As an industry analyst, not since the days of WAN Optimization have I seen a technology gain as much interest as I am seeing with SD-WANs today. Although full deployments are still limited, nearly every network manager, and often many IT leaders I talk to, are interested in it. The reason for this is two-fold – the WAN has grown in importance for cloud-first enterprises and is badly in need of an overhaul. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the vendor community as there has been an explosion of companies bringing a broad range of SD-WAN offerings to market. The great news for buyers is that there is no shortage of choices. The bad news is there are too many choices and making the right decision difficult.To read this article in full, please click here
The classic story of David battling Goliath resonates with any successful entrepreneur. At some point, small companies must confront large, entrenched rivals. Those big companies possess clear advantages: brand recognition, economies of scale, financial leverage and many others. Customers need a compelling reason to switch providers.How do would-be Davids compete? They need to develop their own modernized slingshot. Technology provides virtually endless possibilities for competitive advantage. Like David, though, you need to size up your opponent and adopt the right strategy before choosing your weapon.In the United Kingdom, a company called Ocado did just that in the exotic, sophisticated market of … grocery stores.To read this article in full, please click here
Who hasn’t had an infuriating support experience as a customer? We’ve all been there. Waiting on the phone. Repeating details. Being passed like a hot potato from one agent to the next. Has no one in the universe ever had or dealt with our same issue before? It can be frustrating, to say the least. And we’re shell-shocked the next time we need to reach out for customer support.There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, though. Before we get there, let’s first consider why this is happening. If we look at the support landscape, we can see that it’s changing:
The technology we use is changing. Think about how technology has changed over the last few years. Ten years ago, we didn’t have iPads. Now we have universal connectivity. And behind simple interfaces, underlying technologies are increasingly complex.
The people we support are changing. End users are more mobile. People can work from anywhere, and they take their digital lives with them. And with nearly unlimited – and searchable – data, people are consuming information in a variety of ways.
Customer expectations are changing. The more immediate and available our technology becomes, the more Continue reading
We’re going to go out on a limb and say most employees bring their own mobile devices to work. You probably do too, and it’s not a bad idea. Using a smartphone or tablet you’re already familiar with – and to which you’re already attached at the hip – often helps you to be more productive as an employee. For companies, embracing the bring-your-own-device trend isn’t a bad idea either. That individual boost in productivity compounds across the enterprise.But that doesn’t mean it’s as easy as turning on the green light and letting employees have at it. Those mobile devices need to be supported – and at a high service level end users have come to expect – or companies risk taking a hit on employee productivity and job satisfaction. You can thank places like Apple’s Genius Bar for raising the bar on support expectations. That’s the same level of first-class support employees expect at work and the standard IT support teams are being held to today.To read this article in full, please click here
How do you deal with change? It’s one of the questions of our era.We can see technology disruption play out in a number of industries like computing where the mainframe gave way to the PC that gave way to the smartphone. Change sneaks up on you and before you can craft a response, those new technologies disrupt your business.Networking has seen plenty of changes over the years and when they arrive they often look disruptive at the outset. When I talk to customers about SD-WAN, some ask whether SD-WAN is so disruptive they can essentially replace their MPLS backbone with a mix of broadband providers plus a commodity box– and essentially rely on the public Internet as their backbone. Some of them even have one of those boxes they are experimenting with.To read this article in full, please click here
Digital transformation and cloud initiatives are changing the way IT organizations are thinking about and architecting the wide area network. It is estimated that over 70 percent of applications have already moved to the cloud. Yet, the transformational promise of the cloud is falling short as conventional networks can’t keep pace with demands of the cloud. Why? Because today’s router-centric and basic SD-WAN architectures have either hit the wall or can’t keep up with traffic pattern shifts, distributed applications and the open security perimeters inherent to the cloud. This blog will explore the limitations of today’s WAN approaches, offering a better way forward with a business-first networking model.To read this article in full, please click here
I am the proud owner of a Tesla, a recognized leader in electric vehicles, which makes my daily commute (of almost 3 hours) less stressful and more enjoyable. I also work for Silver Peak, recognized as a Leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure. Both Silver Peak and Tesla have unique positions in different markets. So, why should I make the tie between Tesla and Silver Peak? Not only do the two companies continue to innovate in their respective industries, they also continue to disrupt the status quo of the way things have worked for decades to make them work in today’s fast-paced world. Just as Tesla has transformed the automotive industry by developing the most innovative self-driving vehicle, at Silver Peak, we don’t think of SD-WAN just as a Software-Defined WAN, but as a self-driving wide area network that learns and adapts to keep pace with the changing requirements of today’s cloud-first enterprises.To read this article in full, please click here
The era of digital transformation has injected new life into the old wisdom, “the only constant in life is change.” In our plugged-in world, change is happening at a breakneck pace and it’s pretty much impacting everything, including support. How users want to be supported and what defines a good support experience seems to be constantly evolving as the devices, connections, and channels users choose changes.So when it comes to providing fast and easy support for internal employees or external customers, what worked yesterday probably won’t carry you through tomorrow. Companies must strategize on how to keep up in this new support landscape or be left behind by your customers and the competition.To read this article in full, please click here
Today, many enterprise CIO’s are of in the midst of a digital transformation journey, migrating more of their business applications and infrastructure to the cloud, including real-time voice calling, video conferencing and collaboration applications. Enterprises are increasingly adopting Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) services to streamline voice, video and web conferencing via cloud-based software. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2021, 90 percent of IT leaders will not purchase new premises-hosted Unified Communications (UC) infrastructure because future cloud-hosted UCaaS offerings will be far ahead in terms of features, functions, analytics and dashboards. To read this article in full, please click here
