Arraya Insights

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The road to selling a new piece of technology used to lead through the CIO and IT. After all, they were the ones with the tech knowledge and the decision-making power. Recent trends such as Cloud Business Team Talking Techmigrations and increased workforce mobility have altered that landscape and those conversations fairly dramatically. Instead of only talking to techies about tech, we find ourselves talking tech with folks on the business side, talking business to folks on the tech side and everything in between.

I came across a study recently which discussed the distributed nature of the present day IT budget. The study, CompTIA’s “Building Digital Organizations,” analyzed IT spend and it showed:

  • IT owns the entire tech budget in just 19% of organizations
  • In 33% of companies, departments outside IT have discretionary funds at their disposal to be used for tech purchases
  • The tech budget is split evenly between IT and other functions in 20% of companies
  • Business functions control the majority of the technology budget in 9% of instances
  • The business side is in complete control of the technology budget in 19% of organizations

Gartner’s predictions are strongly indicative of the same trends. According to Gartner, by 2017, only 50% of total IT spend will be under the control of the IT department.

Finance; Marketing; Sales; HR, they’re all playing a sizable role when it comes to making technology decisions. That can be a lot of different voices to hear out and different perspectives to consider.

Even though it’s being split up amongst all of those functions, the budget itself isn’t becoming more restricted. On average, only 5% of respondents in CompTIA’s study said the technology budget for the IT function was decreasing. In terms of the business function, only 2% said the amount other departments could spend on technology was shrinking. In both cases, the rest of respondents saw the budget either growing or maintaining its current size.

IT’s role in business

Just because IT may not have total authority over the technology budget, that doesn’t mean its influence is diminishing. Instead of acting solely as a keeper of the infrastructure, modern IT is now being asked to serve as an enabler of business success. For evidence of this, look no further than the same CompTIA study. In it, a majority (57%) of IT respondents reported seeing their technology objectives become more business focused.

As the expectations placed on IT change, so must the role of the CIO. In the 2015 State of the CIO study, 85% of CIOs said their role was becoming more important to the business itself. This figure towers over the 20% who felt they were being sidelined or marginalized.

Considering how important technology has become to an organization’s success, it’s clear this trend won’t be changing course any time soon. After all, even if all of the other pieces are there, without a reliable, powerful and scalable IT environment, a company is going to struggle to meet its objectives.

What this means for Arraya

At Arraya, we’ve responded to these trends in a couple of ways, including exploring new offerings or initiatives. For example, we’re rolling out a new solution which is geared specifically towards the business and operations end. This offering can eliminate most of the headaches associated with the merger and acquisition (M&A) process. It’s purpose-built to simplify the complex and multifaceted world of M&A by allowing organizations to leverage Arraya’s wealth of technical knowledge and experience in the arena of bringing two separate technology environments together under the same banner.

We’ve always tailored the solutions we architect for customers to meet their unique needs. However, we also must be prepared to tailor our messaging and the conversations we have which surround those solutions. They need to exist in contexts that are meaningful to each of the varied audiences we address inside the companies we work with.

Personally, I never want Arraya to be a company that shies away from new trends and, by extension, new audiences. Thriving in this new landscape requires us, as a company, to be even more flexible in our thought-process and our approach. The good news is, I believe the collection of talent we’ve assembled is absolutely capable of rising to that challenge.

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Microsoft just welcomed a pair of massive – and also very different – organizations into the Office 365 (O365) fold. All told, these deals represent a combined commitment of roughly 400,000 licenses, which will be utilized by end users across the globe. A level of trust is an essential precondition in any IT engagement. However, a commitment on that scale shows just how much faith these organizations are willing to put in the reliability, security and efficiency of O365.

Most recently, Microsoft and General Electric (GE) reached an agreement to bring O365 to an estimated 300,000 of its employees who work in 170 countries worldwide. GE cited an interest in furthering its investment in employee productivity and collaboration as the main driving forces behind the deal. The company sees these endpoints being achieved via O365 features such as Skype for Business, its dependable scalability, and its ability to power a mobile workforce – while keeping data secure and adhering to corporate policies and industry regulations.

