AMS.NET Blog

VDI Enables Workforce Flexibility- Work Anywhere, Anytime

Work is no longer a physical place you go to every day. Work is something you do whether you are at the office, on the road, at the local coffee shop or at home. Just as the place of work lines are blurred so is the line between work and personal time. Employees are working after hours, on the weekend in between family activities and even on vacation. VDI and the virtualization of Unified Communications support workforce flexibility and allow employees to work anywhere, anytime.

Virtualization began with servers and with further advancements in hypervisor technology; organizations now can virtualize desktops and mission critical applications such as Unified Communications (UC). Since UC delivers real time communications with call control and instant messaging, careful consideration should be made to the platform that supports this virtualized application so that it provides high availability and quality of service. A virtualized infrastructure should support virtualization features such as vMotion and Storage vMotion for high availability, optimization of resources and consistent security.   

VDI coupled with virtualized Unified Communication applications enable employees to access company resources from virtually anywhere, from any device at any time. From a company laptop, employee owned device or a thin client, employees can access their desktop. Along with user and organization benefits, a virtualized UC solution minimizes the traditional desktop maintenance. The desktop image is pushed from the virtualized data center. If there is a breach of security or malware attack, the session can be terminated and another desktop pushed to the user. Integrated Unified Communication phones and virtual desktop thin clients provide a smaller footprint on the user’s desk and further reduce IT maintenance and support.

Delivering UC services with VDI on a virtualized architecture enables the flexibility required of today’s workforce. Successfully delivering these applications requires planning, consideration of the virtualized data center and the virtualized desktop infrastructure. To learn more, please join us at one of our VDI Technical Seminars coming to a location near you.

Top 3 Storage Musts to Boost IT Efficiency

Organizations of all sizes are experiencing ever-increasing data growth and a growing demand for storage. Increased use of video conferencing and video surveillance in the workplace along with government compliance requirements have resulted in an overwhelming amount of data that must be organized, protected and archived. IT is tasked to manage this storage demand with limited IT staff and budgets. Unified storage as a part of a virtualized infrastructure has been significant to enabling IT organizations to accommodate this growth. In addition to consolidation, organizations demand that their storage solutions be flexible, efficient and easy to use. 

1. Flexibility
   Organizations run many different applications with various network protocols that require storage including iSCSI, FCoE, NFS, and more. Unified storage consolidates legacy block storage, file servers and direct-attached application storage and enables organizations to cost-effectively manage multi-protocol file systems and multi-protocol block storage access. Flash-optimized solutions deliver the highest system performance and the lowest storage cost with auto-tiering. With Unified Storage, IT managers don’t need to decide between cost and performance.
2. Efficiency
   IT managers require that their storage solutions are efficient and support virtualization features such as thin provisioning and automated data movement. Block compression and file-level deduplication are important to reducing disk space and allowing IT to regain capacity for the most efficient use of storage resources.
3. Easy To Use
   Storage solutions must have a centralized, simple to use management interface to setup and manage storage pools. Unified storage solutions deliver snapshot capabilities, replication and wizard-based management tools for provisioning. Unified storage solutions must integrate with VMware or other virtualization software to ensure an efficient server and storage virtualized infrastructure. Application administrators or generalists can manage storage pools.

Storage used to be a balancing act between performance and cost. Today, IT efficiency is a top priority and is solved with a unified storage solution. Unified storage solutions have the flexibility to support all types of applications, the efficiency to make the most efficient use of resources and an easy to use management interface to simplify storage management.

Top 5 VoIP Implementation Triggers

Technology runs business and some may argue runs the world! Organizations large or small invest in computers, data networks, applications and other technology to run their business. A communication system is also a critical component of business operations. Just as you refresh computers and servers or upgrade applications, you should assess and upgrade your voice and phone system to support scalability and worker productivity.

Companies upgrade their phone system to a VoIP or Unified Communications solution for a variety of reasons including mobility features to support remote and mobile workers, presence and single number reach to improve productivity, call center, web conferencing and more. In addition to communication and productivity reasons, there are 5 main triggers that prompt organizations to move to a VoIP phone system.

