What is digital transformation, and what does it mean to my organization? The concept of digital transformation takes on many different meanings. What business you are in will dictate the specific factors involved. For many companies, the pandemic jump-started their digital transformation. Others simply embraced the changes they already had underway. Aspects of digital transformation that speak to all organizations include the need to be adaptive, resilient, and relevant to customers and stakeholders. Here is a look at what it means to adopt digital transformation within your organization.

What would it be like for your organization if there was an IT disaster such as an office fire, systems failure, or ransomware attack? If all your data was lost, how long would it take for your organization to be functional again? Minutes, hours, days, or weeks? How would this affect your customers and your employees? 

Trends in Information Technology are continuously changing and, as a result, organizations are having to adapt to those changes. Let's look at the most prominent IT trends that are showing up today. 

Cloud-Based Modern Desktop

Many organizational networks are now cloud-based, allowing end users to connect from literally anywhere at any time, and with any device. Businesses who look towards enabling employees with a "Modern Desktop" environment typically want to meet these objectives:

What is Webex Teams?

Cisco's Webex Teams, utilized by businesses around the world, is a cloud-based, or hosted, collaboration platform that’s modeled around teamwork in the modern working environment. Built on the Webex platform, it can act as a phone system, a video conferencing system, a file share, and a whiteboard environment. Persistent, or ongoing, chat can be utilized by people within an organization as well as with partners and clients who work externally. Essentially, it’s a communication platform that will change how your organization collaborates, seamlessly and for the better.

Five years ago, I wrote a blog post that summarized the risks of unmanaged data within IT environments. As a specialist working with Systems Engineering's FileProtect (cloud backup service), I’ve only seen this problem compound. The problem lies in the fact that the majority of businesses haven’t taken on the challenge of cleaning out their proverbial digital junk drawers.

When organizations decide to move data to the cloud, there are several benefits including cost efficiency and time savings. Consistent and frequent updates to make usability easier and friendlier is yet another benefit. For those organizations that have adopted Microsoft Office 365, (or better yet Microsoft 365, a.k.a. 'Modern Desktop') for example, you might have noticed that once a login occurs, the default page seen now is Office.com. As such, Microsoft announced the following explanation earlier this week:

The 2018 Human Factor report by Proofpoint states that as many as 95% of web-based attacks now incorporate social engineering, or human error factor. So, with that simple fact, how can your organization prevent its employees from releasing confidential and critical information?

If you haven’t heard the term “SD-WAN” (software-defined wide area network) by now, you’re either awakening from a two-year coma, or you haven’t been paying close attention to the onslaught of demonstrative offers, vendor emails, and introductory phone calls likely thrown in your direction.

The topic of SD-WAN has become the moniker for “building your company’s next WAN design." Needless to say, the term is out there as a hot topic, information is readily available, and most people feel that SD-WAN will be a positive disruption over the next three to five years. Due to the fact that clients want to build a better WAN experience with the benefit of lower costs, this makes perfect sense. Let's explore.