Earlier in the month, the United States Air Force (USAF) also got on board with O365. The USAF purchased roughly 100,000 licenses and will begin rolling them out during the government’s next fiscal year. What led the USAF to pursue this deal, which is the largest commercial cloud contract in the history of the Department of Defense? In addition to cutting computing expense over the next three years, the USAF was also drawn to O365 due to its ability to forge solid lines of communication between disparate groups, in this case the USAF’s active, civilian and reserve personnel.

Feel secure with Office 365

Organizations considering making the switch to O365 have probably already done a good deal of research on it. They know their options, the benefits, etc. However, there still may be some questions or concerns which need to be addressed. For those cases, Microsoft has put together Trust Center.

Trust Center is an online warehouse of blogs, FAQs, lists and whitepapers related to O365 and trust. It’s designed to ease any fears potential customers may have about getting onboard with O365 by providing them with easy access to answers to the questions which typically haunt potential adopters. Once they have this foundation, they can feel more comfortable putting their faith in O365 to manage their two most precious assets – their people and their data.

Topics covered include:

  • Built-in security– Threats can come from anywhere. O365 employs a defense-in-depth approach to protect your network at the physical, logical and data layers. Trust Center can help explain those defenses as well as the enterprise-grade user and admin controls which come standard with O365.
  • Privacy by design– In the context of O365, Microsoft wants to be seen as a data custodian and processor and nothing more. Trust Center details the ways in which O365 utilizes data and the controls that have been put in place to ensure customers’ data stays private.
  • Continuous compliance– Standards and regulations are fluid concepts. Whether those standards are location or industry-based, updates are a regular occurrence. With Trust Center, it’s easier to see how O365 can automatically adjust to those changes, helping to keep organizations in compliance.
  • Transparent operations– Just because your data is in the Cloud, it shouldn’t mean sacrificing your ability to keep a close eye on it. Dive in deeper with Trust Center to find out more about the methods O365 uses to keep customers connected to their data through its access, support and accountability policies and processes.

The information Trust Center provides can be a good jumping off point for those who want to learn more about O365 or are still working to overcome internal doubts about the safety and security of Cloud applications. (Another way to overcome doubt? With the help of Microsoft VP & General Counsel Brad Smith’s recent keynote at the Microsoft World Partner Conference.)

Deepening that knowledge can be difficult without the help of a partner like Arraya Solutions. Our Microsoft team has the O365 knowledge and experience to clear up lingering questions or fears. Beyond that, our team can help determine the optimal service level, architect and help execute a hassle-free deployment plan, and provide lasting support to ensure full value is achieved from the solution.

Ready to learn more about O365 or how our Microsoft team can make a difference at your organization? Visit us at www.ArrayaSolutions.com/partnership/microsoft/ or reach out to one of our Arraya Account Executives today to schedule an information session.

In the meantime, be sure to follow us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions, to keep up with all of the latest company news, special offers and industry updates.

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I have a confession to make. I’m new to consulting. However, I have been working with Microsoft technologies for over 15 years now. From support to architecture to managing IT teams, I’ve seen Microsoft from many different angles. Now that I work for Arraya Solutions, I can experience Microsoft from a new side – as a partner.

This year, I was able to attend Microsoft WPC (Worldwide Partner Conference), which was held July 12-16 in Orlando. While the focus was mostly on Microsoft, partner, and customer relationships, there were surprisingly a few talks and announcements that Microsoft customers should know about.

How Microsoft Views Security and Privacy

If you ever have a doubt as to Microsoft’s investment in your privacy or their understanding of the security of your data in a global marketplace, look up Brad Smith. Brad is Microsoft’s Executive VP for Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA) and at WPC, he delivered a fantastic 28 minute keynote centered on data security and the balance between trust and empowering everyone through technology.

