First, some good news: Sure, hacks that exploit the Internet of Things and mobile devices generate plenty of headlines and angst. But decades-old best practices still can mitigate the vast majority of threats — even ones that target emerging technologies like IoT. Surprised? You’re not alone. As a CDW security consultant, I often hear enterprise...

The post Simple Solutions for Today’s Cyberattacks appeared first on Solutions Blog.

On December 7, Cisco published the end of life for its popular Access Control System (ACS) product. ACS has been the de facto standard for device network authentication and device administration for many years. With both RADIUS and TACACS+ authentication services, it served the needs for many customers for a long time. This raises the...

The post ACS GOES EOL appeared first on Solutions Blog.

There are many words and phrases floating in the technosphere about Big Data. You may hear data-driven decision-making, analytics, Big Data, IoT, IoE, IoL, Hadoop, Hortonworks, Splunk, HPE Vertica, EMC Isilon, N4mative. Some of these are trendy phrases that don’t really help anyone be strategic about their data, and others are companies who have the...

The post IoT Is Shaping a Data-Driven Future appeared first on Solutions Blog.

People are not accustomed to thinking out loud when using collaborative devices and solutions. The Microsoft Surface Hub could change that. Let’s take a look at what makes this tool great as an enterprise collaboration engine. The Surface Hub is a multitouch collaboration device that has the potential to unlock the power of the group....

The post A Peek Under the Hood: The Surface Hub Offers Far More Than a Whiteboard appeared first on Solutions Blog.

We’ve talked so much this year about how much change retailers continue to manage and prepare for. There’s been a definite disruption in how customers interact with a brand, what abilities retailers have to understand their customers and how to best leverage their customer insights. The customer journey has evolved, both inside and outside of...

The post CDW at NRF 2017: What to Expect appeared first on Solutions Blog.

With so many publishers claiming to sell a software asset management (SAM) tool, how do you decide which tool to choose for your organization? One of the prerequisites is to find out if you need agentless or agent-based server monitoring. Both agent and agentless monitoring use intelligent software to detect and report on computer equipment....

The post How to Choose Software Asset Management Tools appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When I first entered the world of information technology in 1993, the industry was growing by triple digits. “Women in IT” wasn’t really a thing. The issue of “women in IT” was likely born out of the fact that there were almost no women in this field in the early 90’s. Women were (and still...

The post Building a Bright Career appeared first on Solutions Blog.

“Be Greater than Average.” — NASA slogan In December 2002 I interviewed at CDW for an account manager position. I was so nervous I would be late that I took a cab from Union Station to the CDW offices, less than two blocks away. Chicago was gray, painted in unwelcoming wintry colors – but the...

The post Be Greater Than Average appeared first on Solutions Blog.

A few years ago at a PTA meeting I attended, there was a request for a volunteer to help sponsor a SMART Girls Club for fourth and fifth grade girls. The club was run by the YWCA and promoted Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) to young girls. Despite having two boys, I found myself...

The post One Woman’s Path to a STEM Career appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When asked to write a blog post about “Women in Technology,” the undertaking seemed somewhat less than uplifting. There have been scores of articles about the lack of women in technology fields and concern over the attrition rates for those who do enter. Therefore, dear reader, I hope you will permit me to use this...

The post Attracting and Retaining Female Talent appeared first on Solutions Blog.

This week on the CDW Solutions blog we are celebrating the birthday of Ada Lovelace, born 201 years ago, and considered by many to be the world’s first computer programmer. You’ll notice I did not use the word “female” in that designation, “first female computer programmer,” because she was the first — period. In a...

The post Celebrating Diversity in the Workplace appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobile technology is a major challenge for IT managers. The number of mobile devices — particularly smartphones — that connect to enterprise networks has skyrocketed over the past few years. Managing that kind of growth is no small task, which is why it’s a good idea to consider partnering with a reseller (rather than directly...

The post 5 Reasons to Partner With a Reseller for Mobility appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The evolution of cloud-based file sharing toward full-blown collaboration services started with shifts in the way we work. How we work has changed; where we work has changed; and the devices we work on have changed.  The consumerization of IT and the idea of people bringing their personal devices such as smartphones, tablets and notebooks...

The post Making the Leap from File Sharing to Collaboration appeared first on Solutions Blog.

At CDW, we focus on managing risk by protecting the confidentiality, availability and integrity of our information assets. We accomplish that with a three-pronged approach: People: Information Security is more than a department. Process: Our foundation is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cyber security framework. Technology: We have strong partnerships with best-of-breed...

The post Cybersecurity at CDW appeared first on Solutions Blog.

While selling compute services in the early 2000s every customer I met with would talk about implementing a full Disaster Recovery (DR) plan within the year. I would studiously go back to my office and work up a quote to enable data replication from a production site to a secondary site. Yet time and again,...

The post The Evolution of Disaster Recovery appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Cloud deployment models have certainly made a comeback in 2016. What started as a mad rush a few years ago to move everything to the “cloud” (if you remember, most people had air quotes around the word cloud in their minds back then) turned into a mass exodus back into the data center a year...

The post Hybrid Cloud Management—Blurring the Lines between Data Centers, Public Cloud and Private Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The advent of mobile devices has spawned new and exciting ways for healthcare workers to communicate with one another as well as provide innovative services to patients, especially those in remote offices and branches. The first wave of mobile devices included personal digital assistants, followed by smartphones and tablets. The latest iterations of these smart...

The post Mobile and Video Tech Breathe Life into Healthcare Collaboration appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft released a new service for public preview last month — the Windows Upgrade Analytics Service — for enterprises in need of direction upgrading to Windows 10. Upgrading to a new operating system can be a daunting and complex task. Discovering applications and drivers and then testing them for potential compatibility issues have been among...

The post Accelerate Windows 10 Deployment with Analytics appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Contact centers are morphing into customer care centers — the heartbeat for many organizations’ interactions with customers or constituents. “Customer care” means different things to different companies. But typically, a customer care center lets people communicate with an organization by phone, email, or web-based chat and instant messaging. A looming question for many companies in...

The post How to Make the Move to Cloud for Contact Center Services appeared first on Solutions Blog.

All of the clinical equipment in healthcare offices are beginning to transition from those that create paper-based records to those that now produce digital records that can be viewed anywhere in the world. Plus, when you’re done entering patient data, it’s now a part of the patient’s permanent medical record. As a healthcare company, compliance...

The post Compliance, Security and Collaboration appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Many organizations are turning to bots — software code designed to automate time-consuming tasks — to save time and money. For instance, AT&T’s Technology and Operations automation team developed bots to handle routine, time-consuming duties such as creating engineering work orders and updating systems for network-boosting activities. Here at CDW, collaboration solution architect Sankar Nair...

The post It’s Really Not an Apps-Versus-Bots World appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I’d like everyone to meet FRED: A FRED is a flashing rear-end device or an end-of-train device. The evolution of the FRED replaced the caboose. The FRED serves as the perfect example of coming-out-of-nowhere automation. Prior to the FRED, trains on hauls going outside a rail yard had a caboose. You could think of the...

The post Will Data Center Automation Be Another FRED? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What type of customer experience do you want your brand to represent? We’ve helped a lot of retailers and restaurants realize their vision for a superb customer experience through well-planned and thoughtful use of advanced technology. And we’ve come to understand the many distinctions between retail and restaurant customer engagement. I bring up that point...

The post Smart Thinking for the Future in Retail appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft has made substantial changes to the Azure pricing model across the channel effective October 2016.  One of the major reasons for this change was an effort to eliminate the discount complexity across various programs which were often difficult and cumbersome to explain and calculate.  This will help to improve the transparency, consistency and simplicity...

The post Azure Pricing Receives an Overhaul In 2016 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Virtualization has transformed server and storage operations, and it’s changing the face of networking as well. What’s next for this evolution? Wide area networking (WAN). Industry experts expect spending on software-defined WAN products to soar over the next few years. For example, IDC projects spending on SD-WAN to rise to $6 billion by 2020, up...

The post Winning with SD-WAN appeared first on Solutions Blog.

“Just make it happen!” When a business sets a new direction, its IT department is expected to just make it happen. It could be a merger, acquisition, divestiture, new initiative or a new office. If you’re a seasoned IT pro, you’ve received the call or been in the meeting where IT is looked at like...

The post Virtual Desktops: Truth, Lies and Black Magic appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Data can be found everywhere in today’s digital universe. We create content on desktop computers, share it with coworkers and partners across internal and external networks, and send it to our team members via messaging and collaboration tools. Employees regularly connect to enterprise information systems and databases from anywhere, at any time, via tablets and...

The post Secure Productive Enterprise: A Bundled Solution for the Digital Age appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Enterprise mobile technology is supposed to simplify jobs, not make them more complicated. But with many knowledge workers carrying several different devices and relying on perhaps a dozen or more mobile apps to conduct their day-to-day work, enterprises must implement tools to ensure that mobile technology doesn’t become overwhelming. Here’s a simple rule of thumb:...

The post 4 Ways of Creating Value with Mobile Workspaces appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The Internet of Things (IoT) value proposition is based on scale: The more devices that a business puts out there to collect information, the more actionable insights it has. The catch is that this scale often comes at the expense of security. Here’s why: To achieve scale, IoT devices need to be dirt cheap, with...

The post IoT Offers Opportunity to Rethink Security appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Every few years, most companies are faced with an important choice with their collaboration infrastructure. Do you decide to do a one-time, in-place upgrade of your on-premises infrastructure, or do you choose to retire your legacy environment and go with a cloud communications solution instead? Before you decide to upgrade your on-premises collaboration infrastructure, consider...

The post Cloud Collaboration Offerings Provide More than Just a Dial Tone appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Services from major cloud providers are the future of IT.  The days of corporations owning massive amounts of IT infrastructure to run their businesses are numbered because doing that, with the associated capital and operational investments, is no longer necessary.  A shift will continue toward the purchase of hardware infrastructure only necessary to provide access...

The post The Awesome Inevitability of Everything Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

We live in a multi-cloud world. Not only are more customers migrating workloads to the cloud than ever before, but cloud users are realizing that diversification of a cloud strategy is a stronger method of consumption than putting all workloads into a single cloud provider. Customers demand agility and flexibility, and cloud providers must adapt...

The post Evolution of the Cloud: The More Clouds, The Merrier appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s been a year since Apple and Cisco Systems announced their partnership to “transform business through mobility,” so what’s come of that pairing?  There has been a considerable amount of collaborative innovation. The companies have worked together to build in the necessary integration for devices running the Apple iOS 10 operating system and Cisco network...

The post Cisco + Apple = A Mobility Play for the Masses appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Nearly one-third of all consumers and half of the parents in America started their holiday shopping before Labor Day, according to a survey from online advertising tech firm Rubicon Project. And a survey from marketing consultancy Epsilon, titled “Holiday Shopper’s Voice,” has more good news: Nearly nine out of 10 respondents — 87 percent —...

The post The Holidays Are Near, is Your Technology Ready? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Let’s face it. Teleportation is probably not going to happen in my lifetime. Well at least the kind of dematerialization/rematerialization that you see on Star Trek where I say “Beam me up, Scottie,” then find myself back on the Starship after visiting a strange and distant world not less than two seconds earlier. Nonetheless the...

The post Video Technology that Is Light Years Ahead appeared first on Solutions Blog.

For over three years, I have been helping customers make sense of Adobe’s subscription offering. I have acted as a guide in navigating the Value Incentive Plan (VIP) Portal as well as specific products like the Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps license and most recently, Adobe Stock. Having listened to many customers over time, I...

The post Switching Gears: Enhanced Management for Enterprise Customers appeared first on Solutions Blog.

On January 29, 2016, Cisco announced the acquisition of the privately held Acano. And several months later, a new baby was born – Cisco Meeting Server. Just kidding! In reality, Cisco has taken what they’ve bought (Acano’s excellent technology) and introduced it to the Cisco Collaboration family with the recent release of Cisco Meeting Server...

The post Cisco Meeting Server – A Star is Reborn appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As many enterprises move to a more mobile workforce and adopt cloud technologies for their applications and workloads, the applications themselves are becoming more demanding with higher minimum requirements. This means that connectivity and the performance of that connectivity is becoming a critical component of any enterprise’s success. How do enterprises improve upon an already...

The post SD-WANs: Are They All Created Equal? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Anyone shopping at Target, Walgreens or Urban Outfitters has likely noticed that bluetooth beacons have become an important tool in the retail sector, enabling vendors to track in-store foot traffic and push promotions to shoppers’ smartphones based on where they are in the store. It’s not just retail that creating a buzz with beacon technology....

The post Bluetooth Beacons Are Redefining Campus Safety appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Despite being a significant risk, even in organizations that deal with sensitive data such as personal health information (HIPAA) and credit card data (PCI), printer security is often overlooked. After all, printers are usually easy to configure and tend to keep working until some mechanical failure takes place. This risk is a particular problem with...

The post Securing Your Printer appeared first on Solutions Blog.

If you have been following industry news or this blog, you will have heard and read about application programming interfaces (APIs) repeatedly. I am not going to talk about what APIs are in this post, but if you want to learn more a good place to start is always Wikipedia and Cisco’s own DevNet. What...

The post Programming Cisco’s Firepower 6.1 with the REST API appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When Satya Nadella assumed the top job at Microsoft a couple of years back, he laid out a simple vision in a memo to employees: “Our job is to ensure that Microsoft thrives in a mobile- and cloud-first world.” Last week at Microsoft Ignite in Atlanta, Nadella and other Microsoft executives detailed how the company...

The post At Ignite, Microsoft Spells Out Plans for a Mobile-First, Cloud-First Future appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Let’s be honest, nobody really likes change. Especially not on an organizational level. Sure, savvy leaders can recognize that change is necessary to keep pace in a competitive landscape, or that change can ultimately make work life (and real life) easier, more productive and fun. Even still, change isn’t any less scary. Migrating to Microsoft...

The post A Guide for Your Office365 Migration appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Last week, Microsoft held the Microsoft Ignite conference in Atlanta. This post is a collection of observations and inferences from what Microsoft announced or the data that was presented in various sessions. With an event the size of Ignite, this should not be seen as an attempt to be comprehensive. These are simply my observations...

