According to the San Mateo, Calif.-based company’s annual Enterprise Network Transformation report, 98% of IT leaders say they plan to increase their investment in cloud services despite a growing fear of a looming recession.

In addition, 94% of organizations say SASE will play a larger role in their networking and security plans, and 62% plan to eliminate multiprotocol label switching from their operations.

The company says these trends highlight the ongoing shift to the cloud from traditional IT to help support hybrid and remote work models, but also indicate that enterprise IT leaders see networking and security as vital to their organizations’ long-tern success.

According to the report, 47% of IT leaders say their organization will accelerate cloud and network services adoption despite economic uncertainties, which suggests that IT leaders recognize the ability for cloud to help support distributed work and lead to better application performance and security.

Other findings suggest that organizations are reinventing how they think about security in the wake of the pandemic and distributed work. The survey found that 90% of IT leaders believe that zero trust network access is a crucial component of SD-WAN and SASE services, while 98% say hybrid work has increased the need for new network and security solutions.

An overwhelming 99% of IT leaders said hybrid work has changed the way they view managing networks and security, but the report also indicates that organizations are still behind when it comes to hybrid work plans as 58% say they need plans for a hybrid workforce immediately, while 39% said they need plans in the next 6-12 months. Another 3% said they need those plans more than a year out.

The report ultimately concludes that SASE and network-as-a-service solutions are now critical to solving the problem of network complexity and security. According to Aryaka, 96% of C-level IT leaders say managed services and network-as-a-service will play a larger role in 2023.

In a statement, Aryaka CEO Matt Carter says businesses need to be able to be flexible, adaptable and nimble.

“Our report indicates that the vast majority of CIOs, CISOs and IT leaders are preparing for this uncertainty by investing in and adopting architecture, policies and technologies that converge networking and security, as these disciplines are critical to business success,” Carter says.

The post Cloud Investments Spurring Need for SASE, Managed Services appeared first on My TechDecisions.

The Redmond, Wash.-based IT giant says it hopes to deliver this new category of services across security, compliance, identity, management and privacy, starting with new and expanded security services.

The new offering includes Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting, a service for customers with a “robust security operations center (SOC),” but still want Microsoft to help them proactively hunt for threats using data from Microsoft Defender from endpoints, Office 365, cloud applications and identity. The service, available this summer, will see Microsoft experts conducting investigations into any irregularities and handing off the contextual alert information and remediation instructions so IT and security can respond.

Customers can consult the company about a specific incident, nation-state actor or attack vector and get specific recommendations to help them understand and improve their security posture, according to a Microsoft blog penned by Vasu Jakkal, the company’s corporate vice president of security, compliance, identity and management.

The new group of services also includes Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR, an offering for customers who need to extend the capacity of their SOC and extend detection and response (XDR) beyond endpoints and across Microsoft 365 Defender. This includes investigating alerts and using automation and human expertise to respond to incidents alongside the customer’s security team.

According to Jakkal, the customer stays in control to keep costs low and reduce noise and manual processes. Defender Experts for XDR will move into preview this fall, Jakkal adds.

For larger enterprises looking for more comprehensive, high-tough managed services from Microsoft, the company is also releasing Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise, an expert-led service that combines proactive threat hunting and managed detection and response and leverages Microsoft security information and event management and XDR stack to protect cloud environments and platforms.

According to the company, the enterprise-focused service will include Microsoft security experts to manage onboarding, daily interactions, practice modernization and incident response. The service is available now through a custom statement of work.

Also becoming part of the Microsoft Security Experts portfolio of services are existing security services the company already offers, including Security Services for Incident Response and Security Services for Modernization.

Jakkal says the company is committed to working with its ecosystem of partners ad technologies to deliver some of these services, including more than 300 members of its Microsoft Intelligence Security Association and its more than 100 service partners.

In addition, Microsoft will be making an “incremental multimillion-dollar financial investment” in its managed detection and response partner community this year to expand the company’s integration with its partners and create new go-to-market opportunities.

