CDW Expert

In May, the digital world was awash in privacy practice notifications that inundated users on websites and in email inboxes. This wave came as companies doing business in the European Union prepared for the implementation deadline of the General Data Protection Regulation. Talking heads fueled a media frenzy of speculation regarding when EU supervisory authorities…

The split between on-premises and cloud technologies isn’t new. Ask anyone who’s been in the world of computing for a while, and you’ll hear the topics of today as echoes from the past – think back to client-server or mainframe-and-dumb-terminal in the world of computing, or centrex and off-premises extension in the world of voice…

Ok, I’ll admit, I, too, detest “…with this one weird trick” headlines. That said, it’s an incredibly common ask from the C-suite: “I would like to do a town hall meeting with X-hundred (or Y-thousand) employees, and I’d like to use this fancy videoconference room to do it.” To date, the answers to this request…

Servers are the heart of data centers, which means they can make or break a major initiative, such as migrating to a software-defined architecture or supporting high-performance computing. If your organization is gearing up for that kind of big change, consider upgrading to servers based on Intel Xeon Scalable processor architecture. The latest generation of…

With the Internet of Things (IoT), success doesn’t come just from connecting devices. It’s equally important to connect people. IoT’s big promise is enabling new, deep, actionable insights into every aspect of your business: people, processes, buildings, equipment and vehicles, to name just a few. But it can’t deliver on that digital transformation promise if…

The capability is on the horizon: One day, IT teams will be able to leverage a software-defined data center (SDDC) to cut and paste live virtual machines from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud and back again. And, they’ll be able to do so on a Tuesday afternoon when customers and departments are using those applications…

I work out of Madison, Wis., and one of my closest colleagues is based in Cleveland. We're rarely in the same room together. But when we see each other at an event, we don't go through the whole, "It's been a while, how've you been?" routine. Instead, we just pick up the conversation we were…

A couple of months ago, a higher education CIO I know came to me in a near panic. The university's provost (who had never before acknowledged the CIO by name) had just walked into his office and asked why the school didn't have a student-focused mobile app that a rival school offered. The CIO didn't…

Recently, I worked with leaders in a Texas school district who were making a conscious attempt to support modern pedagogical practices. They wanted to give teachers the freedom to change up room layouts to better enable collaboration, but teachers also needed students to sit in rows during portions of their classes. Changing the furniture around…

Last week, I had the pleasure of joining almost 200 security leaders from around the world for CDW's Managing Risk SummIT. One thing was clear from the many great conversations we shared: The world has changed. The security practices that helped us keep intruders out for the past two decades will not hold up against…

CDW recently partnered with IDG Research on a risk mitigation study that came to a startling conclusion: 46 percent of organizations have experienced a serious security breach, and an additional 22 percent experienced a “near breach.” Stop and think about that for a moment. More than two-thirds of organizations either suffered a breach or narrowly…

Recently, I asked a nonprofit executive how his organization planned to comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that will go into effect in the European Union this spring. I expected him to rattle off a loose outline of steps that his IT team is taking to prepare for the GDPR guidelines. Instead,…

It was all the way back in 2009 that Cisco first began to integrate WebEx with TelePresence endpoints — hybrid cloud before hybrid cloud was the next big thing. At the time, it was called Cisco TelePresence WebEx One Touch, which begat WebEx One Touch 2.0, which then begat WebEx Enabled TelePresence, which then became…

When we talk about digital transformation, we tend to think first of end-user devices and edge uses: smart objects, automated operations and streamlined processes. But none of those solutions or outcomes is possible without the right back-end infrastructure to support it. Forward-looking organizations must move beyond a “keep the lights on” mentality and strategically design…

"This stuff is hard,” said Michael Glover, vice president of IT Infrastructure at a Fortune 500 retail company. “Either I put the wrong workloads into the public cloud, which should have stayed on-prem, my monthly bill jumps 70 percent from its usual baseline, or I can't find an excellent cloud resource for mundane, too-deep-in-the-weeds development…

No one likes to be thought of as a collection of 0s and 1s, but in today’s digital world, that’s what it sometimes feels like when we interact with businesses that treat us impersonally. Businesses that want to transform their relationship with customers need to create more personalized experiences, speakers said at a recent CDW…

