Arraya Insights

November 17, 2015 by Arraya Insights

Despite occasional declarations to the contrary, email isn’t going anywhere. At least not as far as the business world is concerned, anyway. Even though we may wish for it to vanish when we come in to a full inbox on a Monday morning, email remains a go-to method for workplace communication and collaboration.

As email volume has increased so has the burden placed on IT to manage and secure it. Also on the rise is the need for a tool to help end users easily prioritize what’s in their inboxes and on their schedules. Those are both areas where Microsoft’s Exchange 2016 shines. This tool was, as Microsoft puts it, “forged in the cloud,” so it’s designed to bring the power and flexibility of the cloud to all email deployments no matter where they’re housed.

Here’s what’s new in Exchange

Unsure whether upgrading to Exchange 2016 is the right move for your organization? Here are five new features which can deliver real, meaningful value.

Smarter email attachments – Under the old way of handling email attachments, it could be tough for users to keep track of whether or not they were working on the most recent version of a file. These version control headaches are a thing of the past in Exchange 2016. Now, users are able to attach a link to SharePoint 2016 or OneDrive for Business, just as they would a traditional attachment. This allows for more streamlined, efficient collaboration.
Blazing-fast searches – Considering how many messages most users have in their inboxes, it’s no wonder that finding one message in particular could give them fits. That’s not the case with Exchange 2016. Its search architecture is lightning-quick, searching server-side content indexes instead of local files. This cloud-based approach gets users to their targeted messages faster than ever. When in offline mode, traditional search methods will be used, ensuring continued access regardless of connectivity.
Advanced security tools – Exchange 2016 supports advanced threat protection, giving organizations access to a host of high-end security features. This includes elements such as safe attachments and time-of-click protection to defend against harmful URLs. Users can manage their inboxes with more confidence knowing that these features and more are watching over them. Meanwhile, the folks at the help desk will have far fewer email-initiated fires to fight.
Enhanced team productivity – Microsoft’s Groups feature is built on a foundation which includes Exchange, Skype for Business and others. This feature allows users to create a shared workspace where they can work in conjunction with their team members, wherever those team members happen to be working from. These workspaces cover everything from emails to calendar events, bringing teams closer together through a more-proficient way of sharing information.
A more user-friendly experience – The modern workplace is anywhere a worker happens to be that day and it includes whatever device he or she happens to have at the time. Exchange 2016 is designed to provide a leading user experience on all devices. In general, the user experience has been beefed up thanks to new features such as Swipe, inline reply, single-line view and more.

Award-winning Exchange know-how

Sadly, Exchange 2016 can’t make those stuffed inboxes on Monday mornings a thing of the past. However, it can help make working with and acting on them easier. With the above features and more, Exchange can enable employees to work more effectively and efficiently both individually and as part of a team.

Ready to learn more about what Exchange 2016 has to offer your organization? Head over to www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/ to open a dialogue with our award-winning Microsoft team. For the past two years, Arraya has been honored with Microsoft’s Mid-Atlantic Area “Rising Star” award for our expertise in walking organizations of all sizes and in numerous industries through deploying and managing Microsoft solutions, including Exchange. We stand ready to work with you to address your email, collaboration or communication needs.

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

November 16, 2015 by Arraya Insights

The tech industry loves its trends. Back in 1999 when my business partner David Bakker and I founded Arraya, industry experts such as Gartner were raving about DSL connections, IP telephony and wearables as some of the tech trends destined to shape the future. Sixteen years later, the tech landscape is dominated by coverage of Cloud, Internet of Things, big data and yes, we’re still talking about wearables.

The thing to remember is that oftentimes trends come and go. Sure, some stick around and deliver on the hype. Others come in with a lot of fanfare, but the initial promise often never turns into anything tangible or long-lasting.

Some companies in our field can get overwhelmed trying to keep up with all of these trends. We try to avoid chasing every new trend that comes up. Instead, we invest time and resources into singling out the ones which we believe will be around long term. Pooling the collective knowledge of every level of the company has helped us do extremely well over the years identifying emerging, difference-making technologies like virtualization.

As important as it is to be knowledgeable about what’s coming next, there’s an element that is equally important, if not more so: providing excellent customer service. There are lots of companies with strong technological skill sets, but many lack what I would call the “customer service gene.” Arraya’s ability to strike a balance between the two is what I believe sets us apart from the competition.