It may seem odd, but Brad started by talking about the Charlie Hebdo attacks, where terrorists used Microsoft accounts. He continued on that thread by discussing how law enforcement used the same data to capture the terrorists and how the people of Paris used it to organize protests. From there, he moved into concerns from governments about data encryption.

“The internet is not some other place, cyber space, it is the place where people go to organize themselves and define what will happen in the real world.”
-Brad Smith

Microsoft realizes that it can only succeed by figuring out how to ride the security and privacy wave. It was the first company to get a thumbs up from Europe’s Data Protection laws and the first to attain ISO27018, a standard for cloud privacy. Microsoft has also sued the US government three times in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court over privacy concerns. But it goes beyond profitability through security. Microsoft is genuinely invested in empowering everyone while protecting them.

“Our customers and society expect us to maximize the value of technology while also preserving the values that are timeless.”
-Satya Nadella

Windows 10, Office 2016 and Phones

Bryan Roper, Executive Demo Lead at Microsoft, stole the show at WPC through his amazing demo of Windows 10 (starting here at 4:50). If you want to be entertained and learn about Windows 10, check out the video. He covers Windows 10 from the end user experience, starting by showing how Windows 10 is a familiar experience whether you are coming from Windows 7 or 8 through the desktop, task bar and, of course, the return of the Start Menu.

Bryan also covered Office 2016 briefly. In that time, he managed to show two new powerful features – real time collaboration in the Office suite and how Outlook will suggest the most recently used files when you add an attachment.

Unexpectedly, there was a demo of the Cortana Analytics Suite in a small custom application as well, which showed how Cortana can help anyone work with Big Data.

My favorite announcement at this keynote though was Terry Myerson, Executive VP of OS and Devices, reaffirming Microsoft’s commitment to Windows Phone. As I’m stuck with an iPhone 4s at the moment, I can’t wait until the new platform launches!

More Office 365

In early July, Microsoft announced the preview of three new Skype for Business Online features focused on Enterprise Voice – Skype Meeting Broadcast, PSTN Conferencing and Cloud PBX and PSTN Calling. The real news came during WPC though.

Microsoft announced Office 365 E5, which will encompass these new features, plus analytics like Power BI Pro and Delve Organizational Analytics, and new advanced security features for eDiscovery, Customer Lockbox, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and Safe Attachments.

This new E5 license basically throws everything Office 365 can do into one license.

Julia White, General Manager of Office, had another surprise at WPC. Besides announcing over 400 updates to Office 365 in the past year, GigJam made its debut.

GigJam is an on-the-fly mini-application for sharing content and data from into a single workspace that can also be shared.

“GigJam isn’t some fancy screen sharing. It distributes a light-weight app cross devices. Future of biz process, productivity.”
-Satya Nadella (Twitter)

Imagine being on your desktop and working on a complex data set. Your engineer is on the road with his mobile device and needs to see what you’re working on. With GigJam, you can share out your workspace with the relevant data sets. You and your remote worker can collaborate on the data sets in an application, no matter what device you are using.

The New Microsoft

Over the course of WPC, Satya Nadella and others touted “The New Microsoft” across their keynotes. Microsoft certainly has a renewed vigor since Satya became CEO as is indicated by all the announcements from Microsoft Ignite, WPC and the release of Windows 10 this week.

If you would like to hear more, Arraya’s Microsoft Practice team can run through some of the topics that were announced at WPC and help you get going! Visit www.ArrayaSolutions.com today to schedule a meeting with an Arraya Account Executive. Also, be sure to follow Arraya on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions, for all of the latest company and industry updates.

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Even though Amazon’s Prime Day deals weren’t all winners, you at least have to admit the company’s user experience remains top notch. Now you can incorporate a similar interface into the day-to-On demand serviceday operations of your company with Service Catalog from ServiceNow. Before you know it, employees will be ordering services from Marketing or HR just like they order discounted tubes of “beard growther” or “doggie paw plungers” from Amazon.

If this sounds appealing – the modern and intuitive user interface, not the paw plungers – you’ve got a lot of company. In fact, 76% of managers say they’d like to have the option to place orders for work services online, just like they place orders on consumer websites. The idea being that, if employees had access to such a tool and it was easy to use, it would help tidy up the flow of communication between departments, leading to fewer miscues and faster service delivery.

One stop for your service needs

So how does it work? Service Catalog consumerizes the service request process. It removes confusion and inefficient processes (such as email) from end user interactions with service providers, transforming them into smarter and more streamlined exchanges. This equates to less frustration for both sides of the request and a higher grade of service quality.

This tool collects all of the services utilized by an organization and houses them under the same roof. Instead of going to one spot to submit an IT request and another to submit a request for Marketing collateral, end users will be able to do so from the same portal.

What else can Service Catalog do for your organization? It features:

  • self-service options so end users can look up the answers to commonly-encountered issues which they may be able to solve themselves. This ensures service providers aren’t burning precious hours chasing down a stream of lower-value projects
  • a Catalog Item Designer feature which extends the power to create and edit items in the catalog to folks outside of IT who are the true experts in their specific areas (think: HR staffers, Facilities team members, etc.)
  • automated, enterprise-wide fulfillment to speed up service delivery
  • improved reporting capabilities, including chargeback and differential pricing models and usage and cost data, gives leadership a better idea of service demand and where improvement opportunities exist
  • the ability to fully integrate with the entire spectrum of ServiceNow offerings, ensuring it truly is a one stop shop for service management

Transform your enterprise with ESM

IT is no longer looked at as the keeper of the business’ infrastructure. In the modern corporate landscape, IT has been recast as a dynamic, service-centric unit which plays a key role in driving the success of the organization as a whole. That’s where Enterprise Service Management (ESM) tools such as those offered by ServiceNow can help.

The powerful automation and self-service provided by ESM remove time-sapping inefficiencies from the internal processes of an organization. Once those inefficiencies have been shed, it allows for more time to support the constantly-evolving needs of today’s workforce and to create the innovative solutions companies need to stay competitive.

Arraya prides itself on providing our customers with solutions that simplify their businesses. It’s at the core of every customer engagement we participate in. This notion is what led to our ESM practice and our ServiceNow partnership. We strongly believe in these solutions’ ability to transform the enterprise for the better. They can optimize and simplify, as well as standardize and automate – all to help our customers achieving long-lasting, positive results.

If you’d like to learn more about the ESM solutions Arraya has to offer, visit us at www.ArrayaSolutions.com. If you’re ready to have a more detailed conversation about whether or not ESM is the right option for your company, click here to set up a meeting with an Arraya Account Executive.

In the meantime, be sure to follow us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions, to keep up with all of the latest company news, offers and insights on the issues that matter most to today’s IT professionals.

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VMware environments don’t always get the same level of attention as, say, their Microsoft counterparts do. Imagine running a Windows Server in your data center that hasn’t been patched or way to successupdated since 2012. That kind of prolonged lapse would leave a company incredibly susceptible to security breaches, data loss and more – and it would likely cost someone his or her job. Even though the same types of risks exist for companies running old or outdated VMware tools, it’s still a common enough occurrence in many data centers.

That’s where having a Managed Services partner like Arraya Solutions can pay off. Arraya’s team brings a wealth of experience with VMware technology to the table – and it can take charge of the necessary maintenance and upgrades needed to secure your VMware environment.

Unsure if a VMware Managed Services agreement is right for your company? Here are two signs you’re an ideal candidate:

Sign #1: You’re still running vSphere 4.x, 5.0 or 5.1

The best days of vSphere 4.x, 5.0 and 5.1 have definitely come and gone. vSphere 4.x was released in 2010 and has been out of support since May 21, 2014. Even the “newest” version on that list, vSphere 5.1, is quickly coming up on three years old. Sticking with these older versions is putting the business’ data security efforts in jeopardy due to unpatched flaws and bugs that have been remedied in more modern incarnations.

