As businesses increasingly migrate to the cloud, effectively managing associated costs is crucial. IT budgets dedicate significant amounts to cloud services, with predictions suggesting this will escalate. This surge in cloud investment makes Financial Operations for cloud environments— FinOps —an essential discipline for managing costs in cloud environments.

Importance of FinOps in Cloud Management

Moving to the cloud often presents organizations with tremendous opportunities, offering scalability, flexibility, and initial cost savings. However, without a disciplined approach, cloud expenses can quickly become unpredictable and may spiral out of control. This is where FinOps plays a crucial role. By adopting FinOps practices, organizations can ensure cloud costs are transparent and predictable, avoid needless expenses and make smarter cloud investments. They can also maintain agility to adjust resources in real time, match spending with demand and avoid over-provisioning and underutilization.

Key Elements of FinOps in Cloud Management

• Collaboration Across Teams: Foster cultural change to enhance cost efficiency, requiring real-time collaboration to the second as resources are managed and act as a catalyst for continuous improvement and quick decision-making.
• Decisions Driven by Business Value: Focus on unit economics and value-based metrics rather than aggregate spending, encouraging strategic trade-offs between cost, quality, and speed to drive innovation and enhance market responsiveness.
• Cultural Shift Towards Accountability: Empowers individual teams to manage their cloud usage and budgets, promoting cost as a critical factor alongside uptime and performance. Ensures decisions are supported by real-time financial data, clean data practices, and benchmarking against industry standards.
• Centralized Management: Advocates for centralized management and executive sponsorship to streamline FinOps practices, utilizing automation to reduce duplication and efficiently manage resources and discounts.
• Maximizing the Variable Cost Model: Treats the cloud’s variable cost model as an opportunity for optimization. It advocates for just-in-time resource management to avoid over-provisioning and underutilization and recommends continuous adjustments to cloud usage for optimal efficiency.

Optimizing Azure Resource Management within FinOps Framework

Through its robust toolkit designed to operate within the FinOps framework, Microsoft Azure helps businesses manage and properly align cloud resources. The key is to discover these tools, many of which you likely already have access to, and then understand how to utilize their insights and recommendations.

Right-Sizing Azure Resources

Right-sizing is crucial for aligning resource consumption with actual demand. Azure’s capabilities allow for dynamic resource adjustment—scaling up during peak usage times and scaling down in quieter periods. This flexibility is critical to maintaining performance without overspending. Azure Advisor analyzes resource usage and configurations to offer tailored recommendations, helping to identify underutilized resources.

Enhancing Cloud Management with Strategic Tools

Beyond right-sizing, Azure provides tools that support broader cost optimization and cloud management. Azure Cost Management delivers analytics and insights that enable businesses to monitor and control spending. This tool is instrumental in implementing financial accountability through showback and chargeback, which attribute cloud costs to specific departments or projects, promoting responsible usage and precise budgeting.

Automation and Multi-Cloud Flexibility

Azure supports extensive automation capabilities that reduce manual overhead and minimize costs. Automation is critical in implementing routine tasks like performance tuning and cost adjustments, preventing resource wastage and improving operational efficiency. Additionally, Azure’s multi-cloud strategy offers flexibility and risk mitigation by not depending solely on a single cloud provider. 

Monitoring and Strategic Decision-Making

Effective cloud management requires monitoring cost anomalies and informed decisions about region selection and service deployment. Azure’s ample monitoring tools help identify unexpected charges, and its analytics capabilities support strategic decision-making.

What You Should Focus On Now

Azure environments typically change often. Keep your eye on the costs.

1. Start with Cost Avoidance—downsize first. If you can turn it off while maintaining patching and backups, do so for stretches of time.
2. Develop a cost optimization process using Azure Advisor.
3. Keep track of your decisions on Azure Advisor recommendations
4. Review your optimizations to make sure they are doing what you thought they would
5. Keep your cost optimizations in mind when making changes.

Enhancing Your Cloud Investment with the Right-Sized Partner

Azure offers the potential to maximize the value of cloud investments. However, without adhering to the principles and discipline required by the FinOps framework, organizations can find themselves spending unnecessarily and without purpose.

OneNeck is an experienced Microsoft Solutions Partner with the technical expertise to maximize your Azure investment. We offer a wide range of Azure Support Services that can help you navigate the complexities of your cloud environment and manage and optimize costs.

Ready to optimize your Azure investment? Contact us today to learn how we can help transform your cloud strategy.

Having a robust storage solution can make or break your data management strategy. A versatile cloud storage service like Azure Storage is designed to handle everything from vast amounts of unstructured data to high-demand enterprise applications. Whether you’re dealing with blobs, files or even Kubernetes containers, read on to understand how Azure can streamline and secure your data management practices effortlessly.

What is Azure Storage?

Azure Storage, developed by Microsoft, is a comprehensive cloud storage solution tailored for modern data management. It supports a wide range of data types and is designed to provide high availability, massive scalability and robust security. 

Services Overview 

Azure Storage and its various components are designed to meet a varying range of data storage requirements for businesses, large and small. Here’s a quick overview of each data service. 

Azure Blobs: Think of Azure Blob storage as your go-to for handling massive amounts of unstructured data. This is perfect for serving images or documents directly to a browser, storing files for distributed access or streaming video and audio.

Azure Files: When you need managed file shares that cloud applications can access using standard SMB (Server Message Block) protocol, Azure Files is your answer. You can mount file shares concurrently from cloud or on-premises deployments of Windows, Linux and macOS.

Azure Elastic SAN: This service supports enterprise-grade, high-performance block storage. Azure Elastic SAN mimics the capabilities of on-premises Storage Area Networks (SANs), providing you with scalability, flexibility and high throughput for your critical workloads.

Azure Queues: Queues is useful for storing large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via authenticated calls using HTTP or HTTPS. This is particularly helpful if you’re building robust applications that must scale to process messages asynchronously.

Azure Tables: This NoSQL store is perfect for storing structured non-relational data. Use it when you need to store TBs (terabytes) of structured data capable of serving web scale applications.

Azure Managed Disks: These are block-level storage volumes managed by Azure and used with Azure Virtual Machines. Managed Disks are available in a range of sizes and performance levels, including ultra-high performance.

Azure Container Storage: If you’re working with containers like Kubernetes or developing microservices, Azure offers integrated container storage solutions. These ensure high performance and seamless scalability for containerized applications.

About Azure Storage Explorer

If you are using several Azure Storage services, you might need some support managing them. Azure Storage Explorer was built just for this. It equips you with the tools to upload, download and manage blobs, files, queues, tables and Data Lake Storage entities efficiently.

It also supports connections across multiple subscriptions and is compatible with all Azure regions, Azure Stack and Azure Government. Additionally, Azure Storage Explorer provides a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) that makes it accessible, even for those new to cloud storage management, supporting a wide range of operating systems.

Key Features and Benefits of Azure Storage

Azure Storage is engineered to provide a robust set of features that cater to diverse data storage requirements. It can:

• scale on demand
• adjust based on your storage capacity needs
• protect your data against loss with data redundancy
• secure your data with advanced encryption

These features and more make Azure Storage a preferred choice for enterprises looking for a reliable and scalable cloud storage solution.

Best Practices for Implementation

Implementing Azure Storage effectively involves adhering to several best practices that ensure both security and efficiency. Here are some important guidelines:

• Maintain distinct storage accounts for development and production to safeguard data integrity and optimize performance. This separation prevents accidental data manipulation and helps you manage resources more effectively.
• Enable Microsoft Defender for comprehensive threat detection.
• Use Azure Resource Manager to deploy and manage your storage resources securely.
• Implement soft delete for blobs and containers to protect against accidental deletions.
• Ensure all data transfers are conducted over HTTPS and restrict shared access signature tokens to HTTPS connections only.
• Take advantage of Microsoft Entra ID for robust access management.
• Apply the principle of least privilege through Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to minimize unnecessary access rights.
• Secure your account access keys using Azure Key Vault and regularly regenerate these keys to mitigate the risks of unauthorized access.

Manage Azure Storage with OneNeck

OneNeck can help manage your Azure storage environment, no matter what tier or configuration you have in place today. Our team will provide management and oversight of your environment, 24/7, from initial design and deployment to operations support, along with recommendations for potential optimization within your environment. Contact us to have a chat with our team.

Cloud computing is generally considered to be a safe bet when it comes to system security. Cloud platforms often come with sophisticated security features like access control, user authentication, encryption, and more.

However, they can be challenging when it comes to regulatory compliance. Not every solution is built with the specific cloud restrictions and requirements of various regulatory bodies in mind. Fortunately, cloud compliance solutions are designed to enhance data security and help organizations adhere to regulatory requirements.

What is Cloud Compliance?

Cloud compliance is adherence to the local, national and international regulations and industry standards that cover storing, processing and transmitting data in the cloud. These regulations and standards protect sensitive information and ensure the privacy, integrity and availability of data. Complying with these regulations helps organizations reduce the risk of data breaches and any fines or reputational damage that may come along with a breach.

The Importance of Cloud Regulatory Compliance and Data Security

Cloud security standards and regulations are complex and ever-changing, and meeting them can take significant time and resources. However, non-compliance carries the risk of fines, legal action, reputation damage and loss of customer trust. Companies must prioritize cloud compliance and data security to ensure sensitive information stays safe while preserving their reputation and upholding customer trust.

Compliance Standards

Depending on the industry and the type of data being stored and processed, cloud compliance standards can vary. Some key standards affecting many organizations include:

PCI DSS

If your company stores, processes, transmits or handles credit card data using cloud services, your provider must be Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant. Compliant cloud providers must protect credit card data from unauthorized access or breaches with robust security measures such as regular security audits and strict access controls.

HIPAA

Most people have heard of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the national law creating regulations to define and protect sensitive healthcare information. HIPPA regulations apply to organizations that handle electronic protected health information (ePHI). 

Organizations that use cloud services to store or process ePHI must ensure their cloud provider meets HIPAA compliance requirements, which include implementing safeguards, conducting risk assessments and controlling data access to protect sensitive healthcare information from unauthorized access or disclosure.

Other Cloud Compliance Standards

In addition to the standards above, your company may be required to comply with other regulations, depending on the industry and the geographic regions you operate in. 

The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework protects the personal data of individuals in the European Union (EU) by requiring transparency from companies that use it.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 18 (SSAE 18) is a cloud compliance standard for third-party data centers. Data centers get certified by completing examinations and providing supporting documentation of organizational and IT controls to protect mission-critical IT infrastructure.

Additional cloud compliance standards include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for organizations that handle the personal data of European Union citizens, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) for government agencies and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards for various industries. 

Cloud Compliance Solutions for Your Organization

With changing regulations and so many moving parts, maintaining cloud compliance can be challenging for any IT department. Fortunately, there are cloud compliance solutions that can help you navigate the complexities of regulatory compliance to ensure you meet all requirements. 

OneNeck IT Solutions offers comprehensive cloud compliance solutions to help organizations comply with regulations. OneNeck’s ReliaCloud meets HIPAA/HITECH, U.S.-EU Privacy Shield and Type 2 SSAE 18 (SOC 1) compliance requirements and others, freeing up your IT resources. 

Don’t face overwhelming compliance requirements on your own. By partnering with OneNeck, you have experts on your side so you can focus on what you do best—managing your business. Learn more about OneNeck cloud compliance solutions here.

Successful organizations constantly seek ways to stay ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving business landscape. One such opportunity is the shift from traditional on-premises systems to cloud-based architectures. This transition is not merely a fleeting trend; it’s a strategic move for businesses aiming for scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. As the cloud becomes an integral part of the modern business landscape, understanding the intricacies of cloud migration becomes vital.

The Significance of Cloud Migration

The modern workplace has ushered in a surge in both the volume and diversity of data and applications. Managing these increasing complexities in traditional systems can be cumbersome, expensive and inefficient. Cloud systems offer a solution, providing scalable storage, enhanced security and cost-effective operations. Moreover, with the rise of remote work and global collaborations, cloud systems facilitate easy access to data and applications worldwide, ensuring business continuity and agility.

The impact of cloud migration extends beyond mere technological advancements; it signifies a profound shift in business operations and strategy. Embracing the cloud equips businesses with extensive agility, allowing them to scale operations in response to demand, optimize resource utilization, and realize significant cost savings. This migration also revolutionizes collaboration. With the cloud, data and applications become universally accessible, enabling teams to work seamlessly in real-time, boosting productivity and spurring innovation. Furthermore, the cloud allows for data-driven decision-making. Businesses can make strategic choices rooted in real-time data by harnessing advanced analytics and AI-driven insights.

Strategic Framework for Cloud Migration

Embarking on the cloud migration journey is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It requires a tailored strategy, considering each organization’s unique needs and objectives. Here’s a deeper look into the foundational steps for a successful cloud migration:

• Strategize the Move: Before any migration begins, it’s crucial to have a deep understanding of the current infrastructure. This knowledge involves auditing existing applications, data storage needs, and network configurations. By defining clear objectives for the migration, businesses can set measurable goals, whether they are cost savings, improved performance, or enhanced scalability.
• Select the Appropriate Cloud: The cloud ecosystem offers a plethora of options. From public clouds that offer vast scalability to private clouds that provide enhanced security, the choice depends on the business’s specific needs. Hybrid and multi-cloud strategies are also gaining traction, allowing companies to leverage the best of both worlds.
• Execute the Transition: This is where the rubber meets the road. A well-defined strategy ensures that the migration process is smooth, with minimal disruptions. It involves selecting the right tools, setting up the necessary configurations and ensuring data integrity during the transfer.
• Assess the Migration: A successful migration is not just about moving data and applications. Once the migration is complete, testing is essential to ensure all components function optimally in the new environment, including performance testing, security audits and functionality checks.

During this process, it’s essential to ensure that the existing systems remain operational. Businesses cannot afford downtimes, and a phased migration approach limits disruptions to daily operations.

Decoding the 6 Rs of Cloud Migration

Experts have outlined the ‘6 Rs’ of cloud migration to streamline this process and ensure a successful migration. These represent six strategies or pathways that businesses can adopt. The journey to the cloud is multifaceted, and the 6 Rs provide a structured approach to navigating this endeavor:

• Re-host: This is the most straightforward approach. It involves moving applications and data to the cloud without significant changes, ensuring a quick and cost-effective migration.
• Re-platform: While similar to re-hosting, this strategy goes a step further by optimizing applications to harness the full potential of the cloud, leading to improved performance and reduced costs.
• Repurchase: This strategy involves a shift in the IT consumption model. Instead of traditional software deployments, businesses might opt for SaaS solutions, leveraging cloud-native applications that are regularly updated and maintained by providers.
• Retain: Not all applications or data might be suitable for immediate migration. Some components may remain on-premise due to compliance needs, legacy system dependencies, or other reasons, leading to a hybrid cloud approach.
• Retire: Over time, certain applications become redundant or obsolete. Instead of migrating them, businesses can decommission them, leading to cost savings and reduced complexity.
• Re-factor: This is the most intensive approach, involving a complete redesign of applications to be cloud-native. While it requires significant effort, the long-term benefits of scalability, performance, and future readiness can be tremendous.

The 6 Rs: A Strategic Blueprint for Cloud Success

While the benefits of cloud migration are evident, the journey itself can be fraught with challenges, and the 6 Rs provide a structured basis to address them. By understanding and implementing one or more of these strategies, businesses can:

Minimize Downtime: Ensuring that operations continue smoothly during the migration process.

Optimize Costs: By choosing the right strategy, organizations can avoid unnecessary expenses and ensure a return on their cloud investment.

Future-Proof Operations: Companies can be prepared for technological advancements by adopting cloud-native solutions and architectures.

A Partner That Has Your Back

With an extensive track record of designing and implementing successful cloud migrations, OneNeck brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the table. We understand that each migration is as unique as the organization undertaking it. We emphasize a tailored approach rooted in industry best practices and hands-on experience. Our team of experts works closely with you to understand your specific needs, goals and industry requirements, crafting a migration plan that is both strategic and seamless.

To ensure a successful migration to the cloud, we conduct a Hybrid Cloud Assessment that covers all the bases, including workload analysis, bandwidth analysis, and end-user experience analysis. This assessment allows us to create a plan that aligns perfectly with your objectives.

But our role doesn’t end with the migration. We remain by your side, offering support and consolation. Whether you are on the cusp of a cloud transition or just contemplating the possibilities, we are here to guide you every step of the way.

Contact us today to explore strategies and solutions for your cloud migration journey.

Choosing the appropriate virtualization deployment model can make a world of difference for your environment. However, deciding between containers vs virtual machines isn’t always clear-cut. They each have strengths and weaknesses, depending on your operating environment.

What is a Virtual Machine (VM)?

Choosing the appropriate virtualization deployment model can significantly impact your environment. VMs can run multiple instances of operating systems on a single physical machine. They can also store data, connect to networks, and perform other computing functions.

VMs exist independently of one another yet share the same hardware resources such as CPU power or storage space. You can run multiple “virtual computers” on a single physical computer. Each VM behaves like a separate, isolated computer, so you can run different operating systems or software on each VM without them interfering with each other.

Pros and Cons of VMs

VMs have advantages and disadvantages that can vary depending on the specific use case and needs. Here are some of the pros of VMs:

1. Isolation: VMs provide isolation between different virtual machines, so if one VM crashes or has security issues, it doesn’t affect other VMs running on the same physical host.
2. Resource Allocation: VMs allow efficient distribution of computing resources, such as specific amounts of CPU, memory, and storage so each VM can operate effectively.
3. Versatility: VMs enable you to run multiple operating systems and applications on a single physical host. This is useful for testing, development, or running applications that require different environments.

Some cons of VMs include:

1. Increased Resource Usage: Because they run complete operating systems—which load up entirely separate instances of binaries, libraries and system resources—VM resource usage is naturally higher.
2. Slow Performance: VMs install an entire OS for each instance, making them resource-heavy and slow to spin up.
3. Limited Scalability: A single server can only support a limited number of VMs, limiting the scalability of VMs in response to dynamic traffic conditions.

What are Containers?

A container is a package of software that contains the necessary elements to run applications in any environment. By sharing the host system’s OS kernel instead of requiring its own OS, containers are compact and can run in a private data center, the public cloud, on a developer’s personal laptop or anywhere you need it.

Pros and Cons of Containers

Here are some of the pros of containers:

1. Resource Efficiency: Containers use fewer compute resources than traditional virtual machines by leveraging shared operating systems.
2. Scalability: Servers can run more containers with the same amount of resources, and applications are easier to scale based on demand.
3. Rapid Deployment: Containers can be created and launched quickly to meet demand.
4. Cloud Compatible: The flexibility of containers makes them ideal for deploying in the cloud.

Cons of containers include:

1. Limited OS Support: Containers typically rely on a Linux kernel, so they may not be as suitable for applications that require specific operating systems, like Windows.
2. Security Risks: Misconfigured containers or vulnerabilities in the container runtime can pose security risks and endanger your organization.
3. Learning Curve: Deploying containers to automatically provision, scale and manage containerized applications can be challenging for organizations and individuals who are new to these technologies.

Which Option is Better for You?

