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Seven Rackspace Technology leaders named 2021 Women of the Channel

nellmarie.colman — Fri, 07 May 2021 15:36:54 +0000

Seven Rackspace Technology leaders named 2021 Women of the Channel nellmarie.colman Fri, 05/07/2021 - 10:36

CRN recognized seven top Rackspace Technology leaders today as part of its Women of the Channel list for 2021:

Adrianna Bustamante, Senior Director of Global Alliances
Jacqueline Duffy, Global Alliances Manager
Judy Vansell, Senior Global Alliances Manager
Lacey Rondon, Regional Partner Leader
Lisa Heritage McLin, Global Vice President Alliances & Channel Chief
Tania Fox, Global Director of Channel Marketing
Vicki Patten, Global Partner Leader

“Rackspace Technology is proud to have seven strong leaders on this year’s list,” said Lisa McLin, Global Vice President Alliances & Channel Chief.

The Rackspace Partner Program provides partners with visibility and access into one of the industry’s broadest portfolio of managed IT services and expertise, across the leading private and public clouds, application services, managed hosting, colocation and managed security. The company’s approach to our channel combines the ability to leverage both self-service and highly dedicated, customized program models to help meet both our channel partners’ needs and the needs of their customers.

Adrianna Bustamante

As Senior Director of Global Alliances at Rackspace Technology, Adrianna oversees partnerships within the multicloud and application business. Across her 13+ years in the channel, she’s led partnerships and go-to-market strategies, driving growth with leading technology alliances, system integrators, digital experience and commerce ecosystems. She helped transform the Rackspace Technology digital experience practice into a robust sales and service delivery engine, generating consecutive years of double-digit revenue acceleration. She has been recognized by CRN Women of the Channel and as one of the “100 People You Don’t Know But Should.” Adrianna also serves as the Chair of the Rackspace Professional Organization of Women Empowerment (POWER) employee resource group.

Prior to Rackspace Technology, Adrianna worked in publicity for 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, where she spearheaded launches and campaigns for catalog and TV on DVD.

Regarding her CRN recognition, Adrianna said, “It’s extremely powerful to bring diverse thought and experience when creating partnerships and driving to a shared vision. Thank you, CRN, for continuing to recognize the impact women are making within our industry at a global scale.”

Jacqueline Duffy

Based in Austin, Texas, Jacqueline has over 12 years of channel sales experience and a proven track record of success working with master agents and trusted advisors globally. Jacqueline works to enable, advise and grow her partners’ businesses by accelerating their adoption and sales of next-generation technologies. With her current role as Global Alliances Manager at Rackspace Technology, Jacki is responsible for growing strategic partner accounts nationally and in the UK. Among her many accomplishments, Jacqueline was most recently recognized as a Rackstar President’s Club Qualifier (2020), exceeding her sales goals by 540% (2020), Rackspace Partner Sales Manager of the Year (2020) and awarded the MicroCorp “Futurist” Award (2020). She is also an active member of the Professional Organization of Women Empowerment (POWER) holding roles such as Mentor Circle Coordinator (2020), podcast co-host (2020) and currently as mentor.

Prior to joining Rackspace Technology, Jacqueline spent three years at AVANT Communications as Senior Partner Manager, building the South-Central Region and was a two-time President’s Club winner for 2016 and 2017. Jacki approaches business with professionalism, compassion and creativity. She strives to always do what is right and best for her channel partners, customers and her peers. She is well connected and continues to evolve and adapt in this ever-changing market to remain relevant and relatable to her ecosystem.

Judy Vansell

Judy was recently promoted to a new role as Senior Global Alliances Manager, supporting Third Party Advisor (TPA) partners. In her new role, Judy will be responsible for the global program strategy and enablement of TPA partners through advocacy with the Rackspace Technology sales teams and the partner sourcing advisors.

Prior to her recent promotion, Judy was Senior Director of Global Partner Operations where she was responsible for creating a Fanatical Experience™ for partners globally. Since joining the Rackspace partner organization, she has driven partnership transformation through business support, tool enhancement, portal gamification, a simple commission structure and a joint go-to market strategy.

Prior to Rackspace Technology, Judy led Sales and Operations teams for more than 25 years. Judy's experience includes developing and growing partner programs, providing operational support and working closely with value added resellers, distributors, master agents, digital agencies, Alliances and Third-Party Advisor partners to deliver results.

Judy has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Oklahoma with an emphasis in Administrative Leadership. She is the co-chair of Education and Development for Rackspace resource group, Professional Organization for Women's Empowerment at Rackspace (POWER) and currently helping to drive POWER Mentor Circles for Rackspace Technology.

“I am honored to be chosen for this recognition for the third year in a row by CRN,” Judy said. “It is exciting time to be a part of strong women in the channel who are making an impact in organizations across the globe.”

Lacey Rondon

As a Regional Partner Leader, Lacey joined Rackspace Technology in 2018 to help support channel partners. She now supports partners on the west coast, helping them achieve success in the cloud through enablement, resource alignment and opportunity qualification — meeting partners where they are in their cloud journey and helping them to be able to better position multi-cloud solutions to their customers.

Lacey has been helping companies with their digital transformation for the past 12 years, passionate about technology and helping partners make the pivot to cloud to grow revenue. She is also the membership co-chair for Cloud Girls, an organization focused on helping partners engage in meaningful business discussions that showcase the value partnerships bring to the table in the tech community.

Regarding her CRN recognition, Lacey said, “I’m honored to be named a Woman of the Channel for a third year in a row, and to be surrounded by such a diverse group of women making an impact in the tech space. Thank you, CRN for acknowledging the unique role each of these women has in the channel.”

Lisa Heritage McLin

As Global Vice President Alliances & Channel Chief, Lisa is responsible for strategy and execution, growing partner relationships and propelling organizational revenue at Rackspace Technology, while serving as a visionary servant leader working to elevate others. Her two specialties are mastering the development of high-velocity sales organizations, and focusing on developing repeatable sales processes and methodologies, while owning accountability for profit-generating programs and building alliance and partnership strategies globally. Lisa develops strong winning teams and is an active mentor, helping others advance their careers.

Previously, Lisa served as vice president of sales, leading the Rackspace Technology commercial sales segments. She is known for her deep expertise in strategic sales, service delivery, operations and business management, and her ability to engage the C-suite, assess enterprise opportunities and build cross-organizational strategies that drive customer satisfaction and revenue profitability.

Regarding her CRN recognition for the fifth year in a row, Lisa said, “It is great to see the focus on importance of diversity in the channel and in technology. Diversity of thought, experience and culture brings the best ideas forward to drive innovation, company growth and an overall better customer experience. Thank you, CRN for continuing to recognize the impact women are making in business.”