Finding the necessary balance

How have we been able to do that? It starts with the hiring process. Our hiring managers know our corporate culture inside and out. They know the types of candidates who have thrived in the past and the types who have faltered. We empower them to use their own experiences within our culture to hire people they’re confident will fit in.

Among the things they look for are candidates who seem to be easy to work with. Good interpersonal and communication skills are extremely important. Depending on the job they’re applying for, candidates are going to need to interact heavily with co-workers or customers or both. One thing is for sure, no one is on an island here at Arraya. We’re all dependent on others to help us perform our jobs at the highest level possible.

We also need candidates who are willing to go that extra mile and put in the time necessary to perform “Superhero” service for our customers. Admittedly, this can be a tough trait to predict. One potential indicator we’ve found is candidates with community involvement on their resume. It’s not an etched-in-stone fact, but it’s a good gauge of a well-rounded candidate. It also shows someone is willing to sacrifice a portion of his or her free time for something he or she believes in. We hope that is something which will carry over into working to delight our customers.

In addition to being passionate about doing what’s best for the customer, candidates must also have a passion for expanding their horizons. For our tech team, this means being driven by a desire to learn everything they can about the new tools and solutions to hit the market. For our non-tech personnel, it’s about finding ways to further their skills in their individual focus areas.

We reward and encourage that passion by providing our people with plenty of chances to hone their talents, whether it’s through industry certifications or by attending learning events. We want people who are going to grab those opportunities and run with them. Our hiring managers love it when candidates want to know how Arraya will help them reach their career goals. It shows they aspire to bigger things and want to keep their careers moving forward.

The Arraya outlook

There’s always something new waiting to take the tech world by storm. I believe that at Arraya, we’re uniquely positioned to adapt to our changing industry because of the people we hire and the emphasis we place on customer service. As the technologies of today are replaced by the technologies of tomorrow, these two elements will combine to keep Arraya on the forefront for our customers.

This balance has helped us escape being pigeon-holed as one type of company. We’re not just known for working with in one area of technology or specializing in a niche area. We’re known for being a true technology partner that delivers outstanding customer service.

November 12, 2015 by Arraya Insights

Are IT security policies a help or a hindrance? Ask the folks in IT, the ones tasked with keeping data secure and who know how easily lax policies can be exploited, and the answer is a massive help. Ask that same question to end users, however, and you’re liable to get the opposite response. Often, security policies can be complex, cumbersome and savvy users will spend time circumventing them.

That’s the indication according to the Context Aware Security study by Dell and Dimensional Research. The study polled business users and IT pros from across three countries to determine the impact of security policies on employee productivity among other topics.

The study asked respondents how often their employers’ security measures negatively impacted their productivity. Their response? An overwhelming 91% said that, at some point, their organization’s security policies have slowed productivity. Upon closer inspection, those numbers look like this:

11% said security policies always impact their productivity
23% said they frequently impact productivity
38% said they occasionally impact productivity
20% said they rarely have any impact
9% said they have no impact whatsoever

Curious as to where this situation is trending? Survey participants were also asked to describe the impact of changes that have been made in their corporate security environment over the past 18 months. They said:

Security has a greater impact on my day-to-day work – 53%
There has been no change – 36%
Security is less impactful on my day-to-day work – 11%

One area where IT and the business side are in total agreement is when it comes to IT’s priorities. The study asked participants – both from IT and from other departments – how much weight IT places on end user convenience in its security philosophy.

On the business side: 87% said IT prioritizes high corporate security standards over employee convenience compared to just 13% who said IT prioritizes employee convenience over corporate security standards
On the IT side: 86% said they prioritize high corporate security standards over employee convenience compared to 14% who said employee convenience is a higher priority than corporate security standards

According to those figures, when push comes to shove, user convenience is going to be sacrificed in favor of a more secure environment. This makes sense considering the monetary and PR costs associated with data breaches and other security lapses. However, this mindset could also be opening up IT to additional security risks.

A secure yet flexible solution for IT

In the Dell/Dimensional study, almost seven in ten security pros (69%) named “employees finding workarounds to avoid IT-imposed security measures” as a risk, good for the top spot on their list of concerns. Trailing not far behind it were “remote workers with access to corporate data” and “outsiders pretending to be legitimate end users.”

That brings us to another point that IT knows but which end users may not: they, meaning end users, are often an organization’s biggest IT security liability. This might be due to a malicious insider setting out to purposefully do some damage to his or her employer. It may also be someone skipping a pain-in-the-neck security check or inadvertently doing something else that gives attackers an easy way in. Either way, sensitive data could fall into the wrong hands, resulting in a black eye for the company and a black eye for IT.