That relationship will include a managed detection and response designation and co-marketing benefits, co-sell benefits for partners and new APIs to help give partners access to Microsoft threat intelligence.

“Wherever you are in your security journey, Microsoft Security Experts will meet you there, whether you need additional security expertise, help with specific technologies, or guidance in navigating new security challenges,” Jakkal writes. “Leveraging industry-leading technology, the best defenders from Microsoft and our partner community, and the most comprehensive threat intelligence in the world, we can build a safer world for everyone, together.”

The post Microsoft To Launch New Managed Security Services appeared first on My TechDecisions.

According to HP, the new HP Subscription Management Service provides license management of Microsoft 365 and other Microsoft cloud subscription services, enabling companies to make software investment decisions “based on reliable workforce intelligence.”

The service, designed for small and medium-sized companies, provides online visibility of software analytics and usage by user, department, or geography, which makes it easier for IT teams to shift and scale subscriptions as needed.

The service also benefits channel partners, offering them a one-stop cloud-based solution for them to sell Microsoft 365 and the full Microsoft cloud subscription portfolio to customers, along with value added from HP, such as licensing analytics and partner support.

The company says the service also helps companies reduce costs and overhead while increasing security and compliance, with the ability to flex licenses up or down with pay-as-you-go subscription options and the ability to secure their workforce from wherever they work with cloud security health checks.

HP Subscription Management Service will be available in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2022, and in parts of Europe and South America later this year.

Read Next: HP Announces Remote Collaboration Subscription Offer

Other services announced by HP include HP Enablement Service for Windows Autopilot, which is designed to help IT teams move away from the traditional Windows PC image deployment to cloud-based device setup.

HP calls this a more simplified and faster way to provision new Windows 10 or 11 devices by adopting a modern cloud-based approach with Windows Autopilot.

HP experts will assess a customer’s device management practices and design and implement Windows Autopilot in their IT environment so the customer can benefit from cloud-based automation. This service is available now, HP says.

The company also announced HP Proactive Insights Experience Management, a new managed service designed to make it easy for IT teams to gauge employee sentiment and perceptions in the context of their IT environment.

This is a collaboration with digital employee experience management software company Nexthink that aims to give IT leaders insight into the employee digital experience across the IT ecosystem via AI-drive analytics and employee sentiment benchmarking.

HP Proactive Insights Experience Management is expected to be available in the U.S., Canada and Europe by the end of the year.

The company is also adding new features to HP Proactive Insights designed for small and medium-sized businesses, including new security, system stability and performance optimization features through automatic BIOS updates and incident handling, all integrated into HP’s fleet monitoring solution.

The post HP Launches Microsoft Subscription Management, Cloud-Based Setup Services appeared first on My TechDecisions.

More than any traditional managed service model, Co-MITs are a very flexible arrangement designed to provide a compromise between the IT department maintaining control of its server while also leaning on support from a vendor in various ways.

Organizations which have been burned by a low-price service provider which let them down or is closing shop; organizations that are beginning to rethink the value of internal IT; organizations whose internal IT team is in need of a partner…these are examples of situations where a co-managed service model may be appropriate.

Related: Cloud Contracts: The Best and the Worst

But what does that look like, and how should IT & tech leaders pursue it?

What is a co-managed service model?

Co-MITs involve a relationship between client management, managed service provider (MSP), and internal IT teams. This contrasts with the “pure” MSP world, where the relationship is primarily between client management and an MSP.

Bad relationships lead to bad business. In discussions surrounding the possibility of entering into such a relationship, all three parties have to agree on goals, terms, and standards.

Co-MIT benefits

Internal IT resources are obviously expected to know the value-adds for the company better than any MSP. Even those companies who enter into a partnership with an MSP often have trouble in the contract when an expectation is broken and the internal IT knows better in a given situation.

Still, MSPs know the technology and overall industry better in many situations. Combining these two pools of strength and talent can create something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

Organizations with internal IT were traditionally seen as a no-go for MSPs, says Bob Coppedge, author of two books on CoMITs and founder of Simplex-IT & www.comits4msps.com.

