Arraya Insights

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It’s 9:30 Tuesday morning. Do you know where your end users are? The answer to that question used to be pretty straightforward. On a typical day, most IT pros could guess end users were at operator-on-the-phone-using-a-headset_MJ73oEvdtheir desks or in a meeting. In recent years, thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of and interest in telecommuting, answering that question has gotten more complicated.

Between 80%-90% of workers have expressed interest in telecommuting at least part of the time, according to research conducted by Globalworkplaceanalytics.com. This same study found the number of employees who regularly work from home has increased by 103% since 2005. In 2014, the number of telecommuters went up 6.5%, which was the largest single-year growth seen since pre-recession days. As a point of reference, the employee population as a whole grew by 1.8% during the same time period.

The trend towards more available telecommuting seems unlikely to go away any time soon. In fact, Cisco predicts mobile data traffic will grow by 800% in the next five years. That astonishing growth will be driven heavily by smartphones, which Cisco thinks could account for 81% of worldwide mobile data usage by 2020.

Perhaps part of the reason for this continued growth is younger employees (read: millennials) place a great deal of value on work life flexibility. A lack of flexibility came in fourth in a recent Ernst & Young study on the reasons millennials would quit a job. Roughly 66% of millennials said a lack of flexibility would cause them to seek new employment. It placed behind common and long-held complaints such as wage disputes (78%), lack of advancement opportunities (75%), and too much overtime (72%).

5 keys to a stellar help desk 

Employees may love flexibility, but it’s introduced a wealth of new variables into the support equation, putting a tremendous strain on help desks. The days of supporting cube-based workers who use only company-owned laptops are a memory. They’ve been replaced by a new arrangement where workers do their jobs from wherever they happen to be, across any number of devices.

Regardless of device or location, if something goes wrong, workers are still calling the same help desk to fix it. However, the challenges unique to this evolving environment require the help desk to evolve too. With that in mind, here are five must-have characteristics for today’s help desks.

  • Access to a shared knowledge base. When one end user has a problem, there’s a good chance another will experience the same thing. The ability to record and look back on problems and fixes allows help desk staffers to gauge what’s worked and what hasn’t for their colleagues. This keeps them from having to start from scratch with every ticket that comes in.
  • An openness to self-service. Not every problem requires the help desk’s involvement. Opening up a knowledge bank to end users as well as the help desk can reduce the number of tickets the help desk needs to field, allowing it to focus on the truly-pressing issues.
  • Use of detailed analytics and reports. Most help desks aren’t strangers to data like number of tickets received, average time to resolution, etc. However, truly elite help desks go one step further and compile that data into reports highlighting frequent trouble spots. This in turn can be used to improve the service they provide.
  • Diverse skillsets covering multiple vendors. Organizations may be a “this” shop or a “that” shop but that designation doesn’t always extend to employees. Thanks to BYOD and other trends, help desks must expand their abilities to support technologies from across the vendor spectrum.
  • Availability that extends past 9-5. Tech issues don’t follow a traditional work schedule and, often times, neither do employees. In order to ensure they have the access they need, when they need it, the help desk must be ready to step in and resolve problems when they happen.

Special Offer: Arraya’s Free Help Desk Discovery Workshop

Ready to explore what it takes for help desks to provide next-level service and support? Sign up today for a free half-day Discovery Workshop with Arraya Solutions. This onsite workshop gives businesses a chance to talk about their help desk goals with Arraya’s team of experts. The end result will be an actionable strategy business can use to bring those goals within reach.

Follow us on Twitter @ArrayaSolutions and on LinkedIn to keep up with our latest company news, special offers and industry insights.

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Last October, HP announced it was shutting down its public cloud services. This week, we found out that Verizon will be shutting down pieces of its own cloud service by April 12, 2016.Switch In On Position Showing Power Working Or Positive Situations While storage services appear to still be intact, this is a risk that a lot of customers might not be willing to take. What recourse do customers really have?

With two months to go, there isn’t a lot of time for Verizon customers to start evaluating cloud platforms. Chances are, customers in this situation will just start jumping ship for a more trusted platform quickly. Arraya’s recommendation would be Microsoft Azure. Microsoft has clearly committed to the cloud and won’t be exiting any time soon. They’ve even set up a site around Microsoft by the Numbers: The Enterprise Cloud where you can find updated statistics.

Here are some resources to help get you learning about Azure quickly, so you can plan your migration as soon as possible!