Most IT budgets are spent maintaining existing systems, so many organizations find it difficult to invest in innovation. New technologies can feel particularly overwhelming for small and midsized businesses, where resources are often limited, speakers said at a recent CDW summit, “Transforming the Customer Experience with Digital Modernization,” in New Orleans. However, there are simple…

One Button to Push (OBTP) is one of Cisco’s marquee TelePresence and videoconferencing features. With OBTP, meetings scheduled by end users for a conference room appear in a list on the room’s display, and video- or WebEx-enabled meetings offer a “big green button” to join the meeting on the device’s touch control pad. This radically…

There are nearly 30 million small and midsized businesses (SMBs) across the U.S., and obviously, not all of them could be present at VMworld this summer. But luckily, one of the most compelling conversations of the event came when Chris Wolf, chief technology officer for VMware, spoke with CDW about technologies that offer plenty of…

Apple revolutionized modern mobility — introducing the world to pocket-sized devices with the iPod, and then changing modern computing forever with the iPhone and the iPad. Cisco, meanwhile, is considered by many IT professionals to represent excellence in networking. If enterprises are going to get the most out of their mobility initiatives, then, it makes sense…

When Phillips Manufacturing began using Adobe Creative Suite, it purchased different licenses for users at various times, acquiring multiple versions of the software. The resulting software environment required a lot of maintenance and created management challenges for the small business, based in Omaha, Neb. Moving to Adobe Creative Cloud, which delivers the applications in the…

I have been fortunate to work for some very complex and mature IT departments throughout my career, and one of the more important practices I saw within these IT shops was a solid disaster recovery and business continuity strategy. As an IT business person that has participated on all sides of the disaster recovery and…

In business, we often ask how we can be more valuable to our customers. But, according to Michael Schrage, research fellow at the MIT Center for Digital Business, there’s another question that we don’t ask often enough: How can we make our customers more valuable to us. At CDW’s Improving Productivity with Digital Transformation Summit…

The main IT challenge that many organizations face is simple: Cybercriminals continue to get better at what they do. In addition to being smarter and better funded, they’re also more organized. Indeed, a lot of the cybercrime we see today is carried out by organizations that are run like businesses, with clear hierarchies and solid…

It’s no secret that the cloud has changed the IT landscape. Virtually every enterprise is looking at some form of cloud computing as an integral part of their IT strategy; according to Market Media Research, cloud computing spend will exceed $270 billion by 2020. That is a bullish forecast, however, that doesn’t mean that all…

“It’s not about IoT,” said Steve Darrah, director of national solution services at Intel. “It’s about what you can do with it.” Internet of Things technologies are having a major impact on numerous industries, as Darrah and other experts stated during a panel discussion at CDW’s Improving Productivity with Digital Transformation Summit this spring. For…

The entrepreneurial spirit and technology acumen of the United States provide reason for optimism in the fight against cybercriminals, said former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. At the helm of the FBI from September 2001 through September 2013, Mueller came to view cybercrime as a top threat to the U.S., but when organizations pulled…

While you might get a text from your dentist reminding you of an appointment or you might be able to hold a table at your favorite restaurant online, in the small and medium business (SMB) market — especially the sub-200 seat space — dial-tone, voicemail and basic unified communications (UC) features are still the norm.…

We are living in exciting times, especially those of us who work in IT. The technological changes going on all around us are, historically, on par with previous leaps in human development. For businesses, technology offers tools that allow them to compete and thrive. It gives them the ability to apply intelligence and process management…

There are more than a few manufacturers of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) appliances. And I meet with customers every week and try to explain to them why they should care about it. To me, HCI really should be boiled down to three components. The first is the hardware – what you can see and touch in…

In 2013, global digital data weighed in at 4.4 zettabytes (a zettabyte equals a trillion gigabytes). IDC predicts that figure will leap to 180 zettabytes by 2025. The amount of data that organizations must manage is growing in size, complexity and value. Unfortunately, while most organizations feel that growth and complexity, they don’t see comparable…

