Software

For organizations to realize the potential value of AI, according to McKinsey, their AI strategy must align with their corporate strategy. They need a “clear data strategy that supports and enables AI,” and they must invest in staff and technical training to ensure they have the skills to implement AI at scale.

I keep those imperatives in mind when I work with business and IT leaders who wonder how AI might help their organizations. My advice to them: To get the most out of the technology — to make AI work for you — it pays to take a phased approach to implementation.

Many organizations struggle with IT asset management even during the best of times. In fact, according to a CDW survey, nearly 1 in 5 businesses incorporates Post-it notes as part of its asset management strategy. Now, add a worldwide crisis that has forced organizations to roll out countless laptops and software licenses in a matter of days to enable remote work (often outside of their normal procurement and budget processes), and you have a recipe not only for massive inefficiency, but also huge software license compliance liabilities.

It’s important for organizations to get in front of this now by applying appropriate asset management tools and practices to their new environments. At CDW, we have four main ways of helping customers to better manage their IT environments.

Cisco has been hard at work to deliver features and enhancements to the Webex Calling product portfolio. Here are the biggest announcements from Cisco’s recent Connect Cloud Calling Summit that make Webex Calling a more complete communications service in the cloud.

As they seek to enable remote work, many organizations are implementing new ways for employees to access and share data. This is all necessary to enable business continuity, but it’s possible (and perhaps even probable) that organizations are unwittingly opening up new security vulnerabilities as they introduce new technologies and workflows. Unless an IT shop employs professionals with deep expertise in cybersecurity, the prospect of hunting around for unknown security gaps can be incredibly daunting. That’s where cybersecurity assessments from a partner like CDW come in.

The election infrastructure in the U.S. depends on the coordinated, secure interaction of thousands of state and local election officials using very different technologies. These range from large cities with fully electronic voting systems to small municipalities that still rely on paper ballots. As I work with officials from these diverse election authorities, I’ve developed a set of best practices that will enhance security in any election environment. Let’s take a look at five key measures that every Board of Elections should put in place.

Video surveillance technology is now in the middle of the same transformation that revolutionized business telephones 15 years ago. Organizations are moving from old, inflexible analog camera systems to modern and agile IP-based digital video surveillance technology. At the same time, they’re shifting responsibility for these systems from facilities teams to IT groups who are more familiar with providing reliable and consistent digital services to other business units.