First off, you should get connected to Microsoft as soon as possible and explain your situation. If you don’t know who your Microsoft rep is, Arraya can help. Once connected, it is time for an open conversation about what you have and what needs to move. Arraya can help gather information from your legacy cloud platform and help you plan for a migration.

Check out the Azure Trust Center and learn how Microsoft protects your data in Azure. Microsoft breaks down the Trust Center into four pillars, Security, Privacy, Transparency, and Compliance. Each section has pages that you can drill further down into, complete with whitepapers and more information on regulatory compliance. If you want to dive even deeper, there is the Microsoft Online Services Privacy Statement, which is a wealth of legalese.

Azure has Service Level Agreements, like most IT-based services. These represent Microsoft’s agreements to terms around uptime and availability. Different services have different SLAs, so think about which workloads you need to move and how this could be impacted.

The cloud is a big challenge. Companies can now host their data around the world with a click and a credit card. As such, Microsoft stays on top of all the geo-political events and laws. They have a blog dedicated to this called Microsoft on the Issues. Microsoft President and former EVP of General Counsel, Brad Smith posts there fairly regularly. I highly recommend watching his keynote from last year’s Worldwide Partner Conference to truly gain perspective on Microsoft’s vision for technology.

Now that you’ve learned about how Microsoft approaches security, trust, and privacy, it is time to start planning for a move. This is where Arraya comes in. We’ve been supporting infrastructure for years and we’ve grown into the cloud as it has evolved. Our team of networking experts can lay down a strong foundation for connecting to Azure using industry best practices. Our Microsoft Cloud Solutions experts will work with you to examine existing workloads and plan a strategy to migrate that fits within the massive amount of Azure service offerings.

If you find yourself in this situation, don’t delay or you risk literally having the plug pulled on your data. Ensure that you stay up and running and can service your company and customers. Contact Arraya Solutions today for more information!

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Here’s some good news: 46% of companies expect their IT budgets to increase in 2016 – opening the door for new solutions, new tools, and likely, some new challenges for the Help Desk. It’s a maze-shows-challenge-or-complexity_MyhDTQv_positive when IT has the resources to make potentially long-awaited upgrades. However, changes often mean more work for the Help Desk as users struggle to navigate unfamiliar technologies and new technologies are integrated with existing tools.

Increased Help Desk activity can be handled in essentially one of two ways: lean more heavily on current team members or increase the size of the team. That first option can put team members on a surefire path to burnout. One report had IT pros averaging 52-hour-workweeks. In the same report, many others said highs of 60 hour weeks are their norm.

Increasing the size of the Help Desk team makes sense, however 68% of companies say they expect filling open tech positions to be either challenging or very challenging. What’s the root cause of that frustration? Here are four frequently-encountered challenges:

  • Challenge #1: Finding the right mix of tech skills. Working on the Help Desk requires skillsets which cover multiple IT disciplines. When a call comes in, a staffer needs to be able to recognize the problem quickly and either solve it or know where to escalate it.
  • Challenge #2: Narrowing down your options. Open positions have a way of attracting mountains of résumés. Not all of those who apply are cut out for the position, however. Sifting through them takes time and resources. Even after promising candidates have been identified, there’s still the interview process.
  • Challenge #3: Addressing availability concerns. Even the best workers aren’t available 24/7. In addition to normal, expected time off, there’s always the chance for unplanned absences due to sickness or transportation issues. Planned or unplanned, time off ends with IT once again being shorthanded. During the hiring process, IT may feel pressure to bring on additional or temporary staffers to cover for these eventualities.
  • Challenge #4: Balancing tech-savvy and people-friendly. When it comes to succeeding on the Help Desk, technical skills are always a top consideration. A trait that can be overlooked? People skills. Truly standout candidates must display both elite tech know-how and customer service skills.

Cure Help Desk hiring headaches

One way to bypass those hiring challenges? Managed Help Desk from Arraya Solutions. This service links existing Help Desk teams with our award-winning Managed Services team. Our team expands upon onsite IT teams, adding the experience, skillsets, or simply the extra hands those teams need to better serve end users.