Tania Fox

As the Global Director of Channel Marketing at Rackspace Technology, Tania leads with a customer-centric, insights-driven, outcome-based approach to deliver the Global Channel strategy and communication plan for internal and external teams — resulting in double-digit revenue growth. A recognized global marketing leader, Tania's focus is on innovation, partner relationships, alliance engagement and enabling sales utilizing her vast experience in Fortune 100 hi-tech companies. Tania has been at Rackspace Technology since September 2019, delivering innovative sales and marketing solutions and integrated marketing plans, among activating other strategic revenue-driven activities.

Before Rackspace Technology, Tania was at Intel Corporation for 17 years. Tania led the Global / Worldwide Sales Development / Enablement team, driving tools, products and solutions for Intel's sales force and alliances globally. Additionally, Tania drove strategic channel marketing engagement programs supporting accounts representing $20B in annual gross revenue and $2B in Intel silicon.

Tania understands the importance of the digital age, healthy relationships, diversity, cultural norms, matrixed organizations and, most importantly, maximizing customers' needs to build world-class customer experiences and products.

Vicki Patten

As Global Partner Leader, Vicki has focused on building and growing channel programs with master agents for over 10 years. In 2019, she led her most strategic partners to double-digit growth and was named Partner Account Manager of the Year. She enables Rackspace Technology partners to position the right solutions to help them achieve their business goals and, as part of the Global Channel Initiative started in 2020, is helping Rackspace Technology partners grow on a global basis.

Prior to joining Rackspace Technology, Vicki spent three decades helping organizations solve their IT business problems and helping partners grow their businesses. After starting her career in hardware sales, Vicki pivoted to services, where she worked with customers and partners to sell professional and managed services.

Regarding her CRN recognition, Vicki said, “I’m honored to be named a Woman of the Channel for a third year, and to work with so many talented, hard-working and generous men and women across the Channel. Thank you, CRN!”

Seven Rackspace Technology leaders named 2021 Women of the ChannelThe 2021 Women of the Channel list is considered the authoritative guide to the most influential women in the channel.Learn MoreRacker CultureBrooke KaczmarekSeven Rackspace Technology leaders named 2021 Women of the ChannelMay 10, 2021

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Do you need a cloud-based web application firewall (WAF)?

nellmarie.colman — Mon, 03 May 2021 19:24:02 +0000

Do you need a cloud-based web application firewall (WAF)? nellmarie.colman Mon, 05/03/2021 - 14:24

Your application is crucial to the delivery of your solution or service and user experience is key. On top of that, customers have a short attention span — so, if your app does not load fast enough or another solution is more appealing, users will go to the competition.

Companies spend millions of dollars and work diligently to capture their users’ attention. Plus, they have to ensure the safety of the information gathered about their customers, the data generated by the service and the security of data systems deployed to provide the solution. With all the investment, how do you ensure your application is secure and delivered on time, with the user experience you expect?

One key area that people overlook is cloud-based web application firewall (WAF). Without a WAF, your application may already be vulnerable to these attack vectors:

Web exploits
API abuse
Availability attacks
Bots, scrapers and crawlers

“But I have AWS, Azure, or GCP. Do I still need a cloud WAF?” Yes! Cloud providers excel at offering compute solutions for their customers to deploy applications. But securing those applications is your responsibility.

In addition, each provider has their own solution that works only for their platform. In contrast, cloud WAF solutions specialize in securing your application from end-to-end by providing a single solution for all your environments, no matter the scale, complexity or cloud provider you are deployed with.

Let’s take a look at how cloud WAFs protect your application and keep your data secure.

Web exploits

Very skilled attackers work to discover weaknesses in the code running the applications on the internet. Once vulnerabilities are discovered, they develop zero-day exploits which can be used against applications running the vulnerable code.

Often, these hackers sell the exploits on the dark web and other forms for fun and profit. Malicious hackers then scan the entire internet for vulnerable applications. Once discovered, they can use the tools available on the dark web to steal your data and intellectual property and pilfer your customers’ data, credit card information or other personally identifiable information (PII).

What makes this situation worse, commodity exploits are easy to search for and do not require any skill to execute. Even if your company has endpoint protection and intrusion detection, your application could still be vulnerable to web attacks.

Deploying a cloud WAF is a simple solution to protect your applications against web exploits, including the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) top ten threats — which includes cross-site scripting, security misconfigurations and SQL injection attacks.

API abuse

Hackers are not just looking for vulnerabilities in your web applications — they also target the systems that support your application. In most modern application development, the communication between systems is driven by an application programmable interface (API). And in 2020, 91% of enterprises experienced an API security incident.

APIs are used for machines and programs to communicate with each other and enable the fast delivery users expect. Just as we rely on an application to deliver a service or solution, applications and mobile apps rely on APIs to deliver valuable information to their supporting systems. API attacks are growing in popularity.

By deploying a cloud WAF, you can protect your mobile apps from attacks against their supporting systems and vital APIs — such as lack of resources, rate limiting, broken authentication and other OWASP Top Ten Threats for APIs.

Availability attacks

Applications are also vulnerable to attacks against availability. For example, with denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, hackers launch massive assaults that flood your application and are capable of overwhelming even the best-designed solution. This can degrade or often impair your users’ experience.

What makes this worse are the various styles of DoS that can be used. If you are deployed on-prem, then your internet bandwidth or network aggregation point could be overwhelmed by a Volumetric attack that saturates the network with bogus traffic like SYN floods or DNS amplification attacks.

Many companies have discovered a way to mitigate Volumetric DDoS attacks by embracing digital transformation and migrating to a cloud provider like AWS, Azure or Google Compute. These providers offer security groups that allow users to block unwanted ports and protocols, similar to a stateful firewall. This strategy will prevent floods of bogus traffic from reaching your application, but it does not block traffic on the ports or protocols your application relies on. Adversaries have discovered techniques to launch attacks against the required ports and protocols with bogus application requests.

This attack is called an application DDoS since the target is the application instead of the network. On-prem customers have very few solutions to defend themselves when both volumetric and application DDoS attacks are used in combination.

With a cloud WAF, your application will be secure from both volumetric and application DDoS attacks. Cloud WAF DDoS mitigations are available for on-prem, cloud or hybrid environments.

Bots, scrapers, and crawlers

Once you have your application deployed and secured, you can focus on capturing your customer’s attention, right? Unfortunately, no.

