Manufacturers can use the Internet of Things as the foundation for digital transformation efforts that maximize efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction. But as they explore these efforts, many manufacturers run into two common hurdles: applying IoT to legacy manufacturing equipment and making sense of all the data flooding in. The good news is both hurdles…

I frequently consult with customers comparing hyperscale public cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google for their data and applications. The workloads they want to evaluate typically fit into one of three categories: A lift-and-shift of virtual or physical workloads into public cloud A partial or full refactoring/modernization of an on-premises…

In an IDG survey conducted for CDW’s “The Modern IT Infrastructure Insight Report,” 58 percent of IT professionals said it’s challenging to align their departmental strategies with corporate goals. Among organizations with extensive hybrid IT environments, that perception jumps to 68 percent. IT pros have good reason to take on this challenge, because certain high-level…

Microsoft Azure adoption grew nearly 35 percent over the past year, to 58 percent of the enterprises surveyed in the “RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud Report.” That’s good news for companies considering whether and how to migrate to Azure. They have plenty of opportunities to learn from real-world examples. At CDW, the most common…

I had the pleasure of visiting with customers and partners at the VeeamON 2018 conference in Chicago earlier this month. This event brought together data protection professionals to share knowledge and discuss backup and high-availability solutions from Veeam. The conference topics reflected the growth of Veeam from a straightforward backup solution into a full-fledged high-availability…

I read a comic today about a data center support technician who was going to put a fog machine in his lab, and when people walked in he could declare, “Welcome to the cloud!” He laughed, his friends laughed and I died a little inside as I read it. The cloud is still viewed as…