Consider the Shellshock flaw that made headlines back in September of last year. By exploiting it, attackers could assign their own variables to a Bash command shell, essentially giving them the ability to take over a computer remotely. They could then force it to execute their commands, run malware and use it to access personal information among other undesirable outcomes.

Older vSphere deployments are still vulnerable to this type of attack, despite the fact it’s easy enough to prevent – provided a company has the right and most up-to-date tools at its disposal. Ensuring the readiness of those tools falls within the purview of a Managed Services provider.

Sign #2: You’ve either lost VMware admins or need their skills elsewhere

IT only has so much bandwidth to go around. If the VMware team has been dealing with turnover or its attention has been diverted to other, more high-profile projects, it can lead to critical upgrades slipping through the cracks. That’s how companies find themselves with aging VMware technologies lying in wait within their data centers.

One way to address this is to expand the size of IT, however that’s not always an option. Even if it is, it requires time and patience while the right new hires are identified and brought up to speed.

Managed Services supplements the talents of existing onsite IT personnel, expanding on the scope of what they can deliver without expanding the size of the team. Arraya has extensive insight into managing and sustaining VMware environments. That firsthand experience allows Arraya to perform upgrades efficiently and effectively by vetting out and avoiding known issues.

Customers can feel secure in the knowledge that their VMware environment is modernized and running smoothly. Should anything go wrong for whatever reason, they’ll have full access to Arraya’s knowledge and experience to get everything back to normal as soon as possible.

Solidifying your VMware environment

The reality is, vSphere and other VMware technologies need to be maintained on a regular basis just like Windows systems. That doesn’t always happen and when those responsibilities are missed, it leaves companies at a greater risk for security problems, bugs, missed driver updates and more.

For additional information on how Arraya’s Managed Services can make a difference at your facility, visit us at http://www.arrayasolutions.com/service/managed-services/ or reach out to your Arraya Account Executive. Also, follow us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions, to stay on top of all of the latest Arraya news and special offers.

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It is a fact of our modern life. Mobile devices and ubiquitous access back into our company allows us to work on our own terms. Employees love it, but IT Security hates it. There is a huge inherentbusiness hand shows touch screen mobile phone with streaming images risk when we allow our company’s sensitive data to be accessed with a username and password. We could have the best firewall in the world, but the first time a hole is punched through it, we’re at risk, all for the sake of easing access and increasing productivity.

For the past few years, vendors have been selling Mobile Device Management solutions. These work well to protect your user devices and the data that’s on them. Microsoft has gone one step further, though, designing its Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) to protect users from themselves.

Microsoft starts by getting your on-premises Active Directory synced up to Azure. If you’re syncing to Office 365 and using DirSync, you’re well on your way to getting this going!

We start here at the identity. Your end users’ identity is really their access back into your network or cloud-based applications. By syncing your identity in Azure Active Directory Premium, you can secure that identity with features like Multi-Factor Authentication. You can also have a web portal for single-sign on access to back end SaaS applications, like SalesForce, Office 365 and Workday.

Microsoft includes advanced analytics and reporting here as well. Imagine getting an alert that someone in the next cube over from you is trying to log into a network resource from a city that is 3,000 miles away. Clearly, something isn’t right. Backed by Azure Machine Learning, these analytics learn your end users’ behavior and can alert you when something is amiss.

Did we mention that you can do self-service password reset without any additional infrastructure? This solves the number one Help Desk ticket generator for many companies.

Now that we’ve secured our identities, we need to take a look at our internal data sets. Depending on your business vertical, your sensitive data could vary. For example, a hospital will want to protect Personally Identifiable Information while an engineering firm will want to protect their Intellectual Property.

With the second piece of EMS, Azure Rights Management, Microsoft gives you the ability to protect your company’s data. Typically Rights Management Solutions (RMS) require a complex on-premises solution. With Azure Rights Management, Microsoft is doing the heavy lifting there for you, but still allowing you to protect on-premises or cloud data.

