Cloud computing can quickly become a double-edged sword. Cloud services are so easy to scale that they can become unwieldy, with IT staff lacking the visibility and structure to manage their cloud environments effectively. Frequently, we find that organizations are overprovisioned, paying for more than they need. In some cases, they have idle resources, often for storage, which also represent unnecessary costs; in others, they may be unaware of security vulnerabilities, such as open ports.

When organizations reach this point, they often engage a partner to optimize instances, identify unused resources and regain control from cost and security perspectives. We offer this kind of support through our Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure Optimization assessments. Our goal is to enable customers to create more structure around the cloud so that they can strengthen monitoring and management of these resources.

It’s time to finally say goodbye to Skype for Business Online. Though the sunset date for the platform — July 31, 2021 — is quickly approaching, you still have time to get ready. However, there are some important things to think about when moving to whatever your replacement platform will be.

For most organizations, the logical next step is Microsoft Teams, and many of these organizations have already found new ways to take advantage of Microsoft Teams to collaborate over the past year. To help continue the push forward, here are three of the questions I hear most often from organizations that are planning to fully transition to Teams ― and my thoughts on how to best prepare.

Change is the only constant in life, even when it happens at a slow pace. And the same is true for Microsoft. With two decades of customers purchasing perpetual licenses through the same portal, this licensing program was due for a change.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced it will sunset its Open Licensing program. This is a big change for a lot of our customers, but it will make things much easier for them by streamlining the available licensing programs from CDW and Microsoft.

In 2020, Cisco introduced enhancements to the Webex cloud and Webex device series, providing a way to connect to Microsoft Teams meetings directly from Cisco video devices.

There are two technologies at play here: Cloud Video Interop (CVI) and Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC).

Zerologon is the name given to a security vulnerability found in Microsoft Windows domain controllers by Secura. It is an unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability in the Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC). An attacker can leverage this flaw to gain administrative access to a Windows domain.

This vulnerability was assigned CVE number CVE-2020-1472 and rated critical. A Zerologon vulnerability that was patched by Microsoft in August has been making the news lately as proof of concept exploits have started to appear in the wild. In this post, I will discuss in more detail what this vulnerability is and how you can defend against it.

It’s hard to talk about Microsoft 365 and not mention the elephant in the room: Microsoft Teams. As remote work and the “new normal” continue to drive business decisions and the way we work, Microsoft Teams continues to be at the center of these collaboration conversations.

With all the attention on Teams, it’s easy to forget about the rest of Microsoft’s massive suite of tools that also contribute to making work life — and in some cases personal life — a little bit easier. To help you start, I’ve put together a list of four of the most effective Microsoft 365 tools I use on a daily or weekly basis that help me keep a handle on my day. There are many tools in the product suite that can help here, and even some new ones (Microsoft Lists).