IT security shouldn’t have to come down to a choice between keeping data safe or frustrating employees with tough-to-follow-or-use tools and processes. Arraya Solutions’ Microsoft team has the depth of knowledge and experience to help organizations find solutions which offer both security and ease of access. One such tool is Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS). EMS allows employees the mobility and flexibility they crave, while giving IT the hardened security tools needed to keep corporate data safe.

One feature of EMS is Advanced Threat Analytics, which monitors employee behavior patterns, authentication and known attack patterns in search of signs of an attack. It collects this information in the background, making it a significantly less cumbersome tool as far as employees are concerned. Plus, tracking behavior can help weed out concerns such as employee workarounds and potentially even outsiders posing as employees.

As for that issue of remote employees and access, EMS provides hardened content security. Even though employees are able to gain access to data from wherever and whenever they need to, it’s up to IT just what they can do with it. IT can set rules to keep sensitive documents from being forwarded, printed out, copy-and-pasted, etc. Once again, both sides get what they need.

Ready to learn more about EMS from Microsoft and how it strikes a balance between IT peace of mind and employee usability? Visit us at www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/ to start the conversation with one of our Account Executives today. Or, reach out to us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions. While you’re there, click “Follow” to stay in the loop with all of our latest company news, insights and special offers.

November 10, 2015 by Arraya Insights

Put the rumors to bed because last week it finally became official: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is coming to Azure. Microsoft and Red Hat, a pair of former rivals, reached a long-buzzed about agreement to make RHEL, Red Hat’s enterprise distribution of Linux, available on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

This move is being viewed by the tech industry as a major win for both companies. For Microsoft, Azure was already a leading cross-platform enterprise cloud solution. However, it lacked the RHEL compatibility of many of its top competitors. By bringing RHEL into the fold, Microsoft is able to ensure Azure can meet the needs of an even larger segment of enterprises.

As for Red Hat, it benefits by adding another industry leader to its list of supported hosts. On top of that, RHEL won’t just be available on Azure, mind you. RHEL has been designated as the “preferred” Linux option for enterprise computing on Azure, giving it a clear place of prominence among the rest of Microsoft’s Linux partners.

How customers will benefit from this partnership

This is all well and good, but what does the deal mean for customers? Here’s a look at three of the top takeaways from the move, as highlighted by Microsoft and Red Hat themselves:

Red Hat solutions will become Azure natives. Customers will soon be able to run their RHEL workloads, including apps, images and virtual machines, directly on Azure. Meanwhile, Azure subscribers will gain access to the full slate of apps offered by Red Hat, such as Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Red Hat JBoss Web Server, and more.
Consistent workload management throughout the hybrid cloud. Red Hat’s CloudForms customers will have the option to manage RHEL workloads on either Hyper-V or Azure. This ability comes about as the result of new interoperability between Microsoft’s Azure and System Center Virtual Machine Manager and CloudForms. It’s believed that the option to manage Azure workloads directly from CloudForms will be added in the coming months.
Improved app development ability. Bringing .NET to Red Hat technologies like RHEL and OpenShift provides developers with a common toolset and language, which will work across both Windows and Linux. This interoperability could very well help to power the next wave of app developments.

Learn more about the Microsoft/Red Hat pact

These benefits and more will be available to customers in the coming weeks and months as the partnership is revved up.

Still have questions about how the Microsoft/Red Hat agreement will impact you? Or, are you interested in learning more about bringing Azure to your organization so you can begin to take advantage of the benefits listed above and others stemming from this new partnership?

Arraya Solutions’ Microsoft Practice is ready to help. Our team has won the Microsoft Mid-Atlantic Area “Rising Star” award in 2014 and 2015 and has a wealth of enterprise-level knowledge and experience. That know-how and experience has been boiled down into a proven methodology used to deliver high value solutions to our clients. Our team can walk you through the nuances of what to expect from this deal, work with you to decide whether or not an Azure deployment is the right fit for your organization, take the lead in rolling it out or simply offer support and insight every step of the way.

If you’d like to begin the conversation, visit us at www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/. We can also be found on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions. Be sure to follow us so you can stay up to date with all of our latest company news, blog posts and special offers.