When it comes to the debate about container vs VM, both have unique characteristics and advantages, depending on your unique situation.

Virtual machiness are easy to create and support various OS options, making them suitable for developers. They also provide a layer of security by keeping instances isolated. However, VMs use more resources — companies with budget to allocate to additional computing power will be well-suited to VMs.

Containers operate well in a cloud environment, are flexible and portable and can easily scale horizontally. They consume fewer resources and are faster to deploy. However, due to their shared resources, they are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks and require robust protection. Companies that are confident in their cybersecurity posture, defense strategy and disaster recovery plan can benefit most from the flexibility and scalability of containers.

Your organization’s virtualization strategy will depend largely on your business needs and infrastructure. Whether you land on the VM, container or combination side of the container vs VM debate, it’s essential to protect your network from attacks.

OneNeck has partnered with Fortra’s Alert Logic to offer Managed Detection and Response (MDR). By combining our teams of round-the-clock security experts with Fortra’s Alert Logic’s award-winning SaaS security platform and continuous threat research and analytics. Learn more about Always-on Support with MDR from OneNeck and Alert Logic by reading the brochure here.

Are your containers secure? OneNeck has partnered with Alert Logic to offer top-notch intrusion detection for containers. Explore our specialized offering and fortify your container security.

Recently, Cisco made a pivotal announcement that marks a new direction in strategy. They announced the end-of-life of the HyperFlex Data Platform, a key product in the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) market.

Cisco has set September 11, 2024, as the final order date, though renewals will be accepted for existing subscriptions until February 28, 2029. Cisco has stated that this move reflects their commitment to staying aligned with current market trends and ensuring that they continue to meet the evolving requirements of their customers. In a statement from Cisco, they further explained the decision. “Cisco made the decision to discontinue its Cisco HyperFlex HCI product family based on evolving customer needs and market dynamics. This decision has been timed to best support our customers, partners, and employees.”

Partnership with Nutanix

Following the decision to discontinue HyperFlex, Cisco has moved to partner with Nutanix. Nutanix, known for their cloud software and HCI solutions, complements Cisco’s offerings in the hyperconverged domain.

The collaboration aims to simplify hybrid multicloud operations. With this alliance, Nutanix’s software will be compatible with Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) hardware, including the M5 and M6 generation servers. As a result, the “Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix” solution has been introduced. This solution integrates Cisco’s compute and networking capabilities with Nutanix’s Cloud Platform, providing businesses with an option for multicloud environments.

By combining their respective strengths, Cisco and Nutanix aim to offer a solution that addresses the challenges of modern hyperconverged infrastructure. This partnership emphasizes both companies’ practical approach to address industry needs. As the industry adapts to these significant shifts, the role of experienced partners becomes even more crucial.

OneNeck – Your Partner for Both Cisco and Nutanix Solutions

OneNeck has built robust and longstanding partnerships with both Cisco and Nutanix. As a Gold Certified Cisco partner, our deep-rooted expertise in Cisco solutions is a testament to our dedication and commitment to excellence. Additionally, our commitment to Nutanix has not gone unnoticed. In early 2023, Nutanix spotlighted our partnership as we were honored with the Global and Americas Service Provider of the Year title. Beyond this, OneNeck holds the distinction of being both a Nutanix Champion Service Provider and a Champion Reseller.

This dual alliance places OneNeck in a unique position, especially during industry shifts like the one presented by this transition. We understand the intricacies of both the Cisco and Nutanix offerings, and this knowledge equips us to offer tailored guidance to businesses.

As companies grapple with multi-cloud decisions, OneNeck is poised to provide clarity, direction and solutions that harness the combined strengths of both Cisco and Nutanix. More than just understanding the technology, we grasp the broader business implications. This holistic context ensures that our clients navigate the change seamlessly and harness it for growth and innovation.

As the HCI landscape undergoes significant changes, OneNeck stands as a steadfast partner for businesses. Our goal is to ensure that companies navigate these transitions seamlessly, making the most of their infrastructure investments and positioning themselves effectively for future industry developments.

Navigating Hyperflex Changes with Expertise and Insight

The decision by Cisco to transition from HyperFlex and collaborate with Nutanix marks a notable change in the HCI market. With this collaboration, businesses can expect solutions that address the challenges of today’s multi-cloud environments.

OneNeck, with our deep-rooted partnerships and expertise, stands ready to guide businesses through this transition. Our tight alignment with Cisco and Nutanix equips us with the insights and knowledge to provide timely and effective solutions.

If your organization is navigating these changes or exploring a new HCI strategy, we’re here to help. Contact us today.

The cloud’s vast potential is undeniable, but it also introduces a unique set of challenges that require specialized expertise. Understanding and implementing robust security measures becomes crucial as organizations transition from traditional on-premises infrastructures to cloud-based and hybrid systems.

Harnessing the Cloud: Opportunities and Obstacles

Cloud computing has significantly impacted the way companies function, offering a range of benefits that cater to modern needs. One of its primary advantages is scalability and flexibility. The cloud can adjust to varying demands for a small startup or a large enterprise. This adaptability means utilizing resources on an as-needed basis, often reducing the necessity for significant upfront investments in infrastructure. The cloud can scale to meet those demands as businesses grow or change.

Traditional IT setups involve high initial costs, from procuring hardware to establishing and maintaining data centers. In contrast, cloud computing introduces a more flexible financial model, shifting expenses to operational ones. Organizations can better manage their budgets, paying only for the resources they use. This provides financial flexibility and reduces reliance on physical hardware, allowing businesses to adapt quickly to changing needs without being bogged down by legacy systems.

Cloud computing facilitates global collaboration, allowing teams worldwide to work together in real-time and access shared resources and tools. Additionally, businesses can effectively reach global markets, serving clients from any location. However, this accessibility also presents challenges; every access point in the cloud can be a potential vulnerability, underscoring the importance of robust security measures.

Shared Responsibility in Cloud Security

In cloud computing, the concept of “shared responsibility” is paramount. It delineates security obligations between the cloud service provider and the user. While the provider is typically responsible for the underlying infrastructure and ensuring the cloud platform’s security, the user is tasked with safeguarding their data and applications.

Encryption, for instance, becomes a collaborative effort where the service might offer the tools, but users must implement and manage them. Understanding and embracing this shared model is crucial for adequate cloud security, as it underscores the idea that security is a joint effort, requiring vigilance from both the provider and the user.

However, shared responsibility doesn’t end with technical measures. It extends to regulatory compliance and best practices. Standards such as NIST, HIPAA and CIS Controls serve as security and data protection benchmarks. These standards represent legal obligations and set the foundation for trust and ethical data handling. By aligning with these recognized standards, consumers and providers can ensure they meet the highest security benchmarks, further strengthening their collaborative defense against potential threats.

Network Security: A Multi-Layered Approach

Let’s visualize a secure cloud environment as a fortress designed with multiple layers of defense to deter potential threats. Firewalls are the primary gatekeepers, monitoring and controlling incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security policies. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) continuously scan for suspicious activities or policy violations, serving as vigilant sentinels that alert administrators to potential threats.

Inside the network, internal security measures are vital. Techniques like micro-segmentation create isolated environments, ensuring a breach in one segment doesn’t jeopardize the entire system. Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) don’t just detect threats; they actively block malicious activities, maintaining the network’s resilience against cyberattacks. Additionally, regular vulnerability assessments highlight weaknesses, allowing for timely remediation.

IAM: Beyond Simple Permissions

Identity and Access Management (IAM) extends beyond the basic premise of granting or denying access. At its core, IAM is a holistic approach to managing digital identities, ensuring that the right individuals access the right resources at the right times and for the right reasons.

Understanding user behavior is pivotal in this process. IAM systems can continuously monitor and analyze user activities and detect patterns and anomalies that might indicate potential security threats. It’s not only about the timing of access; accessing high-value data or making bulk data transfers when it’s not part of their usual tasks can also be flagged.

Furthermore, IAM systems can take proactive measures such as implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA requires the user to provide two or more verification factors to gain access, adding an extra layer of security and ensuring that even if a malicious actor has login credentials, they will still need another verification form, making unauthorized access significantly more challenging.

Proactive Defense: More than Just Monitoring

Managing vulnerabilities is an obvious cornerstone of cloud security. However, the reactionary nature of traditional anti-virus software can no longer address the sophisticated and agile nature of modern attacks.

Regular assessments and penetration tests help identify and address potential weak spots before attackers can exploit them. It’s crucial to have an efficient patch management system in place, ensuring that vulnerabilities are dealt with swiftly.

As businesses increasingly adopt container and microservices architectures, the need for security intensifies. It is essential to integrate protective measures from the development stage and maintain them throughout the software’s lifecycle. By proactively managing vulnerabilities, organizations can reduce the window of opportunity for potential exploits. This proactive stance protects applications and data and fosters a culture of ongoing vigilance, a necessity in an environment where threats can emerge unpredictably.

The Human Element of Cloud Security

While advanced tools and protocols are indispensable, the human element is pivotal. It’s a common misconception that most security breaches are solely due to technological vulnerabilities. Human error or oversight often serves as the gateway for cyberattacks. Without the proper knowledge, employees can inadvertently become the weakest link, falling prey to sophisticated phishing attacks or unintentionally mishandling sensitive data.

Recognizing this, organizations must invest in continuous cybersecurity education. Regular training sessions, enriched with the latest threat intelligence, equip employees with the skills to discern potential threats. Security Awareness Training on identifying phishing emails, safe browsing practices, and secure password management can transform employees from potential security risks to vigilant watchdogs.

Choosing a Cloud Service Partnership

Selecting the right Cloud Service Provider (CSP) is a critical decision. Your CSP needs to be much more than a vendor; they are integral to your organization’s security posture. It’s not just about the tools and features they offer but also about their approach to security as a whole.

When considering a CSP, it’s essential to delve into its security philosophy. Questions to ponder include: How frequently do they undergo security audits? How swiftly do they respond to identified threats? A reputable CSP will be forthright about its security protocols, past incidents and remediation measures. This transparency ensures that you’re not just choosing a service but entering into a partnership built on trust and mutual security goals.

Navigating Cloud Security with OneNeck

In the evolving landscape of modern cloud computing, businesses are presented with unparalleled opportunities and inherent challenges. As organizations leverage the cloud’s capabilities, the significance of robust security becomes increasingly evident. A comprehensive approach to cloud security, which integrates technology, processes, and the human element, is essential for a confident and risk-mitigated digital transition.

At OneNeck, we pride ourselves on being more than just a provider of technical services. With extensive expertise in cloud solutions, we offer a partnership built on trust, experience and dedication. As a leading Cloud Service Provider, we prioritize proactive security measures and have a deep understanding of the evolving threat landscape.

As you consider your next steps in the cloud domain, let our experience and expertise guide you. Contact us today to ensure your cloud endeavors are both innovative and secure.

Collaboration Solutions Keep Your Remote Team Happy, Engaged and Productive

A few years ago, remote work was something of a novelty. That changed in 2020 when the need for remote collaboration burst to the forefront of many organizations’ minds. Now, after a few years of implementing and improving processes, remote work seems here to stay.

Both employees and businesses are on board with the idea of remote or hybrid work — working outside of the office at least part of the time. When given the chance to work remotely at least part of the time, 87% of workers say they’ll do it. An AT&T report predicts that by 2024, hybrid work models will grow to 81% of the workforce.

What is a Collaboration Solution?

A collaboration solution is a type of software that allows employees or teams to communicate with each other and share information in real time, no matter where they are. The right solution for your team can help employees stay productive and focused while working toward the company’s goals.

Collaboration: The Key to Success in Remote Work Environments

It’s common for employees to work 100% remotely or in a hybrid environment, splitting their work time between the office and other locations. Without collaboration solutions, employees can be frustrated by digital barriers that hinder communication and creativity and lead to duplicate work — two or more employees working on different parts of the same project without realizing it.

However, using the right collaboration solution provides many benefits for remote employees.

Collaboration solutions enable strong team communication.

When all your employees use a collaboration solution, it ensures that everyone can access the same information and is on the same page. This also cuts down on duplicate messages through multiple channels, such as an employee sending an email, instant messaging and calling to try to reach someone.

Collaboration solutions build team cohesion.

A cohesive team doesn’t result from having everyone together in one building. Rather, teamwork grows from strong communication and trust. Collaboration solutions foster teamwork with face-to-face communication through video, messaging and information sharing. In addition, a digital space for socializing — a virtual water cooler or digital break room — helps build camaraderie and trust.

Collaboration solutions speed the pace of work.

Real-time information sharing and feedback cut down on distractions by diminishing the need for meetings, emails and calls. Face-to-face and instant communication, even virtually, eliminates delays and bottlenecks and helps speed up work.

Cisco Collaboration Solutions

Cisco has bundled together voice, video, data, security and mobility into a single solution called Cisco Unified Communications (UC). Along with UC, Cisco offers these cloud-based Webex solutions:

• Webex is a complete, cloud-based app-centric collaboration suite that allows teams to create, meet, message, call, whiteboard and share in one continuous workstream from anywhere.
• Webex Calling is a cloud-based phone system for global calling from any location.
• Webex Meetings offers online, face-to-face meetings with high-definition video from a web browser, mobile phone or tablet.

Microsoft’s Tools for Collaborative Success

Microsoft offers a suite of collaboration tools designed to enhance productivity and teamwork. Microsoft Teams, part of the Microsoft 365 suite, is a hub for collaboration that integrates with other Microsoft apps and services. Features include:

• Chat and instant messaging
• Video conferencing
• File sharing and collaboration
• Integration with Microsoft Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Customizable and extendable with third-party apps and integrations

Microsoft’s collaboration solutions are designed to meet the diverse needs of modern workplaces, providing seamless communication and collaboration across devices and platforms.

Technology brings teams together.

The reality of today’s workplace is that remote work is here to stay. Even employees who routinely work from the office will occasionally find themselves working from home or other locations. As a result, every organization needs to invest in collaboration solutions to help their teams stay productive, no matter where they are.

To help, OneNeck IT Solutions has partnered with both Cisco and Microsoft to provide leading-edge collaboration solutions for the remote and hybrid workplace. Both Cisco Unified Solutions and Microsoft Teams are smart, affordable ways to keep your employees happy while encouraging them to give their best work. Together with OneNeck’s continuous monitoring, management and support, your organization will be ready to face the challenges of a hybrid work environment.

The need for robust endpoint protection cannot be overstated. As network boundaries continue to blur with increases in remote work and the proliferation of mobile and IoT devices, endpoint protection has emerged as a critical aspect of network security. In this blog, we explore this process and examine two of Microsoft’s primary solutions: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Intune.

Understanding Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint® is a platform designed to safeguard your organization’s endpoints, essentially any devices connecting to your network. These can range from traditional computing devices like desktops and laptops to modern smart devices and IoT gadgets.

Defender for Endpoint serves as a protective shield for your network by offering real-time threat detection, prevention, and response capabilities. But that’s not all it does. It also provides automated investigation capabilities, helping IT teams promptly detect and respond to threats, reducing time and resources spent on investigations.

Moreover, it facilitates threat intelligence sharing across platforms, enhancing an organization’s ability to proactively defend against potential threats. By harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and integrating it with other security solutions, Defender for Endpoint ensures that your network remains resilient.

The Microsoft Defender Family: A Holistic Approach

The term “Microsoft Defender” often sparks confusion due to its broad scope. Contrary to what one might intuitively think, Microsoft Defender is not a single application but a family of interconnected security solutions designed to take a holistic approach to address digital protection. Given this complex arrangement, businesses often find it challenging to determine which specific product from the Defender suite best suits their needs.

While our focus here is on Defender for Endpoint, understanding what the entire MS Defender family brings to the table is important.  Some of the more prominent applications and add-ons include:

• Microsoft Defender for Office 365– Prevents volume-based and targeted attacks, phishing, ransomware and advanced malware with its robust filtering system. It uses AI to detect malicious and suspicious content and provides capabilities for identifying, prioritizing and investigating threats across Office 365.​
• Microsoft Defender for Identity– Helps Security Operations identify configuration vulnerabilities and prioritize the riskiest users in an organization. It also provides real-time analytics & data intelligence to threats​.
• Microsoft 365 Defender– Part of Microsoft’s XDR solution, it automatically analyzes threat data across domains, building a comprehensive picture of each attack in a single dashboard​​.
• Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps– Acts as a cloud access security broker (CASB), providing multifunction visibility, control over data travel and sophisticated analytics. It helps organizations elevate security posture by combating cyber threats across all their cloud services​​.
• Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management– Bolsters security and IT personnel by filling workflow gaps, enabling prioritization and remediation of critical vulnerabilities and misconfigurations throughout an organization.

These applications work in concert, providing an integrated, multi-layered defense strategy. This interconnectivity creates a centrally managed environment where endpoint protection is integral to your network security strategy rather than an isolated, independent function.

The Role of Microsoft Intune

Microsoft Intune®, a vital component of the Defender ecosystem, deserves special mention. Intune is a cloud-based service that provides comprehensive device and application management capabilities. It’s a tool that simplifies device management and establishes a secure foundation for your endpoint protection strategy.

Intune provides granular control over how devices access corporate data, allowing you to enforce compliance policies and regulate device access based on predefined rules. This ability to control device access is critical to any endpoint protection plan, as it ensures that only authorized devices are allowed to interact with your network.

In addition, Intune facilitates mobile application management, allowing you to control how corporate data is accessed and shared on mobile apps. This ability means protecting your data even when accessed from personal devices, ensuring that your business information remains secure, no matter where it’s accessed.

Interplay Between Intune and Defender for Endpoint

Intune and Defender for Endpoint are not standalone solutions; they work together to provide a comprehensive endpoint protection strategy. Intune sets the stage by establishing basic security controls and compliance policies, while Defender for Endpoint builds upon this foundation to provide advanced threat protection.

This interplay between Intune and Defender for Endpoint allows for an integrated and dynamic defense strategy. Defender for Endpoint and Intune ensure protection for both devices and data from threats by managing your endpoints and controlling their access to your network.

Why Organizations Need to Use Defender for Endpoint

The benefits of using Defender for Endpoint are numerous. It leverages advanced technologies, such as behavioral sensors and cloud-delivered security, to guard against known and unknown threats providing robust protection for your endpoints. This protection includes Zero Day attacks, ensuring your network remains protected even when new threats emerge.

In addition to securing devices, Defender for Endpoint provides application-level protection. It ensures that critical business software is protected from potential vulnerabilities, minimizing the exploitation risk to your applications. This level of security is essential as applications often serve as entry points for attackers.

Furthermore, Defender for Endpoint offers advanced threat-hunting capabilities. Using a rich data set collected from your endpoints it can uncover hidden breaches that traditional defenses might miss. This proactive approach to threat detection and response can significantly reduce the impact of security incidents.

Key Considerations for Implementation

First, it’s essential to understand Intune’s role in optimizing Defender’s effectiveness for endpoints. By leveraging Intune’s capabilities, you can manage antivirus, endpoint detection and response, and firewall policies from a single view, enhancing your organization’s security posture.