The most pressing demands of data centers in 2017 can be summed up in two words: simplicity and performance. Data center managers are seeking to reduce complexity while shrinking the barriers between data and the customer. A key part of this initiative is replacing the mechanical disk with solid-state drives (SSDs). In fact, data center…

The volume of cybersecurity threats that organizations face has become overwhelming. At CDW’s recent Managing Risk Summit in Washington, D.C., leading security experts described how cybercriminals continue to use innovative techniques, including malware, ransomware and compromised credentials, to gain access to enterprise networks and compromise valuable data. “How do you think hackers think of their…

A squirrel chewing through wires outside Yahoo’s data center in 2010. A ship dropping anchor on communication lines running underwater. There are some odd, nearly impossible occurrences that have caused unplanned downtime. Yet the most common cause of data center outages remains human error. And the more public the use of the facility, the more…

According to Greek mythology, the giant Argus Panoptes had 100 eyes, making him the perfect watchman, because only a few eyes would sleep at any given time. Cisco must’ve found a few of them on the Svalbard Islands, in the far northern part of Norway (Norway being home of TelePresence endpoint development at Cisco), to…

Despite all the noise from analysts and vendors pushing enterprises toward the promised land of pervasive video collaboration by video-equipping smaller conference and huddle rooms (as they should!), Cisco continues to keep a parallel focus on video conferencing in the larger conference room, board room and special events room segments. I don’t mean to dismiss…

Over the last three years, IT decision-makers put a wide range of assets from software to infrastructure into the cloud. One of the main drivers for cloud adoption was cost. A cloud migration strategy offered IT professionals a diverse array of solutions for running services at lower cost. And the cloud’s pay-as-you-go model allowed enterprises…

Collaboration tools such as Dropbox, Box and Microsoft OneDrive for Business have been a boon for business productivity. These easy-to-use cloud services provide intuitive file sharing to help untether workers from their office PCs and enable integration with productivity solutions such as Office 365 and SharePoint. With features like integrated version control, file discovery and…

If national publications are calling attention to the health hazards of sitting, and if K–12 students are always sitting in the classroom, we’ve got a problem. In fact, we have several problems. Beyond the deleterious effects of so much time off their feet (such as restlessness and inability to focus), students who sit for too…

Many IT teams purchase storage systems in much the same way people buy cars. If you're a car buyer like me, you take your time, think about it and order the car you want. You really understand the car you currently have and the car you’re going to drive, including the technologies that have changed…

While speaking to a Chicago group about security recently, I picked someone out of the audience and asked him to tell me his password. He looked at me like I was up to no good. “Let me guess,” I said. “Is it at least eight characters with one number and one special character?” He said…

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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 [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="508"] Cisco publishes field notices to inform customers…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 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 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

In mid-November, Microsoft announced that it would be rebranding the next version of its unified communications platform as Skype for Business.  This represents the next step in the integration between Skype, one of the most popular consumer communications services (with more than 300 million users) and Lync, one of the leading enterprise communications platforms (sharing…

Everyone has at least one pair of outstanding jeans. Women’s love for a great pair of blue jeans can sometimes even top having a pint of Häagen-Dazs. Men feel the same way, but as the first rule of Fight Club states, “We don’t talk or ask questions about it.” Nothing is like pulling on that…

I recently had the opportunity to participate in an amazing panel interview sponsored by CDW in partnership with Riverbed, produced by CIO magazine and held at the Foreign Cinema in the Mission District of San Francisco. There were 26 very bright attendees from various levels of information technology. The focus of the event was WAN…

I have spent a lot of time talking to customers and analysts about Cloud solutions and the value they bring to the market.  As a result, I have seen countless instances where customers have achieved great success with their Cloud initiatives.  Unfortunately, I have seen far more examples where organizations have walked away from spectacular…

When’s the last time you checked your voicemail?  Your email?  Your texts?  In an era of always-on-the-go dispersed teams working together, Collaboration tools always seem to slightly lag the ideal point of “frictionless” experience.  Today Cisco announces a first version of their newest Collaboration tool: Cisco Project Squared.  And with it, the tools are once…

Video collaboration is getting to be a critical piece of any enterprise’s collaboration strategy. When more than two parties need to be in a meeting, the need for a video bridge becomes necessary. In the past, this needed on-premises resources that were expensive and required capital expenditure. While this is still a viable option when…

