As a senior data center architect, I work regularly with organizations such as police forces, county health departments and state election agencies. These organizations face different challenges, and each has different ways that it wants to achieve its mission. But my conversations with the people in these organizations reveal meaningful similarities among them. Generally, the…

In my previous blog post, I talked about the need for organizations that are making the transition to public cloud to understand the inherent value of being in the cloud. Moving your private infrastructure into a hybrid cloud is not enough. You need to focus on transforming people, processes and technology in a way that…

The explosion of public cloud adoption in today’s business landscape is undeniable. But it’s alarming to see the number of organizations adopting cloud without a mature, clearly defined strategy on how cloud technologies are transforming various aspects of their business. It’s high time these companies take the plunge and explore the benefits of true transformation,…

Almost all of my closest colleagues are remote. On my team, I work directly with people who are based in Wisconsin, Texas, Pennsylvania and even India. But judging from our easy rapport — not to mention how much we accomplish together — an outside observer would probably assume that we all sit next to each…

In the past decade, organizations across all industries have come to realize that new technologies and methodologies can eliminate many of the management challenges that have traditionally been a part of supporting email and other applications. Today, the same thing is happening with storage, computing and networking. While cloud software has streamlined software support, technologies…

Retailers are practically swimming in data. No matter whether a retailer is all-online or runs a brick-and-mortar store — or whether it’s a tech leader or laggard — virtually everyone handles a wide variety of data: inventory information, customer payment data, loyalty programs that incorporate buying histories, employee payroll data and countless other sources of…