The post Observations from Microsoft Ignite appeared first on Solutions Blog.

We all know that retailers today are faced with a lot of pressure to maintain customer loyalty. Consumers have more choices than ever before, which means retailers need to work even harder to get people into their stores, meaningfully engage with them, and eventually turn those shoppers into lifelong customers.Let’s face it, the pressure to...

The post Think Like a Smart Retailer appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Windows Server 2016, Microsoft’s cloud-ready operating system, promises to deliver new layers of security and Azure-based innovation when it becomes available this fall. A look at the preview version reveals that Microsoft has built multiple layers of protection into its latest iteration of the server operating system. Additionally, software-defined data center technologies will give businesses...

The post Windows Server 2016 — Taking It to the Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Cisco Systems’ HyperFlex platform brings significant benefits to a wide variety of industries. From online retailers to major health care providers, hyperconvergence is arriving in data centers and transforming enterprise IT. If we want a closer look at the application of HyperFlex in a specific industry, higher education stands out as an ideal candidate. The...

The post Case in Point: Cisco HyperFlex in Higher Education appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Gone are the days where IT managers show interest in the traditional stack for most of their workloads. After all, when you walk into a data center and see all the blinking lights, you’re reminded that those lights represent lots of issues that you need to attend to. From connecting the numerous management interfaces; to...

The post 3 Stumbling Blocks to Hyperconverged Infrastructure Success, and How to Get Around Them appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The IT industry is experiencing a major transition within the data center. The days of strictly defined server, network and storage silos will soon be behind us. The data center is no longer about just hardware; it is about applications and software. Application development has changed, and agile application development has gone mainstream. Traditional applications,...

The post Are You Ready for Software-Defined Networking? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Scalable security via Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise E3 just became available this month from Microsoft partners through the Cloud Solution Provider channel. Let’s take a look at three enterprise security capabilities that organizations can now tap into on a per-user, per-month basis — no matter their size: Credential Guard, Device Guard and Windows Information Protection....

The post At Last, Enterprise Security for Windows on a Per-User Basis appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Video has become an integral part of our daily lives. We have cameras with us just about everywhere — in conference rooms, at our desks, on our notebooks and on our smartphones. Interestingly though, while many people think nothing of engaging in video chats with friends or family members on Facetime or Facebook Messenger, they...

The post Video Conferencing Stressing You Out? Here’s How to Crush It appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In the not-so-distant past (that may be yesterday for some organizations), setting up video conference calls could be a fairly arduous task for users in enterprise environments. All participants had to have the same type of system to communicate with their fellow workers. Plus, someone from the IT department typically had to show up 10...

The post Video Conferencing, Like a Boss appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Hyperconvergence platforms are making their way into data centers around the world as technology professionals work to provide their organizations with the IT infrastructure they will need to support operations for years to come. As with any new technology, organizations adopting a hyperconvergence strategy or planning to move in that direction should view this transformation...

The post Assess Your Readiness for Cisco HyperFlex appeared first on Solutions Blog.

An increasingly mobile workforce — and an influential part of that workforce — is changing how people collaborate across video, audio and web conferencing platforms. Millennials (folks born between 1982 and 2002) make up the largest growing generation of workers today. But most important to IT teams supporting users, millennials prefer to communicate differently compared...

The post Transparent Video Bridging Eases Burden of Managing Conferences Across Platform Types appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Upcoming licensing changes for Windows Server 2016 were made public months ago, but a little reminder that they are now imminent doesn’t hurt. It’s time to double-check that your business is properly prepared. After Windows Server 2016 becomes generally available on October 1, Microsoft will convert the licensing model for both the Standard and Datacenter...

The post Countdown to Core — Are You Ready for Changes to Microsoft Windows Server Licensing? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Change comes regularly to enterprise data centers. These facilities, often built to house expensive mainframes and their caretakers, continue to provide the essential power, cooling and environmental controls required to support enterprise IT operations. More than a decade ago, administrators rolled those mainframes out on a forklift, and replaced them with racks and racks of...

The post Hyperconvergence and the Evolving Data Center appeared first on Solutions Blog.

At CDW, we take a holistic approach to information security. As the company’s CISO, my philosophy is that information security is not a department; it’s a capability and a mindset that we need to have throughout the company. All of our coworkers need to be a part of it. Any company’s information security program is...

The post CDW’s Evolving Approach to Information Security appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Increasingly, the businesses I work with have moved, or have begun planning a move, to cloud-based telephony services to replace their on-premises systems. Cloud-based telephony is an on-demand computing model allowing users to tap into a shared pool of configurable computing resources — such as applications, networks, servers, storage and services — that can be...

The post Cloud Telephony Lets You Add Advanced Services — Without the Extra Cost appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a hot topic in the data center world right now. Unless you’ve been operating your data center in a cave for the last three years, you’ve likely been deluged with chatter about this latest addition to IT infrastructure — and with good reason. HCI takes the promise of converged infrastructure and...

The post Bringing Hyperconverged Infrastructure to Life appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The debate over cloud consumption is settled. Ninety-five percent of enterprises and small/medium businesses are using some type of cloud, according to RightScale’s 2016 State of the Cloud Report. But that’s not where the discussion ends. When customers are looking to take an application to the cloud there are many considerations. One of the first...

The post A Helping Hand to the Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Every day, the smartphones in our palms become more like the computers and notebooks on our desks back at the office. That fact presents every business in every industry with an opportunity to tap into these devices for true productivity on the go — rather than using them as mere high-end email inboxes. Take the...

The post Smartphones in the Workplace: Moving Far Beyond Email and Calendar appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As cloud and IT-as-a-Service-based solutions continue to command mainstream adoption, we are gaining insight into what goes into an effective cloud strategy. In the past, the term cloud strategy was, at best, ambiguous. No one knew what it meant, what went into a cloud strategy or how it would fit into their organization’s strategic vision....

The post Two Visions of the Cloud: Nearsighted vs. Farsighted appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In today’s world, security threats and incidents have become the norm. The security statistics speak for themselves that IT security spending will soar from more than $75 billion in 2015 to $101 billion in 2018. And 87 percent of U.S. chief executives polled for PricewaterhouseCoopers’s 18th Annual Global CEO Survey 2015 think cyberattacks will hinder...

The post 3 Reasons to Keep an Incident Response and Security Forensics Team on Retainer appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s 8:17 in the morning and you just threw your briefcase into the car. The imaginary checker flag drops, signaling the start of your (already late) race to work. When you finally make it to your desk, you skim through your inbox to find three new proposals and five new work orders that need approval...

The post Getting into the Digital Workflow appeared first on Solutions Blog.

With more than 350 million devices now running Windows 10, the Microsoft operating system has become one of the most widely used platforms in the world. Last month at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, the company announced a host of new projects that will improve the security and management of its suite of collaboration, cloud...

The post Updates from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Technology’s role is shifting. And with it, IT staffs are no longer just tasked with keeping things up and running. They’re expected to drive real business results and contribute to the bottom line. But you’ve got a complex infrastructure to manage, and getting bogged down in maintenance means foregoing opportunities to innovate. Unfortunately, the more...

The post Maximize Innovation with Managed Services appeared first on Solutions Blog.

New security policies provide organizations with a proven way to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals, but the rollout of such policies is often easier said than done — especially when dozens of firewalls and thousands of devices are involved. To overcome this challenge, small and mid-size organizations should consider Cisco Defense Orchestrator, a new...

The post Cisco Defense Orchestrator Simplifies Security appeared first on Solutions Blog.

If you have invested in any of Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions – such as Azure, Office 365, Intune and Enterprise Mobility Suite – it is likely you’ve heard the term Digital Partner of Record or DPOR for short. However, most customers are at least a little unclear – and even hesitant – on actually naming a...

The post Getting the Most From Your Cloud Partner With Digital Partner of Record appeared first on Solutions Blog.

You have deployed some virtual machines into Azure, AWS, Google, Rackspace — or all of the above. Your email and a growing number of applications are being hosted not just in your data center, but also in the cloud. The tools you have been using to monitor and manage these platforms don’t work so well...

The post Hybrid Cloud Monitoring – Integrate Across Platforms appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As businesses grow and cloud capabilities expand, the focus is shifting to an operations approach that harnesses the cloud’s ability to improve disaster recovery, development and testing, application delivery and virtualized desktop environments. Aggregating your data center to a cloud solution gives you a few, broad-reaching benefits. Most importantly, it creates a nimble organization. But...

The post Reach Further and Move Faster with Aggregation appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In disaster recovery, one size doesn’t fit every company, every budget, or even every IT workload that you need to safeguard.  Flexibility is the key.  But research indicates that nearly half of all companies don’t have a disaster recovery solution in place at all.  That is surprising because the stakes are higher than most people...

The post 3 Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best DRaaS Provider appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Technology is changing how learning happens. As mobile devices and computers become more of an integral part of students’ lives, teachers have started using them to help their students with schoolwork outside of the classroom. But today, we’re starting to experience the connected classroom. Expanding internet capabilities are also expanding the 4 walls where learning...

The post The Expanding Classroom appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The paths one can take to automate IT are numerous. If your choices are driven by use cases and business outcomes then it will be easier to make a decision. It does not mean, though, that we as IT staff don’t need to know how the market is shaking out. Today we examine three layers...

The post The Three Layers of IT Orchestration appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Technology can prove to be a game-changer for retailers, but only when it’s applied properly. Many retailers implement electronic commerce platforms to quickly bring products to customers. Additionally, they invest in technology, such as retail analytics, to understand how to better engage with them through a variety of channels, including physical stores, online or mobile...

The post Keeping Pace with Business and Market Demands appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s a great idea to lock the front door of your house, but it doesn’t do you much good if you leave the garage door open when you drive away. Unfortunately, this is an accurate analogy for security patching at many companies. Patching security vulnerabilities is an important part of every company’s IT processes. Companies...

The post Security Patch Management Tips to Keep Your Network Secure appeared first on Solutions Blog.

By Jason Brown and Chris Coughlin, CDW Mobility Architects In today’s work environment, where a single user sometimes carries three or more mobile devices, organizations may find it tempting to give up on the idea of any IT control over mobile users. But that’s a mistake. Poorly managed mobile deployments can create serious headaches for...

The post Enterprise Mobility Management Tips During IT Deployment appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Retailers face increasing pressure to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, while controlling operational and capital costs at the same time. Retail IT leaders should be on the lookout for technology solutions and services that help to streamline processes and aligns technology disseminated across tens of thousands of locations. That’s where CDW’s pre-ship configuration can play...

The post Ready to Go, Ready to Use appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Bus and rail passengers want the same sort of digital experience they’ve come to expect elsewhere — the ability to access and engage with information anytime, anywhere and on any device. As a result, we’re seeing many transit agencies starting to explore or implement Wi-Fi to retain existing riders and attract new ones. It’s truly...

The post Beacon Technology Connects Commuters appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The leaders I meet with are rarely focused on storage—they’re thinking about larger strategic initiatives; accelerating product development, moving to IT as a Service (ITaaS), and deploying private clouds. But ironically, it’s often storage that’s the bottleneck for these broader initiatives. Now, that’s not the fault of storage itself, but rather the fault of the...

The post How VM-Aware Storage Can Speed up Your Business appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s not coincidental that your contact center gets thrust into the mire of compliance issues. When you think about it, it’s easy to see why. Many companies with contact centers work in highly regulated industries such as banking and healthcare, for example. Usually the goal is to keep these high-touch, customer-facing employees from a) publicly...

The post Avoid Call Center Compliance Snafus by Deploying Voice Analytics appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Malware takes many forms, one of the most popular today being “malvertising.” Designed to look like traditional Internet ads, these threats hide in plain view and lure users into downloading them with links to celebrity gossip, self-improvement tricks or the promise of financial gain. When users click on the ads, ransomware can automatically download itself...

The post How to Stop Ransomware appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Today’s organized criminals are focused on cybercrimes.  For them, it’s pretty easy to download a program and start up a nice crypto-ransomware business or send out a few million phishing emails to crack a user’s credentials (account ID and password) and begin their nefarious activities. It’s pretty simple to find the tools for these endeavors.  See...

The post Why Single Sign-On is So Critical appeared first on Solutions Blog.

CDW has been in the networking business for a long time, and over the decades, we’ve seen amazing innovation while working with partners like Cisco Systems and Intel. Indeed, that’s been my experience in my six years with the company. But nothing compares to the sea change we are experiencing now with the Internet of...

The post How IoT Is Revolutionizing Transportation appeared first on Solutions Blog.

During the course of any given workday, people repeat tasks — lots of them. But what if those repetitive tasks could be automated? Certainly many could, which would free workers to focus more of their time on creative, innovative projects. Now, think about this. What if there was a way to automate 10 things from...

The post Want to Boost Employee Productivity? Go Get a Room appeared first on Solutions Blog.

On May 17th, Meraki “put a quarter up” with their brand new Meraki Communications platform and its hardware star, the MC74 IP phone. The Meraki Communications launch device: the MC74 IP phone. To date, most people know Meraki best for their MR-series wireless access points and “Dashboard,” their industry-leading cloud-based network management system.  Over time,...

The post A Challenger Appears: Meraki and the Beautiful MC74 IP Phone appeared first on Solutions Blog.

“The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards – and even then I have my doubts.”- Security Expert Gene Spafford, 1989 Reality check: Your workloads are potentially more secure in the public cloud than in your own...

The post Public Cloud Security and You appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Organizations are constantly looking for ways to reduce cost and improve their data center efficiencies. With the advent of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and on-demand cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, new virtualization strategies have emerged. We need to realize our clients are recognizing the cloud as a new option in...

The post Cloud Backup: An Opportunity to Discuss Disaster Recovery appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Call Center Week just ended and while several coworkers and our partners are making their way back from the CCW Conference and Expo in Vegas –all week, I’ve been here in CDW’s open-concept office, a veritable call center, itself. Imagine working in an office where engaging the customer is all that matters. Now open your...

The post What Does Your Customer Hear When Contacting Your Call Center? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Cloud Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is taking enterprises by storm this year. The global UCaaS market is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.4 percent from 2014 to 2022, hitting $37.85 billion. Don’t Drop a Dime Where traditionally global enterprises were once operating on siloed environments, they are...