Many enterprises are happily running their Office desktop apps or Exchange, SharePoint, Yammer and Lync services online through Office 365 subscriptions. Some now are asking what other workloads they might move to the cloud. Microsoft Azure answers that need and complements Office 365 through its platform and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings. What is…

By now everyone knows that Windows Server 2003 is fast approaching end of life. But each organization needs to assess the impact, both in terms of the risks of not removing Windows Server 2003 from the infrastructure, and the rewards of deploying a current server OS in the data center. In this brief blog post,…

Just for this blog post you can call me John.  I'm a hardware lover, Lord King of IT Infrastructure for my company.  When I hug it, I do get reciprocal love right back – from the storage frames to the blade servers. I'm the "as-a-Service" machine for my company behind our firewalls.  I've watched a…

The big security news last week was Shellshock, a vulnerability that affects the Bash shell on *nix operating systems (including Macs). So good news, Windows admins, you get to sit this one out. For the rest of the world, the impact of Shellshock is still unclear and perhaps that's what is making it most unsettling.…

Organizations subscribe to Microsoft Office 365; they synchronize their Active Directory and enable single sign-on (SSO). What they do not know is that they now have a bunch of capabilities available to them, many of them free, from their Microsoft Azure tenant. Yes, you heard correctly, their Azure tenant. But, wait a minute Pat; you…

Today marks the beginning of the next wave of innovation for the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS). They are always innovating in this space and once again have stepped up! The new announcements around UCS provides a broader and more powerful portfolio of technologies. They will allow customers to power applications at every scale and add intelligence…

The date was June 5th, 1895 and Jedidiah Collinsworth, CFO for General Corporation was having a very perplexing day.  General Corporation was the largest maker of hammers in its time.  However, the greatest cost to the business was generating power onsite via company owned generators.  Every month the bills would stack up to the ceiling…

Based on our recent survey of cloud decision makers, security/privacy continues to be the top factor on their influence to allocate compute and storage workloads between on-premise servers, co-location/third-party hosting or public/hybrid clouds. I’ve been working closely with an industry thought leader on cloud security, Mark Nunnikhoven from Trend Micro, and would like to share some…

We are in the middle of security conference season. Therefore, it’s not entirely unexpected to see headlines from Black Hat and other conferences discussing “grave” security threats, and what they mean to our ability to protect our organizations and ourselves. Arguably, the biggest headline of the past few weeks has been the purported discovery of…

Software is what’s required to make the train run on time and keep the lights on, or perhaps a little more tangibly stated, software is what some IT guy writes to produce those reports that management expects at the end of every month. Software is everywhere and it's a lot of things, but in accounting…

What are the top nine reasons to employ Office 365 in your business? First, what is Office 365?    Office 365 is a subscription-based online suite of software products that improve business productivity.  The most popular components under the Office 365 brand are Exchange Online (email) and Office 365 ProPlus, the familiar desktop application products used…

It's been an amazing day at Cloud & Such - no bothersome customer calls and the power has only gone out twice in the data center (aka parents’ garage). However, the propane-powered generator kicked in both times. Game of Thrones plays on the large screen monitor that doubles as a computer display. Walking outside the…

You have a problem: The Director of Recruiting just called – a candidate was flying in for a high-level interview. However, due to some weather at Chicago O’Hare (which any business traveler knows can happen any time of year), the airline cancelled the flight. Is there any way to get the candidate in over telepresence…

The Cisco TelePresence SX10 Quick Set is an all-in-one unit that combines with any flat panel display to video-enable small collaboration spaces. It offers affordability for small-to-medium-sized organizations just starting out with telepresence, or in extending telepresence throughout an enterprise. TL;DR Version You can equip a four-to-eight person conference room with a Cisco SX10 and…

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that the measure of success with a cloud provider comes down to your ability to get the “real story” during the sales cycle.  While I touched on the physical security of the provider’s data center - what about the logical, remote and application data security in the cloud…

It’s everywhere around you – is cloud computing a friend or foe?  Does the name make you nauseous? Career maker or career ender?  As a Cloud Client Executive (CCE) at CDW, I hear it all from customers about cloud, so humorous, in fact, it could green-light an HBO comedy series. My role is to help…