Scammers are looking to get any advantage they can get, and your service or solution is no different. Industries from shoe sales to concert venues have been impacted by “bad bots,” which are programs written to buy all of a hot-selling item before any consumers can. The scammers then resell the items later for a much higher price.

Furthermore, a malicious competitor who wants to undercut your business may write a “scraper” to monitor changes to your site including deals or sales you have. Using these programs, scammers can steal your customer by offering similar items for slightly cheaper. Given the choice between two similar items, consumers will choose the lower price.

To get an edge on the competition, companies invest heavily on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and marketing to improve their results on places like Google. The techniques and tactics used to maintain the top result are proprietary to every organization and form a basis of their intellectual property. The use of robots.txt is an industry best-practice and a great solution for well-behaving crawlers to know when and if to index your site, but malicious crawlers and adversaries write programs to steal your SEO and other trade secrets used to maintain top search results.

Through the use of a cloud WAF, you can block blocks bots, scrapers and crawlers from hitting your application. The effect will be less unwanted traffic, a reduced cost on your infrastructure, a higher return on your marketing investment and a better overall customer experience.

How Rackspace Technology can help

At Rackspace Technology, our customers leverage our Managed Cloud WAF solution to secure their applications in the cloud, on-prem and in hybrid environments. With Managed Cloud WAF, our experts provide everything from security to application delivery, which allows our users to focus on running their business. Managed Cloud WAF is an easy way to deploy a global-scale security solution across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

Take the next step toward protecting your applications. Take our quick 15 question security self-assessment and receive a professional consultation with a cloud expert. They’ll review your results with you, answer questions and make best-practice recommendations on how to address any identified security gaps.

Do you need a cloud-based web application firewall (WAF)?Cloud providers excel at offering compute solutions for their customers to deploy applications — but they leave securing the application up to the customer. See how cloud-based web application firewalls (WAFs) fill this gap. Know your cybersecurity risk score./lp/cybersecurity-risk-self-assessmentTake the assessment

Security Cloud InsightsTowne BeselDo you need a cloud-based web application firewall (WAF)?May 3, 2021

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Rackspace and Platform9 partnership simplifies Kubernetes adoption

mike9498 — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 22:59:39 +0000

Rackspace and Platform9 partnership simplifies Kubernetes adoption mike9498 Tue, 04/27/2021 - 17:59

The word Kubernetes means pilot in Greek — and the platform is piloting in a whole new world of possibilities for businesses that are ready to take advantage of containers. It’s an incredibly powerful, scalable and resilient platform that improves metrics, accelerates digital transformation and decreases time to market.

By 2024, Gartner predicts that 15% of enterprise applications will run in a container environment, up threefold from 2020. However, many early adopters of Kubernetes find that they spend more time running Kubernetes than gaining measurable value.

Platform9 is a SaaS Managed Kubernetes platform that builds and operates clusters across edge, private and public clouds to make Kubernetes simple to own, operate and scale. To further help organizations accelerate and de-risk Kubernetes deployments, Rackspace Technology™ and Platform9 have partnered to deliver a managed platform for Kubernetes that specifically addresses the pain points of getting value out of the technology.

Rackspace Managed Platform for Kubernetes (MPK) is powered by Platform9’s leading SaaS Managed Kubernetes technology combined with Rackspace Technology cloud and application modernization expertise. This new service solves for common customer challenges by providing a:

Single pane of glass for deploying and managing clusters across public and private clouds
Curated platform experience that provides frequently requested infrastructure services for containerized applications
Specialized support team comprised of Certified Kubernetes Administrators versed in Kubernetes, Platform9 and multicloud

By partnering with Platform9, Rackspace Technology offers the most complete multicloud Kubernetes experience available today, with services and SLAs designed for truly hands-free Kubernetes environments.

“At Rackspace Technology and Platform9, we see the strain that transformation and growth can put on the ability of a business to fully realize a cloud native strategy,” explained Taylor Bird, VP of Technology Strategy at Rackspace Technology. “It’s these often-missing technical and cultural components necessary for success that inspired us to develop our first collaborative offering: Rackspace Managed Platform for Kubernetes.” 

Available April 30, 2021, Rackspace Managed Platform for Kubernetes is designed for organizations of any size who are struggling to navigate the increasing complexity of managing container-based application deployments in a multicloud world. Learn more about the features, service details and how to get started with Rackspace Managed Platform for Kubernetes.

Rackspace and Platform9 partnership simplifies Kubernetes adoptionWith a partnership with Platform9, Rackspace Technology offers the most complete multicloud Kubernetes experience available today.Explore Rackspace Managed Platform for Kubernetes/cloud/kubernetesStart here

Kubernetes Cloud Insights ProductsSherman Donegan, Chris JonesRackspace Technology and Platform9 partnership simplifies Kubernetes adoptionApril 29, 2021

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AWS Announcements at a Glance: April 2021

nellmarie.colman — Mon, 03 May 2021 18:59:53 +0000

AWS Announcements at a Glance: April 2021 nellmarie.colman Mon, 05/03/2021 - 13:59

With spring here, AWS has been taking advantage of the longer days and warming weather to release a host of new features, services and updates. As with any month, April has been full of announcements from AWS — with Bot Control in AWS WAF, updates to Amazon CodeGuru, the release of Amazon Lookout for Equipment, and Warm Pools in EC2 Auto Scaling, there’s a lot to dive into.

New AWS WAF Bot Control

AWS now gives organizations the means to more easily control traffic from bots, before it reaches your sites and applications, allowing the resources serving your platform to operate more efficiently. New functionality and features within AWS WAF allow for identification of bots, as well as metrics capture and visualization, and the ability to define customized actions based on the bot type.

WAF Bot Control is a new managed rule group within AWS WAF, and it includes pre-built dashboards that allow for a great at-a-glance understanding of how much of your traffic comes from bots, as well as what types of bots those are, such as content scrapers, monitoring tools or SEO crawlers. The default action is to block the unwanted bot traffic, but the custom actions can be defined to return a customized response or to use a new header to identify the request for later handling. By using Bot Control to remove unwanted traffic, the business metrics you collect from your end systems will be cleaner and more useful in understanding your client base, as well as allowing you to scale your systems more efficiently and reduce costs.

AWS WAF Bot Control is available now, and the visualization dashboard is included in the AWS WAF free tier.

Amazon CodeGuru Reviewer Updates

Amazon CodeGuru has been generally available since last June, allowing organizations to automate their code review process while also improving the quality of their code bases. This month, a couple of big announcements have been made to make this service even better.

First up, AWS has improved CodeGuru’s pricing model. It was previously based on the number of lines of code analyzed each month, which had the impact of dis-incentivizing its use for extremely active code repositories. The new model instead is a fixed monthly rate calculated on the total size of the connected repositories — the initial tier is $10 per month for 100k lines of code, and then an additional $30 per month for every 100k lines of code above that. With this change, organizations can expect to see up to a 90% decrease in CodeGuru costs.

The other big announcement is that Python support is now generally available, where previously only Java was supported. As a massively popular language, this will be a welcomed addition for many development teams, allowing them to take advantage of the recommendations afforded by CodeGuru. From suggestions on Python best practices to optimal data structures and concurrency, teams will be able to use CodeGuru to keep their code optimized and safe.

Learn more on the Amazon CodeGuru product page, and then start adding in your Python repositories to help maintain your high code standards.

Amazon Lookout for Equipment (GA)

At AWS re:Invent 2020, Amazon Lookout for Equipment was announced — a service to analyze equipment sensor data and provide predictive insight into the health of that equipment. Lookout for Equipment automatically builds and trains a machine learning model based on your sensor data, and then uses that to identify abnormalities and issues in real-time. By using Lookout for Equipment, organizations can quickly gain the advantages of machine learning on their sensor data without the need for expert data scientists. Specific sensors exhibiting abnormal behaviour can be quickly identified, as well as the impact of the event, letting teams move quickly to diagnose and remediate the emerging issue and avoid large scale problems.

With the general availability of Amazon Lookout for Equipment, organizations with large bases of equipment — such as those in the manufacturing vertical — can utilize their sensor data and machine learning to keep that equipment running at top performance.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling introduces warm pools

Auto Scaling has always been an amazing tool for increasing and decreasing EC2 instances in response to changes in demand, such as a spike in website visitors or fluctuations of work in a queue. One challenge that has surfaced are applications on EC2 instances that require extensive initialization or compilation that can’t be pre-built into the AMI, like imports of large amounts of data on boot, or custom provisioning.

AWS has introduced warm pools to EC2 Auto Scaling to help address this problem. Warm pools maintains a set of stopped, but pre-initialized instances that allow the scaling group to quickly scale out to its maximum when needed. As the instances are pre-initialized and then kept in a stopped state, costs are minimized while ensuring that they can be ready to respond quickly. Lifecycle hooks allow the instances to be properly prepared before they join the warm pool, as well as controlling actions as they leave the warm pool.

Refer to the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling documentation on warm pools for more information on configuring and utilizing them.

Explore AWS for your cloud, apps, data and security

Let our AWS specialists help you experience the full breadth of AWS’s leading-edge cloud capabilities to work smarter, lower costs and innovate with agility. With more than 2700+ AWS certifications and 14 core competencies, we bring the most cutting-edge AWS capabilities to work for your advantage. We apply deep expertise in cloud strategy, cloud-native development, container adoptions, application modernization, AIML, IoT and workload management to help you accelerate innovation with AWS. Learn more about our AWS solutions.

AWS Announcements at a Glance: April 2021April has been full of announcements from AWS — with Bot Control in AWS WAF, updates to Amazon CodeGuru, the release of Amazon Lookout for Equipment, and Warm Pools in EC2 Auto Scaling.Lean on our AWS experts./cloud/awsStart here

Amazon Web Services (AWS)Cloud InsightsRoss LawrieAWS Announcements at a Glance: April 2021April 23, 2021

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Maximize your cost savings with VMware Cloud on AWS

nellmarie.colman — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 16:23:50 +0000

Maximize your cost savings with VMware Cloud on AWS nellmarie.colman Fri, 04/16/2021 - 11:23

According to 451 Research, over 90% of businesses are running workloads in the cloud. Yet all of the surveyed businesses continue to also use on-premises private cloud. This trend toward hybrid cloud — which leverages both public and private clouds — continues to gain momentum, with over half of businesses currently using or planning to use a fully integrated hybrid cloud environment.

But making the shift to hybrid cloud is tough. Operational workflows that were built around your legacy systems will need to change. And your team may not have the skill sets necessary to start running workloads in the cloud or even the time to manage multiple cloud platforms.

Rackspace Managed VMware Cloud on AWS addresses this gap by migrating your on-premises workloads to a VMware SDDC stack, running on top of dedicated hosts within an AWS data center — all managed by our VMware and AWS experts. This simplifies your path to a managed hybrid cloud, while enabling you to use existing VMware management tools. Plus, your applications gain native access to the broad portfolio of AWS cloud services.

For many organizations, VMware Cloud on AWS, combined with managed services from Rackspace Technology, can also deliver an unprecedentedly lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to keeping your workloads on-premises. This article takes a closer look at how Rackspace Managed VMware Cloud on AWS can help you optimize your TCO.

Maximizing business value from VMware Cloud on AWS

According to a 2020 IDC study, “The Business Value of Running Applications on VMware Cloud on AWS in VMware Hybrid Cloud Environments,” organizations running applications on VMware Cloud for AWS completed migrations faster, with less risk and at a much lower cost:

57% lower overall cost to migrate equivalent
59% less staff time
46% faster to migrate

Compared with running the same workloads in a traditional on-premises environment, participants reported that they can better support their businesses on VMware Cloud for AWS, while achieving a 351% three-year ROI. The study linked these cost benefits to four key areas: performance, agility, business impact and infrastructure. Let’s take a look at each of these and how organizations could gain even greater TCO than reported in the study.

Improved performance and reliability

Companies reported that the switch to VMware Cloud on AWS resulted in a more resilient and agile infrastructure, with an 83% reduction in frequency and duration of unplanned outages. This minimizes the costs related to lost productivity and revenue.

Participants also reported improvements in application performance and risk-related metrics, creating a better experience for users.

“Our users are seeing higher performance with VMware Cloud on AWS, and they’re getting more information delivered at the speed that they need. Because we’re operating a medical facility, we need speed, performance, and security, especially when moving data from one location to another. Our users are 10% more productive on average as a result.” – IDC Study Participant

You’re likely to see even greater improvements in productivity and reduced risk when using Rackspace Managed VMware Cloud on AWS with our optional Guest OS Services. Not only do our experts handle the management of your VMware Cloud on AWS environment, but they can also handle the day-to-day management of your virtualized operating system. From monitoring, patching, configuration and optimization to antivirus licensing and updates, our experts can maintain and support your guest operating systems 24x7x365. Furthermore, Rackspace Managed VMware Cloud on AWS can be used as a low-cost disaster recovery site for your on-premises VMware workloads.

Improved agility

With VMware Cloud on AWS, participants reported being able to deploy new VMs 66% faster, leading to a 14% higher productivity for application development teams. They’re able to move and increase their footprint on workloads out into AWS as needed — moving entire workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS or just adding on additional VMs.

