Is DaaS the thing that will finally make the CIO's life easier?

If you're the Director of IT, VP of IT or the CIO of your company, chances are your life hasn't been getting "easier" with time.  The technology needs of an organization are more complex than ever and IT is no longer just a hygienic need, it is a driver for growth and innovation.  The companies with the best IT leaders are winning in the marketplace because they understand that technology is the engine that moves the company forward.  So if your job is to manage this highly complex environment then the success of your company could very well hinge on your ability to steer the technology ship in the right direction.  No pressure right?

So what are some of the top concerns on the mind of most CIO's today?  This is what we're hearing from you: 

Mobility - specifically the security concerns of managing a dispersed workforce that wants to bring their own devices to get work done (and often will whether you like it or not).  This can be an IT nightmare when it comes to support and security.  We've all read the stories about the lost laptop that cost a company thousands if not millions because of the sensitive data that was exposed. 
Compliance - either with internal policies or external regulations / laws.  It's not good enough to to be good, you have to show an audit trail of your goodness.
Shrinking or flat budgets - the do more with less mentality still hasn't gone away completely and until we see an economic uptick, the likelihood is that you'll be dealing with some cost-pressure for the foreseeable future.
Disaster recovery / continuity - everyone wants it, but few can completely afford everything they want and many lose sleep over what they don't have.  The next ice storm or tornado or hurricane or flood or plague of insects can kill a company, if not completely at least for a while.  

Those are some (though not all of course) of the issues facing IT today.  It would be logical then to focus on solutions that address those needs but also allow IT to get away from the "break / fix" routine and into a role of technology leadership.  Instead of fixing a laptop for the CFO, they should be helping the CFO and her staff find technologies that can transform the way they get work done. But how can you do that if you're always putting out fires?  You need to minimize the fires and free up staff time to focus on more important things.  Easier said then done perhaps, until now.

Desktop as a Service (DaaS) can solve these problems.  DaaS is the outsourcing of the desktop environment to a third-party provider (hence the "as a service").  Worthy providers in this space have multiple, location-diverse data centers in an Active/Active setup.   Put simply, a better setup than what most companies deploy on their own.  Your servers, desktop environment (using Citrix or VMware) are all in a secure and redundant data center environment.   This allows your users to have zero or thin clients, or even use tablets, smartphones or home-based PCs of their own.  Before you have a mini panic attack about the idea of that much outsourcing, consider a few things:

• There are ways to protect your data so that you'll feel good about it.  Of course picking the right provider is paramount when it comes to this and the overall success of a cloud adoption strategy.
• You're still in control, you've just decided to get out of the business of owning your own hardware / data center.
• It really is more reliable and secure if you add up the net benefits of such an arrangement (don't expect us to convince you on that here in this blog as space does not allow for it, but we're asking you to keep an open mind and consider a discussion about it).

WIIFM (What's in it for me?): So how does Desktop as a Service (DaaS) actually make your life easier:

1) Managing mobility is easier.  A lot easier in fact. Users can bring their own devices without the burden of IT managing the security issues.  A stolen laptop no longer costs the company in lost data, since the data is never stored locally to begin with. The user can have a windows desktop experience on any device (including iPads and smartphones), and the computing / data storage is happening at a data center and not on the client.   You get out of the business of managing individual devices and into managing (in a centralized way) the core technology needs of your company.  IT spends less time fixing laptops or troubleshooting pesky software issues and suddenly life is all rainbows and sunshine for everyone (that may be an exaggeration but it truly does get better). 
2) Compliance requires an audit trail and many DaaS providers have made this a lot easier with built-in tools to handle that for you. 
3) For all its benefits, DaaS is likely to actually cost less, not more, than what you're doing today.  To prove this will require a thorough TCO analysis but 9 out of 10 times, you'll find a cost savings over a reasonable time frame. 
4)  Disaster Recovery and continuity is built-in.  When your HQ loses power for a week you'll be the one that is resting comfortably that night while your peers are scrambling to get things back up and running. 

DaaS is part of an overall picture of what cloud technology can do to transform the way your company approaches the fulfillment of its technology needs.  Want to learn more?  Visit us at www.stellistechnology.com or call +1 (207) 216-2155 and we'll be happy to start a discussion and bring together subject matter experts to help put a solution together for your enterprise.