Integrating Intune and Defender for Endpoint also provides opportunities for automation, reducing manual tasks and freeing your IT team to focus on strategic initiatives. Furthermore, the rich reporting capabilities of both solutions provide valuable insights into your security posture, helping you make informed decisions and continuously improve your endpoint protection strategy.

Strengthening Your Endpoint Protection Strategy with OneNeck and Microsoft

As digital threats evolve, so must your endpoint protection strategy. Consider how Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Intune can enhance your approach. By proactively managing and securing your endpoints, you can protect your network, data and, ultimately, your organization. Start your journey with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Intune today and step up your endpoint protection game.

As an experienced Microsoft CSP and IT security provider, OneNeck is positioned perfectly to be your trusted partner. We specialize in deploying layered security strategies that provide comprehensive protection, from the DNS layer, through the network to the endpoint. We leverage the power of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Intune and other essential security tools to ensure your digital assets are well-protected.

Ready to boost your organization’s defenses? Contact us today for a personalized consultation on how Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Intune can protect your digital assets.

5 IT Solutions to Automate Your Production Facility

The latest phase in manufacturing, known as Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, refers to the use of smart automation and connectivity in a production environment. By utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT) to connect computers to machines, facilities can automate production while leveraging data and analytics, enhancing human interaction with machines and improving efficiency and productivity.

What are Industry 4.0 Solutions for Manufacturing?

Industry 4.0 IT solutions for manufacturing are cutting-edge technologies that enable data sharing and automation by connecting machines and computers — leading to today’s “smart factories.”

Along with improved robotics and IoT connectivity, smart factories may employ additional digital solutions. These may include automated diagnostic tools, remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), and mobile and web apps.

Automation and connectivity in smart factories lead to improved production reliability and precision, and a more agile, flexible, and efficient production environment.

5 Foundational IT Solutions for Manufacturing

Implementing Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing processes can help companies achieve continuous improvement goals such as reducing downtime, improving supply chain traceability, and increasing speed to market. However, Industry 4.0 doesn’t just happen. Management must identify opportunities, choose from various technological and digital solutions, and implement the ones that address the highest priority functions.

Here are five foundational IT solutions for manufacturing to consider as your organization prepares to implement Industry 4.0 in your factory.

1. Cloud & Hybrid IT: Cloud computing enables manufacturers to store and access data and applications on remote servers. This internet-based solution eliminates the need for on-premises infrastructure, providing an affordable, flexible, and scalable solution. Combining cloud and on-premises systems results in a hybrid IT solution, allowing organizations to leverage the benefits of both.
2. Colocation: Manufacturers can rent servers and other hardware space at a third-party provider’s facility, allowing them to outsource physical infrastructure while retaining control over their IT systems. Colocation can also assist manufacturers by providing redundancy for disaster recovery.
3. Application Modernization: In manufacturing, application modernization is the process of updating or replacing legacy software and systems to ensure compatibility with modern technology. This can include migrating on-premises software to the cloud, implementing software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, and using technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Application modernization enhances the functionality and efficiency of equipment, frontline workers, and supply chain while optimizing processes.
4. Virtualization: Virtualization technology enables manufacturers to use a single physical server to run multiple virtual machines or operating systems. This reduces costs while improving hardware utilization and scalability. Virtualization also helps support flexible work arrangements by enabling the creation of virtualized desktops, allowing employees a secure way to remotely access applications and data.
5. Digital Transformation: Digital transformation is the integration of digital technologies across all aspects of a manufacturing organization, fundamentally changing how it operates. It can cover many different initiatives, such as adopting Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices for real-time data collection and predictive maintenance, leveraging analytics for informed decision-making, and implementing automation and robotics to streamline processes and increase productivity.

The Future of Manufacturing Starts with OneNeck

These foundational IT solutions for manufacturing are a starting point when planning for the digital transformation necessary to thrive in today’s technology-driven landscape. Moving to Industry 4.0 offers enticing long-term benefits including continuous improvement and cost savings.

Don’t walk this path without a partner that can guide you through the journey. At OneNeck, we have helped manufacturing companies like yours jump into action with innovative solutions.

• Migrations to cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments
• Colocation for managing the cost of expanding data centers
• Cybersecurity products and services to reduce downtime and risk
• Digital transformation and application modernization
• Connected machines and devices

In today’s competitive, rapidly evolving manufacturing environment, organizations that embrace digital solutions are better able to weather any storm. Let OneNeck IT Solutions help you navigate your organization’s transition to Industry 4.0.

Read more about IT solutions for the manufacturing industry, and learn how OneNeck can help provide solutions right for your factory.

Just a decade ago, IT professionals were abuzz about “the cloud.” Today, more than 60% of corporate data is stored in the cloud, and by 2025, research suggests that more than 200 zettabytes of data will be stored in the cloud — roughly half of all the world’s data.

Managed cloud storage solutions can help organizations safely, securely, and efficiently house their data without requiring additional staff or expensive capital expenditures (CapEx).

In this blog post, we’ll explore what managed cloud storage is and provide some examples of how businesses can use it.

What is managed cloud storage?

Managed cloud storage is a service provided by a third-party organization in which the provider manages the entire storage infrastructure — including hardware, software, and data management responsibilities. Common cloud management operations include cloud migration, service optimization, and security monitoring that help companies offload the responsibility of installing and maintaining storage infrastructure so they can focus on core business activities.

What’s an example of managed cloud storage?

Many well-known companies offer managed cloud storage services on a subscription basis in which the provider charges a fee based on the amount of storage used. Popular managed cloud storage services include Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud.

These services enable an organization to conveniently and securely store important information such as data from their customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms off-site and managed by someone else.

Managed vs. Unmanaged Cloud Storage

Unlike managed cloud storage, unmanaged cloud storage is the sole responsibility of the company that owns the data. With unmanaged cloud storage, an organization is responsible for selecting a data center and deploying the storage array. The company is also responsible for increasing storage capacity, updating and upgrading infrastructure, and troubleshooting any issues that arise.

How to Choose the Best Cloud Storage Management Solution for You

As cloud storage continues to gain popularity, businesses have a wide range of cloud storage options available. Determining which is the best for your business frequently comes down to a handful of specific factors. Here are some steps to take when choosing a cloud storage management provider.

Determine the location of the data center

Cloud-based storage solutions require a data center to house the physical infrastructure upon which virtualized infrastructure can be run. Choosing the right data center is often a matter of its location.

A data center’s proximity to sufficient power and connectivity services is an important consideration when choosing a location. Having adequate power helps to ensure that storage systems can run uninterrupted as expected, while proximity to public cloud provider availability zones is necessary for maintaining a strong, stable connection to cloud resources.

Evaluate the provider’s security features

Data privacy and security are paramount in today’s high-risk, data-driven business landscape. Cyber attacks continue to increase in frequency and sophistication, causing an average of nearly $4.5 million worth of damage per incident, leading governments to impose regulations such as GDPR in Europe and CRPA in California to compel organizations to bolster their data security efforts.

For organizations using managed cloud storage, it’s important to evaluate the various security safeguards the provider has in place. These measures include physical security at the data center site to prevent unauthorized access to storage hardware, as well as software-enabled security like network intrusion detection, built-in firewalls, and advanced data encryption.

Look at performance data

Like other areas of a business, managed cloud storage should be evaluated with measurable performance data. Cloud storage systems are typically measured by the data transfer rate to and from storage media, which is an indication of the overall performance of the system.

It’s also important to look at broader performance metrics such as service availability (measured in “nines”) and how quickly the storage system comes back online following an outage or interruption, called recovery time objectives (RTOs).

Assess integrations and APIs

One of the biggest benefits of managed cloud storage is that it enables any user to access information from virtually anywhere. But for that to happen — accessing, adding, updating, or deleting data from cloud storage — applications must connect to the data store via an Application Programming Interface or API.

APIs typically come in either a REST (Representational State Transfer) or SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) architecture. Regardless of the design, it’s important that your managed cloud storage provider offer a wide variety of APIs, as each storage system must be connected by purpose-built APIs for that storage unit.

In general, a managed cloud storage service provider with a broader range of APIs will offer a more flexible and robust suite of solutions for your business.

Forward-thinking Infrastructure for Growing Organizations

Managed cloud storage is an excellent way for businesses to offload their storage infrastructure management tasks and focus on their core business activities. Managed cloud storage providers can help businesses reduce operating costs while improving scalability and data security that enable greater and more sustainable growth.

Download our Ultimate Buyer’s Guide to Managed IT Services to learn more about managed cloud storage and other essential solutions.

As of October 10, 2023, Microsoft is retiring support for the following platforms (both physical and virtual):

• Windows Server 2012 x64 (all editions)
• Windows Server 2012 R2 x64 (all editions)

So, what does this mean for you and your organization? There are potentially serious impacts if you opt to skip the upgrade:

• Microsoft will no longer release security or quality updates for these platforms after October 10, 2023, which affects monthly patching.
• Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) like OneNeck will no longer be able to provide support escalation to Microsoft, which reduces support SLAs and the level of urgency to “best effort” support.
• Third-party applications used for endpoint management, monitoring and backups may drop support for these platforms and, as a result, your CSP may be unable to provide these third-party applications to support your Windows 2012 servers.

Bottom line: Windows Server is too important to risk downtime, so it’s time to migrate.

Windows Server Migration Options

Microsoft has advised that the following Windows Server platforms are suitable upgrade/migration replacements for these end-of-life platforms .

• Windows Server 2016 x64
• Windows Server 2019 x64
• Windows Server 2022 x64

Below is a summary of the Support Lifecycle for these supported platforms:

We can help!

At OneNeck, we know migrations can get complex fast, but we’ve pretty much seen it all and would love to help you determine your ideal-fit option and build an actionable plan to get your Windows Server current. So, contact us or your account rep today, and let’s help your Windows Server 2012 off the stage…

In today’s fast-paced business environment, data is golden. Businesses need to manage their data and provide advanced analytics in real-time. Enter the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, a unified solution that transforms data into insights and helps businesses succeed. The best part is that you likely have access to much of it already.

Nearly one year ago, Microsoft introduced its Intelligent Data Platform. The platform was designed to integrate their database, analytics and data governance offerings, bringing different types of operational and analytical data together while allowing for greater understanding and discoverability of organizational data. This is accomplished as end-users work together on shared data, primarily using tools with which they are already familiar.

What Is The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform?

The Intelligent Data Platform is a comprehensive suite of services and tools that empower organizations to manage, analyze and derive insights from their data by offering a unified approach to management, analytics and AI. The platform consists of several key components, including Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Purview, Azure Machine Learning, Azure Cognitive Services and Power BI. These tools and services create a seamless data experience, enabling businesses to ingest, prepare, manage, analyze and visualize data across various sources.

Microsoft: https://news.microsoft.com/build2022/

Operational Databases

• SQL Server 2022– SQL Server is a powerful, scalable, and secure relational database management system. It offers advanced analytics, high availability and robust security. SQL Server is designed to efficiently handle mission-critical workloads and can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud or in a hybrid environment. Integrating SQL Server 2022 with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform allows organizations to manage and analyze their relational data effectively and efficiently.
• Azure SQL Services– A cloud-based relational database service, Azure SQL Database provides built-in intelligence, scalability and high availability. Azure SQL Managed Instance is a fully managed instance of SQL Server that provides near 100% compatibility with on-premises SQL Server. Azure SQL Edge is an optimized, small-footprint version of SQL Server designed for edge computing and IoT scenarios. The Azure SQL services seamlessly integrate with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, enabling organizations to leverage the power of SQL Server in the cloud and quickly scale data workloads.
• Azure Cosmos DB– A multi-model database service designed for building highly available, scalable, and responsive applications. It supports various data models, such as document, key-value, graph, column-family and multiple APIs. By integrating Azure Cosmos DB with the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, businesses can easily manage and analyze their data across various data models and APIs, ensuring a versatile and robust data management solution.
• Azure Arc Data Services– Extends the capabilities of Azure data services to hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Azure Arc Data Services simplifies the deployment, management and monitoring of data services across environments with a unified control plane and consistent management experience. Organizations can implement governance policies, security configurations and monitoring solutions consistently across all their data workloads, regardless of where they are deployed.

 Analytics

• Azure Synapse Analytics– Azure Synapse Link for SQL, added in SQL Server 2022, provides a seamless data pipeline to Azure Synapse Analytics. This service allows organizations to ingest, prepare and manage data for immediate business intelligence and machine learning needs. With its serverless SQL pools, Azure Synapse Analytics enables businesses to query data on their terms. In addition, Azure Synapse Analytics supports real-time data processing, allowing companies to analyze data and gain insights, which is crucial for making data-driven decisions.
• Power BI– A business analytics tool that enables users to visualize and share insights from their data. With its easy-to-use interface and customizable visualizations, Power BI allows businesses to create interactive reports and dashboards, shareable across the organization. Power BI connects to on-premises and cloud-based databases, files and APIs, providing a seamless experience for data analysis and visualization. Furthermore, Power BI integrates with Azure Synapse Analytics, enabling businesses to gain insights from their data and make data-driven decisions more efficiently.
• Azure AI– A collection of artificial intelligence (AI) services designed for developers and data scientists. The portfolio includes Azure Machine Learning (a comprehensive service that allows organizations to build, train and deploy machine learning models) more efficiently. Automated machine-learning capabilities streamlines model selection and hyperparameter tuning, making it easier for data scientists and developers to collaborate on AI projects.

Governance

• Microsoft Purview– A data governance service that helps organizations discover, understand and manage their data across on-premises, multi-cloud and SaaS environments. With its automated discovery, classification and management capabilities, Microsoft Purview (formerly Azure Purview) enables businesses to comprehensively understand their data landscape, ensure compliance with data protection regulations and reduce the risk of data breaches. Azure Purview also integrates with Azure Synapse Analytics, providing a seamless experience for data discovery and governance.

Bringing Together Data Services

The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform brings together all of Microsoft’s key data services, creating a unified solution for managing, analyzing, and deriving insights from your data. Services such as SQL Server 2022, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Azure Synapse, Power BI, Microsoft Purview and more may already be a part of your data ecosystem. However, using these services together effectively is often a challenge.

The primary goal is to simplify the process of integrating databases and operational data store, analytics and data governance. Sharieff Mansour, General Manager of Microsoft Data, AI and Mixed Reality, states, “Historically, customers have been thinking about each of those areas independent from one another, and what the Intelligent Data Platform does is bring all these pieces together.” Microsoft accomplishes this through a data experience that allows organizations to ingest, prepare, manage, analyze and visualize data across multiple sources and services more efficiently.

In addition to its integration capabilities, the Intelligent Data Platform enables organizations to deploy and manage data services across various environments, including on-premises, hybrid and multi-cloud. This flexibility ensures that businesses can choose the most suitable deployment options for their specific requirements: compliance, latency or cost.

Operational Benefits of the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform

• Unified Data Management and Analytics– Businesses can manage and analyze data across different sources. This unified approach eliminates data silos and enables faster, more accurate decision-making.
• Advanced Analytics and AI Capabilities– Allows businesses to tap into the power of AI and machine learning for advanced analytics, predictions, and insights.
• Scalability and Flexibility– Designed to grow with your business by providing the scalability and flexibility needed to handle increasing data volumes and changing business requirements.
• Seamless Integration– Integration with other Microsoft products and services, such as M365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Azure, creates a cohesive data ecosystem that drives efficiency and collaboration.
• Enhanced Data Governance– Robust data governance capabilities enable businesses to discover, understand and manage sensitive data while ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

Maximize the Benefits of Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform with OneNeck

The Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform offers organizations an all-in-one solution for managing, analyzing and deriving insights from their data, enabling them to make faster, data-driven decisions and stay ahead of the competition. Its unified approach to data management, analytics and AI empowers businesses to unlock the full potential of their data estate and transform operations.

As an experienced and knowledgeable Microsoft CSP, OneNeck IT Solutions can help you harness the power of the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, delivering performance benefits across your entire organization. So, if your business is looking to stay ahead in the data-driven world, considering adopting the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform or simply interested in implementing M365 as a part of your modern workplace, Contact Us today to speak with one of our Microsoft experts.

Why You Should Stay on Top of Microsoft 365 Data Backups

Businesses everywhere rely on Microsoft 365 for its cloud-based design and advanced collaboration. It is integral to many organizations’ services and workflows.

Sometimes, however, core tools like this can lull customers into a false sense of security. Over 40% of IT organizations say they no longer backup their Microsoft 365 data with third-party applications, even though Microsoft itself stresses the importance of Microsoft 365 data backups. This article discusses six important reasons organizations should always back up their Microsoft 365 data.

Do I need to back up Microsoft 365 data?

Backing up your Microsoft 365 data ensures that no matter what happens, you’ll always be able to recover your important files. Microsoft has some catastrophic guardrails in place in case your entire system crashes, but they don’t protect against accidental deletion or overwriting.

A regular backup schedule based on the frequency you create and update your documents and media will give you more control over your files — and give you significant peace of mind. Performing your own backups also allows for granular recovery, so you can restore a single file or email, rather than overwriting all data.

How often should I do a Microsoft 365 data backup?

Your backup schedule will depend on your organization’s compliance requirements, how often you access and make changes to your data, and how much downtime you can afford in the event of data loss. Downtime cost organizations an estimated $84,650 per hour in 2021. Organizations may need to perform data backups several times a day or as frequently as every five minutes to stay protected and in compliance.

Frequent backups give you up-to-date data recovery in the event of accidental deletions, as well as a recent restore point if a large part of your data is compromised by a ransomware attack.

Who is responsible for a Microsoft 365 data backup?

Microsoft 365 documentation states that Microsoft maintains the 365 application and infrastructure, while the customer is “…responsible for protecting the security of your data and identities, on-premises resources, and the cloud components you control.” That means you’re responsible for data backup and retention.

6 Important Reasons to do Microsoft 365 Data Backups

Here are six important reasons for regular Microsoft 365 data backups in your organization.

• Microsoft 365 Data Backup Reason 1: Accidental Deletion
  We’ve all had that moment when we accidentally hit the “delete” button on a document — and then panicked. Regular backups make it simple to recover accidentally deleted files or emails so you don’t have to start an extensive project from scratch.This is especially important if you’ve accidentally deleted a Microsoft 365 user. Deleting a user account automatically replicates across the network, along with their personal SharePoint site and OneDrive data. Once the account is deleted, it’s gone from the entire network. You can only get user account data back by restoring it from a backup.
• Microsoft 365 Data Backup Reason 2: Internal Security Threats
  Threats from inside the organization may be intentional, such as a disgruntled employee, or unintentional, such as an employee who clicks on a link in a phishing email. In the event of data loss from internal threats, backups let you restore files necessary for daily operations.
• Microsoft 365 Data Backup Reason 3: External Security Threats
  External threats include malware, viruses, and ransomware. These malicious programs can corrupt or delete data and applications, bringing business to a halt. The importance of a Microsoft 365 data backup is that you can restore a clean copy of your data and cut your recovery time.
• Microsoft 365 Data Backup Reason 4: Legal Compliance
  Certain industries and locations require data to be stored for a specified amount of time. For example, the U.S. financial regulation Sarbanes-Oxley has specific data retention rules. Organizations that fail to meet these regulations can be subject to fines and penalties.
• Microsoft 365 Data Backup Reason 5: Outages and Shutdowns
  Off-site data backups are extremely important when organizations experience an unplanned outage or shutdown due to hardware or software failure, or after a natural disaster. Terabytes of data that might have been lost can be restored quickly, getting everyone back on the task of building the business.
• Microsoft 365 Data Backup Reason 6: Overall Business Continuity
  Business continuity is incredibly important for growing businesses with an expanding technology portfolio. Backups let you remain in control of your data and lower your downtime in the event of a data loss due to deletion, threats, or outages.