1. Upgrading Your Data Network
   VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) is the transmission of voice traffic over the data network. If an organization is upgrading their data network with new routers, switches or upgrading their ISP connection, they may want to consider moving to a VoIP phone system. By coordinating these projects, you can ensure that your network equipment has the proper QoS and your pipe is sufficient to handle both data and voice traffic.
2. Moving Locations
   During a move, network cabling has to be coordinated, ISP service need to be ordered among other technology considerations. Coordinating these services and making these decisions once makes your VoIP implementation easier.
3. Merger or Acquisition
   Often one of the biggest challenges in a merger or acquisition is merging the two companies resources including employees, locations and technology. Consideration of a VoIP system makes sense at a time when you are replacing equipment and making technology investments.
4. Obsolete Equipment
   One of the most common triggers to moving to a VoIP system is existing equipment reaching end-of-life, end-of-support and becoming obsolete. Keeping outdated equipment that is no longer supported by the manufacturer becomes a costly prospect.
5. Business Communication Problems
   If an organization is experiencing call overload, an increase in contact center wait times, missed calls or employees are playing phone tag, a VoIP communication system might be warranted. In addition to solving business communication programs, a new system improves communication, streamlines processes and increases productivity.

If you haven’t already upgraded your traditional phone system to a VoIP system, it’s likely one of these trigger events will cause you to make the move in the near future. As you look for tools to get a competitive edge, existing equipment becomes obsolete or you experience one of the other VoIP implementation triggers, you’ll find that upgrading to a VoIP phone solution will allow you to run your business more efficiently.

 

Is Collaboration Causing a Workplace Revolution?

Organizations have spent a considerable amount of time and money over the last decade focused on improving efficiencies, streamlining operations and driving out costs associated with manual processes. The question is whether all this automation has fully prepared our enterprises for the growing demands and expectations of today’s customers. 

IT organizations have delivered tremendous results. But the bar continues to reach new levels. It’s no longer enough to be efficient as lone enterprises. We are now moving into an era in which our ability to compete and perform revolves around our ability to effectively manage interactions across organizational and geographical boundaries.

A convergence of technologies is set to increase our capacity to interact by a factor of between two and five in the near future. This enhanced interactive capacity will create new ways to configure businesses, organize companies, and serve customers, and have profound effects on the structure, strategy, and competitive dynamics of industries.
— McKinsey & Co.

Globalization, specialization and technological change have made interactions increasingly pervasive in modern economies. Indeed, it’s estimated by McKinsey that 80% of all employment in the United States now involves participation in interactions as opposed to the extraction of raw materials or the production of finished goods.

Research indicates that sectors hiring in today’s difficult economy are seeking employees who tend to be engaged in complex interactions - ones who must exercise a high level of judgment and most likely are actively collaborating in teams.  “[T]he most complex type of interactions — those requiring employees to analyze information, grapple with ambiguity, and solve problems — make up the fastest-growing segment,” according to the firm.

Beyond the efficiencies associated with intra-enterprise automation, it’s now time to seize the opportunities associated with inter-enterprise collaboration and interaction. Collaboration technology will play a critical role in enhancing the quality and speed of analysis, decisions and actions. It will make it easier for individuals to engage in complex interactions to produce results.

As McKinsey puts it, “The use of technology to complement and enhance what talented decision makers do rather than to replace them calls for a very different kind of thinking about the organizational structures that best facilitate their work, the mix of skills companies need, hiring and developing talent, and the way technology supports high-value labor. Technology and organizational strategies are inextricably conjoined in this new world of performance improvement.”

Optimize WAN to Meet Collaboration Demands

Wide Area Network (WAN) optimization may not be on the top of your list in terms of IT investment concerns, but it may prove to be an increasingly important issue as you strive to enhance the value of your network and the adoption of key applications.

That's because user expectations continue to grow and networks are increasingly strained by the demands of today's collaboration technologies. "Applications that require real-time performance, like voice over IP, streaming video, and videoconferencing, continue to consume bandwidth at an unprecedented rate, and there's no sign of slowing down," argues Michael Biddick, author InformationWeek's new report on WAN Optimization. As he puts it:

The problem is, unlike with TCP, the UDP-based protocols used for these media don't reduce their transmission rates in the face of a congested network, and they are very sensitive to latency and jitter. Voice calls with less than 100 milliseconds of one-way latency and jitter less than 5 milliseconds are usually deemed acceptable.