“Don, please schedule an emergency meeting with all IT and telecom staff. We had a flood in the first floor of building C at the Washington Drive campus. We need to figure out how to provide sales, marketing and accounting with immediate access to our customers as the phones on that floor aren’t working now.…

EMC World, EMC’s premier technology conference, was held May 5 thru May 8, 2014, at the Venetian conference center in Las Vegas. Numerous keynote addresses, breakout sessions, virtual labs, announcements and demonstrations was a lot to take in over the course of four days, and even more to fit into a single blog post. Therefore,…

There has been a fair amount of confusion and misinformation surrounding authentication for Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365. The intent of this post is to help get us all on the same page on this issue, especially when it comes deploying solutions for authentication to cloud services. Let me set the stage. An…

One of the great things about being on the security assessment team is the ability to work with companies to truly improve their overall security posture. Sure, it’s interesting to talk about zero-days and exotic exploits against systems they don’t have, but in most cases, it doesn’t hold particular relevance. Part of our assessment exercise…

…Synchronize live video feeds and content from the Jumbotron to digital displays, all the way down to each mobile device. …Allow fans to follow comments from friends, post event pictures and learn more from sports commentators on Facebook and Twitter - in real time. …Make commercial breaks a time to call up a player’s stats…

In this video CDW Engineers unbox a Google Chromebox for meetings testing unit and review components and basic setup. In this video CDW Engineers take you on a tour of the “ad-hoc” meeting flow – starting a hangout from Chromebox for meetings and joining a few users for a meeting. In this video CDW Engineers…

In recent months during many meetings with clients of all sizes I have seen a huge surge in curiosity and consideration for Google Apps for Business from organizations looking to bring a consumer centric user experience into their business workspace strategy to reignite their communication and collaboration capabilities by adopting Google’s feature rich mobile and social…

Has your organization succumbed (or hopefully embraced) the move to mobility? Have they gone as far as to support a bring your own device orBYOD initiative, allowing staffers to use their personal smartphone or tablet for work purposes? How has the support through the entire process been? Being on the IT side, you might have…

Attending the 2014 Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) Conference & Exposition in Austin got me thinking about my own schooling. There was no such thing as a cellular phone, tablet or ’phablet,’ much less anything that could be considered a smart device – other than a teacher and an overhead transparency and book projector. Today,…

If you have been paying attention over the last year or so you have probably noticed wearable technology popping up all over the place. It seems like everyone is wearing some form of fitness tracker these days. While the purpose of a fitness tracker is rather clear, the same cannot easily be said of other…

People love Google+ Hangouts for meetings. People also love big LCD screens in conference rooms for meetings. What if they both moved to California and got married? We’re in luck – today Google announced “Chromebox for meetings” – their first foray into the world of room-based video conferencing, with CDW as a launch partner. As you might…

A few years ago I remember having a conversation with some of my peers about emerging trends and the concept of Enterprise Social came up. Since then we have collectively followed this trend waiting for the right moment we all knew would eventually come to light. Finally it appears the time has come. Enterprise Social…

With the prevalence of mobile devices today, the need for faster Wi-Fi has and continues to become more important. 802.11ac promises faster, more efficient wireless communications, but there are a few important things to remember. (The 802.11ac protocol is being delivered in two waves. Wave 1 of 802.11ac is discussed here.) There are many factors…

The recently updated Cisco WebEx for iPad app with new Box integration brings together two very powerful collaboration platforms from Cisco and Box. In fact, it delivers one of the most efficient and productive mobile collaboration experiences in the market. Tapping into open APIs on both sides, the new WebEx and Box integration enables mobile…

Mobility trends are fascinating to watch, especially in the healthcare industry. There’s no doubt that the proliferation of mobile devices is driving many changes. Clinicians are increasingly using mobile devices, and the number of applications is exploding. The Association of American Medical Colleges reported that in 2012 there were over 40,000 healthcare apps available, with…

My People are Running 120MPH Just Keeping the Lights On One of the big reasons I hear from most IT Directors when asked why they aren't adopting new technology is that they just don't have the people to start investigating those new technologies. Many teams are already overburdened with their current workload and can't afford…

