The foundation of a successful OS upgrade

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Upgrading your organization’s operating system is a big investment in time, money, and resources. But of course, it’s worth all the work.

After all, you’ll be delivering a more secure and responsive infrastructure that will support your business for years to come.

A successful migration starts with a Zones OS Readiness Assessment. This professional service administered by our Advanced Solutions Group will help you verify that your systems have everything necessary to deploy, integrate, and support the new OS. Continue reading →

Shaky disaster recovery plan? There’s no excuse anymore.

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Everyone knows that a comprehensive disaster recovery plan stands to pay for itself – should you need to use it. But over the years, we’ve seen many businesses fail to make the necessary investments in time and money to create one. Some were lucky. Many were not.

Of course, critical systems for banks, finance, and healthcare had significant redundancies built into their IT architecture. After all, these organizations could afford complex solutions maintained by some of the most talented IT folks in the industry. But many firms simply could not afford or maintain the necessary skills on staff to support a true disaster recovery solution for key applications and IT systems. Continue reading →

“I want to get out of the phone business”

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Top real-world UC requests we hear from our customers

We’ve made it through the 2017 technology prediction cycle that marks the begining of each year. I’m simplifying… but the general market trends that have been predicted for UC in 2017 have been along the lines of: 1) Continued advance to the cloud (agreed); 2) IM replaces email (it depends – on the company, use cases, and the groups and demographics within that company); 3) UC begins to be integrated into existing business apps to enhance business workflows/processes (not quite yet); 4) Is 2017 finally the year WebRTC delivers on its potential? (nope). Continue reading →

The future of print technology is here

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HP PageWide is reinventing office printing in more ways than one

It used to be a given in the print industry that if you wanted speed, you sacrificed quality – and vice versa. But HP stepped in and decided to disrupt conventional thinking and implement forward-looking investments in print technology.

It all began with the introduction of HP Scalable Print Technology (SPT), which included research and development in printhead technologies, advanced inks, materials, design rules, and precision production methodology.

And from there, SPT evolved into HP PageWide Technology; the latest HP printing innovation that outpaces the competition in numerous ways, and on practically every level. Continue reading →

Cybersecurity trends underway in 2017

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The past year has seen seismic changes in the cybersecurity landscape.

They’re forcing IT professionals to rethink and re-strategize their organization’s security. They’re being tasked with ways to better control access to their network, gain a deeper understanding of how vulnerable their network is to threats, and develop a faster, decisive response plan when a threat occurs.

If any of the above resonates with you, you’re not alone. The cybersecurity market is expected to swell to $100 billion dollars by 2019. And now that we’re a quarter of the way through 2017, there’s good reason to be forward-looking and take proactive steps to ensure that security is in your company’s DNA.

Gone are the days when traditional security management approaches of multiple point products, manual change processes, extensive policies and data silos, did the trick. Given the growing complexities of networks and rapid delivery of services and applications, a deep, up-to-date rebooting of how you approach your network security is not only crucial – it’s necessary. Continue reading →

The standard in hyper-converged infrastructure

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Dell EMC VxRail appliance

VxRail is the only fully integrated, preconfigured, and tested HCI appliance powered by VMware vSAN, and is the easiest and fastest way to extend a VMware environment. VxRail provides a simple, cost effective hyper-converged solution that solves a wide range of your challenges and supports most applications and workloads. Dell EMC VxRail features purpose-built platforms that deliver data services, resiliency, and QoS, enabling faster, better, and simpler delivery of virtual desktops, business-critical applications, and remote office infrastructure, so IT can focus on more important things: Continue reading →

Want to simplify the mobile infrastructure fast? Here’s how.

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Ever since smartphones displaced the BlackBerry as the device of choice among pretty much everyone outside of government, businesses have been working hard to devise a simple, all-things-to-all-people approach to mobile deployments.

BYOD is cheap, but is by definition a multi-platform solution that presents a number of compatibility, management, and security issues. CYOD strategies restore a good deal of control to the organization, but add to the number of devices an employee will be carrying.

The recent launch of HP’s Elite x3 and VMware’s Workspace ONE could change all that. Continue reading →

Meet the challenges of digital business

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Cisco Digital Network Architecture

Legacy business processes are becoming increasingly digital, requiring fast and flexible network services to facilitate and support them. On top of that, business leaders and the IT professionals who run them are under pressure to accelerate adoption of big data, mobile, cloud, video, and IoT technologies.

Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) gives you a clear and efficient way forward. DNA centers around a network infrastructure that is not only fully programmable and open to third-party innovation, but can also fully and seamlessly integrate the cloud as an infrastructure component. Continue reading →

Are you ready for Windows 10?

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Ready or not, here’s Windows 10.

Whether Microsoft’s latest operating system is proliferating in the corporate space due to consumer adoption, or through sheer force in partnership with OEMs, we know that businesses are adopting Windows 10 twice as fast as Windows 7. Intel Kaby Lake (7th generation) processors will only support Windows 10. Devices with Windows 7 or 8.1 running on Intel Skylake (6th generation) chips will lose support in July of this year.

IT departments are pressed for time and have limited options. Either upgrade all devices to Windows 10 Enterprise via volume licensing, or manage two operating systems as devices are refreshed. Choosing the former option allows your organization to fully take advantage of Windows 10 Enterprise edition, in particular. Continue reading →

Not all clouds are created equal

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Cloud-Storage-Blog-graphic-742x388Why it’s important to optimize yours to stay cloud compliant

It’s a given that many smart companies, big and small, are moving to the cloud at breakneck speed. They’re looking to increase productivity, enhance collaboration, ensure business continuity, and reap the cost benefits. But a move to the cloud also presents potential risks as security and compliance protocols also move from your servers to someone else’s.

Cloud compliance is an issue for anyone using cloud storage or backup services, and the decisions you make regarding where it’s stored, how it’s shared, and who has access to it can greatly impact the operations of your business.

That’s why now – more than ever – it’s important to evaluate and optimize your cloud computing environment.

Continue reading →