Does Microsoft 365 Recommend Backups?

Microsoft highly recommends backing up your 365 data. You don’t necessarily need to back up every file but prioritize content that can’t be easily replaced.

Microsoft does back up Microsoft 365 data every 12 hours and keeps it for 14 days. However, if you need to restore from their backup, it will be a full restore — everything will be overwritten. You can’t recover a single data point, like a file or an email.

Safeguard your Microsoft 365 Investment: Backup your Data

No one plans to lose files. But when you need to restore lost data, you’ll be glad you have a robust backup plan.

The importance of Microsoft 365 data backups cannot be overstated. That’s why OneNeck has partnered with Commvault to bring you Metallic^® Microsoft 365 backup to help protect your documents, emails, and conversations.

Metallic backup offers powerful, enterprise-grade Microsoft 365 data protection across Exchange, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint data. With Metallic backup, you’ll get seamless SaaS data protection and hassle-free deployment, with 24/7 Microsoft expert support provided by OneNeck (with optional monitoring available).

Learn about how OneNeck and Commvault Metallic keep Microsoft 365 data safe from deletion and attack, with the simplicity of SaaS. Read about our Microsoft 365 backup solution here.

Data modernization— specifically, data-first modernization—is central to successful digital transformation. With data growing at an explosive rate, businesses need more efficient ways to manage it and new ways to use it to glean deeper insights that can help fuel growth.

Organizations that adopt a data-first approach and harness the power of today’s new technologies are 20 times more likely to beat their competitors and 11 times more likely to exceed their revenue goals by 10% or more. Here’s why.

Why Is Data Modernization Important?

Data modernization is the process of converting data into a form that is easier to access, manage, and use. It eliminates silos and unlocks the value of data to enable faster decisions and better insights. Data modernization helps businesses achieve the scalability, agility, and speed they are looking for in cloud solutions.

Data modernization involves migrating data from legacy systems to a modern, often cloud-based, solution and merging data from disparate sources into one database to create a single source of truth. First, the data must be cleaned up, unified, and normalized across all fields and records. Then, it can be imported into the new system.

What Is Data-first Modernization?

Data-first modernization is a business strategy rather than a process. An organization that takes a data-first modernization approach understands that data is its primary asset. Putting data at the forefront generates valuable insights that drive better decision-making.

With data-first modernization, businesses can extract value from all their data, regardless of where it lives—whether on the edge, in a data center, or in the cloud. Companies can then leverage technologies, such as advanced analytics, to generate intelligence that accelerates business.

5 Important Technologies for Achieving Data Modernization

Many new technologies are driving data modernization in today’s business landscape. This shortlist summarizes the top five.

The Cloud

The Cloud offers a golden opportunity for businesses looking to move away from legacy technologies and on-premises data centers. Companies that adopt cloud solutions not only reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) associated with IT infrastructure but also gain tremendous flexibility and scalability.

Modern cloud providers offer a full range of services that include Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, cloud-based storage and processing, and data modernization capabilities. The cloud enables businesses to take advantage of powerful new technologies, such as big data, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Active metadata

If metadata is data about data, then what is active metadata?

Active metadata provides context that gives details about everything that is done to the data. It provides additional information that enables organizations to discover, categorize, maintain, use, and govern their data.

Metadata must be generated, assembled, and indexed continuously whenever data is created, updated, or moved. As the volume of data grows, so does metadata. This makes it crucial for businesses to replace traditional metadata management tools with a modern active metadata management solution that continually collects and analyzes metadata and creates intelligence from it.

Automation

Manual routine tasks make employees’ jobs boring and lead to fatigue, which increases the chance of human error. But with modern digital tools, businesses can automate those repetitive tasks and ensure greater accuracy. Automation frees up time, allowing employees to focus on more critical endeavors like business intelligence and data analysis.

But automation isn’t just for routine tasks. Companies can also automate complex business processes. For example, active metadata management can be automated using APIs.

Advanced analytics

Advanced analytics is a broad term that refers to three separate, but related, technologies: predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics, and artificial intelligence.

Predictive analytics uses data to create models of possible future scenarios. Leaders can then use these models to choose the best course of action, whether immediate or long-term. Prescriptive analytics uses algorithms to evaluate data and recommend ways to optimize business processes to achieve desired outcomes. It can identify the cause of bottlenecks and other problems and show how making strategic changes would improve various aspects of a business.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning

The most advanced type of analytics—artificial intelligence—includes machine learning (ML). AI differs from predictive and prescriptive analytics in three ways: it is capable of learning, evolves over time, and understands natural language.

AI and ML work hand in hand to drive business by providing convenience, accessibility, automation, and efficiency—all of which lead to greater productivity and better user experiences. Together, AI and ML can rapidly analyze large volumes of data, find connections between multiple data sets, and identify patterns and anomalies. Because AI can make decisions faster and more accurately than humans, it saves companies considerable time and money.

Data Modernization Fuels Business Growth

Data modernization fuels every digital transformation initiative, enabling organizations to gain valuable insights from their data. OneNeck IT Solutions offers advanced technologies like Azure Data Analytics that can help your business achieve a competitive edge.

Contact us to learn more about how OneNeck can help you scale your business and maximize performance.

Frequently asked questions…

What is the goal of data modernization?

The goal of data modernization is to transform traditional data architectures and processes into modern, more agile, and efficient ones that can support the growing demand for data-driven insights and decision-making. Data modernization involves migrating data from legacy systems to modern platforms, implementing advanced data analytics and machine learning capabilities, adopting cloud-based technologies, and ensuring data security and compliance.

What is advanced analytics vs analytics?

Analytics refers to the process of examining data to draw conclusions or insights about past events or trends. Advanced analytics, involves using complex and sophisticated techniques such as data mining, machine learning, predictive modeling, and artificial intelligence to analyze data and make predictions or recommendations. Advanced analytics allows organizations to gain deeper insights and achieve more accurate predictions, optimize business processes, reduce risks, and identify new opportunities.

What is difference between machine learning and artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) involves creating intelligent machines that can simulate human cognitive processes such as learning, reasoning, and problem-solving. Machine learning (ML) is a subset of AI that involves training computer algorithms to learn patterns in data, make predictions, and improve their performance over time without being explicitly programmed.

What is Azure Data Lake?

Azure Data Lake is a cloud-based storage and analytics service provided by Microsoft that enables businesses to store and analyze large amounts of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. It allows users to store data of any size, shape, and speed easily and securely, and perform powerful analytics and processing tasks.

Change is a given with evolving technology, and more is coming with Azure Active Directory Connect. Here’s what you need to know to make sure you stay ahead of the changes…

On March 15, Microsoft will begin retiring past versions of Azure AD Connect Sync 2.0.x, 12 months from the date they are superseded by a newer version. This upgrade is especially important since Microsoft had to update their prerequisites for Azure AD Connect and you may need additional time to plan and update your servers to the newer versions of these prerequisites.

The following versions will retire on March 15, 2023:

• 2.0.91.0
• 2.0.89.0
• 2.0.88.0
• 2.0.28.0
• 2.0.25.1
• 2.0.10.0
• 2.0.9.0
• 2.0.8.0
• 2.0.3.0

If you’re not already using the latest release version of Azure AD Connect Sync, you should upgrade your software before the March 15 deadline.

What happens if you don’t upgrade your Azure AD Connect?

If you’re running a retired version, it might unexpectedly stop working. You also might not have the latest security fixes, performance improvements, troubleshooting and diagnostic tools, and service enhancements. If you require support, Microsoft might not be able to provide you with the level of service your organization needs.

What about auto-upgrade?

Not all releases of Azure AD Connect are made available for auto-upgrade. The release status indicates whether a release is made available for auto-upgrade or for download only. If auto-upgrade was enabled on your Azure AD Connect server, that server automatically upgrades to the latest version of Azure AD Connect that’s released for auto-upgrade. Not all Azure AD Connect configurations are eligible for auto-upgrade.

Auto-upgrade is meant to push all important updates and critical fixes to you. It isn’t necessarily the latest version because not all versions will require or include a fix to a critical security issue. (This example is just one of many.) Critical issues are usually addressed with a new version provided via auto-upgrade. If there are no such issues, there are no updates pushed out by using auto-upgrade. In general, if you’re using the latest auto-upgrade version, you should be good.

In conclusion…

For Microsoft’s detailed information on Azure AD Connect’s version release history, refer to their documentation here. And as always, if you’d like help getting it done, or need any other Azure related help, we are here to assist.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD. WE GOT YOUR BACK.

Frequently asked questions…

What is Microsoft Azure Active Directory Connect?

Microsoft Azure Active Directory Connect is a tool that allows organizations to integrate their on-premises identity infrastructure with Azure Active Directory. It provides health monitoring, synchronization of users, groups, and contacts, as well as authentication and authorization for accessing Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365 and Azure.

What is Azure AD portal?

The Azure AD portal is a web-based interface that allows administrators to manage and configure Azure Active Directory  resources, such as users, groups, applications, and devices. It provides a central location for managing identity and access in Azure, and includes features for managing authentication, conditional access policies, and security settings.

Low-code development is a phrase you are likely hearing a lot lately. Many organizations are already utilizing this form of application development, and the vast majority plan to increase its usage in the future. Let’s examine two important questions surrounding low-code application development, starting with, what  is low-code development? Secondly, is low-code truly the future of app development?

What is Low-Code and Its Future Impact?

The answer to the first question is fairly straightforward: low-code development is a method to build software applications faster by diminishing the need to write code. With a low-code application development platform, one uses visual development tools, such as drag-and-drop modelers, point-and-click interface creation, smart services, elements and pre-built connectors. They reduce the necessity to write code and facilitate business applications’ speedy design, deployment and maintenance.

The second question takes a little more consideration. According to a Gartner study, it is predicted that by 2024 more than 65% of all business applications will be built using low-code programming, with about 2/3 of enterprises employing a minimum of four low-code platforms. Based on these statistics, it is somewhat safe to say – yes, low-code is going to play a large role in the future of application development. Let’s assess in more detail exactly why low-code’s future appears so bright.

Benefits of Low-Code

The fundamental benefits of low-code solutions are speed and collaboration. The inclusion of pre-built components and integrations make it simpler to create sophisticated and powerful applications. More specific benefits include:

• Improved Agility– Low-code tools are designed to allow users to create and deploy applications fast and efficiently without extensive programming knowledge. Businesses gain the ability to be more agile, quickly developing and deploying the applications they need to support operations and respond to changing business needs.
• Lower Costs of Entry and Deployment– Low-code platforms often include pre-built components and features that can be assembled into complete applications. These features make it possible to develop apps in-house rather than paying for costly custom software development services.
• Small Business Staffing Issues– With little to no coding required, low-code tools are usable by a broad range of individuals within an organization, including those with no background in programming. Small businesses gain the ability to create the apps they need to support operations and respond to changing business needs, without the necessity of having a large IT staff.
• Higher Productivity– Low-code technology helps to streamline the development process and allows teams to be more productive and efficient. Development teams are able to focus on design and functionality, rather than spending time on the tedious and time-consuming process of writing code. Changes and updates that once took large chunks of time can now be nearly instantaneously implemented.
• Effective Risk Management and Governance– Organizations gain the ability to respond quickly to changing business needs or new regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of compliance issues. Additionally, built-in security controls help to protect sensitive information and reduce the risk of data breaches or other incidents. Furthermore, low-code platforms often include version control and other collaboration features, assisting in maintaining a clear audit trail and ensuring applications are developed, controlled and maintained consistently.
• Automation of Business Ideas and Processes– By offering pre-built workflow templates, low-code tools allow automation to be accessible to teams of all skill levels. Additionally, it permits these teams to handle related service requests independently without requiring more extensive involvement from IT staff.
• Democratization of Software Development– The addition of more people in the development process allows organizations to develop custom software quickly and efficiently. With the presence of enhanced collaborative features, it is possible for multiple individuals to simultaneously work on an application. This cooperation allows businesses to maximize limited staffing resources while fostering a more inclusive approach to software development.

Is Low-Code the Same as No-Code?

The term no-code generally suggests a platform is intended for non-professional developers. The reality is there is always code and software running someplace, but with these types of tools, the coding is hidden from the user. No-code solutions are typically marketed towards non-developers and small businesses as an approachable or entry-level option.

Due to their nature of not requiring the user to utilize any coding, customization is often relatively limited. However, it is worth noting that despite the lack of required programming language, some knowledge in development is often necessary to use the required visual modeling tools or if the organization wishes to make more advanced customizations via the addition of some code.

Example of Low-Code Usage in Business

Microsoft’s Power Platform is a low-code suite of applications that enables users to build custom applications, automate processes, and analyze data without extensive coding knowledge. It consists of four main components:

• Power BI– A business intelligence and data visualization tool that allows users to create interactive reports and dashboards from various data sources.
• Power Apps– A platform for building custom business applications without the need for coding.
• Power Automate– A tool for automating business processes by allowing users to create custom “flows” that are triggered and can integrate with other applications and services.
• Power Virtual Agents– Used to build chatbots and other conversational AI agents.

All organizations have bottleneck processes that slow everyone down. These procedures don’t add particular value but are ultimately necessary for operation. Such processes might include managing complicated Excel spreadsheets or approval processes that require constant emailing back and forth, resulting in digging through these emails for each request to get them to the right people. Power Platform’s low-code tools make it possible to build a better way to accomplish these tasks.

Another aspect worth pointing out is that for software an organization is already using, the Power Platform offers an extensive list of connections to those existing systems. If one is currently using a platform with specific APIs, chances are there is a connector already built into Microsoft’s Power Platform that allows access and interaction with that data. Ultimately, Microsoft’s Power Platform’s purpose is to fix processes minus the need for advanced coding expertise and is of particular value to smaller organizations that want to do things better without significantly draining limited resources.

What Does Low-Code Mean for Professional Developers?

With the exponential increase in low-code app development, it might be easy to assume that professional developers should be worried their value to an organization is decreasing. However, the reality is precisely the opposite. Low-code tools make experienced developers even more useful.

Low-code can be beneficial for professional developers for numerous reasons, including:

• Allows professional developers to be more productive. By permitting non-technical users to help create software applications, experienced developers can focus on complex tasks and on building high-quality software.
• Helps developers to stay relevant in a rapidly changing market. As the demand for software development continues to grow, low-code tools can help experienced developers quickly learn new skills and adapt to emerging technologies.
• Enables more collaboration with all stakeholders. Because low-code platforms allow non-technical users to participate in the software development process, skilled developers can more easily communicate and collaborate with other teams and departments within their organization.
• Assists experienced developers in creating more innovative solutions. Using low-code tools, developers can quickly prototype and test new ideas, helping them design creative and effective solutions to problems.

The aim of low-code platforms is not to cut out professional developers from helping an organization build its processes. Rather, it is about trying to make it easier for IT and business users to work together to create more efficient processes that work for everyone. Ultimately, low-code is valuable for professional developers, helping them to increase productivity, stay relevant and create innovative solutions.

Embrace the Low-Code Revolution

Low-code platforms will undoubtedly play an essential role in the future of software development. These tools not only save time and money but also allow more people to participate in the process, enabling businesses to be more agile and responsive. Low-code technology is revolutionizing the way software is developed and is poised to become a standard for application creation in the coming years. As it continues to evolve and improve, expect to see even more exciting and innovative applications built via these platforms.

Are you interested in finding additional information on Microsoft’s Power Platform and the broader applications of low-code tools? Sign up for a Free Power Platform Workshop led by Kaitlyn Montour, and see how the process automation apps already included in your M365 subscription can bring your big ideas to life.

Frequently asked questions…

Is low-code in demand?

The demand for low-code platforms has grown significantly as businesses look to digitize their operations and streamline their processes. The worldwide market for low-code development tools is projected to total $26.9 billion in 2023, increasing nearly 20 percent from 2022, according to the latest forecast from Gartner, Inc.

What is Microsoft Power Platform used for?

Microsoft Power Platform is a low-code development platform that enables organizations to rapidly build custom business applications, automate workflows, and analyze data using Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI and Power Virtual Agents. Each area may be used independently or collectively.

What is the Power Platform admin center?

The Power Platform admin center is a web-based administrative console that enables administrators to manage the Microsoft Power Platform services. It provides a centralized location to view and manage environments, permissions, data policies, and more. Administrators can also access the Power Platform admin center through the Microsoft 365 admin center.

How does automation enable business services to support agility?

Automation helps businesses streamline and optimize their processes, reducing manual work and human error while increasing speed and efficiency. This allows organizations to respond more quickly to changes in the market and adapt services to meet evolving customer needs. By automating routine tasks, businesses free up their workforce to focus on higher-value work, leading to enhanced outcomes and increased innovation.

Work from home was trending before the pandemic, but since COVID, it has become the norm for many businesses. Now, as we come out of the pandemic, we’re entering another crisis: inflation. Companies that embrace remote work are being praised because it helps employees cope with the financial impacts of inflation. However, remote work has brought new challenges, like the need for more cloud computing tools.

Cloud computing is the most effective way to provide remote employees with the software they need to do their job. To give them access, companies must incorporate cloud applications into their tech stack. Many turn to software providers like Microsoft because they offer a plethora of tools that help businesses fill their digital gaps. These tools include Azure, Teams, and Office365.

However, teams often lack the digital expertise to deploy these applications at scale. A Microsoft cloud service provider (CSP) supplies the know-how and personnel needed to deploy with ease.

Give Up the Management Headache with a CSP

If you’ve ever watched a cooking show, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the speed and precision at which professional chefs work. But what happens when we try to copy their recipe? It usually takes us three times longer to recreate it, and if we’re being honest, it probably doesn’t taste as good. Similarly, while customers can set up Azure on their own, their success is often greatly improved with the help of a CSP. Consider seven benefits of working with a Microsoft CSP.

1. Support. Businesses that do it alone have to troubleshoot issues and ensure their installation is up to date and secure. A CSP provides a storehouse of experience and application-specific knowledge to help you resolve issues with minimal effort.
2. Deployment. It’s one thing to test new technology on a small scale and quite another to deploy it across your organization. If you don’t have the processes to deploy cloud applications at scale, you may find your deployment stalling at different stages as you figure things out. A CSP’s expertise will not only speed up deployment but can help roll out the software in predictable stages that simplify migration for your team.
3. Bundled applications. Cloud service providers often deliver configured or proprietary in-product features that help manage users and monitor and secure your applications.  They know how to package solutions because of their experience with other vendors – saving you the time and effort to develop your own software stacks.
4. Managed services. Microsoft partners are required to do more than resell Microsoft products; they must provide value on top of the service. For example, many CSPs manage your services, ensure security, and provide the support that eliminates the need to escalate issues to Microsoft.
5. Flexibility. Cloud solutions are inherently flexible, but scaling up and down services can still present administrative challenges. Your CSP can handle the complexities of scaling, like managing users, licensing, and resource allocation.
6. Licensing support. Identifying a single person’s subscriptions is enough to give you a headache, let alone your entire organization. A Microsoft CSP can manage all your Microsoft cloud licenses. And in addition to simplifying administration, your CSP can ensure you don’t have unused licenses sitting around and advise you on how to get more out of your subscriptions.
7. Control without management. Partnering with a CSP doesn’t mean you have to give up control. Your provider can still provide full admin control over your Office 365 and Azure subscriptions without the headache of managing everything else.