November 6, 2015 by Arraya Insights

The increased device connectivity offered by Internet of Things (IoT) technology can do wonders for manufacturers. Devices which used to be isolated are gaining network access, sensors and intelligence capabilities, resulting in an abundance of valuable data and information from the production floor and elsewhere for manufacturers to analyze. This allows them to make better decisions, spot process inefficiencies and help their customer experience standout from the rest of the pack.

As we laid out in our post entitled What it Takes to Bridge the IT/OT Divide and Succeed with IoT, the manufacturing industry is expected to play a substantial role in driving the future of IoT technology. According to Cisco, manufacturing will be responsible for driving 34% of all IoT value over the next decade and, even more telling, 86% of manufacturing companies expect their IoT investments to increase “somewhat” or “significantly” over the next three years.

So the benefits are there and the interest is also there. That doesn’t mean increasing IoT deployments is going to be an easy road to travel. There are plenty of obstacles just waiting to subvert organizational buy-in, derail roll-out efforts or worse. Right near the top of that list: privacy and security fears. In a recent study on manufacturing and IoT by Zebra Technologies Corporation, 46% of those surveyed named privacy and security concerns along with integration challenges as a top barrier to adopting IoT solutions.

Focus on these 3 areas

Manufacturers who are hesitant to fully get on board with IoT due to concerns over security or privacy could find themselves struggling to keep up with the agility and efficiency of competitors who do. This puts IT in the position of having to find the tools or policies needed to support the business, while also speaking to the security concerns surrounding those solutions.

The Channel Company’s IT Best of Breed website suggests there are three IoT security focal points which need to be covered. They are:

Securing IoT endpoints. The devices which connect to the IoT can be a major security weak spot. The news is full of stories on how hackers are targeting this device or how they’re able to break into that. These vulnerabilities run the gamut from cars to baby monitors and beyond. However, vulnerabilities aren’t unique to consumer items. If the devices manufacturers welcome into their facilities aren’t secure, it makes life easier on attackers.
Securing IoT engagements. Security can’t only revolve around the devices themselves. It also needs to consider how those devices interact with the other elements making up the IoT. This includes apps, cloud tools and even end users. Without the proper access, encryption and privacy controls, among other security services, IoT will remain vulnerable.
Securing IoT ecosystems. IoT deployments necessitate a concerted effort of onsite IT, vendors providing the technology, partners who help implement it and many others. At any point in this extended cycle, a vulnerability could easily be introduced and then go unnoticed – until something goes wrong. Manufacturers must have a framework in place to ensure security is top of mind for all of those interlocking components throughout that process.

Join us for a free instructional IoT event

Cisco is an industry-leader in the IoT sphere. Within its diverse infrastructure portfolio are solutions which touch on each of those security concerns. These solutions work together to protect endpoints and the environments in which they reside. They also make it easier for companies to link and manage previously unconnected devices.

The tools are important but so is finding a partner to help manufacturers choose and deploy the right IoT tools for the job. That’s where Arraya Solutions comes in. Our team has a wealth of experience supporting and deploying security and IoT solutions from Cisco. They know where vulnerabilities and integration pitfalls lurk and what needs to be done to avoid them.

If you’re ready to learn more about what IoT can do for manufacturers, join us for a free half-day seminar on Wednesday Dec. 2 at the Sheraton in King of Prussia, PA. This event will feature multiple sessions, all with the same goal: helping manufacturers succeed with IoT. Each session will be led by members of Cisco or Arraya’s expert teams of engineers.

Have a question you would like answered before the event? Feel free to reach out to us at www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/. We can also be reached directly via our Twitter account, @ArrayaSolutions, which also features the latest company news, our take on industry hot-buttons and links to special offers.

November 5, 2015 by Arraya Insights

It’s not often our Microsoft team gets thrown by an issue they encounter at a customer’s site. When it does happen, no white flags are waved and no hands are thrown in the air. Instead, they embrace the challenge and get right to work learning everything they can about the issue so they can solve it.

Case in point: While he was working on upgrading a client’s Active Directory from Windows Server 2003 to 2012 R2, one of our Microsoft engineers ran into an issue after he promoted the first 2012 R2 domain controller. That domain controller refused to replicate properly with the existing 2003 domain controllers. The ADPrep commands had all run without issue and the domain controller had promoted properly, but replication wouldn’t occur.

