Category Archives: End-User Computing

AirWatch, BYOD, End-User Computing, Mobility, VMware

VMware Blog: Top 3 Mobility Concerns for Today’s Healthcare Organizations

This post originally appeared on VMware’s AirWatch blog and was authored by Scott Szymanski. Be sure to check VMware’s blog for more great content.

 

mobilityMobile devices have been a huge hit for healthcare. In fact, a recent report from Research and Markets expects mobility in healthcare to grow from $24 billion this year to $84 billion in 2020. From accessing medical records to real-time translation services, doctors and nurses are seeing an incredible transformation in how they administer care using mobility.

While this is exciting for patients and doctors alike, healthcare IT teams must reconcile the government red tape and employee concerns inevitable with new technologies. These teams must meet HIPAA compliance and maintain patient trust without creating a labyrinth of security that medical staff find difficult to navigate regularly.

Fortunately, many healthcare organizations, including Florida-based Adventist Health System, have delivered successful mobile transformations across their teams. Watch the Adventist Health System video to learn how mobility is transforming healthcare. Then, take a look at the top three healthcare concerns to consider when researching mobility.

Security

There’s hardly anything more cringe-worthy in healthcare than security. From electronic medical records to staff communications, there is a lot of sensitive client and staff information that needs protecting. And if this information is left in the open, it could have devastating repercussions. According to IDC Health Insights, 50% of healthcare organizations will have experienced anywhere from 1-5 cyberattacks—and one-in-three attacks will be successful.

Luckily, security and mobility can work together. Look for enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions that can track devices, push applications, enforce security policies and more without getting in the way of physicians. Some solutions can even wipe lost or stolen devices remotely, ensuring IT can quickly react when problems arise. Keeping information safe starts with strong security.

 

Simplicity

While security is primary, don’t forget the importance of simplicity. Mobile devices are redefining how medical staff diagnose, treat and report on patient health, and the last thing doctors need is another “helpful tool” that hinders timely and effective patient care. Devices that are difficult to use generally aren’t used at all, and worse than that, they could be used incorrectly in ways that might circumvent the security you worked hard to put in place.

Remember: sometimes less steps equal greater success. Simplifying the sign-in process to devices and applications might encourage a doctor to check a patient’s records twice before ordering a prescription. Tablets and smartphones could reduce training and the number of troubleshooting incidents serviced by IT, leading to independent but connected physicians across your entire medical network.

 

Patient Engagement

No matter how you use mobility, remember who physicians care about most: patients. Delivering timely and accurate information to patients is one of the most important elements of quality healthcare. Patients want to know their treatments and why they are receiving them. Unfortunately, according to a study done at the North Shore University Hospital in New York, less than half of patients surveyed were able to state their doctors’ diagnoses, an issue that could affect patient health and trust.

With connected mobile devices, you could deliver up-to-date patient information to physicians in real-time. Not only could this contribute to more accurate diagnoses, patients might feel safer sharing information with their doctors, ultimately leading to better care. Mobile devices are also more interactive than traditional computers and paper charts, and they could help doctors better illustrate medical procedures or conditions in ways patients actually understand. More informed patients are happier patients, and mobility could be the solution in your organization.

 

GreenPages has strong AirWatch expertise. If you have any questions or need any help on AirWatch projects, be sure to reach out!

Citrix, Citrix Synergy, End-User Computing, Featured, XenApp, XenDesktop, XenMobile

Citrix Synergy 2015 Recap: Top News & Announcements

Last week was the annual Citrix Synergy event in Orlando Florida. This year was a little different with Citrix offering instructor-led learning labs prior to the start of the conference on Sunday and Monday.  I opted to attend three on Monday, each of them being about  three hours in length and very interesting. The labs I attended included:

citrix synergy

SYN622 – XenApp and XenDesktop design workshop – This workshop grouped teams together to review a design and to find the mistakes. This was a great way to meet people from different backgrounds and apply various skillsets to the design.  Afterwards, the Citrix consultants provided their recommendations.

SYN616 – Accelerate your NetScaler skills – This session provided overviews on new advanced features deployment scenarios, including GSLB, Clustering, AAA and Content Switching.

SYN623: This lab focused on how the new Citrix Workspace Cloud Lifecycle Management (CLM) service is used to deploy and manage Citrix infrastructure.  CLM provides SaaS based services to perform blueprinting, automation and management for the design and deployment of enterprise workloads.  Citrix has really extended the capabilities of the hybrid cloud. More to come on this later in the summary…

Keynote Tuesday May 12th

The day kicked off with Citrix CEO Mark Templeton.  Mark said this year’s event was the largest attendance ever (in person and online). Mark began with a discussion on his favorite rock bank, The Moody Blues, and the Software Defined Workplace! The concept of the Software Defined Workplace suggests that work is no longer a place; it is something you do anywhere the inspiration strikes.

Then, Mark talked about why we all love XenApp, and everyone got a drawstring backpack that said, “we love XenApp.”  This reinforced the continued emphasis on traditional XenApp.  We heard a lot of this at the Citrix Summit Partner event in January this year.

Next, Mark showed off script demos of the new X1 mouse that didn’t go well.  I think this was related to a room full of Bluetooth devices.  We also saw Mark’s Inbox with over 65,000 unread emails!  He said he has someone that manages his inbox; I can’t imagine dealing with that much email.

Some key announcements from Day 1:

Citrix is going to extend XenApp 6.5 lifecycle support until 2017.  Also announced was Feature Pack 3 for XenApp. This is expected to be out very soon and will include support for Receiver .Next, Storefront 3, profile management enhancements,  support for Citrix Director for help desk troubleshooting, and some improvements in the Lync optimization pack.

There was also an announcement of support for a Linux VDA, supporting both Red Hat and SUSE for XenDesktop.  These Linux virtual desktops are targeted at high performance Linux applications.  This will integrate directly within the existing XenDesktop toolsets.

HDX FramHawk will be directly integrated into receiver.  This is a technology Citrix acquired and is targeted at very high latency links, such as satellite, cellular and LTE networks.  It provides local-like experience over lossy networks!

XenServer 6.5 Service Pack 1:

XenServer is not going away and some big performance increases are coming.  I was sitting with one of my coworkers during this, and he quickly deployed it in his lab!  I continued to get text messages throughout the day telling me about the new features and performance and video performance improvements.  SP1 has new 64-Bit dom0, nVIDA vGPU scalability enhancements, with up to 96 vGPU sessions per host, new in-memory read-cache, Workload Balancing, big network, and storage performance enhancements.

Receiver x1 Mouse was released, and we all got one as a gift for attending Synergy.  If you haven’t seen this new mouse, it is pretty cool!  The x1 is integrated with Receiver and allows you to use the mouse with an iPhone and iPad.  This is important because Apple doesn’t support Bluetooth mice on these devices.  This gives you the precision, control, and usability needed for a better user experience.

XenMobile 10 is now out and the management stack has been consolidated into an easy-to-deploy virtual appliance.  Not only is it much easier to deploy, it’s also simple to make highly available through cloning by using just one tool to configure additional nodes.  This also gives administrators a single console to manage (which we have all been asking for).  There were also new announcements around Worx apps for Salesforce and WorxTasks.

Citrix Workspace Cloud.  Citrix Workspace Cloud is architecturally similar to ShareFile, in that Citrix provides the control plane allowing you to leverage on-premises cloud infrastructure and public cloud resource infrastructure of your choice.  This can provide companies with a SaaS based solution for cloud management.  Workspace Cloud has a number of services that make up the solution.

Lifecycle Management – see above in one of the instructor lead sessions I attended.  This has a simple SaaS based orchestration engine that allows drop and drag capabilities.  This is very easy to use, even for first time users.  It includes service blueprints, a unified interface for the management and deployment of applications services, service monitoring & alerting, self-healing, auto-scaling, and disaster recovery capabilities in the event of a primary site failure. Other features include:

  • Secure delivery of applications and desktops with XenDesktop and XenApp
  • Enterprise Mobility Management with XenMobile
  • Data Synchronization with ShareFile
  • Concierge Service targeted at improving end user experience with the ability to securely share their screens with support personnel

I think the most anticipated feature of the Citrix Workspace Cloud is the ability to host the traditional Citrix XenDesktop Infrastructure components in the Citrix Workspace Cloud.  This is achieved by separating the control plane from the data/resource plane, so all the traditional control devices such as, the Delivery Controllers and StoreFront, are deployed and managed in the Citrix Cloud.  A small connector is installed in your data center allowing for secure connections to the control plane.  Think of this as a scaled down XenDesktop Delivery Controller.  This allows for the very quick deployment of the infrastructure components, and then you provide the virtual resources for the XenApp and XenDesktop VMs in your data center or a cloud provider of your choice.  This could be a very compelling solution for customers looking for simplified administration of the Citrix infrastructure.

Day 2 Keynote with Mark Templeton:

Citrix AppDisk was announced with a tech preview expected in Q2.  AppDisk is an application layering technology that you can use to create individual application containerized in a disk.  This is different from Microsoft App-V.  Citrix will be competing with VMware App Volumes and Liquidware Labs FlexApp.  This should be pretty interesting, as Citrix has had a lot of experience with application virtualization.  Expect a lot more to come on this in the next few months.  Citrix will be integrating this with AppDNA, which should help to resolve problems and determine the best method to deliver applications.  The demo showed the direct integration with Citrix XenDesktop Studio and showed further commitment from Citrix to keep consoles minimized and leverage the investment made in these tools.  I did find it funny that Citrix had VMware in the Expo Hall demonstrating Horizon View and other competing products.

Citrix CloudBridge Virtual WAN was also announced.  The Virtual WAN will be able to add reliability and quality at branch office locations with multiple aggregate WAN connections all virtualized.

NetScaler with Unified Gateway – this seems like a collection of integrated features including the following:

  • Unified Remote Access Infrastructure – with web, mobile, cloud and SaaS based applications
  • Single URL for End User Access
  • Secure Single-Sign-On to applications with Active Directory and SAML
  • Visibility – enterprise security and compliance with end-to-end visibility on protocols in use
  • SmartControl, which is a new future on the NetScaler giving admins an easier way to set access controls for users with police

GoToMeeting Mobile Screen Sharing used through the new GotToMeeting app,  allows the user to share their screen on a mobile device.

Finally, the Workspace Hub and Project Octoblu were announced – this facilitates the integration and automation of complex technologies and automation with Octoblu, Amazon echo and the new Workspace Hub.  Mark demonstrated the way a conference call should ideally run.  The entire time all I could think about is the YouTube video “A Conference Call in Real Life” This is one of my favorites.  The concept of the Project Octoblu is that you can automate the workspace so that the complexities are removed.  For example, when you walk into the room the automation sets up the presentation, calls into the bridge, the software determines who is on the bridge and then emails, text messages etc. the missing people and gets the call moving more efficiently.  At the conclusion of the call notes or the recording is emailed to the participants all automatically.

In summary, another great Citrix Synergy event with lots of new features and technologies to keep us busy for another year!

 Are you interested in speaking with Randy about the latest Citrix technologies? Email us at socialmedia@greenpages.com

 

 

 

By Randy Becker, CTO

End-User Computing, Featured

2015 Predictions: End User Computing and Security

Earlier in the week, we posted some 2015 predictions from Chris Ward and John Dixon. These predictions covered cloud, the internet of things and software defined technologies. Here are a few quick predictions around end user computing and security from Francis Czekalski and Dan Allen.

 

Francis Czekalski, Practice Manager, End User Computing

Short and sweet – here are four things to keep an eye on in 2015 around end user computing:

  • More integration with mobile devices
  • Wrappers for Legacy Applications to be delivered to IOS devices
  • Less and less dependency for traditional desktops and more focus of delivery on demand
  • Heightened focus on data security

 

end user computing and security

 

Francis presenting at GreenPages’ annual Summit event

Dan Allen, Solutions Architect

Hacktimonium! Remember when only big companies got spam? Then small companies? Then individuals? The same is happening with hacking and digital intrusion. This trend will continue into 2015. Having a Firewall isn’t going to be enough; you need to have some sort of implemented Intrusion Prevention Services like an ASA with sourcefire, Radware appliance, or even some of the smaller brands have a Unified Threat Management piece.

A Year in review: Who got hacked last year?

The Big Ones

  • Apple’s iCloud – Individual accounts hacked.
  • JP Morgan Chase – Enterprise network hacked
  • Sony – Individual and then enterprise hack
  • UPS
  • Target

A list of others you might know.

  • AOL
  • Ebay
  • Living Social
  • Nintendo
  • Evernote
  • USPS
  • Blizzard
  • SnapChat
  • NeimanMarcus
  • Home Depot
  • Washington State Justice Computer Network
  • Yahoo-Japan
  • Dominos-France

The final word here? You Won’t Know You’ve Been Hacked Until It’s Already Gone.

What do you think 2015 has in store around end user computing and security?

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

End-User Computing, Featured, Mobility, VDI, Virtualization

CTO Focus Interview: Gunnar Berger, Citrix

CTO Focus InterviewIn the third installment of our CTO Focus Interview series, I got to speak with Gunnar Berger, CTO at Citrix (View Part I and Part II of the series). Gunnar is a well respected thought leader who previously worked as an Analyst at Gartner and joined Citrix last June. Gunnar is on a mission to make VDI easier and cheaper to deploy. I’d highly recommend following Gunnar on Twitter to hear more from him.

 

Ben: What are your primary responsibilities at Citrix?

Gunnar: A lot of what I do at Citrix is on the back end and not necessarily public facing. In the public view, it’s more of looking at a long term strategy. Most roadmaps are looking ahead 12-18 months. I can be influential in these plans, but I am really looking at the longer term strategy. Where are we going to be in 3-5 years? How do we actually get to that place? How do you take today’s roadmap and drive it towards that 5 year plan? One of the main reasons I took the job at Citrix is because I want to fix VDI. I think it costs too much and is too complex. I think we truly can change VDI at Citrix.

 

Ben: What are some of the challenges you face as a CTO?

Gunnar: One of the main challenges when looking at long term strategies is that things can happen in the short term that can impact those long term plans. That’s every CTO’s challenge regardless of industry. In this particular industry, things change every single day. Every couple of months there is a major merger or acquisition. You have to be nimble and quick and be ready to make adjustments on the fly. My background at Gartner is very relevant here.  I have to make sure I understand where the customer is now and where they will be 3-5 years from now.

If you look at the history of Citrix, look back 5 years and you see they made an incorrect prediction on VDI. You can create a long term strategy and have it not work out. If you aren’t correct with your long term strategy, it’s important to capture that early on and pivot.

 

Ben: What goals do you have for 2015?

Gunnar: I have three main goals heading into 2015. The first is doubling down on applications. The second is to review the complexity and costs of VDI. The third is to “bridge to the cloud.”

1. Double down on applications

Citrix over rotated on VDI but now the pendulum is moving back. VDI has a place but so does RDS. We are doubling down so that XenApp is not a second class citizen to XenDesktop. Apps are what users want, XenApp is our tried and true solution for pushing these apps out to users on any device.

2. Review complexity and cost of VDI

My overall goal is to make VDI easier to deploy and cheaper to deploy. This plays into a long term strategy. Let’s face it, VDI deployments take a lot of time and money. I can’t remember where it was that I heard this stat, but for every dollar of a VDI sale I need to sell $12 in everything else. For a customer to buy one thing they need to buy $12 of something else…not an ideal situation for the customer.

We need to solve that issue to make it less costly. I’m unapologetically a fan of VDI. I think it’s an extremely powerful technology that has a lot of great benefits, but it is currentlycostly and complex. Luckily, in my position I get to work with a lot of really smart people that can solve this so I’m confident that Citrix will make VDI what I have always wanted it to be.

3. Bridge to the cloud

This is where Citrix Workspace Services comes into play. You will start seeing more and more of this from Citrix over the next several months. Essentially this is the unification of all of our different products (i.e. XenDesktop, XenApp, XenMobile, NetScaler, etc.). We will be “SaaS-ifying” our entire stack, which is a massive undertaking. We really want to improve the admin experience by creating a single administrative interface for users of all different product suites.

The goal is provide the same benefits to an enterprise that an end user receives from products like the ChromeBook – automatically get the latest version so you never have to update manually. We want to get to the point that no matter what, customers are always operating on the most recent versions. This obviously benefits the customer as they are getting the latest things instantly.

Citrix isn’t going to try to become a cloud provider. To do that you need billions of dollars. We’re building a bridge to enable users to move seamlessly from on-prem to off-prem. You want to be on Azure or Amazon? We can do that.

The idea is that this becomes the middle ground between you and those cloud providers. What I like about being the intermediary is being able to dial up and back between clouds seamlessly to allow customers to stand things up and test them in minutes instead of days.

 

Ben: Citrix has made heavy investments in mobility. Where do you see mobility in the next 3-5 years?

Gunnar: Honestly, I want to stop talking about mobility like it’s something special. Everything we are doing these days is mobile. Mobile Device Management? Mobile Application Management? We need to drop the mobile from this story. It’s device management. It’s applications management. As far as where mobility fits in with Citrix – it’s inherent to the big picture much like the necessity to breath. I say this to paint a picture because it’s in our DNA. This is what Citrix has done for the last 25 years. In today’s world with smartphones and tablets, we take apps and make them run elsewhere just like we have always done.

 

Ben: Throughout your career, what concept or technology would you say has had the most drastic impact on IT?

Gunnar: Hands down virtualization. Virtualization is the root of where cloud started. Cloud is the most disruptive technology moving forward, and it all started with the hypervisor.

 

Are you a CIO/CTO interested in participating in our Focus Interview series? Email me at bstephenson@greenpages.com

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

End-User Computing, Featured, VDI, Virtualization, VMware

VMware Horizon 6: Updates, Improvements, and Licensing Changes

By Chris Ward, CTO

I got a late start on this blog post but I’m a fan of the saying “better late than never!”  VMware officially shipped Horizon 6, the long awaited major update, to its end user computing product set late last month. There are numerous updates and improvements across the product set with this major release, but there is also a change in how it is licensed. In the past Horizon was consumed either as individual products (VIEW, Mirage, Workspace, etc.) or as a suite which included all components. With this new release, VMware has transitioned to its traditional product hierarchy which includes Horizon Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise editions.  

Each edition builds on previous versions with additional features added into the mix. The Standard edition basically amounts to what we’ve known as VIEW in the past.  It is the baseline VDI feature set inclusive of the connection and security servers, PCoIP protocol, ThinApp application virtualization, and linked clone functionality. Moving to the Advanced edition adds in the Mirage management, Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH), Horizon Workspace, and vSAN integration.  The Enterprise edition adds vCOPS monitoring and vCAC/vCenter Orchestrator integration.

One of the more exciting features of Horizon 6 is RDSH application publishing. This is a big deal because it’s been a glaring missing checkbox when comparing Horizon to Citrix in the past. This feature allows you to configure Windows terminal server (RDSH) farms which are configured to publish individual applications rather than full desktop sessions, very closely resembling Citrix XenApp. Why’s this a big deal?  Well, it can save a lot of back end horsepower when you can have 50 users share a single RDSH VM to run a few applications rather than needing 50 desktop VMs in traditional VDI. This allows a more flexible architecture so you can deliver each application in the best way possible, rather than being forced into deploying only full desktop operating systems. 

Mirage integration with the traditional VIEW product has improved as well.  While not 100% there, you can now get some of the Mirage OS/application layering functionality inside the VDI environment while still being able to use Mirage in its native capacity as a physical desktop management platform.  vSAN integration is a big step forward in potentially minimizing the typically large storage costs for a VDI environment, and the inclusion of vCOPS in the Enterprise edition is great as it provides very deep insight into what’s going on under the covers with your Horizon infrastructure, including deep PCoIP analytics.  Finally, the Workspace component of Horizon has improved greatly, allowing you to provide your end users with a single web page whereby they can access VDI desktops, RDSH based published applications, Citrix XenApp published applications, ThinApp packaged applications, and SaaS based apps such as Office365, Google Apps, etc.

With this release, VMware seems to be delivering on its promise that the EUC space is one of its 3 strategic focus areas.  I look forward to further improvements, along with the integration of Airwatch into the Horizon family in upcoming releases. For now, Horizon 6 is a very big step in the right direction. 

Have you tried or migrated to Horizon 6 since the launch?  If so, please share your thoughts!

 

Are you interested in learning about how you can extend your data center into the cloud with VMware vCloud Hybrid Service? Register for our upcoming webinar!

 

 

Citrix, End-User Computing, Featured

Components, features and use cases for XenDesktop 7.5

 

Our very own Randy Becker recently wrote a guest post for Tech Target entitled “Components, features and use cases for XenDesktop 7.5.” In the post, Randy gives a detailed overview of XenDesktop 7.5 to give readers a better understanding of how to deploy it. Randy also provides use cases for when it makes sense to use XenDesktop 7.5. Check out the article on techtarget.com!

If you’re looking to hear more from Randy around Citrix technologies, he gives a nice summary of news and announcements that came out of Citrix Synergy 2014 (Part 1 and Part 2).

 

 

 

 

business continuity, BYOD, Cloud computing, CMaaS, Disaster Recovery, End-User Computing, Featured, IT Management, Journey to the Cloud, Miscellaneous IT, Storage and Information Management

Cloud Management, Business Continuity & Other 2013 Accomplishments

By Matt Mock, IT Director

It was a very busy year at GreenPages for our internal IT department. With 2013 coming to a close, I wanted to highlight some of the major projects we worked on over the course of the year. The four biggest projects we tackled were using a cloud management solution, improving our business continuity plan, moving our datacenter, and creating and implementing a BYOD policy.

Cloud Management as a Service

GreenPages now offers a Cloud Management as a Service (CMaaS) solution to our clients. We implemented the solution internally late last year, but really started utilizing it as a customer would this year by increasing what was being monitored and managed. We decided to put Exchange under the “Fully Managed” package of CMaaS. Exchange requires a lot of attention and effort. Instead of hiring a full time Exchange admin, we were able to offload that piece with CMaaS as our Managed Services team does all the health checks to make sure any new configuration changes are correct. This resulted in considerable cost savings. Having access to the team 24/7 is a colossal luxury. Before using CMaaS, if an issue popped up at 3 in the morning we would find out about it the next morning. This would require us to try and fix the problem during business hours. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone the hassle of trying to fix an issue with frustrated coworkers who are unable to do their jobs. If an issue arises now in the middle of the night, the problem has already been fixed before anyone shows up to start working. The Managed Services team does research and remediates bugs that come up. This happened to us when we ran into some issues with Apple iOS calendaring. The Managed Services team did the research to determine the cause and went in and fixed the problem. If my team tried to do this it would have taken us 2-3 days of wasted time. Instead, we could be focusing on some of our other strategic projects. In fact, we are holding a webinar on December 19th that will cover strategies and benefits to being the ‘first-to-know,’ and we will also provide a demo of the CMaaS Enterprise Command Center. We also went live with fully automated patching, which requires zero intervention from my team. Furthermore, we leveraged CMaaS to allow us to spin up a fully managed Linux environment. It’s safe to say that if we didn’t implement CMaaS we would not have been able to accomplish all of our strategic goals for this year.

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Business Plan

We also determined that we needed to update our disaster recovery plan to a true robust business continuity plan. A main driver of this was because of our more diverse office model. Not only were more people working remotely as our workforce expanded, but we now have office locations up and down the east coast in Kittery, Boston, Attleboro, New York City, Atlanta, and Tampa. We needed to ensure that we could continue to provide top quality service to our customers if an event were to occur. My team took a careful look at our then current infrastructure set up. After examining our policies and plans, we generated new ones around the optimal outcome we wanted and then adjusted the infrastructure to match. A large part of this included changing providers for our data and voice, which included moving our datacenter.

Datacenter Move

In 2013 we wanted to have more robust datacenter facilities. Ultimately, we were able to get into an extremely redundant and secure datacenter at the Markley Group in Boston that provided us with cost savings. Furthermore, Markley is also a large carrier hotel which gives us additional savings on circuit costs. With this move we’re able to further our capabilities of delivering to our customers 24/7. Another benefit our new datacenter offered was excess office space. That way, if there ever was an event at one of our GreenPages locations we could have a place to send people to work. I recently wrote a post which describes the datacenter move in more details.

BYOD Policy

As 2013 ends, we are finishing our first full year with our BYOD policy. We are taking this time to look back and see where there were any issues with the policies or procedures and adjusting for the next year. Our plan is to ensure that year two is even more streamlined. I answered questions in a recent Q & A explaining our BYOD initiative in more detail.

I’m pretty happy looking back at the work we accomplished in 2013. As with any year, there were bumps along the way and things we didn’t get to that we wanted to. All in all though, we accomplished some very strategic projects that have set us up for success in the future. I think that we will start out 2014 with increased employee satisfaction, increased productivity of our IT department, and of course noticeable cost savings. Here’s to a successful 2014!

Is your IT team the first-to-know when an IT outage happens? Or, do you find out about it from your end users? Is your expert IT staff stretched thin doing first-level incident support? Could they be working on strategic IT projects that generate revenue? Register for our upcoming webinar to learn more!

 

BYOD, End-User Computing, Featured, Unified Communications, VDI

Breaking Down a BYOD Initiative

An Interview with Matt Mock, IT Director at GreenPages Technology Solutions

Ben: What encouraged GreenPages to adopt a BYOD policy?

Matt: The biggest reason we implemented a BYOD policy was that it offered the ability to give users the flexibility to use the technology that they are most comfortable with. Our IT department was getting frequent requests for non-standard equipment. This forced us to do one-offs all the time and made support very difficult.

Ben: How was the policy made? Who was involved in creating it?

Matt: The policy was created after many months of research. We looked into what other companies were doing, researched the costs for hardware and internal support, and interviewed different departments to see what was needed. We involved people from the top down, getting buy in from senior management to start. In addition, we also worked closely with the accounting department to make sure BYOD wouldn’t cost more than traditional hardware refreshes would. Our department did a proof of concept, then a pilot group, and then a gradual rollout. This allowed us to tweak the policy as needed.

Ben: Who has access to the BYOD program?

Matt: Not all departments. The program is for those where it makes the most sense from both a financial and support perspective. We didn’t want to grant BYOD to someone who couldn’t handle the issues on their own that would in turn create more technical support. We rolled it out to groups with specific requirements that weren’t going to cause us to spend more time on internal support.

Ben: Can you describe some of the highlights of the policy?

Matt: Within the policy we specify eligibility for the program, provide exact cost and reimbursement methods, and outline user responsibilities and requirements such as how to get hardware support. We also provide more specifics around what is and isn’t covered in the policy.

Ben: How do employees go about getting hardware support?

Matt: The user assumes responsibility of hardware support and is required to get a warranty. IT will help facilitate support but will not be responsible for the device. This goes back to making sure IT doesn’t spend more time supporting BYOD than they would have previously.

Ben: Makes sense.

Matt: I should also mention that GreenPages’ VDI environment allows us to offer the flexibility of BYOD with multiple devices because everyone can get the same experience regardless of the device used. Utilizing VDI also alleviates concerns around corporate data loss. If a device is lost or stolen, a person doesn’t have access to corporate resources just because they have the corporate device.

Ben: What have some of the main benefits been of the program?

Matt: The main benefits have been employee satisfaction and a decrease in hardware support for internal IT.

Ben: Some people think there are immediate cost savings from BYOD, but Chris Reily (GreenPages’ Director of Solutions Architecture) recently wrote a blog post cautioning people not to expect ROI in the first couple of years. Is this true?

Matt: Correct. You end up spending the same amount on hardware but support costs go down and employee satisfaction goes up. Direct ROI is difficult to measure when offering reimbursements. A company can avoid offering reimbursements but then you are greatly effecting employee satisfaction. If you give reimbursements, you probably end up spending the same over all amount.

Ben: What is your overall opinion of BYOD?

Matt: BYOD is not for every company nor is it necessarily for every employee within a company. A key thing to remember is that your infrastructure has to be ready for BYOD. If it is, then it’s a great perk and a great way to reduce time spent on internal support. It’s also a great way to allow new technologies into the organization and not have to give strict guidelines on what is and is not allowed.  Our BYOD initiative has also helped save my team time so that we can focus on more strategic projects that will help the business.

If you have questions for Matt around his experience implementing a BYOD policy, leave a comment or email us at socialmedia@greenpages.com

 

CMaaS, CTO, End-User Computing, Featured, IT Management, Journey to the Cloud, Miscellaneous IT, Network Infrastructure, SDN, Virtualization

Trick or Treat: Top 5 Fears of a CTO

By Chris Ward, CTO

Journey to the Cloud’s Ben Stephenson recently sat down with Chris Ward, CTO of GreenPages-LogicsOne, to get his take on what the top 5 fears of a CTO are.

Ben: Chief Technology Officer is obviously an extremely strategic, important, and difficult role within an organization. Since it’s almost Halloween, and since you’re an active (and successful) CTO yourself, I thought we would talk about your Top 5 Fears of a CTO. You also have the unique perspective of seeing how GreenPages uses technology internally, as well as how GreenPages advises clients to utilize different technologies.

Chris: Sounds good. I think a major fear is “Falling Behind the Trends.” In this case, it’s not necessarily that you couldn’t see what was coming down the path. You can see it there and know it’s coming, but can you get there with velocity? Can you get there before the competition does?

Ben: Do you have any examples of when you have avoided falling behind the trends?

Chris: At GreenPages, we were fortunate to catch virtualization early on when a lot of others didn’t. We had a lot of customers who were not sold on virtualization for 2-4 years. Those customers are now very far behind the competition and are trying to play catch up. In some cases, I’m sure it’s meant the CTO is out of a job. We also utilized virtualization internally early on and reaped the benefits. Another example is our CMaaS Brokerage and Governance offering. We recognize the significance of cloud brokerage and the paradigm shift towards a hybrid cloud computing model. In this case we are out ahead of the market.

Ben: How about a time when GreenPages did fall behind a trend?

Chris: I would say we fell behind a trend when we began our managed services business. It was traditional, old school managed services. It definitely took us some time to figure out where we wanted to go and where we wanted to be. While we may have fallen behind initially, we recognized change was needed and our Cloud Management as a Service offering has transformed us. Instead of sitting back and missing the boat, we are now in a great spot. This will be a huge help to our customers – but will (and does already) help us significantly internally as well.

Ben: How about fear number 2?

Chris: Fear number two is not seeing around the bend.  From my perspective as the CTO at a solutions provider, things move so fast in this industry and GreenPages offers such a wide variety and breadth of products and services to customer – it can be very difficult to keep up with. If we focused on only one area it would be a lot easier, but since we focus on cloud, virtualization, end user computing, security, storage, datacenter transformation, networking and more it can be quite challenging. For a corporate CTO you are allowed to be a market follower, which can be somewhat of an advantage. While you don’t want to fall behind, you do have partners, like GreenPages and others out there, that you can count on.

Ben: That makes sense. What about a 3rd fear?

Chris: Another large fear for CTOs is making a wrong turn. CTOs can get the crystal ball out and there may be a couple of things coming down the road…but what happens if you turn left and everyone else turns right? What happens if you make the wrong decision or the decision to early?

Ben: Can you give us an example?

Chris: A good example of taking a turn too early in the Cloud era is with the company Nirvanix. Cloud storage is extremely important, but what happens when a business model has not been properly vetted? This is one of the “gotchas” of being an early adopter. To be successful you need a good mix. You can’t be too conservative, but you can’t jump all in any time a new company pops up – the key is balance.

Ben: Do you have any advice for CTOs about this?

Chris: Sure – just because you can doesn’t mean you should!

Ben: I’ve heard you say that one before…

Chris: For example, software defined networking stacks, with products like Cisco Insieme and VMware NSX are very cool new technologies. I personally, and we at GreenPages, think this is going to be the next big thing. But we’re at a crossroads…who should use these? Who will gain the benefits? For example, maybe it makes sense for the enterprise but not for small businesses? This is something major that I have to determine – who is this a good fit for?

Ben: How about fear number 4?

Chris: Fear number 4 revolves around retaining my talent. I want my team to feel like they are always learning something new. I want them to know they are always on the bleeding edge of IT. I want to give them a world that changes very quickly. In my experience, most people that are stellar employees in a technical capacity want to be challenged constantly and to try new things and look at different ways of doing things.

Ben: What should CTOs do to try and retain talent?

Chris: Really take the time and focus on building a culture and environment that harnesses what I mentioned above. If not, you’re at serious risk of losing top talent.

Ben: Before I get too scared let’s get to number 5 and finish this up.

Chris: I’d say the fifth fear of mine is determining if I am working with the right technologies and the right vendors. IT can often be walking a tightrope between vendors from technical and business perspectives. From my perspective, I need to make sure we are providing our customers with the right technology from the right vendor to meet their needs. I need to determine if the technology works as advertised. Is it something that is reasonable to implement? Is there money in this for GreenPages?

Ben: What about from a customer’s perspective?

Chris: The customer also needs to make sure they align themselves with the right partners.  CTOs want to find partners that are looking towards the future, who will advise them correctly, and who will allow the business to stay out ahead of the competition. If a CTO looks at a partner or technology and doesn’t think it’s really advancing the business, then it’s time to reevaluate.

Ben: Thanks for the time Chris – and good luck!

What are your top fears as an IT decision makers? Leave them in the comment section!

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