• Optimizing location-based services
• Establishing a reliable network infrastructure
• Forming a unified data and connection security between retailers and customers

Improved Wi-Fi Network Infrastructure For Retail Employees

Today’s business world requires consistent, reliable, and optimized Wi-Fi access for in-store and warehouse operations. This is vital in delivering seamless online-to-offline customer services such as click-and-collect, appointment-driven shopping, and home delivery. With experience-first networking, users are assured of coherent operations, optimal experiences, and increased revenues.

An integrated is key to achieving maximum efficiency, productivity, and revenue. To achieve cohesive operations and experiences, coordination is necessary across WLAN, LAN, Data Centers, and security domains. With event correlation and Marvis actions, troubleshooting is made easy while dynamic packet capture (PCAP) eliminates truck rolls.

Location-Based Services For Optimized Retail Operations

Experience-first networking means elevating your retail organization with location-based services and optimized warehouse operations. This boosts inventory tracking and reduces errors, creating seamless experiences for your shoppers. To make the most of these services, you need a strong network solution that predicts problems before they occur. This is particularly crucial during busy periods such as holidays to avoid network overload.

Reliable Network Automation And Connectivity

Part of delivering an experience-first networking approach to retail is prioritizing the needs of the operations team – and this is where network and optimization come in. By streamlining operators’ experiences through better automation and increased AI, businesses can provide new retail apps and services, maintain user experience and security, and quickly address issues.

One significant advantage of automation is access to speedy cloud-hosted operations to swiftly resolve network issues. This gives users seamless availability without any downtime. This approach also automates network deployment, testing, and validation to decrease the possibility of costly human errors. This empowers businesses to simplify network planning, design, and operations while also boosting operational efficiency across multiple locations and departments.

With a stable network infrastructure and strong connectivity between stakeholders, this solution will truly aid your retail business.

Unified Data And Connection Security

As a retailer, you need to ensure the safety of your confidential customer payment information and commercial and employee data. Cyberthreats not only cause significant financial losses and reputational damage, but also leave you and your customers vulnerable to fraud. That’s why your network security should be a top priority when deploying networking solutions across stores and headquarters.

Safeguarding your organization with a zero-trust, threat-aware solution that covers all IoT devices and networks ensures rapid response to cyberthreats and integrated compliance with external standards.

Enhance Your Retail Network Infrastructure With Juniper Network

Retail organizations looking to deliver a connected store experience need to prioritize an experience-first approach in their networking strategies. Fortunately, WEI works closely with Juniper Networks to offer retail organizations a and strategies, such as:

• (vBLE) and to enhance customer and employee experiences through virtual beacon accuracy and delivering on-the-spot retail information to customers.
• Automated for advanced security solutions that protect retailers and customers from cyberthreats and offer next-generation firewall protection, intrusion prevention, and advanced threat detection.
• Cloud-Ready for simplifying underlay/overlay management with intent-based automation.

With an AI-driven networking approach, Juniper Networks is an ideal partner for retailers to streamline operations, reduce IT costs, and focus on network agility. Consult with WEI’s team of experts to start connecting your retail business to a seamless and reliable network strategy.

Next Steps: Our white paper titled “” identifies how Juniper Networks’ location-based networking helps higher education institutes overcome complex technology challenges. Readers will better identify:

• Concerns of higher education IT professionals
• Why network infrastructure is a differentiator
• Challenge of improving remote experiences
• Value of a virtual network assistant

The post Four Significant Ways Retail Businesses Adopt Experience-First Networking appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Can you name a common promise that never comes to fruition? We have one – technology will eventually get simpler. Take the cloud for instance. At one point, this technology sounded as straightforward as could be. Just lift and shift business-critical applications from a legacy data center to a cloud provider! No more hardware or virtual infrastructure to manage and support! 

Truth is, modernized cloud application environments are highly complex, so much so that internal IT and data center monitoring tools can’t handle it without the right resources. Without these, IT operations teams run blind.

Why The Complexity?