The post The Benefits of UCaaS in a Global Workforce appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In today’s evolving IT landscape, businesses have a difficult time keeping up with their users and the bandwidth demands for the multitude of applications that their networks host. Where the applications themselves reside is a factor in how much corporate Wide Area Network (WAN) bandwidth is required. As applications move outside of the firm’s private...

The post Networking That Goes the Distance appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As previous postings have announced, Microsoft is implementing a change to its Enterprise Agreement (EA) program that raises the minimum entry requirement from 250 to 500 desktops or users. This takes effect on July 1, 2016. The rigidity of the program structure, with its reliance on physical counts of desktops and/or users, hasn’t lent itself...

The post Microsoft: No More Enterprise Agreements for Sub‐500 Customers appeared first on Solutions Blog.

“You say you want a revolution?” the Beatles once asked the world.  In the world of desktop computing, the answer is “Yes, we want a virtual revolution.” By definition, revolution is a fundamental change that occurs in a short period of time. Education in the United States is continuously evolving to keep up with learning...

The post Virtual Desktops and the Education Revolution appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Technology alone is not the key to business success. Technology adoption is. Investments in technology — especially software — only create the potential for employees and businesses to perform with greater productivity. Users must work with that technology properly, and with regularity, to realize its true potential. Too often, only a small group of users adequately...

The post With Software, Training and Incentives Can Increase Adoption and ROI appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Users no longer have to depend on their organization’s IT department to get the technology they need, insomuch that they can download apps to their mobile devices. They can activate cloud services with a few keystrokes or have a managed service provider build them customized systems, all without having the IT staff aware that this...

The post The Good and Bad of Shadow IT appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Managed Security Services can mean contrasting things to various organizations. It has a tradition of being approached with slight trepidation by many information technology decision makers. By proper definition, a managed security service provider (MSSP) simply put, provides outsourced monitoring and management of security devices and systems. According to Gartner, “common services include managed firewall, intrusion detection, virtual private...

The post Orchestrating Managed Security Services: A Shared Responsibility Model appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Today, enterprise networking is at a very interesting and dynamic state. With the availability of LAN bandwidth speeds of 40GB and 100GB in the data center, virtual switching technologies with all links forwarding traffic, creative new Quality of Service (QoS) configurations, application optimization, intelligent path control and the addition of automated orchestration, the possibilities today...

The post Future State: The Amazing Possibilities of Today’s Enterprise Network appeared first on Solutions Blog.

“I need a phone line installation – is that something you handle?” “My company wants a multi-vendor, international solution for voice, data, and cloud; can you help me with that?” “Is it possible for us to add some public cloud for usage spikes? Most hyper-scale providers have redefined cloud computing as a self-service product. You...

The post Revving up Managed Application Services for Cloud Computing appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The software an organization’s IT staff provides can directly impact overall performance. Unfortunately, technology leaders often neglect software deployment best practices, investing time and effort in shopping for new products instead of optimizing those already in use. As a result, the organization realizes fewer benefits and a lower return on investment — even on good...

The post 5 Common Software Deployment Mistakes and How to Fix Them appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Whenever I get a request for a phone conference without a video option, it surprises me. As a business video solution architect for CDW and someone who has decades of experience in the technology industry, I’ve seen the impact video can have. Every notebook has a webcam, and video conferencing tools have become ubiquitous in...

The post WebRTC Is Poised to Transform Video Job Interviews appeared first on Solutions Blog.

A CFO gets an email from his CEO: She is traveling, but needs $10 million transferred to an account to finalize an acquisition. The CFO knows a deal is in the works, so he approves the transfer. Poof! The money is gone forever. It turns out a fraudster sent the email. Farfetched? Hardly. This trick...

The post The Secret Handshake and Other Anti-Phishing Tips appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Automation helps supercharge collaboration apps. My colleagues and I spend a lot of our days using Cisco Spark. We send each other quick questions via instant message; we collaborate face-to-face in virtual video meetings; we call clients on the phone and we share documents via Box, all within Spark. As a technical lead at CDW,...

The post Rise of the Bots appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When Microsoft announced on April 28, 2016 the general availability of Cool Blob Storage, my marketing eye was immediately twitching. What a great name! It immediately made me want to see what it was all about. That I was immediately attracted to it shows what a great marketing ploy this was. Cool Blob storage is...

The post Microsoft Unveils Azure Cool Blob Storage for as Little as $.01 per GB appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Client virtualization allows healthcare workers — and many other industries — the freedom to operate effectively and securely from anywhere. Consider what’s happening in the healthcare industry as hospitals transition from paper-based records management to electronic or digital records. Healthcare facilities have untethered physicians, nurses and other care workers from fixed workstations by allowing them...

The post Client Virtualization Delivers an Authentic Mobile Workspace appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As their company begins to scale, many growing businesses will find that consumer-facing video conference technologies don’t always cut it. Don’t believe me? Well, let me know what your global client thinks of your firm after you and three other colleagues pass around an iPhone to give a long-distance presentation. While your budget might not...

The post Product Review: A First Look at the Polycom RealPresence Trio 8800 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Does your organization use any hosted or cloud-based services?  Even if you host just one, your network can end up the victim of a serious security fail. Unless you have a completely closed network there is always a need to add some additional safeguards for your organization’s cloud services. This isn’t meant to be a...

The post Don’t Get Robbed—Use Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

CDW was selected as one of the few partners to attend the internal “wolf pack” training on Cisco Tetration Analytics.  We spent several days with Cisco engineers from around the globe gaining hands-on experience with Tetration.  Tetration is a very impressive product today; however, its potential is beyond incredible. Tetration, which was developed by former...

The post Cisco Unveils Tetration: Real-Time Network Analytics for Your Data Center appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) has come a long way in healthcare. It is a far cry from a few years ago when I would say the phrase “IaaS” in meetings and get the following response: “We like the ability to hug our servers.” But times are changing. IT managers are faced with the need...

The post Embracing Microsoft Azure – IaaS in the Healthcare Space appeared first on Solutions Blog.

A good penetration tester is curious, creative and persistent. We are unique, coming from many different walks of life, all driven by a desire to understand security weaknesses and risks – and how to keep others from exploiting them. Cyber Detectives Our mission is not only to find vulnerabilities, but also to explain how we...

The post What Makes a Good Penetration Tester? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Retail success isn’t only about getting customers into your store. It’s also about meeting their expectations. Having the right merchandise at the right time is one of those expectations. Consumers are smarter than ever before, and making it easy for customers to find what they want, when they want it, is something every retailer must...

The post Taking Control of Your Retail Inventory appeared first on Solutions Blog.

At this point, it seems as though every business has pressed their face against the glass and looked into the cloud market. Some out of necessity, others for curiosity, and some because well, someone said they should. Regardless of the motivation, nearly every business is interested to know, “What are other businesses like ours doing...

The post The Cloud: Everyone Wants to Know What Everyone Else is Doing appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Once upon a time I was an IT manager for a school district and was tasked with migrating from Exchange 2003 to 2007. I knew from past experience that when I migrated to new servers, there were always issues. No matter what the tech notes and step-by-step guides say, I was still ready for issues...

The post Migrating to Office 365 — with the Special Sauce appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Today, every company needs some sort of customer engagement — whether they know it or not.  Customer engagement has metamorphosed to include not only external customers but internal customers as well.  There are many options out there for companies to choose from, but which is the best for you? This post focuses on Cisco products...

The post Choosing the Best Customer Engagement Platform for You appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Whether it’s SaaS, IaaS, or a hybrid—cloud services are fast becoming part of IT delivery for nearly every business. The number of companies, health care systems and academic organizations investigating cloud services continues to grow, and as a result the adoption of cloud deployment is skyrocketing. It’s really no wonder—provisioning hosted servers is now as...

The post Managed Services: The Key to Your Cloud Strategy Success appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Simplifying a complex, aging web of infrastructure components leads to more satisfied customers — and greater revenue. Every business wants to increase revenue and decrease costs while mitigating risks and the restaurant industry is no different. Improving the effectiveness of technology can boost customer satisfaction, which goes hand-in-hand with increased revenue. A better bottom line...

The post How the Cloud Delivers Better Wi-Fi Service for Restaurants appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As a CDW Cloud Specialist, it’s my job to help our customers select the best cloud provider based on their requirements and goals. Typically, customers come into my initial consultations with preconceived notions of ideal providers, but often these are based off of effective marketing and advertising strategies employed by the cloud companies with the...

The post Early Considerations before Choosing a Cloud Provider appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I’m often asked whether the inexpensive headsets advertised on the web are adequate for the workplace. Simply put, they’re not. These devices connect organizations to their customers and the outside world, so it pays to invest in a good headset — ideally one that works so well, you forget it’s even there. One thing I’ve...

The post The Finer Points of a Good Headset appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Unified Communications as a Service, otherwise known as UCaaS, is a suite of applications that allow companies to communicate via IP and unify their communications on a single platform. Although options vary by provider and customer need, solutions generally consist of a hosted phone system, network management tools, conferencing and collaboration tools, hosted contact center...

The post The Top Six Reasons Why Healthcare Companies Should Consider UCaaS appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When my friend Nancy contemplated a cross-country move, just one thing held her back: a job she loved. Rather than put in her notice, she made a proposal to work remotely. The benefits were clear. Rather than spending hours a day in Atlanta traffic, she’d be able to start work before the rest of her...

The post Strategies to Make Remote Workers Feel Like Part of the Team appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft recently announced that June 1 will be the general availability release date for the highly anticipated SQL Server 2016. This release of SQL Server is unlike any other, as this version is truly a cloud-borne release with many features already developed and released within Microsoft’s Azure SQL Database cloud platform. SQL Server’s innovative functionality...

The post Save the Date: SQL Server 2016 Available on June 1 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Analytics is transforming retail in myriad ways — a significant aspect of which is the ability to harness and analyze machine data, making a substantial impact to the bottom line for many retailers. Machine data is one of the most rapidly expanding categories of data capture today.  Everything from mobile devices, web sites and POS...

The post Data Capture and Analytics: Transforming the Future of Retail appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Imagine you’re a radiology patient. Something hurts and needs to be fixed. An X-ray informs the diagnosis which informs a treatment plan. Let’s apply the same diagnostic approach to shadow IT! If you’re unfamiliar with the term, shadow IT is any computing resource or service used without IT’s blessing. Examples might include an engineering employee...

The post Diagnosing Your Cloud Practices appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As of March 5, 2016, customers may have noticed a change in their VIP (Value Incentive Plan) portal when trying to add a new seat and place the order through CDW. The price may have been lower than expected which is, of course, a pleasant surprise.  This blog will help clarify the subtle changes Adobe...

The post Adobe VIP Program Discount Tier Updated for 2016 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Suppose an organization needs to keep tabs on a fleet of vehicles; or perhaps its business model involves placing kiosks in retailers. Maybe it’s a utility that collects data from smart meters; or maybe it just needs a failover network. For increasingly mobile business use cases that demand mission-critical connectivity in any environment, cellular routers...

The post Mobile Organizations Tap the Internet of Things appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Unlimited vacation time. Conference calls during the morning commute. Checking in with clients from a pediatrician’s waiting room. These are just a few examples of how today’s messaging applications are blurring the boundaries of work. Users can decide how, when and where they get their jobs done. These apps present great opportunities for bringing efficiencies to...

The post Messaging Apps Are Blurring the Boundaries of Work appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Data centers store an organization’s most valuable, confidential assets, from account information and product designs to strategic plans. To protect these resources, organizations more frequently are turning to firewalls inside their data center that provide exceptional throughput and ultra-low latency — allowing data centers to still function at a high level, but with increased security....

The post Guarantee a Successful Data Center Firewall Deployment appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As part of the company’s push toward hybrid cloud, Windows Server 2016 will focus on per–processor core licenses. Microsoft has made a number of major licensing changes in the last month as the company reorganizes its licensing structure around hybrid cloud. Even for a dedicated licensing professional it’s a lot to follow, let alone a...

The post Microsoft Announces Changes to Windows Server 2016 Licensing appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Password management often contributes to the “nightmare scenario” for just about everyone in a work environment. For employees, it’s having too many accounts in too many places, and the Post-it note in the desk drawer is too darn small! For IT help-desk staff, it’s the endless phone calls from employees that can’t remember their password...

The post WebEx and SSO – A Match Made in the Cloud(s) appeared first on Solutions Blog.

On any given weekday, I can participate in several meetings, collaborate with colleagues, work on projects, check in with clients and still make it to my son’s 5 p.m. basketball game. My productivity secret: I work from home. It’s not much of a secret anymore. Organizations are realizing the promise of having staff work remotely....

The post How to Boost Productivity with Investments in Remote-Worker Culture appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s over, folks.  Microsoft has officially ended support for SQL Server 2005. By the time you read this, April 12 will have come and gone. In earlier posts in this series, we’ve discussed some of the negatives associated with ignoring this deadline. We’ve also talked about some of the options you have for upgrading. Specific...

The post It’s Official: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is Out of Time appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Customers come in all shapes and sizes, and they have a million different demands. But ultimately, they all want the same thing: a good shopping experience. When I was a child, I had a memorable experience with a retailer. I wanted to buy a juice box at a store, but I didn’t know how. The...

The post Delivering the Retail Experience Your Customers Demand appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobility has become a central fact of work operations. Whether you want to make it easier for your customers to buy from you than from your competitors, or ensure that staff can stay productive 24/7 — or both — you need great mobile apps. Unfortunately, no organization has unlimited resources to throw at mobile app...

The post Kony Visualizer Fast-Tracks Mobile Apps appeared first on Solutions Blog.

With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft introduced the concept of servicing branches, which include Current Branch (CB), Current Branch for Business (CBB) and Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB). Each branch has a place in an overall Windows management strategy. While Microsoft offers guidance for where each branch fits, the reasoning behind the guidance is...

The post Does Microsoft’s Windows 10 Servicing Recommendation Pass the “Why” Test? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

A backup administrator’s job is like that of a pilot—hours and hours of utter boredom, followed by moments of sheer adrenaline. Let’s face it. We all know that backup isn’t sexy – but it’s absolutely necessary. In some cases, it’s the last line of defense from ever-increasing malware, ransomware and just plain human error. I...