“About 70% of MSPs have a co-managed client but they didn’t even know it — many IT departments are actively seeking out these agreements and sometimes don’t even know that this is what they’re asking for.

“They’re searching for more efficiencies while maintaining control of their networks — that’s the key benefit to it.”

Creating successful Co-MIT agreements

Coppedge says the best agreements are made typically when an internal IT group recognizes what their weak points are, not when an MSP pressures you to change your agreement.

“Co-MITs are at their best when they lift up internal IT, training them on best practices, so that the IT department becomes more productive themselves,” he says.

“MSPs need to be there to make the IT’s lives’ better. It should be about training and teaching.”

MSPs can take on some responsibility, or simply act as a backup; IT can make them an extension of technical staff, or vice versa.

CoMITs are most effective when the processes of CoMITs business are similar (if not identical) to “pure” MSP business, Coppedge says.

Opportunities for MSPs:

• Become a traditional MSP, but for clients who were unsatisfied from service by a cheap MSPs who low-balled and couldn’t provide support, creating need for something better
• Help out those organizations that felt let down by internal IT and who want to completely outsource
• Find a co-managed situation where an organization with one or two IT people had to struggle to switch to remote work infrastructure and might be open to partnerships going forward

Opportunities for IT:

• If the department has a director or single-person shop; it’s hard to drain the swamp when you’re surrounded by alligators. It’s hard to put in VPN-from-anywhere, track all the documentation, etc. in such a way where you have control and access to everything. You don’t want to give up control of a network, but a Co-MIT offers perks like remote management and other tools without the need for IT to sacrifice control over the network
• The things that make an internal IT department very well-defined and organized are being sacrificed in the current environment.

Getting buy-in

Above all, an IT department interested in an arrangement like this needs to get all three parties on the same page.

IT leaders should stress how much more productive theirs and others’ teams can be with a co-managed service model; how the sale and service of widgets will be improved. Getting too caught up in technical details with management will cloud the value.

“It comes to the same issue: quit talking about cost and talk more about benefits. Talk about how internal IT can ‘do X-percent more in Y-area’ by having some of their time cleared up by an arrangement,” Coppedge says.

Stress that the agreement can be controlled very heavily by the CIO if necessary.

Remember, change begets change. If there’s nothing different going on within an organization, it will only embrace change when they finally decide it is time.

The post Co-Managed IT Services: What IT Directors Need to Know appeared first on My TechDecisions.

“SMBs across industries are facing the challenge of supporting employees who have been forced to work remotely due to the coronavirus,” the Onepath announcement says. “With many states and cities reopening and some employees returning to the office, the challenge increases, as companies must find a way to connect workers in a wider variety of locations.

“SMBs have limited financial and technical resources as compared to larger companies, making them more vulnerable during this transition. Over the past few months, many SMBs have had a difficult time providing remote workers the tools they need to be productive,” the announcement says.

“Under ‘normal’ circumstances, a lack of access to basic tools such as fax and phones might stunt an SMB’s growth. In a pandemic, the impact could be devastating,” according to the company announcement.

How Cloud PBX Helps SMBs

The Cloud PBX unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) solution is designed “for SMBs confronting coronavirus-induced challenges,” the Onepath announcement says.

Onepath Cloud PBX “offers everything a worker needs to do her/his job remotely or from the office, including the ability to receive and transfer calls and manage voicemails as if using an office desk phone, secure document sharing and storage, and video conferencing and screen sharing,” the announcement says.

Onepath Cloud PBX can be deployed to WFH and office environments in two or three days, is offered in three flavors – Engage, Accelerate and Optimize – and starts at $99/month.

“This is all about helping companies adjust to the new normal as far as supporting workers wherever they are,” said Onepath senior VP Brian Kirsch in the company announcement.

“With Cloud PBX, SMBs can get up-and-running quickly with integrated call, fax and collaboration capabilities, with zero hardware requirements, and companies can easily add users and sites without needing to purchase additional infrastructure,” he said.