Why are modern applications so complex today? Unlike monolithic applications that were hosted by individual VMs in an on-prem environment, modern applications are broken down into microservices that are each assigned a defined task or capability. Each container acts like a tiny server, which multiplies the number of endpoints that require monitoring. On top of that, many companies utilize multiple clouds to match each of their critical apps with their optimum cloud environment.

Companies believe this complexity is worth it because it allows for incredible agility to respond to fluctuating dynamic workloads and to serve users at a scale that monolithic applications could never achieve. For all these wonderful benefits, however, there are some real challenges:

• Container Orchestration: Applications are hosted within so many containers running in different environments.
• Security: Containers are more prone to security threats due to vulnerabilities, insecure configurations, and supply chain attacks
• Integration: Modernized container applications often integrate with other applications and services that require a deep understanding of different systems and interactions.
• Monitoring and Troubleshooting: Companies have invested heavily in monitoring tools over the years, but traditional monitoring tools don’t work in the dynamic world of speed and scale that cloud computing enables.
• Multiple Clouds: The use of multiple clouds creates learning curves for support personnel that must rotate through portal admin consoles.

The complexity of container ecospheres doesn’t stop there. Most companies that employ the cloud still utilize on-prem environments. Some of this is due to legacy applications that cannot be modernized. To avoid cloud lock-in, some organizations store their data in a separate data center adjacent to the cloud to avoid data transfer costs if they change cloud providers. Despite the complexity of it all, the benefits that modernized applications bring cannot be ignored. It is one of the reasons why predicts that almost two-thirds of spending on application software will be directed toward cloud technology in 2025.

Internal IT Requires The Right Tools To Support The Cloud

There’s no doubt that IT teams are developing legitimate value-added innovation and containers can make this process easier. Developers can deploy microservices in different languages and technologies while time to market is reduced with added functionality. But all this innovation can’t be fully leveraged without the proper support from IT operation teams. For many organizations, IT operations aren’t modernized to do the job because the data center monitoring tools they are saddled with are not applicable to cloud applications.

• Infrastructures of data centers and cloud environments are fundamentally different. Data centers reside in a fixed location with dedicated hardware while cloud environments are distributed across shared hardware over dispersed locations.
• Data center applications often have static predictable workloads whereas cloud applications are highly elastic and scalable. Traditional monitoring tools may not be designed to keep up.
• Cloud applications are API-driven, and many traditional monitoring tools aren’t optimized for them.
• Traditional monitoring tools can’t act fast enough due to their reliance on human intervention and dashboard rotation.

When you consider everything, you begin to understand why say that monitoring containerized microservices in real-time is almost impossible.

How AIOps Makes Monitoring Containerized Microservices A Reality

It is possible to monitor containerized microservices to ensure that your cloud-based applications run optimally. But how? The answer is AI automation. Gartner states that many IT organizations who fail to adapt AI will no longer be operationally viable. Only automated AI systems can handle the scale, speed, complexity, and dynamic nature of today’s modernized applications that rely on cloud-hosted containers and microservices.

• AI monitoring can perform root cause analysis, enabling problems to be identified and resolved at speed.
• AI monitoring can handle large data sets from disparate systems and recognize when related anomalies occur within an environment. This helps prevent alert storms.
• When implemented into your integration and deployment pipelines, AI monitoring can ensure that problems are detected so that remediation or roll back processes can be implemented instantly.

In 2022, Forrester evaluated 11 AI for IT Operations (AIOps) providers and named Dynatrace a in that industry, giving them top scores in the Current Offering and Strategy categories. AIOps provides the ability to leverage machine learning and other AI technologies to automate and improve the performance, availability, and security of IT systems and applications. It only makes sense that a new application architecture requires a new operational approach.

Contact WEI to find out more how Dynatrace has the solutions you need to keep your IT operations in pace with your application innovations.

Next Steps: Thanks to Dynatrace, full stack application analytics and observability is fully achievable for your AWS-hosted application environments. Converting terabytes of data about your cloud application environment and converting it to real answers and actionable, intelligent automation, companies can maximize their modernized application strategies.