The post World Backup Day: Eight Simple Rules to Prevent Data Loss appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Cloud. Has there ever been a five-letter word that brings to mind so many different ideas and concepts? Ask for a definition and you will find nearly every person has a different answer. Some execs believe the operational agility provided by such elasticity frees up their staff to focus on more strategic efforts, while allowing them...

The post Cloudy Forecast Ahead for 2016 IT Trends appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It seems everyone is offering “cloud” solutions these days. In fact, a recent Google search of “cloud solutions” revealed 85 million hits! If we dial that down further to a search for “Unified Communications as a Service” (UCaaS), we get only 14 million hits. How do we choose? Are all UCaaS solutions equal? Where do...

The post UCaaS Solutions Expand in the Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

There is no shortage of communication platforms and tools for businesses and users to choose from today. It ranges from consumer focused single use apps to enterprise-grade, feature-rich clients. While there is no shortage of options, a problem still remains. How do companies offer an exceptional collaboration experience for their users with the security and...

The post Cisco Lights a Spark for Collaboration appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In the world of IT, individuals often define a disaster as a hurricane, tornado, flood or earthquake. The truth is that a disaster is any event that prevents your business from accessing data and systems required to operate, including regional power outages, cyber attacks, employee sabotage and hardware failure. Disaster recovery (DR) solutions used to...

The post Top Ten Reasons to Consider Disaster Recovery as an Entry Point to the Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

If you’re responsible for managing software licenses in your organization, you know that it’s a complex mix of art and science. It’s ever-evolving: Software publishers continually roll out new programs, revise contract terms and introduce new delivery models. On top of that, vendor audits mean there’s minimal margin for error in getting it right. In...

The post Four Ways to Take the Drama Out of Software Renewals appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The relevance of VoIP implementations in the marketplace continues to grow as a result of gains in flexibility, customization and integration. Industry analyst firms peg the rate of growth at something in excess of 20 percent per year.  The emergence of several developments related to VoIP are becoming more apparent and together they reveal the...

The post Five Key Enterprise Voice Trends to Watch in 2016 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Amazon may be the 800-pound gorilla in modern retailing, but it’s not without weaknesses that savvy competitors can exploit. Consider this: A coffee connoisseur is eyeing a highly rated espresso maker but has a question about how the milk frother works. The site’s crowdsourced Q&A on the product offers no ready answer to her question,...

The post Retailers and Customer Service: Connecting with Data to Improve Satisfaction appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In a previous blog post, I talked about how to take advantage of the cloud for disaster recovery (DR) and the key areas on which to focus. Taking advantage of the cloud for DR solutions can reduce business continuity expenses and provide a way to ensure that key services are operational in the event an...

The post Azure for Disaster Recovery: What Every IT Professional Should Know appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s not uncommon for companies to ignore software license management until they’re forced to act — often because a software maker notifies them of an impending audit. But that’s a huge mistake. As a licensing account executive with CDW, I work with companies of all sizes to manage their software licensing needs. Over the past...

The post Top Five Software License Management Best Practices appeared first on Solutions Blog.

With 1,500 network security reviews under our belts using CDW Threat Check, we’ve learned a few things about how organizations can close up security loopholes. By offering this complimentary Threat Check assessment, our team of security analysts can passively monitor an organization’s networks to identify vulnerabilities and malicious activity. As we head toward our 2,000th...

The post A Proactive Approach to Cyber Attack Prevention appeared first on Solutions Blog.

If you’re like most technology buyers, you’re accustomed to purchasing locked smartphones — that is, phones that are restricted to the network of the specific mobile carrier from whom you purchased them. In the U.S., enterprises and consumers have purchased phones this way because carriers typically subsidized the cost of the phone in return for...

The post Unlocked Smartphones Unlock Big Value appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Many of you may have heard about the DROWN attack on SSL/TLS encryption in the media over the last week or so, not to mention previous issues such as the Heartbleed Bug.  I wanted to take a moment though to talk about the former and its impact on businesses worldwide. “DROWN” stands for “Decrypting RSA with Obsolete and Weakened...

The post Don’t Let Your Business Sink from Latest DROWN Vulnerability appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Adobe Acrobat works in conjunction with Microsoft Office Applications—and has for a number of years. It’s a powerful integration for customers using both products, allowing the end user to make the most of their available resources, and in turn simplify day-to-day tasks.  Adobe PDF and Microsoft Office are the most commonly used formats of their...

The post Discovering Adobe Acrobat DC’s Integration with Microsoft Applications appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What is cloud? That question is asked of me daily by many IT professionals. If you look up the definition in Webster’s Dictionary, you will see it states cloud is, “A great crowd or multitude; a vast collection.” Now, I am pretty sure you didn’t get up from your desk while reading this blog to...

The post The Hybrid Cloud – It’s Not as “Cloudy” as One Would Think appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s no secret that brick-and-mortar stores face challenges in a world where purchases of just about everything can be arranged from an Internet-enabled device and delivered within a few days. Even the greatest draw to pull shoppers into stores — the ability to see and evaluate products in the real world — has been eroded...

The post Clienteling and Custom Apps Retain In-Store Customers appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft Office 365 E5 enables users to enjoy many of the same telephony capabilities outside the office that they do while at their desks. So, whether they’re working at home, in a hotel room or at a coffee shop, they are having the conversations they need to have to get their jobs done. But to...

The post Tips for Getting the Most from Microsoft E5’s Telephony Capabilities appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I’m a highly mobile worker. So, like many workers, I’m always looking for better ways to improve my productivity, no matter where I am. Call it a “mobile office.” Call it a “virtual workspace.” We’re all looking for the magic formula that will ensure that we can access the applications, data and services we need...

The post How a Plantronics Headset Changed My Life appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Do I swipe or insert the card? It’s the new point-of-sale question most consumers ask themselves (or the cashier) when they come to make a purchase. We can thank the new EMV chip cards and the new chip card reader payment terminals that require the new cards to be inserted, rather than swiped through. Last...

The post 3 Reasons to Cash In on an EMV Upgrade appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobilizing a business requires more than simply providing users with mobile devices and popular off-the-shelf apps. To really move the needle on productivity, companies need custom mobile apps that empower people to perform critical processes anytime and anywhere. When it comes to developing custom mobile apps, two principles in particular are critical: Apps must deliver...

The post Creating and Using Custom Mobile Apps to Empower Enterprise Employees appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The changes Microsoft announced last month to its enterprise licensing agreement will likely be the first of many as the company pushes customers to a new volume-licensing portal. By increasing the number of minimum users from 250 to 500 for an enterprise license, Microsoft reduces the number of customers that qualify for the program. This...

The post What User Increases Mean for MS Volume Licensing appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s easy for just about anyone to pick up a device and be productive in no time. Your users expect their documents and apps to be available just about anywhere from any device — and sometimes many devices. But how are you protecting the sensitive data on these devices that could be anywhere in the...

The post Improving BYOD Security with Microsoft EMS appeared first on Solutions Blog.

A business hires two security guards to protect the premises. The first guard patrols the perimeter while the second protects the lobby. Late one night, the guard patrolling the perimeter discovers a freshly broken window. You’d expect that he would immediately alert the inside security guard about the possibility of an intruder, right? Unfortunately, IT...

The post Sophos and the Heartbeat of Information Security appeared first on Solutions Blog.

On February 10, Cisco Systems published a vulnerability relating to the VPN function in the Cisco ASA software. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2016-1287 and relates to the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) version 1 (v1) and IKE version 2 (v2) function of the ASA. With this vulnerability, a remote attacker could send a crafted User...

The post Critical Buffer Overflow Vulnerability Was Found in Cisco ASA Software appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Digital technology on the factory floor is nothing new: Many manufacturers already incorporate automation and sensors into their production lines. But a broad move is under way to integrate these types of operational technologies (OT) with enterprise IT. When OT and IT work together as part of the Internet of Things (IoT), information from the...

The post Beyond Automation & Sensors: IoT in Manufacturing appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I spoke this past fall at a Women in IT summit, and it got me thinking about how I help both recruit and retain women, as well as develop their career paths, here at CDW. Gender balance in IT is a multifaceted, complex issue. In fact, according to a TechRepublic article citing Bureau of Labor...

The post Women in IT: Achieving Gender Balance and Diversity appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Collaboration offers tremendous benefits to healthcare. Healthcare is, after all, inherently collaborative. Doctors, nurses and other clinical staff all constantly collaborate to ensure that patients receive proper care. When this goes well, patients get quality care at a lower cost. When it doesn’t, care suffers and costs go up. The same goes for collaboration. It’s...

The post Healthcare Collaboration In Context: Three Keys to Success appeared first on Solutions Blog.

This isn’t a new TV show — it’s a rerun. Delivering IT services over a network is not new, nor is combining computing power to serve clients. It’s just being done better: it’s more economical, secure and manageable than ever before via cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). This isn’t a write-up on “forklifting” your...

The post Five Benefits of SaaS Migration to Consider in 2016 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

To attract top talent, businesses need state-of-the-art collaboration technology, seamlessly integrated into their hiring workflow. Digital natives, after all, expect to engage with prospective employers via video interviewing or video conferencing. And if they think the organization is too backwards technologically, they’ll take their talents elsewhere. Fortunately, web or mobile recruiting and video conferencing are...

The post Video Interviewing Drives Efficiency in Recruitment Workflow appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As life becomes increasingly digital, the need for mobility keeps growing. As a result, businesses need more Wi-Fi, which in turn drives demand for greater network density and performance from the wired networks that support Wi-Fi access points (APs). One way to meet this demand is to upgrade from 1 Gigabit Ethernet to the next...

The post NBASE-T Helps Enterprises Meet Growing Mobility Demands on the Network appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As part of its Penetration Testing services, the CDW Security Assessment team analyzes passwords – A LOT of passwords. Whenever we are able to obtain administrator privileges through our testing, which is most of the time on internal assessments, we perform an analysis of password security. We start the process by “dumping” the encrypted passwords...

The post Do You Follow Password Security Best Practices? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Cisco UCS Director was designed with a lot of out-of-the-box functionality, such as the self-service portal. While that portal can do a lot, there are ways it can be extended to provide more support that will facilitate a larger user base and set of use cases. This article will demonstrate how to use tags within...

The post UCS Director Super-User Tags Help Extend Self-Service Portal appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Most IT leaders are looking for the next angle or the do-more-with-less approach to spending money. Telecom services are one of the larger operational expenses on a company’s balance sheet. Customers have been looking for ways to creatively add bandwidth and cut costs. The market has responded, albeit slowly. Back around the year 2000, some...

The post Affordably Extend Your MPLS VPN with Software Defined Networks appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft recently revealed a strategic change to its Enterprise Agreement that will raise the minimum commitment for commercial customers as a way to simplify the purchasing process. Beginning July 1, 2016, new enterprise enrollments and enterprise subscription enrollments must commit to at least 500 users or devices, up from 250. Customers licensed under an existing...

The post Microsoft Increases Minimum for Enterprise Software Agreements appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When discussing Office 365 capabilities, it becomes clear that many customers need a better way to secure and manage their data in the context of their legal and regulatory needs. These three topics arise in nearly every conversation: How well can I control my data? How well can I secure my data? How do I...

The post Lock Your System Up Tight with Office 365 People-Centric Security appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Today’s customers expect more from retailers than ever before. In the age of always-improving technology, customers want a convenient, seamless shopping experience, whether they’re making their purchases online or in the store. Luckily for retailers, the same technologies that embolden customers are also empowering forward-thinking companies. Smartphones, tablets and other devices connected through the Internet...

The post Retail Data Analytics Transforms Shopping appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What if your smartphone could make a virtual dragon appear to be napping on your dining room table? Or what if you could use your tablet to see how new furniture would look in your actual living room? According to the experts, such scenarios are possible — and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016 in...

The post Seven Mind-Blowing Products Unveiled at CES 2016 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As we continue to discuss the looming end of support for SQL Server 2005, I want to share simple steps to upgrade a 2005 database to SQL Server 2014. By no means is this list complete, but my goal is to touch on the high-level points to plan and perform a successful upgrade. If you...

The post Tech Tips: Migrating a SQL Server 2005 Database to 2014 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

People love Apple products — and for good reason. Their exceptional ease of use empowers people to achieve serious mobile productivity. That’s why businesses, governments and educational institutions love them, too: People can get a lot of work done if they’re given an iPhone, iPad or Mac loaded with the right apps. And the more...

The post Apple DEP: The Smarter Way to Deploy and Manage Apple Devices appeared first on Solutions Blog.

New Year’s resolutions provide an opportunity to focus on important things that may have slipped through the cracks the previous year.  While resolutions typically center on goals like losing weight or saving for that trip to Cabo San Lucas, IT managers can also use the new year to rededicate themselves to improving their organizations’ security...

The post Cybersecurity Resolutions appeared first on Solutions Blog.

This past year was the biggest one yet for the Solutions Blog team. We covered a tremendous amount of ground in the I.T. field and had more bloggers than ever before. The website also got a much-needed facelift to make searching topics and browsing solution areas even easier. We’re looking forward to providing I.T. thought...

The post Season’s Greetings from the CDW Solutions Blog! appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft has released the much-anticipated follow up to the market-leading System Center 2012 Configuration Manager. This release introduces fundamental changes that have significant implications for the management of Windows 10 and mobile devices.  For starters, the new release of Configuration Manager introduces a monthly release cycle for the product. Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president...

The post Microsoft’s Mobile First, Cloud First Initiative “SaaSifies” Configuration Manager appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Software license announcements are rarely exciting, but some recent news from Microsoft provides great insight into how the company views the cloud and the role Windows Server 2016 will play in it.  In a Dec. 6 message to customers, Microsoft detailed a new licensing and pricing model for the new server operating system. It focuses...

The post Windows Server 2016: Guide to Changes in Microsoft Licensing appeared first on Solutions Blog.

If you’ve ever had the task of requesting and installing a digital certificate on a web server or network device, you’ve probably found it tedious. And maybe you were surprised at the price public certificate authorities charge for their most basic certificates. While any self-signed certificate can provide an identity to set up a secure...

The post “Let’s Encrypt”: The Open and Free SSL Certificate Authority appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What is your data worth? What if it got out into the public or fell into your competitors’ hands? Would it impact your organization or your reputation? What about your customers? How much would it affect your bottom line?  Data is your organization’s lifeblood and it contains a lot of sensitive information, not just about...

The post Windows 10: Addressing New Data Security Challenges appeared first on Solutions Blog.

These days, the biggest roadblock for customers looking to adopt cloud services is the burden of unwinding past relationships with hardware. How do you walk into the office of the same CFO that signed off on your many CAPEX BOMs and tell him or her there’s better a way to consume apps and infrastructure via...

The post Breaking Up is Hard to Do: Leaving Hardware for the Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The recently published book, Navigating the Digital Age: The Definitive Cyber Resource Guide for Directors and Officers, is an interesting read. What it sometimes lacks in consistency, it makes up for in diversity of viewpoint. In one part of the book, an author may write that IT administrators need to focus more on border security,...

The post Cybersecurity Awareness for IT Directors & Security Officers appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When I first talk to a client about mobile strategy, I often start by asking, “What’s more important to you: productivity or security?” It’s a trick question. Neither is more important than the other. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin. People can be fully productive only if they have all the...

The post Balancing Mobile Management with Productivity & Security appeared first on Solutions Blog.

While there is no doubt a lot of publicity around E5, I find that it can still be confusing for customers to navigate. I’d like to take a few moments to cover some high points of E5 and how it can help transform your business. This is the first part of a blog series on...

The post Office 365 E5: A Bundle for the Modern Enterprise appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The day is here where Microsoft is expected to announce pricing details of its new Office 365 Enterprise Suite, E5. The guts of E5 have been public since July. My co-worker, peer and friend, Kimberly Tunney, did a phenomenal job of dissecting the various components that make up E5. Arguably, the most exciting thing about E5...

The post Is a New Office 365 E5 Hosted Phone Plan Right for You? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

If you are like many of our customers, you still have some SQL Server 2005 in your environment. In April of 2016 Microsoft will end extended support of SQL Server 2005. As discussed in an earlier post, there can be quite a few negative implications of this impending deadline. Other details can be found at...

The post The Clock is Ticking: Migration Options for SQL Server 2005 End of Life appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The term “Hybrid Cloud” is many things to many people. Let’s try to define it. The best way to start on this journey is to look at what the industry says, according to the NIST Definition of Cloud Computing: The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or...

The post What Does Hybrid Cloud Mean? And Does It Matter? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

“Game changer” is a term that gets used with enthusiasm in our industry. The new 3D technology from Intel and Micron will likely prove to be game changing in hindsight as much as it seems in foresight. To get a closer look, let’s separate the two 3D technologies.  3D NAND is an extension of existing...

The post Game-Changing 3D NAND SSDs Gain Capacity and Performance appeared first on Solutions Blog.

If you needed to go somewhere and had to build the transportation, which one of the below options work for you? The last picture on the right in each is your final business solution but the paths you go down and the gaps for business value matter. The same scenario pertains to agile software development....

The post Agile Software Development Assists Automation Efforts appeared first on Solutions Blog.

You have aging hardware in your data center, failures are occurring more frequently and maintenance is eating up your time. Perhaps it is time to consider getting out of the hardware business and moving everything to Microsoft Azure.  Microsoft Azure data centers can provide you with highly available servers and storage, all without capital expenditures,...

The post Advantages of Migrating to Microsoft Azure Data Centers appeared first on Solutions Blog.

On October 14, 2015, Cisco released Field Notice 64029 with updates on November 3, 2015. Here’s everything you need to know about this issue that affects Cisco UCS C220 M4 and C240 M4 servers. The field notice addresses and expands upon Cisco Bug CSCuv33991 Lie down on the couch and tell me all your problems...

The post Cisco Field Notice for UCS servers – What You Need to Know appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Cisco recently released its 11.0 software platform for both Enterprise and Express. They’ve added more features and functionality, reduced some complexities and overall delivered a newer product. But is this release truly revolutionary? Let’s begin by breaking down the Enterprise features added to the platform. Cisco changed the operating system to Windows Server 2012R2 and...

The post Cisco Contact Center 11.Next appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As we see software-defined everything emerge, network and data centers as we know it today will evolve into a cloud-based controller design. Let’s take a look at how this technology is poised to make dramatic changes to the way that organizations design, deploy and manage networks and storage.   Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) The Software-Defined...

The post Living in a Software-Defined World appeared first on Solutions Blog.

You’ve heard of Cisco Video Conferencing? Cisco WebEx? And Cisco TelePresence? Well we can now enjoy the combined experience of WebEx and TelePresence in the cloud. It’s called Cisco WebEx Collaboration Meeting Rooms Cloud, or “CMR Cloud” for short. A Deeper Look Take the WebEx experience you already know, add SIP URI access for Cisco...

The post CMR Cloud is the Next Phase of Cisco Video Conferencing appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Business and IT agility go hand in hand, but creating a flexible infrastructure has never been simple for network directors. Traditionally, organizations have had to pour substantial time, money and resources into upgrading equipment every few years. Mismatched hardware and software lifecycles exacerbate the problem. Software licenses are tied to specific devices, which makes it...

The post New Cisco Licensing Boosts Flexibility appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobility has transformed business. Customers now bank while waiting in supermarket checkout lines and order groceries as they sit in the bank drive-through line. Retailers send discount offers to shoppers’ phones while they’re still in the store, and insurance companies let customers file claims and upload damage photos via smartphone apps.  Mobility also dramatically impacts...

The post Managing the Risks of Mobile Business Transformation appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I meet with many clients on a daily basis and consistently see the same challenges retail businesses face when it comes to their engagement strategy with their customers. Two of the biggest that stand out are often: Defining how to best connect with customers. In other words, how do my customers want to engage in...

The post Are You Ready for Omnichannel? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I traveled to Indianapolis, Ind. for EDUCAUSE 2015 with much anticipation. EDUCAUSE bills itself as the “premier higher education IT event” and with over 3,000 expected in attendance, I was looking forward to the show.  Let me tell you, EDUCAUSE did not disappoint! I was able to meet with countless higher education IT professionals and...

The post EDUCAUSE 2015: The Latest and Greatest from Indianapolis appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Men and women around the world lose their jobs everyday due to budgetary cuts across all industries. As compassionate human beings, we all certainly wish that wouldn’t take place. The reality is, when it comes to IT professionals, there is, in fact, something that can be done to help prevent this. Too often, the heads...

The post Serving up the Hybrid Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

IT chiefs are typically tasked with contributing to business productivity. This can often include adopting technologies from cloud computing and collaboration to mobility and apps like Office 365. But have you ever considered sound control to be a productivity builder – especially in today’s open-plan offices?  When open workplace plans began replacing cubicle farms in...

The post Enabling the Open Office Collaboration Experience appeared first on Solutions Blog.

A few weeks ago at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015 in Orlando, we urged all IT Leaders to make the Big Shift to Customer-Focused IT. The discussion was relevant to the audience because the focus was not on the theory of the Big Shift; rather, it was about real-life (CDW) Customers who actually are making the...

The post CIO Challenges: Making the Big Shift to Customer-Focused IT appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In my 15 years of experience in consulting with customers on their security strategy, one thing is abundantly clear, security is tricky. No matter whom we work with, they have questions and concerns revolving around their security. “Am I secure enough?” is the nagging question that will keep security managers up at night. That’s not...

The post Consider a Third-Party Threat Assessment to Bolster Cybersecurity appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)? Is it just another “marketecture” or something more meaningful to today’s data-driven organization? Well, according a report by McKinsey Global Institute, “Unlocking the Potential of the Internet of Things,” the Internet of Things is defined as the following: “Sensors and actuators connected by networks to computing systems. These...

The post What is the Internet of Things and Applications of IoT? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft has built upon their success with the Surface Pro 3 with the recent announcement of the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book. These two new devices use the latest Intel chipsets, processors and components to deliver the best performance, battery life and security features of any tablet or notebook on the market today.  The...

The post Windows 10 Tablet Comparison; Which Surface Pro is Right For You? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

IT leadership is all about decision making. While decisions about hardware and software are made routinely during the design phase of a project, data center decisions are made much less frequently.  The data center is a fixture of an organization. It’s a known value and the foundation from which IT services are delivered. If you...

The post Help with Data Center Services Decisions appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Quality medical care depends heavily on effective communication. As a result, hospitals are under increasing pressure to implement more intelligent clinical communication solutions.  Factors driving an upgrade include: The desire for better clinical outcomes. Mobile-enabled clinical communications streamline workflows while giving care teams more accurate, complete and timely information. Teams thus become more responsive to...

The post The Keys to Successful Mobile-Enabled Clinical Communications appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Without being considered a full-fledged Apple “fanboy,” I am a longtime, loyal Mac user. I started typing this blog running Word 2016 for Mac on a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro while saving to OneDrive for Business. Later, while using mobile, I was using Safari connected to Word Online, CDW’s Office 365 tenant. Furthermore, at a...

The post There is a lot to love about MS Office for Mac 2016, the latest release for Apple users. appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 end of life is quickly approaching.  Microsoft will reach end of support on April 12th, 2016.  Just as we have recently seen support end for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, it is now time to say goodbye to SQL Server 2005. What Does End of Support Mean? Microsoft’s support lifecycle...

The post What Does SQL Server 2005 End of Life Mean For Your Business? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

With the holiday season on the horizon, retailers must prepare to compete more intensely than ever for their piece of the growing, but finite consumer spending. Increasingly, that means upping their omnichannel retail communications game. After all, customers are moving more fluidly than ever among retail channels — including physical stores, websites, calls to the...

The post The Power of Omnichannel Customer Engagement appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Technological advances have greatly improved the capabilities of oil, gas and utility companies to produce, distribute and manage energy, but these advances come with risk. The more these entities rely on remote wireless and wired network technologies, the greater the threats they face from cyberattackers who want to compromise their information systems.  From terrorists intent...

The post In the Energy Sector, Cybersecurity Is More Important Than Ever appeared first on Solutions Blog.

There is no doubt: The face of retail is changing. Retail success today means making a consistent connection with your customer regardless of how that customer decides to connect with you. Under an omnichannel strategy, a company’s store, website, mobile app and social media presence all have the same look and feel. The customer is...

The post The Components of a Seamless Omnichannel Shopping Experience appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s been over a month since the release of Windows 10, so I wanted to give my perspective on the new operating system. My situation is somewhat unique in that I often have access to software very early in the release cycle, yet technical expertise is not a prerequisite for my role on CDW’s team....

The post Windows 10: First Impressions of the New Microsoft OS appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When Microsoft announced the Surface 3 this past spring, I was intrigued. This is a device that is in the price ballpark of the Windows RT-based Surface 2, but has an Intel ATOM processor which allows it to run the full Windows 8 (and now Windows 10) operating systems. In a nutshell, it’s a small,...

The post Can the Microsoft Surface 3 Replace Your Notebook? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

While gestures, facial expressions and other visual feedback are vital to collaboration, none of these translate through teleconferencing methods. Video conferencing, on the other hand, enables the sort of effective dialogue that successful meetings require. The problem, however, is that managing video conferencing systems and endpoints is a complicated, time-consuming burden on IT staff. The...

The post Take the Work Out of Endpoint Registration with Managed Conferencing Services appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What are “soft costs,” really? The term actually originated within the construction industry and describes expenses not tied to the direct construction costs. Examples of construction soft costs include pre-planning, legal, engineering, financing and design. These ideas have been easily translated to IT operations; examples of technology hard costs are servers, storage, networking and software....

The post Soft Costs and the Art of Evaluating the Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s a new Microsoft fiscal year and that means new Microsoft funding programs for customers. On July 1 of each year, many Microsoft customers are on the edge of their seats waiting to see what new program changes Microsoft will make, what the Microsoft vision is for the year and perhaps most importantly, how their...

The post Navigating the New Microsoft Funding Programs for Office 365, EMS and Azure appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It seems more than ever we are all being asked to do more with less. Maybe we are squeezing as much as we can out of our computing resources through virtualization. Or perhaps we are building efficiencies into the processes of our people so we can accomplish more with the same amount of time and...

The post The Value of a Software Solutions Provider: A Lifeline to Successful Implementation appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In September 2015, I spoke at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference about what’s new and innovative in data center technology (My presentation can be downloaded here.). To prepare for this event, I started a two-part blog series. My first post highlighted how Nutanix is using commoditized server hardware and redefining its capability into...

The post Deploying Server Hardware in the Next Generation Data Center appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The days of a simple dial tone are long gone. Companies are now enabled to leverage collaboration technology to address business goals like customer satisfaction, productivity, innovation and growth, among other things. Collaboration decisions have historically been led by IT, but that model has changed significantly with the demand of collaboration applications. Every company has...

The post Stop, Collaborate and Listen: Cisco’s Back With a Brand New Invention appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Having attended both Cisco Live 2015 in June and the VMworld 2015 conference this past week, the message has been loud and clear: We at the cusp of a major transition. Data centers will look and function much differently in the next few years. As IT Professionals, the best career move we can make is...

The post Why I.T. Leaders Should Take the Software-Defined Plunge appeared first on Solutions Blog.

While we have previously discussed Remote Expert Mobile design at a high level, let’s dig into the architecture/design of the Cisco Remote Expert Mobile. Cisco Remote Expert Mobile is a remote support software that empowers organizations to enable real-time engagement directly in their application and website channels, making it easy for customers to interact with...

The post Remote Support Software Architecture – Cisco Remote Expert Mobile appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Last week’s meatloaf may no longer be the most malicious thing in your refrigerator. As reported by Proofpoint back in January 2014, a global attack campaign was carried out through conventional household smart appliances (including a refrigerator) that were hacked and used to deliver 750,000-plus malicious emails. This proved what many security experts had feared for some...

The post IoT Security: Why IT Needs to Stay Ahead of the Curve appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Hospitals are aggressively embracing mobile technology and with good reason: Mobile applications enable doctors, nurses and staff to spend more time at the patient’s bedside. According to studies conducted by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, increased bedside presence has a positive impact on patient outcomes.  That sort of improvement in patient...