How to Buy Bandwidth for the Enterprise: What you Absolutely Need to Know

"If I asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse" - Henry Ford

If you've been thinking about bandwidth in terms of "faster is better" then you're not alone but you're probably focused on the wrong thing.
Here is a primer for you: 

• Bandwidth is not speed.  Bandwidth is the size of the connection and has an indirect relationship with how fast your data will travel across the network
• Speed is actually how fast your data travels to and from where it needs to go.  
• Latency measures how fast/slow your packets of data travel to and from a particular destination.  The less latency the better
• Packet loss is just as it sounds, how many packets of data are simply "lost" in the network to and from any given destination.  Accept nothing less than perfection from your provider on this
• Jitter is the consistency of speed across the network

Here is a simple analogy:  pretend five cars are racing toward the same destination.  Then pretend that the road they're using is a 50-lane highway.  Latency would be the measurement of how long it took those five cars to get to the destination.  Bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway.  Jitter is how much variation there is among the five cars (if the first car got there in 1 minute and the last car in 1 hour, then it could be said that is a high amount of jitter)

So if you focus on buying a 50-lane highway for your enterprise that may be fine but you are missing the bigger picture, especially if you're in a global or dispersed organization that has many applications or communications running across the network. 

For starters, is that highway a longer distance to get to your most important destinations?  Is there a network of roads that could get you there faster but perhaps not with as many lanes?  What is theoretically better, a two lane road that gets you there in half the time or a 50-lane highway that takes twice as long? 

The truth is, you can't easily get behind the curtain with most of the major network providers around the globe, so determining the best network connection for your enterprise is a challenge.  There are however a few things you can do to make sure that you're optimizing your choice in a network provider and they are unashamedly:

1) Work with Stellis Technology Advisors who can act as a no fee, single point of contact in the sales process to help facilitate the best choice for a provider.
2)  Make sure that SLAs are aggressive and structured for the type of network traffic you're doing today and will be doing in the future
3)  Make sure that your provider offers the kind of dynamic tools needed to be flexible.  (Taking from the analogy above, where you're going today may not be the same destination you'll be going in the future, so keep your options open).  These include elastic network tools, real-time network monitoring and port sizes that are suitable to current and future needs. 

Unified Communications: Top 3 Things You Need To Know

I recently heard a client speak about his vision for creating a collaborative organization.   On his mind was surely more than just communications, but he understood the challenge of creating such an enterprise and also understood the benefits.  What separates the dreamers from the doers is that they know it will take a systematic approach to setup their company with the right infrastructure to support such a vision.  This particular client understood that better than most. 

If you want to move toward a connected enterprise you'll have some work to do.  We share our thoughts on three broad areas of focus: 

#1 - The Network:  You can't build up without a foundation.  You can't put together a serious UC effort without the right network in place.  This network must support voice, video and of course the rest of your critical business applications.  Want a connected global enterprise?  If so, then latency, jitter and packet loss will be constantly on your mind if you have failed to properly build a network to support your technology.  Don't lose sight of what matters in this regard, it is all about performance across the network. 



#2 - The Technology:  Your choices will seem limitless.  Will you build your own or buy as a service?  Will you adopt all of what UC has to offer or take small bites at a time?  People underestimate the power of a good UC deployment.  For example, what would a video call between two employees really do for your company?  Well for one, a lot of research supports the idea that people listen more intently when video is involved.  It also creates a more intimate communication, which can help foster good working relationships.  I'm sure if you put your mind to it, you can think of how video would offer other benefits to your company.  What used to be an expensive undertaking is much more affordable today, the only thing that stops organizations from creating a UC environment is will power, not money. 

#3 - The Culture:  Change is easy, everyone knows that.  If you've been in management or IT long enough I'm sure you can appreciate the heavy sarcasm of that statement.  We need to go on a bit of a tangent here and talk about the new role for IT.  "Do more with less" is a constant for IT, but that seems to be changing in our estimation.  The new role is not one of "hey, this is broken can you fix it?" It's not "listen, I found this software, can you get it up and running for my department in a couple of weeks?"  Ok, sure, those things still happen, but we're seeing a shift toward the realization that technology is an engine that makes a company go.  The smarter and more efficient that engine, the better its resources will be used.   IT is at the heart of that, and a good IT executive finds a way to not just deliver solutions internally but to be a part of crafting them.  Proactively sitting down with other departments or even going to the line-level to understand the user experience is both impressive internally but also quite helpful in making decisions.  We recommend that IT people be part of changing the culture in an organization and not just reacting to it.  UC is a great way to start because you can get a sense of how departments communicate and ask them to help you find the benefits of UC.  Chances are that the insights gained by your internal conversations will help you find the best source of technology. 