“We are absolutely more agile with VMware Cloud on AWS. We can stand up as many machines as we want, and there’s no limit or direct costs in doing this.” – IDC Study Participant

Rackspace Technology expertise can elevate that agility even more. From implementing auto-scaling for peak times, to integration with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that allows customers to scale work-from-home environments to thousands of employees, our VMware experts have helped customers around the global leverage key features of VMware Cloud on AWS.

Business impact

VMware Cloud on AWS requires less staff time to manage, secure and support infrastructure environments, which frees up IT teams to work on other initiatives and support business growth. For IT infrastructure teams, the staff time required to manage infrastructure was reduced by 48%; security teams and help desk teams achieved efficiencies of 26% and 69%, on average, respectively.

Also, with fewer unplanned downtimes, respondents reported being able to bill more hours with less downtime.

“One hour less of downtime can mean millions of dollars for [our company].” – IDC Study Participant

With Rackspace Managed VMware Cloud on AWS, your IT teams are able to focus even more time on initiatives that are core to your business rather than managing the service. We provide consolidated billing and flexible payment options, a single source for 24x7x365 support with dedicated account teams, and access to proactive monitoring and troubleshooting across multiple clouds, eliminating the need to manage AWS and VMware Cloud on AWS accounts directly.

More efficient and cost-effective infrastructure

Respondents reported that, by moving their workloads from on-premises environments to VMware Cloud on AWS, they’re able to run equivalent workloads at an average 44% lower cost over three years. This is related to both infrastructure-related savings and staff time efficiencies.

“Before using VMware Cloud on AWS, we had 300 servers, but we’ve been able to reduce that number by 25% … Also, we’re avoiding having to refresh another 10% of those servers, so 35% of servers in total … We’re avoiding $1.5 million of server hardware refreshes.” – IDC Study Participant

In some cases, these cost savings could be even greater if VMware Cloud on AWS didn’t require the purchase of additional hosts just to increase the amount of storage. Rackspace Technology has solved this problem for our customers by jointly developing with NetApp — the only globally available externally attached storage that connects natively to AWS as a data store. Rackspace Cloud Volume Service allows customers to add storage without having to purchase additional hosts. For storage-heavy workloads or those leveraging VMware Cloud on AWS as a disaster recovery (DR) solution, this could result in up to 40% or more in savings.

The experts at Rackspace Technology are here to help

While the TCO of VMware Cloud on AWS is clearly defined in the IDC Study, they do call out that — due to the accelerated commitment to move to the cloud post-pandemic — organizations will require guidance. They will need assistance implementing and demonstrating their modernization and transformation initiatives and identifying “optimal ways to unlock value from this easy-to-use hybrid cloud experience.”

Again, this is a hurdle Rackspace Technology has helped customers quickly overcome. No matter where you are on your cloud journey, Rackspace Technology can accelerate, optimize and simplify your transformation to VMware Cloud on AWS. We have built a Center of Excellence around VMware Cloud on AWS that leverages the cross-platform expertise and thousands of VMware and AWS certifications across hundreds of experts. These experts are here to provision and manage your VMware Cloud on AWS environment, migrate your VMware workloads and progressively transform your applications to cloud native when the time is right.

For over 15 years, we have been managing VMware environments and serving as a trusted advisor to our customers, providing unbiased guidance across architecture, migration and cloud transformation strategies. It’s our Fanatical Experience® across VMware Cloud on AWS that truly differentiates Rackspace Technology and enables us to further optimize the TCO on VMware Cloud on AWS.

Rackspace Technology is currently offering a 30-day no-risk proof-of-concept trial for its Managed VMware Cloud on AWS offering to help customers accelerate the value they are able to achieve with hybrid cloud.

Maximize your cost savings with VMware Cloud on AWSDiscover how Managed VMware Cloud on AWS can help your organization reduce costs, while also enabling you to innovate and transform in the cloud. Reduce your TCO with VMware Cloud on AWS./vmware/vmc-on-awsGet started

VMC on AWS Cloud Insights ProductsDan HoudekMaximize your cost savings with VMware Cloud on AWSApril 16, 2021

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Overcoming the top four barriers to actionable data insights

nellmarie.colman — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 17:23:56 +0000

Overcoming the top four barriers to actionable data insights nellmarie.colman Thu, 04/08/2021 - 12:23

According to IDC, the amount of data created over the next three years will be more than all the data created over the past 30 years. And the world will create three times more data over the next five years than it did in the previous five.

As data volume and variety increase and data sources proliferate, new opportunities will arise — opportunities to deliver superior customer experiences, drive better business decisions and enable greater agility and resiliency. New technologies and approaches — such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud native development, AI and machine learning, and the modern data fabric — offer a path to this intelligent business vision.

Despite these opportunities and new approaches, businesses are struggling to manage data and generate meaningful analysis. They’re weighed down by issues like dirty data and misaligned data collection and governance policies. These companies risk falling behind competitors, who are using data intelligence to adapt to their customers’ needs quickly and proactively.

To gain actionable insights from your data, you’ll need to address some common barriers. Let’s take a look at each of these, as well as what you can do to overcome them.

Barriers and solutions to running a smarter and faster business

In a recent study of 1800+ IT leaders, we explored why businesses either fail to move their data analytics projects into production or experience quality and availability issues when they do. The study revealed several key barriers that are common to most businesses:

1. Data discovery challenges

Data discovery is difficult when you have unknown data sources, poor data quality, data silos and compliance restrictions. These issues can trace their origin to data used or generated by a specific application stored in a siloed data platform, typically found in an early 2000s web application architecture or in 1990s UNIX applications.

Additionally, incomplete views of customers and other business entities, duplicated data and a general lack of understanding around what data is available (for building new applications or updating existing ones) results in less-effective services, insights and customer experiences.

Solution:

With a holistic view and understanding of your data estate, plus a modern data architecture that makes your data accessible, you can make data discovery and utilization a more natural part of your DevOps processes and culture. DevOps drives speed and quick turnaround. And your data — if it’s known and accessible and in a useful format — can be fully incorporated into your DevOps culture, development and deployment processes.

2. Excessive costs

When your infrastructure isn’t structured for utility and elasticity, your talent is expensive, and you’re facing large, ongoing investments with no guaranteed return, costs can grow out of control.

Costs also become excessive as you continue to rely on on-premises data solutions for your worst-case scenarios — as you’re stuck servicing older virtualized applications and data infrastructure. And your on-premises data platforms servicing cloud-based applications may incur higher than needed ingress/egress fees.

