Digital Workspace

Cisco customers have a choice between Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Ethernet VPN (EVPN) for building their data center network fabrics. Since these technologies are thought to be interchangeable, the choice often falls to cultural, political or other “Layer 8” decision-making. But the fabric technologies are, in fact, different in ways both subtle and significant, and one’s choice has a profound impact on fabric orchestration, operations, and staffing.

I hope you’ll join me all the way through this three-part blog series as I compare and contrast these technologies and provide a foundation for deciding on the best choice for your organization’s needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been called the world’s largest forced proof of concept for collaboration technologies. Last spring, organizations across industries scrambled to deploy collaboration suites and get workers up and running from their homes. Already, these technologies are beginning to transform company cultures and workflows.

Many frontline healthcare workers, of course, have bravely donned their personal protective equipment and stayed in the field to deliver care. But collaboration technologies have revolutionized the work of a large number of clinicians and other healthcare workers, and we expect these solutions to have a lasting impact.

Here are five predictions we feel confident making about the future of collaboration in healthcare:

During the past year, collaboration technologies have had their own moment in the sun. In response to the new remote work needs spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations across industries have raced to roll out collaboration suites that keep their workers connected and productive from the safety of home. Largely, these tools have had their intended effect, with many businesses reporting that worker productivity has stayed level or even improved slightly. However, many organizations have found that their collaboration environments are now as rambling, disorganized and inefficient as their mobile environments were a few years ago.

Like mobile solutions, collaboration is here to stay. Organizations that bring a UEM approach to their collaboration environments are the ones that will see the greatest success with these solutions going forward.

Let‘s face it: Cybersecurity teams are overwhelmed with work. There simply is not enough time in the day to perform all the high-value tasks they are responsible for, such as consulting with project teams, conducting risk analyses and developing strategic security plans. To make matters worse, security teams often find themselves consumed with time-sensitive and repetitive operational work. Anything they can do to reduce this burden increases their ability to add value to the organization.

Automation has the potential to help with this heavy lifting. Any time security teams find themselves performing work that requires following a repetitive process, it is likely that automation can play an important role in reducing the operational burden. In our work with CDW customers, we have found a few common areas where automation can help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of cybersecurity teams. Let’s look at a few examples.

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, there are reasons to hope that the worst will soon be behind us. Healthcare professionals are administering vaccines at a rate of more than 1 million shots per day in the U.S., and public health officials predict that life could return to something approaching “normal” by this fall.

However, even once the pandemic is over, organizations will be able to leverage the technology solutions they have deployed to help them navigate the crisis. Many industry observers have already noted the ways that cloud collaboration and remote work solutions will change the future of business. Here are three more (sometimes overlooked) COVID-19-era technologies that will continue to have an impact in the coming years.

All too often, a desire for digital simplicity creates missed opportunities for small businesses.

For example, most businesses want better security, but the added complexity and financial costs that come with securing data and devices can prevent SMBs from pursuing this objective aggressively. Small and medium businesses tend to have small IT departments, and those departments often need to pick their battles.

How big of a concern? According to Verizon’s 2020 Mobile Security Index Report, 39 percent of companies admitted to having suffered a compromise that included a mobile device. It’s definitely something that should be on the minds of IT administrators.