Take a first look at the new technology on display at Cisco Live from Sachine Gupta of Cisco and my coworker Nacho Vega. In this video you'll see some of the latest networking solutions introduced at Cisco Live 2013 and what makes these products so essential to your networking needs. For more information on Cisco…

Through a partnership with Google and Esna Technologies, CDW has rolled out native access to the CDW Cloud Collaboration suite within Google Apps. In the above video, my coworker Andy Dignan, Esna Technologies' David Ballins, and I talk about the new app integration at Cisco Live 2013. Watch and see why clients are evaluating moving…

So I get a call from a manager, “ I have a great project for you to work on, West Coast Customs is involved”. Well, being a fan of the show for many years (so many I might show my age), I said “I’m in!” On the first call I find out I’m working on…

An exciting new update to the popular Cisco WebEx Meetings for iPad and iPhone App was released on March 30th, 2013 to the Apple App Store. Cisco WebEx Meetings for iPad and iPhone enable users to enjoy the full meeting experience from their smartphone or tablet. The new Cisco WebEx Meetings for iPad and iPhone…

The benefits of video conferencing are many Reduced Travel costs Increased productivity Real time collaboration Connecting geographically distributed work force B2B collaboration to name a few However, one of the biggest impediments to a successful deployment of a video conferencing system has been the lack of expertise in setting up the backend infrastructure that makes…

This is part two of a technical discussion of Cisco WebEx Meetings Server 1.0.  You can find part one here. In this post we’ll cover integration of CWMS to Cisco’s UC infrastructure, some advanced configuration, the deployment scenarios my peer Jon Nelson and I tested in the CDW EFT lab and some design principles we…

More often than not customers reach out to vendors because they have a real problem that their business is struggling to overcome. Likewise, more often than not, those vendors respond with Product X or Technology Y. When it comes to collaboration it's important to engage a vendor that understands that products and technology are only…

My coworker Srini Kilambi recently discussed Cisco’s new conferencing product, Cisco WebEx Meetings Server (CWMS) 1.0, from a features and licensing perspective. My peer Jon Nelson, CDW’s UC Technical Architect, and I recently setup several CWMS systems in our Early Field Trial (EFT) lab to test various deployments and features during the CWMS Beta. This…

When people think of WebEx the first thing that comes to mind is cloud collaboration and while that definitely is a viable and powerful collaboration tool, Cisco just recently has released an on premise version of WebEx. The benefits of collaboration are numerous. Being able to share on the fly or scheduled is nowadays critical…

What if you had to completely start over with your IT deployment? It happens every day. Companies sell off divisions, startups receive funding, and sometimes the timing is just right to replace everything and start over. It may sound frightening to some. To others, it will come across as a huge relief and a substantial…

I’ve heard many heartfelt stories from the recent Hurricane Sandy mega storm which impacted people and organizations across the eastern seaboard and it was absolutely amazing to see how quickly people rallied together to bounce back. I was especially proud to see our own CDW team immediately step up and go above and beyond to…

The 2012 Cisco Collaboration Summit in Los Angeles, CA delivered an action packed agenda focused on empowering, engaging and innovating with collaboration solutions. I have been attending Cisco partner events for the past 6-7 years and this one will go down as one of my favorites! It was incredibly awesome to see Cisco's new laser…

CISCO SOCIALMINER is new social customer care solution which enables companies to monitor public social media feeds. Out of the box, any RSS based public social feed such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogs can be easily monitored with Cisco SocialMiner. There are many other social media aggregator solutions in the market today. Cisco SocialMiner brings a…

Facebook and Twitter have fast emerged as de facto methods of communication in our day to day personal lives. The surprising part is this trend is increasing not just amongst the younger generation, the so called millennials(the future generation about to join the workforce) but the fastest growth is being observed among the baby boomers.…

The mobile internet age has changed everything especially within the UC and Collaboration market. Smart phones and tablets are quickly becoming the preferred way to communicate and collaborate inside and outside the organization. It's no longer a question of 'if' mobile devices can replace desk phones but 'how' they can be leveraged. Over the past…