The War Lies to the North<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n After Robert Baratheon dies, there is all out war for rule of the Iron Throne and control of the Seven Kingdoms. Joffrey Lannister usurps power after the passing of the king and executes the Lord of Winterfell, Ned Stark. This sparks Ned\u2019s son Robb to march on King\u2019s Landing to attempt to overthrow Joffrey. Meanwhile Robert Baratheon\u2019s younger brother Renly, his older brother Stannis, and Daenerys Targaryen are also all raising armies to try and defeat Joffrey. By the end of season 3 however, it becomes known that the deadly \u201cWhite Walkers\u201d are back after thousands of years. Some people realize that the war everyone is fighting right now is insignificant because the real war lies to the north.<\/span><\/p>\n The lesson for IT: There is often a good amount of unrest between the IT Department and other business units. Maybe Accounting gets frustrated and places the blame for a systems failure on IT, but IT claims it was the Accounting Department\u2019s fault for not following proper protocols. Maybe there is unrest between Marketing and IT around budget allocation for new tradeshow equipment. The lesson here is that IT needs to partner with the business and work together in order to achieve the overall goals that will determine the success of the company.<\/span><\/p>\n Liberate Your Users<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Daenerys Targaryen, or Khaleesi, is looking to take back the throne that used to belong to her family. Without an army, she purchases a large number of slave soldiers. Instead of treating them poorly and forcing them to fight for her, she frees them all and says it\u2019s their decision if they would like to stay and fight by her side. She then goes from city to city freeing slaves. The result? An extremely loyal and passionate army.<\/span><\/p>\n The lesson for IT: People will respond better if you give them choices as opposed to dictating how everything is going to work. Employees are going to bring their own devices to the workplace whether you allow it or not, so empower them to do so by implementing a BYOD program. Shadow IT is going to happen. Employees are going to bypass IT and use AWS. Provide them with a <\/span>way to do so<\/span><\/a> while you control costs, security, and governance. <\/span><\/p>\n Innovation Is Key<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n When Stannis Baratheon launches a full scale attack on King\u2019s Landing with a large fleet of ships, things look pretty dim for the Lannister family. Stannis has more man power and weapons and has the advantage of being able to cut off supply lines to the capital. Tywin Lannister, King Joffrey\u2019s uncle, is forced to think outside the box to try and defend his city. He ends up catapulting barrels of deadly wild fire onto the attacking ships, successfully fending off Stannis\u2019 forces.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The lesson for IT: Continue to innovate and look for creative ways to solve problems. It can be difficult to get to the strategic initiatives when your team is <\/span>bogged down by day-to-day mundane tasks<\/span><\/a>. IT leaders need to make innovation a top priority in order to keep pace with the needs of the business and the rapidly evolving technology landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n The Wall of Security<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n Security is critical to the survival of any organization. Winterfell and the North always relied on \u201cThe Wall\u201d to keep out marauding Wildlings. The Wall is hundreds of feet high, made of sheer ice, and guarded by the Men of the Night\u2019s Watch. Getting a large group of people past The Wall is extremely difficult. However, when an assembly of the Night\u2019s Watch has to abandon their posts to head out beyond the wall, a group of Wildlings is able to scale it and cross to the other side.<\/span><\/p>\n The lesson for IT: It\u2019s obviously important to have the proper security measures in place in your organization.\u00a0 The lesson from the Wall though is that no matter what security you have in place, there are always ways to infiltrate your environment no matter how secure it may appear. This is why you need to proactively monitor and manage your environment.<\/span><\/p>\n Choose Your Partners Wisely<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n As the war with the Lannisters drags on, Robb Stark is in desperate need of more soldiers. Robb strikes a deal with Walder Frey to have one of his uncles marry one of Frey\u2019s daughters to unite the families. Robb chose the wrong partner and things don\u2019t go according to plan (and by not \u201cgoing according to plan\u201d I mean Robb, his wife, his mother, and his countrymen are brutally murdered during the wedding ceremony\u2026).<\/span><\/p>\n The lesson for IT: There are a lot of factors to take into consideration when you\u2019re deciding who to align yourself with. Choosing the right vendor for your organization depends on many factors including the specific project you\u2019re working on, your existing environment, your budget, your goals, your future plans, etc. You don\u2019t want to make a hasty decision on a specific vendor or product without thinking it through very carefully. This is where a company such as GreenPages<\/a> can act as a trusted advisor to help guide you down the right path.<\/span><\/p>\n Any other lessons you can think of? <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Download this whitepaper<\/a> to learn how\u00a0corporate IT can manage its environment as if it is \u201cdeployed to the cloud.\u201d So, if and when different parts of the environment are deployed to the cloud, day-to-day management of the environment remains unchanged\u2014regardless of where it is running.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n By Ben Stephenson, Journey to the Cloud After a long wait, Game of Thrones Season 4 has officially started (no spoilers for the first episode of season 4 – I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy). Amidst the action and excitement, there are some lessons IT can take away from seasons 1-3 of the…Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[372,179,47,1551],"tags":[118],"class_list":["post-10532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-byod","category-featured","category-it-management","category-shadow-it","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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