The error messages he received included:

Active Directory Domain Services did not perform an authenticated remote procedure call (RPC) to another directory server because the desired service principal name (SPN) for the destination directory server is not registered on the Key Distribution Center (KDC) domain controller that resolves the SPN.
The attempt to establish a replication link for the following writable directory partition failed.

Upon further investigation, the following error was found in the system event log: The Security System could not establish a secured connection with the server LDAP/ServerName.Domain.com/Domain.com@Domain.com. No authentication protocol was available.

Essentially, when the new 2012 R2 domain controller was promoted, there was very minimal communication between it and the preexisting 2003 domain controllers. In a normal upgrade, information would flow easily between these two types of domain controllers. Since it wasn’t, it meant the new domain controller wasn’t properly replicating changes happening in the environment.

This combination of communication issues and error messages was one the engineer hadn’t come across before. After consulting with other members of our Microsoft team, who were also unfamiliar with it, he began to do some sleuthing.

Correcting the domain controller issues

During his search, our engineer found a few Microsoft knowledge base articles online detailing similar error messages. However, these articles weren’t dealing with replication issues. While the error messages may have been similar, the bigger picture problems were things like not being able to remote desktop into a server. The fact that the error messages were so similar led him to look more closely at what the articles had to say.

The posts pointed to an issue with the Active Directory KRBTGT account stemming from an authoritative restoration on the Users container. The KRBTGT account is a service account used by the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) for encryption purposes. Problems can occur when the version number of the KRBTGT account increases following an authoritative restoration. If a version number reaches a certain level, it can cause miscommunication between domain controllers.

To test the theory, the tech ran a command in the customer’s test environment to see the version number of the KRBTGT account of the 2003 domain controllers. Sure enough, the version number on the KRGTBT account was extremely high. This indicated that an authoritative restore, likely even multiple authoritative restores, had been performed on the account.

Once the root cause of the issue was tracked down, the fix itself was actually fairly easy. A hotfix from Microsoft was installed on all of the 2003 domain controllers, which allowed the 2012 R2 domain controller to recognize the validity of the 2003s. Once complete, the new 2012 R2 domain controller was able to replicate successfully and there were no further problems with the upgrade.

The Arraya Promise

We take great pride in the depth of knowledge that our Microsoft practice has cultivated over the years. Our know-how hasn’t gone unnoticed either as we’re a two-time winner (2014, 2015) of Microsoft’s Mid-Atlantic Area “Rising Star” award. However, it’s inevitable that, on occasion, a previously-unknown issue is going to crop up. We don’t pretend like our Microsoft team has seen all there is to see. What we do promise is that, if they do encounter something new, they will work tirelessly to find a solution.

In this case, delivering our signature superhero service required us to do some detective work first. Once the pieces of the puzzle had been put together, we were able to get back to the mantra we’ve laid out for every customer engagement: Go above and beyond to help them succeed.

To learn more about how our Microsoft team can help your organization, please visit www.arrayasolutions.com/partnership/microsoft/. If you’re ready to strike up a conversation about Microsoft, or any one of our other specialty areas, click here.

Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions, to keep up with all of our latest company news, special offers and insights.

November 3, 2015 by Arraya Insights

There are plenty of roads which lead companies to embark on or expand upon an Office 365 deployment. Things like mobility, email, file sharing and social collaboration are on that list, and each one can have a positive impact on an organization. Those elements require careful planning and consideration before their full value can be realized, and each one requires a different skill set to support.

Whether the goal is migrating your organization into Office 365 or enabling new features in an existing tenant, Arraya’s Managed Services can help. As part of our Managed Service for Office 365 offering, Arraya provides the tools, resources and support you need to achieve the full value of the solution.

Support when and where you need it

We believe flexibility and the ability to grow in tandem with customers’ needs are critical features of all our Managed Services. This thought process led to us creating three unique levels of Managed Services for Office 365. Here’s a look at each level as well as some situations where that service level would come into play.