You can free up your team to focus on your company’s core mission by empowering them with cloud tools. A CSP can take over management so that your team only has to decide which tools to use and where you need them.

Partner With OneNeck for Microsoft Administration

OneNeck is a Microsoft CSP that provides a modern approach to software-as-a-service. We understand that the way companies use services is constantly evolving, so our offering is designed to adapt to those needs. With consolidated monthly billing, a simple subscription model, and no upfront costs, it’s easy to understand how your business uses its subscriptions. If you want to simplify your Microsoft services administration and gain world-class support, contact us.

Cloud computing solves a major challenge for many IT departments. It allows them to provide on-demand computing for their team, regardless of location or time of day. Teams are thus not limited to the capacity of an internal data center that may restrict usage to location or users. How does the cloud accomplish this feat?

It does so by providing ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort. Public cloud computing benefits from economies of scale, which allow it to draw from seemingly limitless resources.

While the benefits of the public cloud are considerable, teams may wonder about the benefits of choosing one provider over another. In this article, we’ll consider some specific ways Microsoft Azure is increasing the capabilities of many organizations.

Azure Extends Your IT Capabilities

Often, businesses look for more than simple cloud storage or computing power. Azure is an excellent option because it adds so many features and enhancements. For example, it offers a variety of pre-built applications that you can use to get started quickly. These applications are easy to configure and use, and they can help you get your business up and running quickly.

Another concern for business owners is security. Azure offers robust security features to keep your data safe. It has built-in firewalls that protect your data from unauthorized access and encrypts all data stored in the cloud, which adds redundant protection in case of a breach.

Lastly, Azure is backed by Microsoft and benefits from the scale of a global company. What does this mean for your company as a user?

• You can rely on Microsoft to provide world-class support for your Azure environment.
• You benefit from their large global footprint, with data centers in over 42 regions, ensuring that your applications are always close to your customers.
• Your apps and services are highly scalable, allowing you to scale up or down as needed.
• Your systems are highly reliable, with multiple layers of redundancy built in.

Azure’s features ensure that your computing infrastructure is always ready to meet demand and available to your entire organization. With that in mind, let’s look at a few specific applications of the technology.

No two companies are the same, and neither are their computing needs. Perhaps you’re interested in creating a modern workplace for your employees. Or maybe you want to improve the use of data in your organization. While we can’t cover every use case, let’s briefly consider how Azure fits into a few specific use cases.

Modern workplace. You likely already use Microsoft products in your operations. When using Azure, it’s easy to integrate and deploy Microsoft 365 tools like business-class email, collaboration tools including Microsoft Teams, and Office apps which are the standard in most businesses. The breadth of business applications makes it easy to create a holistic tech stack that supports your modern workplace.

Data and analytics. Learning from your data helps improve nearly every aspect of your business. However, collecting and managing large amounts of data requires powerful data tools. Microsoft Azure has many applications to help you analyze your data, like Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Data Factory, Data Lake, Power BI, and more. These advanced tools plug right into your Azure environment, extending your IT data capabilities instantly.

Government agencies. Government organizations are subject to stricter data requirements, limiting their choices for cloud partners. Azure Government Cloud meets these rigorous requirements by completely separating your cloud data and providing enhanced security. It’s also compliant with regulations like HIPAA, FedRAMP, and IRS 1075.

Partner With OneNeck, a Certified Microsoft Cloud Service Provider

While reading about the advantages of using Azure, you’ve likely thought of a few applications for your business. As both a Microsoft cloud service provider and a hybrid IT solutions provider, we are uniquely qualified to help you leverage Azure to reach your business goals. For example, we help optimize your Azure spend, so you’re not wasting precious budget on unused resources.

Our goal is to provide value beyond just your Microsoft licenses, and help you make best-fit cloud decisions that fuel your business growth and while continually optimizing your current investments. And if your needs go beyond what Azure offers, we’ll help you make strategic decisions that benefit your company for the long haul. Do you want to find out which Azure applications are most suitable for your business needs? Contact us to learn more.

It’s October, which everyone knows means time for trick-or-treating, pumpkin-spiced everything and cybersecurity awareness. Ok, possibly you didn’t immediately think of that last part. However, October is Cybersecurity Awareness month and with it comes the announcement from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) that this year’s theme is “See Yourself in Cyber.” The goal is to highlight that whether one works in network security or is exclusively an end user, everyone has a role to play in strengthening cybersecurity.

After years of highly publicized ransomware attacks and expensive data breaches, it has become clear that organizations must allocate considerable resources for cybersecurity. This emphasis is necessary to protect company data, promote customer trust, and maintain compliance with the government and other regulatory agencies. Investment in secure and resilient infrastructure and applications such as next-generation firewalls, advanced backup and disaster recovery solutions, and utilizing IaaS and SaaS continues to significantly increase. However, broader cybersecurity awareness campaigns have yet to obtain such ubiquitous adoption status.

While most organizations acknowledge the importance of cybersecurity mindfulness, investing in and committing to cybersecurity awareness initiatives still lag significantly behind this stated recognition. This lack of prioritization, in many cases, is originated at the Board of Directors (BOD) level. There are many reasons for potential BOD hesitancy to support fully implementing cybersecurity campaigns, but some of the more common themes and means to address them include:

• Budgetary Concerns– All organizations have a limit to the resources designated for security. In many cases, it is often easier to convince board-level members to allocate these assets for infrastructure, applications or even additional staffing. Garnering support to assign these resources to less-tangible elements, such as security awareness training, is often challenging. Bringing to the BOD assessments that demonstrate how security training aids an organization while concurrently underscoring the costs of inaction can go a long way in convincing board members of the elevated ROI they will see from implementation.
• Lack of Cybersecurity Understanding– Education is vital. Company leadership will not support or approve campaigns they do not understand. It is common for leadership to view cybersecurity as an “IT issue” and not something that involves the entire organization. To raise the levels of understanding, one must ensure board members themselves are involved in cybersecurity training and are aware of not only the benefits of proactive company-wide approaches to cybersecurity but simultaneously understand the financial and reputational ramifications of breaches or attacks.
• Resistance to Change– Technology is evolving, and so are the threats. The modern workplace requires a modern approach where everyone is part of the solution. Ultimately individuals, including board members, don’t like change and often want to continue doing things as they have always been. A prospective way to combat this inertia is by increasing board member involvement in planning cybersecurity activities and training. When you have full board-level support for a cybersecurity awareness initiative, all employees and team members will eventually be able to “see themselves in cybersecurity” and recognize that compliance with training exercises or policies is a core component of their profession.

When asked about obtaining board-level support for cybersecurity awareness campaigns, Katie McCullough, Chief Information Security Officer at OneNeck, advised, “At its core, cybersecurity is about assessing, managing or removing risk to the availability of customer’s critical data and services. By ensuring cybersecurity is included as part of any Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), one can typically help drive the awareness and support of these campaigns through scheduled reviews of the ERM, by the Board of Directors.”

Clarification of why organization-wide cybersecurity awareness matters before successfully bringing cybersecurity campaign concepts to the BOD’s attention is imperative. Begin by stressing that critical concepts such as data protection and holistically solid security posture are at their core intelligent business decisions. This can be followed by emphasizing awareness training provides significant ROI, with expenses for designing and implementing awareness campaigns being greatly overshadowed by the cost of a breach. Finally, it is wise to highlight the short-term inconvenience of awareness training will materialize into significant long-term gains. Ultimately, the goal is to work with your BOD to answer questions and provide information, so they feel comfortable making informed decisions.

Another area to underscore to board members is that they are accountable for the organization’s cybersecurity. We see an extreme example of this accountability by analyzing the well-publicized breach of SolarWinds. In November of 2021, investors sued the BOD, claiming knowledge of cybersecurity vulnerabilities before a data breach and subsequent failure of action.

While a lawsuit may not be the most likely outcome of a cyberattack, it nonetheless serves as a stark reminder to board members that they are ultimately responsible for how organizations secure themselves. Having proactive board-level conversations about cybersecurity awareness helps protect the organization’s customers, profits, reputation and the Boards of Directors themselves.

Encouraging professional education for board members is another technique for getting board-level buy-in. Katie McCullough notes, “More and more companies are looking for Board of Directors to consider certifications such as NACD Certification program, which includes a certification for Cyber-Risk Oversight as an emerging area of board oversight.”  Board members can use training resources to:

• Learn foundational principles for board-level cyber-risk oversight.
• Increase comprehension of issues, including allocating cybersecurity responsibilities, legal implications, setting expectations about the organization’s cybersecurity processes and ways to improve employee engagement in security practices.
• Gain the ability to apply procedures and tools to improve organizational practices by focusing on specific risk components, including insider threats, third-party exposures, merger and acquisition due diligence, and adequate risk disclosure.

Board of Director buy-in is key to any organization having an effective cybersecurity awareness culture. For everyone in an organization to “see yourself in cyber,” the impetus must come from the top. Implementations of awareness campaigns, whether specifically designed to coincide with Cybersecurity Awareness Month or throughout the year, will only be effective if they are supported and promoted by company leadership.

While we have discussed several strategies and potential tools that can be used to secure top-level support, the essential thing to remember when dealing with board members is that despite their lofty positions, they are ultimately still just people. Effective communication, proper education and comprehensive information on the organization-wide benefits of cybersecurity awareness campaigns will go a long way in securing board-level support and approval.

If you were to survey your employees about aspects of their jobs that could be improved, you’d likely find better collaboration tools and meetings at the top of the list. In fact, in a PwC survey, 73% of respondents said they know of systems that would help them produce higher quality work.

While employees don’t always think executives listen to their concerns, that’s not often the source of collaboration problems. As your company grows, you’ve had to assemble your tech stack on the fly — trying your best to provide the tools employees need while staying focused on the company’s larger goals.

But eventually, you get to the point where your tech stack starts having a cumulative effect on productivity, whether for better or worse. In this article, we’ll consider some factors that can hinder or help your utilization of collaboration tools.

Under-utilization Leads to Fragmentation

The problem with collaboration tools not being used to their full potential is that it can lead to fragmentation. When employees don’t have the same tools, it becomes difficult for them to communicate and collaborate effectively. In some cases, this can even lead to employees working on different parts of the same project without realizing it.

Nowadays, there are many collaboration services available that can help your team work more effectively. These services can provide a common platform for employees to share files, communicate, and collaborate on projects. By leveraging a collaboration service, you can ensure that your team is using the same tools and is working together towards a common goal.

Choosing a collaboration service isn’t as simple as using a product the technical team finds appealing. It’s crucial to leverage data, employee input, and company goals to ensure you’re committing to the right platform.

1. Define your needs. To select the ideal collaboration service, you must first decide what you want it to do for your team. During the selection process, employee feedback is critical. Is executive opinion aligned with what employees actually need? From there, you can ask questions about your technical needs. Are you looking for something that will allow employees to share files and communicate easily, or are you looking for a service that facilitates meetings and client communication? You may also need a service that provides an all-in-one solution. Getting clarity on your actual needs will help you use your budget more effectively.
2. Research and test different services. There are many services available today, so it’s important to find one that fits your needs. In your previous analysis, you may discover that your team only lacks a rock-solid communication app. With that knowledge, you may decide to use a niche app that does the job superbly. However, it’s good to keep in mind that the biggest collaboration boosts will come from tools that allow you to do many jobs within the same ecosystem. So, while your needs today may not be as intensive, you may opt to choose your tools planning for future growth. Some popular communication apps include Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom.
3. Deploy the collaboration service. Often, deployment can be the most challenging step since it requires training, technical capabilities, and administrative management. A solid transition plan will ensure that collaboration services are deployed uniformly across departments. Additionally, instituting a regular training program will help employees make the switch faster, increasing adoption rates.

Implementing new technology can be a phase that employees dread or are excited about. Much of their feelings will depend on the groundwork you do to get buy-in from your team. You can generate excitement by including your team in the decision-making process — clearly articulating why you’re making the change and providing training. When your team is excited about the change, you’ll have the momentum you need for successful integration.

Facilitate Deployment with a Collaboration Services Partner

Many businesses hit a roadblock when they get to deployment. Their team is excited about migrating to tools that provide a holistic collaboration experience. But they lack the technical expertise and migration experience to get started. If you feel stymied by the prospect of migrating your tools, we can help.

OneNeck offers managed collaboration services that give you the tools you need without the technical headache. We partner with companies like Cisco and Microsoft to provide complete solutions that cover the A to Z of your collaboration needs. And if you’re looking for something more streamlined, we can adapt our solutions to fit your needs. Contact us to learn more.

Government agencies impact the life of everyone in the country, so they must operate as efficiently as possible. Cloud tools increase the efficiency of large organizations by offering a way to collaborate and share data with ease, but government agencies must be cautious since they need to maintain a high level of security. These requirements make Azure Government the ideal cloud solution. It offers the same features and functionality as Azure but has been specifically designed to meet the rigorous demands of government organizations. This blog provides a brief overview of Azure Government and some of its key benefits.

A Quick Look at Core Features of Azure Government

While Azure Government operates similarly to the public version in many ways, it is subject to additional compliance and security requirements — providing government agencies with the needed security and cloud flexibility. Some of the key benefits of Azure Government include:

• Enhanced security and compliance. Azure Government includes built-in security and compliance features that ensure data is protected.
• Dedicated resources. Azure Government offers each client dedicated computing resources that are not shared with other customers. Providing each client with dedicated hardware ensures that government data is stored in a secure and isolated environment.
• Flexible deployment options. Azure Government offers both on-premises and cloud-based deployment options, so organizations can choose the option that best meets their needs.
• Scalability and reliability. Azure Government is a scalable and reliable solution that can meet the needs of even the most demanding or fastest growing workloads.

If you are looking for a cloud solution to help your organization meet its compliance and security requirements, then Azure Government may be the right choice. Consider some specific ways it provides government-specific security features.

Azure Government delivers a unique blend of standard cloud and advanced security features. It offers all that you would expect from Microsoft, including encryption, role-based access control, and activity monitoring. But Azure Government goes a step further by providing many government-specific features, such as:

• A segregated cloud environment that is separate from the public Azure cloud
• Dual data control, which means that both Microsoft and the customer have access to encrypted data at all times
• Compliance with a wide range of government security standards, including the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), and Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)

Compliance with government standards makes it easier for your agency to obtain an Authority to Operate (ATO) from the Designated Approving Authority (DAA). Additionally, these security features enable government organizations to store sensitive data securely while retaining all the flexibility of a cloud solution.

Azure Government’s segregated cloud environment is one of its most important security features. Since this environment is separate from the public cloud, government data is isolated from other customers’ data. As a result, government data is protected from cyber-attacks and unauthorized access.

Another reason government organizations leverage cloud solutions is to improve their scalability. How does Azure Government perform in this area?

Azure Government Makes Your Agency More Scalable

At its heart, Azure Government is a cloud solution. By giving you the ability to auto-scale applications and provision and scale services on demand, Azure makes your infrastructure more responsive to user needs. It also simplifies provisioning new services and managing applications through a self-service portal.

Azure Government enhances scalability by offering a cost-effective way to expand your agency’s resources. You pay for only the resources you use and can easily add or remove resources as needed. It also offers discounts for volume licensing and reserved instances which can help you save money when operating in a large organization.

Drive Your Organization Forward With the Cloud

When cloud tools align with your organization’s goals, they can help you boost efficiency, increase speed, and cut costs. The challenge is finding a partner to help you tailor Azure to your needs and deploy at scale.

As a Microsoft Cloud Partner, OneNeck is uniquely positioned to help you integrate Azure into your government agency. Our services enhance your IT capabilities while reducing the complexity of managing your Azure environment. If you’re looking for a way to make your agency more scalable, contact us to learn how Azure Government can benefit your agency.

OneNeck customers dealing with electronic private healthcare information (ePHI) often ask the question is Microsoft Teams HIPAA compliant? These customers utilize M365 and Teams within their organizations and value the easy and effective collaboration it brings. Still, they are concerned about the implications of using these services when PHI is so critical to their business.

So, is Microsoft Teams HIPAA compliant?

Absolutely. However, there are steps that every organization must take to establish and maintain this compliance.

The safeguards of the HIPAA Security Rule for compliance are broken down into three main sections: technical, physical and administrative safeguards. For our purposes, we’ll primarily focus here on the necessary technical safeguards.

One of the most important technology-related security HIPAA requirements is that all ePHI must be encrypted, so only authorized users can access the data or, in the event of a breach, compromised data will be indecipherable. Another crucial security requirement is that every authorized user with access to ePHI must have a unique user identification to monitor their use. As for physical devices, technology with HIPAA compliance must have an automatic log-off feature to prevent unauthorized access if said device is left unattended.

Microsoft Teams is developed with security at the forefront of its design and is well suited to meet HIPAA security requirements. Microsoft Teams has the following safeguards in place that assist in the securing of ePHI:

• Access Controls provide users with login credentials that are unique to them, ensuring that PHI is only accessible to authorized users.
• Single sign-on (SSO) enables users to secure access to related systems with one login credential (Microsoft Teams, M365, etc.).
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) requires users to submit multiple credentials to access data (username and password, biometrics, security questions, etc.), thus certifying legitimacy.
• Audit Logs track access to ePHI to ensure observance of all the necessary standards.
• Encryption transforms ePHI into a format only accessible via a decryption key, preventing unauthorized access to data at rest and in transit.

It is essential to note that while Microsoft Teams does include the necessary security features for HIPAA compliance, in many cases, the organization and its users must properly configure specific settings along with the implementation of companywide policies ensuring the safeguards above are followed. Ultimately, your organization’s policies, IT department and users must actively work together to ensure compliance is not only initially attained but constantly maintained.

BAA (Business Associate Agreement)

Per HIPAA 45 CFR 164.504(e), a business associate agreement (BAA) is required for any organization that will process PHI on another company’s behalf. This agreement provides the required security controls, the responsibilities of the parties involved and how PHI can be used. Even with all necessary security policies and controls enabled in Microsoft Teams, it would not qualify for HIPAA compliance until a signed BAA is in place.

Fundamental aspects of a HIPAA BAA include:

• A description of how business associates are permitted and required to use PHI.
• A requirement that PHI only is used or disclosed as contracted or required by law.
• Business associates must utilize applicable security measures to ensure PHI is used in agreement with all contract terms.
• Requires reasonable steps be taken to resolve any breach as soon as one is detected.