In terms of the challenges listed above:

  • Tech skills: Our Managed Services team is well-versed in supporting diverse technological environments thanks to our relationships with multiple industry-leaders
  • Availability: Arraya has structured our team so that it will be ready to provide support 24/7, 365 days a year
  • Customer service: We believe every customer deserves to receive a superhero level of service and that has become a prerequisite of our own hiring/training processes

As for hiring, the responsibility for maintaining a high-quality Help Desk falls on Arraya. This covers everything from identifying the best candidates, hiring them, and training them on what they need to do to succeed. With these HR and training responsibilities shifted elsewhere, IT is able to focus on IT.

Want to learn more about Managed Help Desk? Reach out to us today to schedule your free Help Desk Discovery Workshop. This half-day, onsite workshop enables organizations to tap into Arraya’s knowledge and experience in order to develop an actionable and effective Help Desk management strategy.

Our Discovery Workshop also includes a discussion on an organization’s Help Desk goals. Once the destination has been determined, the Arraya team will break down valuable support metrics which can help customers hit their goals.

After you sign up, be sure to follow Arraya on Twitter @ArrayaSolutions. There you’ll find updates on all of our latest blogs, events and special offers.

 

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Cisco has an extensive catalog of solutions available to organizations interested in increasing their wireless capabilities. With so many options to choose from, finding the one that’s the right fit canwireless-signal-symbol-shows-internet-connection_zJja4Vwu prove tricky. In order to help organizations more easily navigate this process, we’ve compiled a list of the four of the most popular wireless options on the market and how they can help.

  1. Cisco Unified Wireless

Cisco Unified Wireless provides the most control and the latest features. As a result, it’s currently the solution deployed by the majority of Cisco Wireless customers. In the traditional deployment method, Cisco Unified Wireless consists of AireOS-based Wireless LAN controllers with both Physical and virtual appliance options. The deployment modes include Local Mode, FlexConnect and Office Extend.

Cisco Unified Wireless:

  • Simplifies operations: Cisco wireless controllers reduce operational expenses by simplifying network deployment, operations, and management. Cisco Unified Wireless makes it possible to configure wireless policy, management, or security settings at any time through centralized provisioning and management. IT pros can respond to organizational growth thanks to Cisco’s scale-as-it-grows licensing model, available with all Cisco wireless controllers.
  • Centralizes control: Unified Wireless allows for wireless network performance to be optimized while lowering costs and increasing operational efficiency. Wireless controllers can be deployed to help centrally manage, secure, and configure access points throughout the organization.
  • Diversifies deployment options: As part of Unified Wireless, controllers can be chosen based on what best suits the customer’s deployment. The solution can then be scaled for any size of business.
  1. Cisco Converged Access

Organizations want high-performing Wi-Fi that will grow as they do. However, they also want the ability to utilize wired connections should the need arise. Organizations also want to experience the benefits of all of the above without tying their IT teams to time-sapping network management responsibilities.

Cisco Converged Access deployment mode can enable the integrated networking functionality organizations desire. In this method of deployment, a Cisco Catalyst 3850 switch is used as the launching point for linking wired and wireless connections. It allows for native wired-to-wireless (or vice versa) data conversions.

Cisco Converged Access also:

  • Supports expanding mobility. Cisco Converged Access mode is well-suited to handle the rising tide of mobile data taxing modern networks. The system’s Catalyst 3850 switch and the 5760 wireless controller work together to deliver improved bandwidth which makes juggling extra volume a breeze.
  • Offers visibility and reliability. The wireless-wired convergence of Cisco Converged Access provides IT with greater insight into the performance and usage of the corporate network. Cisco Converged Access also allows IT to achieve a level of policy consistency that wasn’t possible previously.
  • Addresses today’s IT concerns. Cisco Converged Access is capable of conducting innovative and leading-edge 802.11ac connections. It is also fully ready to process the demands placed on the network by video apps, smartphones, and overall high wireless density.
  1. Cisco Mobility Express

End users have enterprise-sized expectations for their business’ wireless capabilities. Their expectations have been driven skyward by technological advances which have given them an army of mobility-enabling and connection-hungry devices. Expectations are one thing. In many cases, the reality is that IT’s budget is often more in line with the SMB level than the enterprise.

Cisco’s Mobility Express is an on-premises Wi-Fi solution built to help smaller organizations address growing connectivity needs. It does this by merging a virtual LAN controller with Cisco Aironet access points to support cutting edge 802.11ac Wave 2 connectivity. This solution is sometimes referred to as “controller-less” because the controller functionality is built into the Access Points and doesn’t require a separate dedicated controller.