In this tech brief, we expand on:

• Application Modernization
• Cloud scalability
• Monitoring vs. observability

The post Why Modernized Applications Also Require Modernized IT Operations appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Sustainability is an important initiative for businesses of all sizes, and we are always looking for new ways to drive eco-friendly solutions for our customers. WEI’s partnership with HPE and AMD helps create more sustainable IT solutions and allows us to provide customers with even more innovative and efficient options for reducing their environmental impact. I discuss how our partnership with HPE and AMD is advancing green tech and driving more eco-friendly solutions for customers.

WEI’s Approach To Sustainability

Sustainability and efficiency are two sides of the same coin when it comes to developing next-generation IT solutions. WEI takes sustainability very seriously, and it has become ingrained in our mission as we continue developing solutions that move the needle. 

Our approach to sustainability involves helping customers lower their carbon footprints. Fortunately, we partner with companies like HPE and , as they provide deep knowledge of customer needs across all technologies. For example, AMD offers sustainable IT solutions that provide customers with higher performance while using less energy. Their goal is to help organizations do more with the same number of servers and reduce their environmental impact in the process. WEI also has expertise in local nuances that help improve customer experience with the increasing demand for technology.

Here are a few tools from HPE and AMD that are readily available through WEI that can help customers kick off their sustainability strategy:

• One of AMD’s is focused on bare metal and greenhouse gas emissions TCO.
• AMD’s virtualization TCO tool optimizes configurations for virtual environments.
• HPE GreenLake’s consumption model is a sustainable IT solution that allows businesses to reduce the cost of change while still leveraging their existing consumption model.

Design and Implement With Sustainability In Mind

We are working on creating sustainable IT solutions that use the latest technology, while also implementing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to utilize our resources more efficiently. We’ll design systems that can be scaled up or down as needed, rather than building oversized environments that consume too much power and produce too much heat. Our goal is to change both the technology we use and the models for consuming IT.

Ten years ago, IT leaders were looking at consolidation ratios as a way to achieve IT efficiency, but now we are creating other ways. As an example, AMD’s new technology offers socket count reductions of up to when it comes to power consumption, which is huge!

Leveraging Sustainability With Tech Investments

Often, when we assess and analyze data center environments, we see many systems not being used to their full potential. Sustainable IT solutions in this area can help your business save money in the long run. By examining data centers and ensuring that they are operating sustainably, HPE, AMD, and WEI can help reduce over-provisioning, which means that you will be able to use future resources more efficiently.

Companies everywhere are better understanding the value of investing in their employees. As with many industries, though, tech companies are challenged in finding and attracting new employees. A remedy for this is allowing people to see that their work contributes to a larger purpose. Documenting sustainable IT solutions and green IT allows employees to better understand how their company is making the world a better, greener place.

In the long run, sustainability is key when it comes to our environment and economy. By using tech investments such as using IT assets for their intended purposes, we can all do our part in preserving our resources.

Watch this three-part the CUBE Executive Interview Series to learn how to make your enterprise more sustainable through innovative IT from AMD, HPE, and WEI.

Sustainable IT Solutions On The Horizon

We’re excited how we can continue deploying these infrastructure and service models. IT leaders need to build the environment but also be able to measure it to really understand its impact. Our process includes figuring out how to quantify and automate services so that they are more sustainable. WEI adds value by helping extend beyond just the implementation of these solutions. If you can quantify the value and show the exact savings, customers will want to implement more of these Sustainable IT solutions.

Contact us today to learn how your organization can get involved in these types of initiatives and help make a difference for the environment.

Next Steps: IT leaders everywhere are quickly realizing the powerful potential of HPE GreenLake as a premiere edge to cloud platform. The consumption model offers valuable predictability and manageability that allows IT leaders to get the most out of current resources and prevent costly over-provisioning. Discover how it makes sense for enterprises both financially and operationally by downloading our free tech brief below. 

The post Sustainable IT Solutions: Make The Switch To An Eco-Friendly IT Strategy appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Thanks to increasingly effective servers, meteorologists are predicting weather more accurately, scientists are crafting new vaccines using genetic sequencing, and doctors are diagnosing patients faster with the best resources available. As technology advances, however, the demands placed on servers also increases. indicate that by the end of 2023, the internet will be comprised of 114 zettabytes of information, and that number will only increase with time. This equation leads to increased energy consumption which means more heat production. Increased heat production often results in a decrease in system performance.