Fortunately, Microsoft states on its website that it is willing to sign a BAA with organizations utilizing Microsoft Teams for PHI. It is important to note they also provide a disclaimer that the end user assumes the responsibility of ensuring that Microsoft Teams is configured for HIPAA compliance. Once this BAA is signed, an organization can process and store ePHI with Microsoft Teams. One additional important aspect of which to take note, is that even if an organization already has a signed BAA with Microsoft for M365 or other services, they must confirm that Microsoft Teams is specified; if not, an additional Microsoft Teams BAA is required.

Organizational Responsibility for Maintaining Teams Compliance

Even with Microsoft Teams’ built-in security controls and a signed BAA, every organization must understand that they ultimately bear the responsibility of ensuring their use of Microsoft Teams is HIPAA compliant. Organizations must place a priority on practicing the appropriate security hygiene necessary to minimize security risks.

To remain HIPAA compliant, your organization must make the security and safety of PHI paramount. This requires top-down buy-in from the entire organization. Not only must HIPAA policies and procedures be established, but appropriate security awareness training must be routinely conducted, so everyone involved understands these best practices.

Ultimately, Microsoft Teams is capable of meeting all security features and legal agreements of HIPPA compliance. Nonetheless, whatever tools are used, maintaining compliance relies on your organization and its ability to establish and enforce HIPPA policies and procedures.

The concept of managing storage is simple: as computing needs grow, you should add more storage. But doing this in a business is anything but simple. That’s because factors like speed, location, type, data architecture, access requirements, and, yes, size are all important to your storage infrastructure decisions.

On top of choosing the proper storage solutions for your current business needs, you must also plan for the future. Will the storage solution you implement today be viable in three years? How soon will it be before you need to scale your infrastructure once again? These are just a couple of questions that give your IT team nightmares.

Managed storage is when an organization outsources its storage management to a third-party provider. Depending on the organization’s needs, this may involve cloud storage, offsite storage, onsite storage, or a combination of the three.

Leverage the Benefits of Managed Storage

With a traditional storage setup, once you run into the limits of your capacity, it’s time to upgrade or add to your hardware. As your organization grows, adding to your infrastructure becomes more complex because you must fully integrate new resources and make them accessible to your team. In contrast, a managed storage provider lets you scale storage resources on demand and only pay for what you need. How does managed storage benefit availability and scalability?

• Dedicated storage administrator. One of the challenges of IT infrastructure is procuring the talent to manage essential components. Working with a managed storage provider allows you to leverage their team’s storage administrators for an instant injection of storage expertise.
• Scale with advanced hardware. When managing hardware in-house, the goal is to get the most ROI out of every component. Reaching this goal often requires teams to use hardware for as long as feasible. A managed storage provider will have access to modern infrastructure with low latency capabilities. They can also provide node-based infrastructure, which is essential for scaling out your network.
• Scalable security. Security is another concern when scaling resources since your attack surface grows as your business grows. Many teams lack the internal expertise to ensure systems stay secure. But working with a managed storage provider gives you access to their security team and partners. Your provider should also be able to adapt and secure onsite and offsite storage to fit your needs.
• Near zero downtime. Managed storage providers have the infrastructure to provide redundancies at a level that’s hard to emulate for those doing it independently. Additional redundancies make possible techniques like live migration, allowing you to move systems without taking them offline. Moreover, systems can be backed up and restored, and resources can be allocated to workloads without users experiencing a hiccup.
• Operational efficiencies. Working with a managed storage provider simplifies tasks like deploying additional resources and billing, providing an accurate view of existing storage resources. Since your storage provider takes care of management, you also remove this workload from your IT team’s plate so they can focus on company applications, services, etc.

Typical in-house storage infrastructure gets updated every three to five years, which likely happens when teams look at how well the previous system served their needs. Managed storage solutions are attuned to your business’s needs and can be optimized actively — leading to systems that perform better throughout their entire lifecycle.

Managed Storage for Your Evolving Infrastructure Needs

We don’t expect our personal computing devices to handle applications that come up five years from now (thus, the average replacement time is under three years). So, why should we expect differently from our business infrastructure where machine learning, computer vision, and blockchain applications are becoming more common?

Organizations are using their computing resources to power virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), analytics software, private clouds, and more. Managed storage provides elastic infrastructure that allows you to allocate resources for a number of different needs and manage growing user bases. But how can you get started?

OneNeck is an IT solutions provider that offers managed storage services and more. We can help you use Azure, HPE, Cohesity, Commvault, NetApp and many more solutions in your storage strategy to ensure your data is always available. If you want to control your infrastructure and save money while harnessing deep storage expertise, contact us today.

A teammate who doesn’t work well with others is a liability, and the same is true of your business’s technology. When applications and systems can’t communicate, it creates all types of problems for your team. Disparate systems hurt productivity in many ways, like having to move data manually and getting an incomplete picture of your company’s data.

Companies recognize the issues with disparate systems and have responded with solutions to overcome these hurdles. These solutions include multi-cloud and hybrid cloud computing. How do these computing methods work?

A multi-cloud setup is a cloud configuration that includes more than one cloud deployment of the same type (private or public). For example, a company may leverage several public cloud services like AWS and Azure. A hybrid cloud setup includes multiple deployment types (private and public) and integrates these deployments to work together seamlessly. For example, a company may mix a private cloud hosted by their organization with a public cloud service like Azure.

The benefit of these technologies is that they allow different systems to communicate and share data, making your team’s life easier. Both cloud setups increase the flexibility of your network and your computing potential.

The Benefits of Multi-cloud and Hybrid Cloud Computing

Moving to the cloud can improve your computing reliability and agility. In what ways? To answer that, we’ll look at the benefits of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud computing.

Flexibility. Cloud solutions give companies additional options when they upgrade their infrastructure. The hybrid cloud lets businesses keep part of their infrastructure on-premises. As a result, businesses can transition to cloud solutions incrementally. Many teams find this incremental move more feasible and less daunting.

Multi-cloud computing provides flexibility by allowing you to leverage different cloud services simultaneously. This gives your team access to additional tools and cloud providers that serve specific regions — bringing data closer to users and improving network performance.

Reliability. Outages in your infrastructure can hurt performance, stall work, and even cause you to lose customers. A reliable network isn’t one that never has issues but rather a network with contingencies that protect users from the effects of infrastructure problems.

Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud computing help you create robust backups that allow for dynamic failover switching. So, even if your system experiences an outage, it won’t impact your users. The difference between hybrid and multi-cloud is that a hybrid cloud setup will use a combination of onsite infrastructure and cloud services. In contrast, multi-cloud computing will use a mixture of cloud providers to achieve the same result.

Security. Factors like shadow IT and security requirements for sensitive data can dictate the setup of your cloud computing. Sensitive data requires fine-tuned controls that allow your organization to control access to documents and where data is stored. A hybrid setup permits organizations to store sensitive data onsite while using the cloud for other services.

Multi-cloud setups help you better assimilate shadow IT applications. For example, it may be more cost-effective and productive to embrace a new cloud application and add it to your toolset instead of migrating data from shadow IT applications. Embracing the shadow application gives IT control and visibility over these previously unmonitored applications.

Scalability. The beauty of cloud computing is that it enables businesses to respond to business growth efficiently. Instead of purchasing new infrastructure every time demand spikes, you can quickly increase and decrease computing power based on usage — keeping resources aligned with needs and avoiding over-purchasing.

A hybrid cloud setup further allows companies to keep some infrastructure onsite for lower long-term costs while leveraging cloud computing for overflow and specific application use cases.

Use the Cloud to Plan Long-Term

We know that computing infrastructure is critical to the success of our applications and services. However, we don’t know what traffic and demand will look like tomorrow. The cloud gives companies the best of both worlds by providing them with the resources they need today and the flexibility to pivot to the needs of tomorrow.

The choice between multi-cloud and hybrid cloud computing depends on your business’s requirements. OneNeck can help you analyze those requirements and make a choice that will benefit your company long-term. Talk to our team today and learn how cloud computing can supercharge your IT infrastructure.

Cloud computing is an important business tool for companies that want to improve infrastructure flexibility and scalability. It allows them to easily share resources, such as servers, storage, applications, and services over a network.

In contrast to a public cloud, where multiple organizations share resources, a private cloud is one where resources are dedicated to a single organization. Businesses may choose the private cloud over the public cloud if they want more control over their hardware or need to meet strict security requirements. They may also want to avoid losing performance when another organization’s workload hogs the machine’s resources.

There are two main options when setting up a private cloud: setting up your own on-premise hardware or working with a provider to set up a hosted private cloud. Let’s consider the differences between each option.

Differences Between Hosted and On-Premise Private Cloud Solutions

The challenge with a private cloud is that the company using it is responsible for its hardware, security, and administration. Many businesses find this too much for their current team to handle but may still need the security and control that the private cloud offers. How can they gain control without infrastructure management?

A hosted private cloud is a private cloud that is maintained and operated by a third party. This third-party manages the infrastructure and ensures that the cloud meets the customer’s needs. Resources are isolated from other clients and dedicated to a single client — allowing for a private cloud experience.

Setting up the private cloud with a hosted service is a great solution for businesses who want to move away from on-premise hardware and software but still want some level of control over their data.

Benefits of a Hosted Private Cloud:

• Complete oversight of the network
• Hardware is managed by the provider who is more likely to keep pace with emerging technology
• Access to experienced system administrators
• Full control over security to maintain strict security standards for data protection like HIPAA and other government regulations
• Infrastructure that is ready to scale
• Controlled costs that are billed as an operating expense

On the other hand, on-premise private clouds offer more control over data and infrastructure but come with a higher upfront cost and require more maintenance. Additionally, businesses can get locked into using a particular hardware vendor’s technology if they choose this option. Lock-in can create compatibility and budget concerns during future upgrades. Choosing between an on-premise or hosted private cloud will typically come down to budget, control and future requirements.

Benefits of an On-Premise Cloud:

• Complete oversight of the network
• Full control over security to maintain strict security standards for data protection like HIPAA and other government regulations
• Ability to choose specific hardware based on computing workloads
• Authority to direct future hardware upgrades and management software decisions

Both on-premise and hosted private clouds offer isolated infrastructure that protects your data from the risks of shared hardware. However, by removing the burden of hardware management, hosted private clouds become much more accessible. How can you find the right private cloud partner?

Choosing a Hosted Private Cloud Partner

While choosing a hosted provider isn’t as permanent as on-premise equipment, making the right choice will speed up deployment and integration. There are a few key steps that can help you with your consideration.

1. Make sure that the provider has a solid track record in your industry and is able to meet your specific needs.
2. Ensure that the provider has the necessary resources and expertise to help you scale and help your organization leverage the available cloud tools.
3. Review the contract’s terms and conditions carefully to make sure that you are comfortable with them.

Hosting your private cloud with a reputable provider can offer many benefits, including support and guidance as you move to the cloud.

Leverage OneNeck to get access to ReliaCloud, a hosted private cloud that provides dedicated compute resources from a Nutanix hyperconverged (web-scale) architecture. These services run in OneNeck’s data centers, where you get a managed cluster solution containing common services like hardware, cluster software, network, AOS management, hypervisor management and more.

At OneNeck, our goal is to help you protect what’s working in your core infrastructure while helping you navigate your path to IT modernization. Talk to us today about how you can build a private cloud solution that meets the demands of your workload.

So, how can business owners decide on the best IT strategy? It comes down to three requirements: administrative control, security and hardware. For example, if your business is in the healthcare or finance industry, you’ll have to abide by regulations that dictate how you handle customer data.

Additionally, if you operate in Europe, you’ll be under GDPR regulations, which may not allow you to store data on cloud servers outside of the region. As we’ll see, choosing between data center colocation and cloud computing solutions has a lot to do with how much control you need.

Cloud Computing Solutions Simplify IT Management

Cloud computing is a service typically provided by a cloud provider, wherein they offer computing resources located in their own fully managed data centers. Customers use the cloud provider’s servers, network and storage to host their data and applications — eliminating the need for IT management.

The cloud provides a low entry cost for businesses, especially smaller companies. It also facilitates scaling hardware up and down based on consumption, allowing businesses to meet fluctuating demands more easily. Cloud computing makes it easier for businesses to get up and running since they only have to worry about application and data management and can leverage the cloud provider’s support staff.

The cloud can have downsides when it comes to long-term costs and compliance. As a company’s data usage increases, its associated costs will rise. Eventually, it can reach the point where its data needs are no longer cost-effective. Furthermore, since data is stored with a third party, they may face compliance challenges. Some of which may make cloud computing unfeasible.

Data Center Colocation Provides Unparalleled Flexibility

Colocation data centers are facilities that allow companies to rent secure space for their IT resources. The colocation facility provides power, space, network connections and sometimes physical security. But the client is responsible for its own hardware, as well as its management and maintenance.

Colocation data centers help businesses expand IT infrastructure without building their own data center. Thus, companies can place computing hardware closer to users, tapping into the latency benefits of edge computing. Since they are in full control of their hardware, they can maintain compliance with regulatory and industry requirements.

Additionally, since the hardware is not shared among different companies, businesses have a smaller attack surface — improving security. However, it’s not all positive. Companies must provide their own hardware, taking care of deployment, maintenance and support. This job can be challenging if the data center is in a different region and may necessitate the hiring of remote staff.

Side-by-Side Comparison of Colocation and Cloud Computing

Work With a Partner Who Understands Cloud Computing and Colocation Requirements

Cloud computing and colocation data centers have an important place in modern business. They provide needed options for the unique requirements of different organizations. Consider a financial institution based out of California that needs to equip its office in New York with private cloud resources.

Industry regulations may dictate specific requirements on how they transmit data. Using a colocation in New York would allow the company to provide local IT resources, improving performance while maintaining control over the data. However, less stringent requirements in a different industry may make a company favor cloud computing.

A prudent computing choice will take into consideration costs, performance and accessibility. At OneNeck, we help our customers deploy both cloud and colocation solutions in their operations, as well as a myriad of hybrid solutions that bridge the gap between. Contact us to learn more.

Microsoft Announcement on Extending Audio Conferencing Capabilities

…today, we are announcing that we will add unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings across our enterprise, business, frontline, and government suites over the next few months. Even as cloud connectivity increases, we know that people join Teams meetings while they are on the go or struggling with a bad internet connection. Currently included with Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5, we have come to see dial-in as an important part of the complete Teams experience. Available with subscription in over 70 countries and with interactive support in 44 languages and dialects, unlimited dial-in provides peace of mind that users will be able to join their Microsoft Teams meeting from virtually any device regardless of location.
(Source: Microsoft’s Aug 2021 Announcement)

With the offer, anyone who is assigned the license can use unlimited dial-in minutes. There is also 60 minutes of dial-out minutes included per license, which is pooled at the tenant level and can be used by everyone with a license. If you have some end users that require a lot of dial-out licenses, an additional subscription can be added for that user.

How to Take Action and Turn On Free Microsoft 365 Audio Conferencing

If you already have Microsoft 365 Audio Conferencing licensed and configured, making the switch is quite simple:

1. Work with your CSP to request their assistance.Or, if you’re a OneNeck customer, send a service request to servicedesk@oneneck.com for the quantity needed. The quantity should be the number of office licenses you have or less.
2. Assign a license to one user, and remove the old Microsoft 365 Audio Conferencing license from that user.
3. Finally, test the functionality. While we have not had issues with the new offer, we still recommend testing in your environment.
4. Roll out to other users as you are comfortable with the process.
5. Send a request/ticket to your CSP (OneNeck if applicable) to turn off auto-renew on the old M365 Audio Conferencing subscription.

If you do not have Audio Conferencing, in addition to adding the new subscription and assigning it to users, you will need to configure Audio Conferencing. Information on the configuration can be found on Microsoft’s site.

OneNeck – We’re Here to Help

If you are an existing Microsoft client and would like to enable Audio Conferencing in your environment, we can help with our Audio Conferencing Quick Start. Let one of our experienced Microsoft architects help you choose a right-fit subscription, configure the solution and then educate your team to manage your Audio Conferencing. Add-on hours can be scheduled for additional configuration if your Teams’ policies need to be addressed.

Common Questions We Get on Microsoft Teams Audio Conferencing

What is Microsoft Teams Audio Conferencing?

Audio Conferencing in Microsoft 365 and Office 365 enables users to call in to meetings from their phones. Audio Conferencing allows up to 1000 phone attendees.

What online services/office packages now qualify for MS Teams Audio Conferencing select dial-out?

Office 365 E5 and Microsoft 365 E5 already include Audio Conferencing and you don’t need to change or add anything for those licenses. Office 365 E1, E3, and F3, Microsoft 365 E3, F1, and F3 and Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium now qualify for free audio conferencing.

What is “Unlimited dial-in?”

Unlimited dial-in is the ability to assign a phone number to a Teams meeting so that roaming users can dial-in instead of using the Internet.

What is “Select dial-out?”

Microsoft includes 60 minutes/month/license of dial-out capability. This feature can be used when on a Teams call. For example: Jim and Mike are on a call and they decide they need Doug to answer a question. Jim and Mike can add a participant using Doug’s cell # and dial-out to get him into the call. Dial-out can also be used when you lose connection during a Teams meeting. If enabled, Teams will ask if you want a call back if you lose your meeting connection.

What if I need more dial-out minutes?

You can add the Extended Dial-out Minutes to USA/CAN ($4/user/month) license to a meeting organizer and they can schedule meetings with unlimited dial-out.

What is Operator Conferencing?

With Operator Connect Conferencing capabilities, organizations can use phone numbers from a third-party operator to join Microsoft Teams meetings. If your current operator is part of the Microsoft Operator Connect program, you can add phone numbers from your operator to your Audio Conferencing bridge and use them to join meetings. Without Operator Connect Conferencing capabilities, organizations can only use phone numbers provided by Microsoft for their audio conferencing bridge. To see if your operator participates in the Microsoft Operator Connect program, see the Microsoft 365 Operator Connect directory.

In conclusion, if you’re unsure of what to do next, remember OneNeck’s Microsoft experts are here to help!

Analyzing the Pros and Cons of Cloud Storage

There’s no denying that cloud storage is convenient. The challenge is figuring out if cloud storage will provide the performance and security your business needs. Another consideration is whether your company will move 100% to the cloud or use a hybrid setup. Let’s consider a few pros and cons to help you decide which storage solution will satisfy your team’s requirements.

The Pros of Cloud Storage

• With physical infrastructure, you have to invest in hardware when you need to scale. These purchases can be costly, and they take time. Cloud storage allows you to scale up and down on-demand to keep your capacity aligned with your current business needs.
• Updated technology. It’s unlikely that your company updates its IT infrastructure very often. The competitive nature of cloud storage solutions forces providers to keep up with modern technology, giving you access to updated hardware without the costs.
• Storing your files in the cloud ensures that your people have access to important data wherever they have an internet connection. Accessibility is vital for teams with remote workforces and traveling sales people.
• Disaster recovery. Every business should have a plan for recovering its data when disaster strikes. A crucial part of these plans is an offsite location for storing data. Cloud storage is ideal for the job as it is often located in a completely separate region and providers have their own redundancies in place.

The Cons of Cloud Storage

• Security and privacy. Unless you host a private cloud, a third party will store your data. Their security policies and infrastructure will directly affect your complicity with regulatory and industry requirements. Additionally, some industries have more stringent rules for how you can store your data, like healthcare.
• Long-term costs. Depending on your storage needs, on-premise solutions can be cheaper in the long run. To understand the big picture, your procurement team needs to factor in hardware costs and upgrade frequency, bandwidth costs, and performance and accessibility requirements.
• Integration. Your systems may differ quite a bit from the data structure of some cloud providers, making integration difficult. You must make sure you have alignment beforehand to ensure a smooth transition.

Even though there are downsides to cloud storage, many solutions can be adapted to your needs — eliminating or mitigating these cons. For example, organizations that handle sensitive data can apply a hybrid approach to cloud storage. In this scenario, they may have a private storage infrastructure for data that isn’t uploaded to the cloud and use a cloud provider for other data needs. Additionally, many top-tier providers offer solutions that are compliant with strict industry regulations. How can you choose a storage solution for your company?

Tailor Data Storage to Your Needs

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for data storage. Some companies need ultra-low latency, others need scalability and accessibility, and yet others are just looking for a simple solution that can be implemented immediately. At OneNeck, we help our clients implement cloud solutions that range from a fully private cloud to a fully public cloud, and hybrid options in between.

Security and accessibility are crucial to getting the most out of your data. Our team can help you create a roadmap that prioritizes these qualities in your data storage solution. We’ll also analyze your business and technical requirements to ensure you have a final product tailored to your needs. Contact us to learn more.

SharePoint and OneDrive for Business are each great options when it comes to file-sharing software. Both are fully integrated into the Microsoft^® 365 ecosystem for easy collaboration and allow users to store, share and synchronize files across locations and devices. While they have many similarities, they also offer distinct differences. OneDrive vs SharePoint: which is the best option for your company? Can these applications be used interchangeably? Should we use them both?

These are questions raised in almost every organization.

Let’s explore how each of these applications operate and delve into some of their most common use cases.

The Similarities between OneDrive vs SharePoint

SharePoint and OneDrive both come fully integrated into the M365 environment. Each application stores files in the cloud and utilizes Microsoft’s data center infrastructure to securely store and move your files. As part of Microsoft 365, each application allows users to access their files from anywhere with internet access. Both can allow for access by other users to facilitate collaboration within a team. At their core, the two applications appear to serve very similar functions.

Common Features:

• Cloud storage: Both offer cloud storage via Microsoft cloud space environment, meaning data is securely stored in Microsoft’s geo-redundant network of data centers.
• Security: Both options enjoy the same enterprise level of security (SSL/TLS connection) guaranteed by Microsoft for all its M365 applications.
• Global access: As part of the cloud-based M365 suite, SharePoint and OneDrive are accessible from virtually anywhere connected to the Internet.
• Syncing to local storage: Both options offer the ability to sync to a local drive, either manually or via automation.

The Differences Between OneDrive vs SharePoint

While SharePoint and OneDrive share several characteristics, they also contain several distinct features that allow for significant differences in their usage.

The fundamental difference between SharePoint and OneDrive is the type of file being stored. OneDrive is primarily used for the storage of personal files. These could be early drafts, incomplete projects, or files that contain confidential information. By default, these files will be accessible only via an individual’s account. One does have the ability to make them available to share with select individuals at any point. Still, this permission needs to be given by the user before any others in the organization can access them. Collaboration can be easily accomplished within a team via OneDrive, but it will usually be on a more intentionally narrow scope.

SharePoint is Microsoft’s original workspace, designed for collaboration and productivity. Files placed here will immediately be accessible by an entire team. It is a content management system whose scope can range from small teams to an entire company and even those outside the organization. Accessibility to others is not just a feature of SharePoint; it is the goal. SharePoint is where content created within Teams and Outlook is stored. Users can see what other team members have opened and if anyone has updated a file. Team members can also easily track changes and quickly revert to previous versions of any file.

SharePoint has another unique aspect that differentiates it from OneDrive, the ability to create a modern intranet. This feature allows an organization to create a site that can only be accessed by its employees or on more minor scales to include select members of a particular team.

Common Organizational Intranet Uses:

• Human Resources (onboarding, payroll, benefits, etc.)
• Training
• DevOps
• Organizational specific applications

Determining Factors for Your Organization

Most organizations will decide on using both in some capacity. But for an individual or team choosing where they should store specific files, the answer will be determined by a few key aspects.

Purpose of the File ­­— Determining the purpose of the file will go a long way in deciding whether to use SharePoint or OneDrive. Why is the file being produced, and who needs to see it? The intended audience is critical. Is this meant to be viewed company-wide or sent confidentially to a customer?

Who is Working on the Project — Is the file produced by an individual, or is this a team project? A single user working independently on a project may choose to store the files in OneDrive until they are ready to be more widely dispersed. Files involving many users, or ones that require input from multiple sources, will be a more natural fit for the features found within SharePoint.

Workflow of the Team — Files should be saved according to how and where a team works! Ultimately, determining which application will be the most effective likely comes down to what team members are willing to use. SharePoint, in particular, requires a high level of buy-in from an organization and its teams to be effective. If all team members follow consistent procedures of uploading files to and editing documents within SharePoint, seamless collaboration can occur.

The Choice: Probably Both

Both SharePoint and OneDrive are robust cloud-based collaboration and storage solutions. OneDrive is a personal file storage solution where the individual to whom the drive belongs manages access. The user decides both the when and what of file sharing. Organizations use SharePoint for many purposes, from file storage to enabling intranet portals, pages and business applications.

In the end, it is impossible to say that one of these applications is better than another. It is more about an organization assessing their needs and workflow practices to determine where SharePoint or OneDrive will be most effective. Both, when used effectively, whether independently or in conjunction, are extremely powerful and productive collaborative tools.

OneNeck Has Your Back!

Need more information on SharePoint, OneDrive or any of the collaborative tools found in Microsoft 365? OneNeck can help. We are a Gold Certified Microsoft partner, and our expert team is here to help you choose, implement and optimize the right-fit M365 subscription plan for your business. We’ll help your organization thrive in the Modern Workplace with a secure, cost-effective solution that allows your team to be productive from anywhere!

The question is no longer if your company should invest in the cloud, but rather how much of your organization’s resources must go towards cloud-based infrastructure and services. In 2020 over 90% of all organizations used public cloud services (Source: DevOps) while spending over $50 billion.

Cloud usage will only increase as the world evolves from traditional on-premises models to the Modern Workplace. Estimates suggest spending could surge to nearly $800 billion by 2025 and that enterprise spending on the cloud will comprise nearly 15% of IT revenue. (Source: Cision)

Organizations will continue to further move their workflows to the cloud due to the efficiency, flexibility and cost savings that cloud computing provides. The prospect of cost-saving is, for many, a leading factor in the transition and increased utilization of the cloud. It will likely then come as a shock to learn that in 2020, “cloud waste” accounted for a nearly $18 billion drain on company resources. (Source: Gartner)

What is Cloud Waste?

Cloud waste is defined as the purchase of cloud resources that are underutilized or, in many instances, go completely unused. This wasted spend increases operating costs and prevents using those resources in other areas of your business. So how do so many companies waste money trying to save money? There are two primary culprits that lead to cloud waste, overprovisioning and idle resources.

• Overprovisioning of resources means that an organization pays for more resource capacity than it needs. Think of buying an expensive sports car when you could bike a few blocks to work. While all organizations desire capacity for continued growth, in many cases, the cloud resources invested are well beyond a company’s immediate needs. Simply put, your company should not be paying for infrastructure and other resources that you rarely or never use.
• Idle resources are what exist between your maximum computing load and the actual load your company uses. While it certainly makes sense for organizations to plan for periods of increased consumption, there is often a significant gap between what is used on a typical basis (even what is consumed during peak activity) and the maximum load available.

Steps to Minimize Cloud Waste

So, where do you start when setting out to minimize cloud waste?

• Effectively Estimating Capacity – Think before you purchase and ensure you accurately assess current and future needs.
• Monitoring and Auditing – Closely track and audit your usage to discover under-used or idle resources.
• Optimize Your Cloud Footprint – Find the right-size cloud infrastructure for your needs and continually optimize your investment as your cloud service needs evolve.
• Automate Cloud Management/Scaling – Establish processes, and automate where possible, to direct resources where they are needed during usage fluctuations and release or shut down any idle resources.

OneNeck Has Your Back

If avoiding cloud waste was easy, the problem would not exist on such a massive scale. The steps mentioned above will limit the resources wasted in cloud computing, but how does a company estimate capacity, consistently monitor usage, as well as automate and optimize its cloud footprint?

OneNeck is a partner who has proven experience in hosting and managing both cloud and hybrid infrastructures. Our expert team can provide you with thorough IT Assessment Services to ensure that you understand how your current network is operating today and what its capabilities are for the future.

Utilizing OneNeck’s Cloud Cost Optimization service will uncover inefficient uses of your cloud resources. It can help identify exactly how much you are spending and where and how the waste can be eliminated. OneNeck knows that cloud cost optimization is not a one-time instance but an ongoing practice. Let us become a member of your cost management team so that you can focus on what you do best.

There’s been a lot of changes happening in recent months around Microsoft’s license pricing (aka New Commerce Experience), and most recently, Microsoft announced new pricing is coming for Microsoft 365, directly impacting nonprofits. On September 1, 2022, the following nonprofit price updates* will go into effect:

• Enterprise: Office 365 E1: $2.50 (from $2), Office 365 E3: $5.75 (from $4.50), Office 365 E5: $15.20 (from $14), Microsoft 365 E3: $9 (from $8)

  Note that up 2000 seats of Office 365 E1 continue to be available as a grant via an Enterprise Agreement for eligible users, if they meet the requirement of 250 paid users of qualifying products.

• SMB products: Business Premium: $5.50 (from $5)

  Note that up to 10 seats of Microsoft 365 Business Premium continue to be available as a grant. 300 seats of Microsoft 365 Business Basic continue to be available as a grant as well.

• Also note they are NOT changing pricing for Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft Business Standard, or the Frontline SKUs.

Why is the price of Microsoft 365 changing at this time?

This reflects the significant value that Microsoft has added to Microsoft 365 over the past decade and maintains the 60-75% nonprofit discount level they have had in place since 2013.

This change builds on the product innovation Microsoft has delivered over the past ten years to meet the changing needs of their customers. Since its initial release, they’ve added 25 new apps and over 1,400 features including:

• The introduction of Microsoft Teams as the only solution with meetings, chats, calls, collaboration, and the ability to automate business processes.
• Added capabilities like data loss prevention (DLP) for documents and emails, Office messaging encryption, and attack surface reduction capabilities.
• New AI-supported capabilities that help automate tasks, more easily find information in a timely manner, and enables communication in ways that are more accessible for everyone.
• Unlimited audio-conferencing dial-in across all Microsoft/Office 365 suites for nonprofits and Microsoft Defender security value into both Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 Business Premium

How will this price change impact existing customers?

Existing customers are not impacted until their next renewal on or after September 1, 2022.

*Pricing indicated is equivalent to USD in your local currency.

We’ve got your back.

If you have questions about any of Microsoft’s recent price updates, our Microsoft experts are here to help you understand your options and optimize your Microsoft license investment.

Advances in technology are happening faster than ever. Just look at the increase of patents filed every year. No wonder business leaders feel the pressure to deliver applications and services at mach speed. But a common challenge they run into is that siloed development infrastructure makes fast development difficult. This is where Azure DevOps can help. DevOps was developed to tear down the walls between departments, improving communication and collaboration.

However, working in a high-tech environment means that DevOps is extremely challenging to implement without the proper tools. Azure DevOps is a collection of developer services that help teams get past this. According to Microsoft, the tool set is designed to help teams plan work, collaborate on code development, and build and deploy applications.

The following sections will discuss what Azure DevOps is, why teams choose it, and how you can get started with Azure.

What Does the Azure DevOps Platform Include?

Azure DevOps is a flexible platform that provides users the tools they need to work efficiently in the DevOps framework. It gives its users flexibility by allowing them to work in the cloud or deploying it as an on-premises server solution. The platform has five main components that provide a complete DevOps solution.

1. Azure Repos. Repos are version control tools that help track changes made to your code over time. When edits are made to the code, snapshots are saved, which you can revert to if needed. Version control is an indispensable tool for developers making changes at a rapid pace as it allows them to easily undo errors introduced into the system.

2. Azure Pipelines. Pipelines automatically build and test code projects. It uses continuous integration and continuous delivery principles to test, build, and ship anywhere. Continuous integration is a DevOps technique that allows developers to catch bugs early and improve code quality. And continuous delivery helps ensure teams can keep up a high-velocity development environment.

3. Azure Boards. Agile, Scrum, and Kanban are all integral DevOps processes. Azure Boards provide native support as well as configurable dashboards, calendar views, and integrated reporting that help improve project and issue tracking in your organization.

4. Azure Test Plans. Testing is crucial to quality control and needs to happen quickly in a DevOps environment. Azure Test Plans provides a browser-based test management solution that provides the capability needed for planned manual testing, user acceptance testing, and exploratory testing. It also has tools for gathering feedback from stakeholders.

5. Azure Artifacts. Software artifacts can help developers create development roadmaps that save time, improve flexibility, and make software easier to upgrade and maintain. Azure Artifacts can be used alongside Azure Pipelines to deploy packages, publish build artifacts, and integrate files between pipeline stages.

Azure DevOps provides developers with the tools to collaborate and code efficiently — living up to the DevOps philosophy.

Azure DevOps is backed by one of the biggest names in technology: Microsoft. It offers powerful features, including quick setup, centralized control, and robust security. Azure is built around collaboration which is essential to DevOps. Tools like Azure Boards facilitate communication and help team members to understand what everyone is working on.

Additionally, Azure is an open platform that plays well with other tools like Slack and AWS. As a result, companies don’t have to change their tech stack completely to use Azure. In fact, Azure DevOps services can be used on a standalone basis if users don’t need all the platform’s features.

Another core tenet of DevOps is continuous integration and delivery. Azure DevOps services, like Azure Pipeline, facilitate implementing the CI/CD methodology. With so many moving parts in a large organization, it’s no wonder that people choose a platform like Azure to streamline their DevOps integration.

The Right Partner Can Help You Deploy DevOps Faster

Your IT team works hard to support your development team and business applications. It’s unlikely that they have the bandwidth to research different options and implement large-scale solutions. Our team at OneNeck has the hands-on Microsoft experience to answer your questions and get you up and running quickly.

As a Microsoft Cloud Service Provider, we understand the challenges of adopting a new DevOps solution. Leverage our expertise to harness the collaborative capabilities of Microsoft Azure in your business. Contact us today.

Businesses are increasingly dependent on technology. And data is essential to the efficiency of that technology as well as future business decisions. With its increased use in business operations comes a larger attack surface. So, shouldn’t companies that prioritize technology also prioritize security?

Yes, especially when you consider the frequency that malware is released. The  AV-TEST Institute registers over 450,000 new malicious programs and potentially unwanted applications every day. On top of that, remote work has exploded since the beginning of the pandemic. The sheer volume of malware and growing endpoints, especially unknown endpoints from BYOD, has put a spotlight on security concerns.

This new environment has pushed companies to look for advanced security solutions that can protect against more intelligent and widespread malware. Endpoint security is designed to be that advanced solution.

What is endpoint security?

Endpoints are devices connected to your company’s network. These can range from servers, personal computers, mobile devices, and even IoT devices like smartwatches. When you consider the range of devices, it’s easy to see why there are security concerns. But to fully protect enterprise infrastructure, a new layer is needed.

Traditional antivirus software methods take a preventative approach to security, intercepting known threats before they enter the system. While this is an important security component, the sheer quantity of malware created daily means that databases will always have gaps in knowledge. Additionally, antivirus software is typically installed and managed at the user level, restricting the control and access capabilities of security admins.

Endpoint security improves on traditional antivirus technologies in several key ways:

• Continuous detection capabilities. With large amounts of malware created every day, it’s unlikely that your preventative defenses will recognize every threat and be able to defend against them. Endpoint security continuously monitors devices on the network to detect abnormal file behavior, leveraging AI and machine learning. It can then add new malware entries to the cloud for preventative detection.
• Cloud-based malware registry. Antivirus software used to rely on downloadable databases to ensure your software was updated on the latest malware. However, this process depends on user updates which are slower and unreliable. Cloud-based solutions allow endpoints to share a single database that’s always updated with known threats — eliminating security holes from endpoints that are slow to update.
• Unified admin controls. Managing an organization full of devices is hard enough, but the challenge is multiplied when using varied software solutions and processes. Endpoint security provides a single dashboard for all users and devices. Additionally, security admins have the needed controls to act when threats arise.

By combining preventative security with continuous detection and response capabilities, endpoint security helps companies defend against a growing number of threats.

Secure Your Network with OneNeck and Cisco

Data is one of your business’s most valuable assets and is also one of the most vulnerable. Security admins must protect devices that vary widely and are located in different regions, even more so since COVID has pushed many companies to leverage remote work in their operations. OneNeck partners with best-in-breed partners like Cisco to provide modern endpoint security that helps keep your data safe.

Endpoint protection is designed to prevent known threats, detect new ones, and respond to eliminate them promptly. Cisco Secure Endpoint uses the cloud to provide the latest threat intelligence, as well as advanced algorithms to detect new threats and rapidly respond to them — isolating the endpoint to mitigate damage and remediating malware across all devices.

Cisco Secure Endpoint brings together endpoint protection platform (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities in a unified solution, and it eliminates the need to manage separate solutions for complete coverage while simplifying deployment and management tasks.

OneNeck Simplifies the Integration of Your Security Solution

Security is essential, but we realize it’s only one piece of your network. Time is limited, and you need solutions that work reliably and reduce the complexity. OneNeck can advise you on the strategies and solutions you need to keep your endpoints safe and protect your data. Contact us to learn how you can protect against threats in real-time.

For organizations using .NET 5.0, you’d better take note of Microsoft’s recent announcement. .NET 5.0 will reach end of support on May 8, and after the .NET May 2022 updates, Microsoft will no longer provide updates including security fixes or technical support for this version.

.NET and .NET Core refer to several technologies including the runtime, ASP.NET Core, and Entity Framework Core. Looking for the support policy for another part of the .NET platform? See the .NET Support Policy page.

The following table tracks release dates and end of support dates for .NET and .NET Core versions.

So, what should .NET 5.0 customers do? It’s time to migrate your applications to .NET 6.0. You can download .NET 6.0 from the .NET website.

For more information about installing the newest version of .NET, check out this informative Microsoft blog.

And, as always, if you have any questions, our Microsoft experts are here ready to help.

People are a business’s most important asset. However, it’s harder than ever to attract and retain top talent in today’s labor market. The market favors employees, and people aren’t willing to put up with toxic environments or stagnating companies. Thus, businesses need to create a modern workplace that keeps employees happy and engaged. So, what do people want?

Gone are the days when businesses could offer a slightly higher wage and expect employees to flock to them. People are looking past salary to other benefits, like remote work capabilities. In fact, in a FlexJobs survey, 52% of men and 60% of women stated they would quit if they could not continue to work remotely. Remote work has gone from a nice perk to an expectation. And this shift has compelled businesses to adapt their technology and workplaces to accommodate changing expectations.