The post Mobile Technology at the Patients Bedside. appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Every day we talk with customers about making decisions regarding what I.T. services to maintain on-premises and which ones to shift to the cloud. This can be a somewhat daunting task, but I.T. professionals want and expect services to help them manage the decisions, transitions and ongoing operations.  In addition, I.T. shops today see technology...

The post The Value of Tapping into Managed Services appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In my last mPOS blog post, I talked about the definition of and the benefits behind mobile point of sale. To recap, mobile point of sale is essentially a smartphone, tablet or dedicated wireless device that acts as a cash register or electronic point of sale terminal (POSint-of-sale terminal). A bad point of sale experience can cost a...

The post Businesses are Embracing Mobile Point of Sale appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The rapid pace of business change today doesn’t affect only product development and marketing – it also affects finance departments. Effective collaboration can be especially useful for finance departments that need to execute change quickly and effectively. CDW’s own finance department offers a great case in point. The department recently undertook an extensive re-engineering process...

The post How Collaboration Tools Helped Transform a Finance Department appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The Discovery Channel has been airing a show since 2003 titled, “MythBusters.” The show’s hosts use elements of science and the scientific method to test the validity of rumors, myths and news stories. There’s been a lot of chatter about healthcare and the cloud, so let’s run our own MythBusters-style experiment on cloud technology and...

The post Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) in Healthcare Environemnts appeared first on Solutions Blog.

A new concept drawing a lot of attention these days is the Internet of Things or IoT. The idea is to make everything connect to the Internet so you can automate and control it. Take, for example, industry segments like retail, manufacturing, healthcare, public safety and more. Each is trying to identify areas to improve...

The post Internet of Things and Beacon Technology: Using iOS Apps, Cisco Meraki iBeacon and CafeX appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Disaster recovery (DR) is a constant conversation with customers. At the Microsoft Ignite conference this year, Manoj Kumar Jain (Principal Program Manager) referenced a few statistics on disaster recovery: Most organizations experience four-plus disruptions each year and the average cost of disruption is $1.5 million an hour. With the increasing popularity of public clouds, the...

The post How to Take Advantage of the Public Cloud for Disaster Recovery appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Many people in IT take what the tech analyst firm Gartner has to say about anything very seriously. As a technologist, I am no different. Recently, Gartner put together a short one-hour presentation on their “Top 10 Cloud Myths.” I had to tune in. While I agreed with all of Gartners top 10 cloud myths...

The post A Recap of Gartners Top 10 Cloud Myths appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobile point-of-sale technology is transforming retail. With mPOS, in-store salespeople can check back-room inventory while they’re in the aisle with a customer. If an item isn’t in stock, they can easily direct the customer to a nearby store that carries it or place an online order for the customer on the spot.  Today’s mPOS systems...

The post Mobile Point of Sale Technology is Challenging but Absolutely Essential appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Most people I talk to don’t realize that there actually is an official definition of cloud computing or “the cloud.” The National Institute of Standards and Technology has created a definition that runs to several hundred words and essentially defines cloud as, “compute resources, delivered over a network.”  While this is an accurate definition, it...

The post What Is Cloud Computing and Why Does Your Company Need It? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Most all of us are familiar with data deduplication as it applies to data redundancy in backup storage. As you know, there are countless avenues to deduplication, from software backup applications, to deduplication appliances, to cloud targets. And the insertion of deduplication capabilities into the software stack of primary storage has been available for years,...

The post Data Deduplication for Primary Storage in Today’s Market appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The question to upgrade to a new operating system for any organization has far reaching impact to not only IT staff, but also to all of your users. There are always risks, the cost of support and the potential loss of productivity for the organization. With that said, should you take the time to evaluate...

The post Top Windows 10 Features for Business Users appeared first on Solutions Blog.

At this month’s annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, corporate vice president John Case announced their new E5 Suite for Office 365, available to eligible partners and their customers by year end. The new E5 suite underscore Microsoft’s mobile first, cloud first strategy by adding features that enhance real-time, day-to-day business communications; improve data analysis and...

The post Microsoft Announces New E5 Suite for Office 365 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

So, Windows 7 has been out for six years and is the most reliable and stable operating system to-date. It is used on almost a billion devices around the world (870 million to be exact). Support doesn’t even end until 2020. It took a lot of effort and time to get off of Windows XP...

The post Upgrading to Windows 10 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Getting your arms around your unstructured data, servers, virtual machines, storage and SAN fabric has never been more relevant to IT administrators and CIOs. Luckily, there are a few excellent products that will help you to solve this performance and capacity conundrum, saving money and hopefully getting an approving nod from the boss.  Here’s why...

The post Tackling Unstructured Data with Data Center Diagnostics appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Of the over 1,200 IT professionals surveyed in the CDW Cloud 401 Report, 100 percent of the respondents report that cloud computing services have been implemented as part of their IT strategy. And of their total IT services, 35 percent of those are delivered completely or partially by the cloud, with 54 percent being migrated from...

The post The Results of the CDW Cloud 401 Report appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Contact centers are undergoing a major transformation. The customer experience has gone from being single channel predominately focused on voice to multichannel – and now omnichannel. Let’s focus on one solution within the multichannel scenario though: Remote Expert Mobile that was recently released by Cisco. Consumers are demanding rich interaction with the companies they want...

The post Part 1: Contact Centers No Longer a One-Way Street appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In 2010, Microsoft ended mainstream support of Windows Server 2003. And you probably are aware that official end of life for all versions of this workhorse OS – that has served organizations well for over a decade – occurred on July 14, 2015. End of support refers to the date when Microsoft will no longer...

The post R.I.P. Windows Server 2003 (April 24, 2003 – July 14, 2015) appeared first on Solutions Blog.

One of the reasons I love working with Cisco Unified Communications (UC) is the flexibility they provide within their solutions to create custom applications. Just about every application within Cisco UC allows for some form of automation or customization. Examples include Communications Manager, Unity Connection, CTIOS Client (a Windows-based agent desktop built on the .Net...

The post Creating Custom Applications in the UC Space appeared first on Solutions Blog.

With Microsoft officially confirming the migration we’ve been expecting for the past year, many organizations are moving past the initial shock and diving into the nitty gritty of coordinating the move. We have the dirt on Windows 10 from our usual band of experts, so instead of letting our customers go fishing for this information,...

The post Windows 10: How to Ensure a Smooth Migration for Your Business appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Interestingly, many organizations today are utilizing cloud computing and don’t even know it. A lot of this has come from the consumerization of IT, which is the process of emerging technology in the consumer market spreading into businesses and organizations (Think: mobile devices, social media, online services, etc.). At other times, cloud usage can help...

The post Intimidated by Cloud Computing? You May Already Be Using It appeared first on Solutions Blog.

According to David Gosman, CEO of pcAmerica, 26 percent of people will leave a brick-and-mortar store if they are having a bad customer service experience. And of those 26 percent, seven percent of those customers will leave permanently. That is a huge statistic. That means that retail store personnel can do everything correctly – merchandising...

The post The Point-of-Sale Experience Can Make (or Break) Your Business appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Collaboration technology offers a wealth of business benefits — including greater productivity, accelerated processes and reduced travel costs. But generalized discussions of collaboration’s benefits can feel a bit abstract, so it’s good to zero in on a particular use case.  Accounting departments provide an especially compelling example of collaboration’s real value within a line of business...

The post Collaboration Technology in Accounting Yields Leaner Operations, Better Results appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The IT industry is full of acronyms and buzzwords (as those of us in the profession are sometimes painfully aware.). Many of these are constantly evolving in definition (e.g., “the cloud”). There is also a never-ending supply of new technology and processes, all of which we struggle to define. As a result, we end up...

The post Building Out or Refreshing Your Data Center? Consider Converged Infrastructure as a Solution appeared first on Solutions Blog.

For those of us who wondered if Nutanix left any complexity in storage management, they continue to apply customer and partner feedback to simplify storage and compute environments.  For example, the App Mobility Fabric delivers VM placement, conversion and migration functionality. Effectively, a Nutanix user is enabled to automate VM conversions between Hyper-V, ESX and...

The post Nutanix: Hyper-Converged Solutions for VDI, Production Compute and Storage appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Serving as a classroom teacher, school administrator and chief technology officer over the course of 14 years, I’ve seen the emergence of classroom instruction combined with self-directed online study. Blended learning, as it is called, is gaining in popularity. In fact, recent statistics show that more than half of sixth- through 12th-grade students complete online...

The post Kajeet: Overcoming the K–12 Digital Divide with Education Broadband appeared first on Solutions Blog.

There has been a lot written about Microsoft Azure from a technical perspective, but many of our customers still struggle with the essential question of, “What can I do with Azure?” Sure, many know that websites can be staged in Azure or that virtual machines can be deployed in Azure. Beyond that, most folks have...

The post Microsoft Azure : Your Data Center Without Boundaries appeared first on Solutions Blog.

From a clinical perspective, modern medicine often borders on the miraculous. From a business perspective, however, it’s another story. Hospitals, clinics and other medical practices are under tremendous pressure to be profitable despite escalating costs and downward pressure on pricing. Mandated by the Affordable Care Act, the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program puts further financial pressure...

The post Telemedicine: Much More Than Remote Diagnosis appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Cisco Live has always been a place for network professionals to gather and share ideas, to learn about new technologies and trends, and to allow Cisco to announce new products and strategies. One of the exciting security products announced at Cisco Live 2015 was the Cisco Firepower 9300, a threat-centric security platform for service providers....

The post Cisco Live 2015: Cisco Brings Out the Big Guns with Firepower 9300 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I was at Cisco Live 2015 this year and had the opportunity to learn about Cisco’s APIC-EM platform, or Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Enterprise Module. In short, it helps manage end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) and perform-per-flow QoS, in addition to a few other jobs. Ultimately though, it’s another venture by automation software to address...

The post Cisco Live 2015: Overcoming Network Complexity with Cisco’s APIC-EM Platform appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When it comes to trade show bucket lists, Cisco Live 2015 was the last of the majors that I’d yet to attend, so I was more than excited to finally cross it off. As a Solution Architect within the server storage practice, I was entrusted to work the CDW booth and handle inquiries around our...

The post Cisco Live 2015: Unveiling the “Data Center in a Box” appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Many people believe hosted voice and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) are the same thing. I suppose you could argue they’re similar, and certainly Hosted Voice is a component of UCaaS since you can’t have UCaaS without a dial tone. However, I think there are several differences. When considering moving away from an on-premises...

The post Hosted Voice versus Unified Communications as a Service: What’s Best for Your Company? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

So-called digital natives are transforming society as they infuse technology into every aspect of life, from commerce to social relationships. But nowhere is their impact greater than in higher education, where they account for 100 percent of the student body — as well as a growing percentage of faculty and administrative staff.  Colleges and universities...

The post Cisco WebEx Goes to School appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In these days of limited resources – often both staff and budget – IT shops are looking for technology that offers more flexibility and ease of management. Enter the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). VDI is the practice of hosting a desktop operating system within a virtual machine (VM) running on a centralized server. The desktop...

The post Five Key Benefits of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) appeared first on Solutions Blog.

CDW is on premise at Cisco Live. One of the biggest trends we are seeing is that users are clamoring for video collaboration and there’s a bit of “shadow IT” going on in some departments. Unfortunately, the experience is poor, systems aren’t working well together and you need a broad solution covering use cases including...

The post Cisco Live 2015: Video Collaboration with an Easy Button appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Courts face a variety of challenges, including tight budgets, an increasingly diverse population and, of course, the task of meting out fair, timely justice on a daily basis. Video conferencing can help with these challenges in several ways: Remote arraignment reduces transportation costs and avoids scheduling delays by letting courts conduct routine proceedings while a...

The post Video Conferencing in the Courtroom: Opportunities and Challenges appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Previous posts: Part One: Single Sign-On Versus Same Sign-On with Office 365 and Active Directory Domain Services Part Two: Single Sign-On Versus Same Sign-On with Office 365 and Active Directory Domain Services Let’s talk about the columns three and four of the Office 365 Login User Experience Matrix found below. Active Directory Federation Services (“AD FS”)...

The post Part Three: Single Sign-On Versus Same Sign-On with Office 365 and Active Directory Domain Services appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In October 2012, Microsoft acquired StorSimple and since then, Microsoft has turned the product into a highly-integrated cloud-based storage system. It’s probably been mentioned to you once or twice by your Microsoft account team, but I wanted to give a quick overview of the product in case you missed it. Being a licensing specialist, I...

The post Microsoft Azure and StorSimple: Streamlining Enterprise Storage and Management in the Cloud appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Previous post: Part One: Single Sign-On Versus Same Sign-On with Office 365 and Active Directory Domain Services Let’s talk about the second column of the Office 365 Login User Experience Matrix found below. Based on my anecdotal feedback from customers, I would say at this point Microsoft Azure Active Directory for Single Sign-On (“Azure AD...

The post Part Two: Single Sign-On Versus Same Sign-On with Office 365 and Active Directory Domain Services appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft has officially announced that the release for its latest version of Windows will be July 29, 2015. The Windows 10 release date has been widely expected for the past month, but looking back at late 2014, it seemed like a pipe dream. Reports from December 2014 show expected launch dates for the OS to...

The post Microsoft Announces July 29 Release Date for Windows 10 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobile security is a hot topic — but it may not be hot enough. Mobile data leaks are detrimental to a business. Today’s knowledge workers are walking around with extremely valuable corporate data on their notebooks, tablets and smartphones. And, according to a 2014 InformationWeek report, 45 percent of companies surveyed suffered data loss when...

The post Getting Serious About Mobile Data Leaks appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Last quarter, we looked at the shift from multichannel to omnichannel, as well as the rich content that can be integrated into a Cisco Enterprise Contact Center. Cisco has a rich partner ecosystem which enables their software to do some extraordinary things, and that laid the foundation for moving them into this omnichannel world and...

The post The Customer Journey: A Look at Cisco’s Newly-Announced Cloud Context Service (Part 2) appeared first on Solutions Blog.

One question every customer who has Active Directory Domain Services asks during a migration from on-premises server to Office 365 is, “What is the login experience?” The short, consulting answer is: “It depends.” I have attempted to provide the longer answer in the remaining paragraphs of this post; however, to set the context, I’m going...