“We think it’s a slam dunk for any SMB, and we look forward to helping companies transition smoothly to the new normal,” said Kirsch in the company announcement.

The post New Cloud PBX UCaaS from OnePath appeared first on My TechDecisions.

A significant update for RMH’s aging network environment, the solutions are boosting RMH’s application performance, wireless failover capabilities and providing a seamless voice solution that has proved to be particularly useful during times of lockdown and social distancing, according to the company.

The network upgrades were necessary as they play a major role in Applebee’s options such as Carside-To-Go, online ordering and delivery, which have been popular options during the current health crisis.

“I had been mainly keeping our IT in-house and managed our own Internet connections, routers, security, etc.,” explains Roger Somers, executive director of IT, RMH Franchise.

“As our footprint was growing, the requirements for a secure network were also increasing, and it made sense for us to outsource. PCI (Payment Card Industry) requirements also became more stringent and businesses were required to adhere to stricter compliance rules.”

Related: Do Employee Monitoring Services Actually Work?

Somers was looking for a managed services provider who could quickly deliver a cost-effective solution for managing and securing their IT network and voice communications across all locations. Interface, a preferred provider for CSCS, the purchasing agent for Applebee’s, fit the bill and customized a scalable solution bundle.

Interface implemented a next-generation Secure SD-WAN network architecture with broadband upgrades. Additionally, Interface combined managed 4G/LTE wireless capability with terrestrial circuits in areas with low-speed broadband to deliver an improved restaurant and guest experience.

The 4G/LTE service automatically takes over should the primary network connection fail. It offers seamless fail-over for POS transactions, credit card processing, inventory management and other key processes to continue to perform without interruption or store personnel involvement.

Interface also implemented its VoIP phone service and consolidated several vendors, migrating all RMH’s locations from legacy phone systems to a fully hosted Cloud model, saving long distance costs and standardizing all locations, according to the company.

Another benefit Somers sees is the Cloud auto attendant feature.

“The remote recording plays our business hours, curbside delivery or take out specials and can dynamically route calls. This reduces a lot of the call volume directly into the restaurants, has increased our efficiencies, and saved us time and money,” he says.

Somers added that Interface has made spinning up secure networking and voice services “simple, fast and scalable” with a fully configured proprietary cabinet that includes all of the franchises’ managed services.

He continues that the wireless backup has become “increasingly important as we continue to layer more critical services on our Internet connection like tabletop devices. The Interface Cloud-Powered Remote Reboot feature power cycles equipment without any onsite intervention, before employees or guests realize there may be an issue. If an Internet provider is down or there is any sort of network failure, rolling over to 4G/LTE is automatic and provides for business continuity. That has become critical for us.”

Since implementing the Interface solutions, RMH says it has increased agility, gained operational efficiencies, and augmented security, all while realizing 10X cost savings.

RMH is planning on further strengthening the partnership with Interface by adding alarm monitoring services to Interface’s bundle of managed services for networking, voice and security.

This article premiered on our sister site, Security Sales & Integration.

The post Applebee’s Location Commits to Managed Service to Upgrade Restaurant Networks appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Customers simply log into AWS IQ and describe their project needs in a few sentences. They can then chat with experts to clarify details of the project, compare proposals, review expert profiles, and select the expert that best fits their needs.

There are no upfront commitments required to use AWS IQ, and customers pay for completed project milestones through their existing AWS account.

More from the company:

Many small and mid-sized businesses have embraced AWS for its secure, flexible, cost-effective, and scalable infrastructure and services. As these customers begin or expand their use of AWS, they sometimes need help executing or thinking through a project, and could benefit from specialized knowledge and experience.

Customers can engage third party experts to help them achieve their goals, but finding the right expertise, cost-equation, and fit can be time-consuming.

Getting an expert set up with secure access to the customer’s AWS environment can be complex; and even if a customer finds a highly qualified expert that they trust, they still need to deal with administrative chores like project tracking and payment processing.