Level 1: End User Support – Arraya’s End User Support is focused on solving problems on corporate frontlines. It provides around-the-clock application assistance for end-users throughout your organization. Help is always there when users need it, and IT can preserve its resources for innovation and improvement-based projects. Among the issues this level covers include:

Anytime a user is unable to access emails in Outlook or webmail
Email issues affecting more than one user such as access problems or bounce-backs from specific domains
Forgotten passwords and locked user accounts

Level 2: Infrastructure Support – The next step is supporting the technology itself. Arraya’s Infrastructure Support is dedicated to handling the daily administration and maintenance needed to keep an Office 365 tenant secure and running at peak efficiency. This includes:

Adjusting mailbox usage policies and delegation rights
Modifying existing admin and user roles
Updating IP allow/block lists
Modifying Spam policies and quarantine actions

Level 3: Enablement Support – The third level of support deals with expanding service capabilities, aiding in the migration process and spinning up new features. It’s ideal for ensuring customers get the full benefit from their Office 365 investment. Enablement Support helps customers who are:

Interested in growing Office 365 beyond one tool, for example Exchange, to include other options, such as SharePoint, Skype for Business, etc.
Looking to interface Skype for Business with their corporate phone system
Trying to spin up Yammer and integrate it to an existing SharePoint deployment to further increase collaboration abilities

Achieve your Office 365 goals

Arraya’s Microsoft practice has developed a deep talent pool covering, among other areas, Microsoft’s data center and collaboration stacks. This impressive collection of knowledge and ability has helped Arraya gain recognition as a leader in our region and win the Microsoft Mid-Atlantic Rising Star Award in 2014 and 2015.

Managed Services for Office 365 is designed to expand upon the skills and know-how of organizations’ IT teams without expanding the size of the team itself. Our team partners with existing personnel to learn about an organization’s distinct IT environment and goals. Then they work together to craft solutions to bring those goals within reach.

If you’d like to learn more about our Microsoft practice or want to strike up a conversation about Managed Services for Office 365 or any of our other Microsoft solutions, visit us at: www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/. Or, we can be reached on Twitter @ArrayaSolutions. While you’re there, be sure to follow us so you can keep up with our latest company news, thoughts on industry hot buttons and special offers.

October 30, 2015 by Arraya Insights

There’s been some interesting news regarding Google Apps for Work recently. First was the announcement that Google is making a very aggressive move in its battle to win the hearts of the Enterprise. At a high level, Google will give away Google Apps to companies with a Microsoft EA as long as they promise to subscribe after the EA is up. Second, “The Mandate,” which comes from Google’s executives and outlines the motivation behind the aggressiveness. This is a grab to get more Google in your face during work hours.

While this is an interesting prospect for Google-eyed customers that might be ending their EA, for others, it’s not necessarily about the hard subscription cost or ‘being trapped’ as the articles state it. Putting aside the fact that Google is doing nothing to improve its service with this offering or have really nothing new to offer, let’s look at some reasons why customers would still choose Office 365 over Google Apps for Work.

Cost
Let’s start with cost. With Google’s offer, you are getting Google Apps for Work for free for a time. If you have an EA with Microsoft however, you’ve committed to paying for either Exchange on-premises or Office 365 for a certain period. Are you really saving anything by moving? Probably not. Come the end of your EA, you are either renewing your EA, adjusting it, or paying for Google Apps.

Google is offering partners $25/user for training people on Google Apps for Work. This strikes me as extremely telling about how Google views their own product. Microsoft offers $15/user for new Office 365 seats (starting at 150 seats minimum). The money is to be used for deployment, not training.

Let that sink in for a moment. Google is basically stating that their solution requires training and Microsoft is offering to lower the deployment cost for the customer. While it is unclear as to whether Microsoft is confident enough in Office’s ubiquity to not offer training funds, this does seem to indicate that Google isn’t.

Switching platforms is painful for any working population. I’ve lived through an Office 365 to Google Apps for Work migration at an Enterprise and it was extremely painful. Training is likely not enough. The solution itself requires a culture change and a different way of working.

I’ve covered the approaches to collaboration between Google and Microsoft before. Putting aside the differences, Google Apps for Work is rife with issues that have lingered for years. Instead of addressing these issues, they are putting forth this effort to gain customers which doesn’t involve product improvement and organic growth.

The Primary Business Model
This is the point that people seem to miss in the Google vs. Microsoft Enterprise debate. Microsoft has always been software and productivity focused. Collaboration is their bread and butter at this point. It is how they make money.

Google was born out of one specific revenue stream and it wasn’t software. They are the king of search and data collection, turning the data into profits. Products that fail to meet this revenue stream seem to meet an untimely death. Google states that they don’t use Apps for Work data in the same way, but the question is then – what’s the point?