Mobility Express also:

  • Provides a unified approach. IT teams used to have to concern themselves with buying and maintaining a separate WLAN deployment. Mobility Express comes with a WLAN controller embedded directly in the solution itself, making life easier for IT while keeping costs down in the process.
  • Enhances network visibility. Mobility Express’ management feature puts control over the network in the hands of IT via a browser window or mobile app. This allows the team to maintain, supervise, and repair the network whenever needed.
  • Streamlines network administration. Mobility Express is primed to allow smaller IT teams to successfully manage their growing networks without having to add staff. This solution covers up to 25 access points and 500 clients for each virtual controller deployed on site.
  1. Cisco Meraki

Many data centers have been stretched thin supporting an increasingly mobile workforce. In addition to mobility, this workforce also counts on having multiple devices with which it can do its job. In order to guarantee the expected level of connectivity, data center footprints swelled and the accompanying management responsibilities fell on the IT team.

Cisco Meraki delivers a cloud-based architecture to replace the inefficient and insufficient legacy wireless networking solutions many companies rely on. Meraki’s routers, switches, security appliances, and more, give businesses of all sizes access to Meraki’s leading cloud networking service.

Cisco Meraki also:

  • Centralizes network management. Meraki gives IT the ability to manage its entire network from a browser-based dashboard. IT pros can adjust network needs, user access, etc., all from this access point, saving time on formerly time-consuming management tasks.
  • Automates updates. Meraki’s hardware is always connected to its global network of data centers. As a result, small but absolutely vital tasks such as optimization and updates are installed automatically. This keeps Meraki’s firmware always up-to-date.
  • Increases privacy. Meraki’s out-of-band management architecture helps ease the privacy concerns often associated with the cloud. This set up ensures a company’s data doesn’t pass through a Meraki data center, instead allowing it to live exclusively in a company’s own personal network.
  • Ensures reliability. Organizations can rest assured that Meraki’s services will be there when they need them. Meraki service level agreement promises 99.99% availability. Also, its servers are tested every five minutes, 24/7, to catch any issues that could lead to service interruptions.

Connect with Arraya’s wireless experts

The issue of connectivity is already top of mind for most in IT and that won’t change as organizational networking needs continue to grow. It comes down to being able to identify and deploy a wireless solution capable of helping your business address its goals now and down the road. That’s where our team comes in.

Arraya’s Cisco practice brings decades of experience working with customers to design and implement ground-breaking Cisco solutions for every engagement we participate in. Our commitment to innovative and outside-the-box thinking has long-endeared us to the customers we support. However, our approach gained even greater recognition recently when global IT distributor Tech Data honored our efforts with its Cisco Charged Innovation Award. Specific to Cisco wireless, our team includes a Cisco CCIE Wireless certification for excellence in wireless networking.

Want to talk wireless with a member of our team? Visit www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us to get the conversation started. Or, feel free to reach out to us on Twitter (@ArrayaSolutions) or on LinkedIn (Arraya Solutions) to learn more about who we are and how we can help.

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Security pros face an uphill battle in today’s threat landscape according to Cisco’s 2016 Annual Security Report (ASR). However, uphill doesn’t mean impossible. These 6 takeaways from Cisco’s Padlock Icon Computer Key Showing Safety Security Or ProtectedASR can help guide and improve security efforts in 2016 and in the years to follow.

Takeaway #1: Attackers are getting more sophisticated.

Attackers have started to go legitimate. That may sound like great news, but unfortunately they haven’t turned over a new leaf. Instead, what they’ve done is draw inspiration and resources from legitimate sources and use them to carry out their illegitimate endeavors.

Cisco’s ASR highlighted how attack methods have evolved and grown in sophistication:

  • Attackers have gotten bolder and more coordinated. They will work closely together, sharing information and resources to precisely execute campaigns
  • Cyber crooks have borrowed a page or two from the playbooks of the IT teams they target. They’ve begun leveraging elements such as strong infrastructure and virtualized hosting to increase the efficiency and power of their attacks
  • Attackers have begun commandeering resources right from under the noses of IT. For example, they can siphon off server capacity and use that to launch their campaigns

As attackers have grown more sophisticated in their methodology, it’s increased pressure on IT to respond in kind. Technology which gives IT the ability to recognize and respond to threats in as close to real time as possible has become nothing short of a business need.

Takeaway #2: Confidence in security is down.