How AWS IQ works

Customers can use AWS IQ to find help with a range of topics, like choosing the best architecture for a given workload, diving deep into the capabilities of AWS services, automating the deployment of infrastructure, migrating to AWS, and optimizing their AWS spend.

Once the project is underway, customers can temporarily grant experts project-appropriate access to their AWS environment, monitor activity through AWS CloudTrail logs, and revoke access at any time.

Read Next: Inside Amazon Web Services: AWS By The Numbers

Customers approve payment requests as work is completed and are billed directly to their AWS account. With AWS IQ, customers can reduce the legwork and uncertainty involved in finding an AWS-Certified expert, cut down on the administrative overhead required to manage the engagement, and build projects faster.

To learn more about AWS IQ, visit http://aws.amazon.com/iq.

The post Amazon Web Service’s AWS IQ Helps Customers Engage with Certified Project Experts appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Masergy’s new ISC portal simplifies and unifies network and application management with real-time visibility, analytics and service control purpose-built for the multi-cloud enterprise.

The portal offers a holistic view of clients’ global SD-WAN and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) applications while enabling the ability to manage, secure, and optimize their network environments in real-time.

Related: Voice Control: The Next Big Thing in Wayfinding?

From private and public bandwidth to edge devices, public/private cloud instances, business applications, and voice/video communications, global enterprises now have the unified visibility and control they need to maximize their application performance. No more reconciling information across multiple dashboards.

Features of Masergy Intelligent Service Control portal include:

• A single pane of glass delivers unified views of analytics for the customer’s global networks, UCaaS, WAN edge devices, and application performance.
• Customizable dashboard views allow the customer to feature the information they need with views of top applications, security threats, network services, network usage, and open support tickets.
• Real-time bandwidth controls provide the ability to modify port bandwidth globally across both public and private connections.
• End-to-end visibility of application performance help customers make faster, more informed decisions about bandwidth allocation and service improvement.
• Comprehensive self-service features empower the customer to control the network with site and contact management capabilities, ticket tracking, alarm notifications, invoicing, device reports, change history, and escalations.

“When it comes to accelerating the pace of IT and building a multi-cloud environment, unified network visibility is everything–global enterprises need a single source of truth for information about their cloud application performance,” said Masergy’s Chief Digital Officer Terry Traina.

“Masergy’s Managed SD-WAN solution is leading the industry in providing customers with a unified framework for monitoring and managing their increasingly complex environments, so our customers can ensure cloud application reliability, streamline WAN management, and stay focused on their strategic initiatives.”

The post Masergy’s New Intelligent Service Control Portal Experience Packages Analytics and Control appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Customers can bring data into the data lake from multiple sources through pre-defined templates. Users can automatically classify and prepare the data and centrally define granular data access policies to govern access by the different groups within an organization. They can then analyze the data using their choice of AWS analytics and machine learning services, including Amazon Redshift, Amazon Athena, and AWS Glue, with Amazon EMR, Amazon QuickSight, and Amazon SageMaker integration set for the following months.

No additional charges will be required to use AWS Lake Formation – instead customers pay only for the underlying AWS services used.

“Our customers tell us that Amazon S3 is the ideal place to house their data lakes, which is why AWS hosts more data lakes than anyone else – with tens of thousands and growing every day. They’ve also told us that they want it to be easier and faster to set up and manage their data lakes,” says Raju Gulabani, Vice President, Databases, Analytics, and Machine Learning, AWS. “That’s why we built AWS Lake Formation, so customers can spend more time learning from their data and innovating, rather than wrestling that data into functioning data lakes. AWS Lake Formation is available today and we’re excited to see how customers use it as one of the building blocks for growing and transforming their businesses and customer experiences.”