The post Part One: Single Sign-On Versus Same Sign-On with Office 365 and Active Directory Domain Services appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobility is dramatically changing the workplace to make companies more agile, efficient and productive. But these benefits don’t come without costs, and one of those costs is security. As more work is done on mobile devices that could fall into anyone’s hands, sensitive corporate data and documents must be appropriately protected. Companies must be diligent...

The post Is Microsoft Mobility Management Right for Your Business? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Unified communications has been a focus of businesses for quite some time. Dubbed as “UC,” it is simply the integration of real time communications (e.g., voice, video, etc.) with non-real time communications (e.g., voicemail, email, etc.). As companies continue their never-ending search to “do more with less,” unified communications has become a prime target to...

The post Unified Communications and the Cloud: A Match Made in Heaven appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The real barrier to software defined networking (SDN) adoption is education. Network engineers have stated for the past 31 years that, “Real engineers manage via command-line interface (CLI),” as if it were a badge of honor to manage a network with thousands of lines of code on a black screen. With all of the benefits...

The post Part 2: Why We Need Software Defined Networking (SDN) Solutions appeared first on Solutions Blog.

By now, most people are aware that Microsoft has entered the device market with the Surface line of tablets. The Microsoft Surface has become popular as a complete notebook replacement for many in the corporate realm. In 2014, Microsoft purchased the Devices and Services division of Nokia and this summer, they expect to release the first Lumia...

The post The New Microsoft appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Businesses live and die by metrics. Everywhere, the sheer volume of data is being examined, reexamined and leveraged. Let’s take a look at one part of the business world – more specifically, the retail space – to see what this industry is doing in Big Data. The term Big Data isn’t new and the idea...

The post Big Data and Predictive Analytics: The New Lifeblood of the Retail Industry? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Early reports of unconfirmed Microsoft Client Access Licenses (CAL) price increases have abounded in the past half of a year. And, while we’ve all known they were coming, the details are often what is most important. Without further preamble, here are those details: -Pricing on the User CAL increases by 13% over existing prices -The increase...

The post User Client Access Licenses (CAL) Price Increases: What You Need to Know appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The first ever Microsoft Ignite conference is over. The expo hall is closed and the dust has begun to settle. With more than 20,000 attendees focusing across all major product lines, there was a lot to take in. I wanted to share a few points that stood out to me as points to consider in...

The post Microsoft Ignite Sparks Innovation, Collaboration appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The enterprise network of the not-so-distant future promises to usher in a whole new era of modernization and efficiency. Wireless access has become the infrastructure force majeure, video traffic has allowed for more perceptive communication and underlying infrastructures have become more responsive and logical.  Today’s businesses must support and facilitate the efficient movement of increasing...

The post The Next Generation of Enterprise Networking (Webinar) appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Finally we are at the point where we can have a discussion about all-flash arrays without any ifs, ands, or buts. On May 4, 2015 at EMC World, EMC unveiled the much awaited XtremIO v4.0. This will be available as a free software upgrade to existing XtremIO customers. XtremIO has now been available for a...

The post The Unveiling of XtremIO v4.0- Flash Comes of Age! appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Over 14,000 people from 99 different countries traveled to the Venetian in Las Vegas, Nev. for EMC World 2015 held from May 4 through May 7. EMC World is a premier event for EMC, partners and customers, and is rife with announcements, keynote addresses, labs, product demonstrations and events.  Here are a few of my...

The post EMC World 2015: What’s Trending in Tech appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The IT threat landscape is constantly changing. The internet has become a necessity to conduct business, but it’s also a dangerous place where malware lurks around every corner. And hackers have become experts in the craft of hiding said malware within packets and applications.  Stateful inspection firewalls still in use don’t have the intelligence to...

The post Next Generation Firewalls For Your Small Business appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What are Containers? Did you know that every time you enter a search on Google, your search is run in a container? In 2014, Google was deploying two billion containers each week! But what exactly is a container? If you’re already familiar with virtualization and virtual machines, Linux containers are very similar: Containers run applications...

The post Are Containers A Threat to the Virtual Machine? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

There’s a reason Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have taken the world by storm. Human beings are wired to be social. Social media simply taps into our inherent need to connect and share with others. Businesses are inherently social as well. After all, they’re composed of people. And those people have to work together toward common...

The post How IBM Connections can Remake Your Organization as a Social Business appeared first on Solutions Blog.

For over a century, motorcycles have offered law enforcement agencies many tactical advantages over their four-wheeled counterparts. Motor units enjoy greater maneuverability allowing them to zip through congested traffic and crowds. Their smaller size police motorcycle allows officers to patrol where traditional police cruisers cannot. Their acceleration and top speeds put first responder’s on scene...

The post IT and the 21st Century Police Motorcycle appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s Monday morning again, you’re getting ready for the week ahead and there’s barely time for lunch with all of the meetings scheduled and tasks to accomplish. You’re expected to balance more and more demands on yourself and your team while the IT department keeps adding layers of complexity as to how you collaborate. Why...

The post The Advancements in Video Collaboration Technology appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What do you think of when you hear that you need to join a web conference? WebEx GoToMeeting TeamViewer Lync Skype Clearly, there are a lot of options out there to choose from when it comes to business solutions.  And what do you think of when you want to IM, call or video chat with...

The post Skype for Business appeared first on Solutions Blog.

LTE-U is a technology standard more correctly referred to by its 3GPP name of License-Assisted Access (LAA). The standard provides a framework for implementing carrier grade LTE services in unlicensed RF spectrum frequently used by Wi-Fi products (among others).  Specifically, the goal is to operate in the currently available 5GHz spectrum now relied on solely by...

The post LTE-U is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The HIMSS 2015 conference, noted as the largest health IT event in the industry, was held in Chicago on April 12-16. This year, I had the good fortune to both attend the conference and work in our healthcare booth. This was my fourth HIMSS, and, as usual, it was filled with good conversations, informative sessions...

The post HIMSS 2015: Analytics and patient engagement remain key focus of health care organizations appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I’d like to take a minute to spotlight the newly announced Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 product editions. This includes the all-new Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN, Visual Studio Professional with MSDN and the free Visual Studio Community edition – coming later this year.  Visual Studio 2015 is designed to boost the power and productivity of...

The post Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Preview appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The 2016 Ford Interceptor SUV promises to continue blazing a path of intentional design and engineering aimed at making police officers more effective and safer in the field. Ford has also spearheaded a new wave of partnerships to unite customers with aftermarket manufacturers, vehicle upfitters and technology integrators.    Ford’s leadership in the public safety...

The post The 2016 Ford Interceptor SUV: A Technology-filled, Crime-Fighting Machine appeared first on Solutions Blog.

It’s almost sad if you think about it: Here we are in 2015, yet most businesses still don’t have basic contact center screen pops. Countless customers still need to repeat themselves countless times, and countless agents still waste countless minutes.  But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Cisco Finesse desktop enables even small...

The post Cisco Finesse Brings Screen Pops to the Masses appeared first on Solutions Blog.

At CDW we solve a lot of collaboration technology problems for our customers. But we are also intense adopters ourselves. In fact, one of the reasons we are so good at addressing customers’ collaboration issues is that we have encountered many of them personally. And one of the reasons we’re so passionate about collaboration technology...

The post The Implementation of Cisco Spark at CDW appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Windows 10 is coming – soon. Microsoft has announced that it will be giving away Windows 10 for free, but is this offer too good to be true? There is fine print for you to be aware of and some requirements, but you might be pleasantly surprised on what qualifies. The Requirements – Windows 10 has been...

The post Thinking about Upgrading to Windows 10? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Remember those days when customizing MS Office clients (Word, Excel and Outlook) used to be a complicated development task? Well, with new features in Visual Studio, building office apps is much easier and there is much less code to deal with.  In this blog post, I will discuss the task pane apps for Outlook. Task...

The post Building Microsoft Office Apps with Visual Studio appeared first on Solutions Blog.

First came smartphones. Then it was tablets. Next could be wearables such as the Apple Watch. But regardless of what form devices may take in the future, the mobility phenomenon continues to grow relentlessly. And like a mob of unstoppable zombies on The Walking Dead, it’s threatening to eat IT alive. That’s because mobility is...

The post Mobility: Avoid the Mobile Apocalypse with an Outsourced Portal appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobility has become part of everyday life, inside and outside the workplace. Mobile technology greatly enhances individual productivity and overall business performance.When people can get their work done anytime, from anywhere, everyone benefits. That’s why it is vital for companies to eliminate any obstacles that stand in the way.  Among those potential obstacles are security...

The post Containerization and App Wrapping: Must-Haves for Workplace Mobility appeared first on Solutions Blog.

For some people, this past winter it seemed like it never stopped snowing, schools were constantly closing and transit delays were the norm.  How do you work if you’re snowed in, need to stay home with the kids or the trains are stopped?  With a mobile workspace, that’s how!  Do you have a device?  Any...

The post The Mobile Workspace: Radically Change Your Work Life appeared first on Solutions Blog.

“The cloud” is a term that we hear quite frequently when utilizing technology. At the same time, it seems that many misconceptions and apprehensions come to mind when having a cloud-based discussion. Often times, companies will shy away from anything cloud-based, citing a fear of security risks and other safety reasons. I find this trend...

The post Why Should I Migrate to Adobe Creative Cloud? – A Perspective From the IT side appeared first on Solutions Blog.

On April 7th, Adobe is launching a new PDF Cloud offering called Acrobat Document Cloud (DC).  Users will now be able to create, review, approve, sign and track documents whether they are on a desktop or mobile device.  Acrobat DC, with its touch-enabled user interface, will be available both via subscription and perpetual license.   This...

The post Adobe Acrobat Document Cloud Unraveled appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Skype for Business is the name of the next version of Lync. Lync Server becomes Skype for Business Server. Lync Online becomes Skype for Business Online. Both Skype and Lync have been around for more than a decade and both are extremely successful. Lync is getting a new name and a fresh look and feel...

The post How is Skype for Business Different than Skype? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Most clients, if pressed, will say that the most valuable Software Assurance benefits they receive from Microsoft are Planning Services Vouchers and Training Vouchers. If you’re not an Enterprise Agreement customer, and these are unfamiliar terms to you, here is a quick rundown:  Planning Services Vouchers: These are vouchers that can be used with a...

The post Software Assurance Benefits and the Point of No Return appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobility has changed the way people work. Today’s knowledge workers typically keep at least one mobile device within arm’s reach all day — sometimes even all night. Providing them with secure mobile access to the resources they need to do their jobs enables them to be productive whether they’re in the office, at home or on...

The post Three Reasons to Outsource Your Mobile Help Desk appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I heard a question the other day that caught me off guard. “Why do you guys even sell IPS (Intrusion Prevention Systems), is there even value in that anymore? Shouldn’t you just recommend patching vulnerable systems?”  Let’s start with the second question, yes we do recommend patching. But the reality is that not every system has a...

The post Patching or IPS appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I think the classic IT model we are accustomed to today is slowly transforming – and will be mostly marginalized.  In fact, a very clear picture of the replacement of how to run IT is here now. We are used to buying packaged software or even developing in-house software for operating systems, clustering, networking, firewalling,...

The post What If the Future Did Not Include IT as You Know It? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In our previous discussion on virtual networking, we explained how virtual networks are replacing the need for virtual local area network (VLAN) configuration in data centers, and simplifying the grouping and isolation of servers. But we never really explained how the virtual networks are actually accessed, since they “ride” underneath physical networks. So, let’s take...

The post What is Software Defined Networking (SDN) appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobility offers businesses unprecedented opportunities to improve performance and gain a competitive edge. With the right mobile capabilities in place, staff can better engage with customers, boost productivity, streamline collaboration and increase revenue. However, mobility also presents complex operational challenges that can overwhelm IT and business leaders. As more employees use more devices to access...

The post Six Ways to Reduce Mobility Pain appeared first on Solutions Blog.

There are SO many choices when it comes to video conferencing, and with choices come WORDS!  You might ask, “What do all these terms mean and how are they relevant to me?  I just want a video conferencing solution that works for my users and me!”  I’ve been asked so many times about this and...

The post Top 10 Must-know Video Conferencing Vocabulary Terms appeared first on Solutions Blog.

My favorite aspect of being a wireless solution architect is how incredibly dynamic this space remains.  My second favorite part about working in wireless is the direct touch these technologies have with end users.  The only similar technology would be voice, but everyone already takes voice services for granted.  Luckily, for me, we’re not quite...

The post Bluetooth Low Energy – What It Is, Isn’t and How It Enables Location-Aware Applications appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What Is It? You may have been hearing the buzz around Microsoft’s pending product launch for “Skype for Business,” but what exactly is it? Simply put, Skype for Business is the next generation of Microsoft’s unified communications platform. Make no mistake, this is not a first-generation product. Skype for Business Server 2015 will be the...

The post Skype for Business Server 2015 – Ensuring a Smooth Transition for Your Organization appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The world today is fundamentally different than it was just a decade ago.  I remember when Cisco gave us a sneak peak at their first video TelePresence product in Silicon Valley right around the same time. They took half of my team into one room that initially looked like a professional home theatre, and the other...

The post Cisco Spark: Collaboration Never Felt So Good appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Technology users today push the limits of their equipment to the edge and beyond to get the job done. Manufacturers go to great lengths to design devices that will rise to the challenge. (See: Panasonic’s “Rube Goldberg Machine” Ultimate Torture Test.) From oil rigs off the coast of Texas to Alaska State Troopers, all across...

The post 10 Rugged Computing Advantages appeared first on Solutions Blog.

You’ve probably noticed a number of SQL-licensing-related blog posts here on the Solutions Blog recently. That’s for good reason. As I mentioned in my last post, the majority of all Enrollment for Application Platform (EAP) contracts are set to expire at the end of this month (March 2015). I went on to discuss a potential...

The post SQL Conversion: One Final Reminder appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Frictionless multimedia collaboration is extremely important to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). After all, if a company is trying to be super competitive with a relatively small headcount, everyone in the organization needs to be as productive as possible. Employees need to work together to resolve customer issues, bring innovative ideas to market and avoid...

The post Spotlight on Avaya IP Office appeared first on Solutions Blog.

For a long time data center architects have struggled with the requirement to provide connectivity across racks of servers, across multiple locations, while maintaining isolation for groups of those servers.  For example, the Accounting department might not want their servers accessible to someone working on another department’s server.  The Accounting servers need to be isolated,...