As stated in the Business Insider article, Google is missing out on 8-10 hours of our work days, which is a significant chunk of time. They see Google Apps for Work as an entry point into this time, not as the solution it actually is for your business. Here’s the quote:

Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have long believed that given the sheer amount of time that people spend at their jobs, ignoring the workplace would be doing a disservice to Google’s long-standing corporate mission — “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Security
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, Google’s security story has proven out to be not as robust as Microsoft’s. If you’re paying attention to the cloud market lately, you’ve seen this for yourself.

Microsoft is fighting the privacy fight harder than any cloud provider at the moment. Watch Brad Smith, President of Microsoft and Chief Legal Officer, talk about his perceptions earlier this year. He clearly articulates the security and legal obligations from Microsoft’s perspective as a cloud provider.

Taking this conversation further, Brad recently wrote up an excellent blog post on his thoughts regarding the collapse of US-EU Safe Harbor. Microsoft is watching all of these machinations closely to see how it impacts the business, industry and customers.

On the other side, Google barely states anything about it and furthermore, makes it difficult to search for more information. If you search for David Drummond, Google’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, and Safe Harbor, you won’t find much out there. There is an article from 2014, but that’s not much help. In fact, if you search for David Drummond and Google, the recent news results are pretty interesting (using Google to avoid bias).

Will this move matter?
This move will likely push Google fans in IT management over the edge to sign their companies up. Chances are though that these customers have already moved to Google under the guise of cost savings, which tends to be the only argument I ever hear. My favorite rationale is that Outlook works with Google Apps for Work. Two notes there – first, if Google is so great, why do you still need Outlook and second, when you see what Google Apps Sync for Outlook actually does, you’ll stop using it.

CIO Magazine covers this and other reasons why customers, even with the hard cost argument, are moving from Google Apps to Office 365. The momentum is definitely swinging Microsoft’s direction. They are making the right investments in the platform, growing their business while helping customers collaborate securely.

The question you need to ask is – what is Google’s real motivation behind this announcement? Is it to help you or them?

October 28, 2015 by Arraya Insights

The checklist of things which need to be addressed before, during and after a data center relocation or consolidation project goes on and on. Further complicating things is the fact that, since these types of moves aren’t a regular occurrence, most IT teams don’t have an abundance of experience leading them. If any items aren’t checked off, outages and even data loss could occur.

Considering how much is riding on a successful data center project, it’s easy to see why they can be a tremendous source of stress. However that doesn’t have to be the case. While making major changes to the data center will likely never be something IT looks forward to, it’s possible to remove some of the biggest hurdles.

Enter: ServiceNow, the enterprise cloud company. When paired together, three ServiceNow solutions can transform a data center move or consolidation project into a more manageable undertaking. They are Discovery, Change Management and ServiceWatch.

ServiceWatch and Discovery both fall under the umbrella of ServiceNow’s IT Operations Management (ITOM) solutions. ITOM builds upon the basic service package offered by ServiceNow, (which is where you’ll find Change Management). Each ITOM solution is concerned with managing the provisioning, capacity, performance and availability of the IT Infrastructure. ITOM means faster results for end users, increased productivity for IT and an improved perception of IT from the Executive Leadership team.

Let’s take a closer look at each and the role they can play in data center projects.

ServiceNow Discovery

IT must have a strong knowledge of the lay of the land before beginning a data center move or consolidation. Without that, IT team members will be forced to devote valuable time to manually going in and compiling a list of what’s there, what’s connected to what and so on.

Here’s what to do: Discovery scans the corporate network in search of the IP-enabled assets and configuration items that make up the IT infrastructure. It then maps the interdependencies of each and feeds that data into the CMDB. These scans take place on a recurring schedule to ensure the accuracy of the information being stored within the CMDB. This way, when the time comes to get started, IT will already have access to a detailed data center inventory, enabling it to swiftly move on to the project’s next steps.

This solution:

Unites an organization’s CI and asset tracking data in a single, unified location
Automatically creates relationships and visual maps depicting the connections between different data center elements
Supports custom-built applications

Change Management

During a data center project, there are going to be systems which need to be powered down or decommissioned, programs which need to be migrated off of, etc. Activities of this scale not only need the proper approval to move forward, they must also be tracked every step of the way.

Here’s what to do: Change Management is designed to remove the uncertainty and the anxiety that are often staples of making changes. It adds clarity to the process through a change calendar, dynamic risk and impact calculation and change collision detection. These features can protect IT and business operations from the adverse, unexpected effects of a modification. Instead of fearing what might go wrong, IT can fully embrace changes for the upsides they offer.