Hackers had a successful year in 2015. According to one study, hackers were able to successfully compromise a target 60% of the time. Their effectiveness, mixed with the seemingly never-ending string of headlines hackers earned, dinged the confidence of many on the security side. Some were left unsure of their – and their organizations’ – ability to go toe-to-toe with cyber crooks.

The findings in Cisco’s ASR aren’t overwhelming, however they do represent a subtle change in course and in confidence levels from where things stood in 2014:

  • 59% of those surveyed see their security infrastructure as being “very up-to-date” and leveraging the best technologies on the market, down 5% from last year’s study
  • 37% say their security technologies are replaced or upgraded regularly, but wouldn’t go so far as to call them the latest or greatest. This marks a 4% drop from the numbers recorded last year
  • 5% replace or upgrade security technologies only when they absolutely have to, up 2% from last year

Confidence is essential but overconfidence can be risky. This is where regular security audits can help. They can give organizations a confidence-boost by showing them the strengths of their current environment. It can also help them weed out weaknesses, preventing overconfidence.

Takeaway #3: IT infrastructures are getting older.

Today’s businesses depend on technology. As a result of this dependence, IT security must be a top priority for all companies, in all verticals. However, as Cisco’s ASR discovered, many organizations are relying heavily on long-in-the-tooth network infrastructure. This report looked at a cross-section of the Cisco devices online and in customer environments and found a large number of vulnerabilities that had been left unaddressed.

  • 92% of devices covered in the study were running versions of software with known vulnerabilities. On average the software these devices ran contained 26 known vulnerabilities
  • Some customers were using software versions that were more than six years old
  • 8% of the devices studied had reached their end-of-life stage, while another 31% were due to go end-of-life within the next four years

Whether it’s in respect to patches or updates or even larger scale projects like phasing out outdated technology, organizations must remain vigilant. Plans must be made to ensure routine updates are made quickly and long-term plans to phase-out aging tech must be devised well in advance. The longer these decisions or tasks are put off, the higher the chance that they could be exploited.

Takeaway #4: Budgets are holding security back.

Take a guess on what security pros say is the biggest obstacle keeping them from gaining access to advanced tools and processes. Chances are that guess was something to do with budgets and that is absolutely correct. According to Cisco’s ASR, budget constraints (39%) topped the list of barriers to advancing security processes and technology. However, it wasn’t quite the runaway win one might expect:

  • 32% of those surveyed said compatibility issues
  • 25% blamed certification requirements
  • 24% said competing priorities
  • 24% named heavy workloads

The cost of data center and network outages continues to rise. Organizations must adopt a more forward-thinking approach to upgrades. For example, should an upgrade provide more reliability and fewer outages, it could cover that initial investment in little to no time.

Takeaway #5: Changes are coming to who controls security budgets.

One trend worth keeping an eye on is how organizations structure their IT and Security budgets. This can provide insight into the value organizational leaders are placing on security practices and technology. Cisco’s ASR looked into how many organizations were separating their security budgets from their IT budgets and this is what it uncovered:

  • 58% of organizations have their entire security budget contained within the IT budget, down from 61% last year
  • 33% of organizations have their security budget partially within IT’s, equal to what was recorded in last year’s study
  • 9% of businesses have their security budget totally separate from IT’s, up 3% from last year’s numbers

As organizations continue to place greater emphasis on securing their technological investments, this trend of splitting out security budgets could very well continue – or even begin to pick up steam, reducing IT’s role in the process.

Takeaway #6: Malware continues to be a major threat.

Organizations face a number of high-risk threats to their IT infrastructure from external sources. The most persistent of these threats, according to Cisco’s ASR, is malware. Nearly 7-in-10 of those surveyed (68%) listed this as an external threat. Here’s the rest of the list:

  • 54% identified phishing as a threat
  • 43% faced advanced persistent threats
  • 38% said denial of service attacks
  • 35% named brute-force attacks
  • 35% said zero day attacks

Cyber crooks’ methodology is diverse which means those on the security side must be ready for anything. Today’s security solutions must be strong enough to repel an attack, but they must also be flexible enough to adjust as attack vectors change.

Building security solutions for any challenge

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: Time is of the essence when it comes to threat detection. The current industry average is 100-200 days. Cisco has run out well ahead of that pace, dropping to a mere 17 hours. This assures companies that a threat’s chance to do any real damage will be greatly minimized.