Solution:

By moving data platforms to the right public and private clouds in a multicloud architecture, you get the benefits of multicloud — including elasticity, self-service, optimized economics and cloud native services — so you can develop modern applications and host a modern data architecture.

3. Complexity

Choosing the right mix of technologies, identifying architectural best practices for deployment, and integrating cloud, on-premises and edge — these are all complex responsibilities. Yet they’re made even more difficult if your data platform mix isn’t optimized.

For example, your data may have been forced into a traditional relational data management system, or worse, into unstructured files — even though that is not the optimal place for data use and analysis. This makes developing applications using this data more difficult and less effective.

IoT dramatically increases the data coming into your business. But it must be analyzed and intelligently separated into data flows that support the business — such that your applications get the data they need when they need it. Many organizations either do not leverage the IoT or do so in a manner that overly restricts their data being used from the IoT. While these approaches result in preventing data flooding with its reliability, security and availability issues, they eliminate the benefits of using all of the appropriate data in their business ecosystem.

Solution:

Dealing with the explosion of data variety, velocity and volume is complex. But by putting this data into the right data platforms in the right clouds configured into a modern data architecture, your data can be more readily used, be more cost effective and set the foundation for modern analytics and superior business insights.

4. Skills gaps

Most organizations don’t have the skills necessary in-house to optimize their data architecture for modern AI/ML use cases and cloud native applications. To create a modern data fabric, you need specialized education, training and experience not organically available in typical IT teams. This skills gap also contributes to data integration architecture that is scattered and opportunistic — preventing applications from getting the right data at the right time and leading to less-than-optimal experiences, results and insights.

Solution:

Work with a partner whose team has the right skills, career paths and continuous work experience — where they’re always busy solving problems and building expertise across many different industries and use cases. This helps ensure that they’re able to attract and retain the best data people.

Achieving actionable data insights

With a modern data architecture, your data can help drive better business processes, experiences and decisions. And with a fully integrated data environment supported by DataOps and MLOps, your business and IT teams can make intelligent business and IT decisions that will drive the most value to your customers and have the greatest impact on your business’s bottom line.

Modern data architecture — coupled with AI and machine learning — enables your business to get the right data to the right application at the right business moment while delivering a new level of business insights and intelligent applications.

To learn more about how organizations are managing and modernizing their data, check out our report, “Data modernization: Removing the barriers to AI and machine learning.” You’ll discover more about the widespread challenges businesses are facing with data quality and infrastructure, as well as critical insights into the role of people and operations in modernizing your data.

Overcoming the top four barriers to actionable data insightsLearn how to overcome common barriers with a modern data architecture, so your data can help drive better business processes, experiences and decisions. Take the next step toward modernizing your data./solve/data-modernizationRead the report

Data Services Professional Services - Data Services Cloud InsightsPierre FrickeOvercoming the top four barriers to actionable data insightsApril 8, 2021

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Rethinking support models for a cloud native world

nellmarie.colman — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 16:11:10 +0000

Rethinking support models for a cloud native world nellmarie.colman Wed, 04/07/2021 - 11:11

Most IT teams fall somewhere in-between traditional IT Operations and modern, cloud native ways of doing things. The defining characteristics of traditional IT operations include: clear handoffs between build and operate, emphasized infrastructure and operations and a waterfall development and release approach. To evolve to a cloud native operating model, there need to be no boundaries between build and operate. This is where DevOps comes in.

A DevOps approach blurs the line between build and operate and enables you to drive real outcomes. And as part of the shift towards cloud native, the focus should move further up the stack to applications, allowing these to dictate infrastructure decisions rather than the other way around. Think of it as having applications in the driver’s seat, with infrastructure along for the ride.

Shackled to old ways

Many businesses are still operating in the cloud as if it were a data center. We often get questions about patching and backups, which are concepts that should be handled very differently in a cloud native application than one running in your data center. To reach the pure cloud native nirvana state, customers need to make a more conscious effort to move away from a traditional VM-centric approach.

Part of the problem is that you are probably being held back by your MSP partners. Traditional MSPs were built for the old world and there’s no incentive for them to encourage your evolution. They are set up to fill the gaps in functional areas between build and operate silos and have narrowly defined and SLA-driven scopes. The truth is the IT support model is constrained to fit inside the boundaries of the past.

How MSPs can encourage evolution

As businesses move towards a cloud native model, they start to build highly accountable small teams that are responsible for the application's full lifecycle. Support models need to shift to provide services that properly support those teams. These services should look more like engineering services and less like a pure operations play. And these engineering services should deliver against a customer’s initiatives rather than arbitrary SLAs.

The nature of cloud engineering work means it should be an ongoing engagement. There's always something that can be automated or fixed. Support models need to be flexible, and they should be able to seamlessly integrate with customer teams. Only then can an MSP be fully aligned with customer goals and provide enhancements the right way.

Slowly let go of the past

Evolving IT organizations need a modern cloud support model that is free from the siloed boundaries of the past, emphasizes applications over infrastructure and guides their teams toward an agile, DevOps-driven approach to IT operations.

It should also be the responsibility of MSPs to help customers remove VM management from each application that becomes more and more cloud native. The older VM management tasks will need a high level of support to make sure they are handled correctly — but with integrated and highly specialized teams on the same mission, the path towards cloud native will become much clearer.

How can Rackspace Technology support this emerging world?

The evolution to cloud native requires a new way of thinking. We're announcing a new approach to support. More to come on April 15th.

Rethinking support models for a cloud native worldThe evolution to cloud native can transform your business, but old support models can hold you back. Discover how to revolutionize your support model and accelerate your cloud native journey. Revolutionize Your Support Modelhttps://events.rackspace.com/fundamental-shift/Something Big is Coming

IT Transformation Professional Services Cloud InsightsJosh PrewittRethinking support models for a cloud native worldApril 7, 2021

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Cloud native development: Serverless Black Belts

A beginner’s guide to cloud security management

nellmarie.colman — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 17:34:31 +0000

A beginner’s guide to cloud security management nellmarie.colman Tue, 03/30/2021 - 12:34

Cyber criminals are on the never-ending hunt for data — anything they can steal and sell, exploit or hold for ransom. From small businesses to the largest enterprises, everyone’s data is a target. So it’s important for you to protect your data, with a layered, defense-in-depth approach.

You might already be familiar with how to protect your data in a traditional, on-premises environment — such as by restricting admin and user access, using properly configured firewalls and running anti-malware software. But how does data security work in a complex cloud environment?

In this guide, we’ll answer these questions, look into best practices for cloud security management and discuss how security experts can help along the journey.

