Patrick Nowicki

It’s easy to take collaboration tools for granted. They’ve evolved gradually over time, adding a feature here and upgrading a user experience there. Now, platforms such as Cisco Webex allow users from around the world to collaborate via HD video, screen sharing, voice and chat. They really are incredible tools that allow for a level…

It happens almost by accident. An organization adopts a cloud collaboration suite, giving employees the ability to share files, exchange messages, manage their calendars and set up voice and video calls — all on a single platform. But then the company merges with another organization, which is using a similar platform from another vendor. Meanwhile,…

If you have evaluated or use Office 365 for any of your collaboration and productivity needs, I don't need to tell you how popular Microsoft Teams has become in the marketplace, even recently surpassing Slack in user adoption. However, many organizations have been more tentative about moving to Microsoft Teams for calling and meetings. This…

I recently attended Cisco Live 2018, and one topic at the event in Orlando that drew my attention was the updates to Webex Meetings. If you are using Cisco’s Webex Meetings today, hopefully you have already heard that Webex version WBS 33.3 is right around the corner. What does this mean to you and your…

In my first post on the Surface Hub, I focused on potential new use cases for this hybrid devices. Then my second blog post in this series took a deeper dive into the Surface Hub’s features and how it compared to the competition. Now, I'm finally getting around to the question of whether this product is…

Some innovative technologies come onto the market without a clearly defined use case (or, perhaps, a clearly marketed one). They pull together features from other technologies and combine them in a new way. And while this hybrid isn’t a great fit for the original workplace settings it was pulled from, it offers opportunities for creating…

One of the main responsibilities in my job as an architect is to look at what's happening in the industry, discuss with people closest to the sources and then experience the innovations for myself to help set direction for CDW and provide recommendations to our customers. When I first saw the Surface Hub, I didn’t…

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we touched on the need for thoroughly planning out an application adoption strategy and some of the key tactics for a successful rollout. This last post will focus on additional considerations for application adoption. Historically, many IT organizations have focused on costs, maintaining system health and…

In our previous post, we laid out the strategies that CDW uses to help organizations plan a successful application rollout that will lead to getting the most business value out of your application. Following a high-level process like that, it is important to keep the project on track and accomplish your goals, but the details behind…

It seems like new applications pop up every five minutes, and while some companies have a monopoly on a new type of application, it doesn’t take long before a contender comes along and puts their own spin on the concept. When the new application hits the market, there is always hype around its great features…

The end users of many on-premises and hosted Cisco Unified Communication customers have never been able to communicate natively from their Cisco Jabber clients to their third-party business partners who use Microsoft’s Lync or Skype for Business. It’s as if they were on opposite sides of a river with no “bridge” to cross, leaving them…

"How do I get the most out of my investment?" It’s a question all IT organizations ask themselves when they review applications they have in their environment, especially when considering upgrades and migrations. This question can and ought to be answered with both technical and user adoption considerations in mind. And it presents quite the…