But as the number of calls increases, quality can quickly degrade. If you plan on enterprise-wide Unified Communications for a distributed company and are concerned about quality of service, look hard at deploying WAN optimization appliances in tandem with your Unified Communications deployment.

The challenge to acquire more bandwidth is not likely to go away. While all applications don't require microsecond response times, demand is increasing as a result of high capacity broadband at home and high speed Local Area Networks at work. "Everyone wants more bandwidth, and demand always outstrips supply," notes Biddick. 

Enterprises that are concerned about the adoption and usage of bandwidth-intensive technology will have to ensure that network performance meets user expectations.

Should you put WAN optimization up on your list of priorities, you'll want to ensure that enterprise leaders -- both in business and IT -- agree on the technology's value.

"Like any network-wide system, WAN optimization as an element of the enterprise network architecture needs to be discussed and agreed to before anyone cuts a check," writes Biddick. "Bite off manageable phases of the project, and look to particular applications and segments of the network to optimize, in contrast to full deployment across the enterprise in one swoop."

The right technology partner can also help you prioritize phases to help you achieve your current goals, as well as set you up to meet future needs. 

The New ‘Convergence’

A decade ago convergence referred to connecting the network, telephony, security systems and other applications onto a single IP network. Today, the virtualized architecture is pushing the concept one step further. Not only are the network, telephony, security and other essential business applications being converged onto a single virtualized architecture, convergence is occurring within IT and Business.

As Paul McNab, Cisco VP/CTO Data Center Switching and Services, recently stated, “We are seeing a cultural change. The network is driving convergence from the shop floor to the top floor.” The needs of IT and the Business are aligned more than ever before.

IT used to be a cost center with 80% or more of its budget going towards maintaining existing systems. As organizations move towards a virtualized architecture, IT is becoming a business asset. New efficiencies and improved management are freeing up IT resources for more strategic business initiatives. Improved provisioning is enabling IT to quickly deliver business services and help the Business reduce the time to market.

When evaluating the move towards a virtual architecture or trying to find the business case for virtualization, consider the cultural change and what kind of possibilities can occur when IT and Business strategically work together to reach the organizations goals.

Here are 3 possibilities to get you started:

1. Simply scale resources with demands of business
   As the business changes and the demands for IT services increase or decrease, IT can respond quickly. Scaling the call center or business systems to respond to business growth isn’t restricted by IT resources or time.


2. Adopt business enhancing tools
   As virtualization increases IT productivity, IT has time for strategic business initiatives and can work with the business on implementing new business tools including video to provide enhanced communication internally, with business suppliers and customers.


3. Provide business continuity and disaster recovery
   Ensure that access to business applications and customer support systems are always up and running. In a virtualized data center hardware maintenance and updates can occur without downtime or service interruption. More importantly, in the event of a hardware failure, virtual machines automatically restart for continuous availability of resources.

Harness the Tip of the Information Iceberg

One of the biggest impacts of collaboration on the enterprise is the increased ability to find and use the right information at the right time. But, recent research findings differ. It would appear that there's either way too much information to make sense of, or that the ability to find what we need is severely limited—depending upon who you ask.

Unified Communications and Collaboration can help streamline the information flow. It's all about harnessing the silos you have now while working to make the boundaries to the information contained within them more fluid. Eliminating silos has been a battle cry for increasing informational access. But, perhaps that's too big an effort for many enterprises to tackle during this period of do more with less.

Consider a different perspective.

Last month's post, End Project Email Woes with Workspaces, discussed how to end the chaos of overflowing email which also serves to create silos of information for project teams. Increasing productivity—even amidst silos of information—becomes possible when the information critical to completing a project can be compiled within a workspace and made accessible to all project members, regardless of which silo or system sourced it.

One way to accomplish this is by enabling access to subject-matter experts via unified messaging, presence and video conferencing. This access allows your workers increased ability to actually find and gain access to the information they need. Once discovered the information can be added to the workspace for the entire team to use to do their jobs better...and faster.