Rights Management allows your end users to protect sensitive data in a few ways. Owners can decide who can get the file, what they can do with it and when it should expire. They can also opt to receive notifications when someone tries to do something with the file that they shouldn’t. An IT administrator can create templates for certain data types, removing the complexity for your end users while keeping your data secure.

There’s also conditional RMS, which allows an IT administrator to set conditions that automatically apply an RMS template based on criteria met. This protects your data without end users even knowing it!

Windows Intune is the MDM and PC management piece of the Enterprise Mobility Suite. This gives end users the ability to use whatever device they want, wherever they are, while ensuring that your company can still manage your data on the device without impacting the end user’s personal data.

Intune can help you protect your company’s data on personally owned devices by allowing conditional access, for example, you can disallow jailbroken devices or require an anti-virus solution.

Microsoft’s unique approach to content and data security has helped them design a complete solution that goes beyond MDM to truly help you protect your data and your users. Arraya Solutions has a cost effective engagement that takes you through piloting the Enterprise Mobility Suite, but leaves you with a deployment you can extend into production.

To learn more visit www.ArrayaSolutions.com or reach out to your Arraya Account Executive. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @ArrayaSolutions.

 

 

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At least momentarily during last week’s news cycle, for what seems like the first time in a long time, hackers and data breaches took a backseat to regular old IT glitches. On Wednesday, the New York Stock Exchange and United Airlines each suffered malfunctions that were not malicious attacks, but still caused outages and managed to nab headlines.

Let’s take a closer look at each incident and see what lessons IT pros can glean from where these organizations may have gone wrong.

New York Stock Exchange

  • What went wrong: The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was rolling out a new software release. As per its protocol, the new software was first deployed on a lone trading unit. However, as customers began logging in, there were reports of communication issues between the updated trading unit and customers’ gateways. There was speculation that customer gateways hadn’t been loaded with the proper configuration to manage the new release. An upgraded configuration was installed, but that failed to clear up the connection problems. Customers continued to report complications. The decision was made to suspend trading, cancel all open orders and work with customers to reconcile any related concerns. All customer gateways were restarted and failed over to back-up trading units so trading could resume.
  • The fallout: NYSE endured its longest outage in the last decade when a software issue forced trading to be suspended for almost four hours.
  • Lessons learned: Even a cautious roll out for new products or new software can lead to issues for IT. When planning changes for your line of business applications, it helps to have a partner like Arraya Solutions on your side who can help you devise low-risk roll outs and back out plans, which avoid pitfalls and vet out mistakes – such as the configuration hitches the NYSE dealt with – as well as help you mitigate issues should something go wrong.

United Airlines

  • What went wrong: A faulty network router degraded connectivity strength for various United Airlines applications, including for its reservation system. This prompted a slew of delays and cancellations.
  • The fallout: United canceled roughly 60 flights and delayed more than 800 others during a 90-plus-minute long, nationwide grounding.
  • Lessons learned: Some experts have called out United for a lack of redundancy and emergency planning, which allowed the system to drop without a failover option to keep things afloat. However, United has defended both the reliability and redundancy of its systems, while adding that it continues to invest in making its networks more reliable. In situations like this, you need to have the right technology in place to support your disaster recovery efforts, that’s a given. On top of that, a tool like Arraya’s Alert platform can give you early warning when something isn’t right with your system. Alert customers have the peace of mind that comes with knowing Arraya’s team has eyes on their applications and systems 24/7, 365 days a year.

Arraya can help you with upgrade planning and project management and our line of Managed Services offerings are designed to extend the capabilities and sightlines of on-premises IT teams. The extra hands and skill sets the Managed Services team brings to the table can ensure smoother deployments and faster remediation of issues. The team can deliver on those outcomes while keeping operational costs in check.

To learn more about Managed Services from Arraya and what they can do for your organization or to connect with one of our Account Executives, visit us at www.ArrayaSolutions.com. Also, follow us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions, to stay on top of all the latest company news, offers and events.