To combat this issue, Dell has incorporated AI-driven cooling into its . This exciting technology uses thermal and mechanical simulation tools to optimize cooling and ensure sustained system performance. In this article, we discuss the benefits of smart cooling technology and how it is helping Dell EMC continue to push the boundaries of technological innovation.

How Does Smart Cooling Technology Work?

There are three primary methods servers employ to ensure that the system is not overwhelmed by heat production. This includes air cooling (or multi-vector cooling), direct liquid cooling (DLC), immersion cooling, or a combination of these technologies.

Each of these options come with their own benefits and methods, which I have outlined in detail below:

Air Cooling: Multi-vector cooling (MVC) maximizes the potential of air cooling. This cutting-edge technology employs a complex system of cost-effective and high-performing fans and heatsinks that streamline airflow and air temperature distribution across the chassis.

If the fans and heatsinks were not enough, the design of the system itself is engineered to prevent systems from overheating. In PowerEdge servers, the motherboard is T-shaped, and the power supply units are located at each corner of the chassis. This allows for improved airflow and system cooling.

Direct Liquid Cooling: This smart cooling technology uses liquid to absorb and remove heat created by high-power processors. For those concerned about potential leaks, Dell solutions also include Leak Sense technology. This intelligent system alerts customers of minor and major leaks and offers increased configuration.

Immersion Cooling: This cooling method is designed for power-dense systems operating in spaces with little or no conditioned air. In immersion cooling, the systems are submerged in a tank of liquid which captures 100% of the heat.

Making Smart Cooling Technology Smarter

When combined, air cooling, direct liquid cooling, and immersion cooling provide increased assurance that your system will not overheat or suffer any performance issues. But what really sets PowerEdge servers apart is the integration of artificial intelligence and system tools.

Dell’s servers now offer OpenManage Enterprise Power Manager, a tool which gives customers full insight and control of how their system prioritizes cooling. Here are a few ways this system serves customers:

• Allows users to monitor and manage power and thermal consumption for individual and groups of servers.
• Provides reports to help meet sustainability goals.
• Utilizes policies to set power caps at the rack or group level.
• Supports enhanced visualization of data center racks with power and thermal readings.
• Informs users of the power of virtual machine usage for a physical device.
• Shares information on server performance metrics.

This smart cooling system includes an integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC). This tool allows users to maximize resource use and adjust power when there is a decreased demand for performance. The Power Manager also provides pre-defined power policies, ensuring that users’ key workloads continue to operate.

Smart Cooling Technology And Sustainability

While performance is a primary concern for most IT-centric companies, preserving the environment is also of growing importance. Fortunately, customers who implement PowerEdge servers into their system will have a clean conscious.

Here are a few ways these servers have integrated environmentalism into their strategies:

• Decreased Drain On Energy ����ֱ��: Using the tools Power Manager provides, users will reduce expenses, maintain availability, and decrease power usage.
• Fewer Replacements: By using tools like MVC and DLC to keep your systems cool, users will replace tools less frequently. This will not only save you money but also decrease your carbon footprint.
• Power Caps: OpenManage allows administrators to place power caps on racks/rows/rooms of servers. When used effectively (especially when performance demand is lower) this has a significant impact on the energy drain of a data center.

Final Thoughts

Whether you are looking for ways to decrease your expenses, reduce your carbon footprint, or improve your system performance, smart cooling technology is the right choice for you. If you would like to begin integrating Dell’s PowerEdge servers into your system, we can get you started. We help businesses of all sizes every step of the way, from purchase through implementation. Contact us today to discover which tools are the right fit for you!

Next Steps: Discover more about refreshing your servers and enhancing digital transformation by downloading our tech brief,

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Enterprises modernizing their IT infrastructure to keep up with the demand of a changing workforce need more from their storage providers. With the work-from-anywhere model here to stay, an enterprise storage solution that offers on-demand, always-on, and easy-to-use services is a must.

As more enterprises move forward with their modernization efforts to support this shift in the workforce, agility is a key requirement of high-end storage. It is clear that the more purpose-built, statically defined scale-up designs of the past need to give way to more software-defined, modular scale-out designs.

Modern enterprises need a high-end storage solution that leverages AI/ML technologies, in combination with automation and continuous availability, to improve and simplify routine management tasks at scale. It is also important to be able to operate in hybrid cloud environments while also delivering a rich, secure storage management operating system.

There is one high-end storage solution that meets all these requirements and more: HPE Primera Intelligent Storage. Keep reading to learn 10 reasons why HPE Primera meets your enterprise’s high-end storage needs.

10 Reasons Why Your Enterprise Needs HPE Primera Intelligent Storage

1. Global Intelligence: With HPE InfoSight embedded into HPE Primera, disruptions are predicted and prevented in real-time to help optimize performance.
2. Services-centric OS: Mission-critical apps benefit from reduced risk and enhanced resiliency with HPE Primera’s simplified and unique OS for high-end storage without node reboots for most updates.
3. 100% availability guarantee: Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, HPE Primera analyzes application patterns while also predicting and preventing disruptions across the infrastructure. The solution also provides business continuity with automatic site failover. With no disruptions, corruptions, or delays using app-aware resiliency across all models, HPE Primera provides a 100% availability guarantee.
4. Timeless storage: This all-inclusive software provides a unique ownership experience with unending value. You won’t pay for additional features and enhancements, and the software will update every three years.
5. Radical simplicity: With HPE Primera, your time spent deploying, managing, and scaling your storage needs is reduced up to 93%. HPE Primera is able to tune itself and implement upgrades without slowing your ability to serve your customers.
6. As-a-service consumption: Using HPE Primera with HPE Greenlake offers you the ability to consume IT on your terms. Get exactly what you need when you need it with its ability to use high-end storage-as-a-service capabilities.
7. Intelligence and composability: HPE Primera’s integration with HPE Synergy advances the cloud experience, providing a foundation of composability for any workload.
8. All-active architecture: Every volume within your storage architecture is able to access every SSD, node, and port, providing nonstop availability and low latency for fast performance at scale.
9. Extreme scalability: HPE Primera has made scaling high-end storage a breeze using multi-node transparent upgrades. Your storage needs are able to grow with the needs of your enterprise, intelligently adjusting to your unique business demands.
10. Hybrid cloud mobility: Extend your protection to the cloud. With less cost and complexity, HPE Primera’s cloud mobility delivers:

• Flash speed
• Application-integrated data protection
• Copy data management
• Data mobility

Seamlessly, securely, and cost-effectively move your enterprise’s data across primary, secondary, and private/public cloud tiers. With a simple cloud-based archive or disaster recovery option, you’re able to use your on-premises infrastructure for fast, reliable operational recovery.

Ready To Redefine Your High-End Storage?

HPE Primera is redefining high-end storage to ensure that modern needs are being met as simply and easily as possible. Problems that plague more traditional storage systems, such as risky upgrades and complex management systems, are fixed through intelligent design to keep enterprises going strong through their modernization efforts. If you’re ready to make the change now, contact WEI to begin building a custom solution for your business.

Next Steps: As the title of our refreshed executive brief eludes to, we have identified four smart storage strategies to help your company compete in today’s digital world. Such strategies have already proven to help companies be better prepared for their new normal. Click here to read and download

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Enterprises are currently reinventing how they operate with . They’re capitalizing on a variety of cloud-based technologies and launching products and services to customers more quickly than ever before. As more businesses update their infrastructures, traditional enterprise networks are struggling to keep up with the changes. A recent networking global survey found that 97% of organizations will have difficulty keeping pace with the changing demands of the cloud and hybrid networks. As businesses continue to update their infrastructures, many are using software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) to move forward in their digital transformation journey.

The Benefits Of Digital Transformation With SD-WAN

Increasing network bandwidth on a traditional WAN (which wasn’t designed for the cloud) can be expensive and time-consuming. However, SD-WAN can deliver the agility and flexibility needed to support digital transformation. HPE explains, “Unlike the traditional router-centric WAN architecture, the SD-WAN model is designed to fully support applications hosted in on-premises data centers, public or private clouds, and SaaS services while delivering the highest levels of application performance.”