Like most charitable organizations, The Salvation Army relies on volunteer help. Volunteers around the world serve people in need at service centers, retail stores, and satellite offices in metropolitan cities, rural communities, and at the scene of disaster areas. All of these locations have to stay online, connected, and sharing data, but with such a wide range of sites, networking is a challenge. Add in staff with varying levels of expertise and locations ranging in size from with one person at a small satellite office to hundreds at international headquarters, and you quickly have a very complicated situation on your hands.The wide variety of spaces and available talent to manage IT infrastructure has created a nightmare for network administrators trying to keep data flowing where it needs to go. That is, until the organization began upgrading to next-level networking, making configuration, setup, and maintenance of networks at each location far easier, and freeing up personnel—volunteer and otherwise—for more productive work.To read this article in full, please click here
This decade saw the spectacular rise of mobile devices as the platform of choice for everything from social media and gaming to customer service and online payments. Now it’s time for a new platform to revolutionize the way consumers and businesses engage with digital content. It’s time for the world to be introduced to the next generation of entertainment, shopping, healthcare, and more: augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).According to research firm McKinsey, immersive computing could actually replace mobile devices. While it’s difficult to imagine anything approaching today’s ubiquity of smartphones, Goldman Sachs estimates that the emerging AR and VR industry could see up to $182 billion in annual revenue by 2025 – a figure that far surpasses the current $88 billion in combined in-home entertainment and movie box office revenues.To read this article in full, please click here
The digital economy is here, and the ability to innovatively meet ever evolving customer expectations has become the new reality. For most organizations accomplishing this goal starts with digital transformation.In order to realize digital transformation benefits, companies need to move beyond a legacy network and invest in next generation components, according to participants in a recent IDG TechTalk Twitter chat.Unfortunately, past investments in legacy technology are still serving as a significant road block.
A1) Issues such as technical debt, legacy security problems, poor/inconsistent Ops & maintenance, and a long list of infrastructure/bandwidth inadequacies can hold back #DigitalTransformation. #IdgTechTalkTo read this article in full, please click here
You probably already know that end user technology is exploding and are feeling the effects of it in your support organization every day. Remember when IT sanctioned and standardized every hardware and software instance in the workplace? Those days are long gone. Today, it’s the driving force of productivity that dictates what will or won’t be used – and that can be hard on a support organization.Whatever users need to do their jobs better, faster, more efficiently is what you are seeing come into the workplace. So naturally, that’s what comes into your service desk too. Support organizations see all kinds of devices, applications, systems, and equipment, and it’s adding a great deal of complexity and demand to keep up with. In fact, four of the top five factors causing support ticket volumes to rise are attributed to new and current technology.To read this article in full, please click here
Enterprises are introducing cloud services to improve productivity, increase business agility, and accelerate the pace of innovation. But adopting this new paradigm while delivering the right level of visibility and control can overtax resources and impact existing governance, risk, compliance, and cost strategies. In addition, organizations often lack a holistic view of their security posture and state of controls to satisfy internal and/or external regulators.This guide will help you discover ways to fine-tune oversight and operations of your hybrid cloud solution.Click here to download the white paper.To read this article in full, please click here
The good news is, there’s a lot of data coming into support organizations today through the many technologies and channels available. The bad news is all of this data can lead to metric overload. In the ever-changing customer support ecosystem, it can be difficult for managers to know which metrics really matter and where to focus for the best return.Deep breaths.It’s a good idea to periodically take a step back, look at the support metrics you’re tracking, and consider some newer metrics that may more accurately reflect today’s support center.
Measuring the Customer Experience (CX)
Typically, customer satisfaction metrics like Net Promoter Score and CSAT are used as a proxy for measuring CX. After all, it stands to reason that if customers are happy, they’re having a good experience. While it’s absolutely important to measure customer satisfaction, it’s equally as important to dig deeper into metrics that more accurately measure CX, especially as organizations increasingly focus on CX as a competitive differentiator.To read this article in full, please click here
This is the second installment of the blog series exploring how enterprises can realize the full transformation promise of the cloud by shifting to a business first networking model powered by a business-driven SD-WAN. The first installment explored automating secure IPsec connectivity and intelligently steering traffic to cloud providers. We also framed the direct correlation between moving to the cloud and adopting an SD-WAN. In this blog, we will expand upon several additional challenges that can be addressed with a business-driven SD-WAN when embracing the cloud:To read this article in full, please click here
Get the IT scalability and flexibility necessary to move fast. HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity allows you to choose the technology and services you need and pay only for what you use. Read more about HPE GreenLake here.Related links:https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/getpdf.aspx/A00030327ENW.pdfTo read this article in full, please click here
Simplify the development, management, and security of your hybrid cloud. This quick video showcases five reasons why HPE ProLiant for Microsoft Azure Stack delivers a true hybrid cloud experience. Read more information about HPE ProLiant for Azure Stack here.To read this article in full, please click here
In this short video, partners from HPE, The Sourcing Company, and Interxion describe how they provide customers with increased agility, enhanced innovation, and cost control with the right mix of private and public cloud to handle all workloads. Read more information about HPE ProLiant for Azure Stack here.To read this article in full, please click here
Many hyperconverged solutions only focus on software-defined storage. However, many networking functions and technologies can be consolidated for simplicity and scale in the data center. This video describes how HPE SimpliVity with Composable Fabric gives organizations the power to run any virtual machine anywhere, anytime. Read more about HPE SimpliVity here.
Related links:To read this article in full, please click here
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