If you’d like to learn more about Cisco’s ASR and its industry-leading security solutions, reach out to our team today. Arraya Solutions is a Cisco Premier Partner and our team has a wealth of experience deploying and supporting Cisco security technology. Our innovative efforts in devising cost-effective custom-built Cisco solutions for our customers resulted in us winning the Cisco-Charged Innovation Award. We can also help find and manage the tools an organization needs to keep its IT infrastructure safe in today’s business world.

Begin the conversation here: http://www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/.

Also, follow us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions, to stay in the loop with all of our latest blogs, special events and offers.

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If you follow this blog or Arraya, you know that M&A is a big part of our Microsoft Practice. This activity isn’t only happening across various commercial industries; it is also happening in the way to successMicrosoft Partner arena as well. Microsoft has been on a huge upswing in the last few years, thanks to great solutions, like Azure and Office 365, but also due to the new leadership under Satya Nadella. As a result, Microsoft Partners are very busy and growing.

I came over to the partner side by joining Arraya a year ago and over this past year, our Microsoft Practice has grown as well. During my time here, I’ve seen some trends that call to light what makes Arraya different.

Consolidation in the industry is nearly inevitable. There are two trends happening, partners are being bought by other partners and LSPs are buying up partners to get into the consulting game. The former is fueled by venture capitalists looking to make money and the latter is a move to stay relevant in a cloud game. I haven’t seen either model succeed yet.

This brings me to Arraya’s two key differentiators. The first is VISIBILITY. We’ve found that it is key to meet our customer’s stakeholders and engineers in person. There are goals and objectives that come out of these face to face meetings that are lost in translation with a phone call and especially over email.

This is part of our award winning M&A-in-a-box strategy. We build these engagements with a discovery session before getting into how the move will be done. In fact, all of our engagements start with a plan and design session. We always uncover additional information about the project that can help us better understand everyone’s goals and objectives.

We tend to do these meetings on site to establish a comfort level with Arraya and our engineers. Any objections or obstacles can be quickly surfaced and dealt with without issue. Even though we live in a cloud world, not quite everything can be done remotely! Likely, we won’t be on site for the whole project, but if you need us, we will be there.

The second way we are different is through ENGAGEMENT. This is evident in our Office 365 Workload Enablement offering. A lot of Microsoft partners care about one thing when it comes to Office 365. They want to get your mailboxes up there as fast as possible. After that, you are on your own.

We understand that you’ve made a commitment to a platform, not just Email-as-a-service. If you’ve bought Office 365, you understand that there is a collaboration story there deeper than email. A lot of companies need help on the execution though and we can help you ensure you are making the most of your investment.

Arraya’s Microsoft Practice has grown in the last year, but our values remain consistent. One of those values is relationships. You simply can’t maintain relationships without the visibility and engagement that Arraya offers.

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A little while back, we put up a post outlining why the inclusion of voice in the new Office 365 E5 SKU should push the license package to the top of your list of IT New Year’s Resolutions. As Human hand drawing social network scheme on the whiteboardexciting as the inclusion of voice is – it isn’t the only reason you should be considering Office 365 E5. There are a variety of other features in Office 365 E5 which can help businesses power through plateaus and reach new levels of success in 2016 and beyond.

Let’s take a closer look at what else is included in the Office 365 E5 SKU and what these features can do for your organization.

Delve Analytics 

On its own, Microsoft’s Delve gives employees an easy way to see what documents the people they interact with most are working on. It leverages machine learning to figure out an employee’s true team, not the one from their org chart. Delve Analytics takes that concept and uses the same machine learning to compile and track the data associated with it. It essentially gives managers a visual representation of how their employees work and collaborate with others.

Delve Analytics:

  • provides users and managers the chance to see which employees or departments work most effectively together and which ones need improvement
  • uses dashboards and interactive reports to display insights on time usage, helping employees identify inefficiencies and make the necessary corrections
  • increases the speed at which users can analyze and understand data surrounding how they do their jobs

Power BI

Power BI is a business analytics tool that allows users to better digest data pulled from across a variety of mediums. It takes that data and translates it into compelling visuals, reports, and dashboards. This allows users to gain greater insight into just how these different data sets relate to each other and the business in general.

Power BI:

  • enables companies to make better and more efficient use of the data sets they’re already generating
  • hooks into data sources such as SQL, Excel, Hadoop, Mail Chimp, Google Analytics, and many more to build a well-rounded picture of your organization
  • delivers data to users via live dashboards so that they have the most accurate, updated version of the figures at their disposal

The most amazing thing is that the dashboards aren’t difficult to build. Our Microsoft Practice Manager has put together a video in Office Mix to show how easy it is.