This solution:

Automates and streamlines the change approval process via a powerful workflow engine
Provides a more accurate calculation of risk, enabling better decision making through quantitative risk assessments
Prevents escalating project budgets either by backing out ineffective changes or by rolling out a solution to the problem

ServiceWatch

Nothing exists on an island in business. This is especially true in the case of a project on the scale of a data center move. The decisions made in IT during these projects are invariably going to affect other business groups and the services they provide. However, IT doesn’t always have access to the full, business-wide picture before making a change, potentially leading to service disruptions and continuity issues.

Here’s how it works: ServiceWatch maps the relationships between IT components and the specific business services they support. It displays that information on dashboards which are updated in real-time. This bolsters service continuity efforts by helping IT see which services could be affected by a change and therefore need to be backed up to prevent downtime or data loss.

This solution:

Extends the capabilities of existing ServiceNow CMDB deployments
Makes IT more service-aware and puts IT components into the context of the rest of the business
Provides staff with the info to address problems without the need for “war room” scenarios

If you’d like to learn more, contact us at www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/ or through Twitter by sending your questions, comments and ideas to @ArrayaSolutions.

October 26, 2015 by Arraya Insights

Innovation is more than a favorite blog topic of ours. It’s long been a cornerstone of our corporate culture here at Arraya and it’s something we strive to bring to every project we embark on.

Our innovative efforts on one project recently ended with something besides a highly-satisfied customer. The work we did eventually led to us being named a finalist for a Marcum Innovator of the Year Award. These awards celebrate Philadelphia-area companies driving advancements in the fields of Biotech/Healthcare, Business Services, Manufacturing, Real Estate and Technology. Arraya has been nominated in the Business Services category for our “Mergers and Acquisitions in a Box” solution.

Where it all began

M&A in a Box began with a customer request. One of our longtime customers was involved in an M&A situation and needed to blend its technology environment with that of another company. The customer knew we had a wealth of experience supporting the technologies involved and asked us for our help.

While we worked on this project, we began thinking about taking an intricate and challenging concept like M&A – something that can cause great anxiety in even hardened business leaders – and distilling the concepts behind executing it into an easy-to-follow, repeatable methodology.

The project was a success and it would become the first of many. With each subsequent engagement, we learned more about how we could facilitate a smoother M&A changeover from the technology side. Soon, we had a skeleton of what companies would need from us, where potential trouble spots lurked and what needed to be done to mitigate those trouble spots before they could cause us problems. Thus, M&A in a Box was born.

The nuts and bolts of M&A in a Box

M&As have become a fairly regular occurrence in plenty of industries, especially in healthcare. Despite the frequency of these events, many IT teams don’t have a plan in place to keep the process moving swiftly and efficiently when it begins. As a result, more stress and chaos is added in to already stressful and chaotic situations.

Our M&A in a Box offering addresses those deficiencies by allowing companies to leverage Arraya’s technical knowledge and experience to remove most of the headaches typically associated with bringing two technology environments together under one corporate banner. This includes everything from email accounts to proper authorization systems and network connectivity. In an M&A engagement, Arraya’s team will support the necessary re-architecting of each of those functions and more to ensure all corporate resources are on the same page. This allows organizations to focus on areas outside of the realm of IT which must also be linked.

The thing is, no two M&A situations are exactly the same, so the name – which hints at something mass-produced – is a little bit of a misnomer. The solution is really a flexible and scalable methodology that may be utilized across a spectrum of different industries, by organizations of all shapes and sizes. The name is meant to reference the ease which M&A in a Box introduces into the process.

The end result of using Arraya’s M&A in a Box offering is a low-cost way to reduce the risk often found in events like mergers and acquisitions. In addition, it can ensure companies realize the gains and advantages that made them decide to head down the M&A path in the first place.

A stress-free union

We’re thrilled that Marcum and Smart CEO Magazine (which co-sponsors the awards) saw value in what we do and selected us as a finalist. The Innovator of the Year Award winners will be announced at a ceremony on Oct. 27. Win or lose, we’re proud to be nominated. Truth be told, we’re even prouder of what we’ve been able to accomplish so far with M&A in a Box. And like any good innovator, we can’t help but think about how we can evolve and grow the service in the coming years.

Would you like to learn more about M&A in a Box or one of the other IT solutions or services we offer? Visit us at www.arrayasolutions.com/contact-us/. You can also get in contact with us and stay on top of all of the latest Arraya news, events and special offers by following us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions.