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Help Desk, IT Management, IT operations

Running Effective Help Desks: Focus on Financial Productivity

Many help desks focus on volume as a metric. How much volume do I have? How long does it take to get through it? How does that translate to headcount for the number of staff I need to handle the call volume? Those are important, but only half of the battle. The other half of the battle is how successful you are in resolving issues at the first level without escalating to the second level.

The reason the first call is so important:

  • Cheaper – fix with one resource instead of two
  • Time – focus should be on financial productivity. How do we get users up and running as quickly as possible?

Your overall key to success is establishing high first call resolutions and identifying opportunities to reduce or remove call volumes from the environment.

 

Watch on YouTube

Are you interested in learning more about GreenPages’ Help Desk services? Feel free to reach out!

 

Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 9/19/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 9/19/2016.

Yahoo says that hackers stole data from 500 million accounts in 2014. Sophos announced that its XG Firewall is coming to Microsoft Azure in October. Cisco and Salesforce have announced a partnership that’ll see them combine their cloud and Internet of Things technologies. American Airlines is assessing cloud services form Amazon, IBM and Microsoft to move some applications to the cloud. Larry Ellison chirps at Amazon, Apple keeps buying machine learning companies, federal cyber incidents grew drastically between 2015 and 2016, and more top news this week you may have missed!

Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.

Tech News Recap

Did you miss this week’s webinar? Download now to get 20 critical security controls every modern company should have.

 

By Ben Stephenson, GreenPages Technology Solutions

Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 9/12/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 9/12/2016.

Microsoft released one of its biggest security updates this year, fixing 50 vulnerabilities in its products and 26 more in Flash Player. HPE launched the HPE ArcSight Data Platform 2.0 that is aimed at improving security and visibility for the enterprise. Sophos rolled out Intercept X, which uses behavior-based screening to detect malicious behavior on endpoints rather than signature-based protection that requires constant updating. Gmail for business experienced a 12-hour outage, Uber has started self-driving car pickups in Pittsburgh, and more top news you may have missed this week!

Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.

Tech News Recap

  • Unleash the power of hybrid cloud while reducing complexity
  • Microsoft releases one of its biggest security updates this year
  • The scoop on Cisco’s resurgence in collaboration and its long range plans for IoT
  • HPE launches new data platform to increase security and visibility across enterprise IT
  • Law firm CIO: “I run more video than CBS”
  • Sophos rolls out Intercept X for endpoint protection
  • Cisco spotlights iOS 10’s best business features
  • Gmail outage for business users lasted over 12 hours
  • Why hackers hack: Is it all about the money?
  • 7 Dev Team Secrets IT Managers Need To Know
  • UK Government is hit by 9,000 security breaches a year, but reporting them remains chaotic
  • Comparing Internet Access Speeds in Canada, Mexico, and the United States
  • How the IoT is creating “precision farming”
  • Report: Despite growing security threats, CXOs struggle to find cybersecurity professionals
  • Uber starts self-driving car pickups in Pittsburgh
  • Hackers split on “ethics” of ransomware attacks on hospitals

Security needs to be on every IT decision maker’s mind. Register for our upcoming webinar, “20 Critical Security Controls Every Modern Company Should Have“

By Ben Stephenson, GreenPages Technology Solutions

 

 

Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 8/15/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 8/15/2016!

Eddie Bauer is latest retailer to be hit by point-of-sale malware as customer payment card information was stolen. vSphere ESXi 5.0 and 5.1 is end-of-support on August 24th. A data breach at Sage is a reminder that threats aren’t just from external hackers but also from internal employees. Macy’s is trying to make the shift to its digital business, Salesforce buys analytics startup BeyondCore, and more top news you may have missed this week!

Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.

Tech News Recap

 

Hear from two IT executives on their experience of moving to a Managed Services model

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

 

AWS

GreenPages’ Chris Williams Hosting #vBrownBag AWS Exam Prep Webinar

GreenPages Enterprise Consultant Chris Williams will be hosting a webinar on August 24th to help IT professionals pass the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam. The series is brought to you by #vBrownBag and follows the official certification blueprint published by Amazon. If you’re thinking of taking this AWS exam, you don’t want to miss out!

The webinar is titled Domain 1.0 Part 4 – Designing highly available, cost-efficient, fault-toleration, scalable systems. In the webinar Chris will cover:

  • Hybrid IT architectures
  • Direct Connect
  • Storage Gateway
  • VPC
  • Directory Services

 

To learn more about the webinar and to register, visit the #vBrownBag site!

 

About #vBrownBag

vBrownBag is a community of people who work in IT infrastructure who help other professionals in the IT industry perform their jobs at a higher level by providing helpful resources and advice through podcasts, TechTalks, and other mediums.

Miscellaneous IT, Tech New Recap

Tech News Recap for the Week of 8/8/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 8/8/2016!

A point-of-sale cash register system sold by Oracle appears to have been hacked by Russians. The latest study from Ponemon Institute says that IT Managers are finding more confidence in tracking shadow IT in enterprises but that security and governance still lags. The Internet of Things market could top $3 trillion by 2025. U.S. mobile carriers added more cars than phones to their networks in the second quarter of the year. Worldwide public cloud services spending is forecasted to reach $195 billion by 2020. Macy’s is focusing on digital transformation, Boeing is using Microsoft Azure to make commercial flights more efficient, and more top news you may have missed this week!

Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.

Tech News Recap

 

Did you miss our webinar about the current landscape of the hyper-converged market? Download here!

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

containers, Docker, Miscellaneous IT

Running Docker on CentOS on ESXi

The post below was written by GreenPages Enterprise Consultant Chris Williams and was published on his Mistwire blog.

Recently I’ve been playing with containers a little bit in my lab. Today I’m going to show you how to get a Docker engine running on a CentOS 7 VM running on an ESXi host. It’s surprisingly easy!
First, what is Docker? It’s an engine that lays on top of an existing host OS and basically removes the “Guest OS” abstraction layer from the mix. This is good because the Guest OS is a big resource hog when you start having several of them per host.

So what does this mean? Is this (potentially) bad news for VMware and Microsoft?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss*

*VMware and MS are working on projects to get in on the containery goodness, so I won’t speak about that here. Instead I’m going to walk through how to set up your first Docker engine ON CentOS ON ESXi in your existing vSphere environment.

 

To read the rest of Chris’ post, click here!

 

Looking for more information around Docker? Download this whitepaper, “10 Things to Know About Docker.”

 

Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 8/1/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 8/1/2016!

Illinois’ largest hospital chain agreed to pay a $5.5 million fine for poor data security that led to the exposure of electronic patient records. VMware CTO Chris Wolf hinted that IT pros should expect to see more integration between VMware NSX and Cisco ACI. Appeals have been filed to rehear the case around the FCC’s controversial open internet regulation. VMware announced the addition of AirWatch Express, some of techs biggest players are helping put on the Olympics, US internet speeds improve, and more top news from this week you may have missed!

Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.

Tech News Recap

Did you miss our webinar about the current landscape of the hyper-converged market? Download here!

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

 

 

BYOD, End-User Computing, MDM, VMware Airwatch

Cheap and Simple MDM for the Masses!

The post below was written by GreenPages’ Advanced Virtualization Consultant Sean Thulin. It was originally published on his blog.

As businesses expand, IT staffs often do not.  When more and more people are added to the company, you will need a way to manage everyone’s devices.  Whether you have corporate secrets to protect, a BYOD policy to enforce, or you just want people to stop asking you for the Wi-Fi password, mobile device management is becoming a bigger part of day to day operations.  Today, VMware is proud to announce the addition of a new product, Airwatch Express!

Airwatch Express is the MDM-as-a-service offering that allows companies to manage mobile devices without going through a major investment in time or resources.  At only $2.50/month/device, this offering allows a 100% cloud based management of devices that comes in at almost half the current pricing.

To read the rest of the post, visit Sean’s blog!

Miscellaneous IT, Tech New Recap

Tech News Recap for the Week of 7/25/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 7/25/2016! Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.

Oracle has entered into an agreement to buy NetSuite for $9.3 billion. Apple has announced the release date for the highly anticipated iPhone 7. Microsoft’s Iowa data center cluster is set to reach 3.2M square feet. Samsung now leads the smartphone market. The AdGholas malvertising operation tricked ad networks and malware scanners using steganography, Google wants to turn Detroit into a smart city, and more top news from this week you may have missed!

Tech News Recap

 

VMware NSX or Cisco ACI? Get the unbiased scoop!

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist