A few weeks into January, there is still time to put on our fortune teller hat to make IT predictions for 2022. This is an opportunity to predict the trends, technologies, and challenges that enterprises will experience over the next 11 months. While we don’t claim to have any clairvoyant powers, we do have a good pulse on how the coming year will play out due to our involved client partnerships and our commitment to identifying and embracing new technology solutions that add value to our clients.

1. Ransomware Expected to Get Worse

A basic IT prediction for 2022 is that ransomware will be a threat that accelerates on frequency and severity. Is that a stretch? No, probably not. A major reason why we see this increasingly complex war getting worse is the utilization of Initial Access Brokers (IABs). These IABs are financially motivated employees who turn over RDP or VPN login credentials as well as expose firsthand information about a targeted organization’s infrastructure and its cybersecurity procedures. In return, these employees are promised a financial reward. One such ransomware ring, Black Matter, was offering IABs up to $100,000 if their supplied information and efforts resulted in a successful attack. With the size of the involved ransoms being so high today, threat actors can pay these insider fees as a cost to doing business. Ransomware gangs are constantly evolving their attack methodologies to make these events easier to execute and more effective.

The thing we must remember is that the psychology of these ransomware attackers is centered around a business-first approach. Such attacks are not usually politically motivated, nor is it economic warfare. Up until now, that is one of the reasons why political and regulatory efforts have been so lacking, and why ransomware still flourishes unabated. Thankfully, this is starting to change as our pollical leaders are recognizing the economic disruption that ransomware criminals create with each attack. Of course, depending entirely on political institutions and reactionary cybersecurity solutions is not enough for your enterprise. Business and IT executives must take greater proactive steps to combat this threat. Next week, the WEI blog will be featuring a blueprint strategy that outlines the proactive strategies and technology-based solutions to do just that.

2. It’s an “as a service” World

Fact is, we are steadily moving toward an “as a service” world where there are a gamut of acronyms for a multitude of “as a service” types including IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, NaaS and PCaaS. Even ransomware is available as a service, which has become a key driver of cloud service implementations as companies realize that on-premise datacenters are too vulnerable to threat actors. The pace of business is constantly accelerating, as is the pace of technology implementation. Users want things available instantly and only the cloud can deliver on demand provisioning at the required scale.

Many of the systems that we depend on today are now serviced by the cloud including Office 365, Salesforce, and virtual desktop technologies. We are seeing hardware vendors such as Dell and HPE with GreenLake package their portfolios into some type of offering. The key to packaging services this way is the ease to which they can be consumed. We see this getting easier in the coming year with more and more types of “as a service” offerings as we see users increasingly utilize them. At the same time, enterprises will make greater use of cloud management services and cloud-based monitoring tools to secure their networks.

3. Will Companies Embrace Windows 11?

Many companies took their sweet time upgrading their computers from a Windows 7 operating system to Windows 10. The question is whether companies will take the same elongated approach in We believe there are challenges impacting Windows 11 from being implemented at any sizable scale and some of this has to do with the benefits of Windows 11 not being articulated well enough for companies to consider it. Many don’t understand what the roadmap is for Windows 11 or why they should transition. As a result, it is a safe IT prediction for 2022 to not see a lot of conversation about Windows 11 for the first half of 2022.

We see Windows 11 making its way into enterprise fleets mainly through the purchase of new machines. However, the current supply chain issues concerning the manufacturing and delivery of client PCs and laptops is delaying this process. We do anticipate that by the end of 2022 enterprises will begin realizing the real benefits of Windows 11. Many of the embedded services within Windows 11 make it easy to interact with Microsoft Azure and that cloud fusion will add even greater value over Windows 10.

4. The Impact of 5G Mobility

No, we aren’t here to make predictions about 5G itself. Rather, this IT prediction for 2022 is about how 5G will impact cybersecurity and device management. Users are only as mobile as their level of internet access allows. In 2022, portable computing devices are going to be embedded with 5G. As a result, users are no longer dependent on at-home Wi-Fi or personal hotspots. Many consumers will be happy to know they will no longer need to stop at the nearest coffee house to get some last-minute tasks done for corporate.

The proliferation of 5G will greatly expand the need to secure those users so that they can authenticate from anywhere because the bad guys are quickly learning how to get around traditional multifactor authentication systems that use SMS texting. The challenge will be finding the balance between adding additional layers of protection while not prohibiting users from being productive. Regarding device management, companies such as Dell are offering the ability to manage, troubleshoot and remediate PCs regardless of location and that is going to become more and more valued by companies in the years ahead. The move to 5G will also cause a shakeup in that companies will migrate to vendors that offer best-of-breed 5G solutions.

5. The Transition of Internal IT

Let’s talk about the very nature of the IT Department. It is growing more apparent by the day that IT can no longer be located on an island while driving the bus, too. Their role is to support the business, and to do so, IT must make itself even more valuable by aligning itself to business needs. IT needs to be both adaptable and responsive as many companies have learned this lesson after witnessing shadow IT permeating throughout their organization. IT needs to be in lockstep with the business units they serve, and this means creating tighter liaisons with them. In the same way that a business knows its customer, Internal IT must know its users, and who its customers are.

Companies are expected to grow less reliant on administrators that specialize in a specific facet such as storage or networking. Instead, they will transition to operational staffs that know how to run their entire environments whether those resources reside on-premise or in the cloud. In some ways, we see the IT department operating similarly to a company’s facilities department. Why? Because technology is needed in the same way that electricity is. For example, as a user expects the lights to come on at the flick of a switch, they also take wireless connectivity for granted upon entering the building. IT is now the ultimate enabler for technology-driven users, and this requires somewhat of a cultural shift for many IT departments.

6. Concluding IT Prediction for 2022

We have a lot more to say about the coming future, but a sixth prediction is certain: The pace of innovation isn’t going to slow down. In fact, it will only accelerate in 2022 and even more so in the years ahead. IT professionals must be ready to keep pace. If you would like to hear more about the coming challenges we foresee, as well as the solutions we believe in overcoming these challenges, we urge you to contact us to help you create a roadmap to navigating 2022.

Next Steps: Flipping the calendar to 2022 means discovering and deploying new and innovative technologies that can help your enterprise reach new heights. More so than ever, CIOs around the world will be working around the clock to ensure that their enterprise is up to the highest cybersecurity standards possible. If you are an IT leader, we encourage you to read our eBook titled,

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At WEI, we are passionate about solving technology challenges. Through developing custom procurement solutions, we empower your organization to unlock new data and make business decisions that encourage innovation. To ensure all items and services are properly acquired so they can be implemented successfully and efficiently, it’s important to have solidified procurement processes.

We recently partnered with the University of Massachusetts (UMass) to develop a procurement solution that standardizes processes, technology, and procedures across the Lowell campus. In this article, we discuss the challenges UMass faced, how we supported them, and the outcome of the solution.

Watch: Adapting To The Evolving Education Tech Landscape

The Situation

The UMass mission is “to provide an affordable and accessible education of high quality and to conduct programs of research and public service that advance knowledge and improve the lives of the people of the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world.” In support of their mission, WEI and UMass partnered to unify drive change “unlock value beyond price,” specifically to identify and secure devices being used by students, faculty, and staff at the Lowell campus.

Previously, WEI worked with the UMass Boston campus to create a Unified Procurement Team to standardize costs, contracts with vendors, and the entire UMass IT system. Wanting to further adhere to their mission of becoming a digital and data-driven organization, leveraging technology on its Lowell campus was the obvious decision for UMass.

The newly appointed CPO for UMass, David Cho, wanted to unite the university’s procurement function and processes under the Unified Procurement Services Team, and enact a new strategy to work more closely with suppliers and extract more value, a philosophy that aligns with WEI. Our partnership with UMass was strengthened by creating another procurement organization for the Lowell campus.

How WEI Helped

At WEI, we’re more than an IT solution supplier. When it comes to leveraging technology, we believe in empowering organizations with new standardized procedures. In the partnership with UMass, we established a procurement organization across the Lowell campus that unlocks technology and data through a new uniform process.

WEI’s VP of Technology Solutions, : “The process allows students and faculty to go from campus to campus and still benefit from the same technology. This makes a big difference to their people, and it also provides data to go back to the procurement organization about the devices, people, and how they’re leveraging the environment.”

We make sure the procurement organization meets regularly to discuss UMass’ vision and solutions, and WEI provides consultation to ensure the best outcome, as well as address the changing needs in the organization, guaranteeing business initiatives, goals, and budgets are being met. : “We’ve created a regular cadence to meet with the procurement team and have a vision going forward. Now we’re discussing price, lead times, strategy, and vision, all at the same time, and that’s how UMass is going to acquire the technology solutions they’re looking for.”

Procurement Solutions Improve Business Decisions

WEI welcomes opportunities to create and establish an efficient procurement organization for your enterprise. Our partnership with UMass allows us to grow our understanding of how unlocking value like data and implementing processes are needed for your organization. We believe through procurement team organization you are given the tools you need to make successful and efficient business decisions that drive your enterprise forward.

WEI has welcomed opportunities like this on other occasions to find the perfect solution to solve our customers’ business challenges. Watch the below to learn more about how WEI worked to create a customized solution to unify procurement and drive real change for the university.

Watch: Innovating The Enterprise Procurement Process With WEI & UMass

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Companies have spent the past decade racing to achieve their digital transformation. One of the primary means of achieving this objective is through the cloud – a simple solution to a complex problem.

The problem is that there isn’t just one cloud. The found that “84% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy.” Hybrid cloud environments are challenging enough by themselves, but things have grown even more complex due to the adoption of another IT architecture, edge computing. In a rush to migrate everything to the cloud, we found the cloud isn’t the optimal environment for everything in an enterprise.

Problems With Configuring Modern Environments

When it comes to cloud migration the hybrid cloud environment doesn’t necessarily equate to multi-cloud interoperability. Enterprises face challenges when it comes to integrating all their clouds into a single ecosphere in order to create a framework that routes workflows in an automated fashion amongst themselves.

The practice of uploading all data to the cloud for processing adds too much latency for some mission critical operations. Additionally, many companies have had to face real costs that often exceed those anticipated. While OPEX cost modeling has significant advantages over CAPEX, it doesn’t always equal lower expenses. Now, IT leaders find it cheaper to run things back on-premises. Enterprises need to attain a multi-cloud infrastructure in order to define and create policies to improve efficiencies, accelerate deployments and minimize security risks across their entire cloud portfolio.

How Nutanix Supports A Hybrid Multi-Cloud Environment

It’s obvious that enterprises can’t regress back to on-premise infrastructures. Too many executives have witnessed the enormous impact digital transformation has had in terms of greater innovation and profitability. The solution is a next-generation hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) HCI is cloud-like technology, but it isn’t restricted to the cloud.

is a combination of servers and storage in a distributed infrastructure platform with intelligent software to create flexible building blocks that replace on-premise infrastructure. It consists of separate services, storage networks, and storage arrays. Advanced HCI solutions today can manage enterprise applications in a hybrid cloud environment. No more choosing between public or private cloud. The unifying nature of today’s leading HCI solutions puts you in charge of what goes where. Latency sensitive processes and compliance abiding applications can reside on local infrastructure while other apps can be assigned to their optimum cloud environment. On top of that, admins can then manage both their private and public cloud infrastructures through a single management plane, eliminating the need to bounce between interfaces and portals to manage everything.

Today’s advanced HCI solutions can create a borderless IT estate in which silos are a thing of the past. No need to purchase a bunch of servers and pair them with an external storage solution while connecting it all together with a network switch. Because they were purchased separately you never benefited from purchasing the best of breed for every component. You may have ended up with a complex mesh of compartmentalized equipment that required training and kept you in a proprietary lockdown. Additionally, the implementation and upgrade processes were so expensive, enterprises embraced the practice of oversizing their infrastructures for future growth.

How HCI Continues To Grow

The recent challenges presented by the global pandemic showed how critical the need for great elasticity really is in the . This has accelerated the transition to multi-cloud infrastructures that utilize the appropriate mix of both private and public clouds.

Today’s advanced Nutanix’s HCI solutions are designed for this new era. HCI allows you to create heterogeneous clusters that can accommodate hybrid cloud environments that include multiple CPU generations, all-flash storage, and multiple hypervisors. Additionally, HCI significantly condenses the footprint of your data center or edge computing environment. You also have the ability to choose your hardware preference. You can select the most optimal cloud for your apps and business needs. HCI has the potential to deliver turnkey infrastructure for any app at any scale, across any location, whether it’s an on-premises data center, computing edge location or public cloud service. This cross-platform mobility gives enterprises the duality to run enterprise applications through multi-cloud infrastructures without any code change.

In a world without borders, you need an enterprise hybrid cloud environment that is void of borders as well, one that provides frictionless agility, management simplicity and fractional consumption of services regardless of where they reside, Nutanix’s HCI is innately designed for this.

Next Steps: We’ve helped countless enterprise IT teams transform their business with Nutanix. Leverage our team’s knowledge and expertise to discuss how you can achieve a next-gen HCI solution customized for your business needs. Sign up for a commitment-free conversation with our Nutanix expert, Mark Gabryjelski today!

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As an IT solutions provider dedicated to innovation and solving our clients’ technology challenges, we are pleased to announce our recent recognition by on the 2018 Solution Provider 500 (SP500) list; WEI was ranked at #109 on the prestigious list.

The Solution Provider 500 is CRN’s predominant channel partner award list, serving as the industry standard for recognition of the most successful solution provider companies in the channel since 1995. The complete list will be published on , making it readily available to vendors seeking out top solution providers to partner with.

“We are honored to be named to CRN’s distinguished list of 500 solution providers,” said WEI President Belisario Rosas. “To make this list is an impressive accomplishment and one which I attribute to my dedicated team members and to the success and trust of our valued clients and customers.”

“CRN’s Solution Provider 500 list spotlights the North American IT channel partner organizations that have earned the highest revenue over the past year, providing a valuable resource to vendors looking for top solution providers to partner with,” said Bob Skelley, CEO of The Channel Company. “The companies on this year’s list represent an incredible, combined revenue of $320 billion, a sum that attests to their success in staying ahead of rapidly changing market demands. We extend our sincerest congratulations to each of these top-performing solution providers and look forward to their future pursuits and successes.”

Our placement on the Solution Provider 500 list also qualifies us for future awards like the CRN Triple Crown Award, which the complete 2018 Solution Provider 500 list will be available online at and a sample of the list is featured in the June issue of CRN Magazine.

As an expert in business technology improvement, we help our clients optimize their IT infrastructure and work more efficiently. Our sales and technical teams remain focused on providing unwavering support to your enterprise throughout all steps of an IT project. For more information about our solutions, please visit . To learn more about The Channel Company, visit .

Next Steps: Read the press release about this honor.

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