Learn more about AWS Lake Formation from the Accenture customer success story, outlined in the AWS press release:

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology, and operations. “I focus on helping clients in their ‘Data on Cloud’ journey. Specific to that, we have seen that organizations are dealing with a lack of trusted data when they need to perform analytics on data coming from multiple sources,” said Namrata Maheshwary, Senior Architect for the Data Business Group, Accenture. “Data cleansing is a critical step in data analytics and can greatly impact the business outcome and decision making. The new features in AWS Lake Formation have been hugely beneficial to address the challenge of data veracity and securing access to the data lake. We found it tremendously useful to make use of the advanced machine learning techniques for data preparation to find matching records, clean, and deduplicate data from different data sources. This will help reduce the time, effort, and cost, while improving the quality and accuracy of the data in a customer’s data lakes.”

The post Amazon Web Services Announces Availability of AWS Lake Formation appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Selling or purchasing a home is no simple process. It involves countless forms, documents and communications with multiple parties such as inspectors, appraisers, title vendors, and more. SOHO Realty wanted to make this process less complicated and easier for customers to navigate.

The Tech Decision

SOHO Realty needed a customized Marketing and Sales Automation solution to enable its agents and customers to efficiently collaborate while ensuring that all sales process steps and procedures are properly executed, and documents are stored in the appropriate company document repositories.

SOHO Realty brought on Optimum, a modern software and digital solutions consulting firm, to develop a customized solution that would ease the paperwork and documentation processes for its clients and streamline the home buying experience.

“The process of purchasing a home is already challenging enough without all the required paperwork. We wanted to ease the documentation process for our clients and improve their home buying experience,” says Sharlene Mercier, Managing Broker at SOHO Realty.

SOHO Realty was already using Dotloop, a transaction management tool for real estate brokerages, to manage its electronic signature and other documentation needs; but it wasn’t a complete sales automation solution.

SOHO Realty needed help automating the delivery of documents and tracking the status of tasks in the home buying and selling process. Additionally, SOHO Realty strived to better manage its incoming leads, from both buyers and sellers, and ensure proper and fast follow ups.

The Sales Automation Solution

Using Nintex for Office 365, Optimum created a customized CRM for SOHO Realty that was centered around the way SOHO operates. The solution utilized one advanced and fully customized Nintex Form and three Nintex Workflows, with indirect integration to SOHO’s Dotloop tenant.

Optimum’s Nintex solution starts with the agency’s online inquiries webform. Once completed and submitted, the information is added to SOHO’s CRM, triggering a Nintex Workflow which notifies a SOHO Realty sales rep to follow up with the lead. The sales rep follows up with the customer and collects more information, entering the information into the Nintex Form.

Next, the sales rep qualifies or disqualifies the lead. If qualified, the customer is assigned to an agent, which is notified via the Nintex Workflow.

As the sales journey progresses, the agent continues to use the Nintex Form to collect more information and, if applicable, kicks off a workflow to add the buying or selling and other legal documents to Dotloop. Customer information is also automatically prepopulated into the applicable documents in Dotloop based on what information has already been collected.

Read Next: Manufacturing Jobs Are Getting Hit the Hardest by Automation – Here’s Why

As documents are signed and completed in Dotloop, Nintex kicks off a workflow to deliver them to the applicable parties and the agent is notified through a workflow to continue the process. Additionally, the agent can track the status of every step in the process through the Nintex solution.

The Impact

The Nintex sales automation solution built by Optimum helps SOHO Realty improve the overall experience of buying and selling a home, both for their customers and for their staff. Thanks to workflow automation, SOHO Realty staff have better visibility into a large portion of their business process, ranging from lead generation to transaction to closing.

“By providing a more streamlined experience with Nintex, we’re able to ease the documentation process for our clients. Optimum helped us to develop a digitized solution to our customer experience and documentation requirements that is aligned with the way we do business,” says Sharlene Mercier, Managing Broker at SOHO Realty.

Additionally, the staff have greater insight into the status of documents and easier task management and assignment. These major benefits give Sharlene and her staff more time to spend on helping their customers by automating work items that had been taking up a large part of their workday.

The post SOHO Real Estate Makes Managing Forms & Vendors Easier with Sales Automation Solution appeared first on My TechDecisions.