The answer to this question depends upon who you ask. If you ask a vendor who claims to be a managed services provider (MSP), there’s a good chance the definition you hear will sound exactly the same as that vendor’s marketing materials.
If you ask the average small to midsize business owner or IT manager, their definition of managed services will probably sound a lot like the traditional break-fix model of IT support.
Early video conferencing solutions were major timesavers and money savers. Organizations no longer had to spend days or weeks planning face-to-face meetings, or pay for travel and accommodations. But those early solutions did require expensive on-premises equipment.
Contact centers based upon unified communications platforms can deliver a true omnichannel experience.
The traditional call center is essentially a telephone system with call routing and other features that enable multiple agents to handle incoming and outgoing calls.
Security assessments can help organizations win the war against cyberattacks by identifying and remediating vulnerabilities.
Sometime in the sixth century B.C., Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote one of the most successful books on military strategy. In it he states that strong leadership and sound planning can result in victory over a superior force.
A hybrid cloud enables organizations to gain the agility of the public cloud while maintaining security and control.
Public cloud or on-premises data center? That has been the conundrum organizations face as they seek to leverage the flexibility and scalability of the public cloud while addressing security, privacy and performance concerns.
The rate of cloud adoption will continue to be highest among small to midsize businesses (SMBs), according to recent forecasts from Techaisle, with 57 percent of SMBs accelerating their cloud initiatives. Not only is cloud adoption increasing, but cloud strategies are becoming more advanced.
Most security breaches can be traced back to human error. Hackers know it’s far more difficult to defeat advanced security defenses than it is to trick a human into opening the doors and letting them in. If the doors aren’t completely opened, the keys are essentially handed to hackers when organizations fail to require complex passwords, turn on security features or respond to security alerts.
“I opened the attachment because the email looked like it was from my boss.”
“I needed to work from home and my Internet has been spotty, so I just saved the documents to a USB drive.”
“I paid the ransom because I didn’t want to get in trouble, but I still can’t access my files.
Without access to business applications, data and cloud resources, many organizations can’t function. In a best-case scenario, operations are severely limited, which results in low productivity, missed deadlines, lost sales, a poor customer experience and high mitigation costs.
Hurricane activity has spiked dramatically in recent weeks. As the National Hurricane Center monitored the simultaneous formation of a half-dozen named storms and five other areas of concern in mid-September, NHC scientist Eric Blake tweeted, “They are forming like roaches out there!”
An active hurricane season is always a reminder of the importance of disaster recovery planning.