What is cloud security?

Cloud security has the same goal as traditional on-premises security: keeping your valuable data safe. It involves procedures and technologies designed to protect your cloud environment against both internal and external threats to your most sensitive business-critical infrastructure.

What is different about cloud security?

When comparing on-premises security and cloud security, the main differentiator is the nature of the cloud. The cloud isn’t in your data center or at your office, where you can control it. It’s in an intangible place that you can’t necessarily touch or fully control.

As a result, you can’t apply your traditional, standard infrastructure controls or enterprise tool sets, as you can with on-premises. With on-prem, you plug in a server, hook it up, and it immediately inherits all of the firewalls, IPs and rule sets you already have running in your environment.

In the cloud, you turn a new system on, and it adopts none of those historical protections. This means you must build security at the forefront — because once your cloud infrastructure is on, it’s open to the world. But once you’ve integrated cloud native tool sets and solutions, you can gain visibility that goes beyond what legacy security provides. Cloud native security solutions enable you to monitor network flow, identify vulnerabilities, integrate threat intelligence and even implement AI learning around your cloud infrastructure and systems.

What is cloud security management?

Cloud security management is similar to the model for on-premises security management. It's about understanding what security controls you have in place and how you're securing your environment, systems and data — and what you have to do, from a management standpoint, to maintain that visibility.

For example, every time you spin up a new instance in the cloud, you need to make sure you push the correct agents and that it has the right policies assigned to it. You need to be sure the controls you’ve already engineered and architected are in place.

Cloud security is quite a bit easier than traditional models, since — assuming you’re using the cloud correctly — you can automate many of the requirements and workflows. For example, in the past, IT may have set up a new server, and perhaps they didn’t install any of the agents. You might not notice until sometime later. But in the cloud, you can automate the whole process and specify installations, instead of relying on human workloads or trial-and-error.

How do you manage security in the cloud?

To protect your data, you need to take the keys to your data and lock them away — such that an adversary would need to break through layer after layer of protection to get to those keys. Cyber criminals look for vulnerable systems and data, so make it difficult for them.

Rule of least privilege

The baseline, number-one thing that everyone should do — whether you’re talking about cloud, on-premises or even a single-instance computer running in your office — is implement the rule of least privilege. Basically, if the system doesn’t need to do something, don’t allow it to.

For example, if you have a server that’s just processing information in a SQL database, don’t install a web browser. That kind of deny-by-default approach alone can remove many common attack vectors. Each time you can eliminate a way for the bad guys to get in or out, you’ve given a huge boost to your security, with minimal effort and cost.

Zero trust

Likewise, if a person within your organization doesn’t need access, don’t give them access. Take a zero-trust approach inside and outside your organization. Trust no one.

For example, say you have a house with a door, and that door has a lock. Your security is the lock on that front door. You give people you trust keys to your front door. You don’t trust anyone outside the front door, and you trust everyone inside. That’s how traditional perimeter security works.

But let’s say you’re in the house with those people you trust, but one person goes into your bedroom and is there for 20 minutes. You start wondering, what is that person up to? So you start monitoring their activity and discover they’re stealing your valuables.

So, although you need the lock on the front door, you need monitoring, validating and checking within your house as well, preferably focused on areas that are most critical. That’s what zero trust security looks like. You trust nothing and nobody, at any time, and you make it very difficult for someone to do something they shouldn’t be doing.

Patching

The world is terrible at patching. Most of the major data breaches in the last two decades, not related to zero-day exploits, have been because someone failed to apply a critical patch in a reasonable amount of time. Many recent breaches were caused because patches were ignored for years. Using free, open-source tools online, almost anyone can get into your system and compromise it when it is left without these critical updates.

Bottom line: Staying up to date with your patches is a powerful way to manage risk in the cloud. Cloud native security solutions can help by notifying you of outdated systems and reporting on the specifics, so you can keep them up to date.

Cloud security management with Rackspace Technology

When it comes to cloud security management, you don’t have to go it alone. Rackspace Technology can partner with you to address every element of your security journey and take the weight off of your in-house team so they can focus on more strategic initiatives.

Through our experience across thousands of clients and our extensive partner ecosystem, we can help you define and implement a cloud security strategy designed to keep your business safe.

Do you know your current cybersecurity risk score? Take our 15-question self-assessment today. Then take advantage of a professional consultation with one of our cloud experts who will review your results and offer best-practice recommendations on how to address any identified security gaps.

A beginner’s guide to cloud security managementDiscover the differences between cloud security and traditional on-premises security, as well as best practices for keeping your data safe in the cloud.Discover your cybersecurity risk score./lp/cybersecurity-risk-self-assessmentTake the assessment

Professional Services - Security Security Cloud InsightsChris EvansA beginner’s guide to cloud security managementMarch 30, 2021

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Creating stronger networks for women in tech

nellmarie.colman — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:45:36 +0000

Creating stronger networks for women in tech nellmarie.colman Tue, 03/23/2021 - 15:45

March is Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day was celebrated on March 8th. It’s a time of the year when there are a lot of discussions about gender parity and diversity, particularly in the tech industry — where data shows that women are still underrepresented, underpaid and often discriminated against.

We still have a long way to go, and it’s in a business’s best interest to drive progress in this area. According to Gartner, employee performance in diverse organizations is 12% higher than employee performance in companies with no inclusivity efforts. Diversity and inclusivity also improve employee engagement, which in turn increases retention by 19% and collaboration by 57%.

In a special #WomenInTech Cloudspotting episode, Sai and Alex are joined by four members of the Professional Organization of Women Empowerment at Rackspace Technology (POWER) resource group. POWER is made up of a few hundred Rackspace Technology employees who are on a mission to make Rackspace Technology a company where women thrive and to empower women in their careers.

Tune in to hear about the following:

Advice for women starting new roles and progressing in their career
Maternity leave, returning to work and childcare
Merging of work and life, and increasing acceptance of family duties
Overcoming the culture of presenteeism
Recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce

Jo Glass, Director of Strategic Operations at Rackspace Technology, discusses the amazing women-in-tech community. “I think for any woman in tech, get online, there are so many inspirational women out there, there's so much literature out there. It's fantastic that it's such a commonly talked about topic now, which it wasn't historically. Think about what sort of roles you want to go for and then reach out to other women in tech and to women outside of tech for support. There are all these transferable skills that can be applied to tech, you don't have to be an engineering major. Think about what value you can bring into a business.”