Customer Lockbox

For some customers, there’s an acute fear of losing control over their data when they entrust it to the cloud. The Customer Lockbox feature is designed to put those fears to rest once and for all. It does this by injecting customers into the security process, keeping them in full control over their own data regardless of where it may live.

Customer Lockbox:

  • gives customers the ability to limit who can access their data through the use of pre-assigned, two-factor authentication steps
  • increases transparency in terms of who is doing what with data stored in the cloud
  • improves customer confidence in migrating additional data sets into the cloud

Advanced eDiscovery

Organizations engaged in eDiscovery can find themselves having to sift through mountains of data to find the documents their legal teams want to see. This process can eat up a lot of time as well as resources. However, Microsoft’s Advanced eDiscovery tool was built with the goal of reducing the time and money spent conducting eDiscoveries, as well as limiting other challenges which can crop up.

Advanced eDiscovery:

  • integrates Equivio machine learning capabilities, predictive coding, and text analytics to make it easier to navigate data stockpiles
  • supports integration with non-Microsoft systems and tools to ensure important documents aren’t being missed
  • responds to user training, allowing it to more efficiently weed out valuable nuggets from large, unstructured data piles

Advanced Threat Protection

Email is one of an organization’s most important communication tools – it can also be one of the biggest threats. If users let their guards down, they could easily fall victim to a malware scam. Depending on a user’s level of access, a mistake like this could very easily put the entire organization at risk. Advanced Threat Protection from Microsoft works to protect users from known and unknown threats which may be lurking in emails, attachments, links, etc.

Advanced Threat Protection:

  • can be licensed for specific, high-risk users whose clearance level would be greatly coveted by attackers
  • sends every email that comes in off to a quarantine area where it’s scanned in depth for threats before delivery is completed
  • sends a stub to end users which enables them to read and act on the text of the email while the attachments and links are vetted for security

Experience the security and reliability of Office 365 E5

If you are on an Office 365 E plan, you can step up to E5, but you may want to enable some other workloads first, like SharePoint, OneDrive, etc. If you own Office 365 E1 or E3 and want some help in figuring out the next step, our award-winning Microsoft team is ready to help. Contact us today to schedule an Office 365 Workload Enablement Workshop.

You can also find us on Twitter @ArrayaSolutions. Follow us to stay updated on all of our latest blogs, special offers, and exclusive events.

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Imagine not being bound by strict Microsoft enterprise agreements (EAs). Instead, licenses, as well as support for those licenses, scales up or down based on need. In a pre-cloud world, theCloud_infrastructure_purchased flexibility to make changes on the fly like this didn’t exist. Scaling licenses or support meant either waiting out an EA or working with a Microsoft Large Account Reseller (LAR) to navigate the often complex legal issues surrounding EAs.

Microsoft’s Cloud Service Provider (CSP) program has changed all that. CSP allows customers to consume Microsoft’s industry-leading cloud services using a flexible, consumption-based pricing model.

Here are two specific use cases where the increased flexibility offered by Microsoft’s CSP program can make an impact.

Use Case #1: Life Sciences 

In highly-competitive fields like life sciences, there’s a lot riding on being the first to market with a product. How much? A study by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development pegged the cost of developing a new prescription drug at $2.6 billion. Tufts also estimated that the entire process can take more than a decade to complete. That’s a lot of resources and time to expend just to reach the gate.

Once a drug has been approved, there can’t be any delays in getting it into the hands of the people who need it. Life sciences organizations must be ready to ramp up their sales teams to ensure that happens. This involves onboarding new hires, getting them on the road and making sure they have the technology, tools and support needed to get the job done.

It’s up to IT to quickly provision the services needed to enable those efforts. They will likely need to increase usage of solutions such as Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite, Office 365, Azure and more. The good news is those tools are covered under the CSP program.

Since the CSP program covers cloud-based resources, all it takes to ramp up usage is a few clicks. Environments that are entirely on-premises would require the existing data center footprint to be expanded in order to cover growth. IT would have to plan ahead for situations where rapid growth would be necessary. This would mean buying more resources or seats than it initially needed, so it had them just in case.

Use Case #2: Mergers and Acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are another instance where the ease and scalability offered under Microsoft’s CSP program would prove beneficial. This past year was a record-breaker in terms of M&A activities, according to research conducted by Intralinks. While the growth rate of M&A is expected to taper off somewhat in 2016, growth is still expected. Intralinks predicts that the first quarter of 2016 will still see a growth rate of 5.5%.