Jitter, Packet Loss & Latency

Let's start with a layman's understanding of what they are:

Packet Loss - A "packet" is simply a packet of data (bytes) that travels across a network.  Let's use a highway analogy to best explain this:  Imagine that you have highway where cars can travel from say Boston to New York.  Some cars will leave Boston and never make it to NY, and that can also happen to packets in your network.  Any good public highway official will want ALL cars to make it unharmed to the destination, and that is also true of network professionals who want their network to deliver 100% of all packets, which essentially means no loss whatsoever.   

Latency - Everyone understands bandwidth but latency is just as (if not more) important.  For example, would you rather have a 10 lane highway that has stop and go traffic every two miles?  Or would you rather have a two lane highway where you can go 80 mph all of the time?  Bandwidth is the number of lanes, but latency is how fast your packets can travel across the network.  If your network has too much latency, your data will travel slowly and your experience will be degraded.

Jitter - Jitter is a measurement of how consistent the latency is on the network.  For example, in the 10 lane highway analogy, if some cars make it from Boston to New York in just 3 hours, while others make it in 5, and yet others in 10, then you would have an inconsistent delivery time of those cars.  The same is true for packets and in an ideal world, all packets traverse the network at the same speed and arrive at the same rate.  The rate of variance of this timing is calculated as jitter. 

So why do these things matter?  Well for starters, a great deal of what we do everyday at work is contingent upon a few basic things:
 
1) We need software applications to run smoothly and respond quickly to our commands
2) We need access to our files quickly and with ease
3) We need to be able to communicate through either a clear sounding phone call, or for the more advanced among us, an immersive unified communications experience that includes video. 
4) The longer it takes us to perform tasks that require computing or communication, the harder it is for us to get our work done. As a result, our productivity, and consequently our company's profits, suffer for it.   

Information technology and communication tools are almost hygienic in nature, we simply require them to do the grander work that our jobs compel us to do.  We only notice their absence when they aren't working properly for us. Packet loss, latency and jitter all impact those items listed above. 

So what can you do about it?  Easy, make sure you have a solid network with a service level agreement that commits to acceptable levels of packet loss, jitter and latency that are within the tolerance level of the applications and communication tools you're using or plan to deploy.

But how do you make sure that you have the right network?  This one should be so obvious we are almost afraid to answer it, but of course not wanting to miss a chance for shameless self-promotion we can't pass it up:  Call Stellis Technology Advisors, we can help. 

Your MPLS Network: Top 3 Reasons Why Performance is More Important than Ever

In the past, many business executives felt that connectivity was nothing more than a commodity, to be purchased from the lowest cost provider with the most (bandwidth) to offer for the money.

That sentiment isn't completely gone but the performance of your MPLS network and/or Internet connection matters now more than it ever has before (and that trend is only going to continue).  Here are the top 3 reasons why:  

1.  Virtualization is Everywhere. Enterprises are building their own private cloud, small to mid-size companies are leveraging the "as a service" model and what does that all mean?  Your network is a critical link that will mean the difference between the success or failure of a cloud strategy.  So to sum this up: just about everything you need to function properly in the workplace requires a performing network connection. 

2. The Internet of Everything.  Cisco coined the term but it isn't just your properietary software or data that your users need to work properly.  They need access to the world wide web of information and while the Internet may not be a new phenemonenon, what was once an important productivity tool is now a critical need for most companies.   Put simply, how well would you function if you had no access to the Internet?

3. Video, Voice, Critical Applications - So you're an IT professional and you have to manage the convergence of data, voice, video etc.  I bet you thought that was a question didn't you?  It's not, it's a fact.  It would be nice if you had a network that could properly prioritize those functions and make sure "everything works" the way your management and critical busines units need it to.  How well your network performs and your next employment review are inextricably tied together.  So yes, it would be nice if that network functioned the way you need it to.

It is important to remember that the amount of bandwidth you have, while important, is not a measure of network performance.  Latency, jitter, packet loss and of course the tools needed to manage your network and dynmically make changes are of equal importance. 