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Torn between opting for a Managed Services partnership and going the new hire route to expand the capabilities of your IT team? If both options seem to be on equal footing at first, a deeper dive Managed Services vs. New Hirescan reveal intangibles which may provide some separation.

These five questions can give you the clarity you need to make a final decision.

1. How much availability do you need?

A New Hire …

  • Has limited availability. Even the greatest, most dedicated employee can’t be around 24/7
  • Is subject to unplanned absences for things like illness, family issues, or transportation troubles, all of which are unavoidable, yet can leave you scrambling for coverage just the same

A Managed Services Partner …

  • Can deliver an uncompromised availability model
  • Has eyes on your IT environment in some capacity day and night, on holidays, weekends, etc., and can respond at a moment’s notice should the need arise

2. How important is flexibility?

A New Hire…

  • Can be very specialized in a particular area. A razor focus can certainly be beneficial, however, if your company switches gears and implements a new solution, that hire can be left starting from scratch
  • Will have a set of expectations about his or her role, salary, etc. Try to amend those and it could lead to issues

A Managed Services Partner…

  • Works across a multitude of projects and technologies, so it’s naturally positioned to keep up with the latest and greatest tech tools, allowing your team to maintain its internal focus
  • Can offer more flexible contracts. If you decide you no longer need a particular service from a provider, contracts can often be adjusted on the fly to change the scope of the partnership.

3. How much time do you have to invest in the hiring process?

A New Hire…

  • Takes a significant investment of time just to find. It can be a long and arduous journey getting from the first interviews to the point where you feel ready to commit to someone
  • Puts you in the position of shifting more work over onto your existing IT resources while he or she is hired and then brought up to speed

A Managed Services Partner …

  • Is in the business of people. It’s up to the provider to hire and retain the talent to fill out its team
  • Can take unwanted HR tasks are off your plate, leaving you with more time to spend on keeping your IT environment running efficiently and effectively

4. How can I prove the value?

A New Hire …

  • Puts the responsibility to prove he or she is worth bringing on board and retaining directly on your shoulders
  • Can make more work for you to ensure he or she continues to contribute value to the company

A Managed Services Partner …

  • Gives you the facts and figures necessary to make for an easier sell to the rest of your company’s leadership team
  • Has experience working with many verticals, allowing it to hone in on and deliver outstanding results where it matters most to your organization

5. Does a personal touch matter?

A New Hire …

  • Means you’re able to put a face to a name and see the person around your workplace each day
  • Allows you to develop a strong personal connection with one person, instead of with a faceless group of “outsiders”

A Managed Services Partner …

  • Can replicate a personal approach by providing both remote and onsite reporting
  • Who believes in delivering “best-of-breed” service focuses on building relationships between its team and yours, so the provider won’t feel like an outsider, but rather an extension of your own team

At Arraya Solutions, we want every step of the IT management process to be easier. With that goal in mind, we offer a full suite of services to complement and support your IT department and secure your data, including:

Managed Services
Capable of shouldering responsibility for all facets of a customer’s environment, including: Infrastructure, Storage, Network, Help Desk, UC, Exchange/SharePoint, Systems Center, O365, SQL, Cloud and more.

Enterprise Monitoring & Support
Keeps customers off of the defensive by monitoring the uptime and utilization of their systems, devices and applications, while also reducing the number of false alarms they have to contend with.

Cloud-based Backup
Blends cutting-edge technology with a flexible consumption model to form a backup solution that is fast, efficient and cost-effective – and restores are always free.

To learn more about these offerings, visit us online at www.ArrayaSolutions.com/services or get in touch with your Arraya Account Executive. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions, to keep up with the latest company news and opinions.

 

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Arraya Solutions would like to congratulate Robert Schaller, the Director of IT for Rockhill Mennonite Community, for winning our Managed Services survey drawing! As our big winner, Mr. Schaller will receive a $100 gift card courtesy of Arraya.