The post What is Software Defined Networking (SDN) – Part 1 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I talk with the IT departments at different organizations about their Microsoft solutions – the ones they have deployed and the ones they plan on rolling out. Inevitably, the conversation turns to collaboration solutions and SharePoint, specifically. Typically, companies have a narrow vision of SharePoint and they think about it as an intranet, file sharing...

The post Microsoft SharePoint: The End of Email Attachments? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Years ago, Microsoft created a specialized Enterprise Enrollment called Enrollment for Application Platform or EAP.  It was designed to help provide better pricing on Microsoft’s platform products (SQL, Visual Studio, SharePoint and BizTalk).  Because traditional Enterprise Agreements are limited to organizations with 250 or more users, many customers with large platform investments were not able...

The post What is Deferred L? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Imagine you run a retail business and your customers are ready to check out with their credit card and your cashier has to tell them, “I’m sorry but our system is down.”  This downtime generally results in one of three consequences:  Your business is unable to accept non-cash payment types resulting in some customers leaving...

The post 3G/4G/LTE WAN Failover for Retail Businesses appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When Cisco was founded in 1984, applications like WordPerfect were simple and IP was used as the transport protocol to move data through the network.  Fast-forward 31 years where applications today are quite complex and multi-tiered.  For example, a user may connect to a web portal on one server, which then performs a search on...

The post Part 1: Why We Need Software Defined Networking (SDN) Solutions appeared first on Solutions Blog.

At the end of January, Amazon Web Services announced the preview of a new enterprise email service called Amazon WorkMail, designed to challenge the two largest enterprise messaging vendors:  Microsoft and Google.  Essentially, AWS is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) vendor that incorporated an application into an infrastructure portfolio.  While not going into detail...

The post Converging Cloud Platforms for Managed Systems appeared first on Solutions Blog.

What’s next for Microsoft’s industry leading business productivity software Office 365?  NextGen Portals are dynamic and social intranet sites that bring machine learning and content curation together, increasing document relevancy and personalization, while decreasing the potential for stale content experiences. NextGen Portals take cues from past customer custom portals built on SharePoint and land squarely...

The post What’s Next for Office 365? A First Look at ‘NextGen Portals’ appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Contact centers are now increasingly becoming more complex and complicated. With various avenues and roadways to communicate, we must adapt and conform to meet customer expectations.  Multichannel is so two years ago; now it’s omnichannel, which is essentially multichannel, but with one point of aggregation and a system framework. At the heart of it all...

The post The Customer Journey: A Look at Cisco’s Revolutionary Contact Center (Part 1) appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Yes, the hourglass is getting emptier by the day.  While we deal with thousands of customers across public and private sectors, representing every organizational category you can imagine, one theme remains constant:  No one seems concerned about the impact of July 14, 2015 on their organization. For some organizations, the end of life – and...

The post Windows Server 2003 End of Support: Time is running out! appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Being productive requires simple, effective and secure ways to collaborate. Email is no longer an effective way to share documents. Within email, every document attached is an unnecessary copy; therefore, it’s impossible to effectively track changes.  For those on the receiving end, emailed documents lack appropriate methods of contributing and make it difficult later to...

The post Office 365: What Content Belongs Where? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Benjamin Franklin’s famous axiom is as true today, regarding data loss prevention (DLP), as it was when Franklin first made the quote.  While Franklin was actually addressing “fire safety,” data loss incidents today can cause organizations, both large and small, to “get burned.” Many IT chiefs are spending a vast majority of their precious budgets...

The post An Ounce of Data Loss Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The Panasonic Arbitrator is a leading digital evidence collection and management platform most commonly used in law enforcement vehicles, as a wearable camera and in static environments (e.g. interview rooms, sally ports and intoxilyzer rooms).  After dozens of successful and ongoing implementations, I’ve come to appreciate the Arbitrator for its customizability and dynamic back-end software....

The post Unlocking the Panasonic Arbitrator’s Advanced Capabilities appeared first on Solutions Blog.

There’s a problem with the technology that we’ve come to know as “cloud.”  The cloud is not what you think it is.  You see, every computer user assigns a definition to the technology they use and it doesn’t even have to be accurate.  It’s WHAT IT IS…to the user.  This can lead to confusion and...

The post Cloud Computing: It’s not what you think it is. appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Cisco’s Identity Services Engine was first released in May of 2011 as version 1.0 and they recently released version 1.3. That doesn’t sound like much of a change, does it? But regardless of version numbers, the product has continued to evolve since its initial release to accommodate the changing network-wired, wireless and remote access VPN...

The post Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) 1.3 – Should You Bite the Bullet and Update? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Hospitals no longer have the characterization of being dark, decrepit, scary places where you put off going – yes, even for that annual wellness exam.  In fact, some healthcare entities and hospitals are more like hotels, competing for patients, doctors and the reputation of being the Ritz-Carlton of infirmaries. There is no question that health...

The post The Hospital of the Future appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft Office 365 offers a substantially different — and far superior — way of optimizing knowledge worker productivity. But because accessing productivity software from the cloud is so different from running it locally, many IT decision-makers approach the move to Office 365 as a major enterprise technology migration. As a result, they often defer implementation...

The post 2 Quick Steps for Incrementally Migrating to Office 365 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Despite overwhelming evidence that video-enabled collaboration improves productivity and yields better business outcomes, adoption of desktop video conferencing has lagged. Lukewarm user response impeded adoption of previous generations of desktop video technology. This lack of reception stemmed in part from problems with the end-user experience and the fact that most users weren’t accustomed to having...

The post Hands-On with the Cisco DX80 appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Vulnerability scanning and reporting are becoming a driving need within healthcare.  As advanced persistent threats or APTs are on the rise and constant exploits are being found, IT staffs are not always able to patch/update healthcare systems due to equipment guidelines. Having the tools in place to see potential issues and mitigate risk helps IT...

The post Product Review: Tenable Nessus Vulnerability Scanner appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Microsoft is making some ambitious goals with the next release of Windows – Windows 10. It’s not only targeted at the firm’s desktop/laptop users, but also Windows Phone and Xbox customers. Windows 10 will be a common platform for the majority of devices that are used at home and work. The features include the ability...

The post Windows 10 – One for All? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Oftentimes, clients will ask us how to manage software. That’s a loaded question, to be sure, but also a very important one. It’s an endeavor that requires a lot of thought, planning and work. Each organization needs to decide what works best for them, though there are some best practices to consider. What is Software...

The post 4 Steps to Successful Software Asset Management appeared first on Solutions Blog.

We’ve had several blog posts listing reasons to replace your Windows 2003 servers as soon as possible.  Server 2003 will be targeted by the most malicious hackers because no patches are coming from Microsoft. I’m sure you’ve been working diligently on migrating and upgrading, but there are probably a few systems that just aren’t easy...

The post Stuck with Windows Server 2003? I Have Some Suggestions. appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Minority Report, the 2002 sci-fi thriller starring Tom Cruise, follows the plight of John Anderton, who’s on the run from a special police unit that uses technology to catch killers-to-be before they strike. In one of the movie’s iconic scenes, Anderton ducks into a high-tech shopping mall filled with digital signage that scans his retinas...

The post The Internet of Things appeared first on Solutions Blog.

In most sales-oriented businesses, especially financial, it is commonly known that 80% of the business comes from 20% of the customers, using about 20% of your resources. This means that 80% of your customers, still using 80% of your resources, provide only 20% of your business. In this day and age of customers leaving for...

The post The Importance of Contact Center Reporting Tools appeared first on Solutions Blog.

There are many reasons why companies defer decisions about collaboration technology. Confronted with an array of technology choices, IT managers may be confused. Competing vendors make a lot of similar claims, making it difficult to arrive at a buying decision with an appropriate degree of confidence. Some IT managers also struggle to define a business...

The post A Simple Choice: Collaborate Right or Collaborate Wrong appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Providing the ultimate fan experience is one of the goals at the 2015 Super Bowl. And Wi-Fi is no exception. CDW has been working with the Arizona Cardinals this football season to make sure that the University of Phoenix Stadium is ready for Sunday’s Big Game. The work started last summer when we designed and...

The post Reducing Rogue Access Points to Ensure a Better Wireless Experience appeared first on Solutions Blog.

The smell of potato chips and a few too many energy drinks wafts through the air. Dawn is still hours away. The dark room surrounds Joe as he smiles in the dim light of the laptop screen. His persistence has finally paid off. He has been dissecting this component for a while. Server 2003 is...

The post Why Hackers Love End of Life appeared first on Solutions Blog.

IT is the central nervous system of practically every modern business on the planet. However, most of us have looked at IT primarily as a cost center, endlessly pursuing a lowered Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) through massive budget cuts, technology consolidation and the migration from siloed, analog systems to integrated, digital ones. This became...

The post The Rise and Fall of IT (as we know it) appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Gone are the days when a customer calls a company or writes to complain.  They still write, but no longer to the CEO or some other board member of the organization.  They write to social media. Customers still have complaints, like they always have. But their methods and how companies communicate back have changed significantly. ...

The post Social Media and the Changing Contact Center appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Availability Groups is a great solution for providing both high availability and disaster recovery for SQL Server 2012 and 2014 deployments. But for many, the cost of a secondary site can be a roadblock to providing disaster recovery resiliency. With Microsoft Azure, we can leverage the efficiencies of the cloud to avoid a lot of...

The post Leverage Microsoft Azure for SQL Server Disaster Recovery appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Your Computer is now your Phone. In fact, your monitor is also your phone.  And the same holds true for that display on the wall.  Read on to see how Cisco’s DX80 brings everything you need to be productive in one sleek integrated device. Today there are so many ways to communicate: via phone, instant...

The post Your Computer is now your Phone appeared first on Solutions Blog.

When you stop to consider just how much work IT managers have on their plates today — mobility, cloud and IT security — it’s easy to see how the task of managing software licenses might be overlooked. IT managers at many organizations aren’t entirely certain when it comes to all of the software they have,...

The post The Case for Smarter Software License Management appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Mobility continues to be one of the most dynamic technology trends in the field today. New tools, resources and information are being designed with mobility as their primary modality. Where once information was housed on central servers and storage infrastructure distributed across a hub and spoke network, today’s mobile-first paradigm puts the power in the...

The post Mobile Access Routers Extend the Enterprise to Transit and Public Safety Vehicles appeared first on Solutions Blog.

How to measure transparency?  My view of transparency is “Control vs. Trust.”  Does IT control everything you do?  Does management control everything you say?  Or does IT provide you with tools and trust you will use technology for the better.  Do your management and executive leadership trust you to make good decisions with information and...

The post Transparency: “Control” or “Trust” appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Now that there are less than 187 days until Microsoft stops supporting Windows Server (WS) 2003 R2, the gallows are coming into view, your pulse is racing and soon even non-technical senior executives concerned about your organization’s ability to be regulatory compliant will ask, “What’s our plan?”  The former is an exaggeration, but this Y2K-like...

The post What is the Application Benefit of Upgrading: Old OS Server vs. New Hardware? appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Almost every collaboration project I have seen in my career starts, progresses and ends the same way.  We have a vision; we plan; we create committees; we start small and build toward our goal. We align the people, assign a project manager, install the software and build out a basic taxonomy. Perhaps, we even think...

The post Building a More Collaborative Organization appeared first on Solutions Blog.

I am here to argue that if you are already using a major cloud provider, you are in effect using software defined networking and services.  I will refer to the Software Defined Data Center as SDx rather than just SDN.  I also blur some terminology here.  But the effect should be to make you feel...

The post Implementing a Software Defined Data Center appeared first on Solutions Blog.

You’ve gotten Inspired Beyond the Why and are ready to be an early adopter in exploring what 3D printers can do in your organization. Now what? What do you need to effectively deploy this technology? The tech research and analysis firm Gartner predicts that 3D printer purchases will double every year for the next three...

The post Getting to Ctrl-P in 3D appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Over the past few months, Azure has gained quite a bit of steam. It’s especially noteworthy, seeing as it has continued solid growth despite a rather serious outage in November. Azure’s pace has not gone unnoticed, causing Bloomberg BusinessWeek to delve into why it has been successful in closing the market share gap with AWS....

The post Survey of Why Organizations are moving to the Cloud and Microsoft Azure appeared first on Solutions Blog.

How much does Azure cost? This is a question that virtually everyone has had when they started looking at the Microsoft Azure cloud offerings. The reason this question isn’t as straightforward as it seems to be is that the pricing model has changed dramatically compared to the legacy model of buying server and app licenses...

The post Everything You Need to know About Microsoft Azure appeared first on Solutions Blog.

My father is the type of person who holds onto cars until he squeezes every last bit of value out of them.  I remember spending weekend evenings holding the light while he worked under the hood fixing something on his old Pontiac.  Often, he would spend entire weekends tearing apart a carburetor and sometimes hundreds...

The post The Benefits of Migrating from Windows Server 2003 onto New Hardware appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Many organizations looking to leverage Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) may have concerns when it comes to recouping past investment in existing in-house infrastructure. That’s where Microsoft Azure really shines. Microsoft’s IaaS solution allows organizations tomigrate to the cloud as quickly or slowly as they’d like. Microsoft is a strong proponent of the hybrid cloud,...

The post Cloud-based Microsoft Azure Lets Organizations Migrate at Their Own Pace, Saving Money and Gaining Efficiencies As They Go appeared first on Solutions Blog.

As cloud IT models gain more market share and small- to medium-sized businesses become more comfortable with cloud security/governance, opportunities are growing to save money and increase productivity. The Microsoft Office 365 platform not only offers email and document management in the cloud, it goes beyond these key offerings to help transform day-to-day business tasks. In...

The post Office 365 – Get full ROI with SharePoint Online appeared first on Solutions Blog.

Your experience with in-vehicle computing probably lands somewhere on the spectrum between the state-of-the-art CDW Technoliner and this parody from our friends at Gordon & Taylor.  You’re likely all too aware of a few limitations your mobile users would like to eliminate.  Whether on foot, in a vehicle, on a motorcycle, mobile command center or...

The post 7 Tips to Optimize In-Vehicle Mobility Performance appeared first on Solutions Blog.