Vanessa Thompson, Enterprise Customer Success Manager at Rackspace Technology, discusses returning to work after having a child and managing childcare. “It's about easing back in and figuring out how you balance the childcare demands and balance your work as well. Having a supportive partner is so important as well so that you share that responsibility. And if anything, I think COVID has helped maybe shine a little bit of a light on family setups and support systems which means we can be more open about our situation.”

Gavin Bounds, COO EMEA at Rackspace Technology & Chair at PurpleSpace, a networking hub for disabled employees, explains how COVID may have altered the culture of presenteeism, which held people back who couldn’t be in the office as much. “I'm hoping that when we start to kind of get back to whatever normal is, the culture of presenteeism, which I've observed in a number of organizations and is incredibly unhealthy, I'm hoping that will have changed for good. And it was definitely a concept that would disadvantage quite often women who had family obligations or reasons to be less present in the office.”

Creating stronger networks for women in techIf you believe in equal opportunities, then we have a long way to go in IT. Creating stronger female networks is one way forward.Creating stronger female networkshttps://cloudspotting.fireside.fm/29Listen now

Cloud InsightsChris SchwartzCreating stronger networks for women in techMarch 23, 2021

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Defend, protect and secure with Microsoft 365 Business Premium

nellmarie.colman — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 16:32:21 +0000

Defend, protect and secure with Microsoft 365 Business Premium nellmarie.colman Mon, 03/22/2021 - 11:32

Your business is never too small to be cyberattacked. In fact, two-thirds of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees have been targeted, and 58% have been breached. And of companies hit with a ransomware attack, 73% have paid a ransom.

To help small-to-medium-sized businesses modernize their security operations, Microsoft has designed its Microsoft 365 Business Premium platform to protect against a full range of threats. From phishing attacks and data loss, to lost or stolen devices, you can protect your business with one, comprehensive, integrated solution — with the least effort and cost.

Let’s look deeper into how Microsoft 365 Business Premium can protect your business.

Today’s top security threat: phishing

Remember when it was easy to spot a phishing attack? The bad grammar, the outrageous claims and the promise of quick riches? Those days are gone. Today’s phishing schemes are much more sophisticated, and the malware they carry can easily hide, re-write itself and cover its tracks once it has infected your systems.

Over 90% of phishing attacks start with an email. So Microsoft 365 Business Premium provides several layers of safeguarding, focused specifically on email:

1. Safe Links

One clever phishing attack involves sending an email with a harmless link, which — once it has passed through your filters — changes into something malicious. To combat this tactic, the Safe Links feature double-checks every link when you click on it, to see if you’re about to be sent somewhere dangerous. Safe Links works on links contained within Office documents as well.

2. Safe Attachments

Like Safe Links, the Safe Attachments tool opens every email attachment that your company receives in a virtual environment, then watches to see what happens next. If strange behavior indicates that a cyberweapon is deployed, that file will never reach your inbox. The entire process takes less than a minute and is transparent to the email recipient.

3. Anti-phishing intelligence

This tool learns the way everyone in your organization communicates (and who they communicate with) so that when an unnatural or unusual string of communications begins, the system can accurately gauge whether one of those accounts is being controlled by an attacker.

Protecting business data

From customer data to financial records, every business has data that needs to be kept private. Microsoft 365 Business Premium offers an automated, AI-powered data protection solution that monitors the way data moves inside your organization — to help keep sensitive data from being stolen or accidentally shared. Here are four ways Microsoft 365 Business Premium helps protect your data:

1. Data loss prevention

Automatically detect when an email you’re about to send includes sensitive data like credit card information, social security numbers and or other confidential data types. There are even templates that can conform to geographic or industry-specific regulatory requirements.

2. Encryption of email and documents

If you need to send sensitive data to a partner or customer outside your organization (like an accountant or a hospital), you can encrypt that email with just one click. This ensures that only the intended recipient with the right credentials can open the email — no matter where it goes.

3. Information protection

You can use this function to control who has access to company information — whether it’s in an email or a document — by applying restrictions that prevent people from forwarding, copying or printing.

4. Archiving and e-Discovery

When you need to preserve email and documents for legal reasons, or if you need to access an employee’s email or files after they leave the company, Microsoft 365 Business Premium makes it easy to simply archive it. You can also use in-place legal hold and e-Discovery features in the event you need to retrieve email or documents for legal proceedings.

Easily securing and managing your devices

With so many company devices — from computers to phones and tablets — it’s tough keeping track of them all, let alone making sure they’re being secured.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use, device management solution powered by Microsoft Intune. Whether you need to manage company-owned devices, or company information on personal devices, Intune allows you to enforce minimum security requirements for any device connecting to your network. It also allows you to apply security policies and control where data is saved on a device, and you can selectively wipe the corporate data off a device if it’s lost or stolen.

Additionally, you can control which devices reach your Office apps and services data and allow or deny access depending on when the user is logging in, their location while attempting to access it, what applications they are using, and if it is outside of normal working hours. Parameters like these can automatically eliminate many inbound threats.

Accessing expert support

The Microsoft experts at Rackspace Technology are here to help you defend, protect and secure your business with Microsoft 365 Business Premium. We’re with you every step of the way, from advisory services through implementation, to ongoing management and optimization.

Access to the experts
With over 1,500 Microsoft Certified Professionals, we’ll help you configure and manage your solution, so you get the most out of your investment.
A perfect fit
Our advisors can help you identify the appropriate Office 365 or Microsoft 365 licenses for your business needs.
Premium admin portal
Simplify administrative tasks using a control panel designed for easy and efficient management.
24x7x365 support
Day or night, you can get around-the-clock access to award-winning support with unlimited requests and no per-incident charges.

Ready to take the next step? Let our experts assess your current security posture, discuss your current and future requirements and security goals, and create an implementation plan to secure your environment. Sign up for a Microsoft 365 security assessment today.

Defend, protect and secure with Microsoft 365 Business Premium With Microsoft 365 Business Premium, you can protect your business against phishing attacks, data loss, threats from lost or stolen devices and more, all in one comprehensive, integrated solution.Get a Microsoft 365 security assessment./lp/microsoft-365-secure-assessmentSign up today

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Microsoft Office 365 Security Cloud InsightsJason FoxDefend, protect and secure with Microsoft 365 Business PremiumMarch 22, 2021

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Tune in to hear about the following:

Defend, protect and secure with Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Today’s top security threat: phishing

1. Safe Links

2. Safe Attachments

3. Anti-phishing intelligence

Protecting business data

1. Data loss prevention

2. Encryption of email and documents

3. Information protection

4. Archiving and e-Discovery

Easily securing and managing your devices

Accessing expert support

How can Rackspace Technology support this emerging world?