All Arraya Managed Services customers who filled out our first annual Managed Services customer feedback survey were automatically entered into the drawing.

Our thanks go out to Mr. Schaller as well as each one of our customers who took the time to share his/her thoughts and opinions on the survey. We received a lot of positive responses as well as some ways we could improve. We don’t take those comments lightly and we plan on using all of the data we gathered to drive improvements over the coming weeks and months, so be sure to stay tuned.

In the meantime, you can view the results of the survey here.

If you’d like to learn more about Arraya’s Managed Services offerings, please visit www.arrayasolutions.com/service/managed-services or schedule an appointment with an Arraya Account Executive today.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @ArrayaSolutions to stay on top of all of the latest news about Arraya and the tech industry in general.

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If there’s anyone who doesn’t need to be made more aware of how critical backups are, it’s the folks in IT. After all, one of IT’s chief responsibilities isCloud computing and remote data storage concept: blue glossy cloud and hard disk icon isolated on white background with reflection effect securing the company’s second most valuable asset (after its people): namely, its data. And then there’s dealing with the clean up when security efforts go awry.

However, a growing number of IT leaders are realizing their legacy backup solutions aren’t providing them with enough security or scalability to meet their continuity needs. This realization has led them to explore other backup options, including sending backups to the cloud.

Must-have answers

There is certainly no shortage of cloud-based backup solutions out there, most of which tout similar upsides. Once you dig beneath the surface, however, a solution’s true value can become more evident.

Here are three questions that can help you dive in deeper and find the right cloud-based backup solution for your company – giving you the peace of mind your company is fully protected.

1. How transparent is it?
Some providers are content to keep their backup and restore activities to themselves as much as possible. On the other hand, Arraya believes a true best-of-breed provider would rather keep customers in the loop and empower them to take a more active role in data security.

It’s in this spirit of transparency that Arraya developed the customer web portal for Protect, our cloud-based backup service. This portal is a custom-built tool which is browser-agnostic and runs on a lightning fast platform.

Customers can use the portal to:

  • see a graphical interpretation of the status of their backup activities – both recent and over their history – to gain a better understanding of how they’re using the Protect service
  • validate that Protect is continuing to keep their business compliant with industry regulations
  • gain a level of control by launching their own restores. A customer’s end users can see activities specific to their sphere of influence, potentially allowing them to back up (only) their own work station and restore it themselves

2. Does it offer flexibility?
Backup solutions shouldn’t hem customers in or limit their options. Elite solutions empower customers by providing them with the flexibility and freedom to make choices around their backups and restores. That’s a principle feature of Arraya’s Protect service.

Protect allows customers to back up their business critical data securely over the WAN without the need for a dedicated, on-premises appliance. This gives them the efficiency of an on-premises solution without the cost of actually maintaining one. However, if they want more flexibility around restores and the peace of mind that comes with replicating data offsite, Protect also supports hybrid deployment options. So if customers are looking to invest in a physical grid to complement their WAN-based solution, they could replicate that data and it would still be covered.

The flexibility of Protect fits in perfectly with Arraya’s ideal of working with customers to find and support the right solutions for data security and availability, instead of dictating what should be used.


3. What’s the actual cost of the service?
Does a cloud-based backup provider’s price tag look too good to be true? Chances are, it might be. Many providers will keep their backup rates low, but will offset that with charges for restores, deletions or long-term retention. This can obscure the solution’s actual cost.

With Protect, customers only pay for what they use and never for restores. Our payment scale is based off of a one-to-one correlation to consumption model. Customers pay a single monthly cost which covers all required licensing, maintenance, administration, retention and unlimited systems, file and application data restoration. Customers don’t pay for extra services they may never need and they won’t get hit with any surprise charges.

Protect delivers a premium backup solution at a cost-effective sticker price. To learn more about Protect, Arraya’s cloud-based backup service, or to get in touch with an Arraya Account Executive, visit www.ArrayaSolutions.com.

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