Cloud (Hosted) VoIP vs. On-Premise IP PBX - Which is better?

Although hosted/cloud communications have gained widespread market acceptance, and most of the major manufacturers of PBX equipment are also moving their offering to a "cloud-based" solution, there is still a fundamental choice that each business must make:  Buy an on-premise PBX or buy communications as a service / Hosted VoIP system?

We go round for round to determine which approach is best:

Round 1: The power is out or the local internet connection is down: which approach keeps your business up and running? 

On-Premise - Internal calls still work (only if the PBX is on backup power) but connection to the outside world is lost.  Incoming callers hear fast busy but the main # of the business can be re-routed to cell phones / other numbers via the phone company.  Employees cannot take phones home or to satellite locations nor can they re-route their individual extension to their cell phone. 

Hosted - Internal calls will not work at the site but incoming callers will get to voicemail or be re-routed to cell phones, including individual extensions for each employee.  Employees can take their phone home or use a soft phone to retain full functionality if the outage persists, which creates a natural business continuity plan. 

Winner of Round 1:  We give the clear edge here to Hosted, both because there is more flexibility to re-route all calls and also because there is a long-term continuity solution if the outage is more permanent. 

Round 2:  Which approach offers more features / benefits?

On-Premise - The devil is in the details.  There are some very good PBXs that have features that are world-class and can integrate with a company's CRM or other software.  Like everything else, you get what you pay for and advanced features cost money.   Upgrading to new features may cost more money in the future or require more hardware which can be both expensive and a hassle to implement. 

Hosted - Again, it depends on the details.  Some hosted companies are "one size fits all" and offer adequate features but very little customization.  Other providers are highly customizable and can integrate their features with CRM or other software.  Upgrading features is usually standard as the provider evolves their offering (typically requiring no investment on the customer's part) . 

Winner of Round 2:  Slight win for Hosted but with one caveat:  for some specific scenarios there are PBXs that may be a better fit.  This is quickly changing as high-end cloud providers are filling in the gaps.  For 95% of the marketplace, Hosted offers same or better features and because those features evolve and get better with time we give the win to Hosted for this round.

Round 3: Which is more affordable? 

On-Premise - Certainly the model is different for premise-based PBXs.  These typically require an capital expense, significant installation fees and then a vendor maintenance contract that covers adds/moves/changes etc.  Most business decision makers don't love the idea of writing a big check for phone equipment but they see it as an investment and can of course use that phone system for years to come with only the monthly cost of vendor maintenance and phone services. 

Hosted - Most hosted models have little or no upfront costs and instead charge a "per user/phone" cost each month.  This typically means that the monthly costs are higher than a premise-based PBX, although in some cases this may not be true.  Hosted VoIP completely replaces vendor maintenance, phone service costs and of course the capital expense. 

Winner of Round 3:  Give the edge here to Hosted.  Like all "cost" analysis, one must look carefully at the details.  Apples for apples, hosted wins for two reasons:  1) the TCO (Total cost of ownership) is lower when you do the full analysis and 2) the costs are variable and can expand / contract with the changing needs of customer. 

There are other factors to consider:  quality of service/support, individual feature offerings, the tax implications of moving from capex to opex--but on the whole, the hosted model is winning the battle.  Perhaps this is why most premise-based manufacturers are quickly changing their business model to become cloud-based.

Careful analysis is always required before making any decision.  This should include a TCO analysis, a feature match up, an examination of future considerations and of course the philosophy of the customer should be taken into account.  Do they value owning hardware?  Do they prefer to have a "service provider" they can migrate away from if the solution isn't keeping pace with their need? 

The above is an informed opinion on the part of Stellis Technology Advisors.  We welcome your opinions and feedback. 

You may delay, but time will not - Benjamin Franklin

The truth is that organizations are moving their technology into the "cloud" for a lot of good reasons .  If your organization is the last one on the train...well let's just say you'll be fighting the battle with a sword while your peers are hanging out with the guy who helped them get the machine gun.

And on the subject of time:  The most important thing that we do at Stellis is that we save our clients precious time.  Time they can better spend on other matters.   Our value proposition is a simple one:  We deliver to you "best of breed" cloud and telecom solutions and our industry perspective means that you'll get the best pricing from innovative providers who can truly benefit your company.