There’s plenty on IT’s shoulders during an M&A scenario. Swiftly spinning up the services needed to unite two disparate organizations is essential to see a positive return on an M&A. In many industries, organizations are also subject to strict regulations surrounding M&A. These can carry stiff penalties for noncompliance, adding further motivation to get the job done both quickly and efficiently.

Once again, CSP can help. It can help shorten the time between the start of the M&A process and when the true value of the partnership is realized. It can also take some of the stress out of M&A by making it easier to manage while also diminishing the costly threat of noncompliance.

Gaining the best of Microsoft’s cloud

In addition to scalability, another goal of Microsoft’s CSP program is to inject simplicity into customers’ cloud journey. Under CSP, customers gain a unified point of contact for their Microsoft solutions and any support or professional services these solutions require. Rather than buying their licenses from a LAR and then receiving support from a separate partner, now they can do both with a CSP partner such as Arraya Solutions. This arrangement allows customers to streamline their cloud services and solutions into one monthly bill while also forming stronger bonds with their technology partners.

To learn more about the benefits of Arraya’s participation in Microsoft’s CSP program visit arraya.rocks/O365 or  reach out to us at www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/. We can also be contacted directly via our Twitter account, @ArrayaSolutions. Be sure to check our feed regularly for our latest blog updates, event notices, and special offers.

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We admit it, we’re proud of Alert, our enterprise monitoring and support platform – we’re just not so proud that we think it’s beyond improvement. We’re always looking for ways to better the yellow arrow upservices we provide our customers, and Alert isn’t exempt from this mindset. In fact, we’ve invested a significant amount of time over the past year to make Alert an even more valuable tool, and we expect those efforts to begin paying off shortly.

Alert is built on the philosophy that the best defense is a strong offense. This means keeping organizations out in front of problems by monitoring the uptime and utilization of the systems, devices, and applications they rely on every day. This service utilizes a small-footprint support appliance installed in customer networks to collect data and relay alerts to our central monitoring servers over secure VPN connections.

The true value of Alert, however, is the direct connection it forges between a customer’s onsite IT and our award-winning Managed Services team. Our experts get to know the customer’s environment, giving them the knowledge to weed out false alarms, catch problems before they can impact the business, and help right the ship.

Even though we were happy with Alert’s performance, we saw an opportunity to make changes that – while maybe not always visible to customers – would make operations smoother for us on the backend, thereby making Alert faster and more responsive.

More effective alert management

Enterprise monitoring services can be plagued by unnecessary background noise due to false alarms. Our team works hard to weed out unnecessary notifications from the true alerts produced, ensuring only confirmed problems are escalated for Alert customers. Here are two changes coming to Alert that we feel are going to help our team deliver on that mission:

  • Managed Services team members will soon be able to set “maintenance windows” for individual customers. Should a customer have a planned outage coming up, the times that a system will be down can be configured in Alert. Throughout the duration of that window, designated alerts will be suppressed. This will prevent our team members from having to sift through false positives.
  • Our team will also be able to mute reported alerts. This will cover issues that we and the customer already know about. Once again, this will lessen the amount of alerts our team must investigate. Instead of getting distracted by issues which are already being addressed, our team will be able to focus on valid alerts concerning real problems.

The end result of these changes will be fewer alerts for our team to field. Reducing ticket volume and making the ones that do come in more meaningful will allow them to focus on real problems.

Greater insight into the alerts you see

While those changes will be on the back end of Alert, there are plans to update the customer-facing side as well. Additional reporting capabilities are coming to Alert. As it stands, the service does give customers a dashboard which they can use to view visual representations of their Alert data. However, this can be tough to sort and categorize. Alert will soon offer additional reporting options to help customers make better sense of history and trends affecting their business and their IT environment. This insight can help customers more accurately judge when the time is right to invest in new hardware or make needed configuration changes.

Also, these features will enable us to build intelligence around how alerts can impact each other. As a result, our team and customers can be more confident that they’ve gotten to the root cause of issues and aren’t simply treating symptoms.

If you want to learn more about these upcoming improvements or are interested in leveraging the Alert service to protect your mission-critical infrastructure and applications, please contact us at: http://www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/.

Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions, to stay updated on all of our latest company news, blog posts, events, and special offers.