When SD-WAN is deployed correctly, it allows the network to adapt to shifting IT requirements. This low-cost way to enhance the capacity and flexibility of enterprise networks has :

1. Better-performing services: SD-WAN helps establish fast and reliable connectivity for next-gen services while also supporting digital technologies that assist in business productivity. Generally, it improves the ability of organizations to better monitor application performance and end-user experience.
2. Uptime and availability: Many business processes rely on uptime and availability in their networks. Luckily, SD-WAN accumulates several connections at each site from multiple ISPs to make sure the network continues to function properly.
3. A digital-first mindset: Using a software-driven virtual network is a fantastic way to make digital transformation the norm for organizations. SD-WAN brings more visibility to enterprise networks and can help forge the way for the implementation of more digital technologies and innovative ideas to better operate businesses.

The benefits of SD-WAN not only help enterprises keep up with digital transformation changes, but also improves overall network performance. This platform can ensure excellent performance across all cloud-connected networks, ultimately paving the way for companies to make the most of their available bandwidth.

Why SD-WAN Is The Preferred Platform

Those looking to shift toward an enterprise-first networking model should consider HPE SD-WAN. The platform is designed to help organizations fully understand the benefits of digital transformation within the cloud. HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect Enterprise supports customers with these four unique areas of business values:

1. Business-Driven SD-WAN

With this platform, customers can build a unified WAN edge that ensures business priorities are always manifested in how the network delivers applications to users. The business-driven aspect drives the way network resources are applied to fit the business cruciality of every application. Once virtual WAN overlays based on business requirements have been defined by HPE , configurations are directed to all sites across the network, and traffic handling is completely automated. HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect Enterprise will constantly learn and adapt to any network changes and traffic handling.

2. Highest Quality Of Experience

Both end-users and IT teams can enjoy the highest quality of experience with HPE Aruba Networking’s SD-WAN platform. With consistency in application performance and the optional WAN optimization performance pack, HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect Enterprise will enable IT teams to keep users satisfied and productive. Some examples include high-quality voice and video across services and cost-effective consumer broadband services. Human errors are minimized with centralized orchestration, so IT teams can focus on the business and troubleshoot faster.

3. Continuous Adaptation

This SD-WAN edge platform also utilizes automated real-time responses to eliminate the impact of blackouts and brownouts. Through continuous monitoring and analytics, HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect Enterprise can detect any changes to the network and initiate immediate adjustments that may be necessary. A huge benefit of HPE Aruba Networking’s adaptive internet breakout is how users can stay connected to any application without manual intervention from IT.

4. Unified Platform

HPE Aruba Networking’s platform unifies SD-WAN, firewall, segmentation, routing, WAN optimization, and application visibility and control into one centrally managed platform. This is what makes HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect Enterprise stand out from the competition. Through service chaining ecosystem partners, HPE Aruba Networking allows organizations to leverage existing investments including industry-leading security.

Conclusion

SD-WAN has the potential to deliver the necessary modifications that enterprise networks need in order to keep up with customer-driven digital transformation. This low-cost platform delivers flexibility, agility, and high performance all through cloud-delivered applications. SD-WAN creates more effective networking solutions that can help accelerate the growth of any organization. If your enterprise would like to learn more about SD-WAN and how to meet the developing demands of digital transformation, contact WEI today to get started.

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.

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Your Solution To Hybrid Cloud IT Modernization

HPE GreenLake is a fully managed, scalable IT infrastructure service that offers enterprises a cloud-like consumption model for on-premises infrastructure. With the advent of this service, the one-size-fits-all approach to supported technology is replaced, allowing enterprises to choose the most appropriate HPE or third-party technology. IT leaders can provide their teams with a powerful foundation to drive IT modernization through an elastic as-a-Service platform that can run on-premises, at the edge, or in a colocation facility. This as-a-Service function allows for the flexibility, security, and efficiency that fits your enterprise needs.

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