The truth is that most companies produce silos of information created around areas of expertise. That's the nature of departmental work. You have your contact center silo, your solution area silos, your sales silo and marketing silo, to mention a few. Each of those areas is a concentrated niche of expertise that includes the subject matter experts who can facilitate access and establish context for how the information can best be applied to the project at hand.

The inherent problem with a "silo" is that it's limited by how data is accessed and used. Data usually has only one way in and one way out. Based on the demand for access to information that meets a workers' needs at a specific point in time, the better choice may be to improve collaboration across silo boundaries.

Perhaps harnessing the tip of the information iceberg via unified communications and collaboration is a more compelling and economically feasible approach than attempting to merge all of your silos together while struggling to maintain the integrity of the data simultaneously.

What do you think?

Unified Communications and Collaboration can help streamline the information flow. It's all about harnessing the silos you have now while working to make the boundaries to the information contained within them more fluid. Eliminating silos has been a battle cry for increasing informational access. But, perhaps that's too big an effort for many enterprises to tackle during this period of do more with less.

Consider a different perspective.

Last month's post, End Project Email Woes with Workspaces, discussed how to end the chaos of overflowing email which also serves to create silos of information for project teams. Increasing productivity—even amidst silos of information—becomes possible when the information critical to completing a project can be compiled within a workspace and made accessible to all project members, regardless of which silo or system sourced it.

One way to accomplish this is by enabling access to subject-matter experts via unified messaging, presence and video conferencing. This access allows your workers increased ability to actually find and gain access to the information they need. Once discovered the information can be added to the workspace for the entire team to use to do their jobs better...and faster.

The truth is that most companies produce silos of information created around areas of expertise. That's the nature of departmental work. You have your contact center silo, your solution area silos, your sales silo and marketing silo, to mention a few. Each of those areas is a concentrated niche of expertise that includes the subject matter experts who can facilitate access and establish context for how the information can best be applied to the project at hand.

The inherent problem with a "silo" is that it's limited by how data is accessed and used. Data usually has only one way in and one way out. Based on the demand for access to information that meets a workers' needs at a specific point in time, the better choice may be to improve collaboration across silo boundaries.

Perhaps harnessing the tip of the information iceberg via unified communications and collaboration is a more compelling and economically feasible approach than attempting to merge all of your silos together while struggling to maintain the integrity of the data simultaneously.

What do you think?

Communication Latency is Bad for Business

We've all used email and the phone extensively in our professional lives. Both can be used in a one-to-one or one-to-many setting. However, one limitation with only phone or email is that phone excludes data and email excludes voice.

When using only phone or email, response times are unreliable. If people are not available immediately, this can result in messages getting lost in overflowing inboxes or voice mail that can remain unanswered. Unified communications simplifies the growing complexity of communications by taking the guesswork out of the process.

Presence not only aids workers in discovering who's available when needed, but the best way to reach them. This reduces delays to decision making, improves your ability to hit project milestones on time and helps your company resolve more customer issues during the first call—to name but a few benefits that can boost your business results.

Speed and instant gratification seem to be the norm for communications today. This expectation has been aided by social media and Web 2.0 tools that enable seemingly instantaneous interactions. Your customers expect faster response times and so does your workforce.

Unified Communications is focused on reducing response times for work completion by enabling people to choose the most efficient and effective means of interaction for the task at hand. That means connecting the right people with the right information at the right time, regardless of location.

Considering that communications are likely the lifeblood of your business, eliminating communication latency should be a top priority. If you're looking for solid reasons to justify investing in advanced communication technology, here are a few issues that unified communications can help to correct:

• Number of customer issues requiring more than one call for resolution.
• Project delays based on the unavailability of subject matter experts.
• Amount of time executives are unavailable due to travel.
• Escalating product development costs.
• Lengthening sales cycles due to scheduling conflicts for sales meetings.

Enabling better connectivity between voice, data and applications impacts all of these at varying degrees. And the impacts are powerful enough to produce quite a return on investment.

See How Collaboration Impacts Customer Outcomes

This video is a fun take on what the future might look like on a personal level combined with the way business can get done better and more efficiently behind the scenes. It shows how real-time collaboration can impact customer service relationships

Isn't it interesting that by simplifying how teams and employees connect across your IP Network you can transform how your customers experience your complex products? Although I'm still not sure I'm ready to hear Scrappy talk to me in English...