Helping your business evolve from a traditional office to a modern workplace is challenging. However, the right technology and infrastructure can simplify your transition.

Leverage Technology During Your Transition to a Modern Workplace

Transitioning to a modern workplace permanently requires that business leaders rethink employee workspaces. It’s no longer true that employees need to be in the same building to collaborate seamlessly. Tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Asana, and SharePoint help facilitate communication, project management, and collaboration among teams regardless of their location.

However, remote work does present some technical challenges. For example, it’s not easy to create a software stack where everything is connected seamlessly. This disconnect can be frustrating to employees and slow down productivity. Another challenge is that remote work often requires that companies provide cloud computing capabilities and secure connections to on-premise data — ensuring that teams have access to mission-critical applications.

Businesses are solving the modern workplace challenges by working with full-service IT partners who can provide both the technology and infrastructure to empower their remote teams. IT infrastructure is essential to leveraging technologies like virtualization and hyperconverged infrastructure, which enable businesses to manage incoming computing requests dynamically and give employees access to the needed software. Additionally, there are many positive business outcomes from transitioning to a modern workplace.

The working environment of a modern workplace is designed to meet your business’s physical and technological needs and those of your employees. It’s only reasonable that these needs would change as society’s norms and expectations transform. Business leaders that approach the transition to a modern workplace with a positive mindset experience the following five advantages:

1. Draw talent from a global workforce. Enabling remote work in your organization expands your talent pool to a worldwide candidate list from those in your immediate area. This prospect gives businesses more flexibility in times of labor shortage and allows them to find the absolute best in their industry.
2. Improve connections between customers and partners. Think about how much more comfortable we’ve become with video conferencing and other interactive web tools. For example, in traditional fields like appliance repair, teams can video chat through a company portal, review the customer’s issue and respond with precision.
3. Lower overhead from physical infrastructure. With more people working from home, companies can lower physical office costs by embracing the modern workplace. Companies can then pass these savings on to employees to help improve their home office equipment while still improving their bottom line.
4. Better integrated software. Businesses that ensure that employees can collaborate effortlessly, and that software works together seamlessly, enhance areas like customer service and business operations. For example, when employees aren’t spending their time troubleshooting or moving data from one application to another, they are more efficient – boosting profitability.
5. Promote future IT investments. When your day-to-day work depends on your IT infrastructure, it’s easier to get leadership buy-in for future IT investments. This mindset shift can promote a culture of innovation and help your business respond with agility to future changes.

Building a modern workplace can make your business more technologically and operationally sound. These changes are already happening everywhere. The only difference is that the companies that embrace the change will be better integrated and better able to lead their industry.

OneNeck Can Help

We’ve discussed the challenges inherent in modernizing your workplace. But, you don’t have to do it alone. OneNeck can give you the tools to transition into a modern workplace. We’ve got you covered, from software stacks based on Cisco and Microsoft technologies to cloud, hybrid cloud, and colocation infrastructure resources. Let’s talk about how you can embrace the modern workplace. Contact us today.

How would you like to pay your employees to do nothing? Paying people for nothing is not likely in your business plan. But without sufficient preparation, that’s exactly what many companies do when faced with a disaster or an outage. Systems go down for hours, days, or even weeks, and operations get shut down.

The consequences of critical systems going down for extended periods are self-explanatory. To protect your company, it’s important to prepare for disasters before they disrupt operations. The first step in tackling this daunting task is understanding the fundamentals of backup and disaster recovery.

Learn the Differences Between Backups and Disaster Recovery

Owning a parachute doesn’t mean you can use it in an emergency. The same holds true for using your backups. While it’s essential to make regular backups, you may not have a plan for how to use them during a natural disaster or outage. This example brings us to the first point: What’s the difference between making backups and disaster recovery?

• A backup is a copy of your data. Backups can be stored on-premise, in the cloud, or a combination of the two. Additionally, they can be performed continuously or intermittently.

• Disaster recovery refers to the plans and processes you’ll use to recover your data and applications (using your backups) after an outage. These plans will vary depending on the type of outage, which can range from a simple server glitch to a natural disaster.

For your plans to be successful, you need both a backup strategy that considers your company’s needs and a disaster recovery plan that helps you effectively use your backup data.

When you experience an outage, speed is critical. The longer employees sit idle, and applications are unavailable to your clients and team, the more damage it will do to your business. Planning is essential if you want to get your hardware applications running quickly. Below are five steps to help you cover the critical areas of backup and disaster recovery:

1. Prioritize your business’s most vulnerable applications and data. While you’d like to get everything restored after an outage immediately, some applications will impact your business more than others. For example, a financial institution’s customer portal is more important than the software the development team uses to design new features. So start by evaluating which data and applications impact immediate operations the most.
2. Calculate how long you can be without your applications. Gauging available recovery time is crucial to choosing the methods you’ll employ for disaster recovery. You’ll have different processes for applications that need to be restored immediately compared with those that can wait a few days. This knowledge will help you establish your recovery time objective (RTO), which is the time it takes to recover normal business operations.
3. Determine how much data you can stand to lose. It may seem counterintuitive to plan on losing data, but it’s essential for determining your backup frequency. If losing even a small amount of data is unacceptable, then your team may opt for continuous backups.
4. Choose where you’ll back up your data. Once you know your backup frequency and restoration needs, you should also consider your data privacy requirements. These three factors will help you determine backup location. For example, if speed is of the essence, you may choose a hybrid cloud model where data is stored both on-premises for speed and in the cloud for better distribution. Either way, a good rule of thumb is to store backup data in separate locations in case the disaster impacts your physical location.
5. Document your restoration strategy. If you’re working with a disaster recovery plan that’s managed for you, your provider will handle failover during an outage. In a more hands-on approach, you’ll need to determine when and how your backup servers will activate during an outage as well as how you’ll handle power failures and the other effects of a natural disaster. Everything should be documented, easy to access, and in a format conducive to training.

A lot more detail and planning will go into your backup and disaster recovery plans, but these are some great steps to help you start the conversation. If you get stuck, don’t feel that you have to navigate the process alone.

Work With a Partner to Manage Backup and Disaster Recovery

A backup and disaster recovery plan is essential to a speedy response that mitigates the damage of an outage. However, navigating cloud backup and recovery options can be daunting. OneNeck’s team is experienced in both and can help you traverse the topic successfully.

Our managed backup services are hands-on and ensure that your backups are monitored continuously and always ready when you need them. We also tailor our disaster recovery solutions to your unique needs to ensure your applications are prioritized correctly. Contact us if you’d like to learn more about our managed backup and disaster recovery solutions.

Gartner expects end-user spending on public cloud services to grow 23.1% in 2021 to total $332.3 billion. This growth is why more companies are moving essential business processes to the cloud. And as mobile, web, and desktop applications become increasingly crucial to everyday operations and customer experience, growth will continue. How should businesses respond?

It would be a mistake to ignore the growth in cloud computing. However, before moving everything to the cloud, organizations must determine which business functions can benefit from cloud-based tools and applications — and how they plan to migrate from local to cloud-based services. To help with this analysis, we’ll look at five ways Microsoft Azure can improve business operations.

Supercharge Your Business Operations with Microsoft Azure

Managing business operations is a balancing act, and efficiencies add up to greater margins as you scale. Microsoft’s scalable pricing model allows companies of all sizes to improve their business operations using Azure. Microsoft Azure can help streamline the following areas:

1. Responsive marketing. If you ask your marketing team what they need, they’ll most likely say resources. Teams are constantly scrambling to release the next campaign. Marketing is finicky and requires a combination of skill, timing, and marketing collateral to be effective. Azure allows marketing teams to create new web applications for campaigns in minutes by leveraging templates. Marketing teams can then A/B test different assets and keep a pulse on how everything is doing using Azure’s advanced analytics.
2. Personalized sales. Sales are integral to overall business health and growth. Leveraging Azure’s cloud tools can help you empower your sales team with essential data for finding prospects and closing deals. Three factors that greatly affect sales are customer relationships, employee performance, and data accessibility. Azure gives you access to customer relationship management (CRM) software, cloud-based project management, and real-time reports. These tools enable your team to approach customers with the most accurate data and help business leaders keep track of team performance and needs.
3. Improved customer service and engagement. Customers are more likely to stay loyal and purchase more from a company they believe delivers superior value. One way companies can use Azure to improve engagement is by leveraging application analytics. This tool can be used to measure application performance as well as collect data that measures convenience, personalization, and trust. Then, using Azure’s intelligent cloud, you can tie all of this data together to gain a complete picture of your customers and how you can improve their experience.
4. Immersive e-commerce. Shopping online is an immersive experience. A customer may start their shopping journey looking for a specific product only to find that personalized recommendations and the ease of the application have them looking at much more. However, a dynamic environment requires more than a static website. Microsoft tools like Application Insights and Azure’s app service help you ensure that your e-commerce website can scale with ease, perform as intended, and provide the needed analytics to improve the shopping experience.
5. Advanced decision-making. Data and analytics are essential to making informed business decisions. Azure provides tools that help gather, organize, and analyze data to extract useful insights. Their tools range from Azure Synapse Analytics, which allows you to load any number of data sources from on-premise and cloud locations and analyze it in SQL, to Azure Machine Learning, which allows you to apply ML algorithms to your business problems.

Your organization can likely benefit from improvements in one or more of these areas. But you may be wondering what it will take to get started with Azure.

OneNeck Can Help You Implement Azure in Your Business

Microsoft Azure is a powerful tool for any business in the cloud. Azure allows companies to build, manage, and deploy custom web applications using the tools and frameworks they’re most comfortable with. But migrating business-critical applications can be daunting since most businesses can’t afford downtime in those areas.

OneNeck is a top Microsoft Partner. We can leverage our experience to help you avoid the challenges common to migrating systems to the cloud. Additionally, we’ll ensure your installation is optimized for your business so that you’re taking advantage of the features that will have the greatest impact. Contact us to learn more.

What is the New Commerce Experience?

Microsoft has many licensing programs that often contradict, overlap and confuse the entire industry, and they recently launched a New Customer Experience platform that enables them to sell products under fewer, more aligned programs.  Their goal is to help customers be more flexible, move faster and, ultimately, provide greater value.  The end vision is that customers will buy through the Microsoft website, through a Microsoft sales rep, or through the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) program and only need to sign one contract.  They are accomplishing this goal over many years, as  Azure was moved to the New Customer Experience platform over the last two years, and now licensing is being moved.

Microsoft provides licensing subscriptions for products like Microsoft 365, Power BI, Exchange Online, etc.  Today those subscriptions are ordered for a term (1 Year) and then auto-renew on their anniversary date.  For several years, Microsoft has allowed CSPs like OneNeck to reduce the number of licenses or even suspend a subscription, and the CSP was not charged by Microsoft, nor the customer charged by the CSP.  This was often discussed with clients as being a Pay-As-You-Go monthly model and a benefit of partnering with a CSP.  All subscriptions were set to auto-renew, because you could change them at any time.  Now Microsoft has labeled the old program the “legacy” program and is discontinuing those products over the next year and a half (to be completed June 30^th, 2023).

As the New Commerce Experience products replace the legacy products, you will still see the same or very similar names like M365 Business Premium; however, the rules for ordering and managing the subscriptions have changed.

• Microsoft is now enforcing the cancellation policy, and you will no longer be able to reduce or cancel a subscription after 168 hours from order.
• You can add to a subscription at the same rate anytime during the contract, or you can upgrade to a higher level package, but you cannot reduce or cancel it.  A service provider can schedule the cancellation or reduction, but it will not occur until the end of the term.
• Microsoft has added a new monthly term subscription at a 20% premium to provide flexibility when you cannot commit to a full year. The monthly term subscriptions are available for most, but not all, products.
• When a New Commerce Experience subscription is created, it is automatically set to renew at the end of the term – auto-renewal.  The service provider has the option to go back in after the order and uncheck the box, giving the client the ability to automatically cancel the subscription unless a manual renewal occurs.

Toggling Auto-renew

As of October 14, 2021, newly purchased licensing subscriptions (NCE) are set to auto-renew at their designated renewal date as a default, but this auto-renew component can be toggled on and off.  Software subscriptions purchased before October 14, 2021 don’t have auto-renew turned on and are not eligible for auto-renew to be applied. If a software subscription is either ineligible for auto-renew, or auto-renew is turned off, a partner can see the expiration date on the subscription detail page; otherwise, a renewal date is visible.

There are implications to unchecking the box.  If a subscription is not renewed by the expiration, a grace period starts.  The grace period is 7 days for a monthly subscription and 30 days for an annual subscription.  If you renew the subscription after the expiration, the term will start back immediately after the expiration date, and there is a risk of loss of service or even loss of data.

Microsoft has added a new change scheduling feature that can be used as a best practice to control the expiration.  If you want a subscription to expire or change, we can schedule the cancellation or reduction to occur on the expiration date.  This can be planned well in advance and is our recommended approach because it has the lowest risk to availability of the service and associated data.

We’re here to help.

There is a lot to wade through when it comes to these licensing changes, and most IT professionals are too busy to dig into them – but we’re here to help. We can review your current Microsoft licensing and make recommendations for optimizing your spend, making sure you get the most from your Microsoft investment.

Microsoft Azure Synapse Database Analytics is one of Azure’s primary data services, tasked with analytics and data warehousing. In fact, it is a rebranding of Azure SQL Data warehouse.

It brings together data warehousing and big data analytics by integrating ingestion pipelines, Spark clusters, Azure Data Lake and both serverless and dedicated SQL pools. As it sits, it is a powerful and useful service bring “data lakehouse” like functionality into an Azure Data Service. Microsoft is calling the result of using these templates “lake databases.”

What is a Lake Database?

Microsoft defines “Lake Database” as follows:

“The lake database in Azure Synapse Analytics enables customers to bring together database design, meta information about the data that is stored and a possibility to describe how and where the data should be stored. Lake database addresses the challenge of today’s data lakes where it is hard to understand how data is structured.”

The below diagram shows how all components of Azure Synapse Analytics are tied together:

Azure Synapse Database Templates

At the Ignite 2021 Conference, Microsoft announced a new feature for Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Synapse Database Templates. These templates are industry specific blueprints that provide comment elements to ensure best practices, governance and analytic needs. This feature is currently in preview and launched with six database templates:

• Banking
• Consumer Goods
• Fund Management
• Life Insurance & Annuities
• Property & Casualty Insurance
• Retail

Database templates address core requirements of an industry and contain a supporting set of business area templates and one or more enterprise templates. Something that Microsoft considers important to all industries is emission and carbon management. In the available templates are databases that will allow companies to track and report their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions.

What Are Synapse Database Templates?

They are standardized templates for the above industries. They allow organizations to easily and quickly create a database model for their organizations needs. Using the templates will allow you to create your lake database and then leverage the Azure Synapse analytical runtime to provide insights to your analytics team and business leaders.

Business Area Templates provide a comprehensive subject area data models. You will get tables and columns relevant to your particular business. Enterprise templates contain a subset of tables that will be of organizational interest for a specific industry. Think of enterprise templates as the glue between multiple business area templates.

As the product matures more templates will be added, so stay tuned. Also remember that this has just been announced for Public Preview, so expect some changes as it moves to General Availability (GA).

Businesses today face daunting technological challenges. Customers expect uninterrupted service from anywhere and want it faster than ever. However, delivering digital applications and services requires immense amounts of computing resources, especially if they’re being delivered globally.

For this reason, many large organizations employ a cloud or hybrid cloud model. These models allow them to leverage the computing infrastructure of a cloud provider to augment their own resources. This article will look at seven reasons why Microsoft Azure is the solution of choice for many organizations.

7 Microsoft Azure Benefits

1. Speed to deployment. One of the most important metrics in the technology industry is speed. The faster a company can release updates, fixes, new features, etc., the easier it is to keep users happy and engaged. Azure’s benefits go beyond simple metrics like page speed. It helps companies quickly create, test and deploy new applications as well as scale infrastructure and perform recovery actions.With over 1,000 quick-start templates, you don’t have to start from scratch when building cloud tools. Additionally, Azure automates the configuration of virtual machines, infrastructure management, and deployment and delivery — greatly increasing your development velocity.

3. Pay for what you use. Azure’s pricing model charges customers for what they use. This makes it easy for companies to start small and scale up as they migrate to the cloud in a sustainable way.
4. Flexible scalability. Azure gives companies the power to quickly scale their storage, computing and support resources with the click of a button. In contrast, when companies upgrade their physical resources, they’re stuck with them even if workloads drop. This means a large investment could be wasted. Businesses using Azure can adjust resources based on current usage, allowing them to adapt quickly to changing needs. Additionally, Azure plays well with open-source technologies, making it easy to connect applications that use a variety of coding languages.
5. Full suite of services, fully integrated. With a traditional development environment, it’s unlikely that all of your services will be connected. This makes testing more of a challenge when it’s time to release a new update or feature, as they are more likely to break parts of your ecosystem. Azure is built with a full suite of services within the development environment, meaning that updates can be accurately tested before being released to the public.
6. Preloaded with analytics. Azure makes getting business insights easier by providing users with a number of analytics tools within its ecosystem. These include tools like Azure Data Lake Analytics that help users run massively parallel data transformation and processing tools in U-SQL, R, Python, and .NET.
7. Built-in disaster recovery. Azure’s cloud-based backups allow you to speed up the time it takes to perform system backups and recovery functions. You can also leverage a hybrid cloud setup to benefit from the performance of the cloud while harnessing long-term cost savings of on-premise infrastructure.  Azure also provides a sandbox environment where you can test applications in a live environment, helping ensure that they work as expected when made available to customers — reducing the frequency that you must use recovery features. This environment allows users to test new versions with live data to ensure a smooth rollout.
8. Enhanced security. Most companies don’t have unlimited IT budgets, and the level of security that can be provided on-premises is limited to their investment and expertise. Microsoft spends over a billion dollars each year in its efforts to improve security. When using Azure, you benefit from this security investment without overextending your resources. Azure also has over 90 compliance certifications such as GDPR and HIPAA. These certifications are indispensable in industries like healthcare, finance and government.
   

   Embrace the cloud with Microsoft Azure

   If you’re looking to expand your cloud infrastructure or begin your journey to the cloud, Microsoft Azure can help. With Azure, you’ll get enhanced security, advanced backup and recovery, and quick scalability that fits your business needs. Microsoft is also an essential tool for organizations undergoing a digital transformation. Empower your business with analytics, flexible infrastructure and the tools needed for a modern workplace.

   OneNeck is a top Microsoft partner. We can help you analyze your business case and technical requirements to understand where Azure fits best into your business and how you can implement it. Contact us to learn more.

Microsoft has announced their first price increase for Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services in a decade. These price increases will go into effect in early 2022.  There are two components to the price increase:

• Microsoft Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) increases.
• Microsoft Office 365 increases.

Microsoft SPLA Price Increases

At OneNeck, we offer Microsoft licensing to our clients through the SPLA program for Microsoft Windows operating systems and applications.  This is a convenient way for our clients to source the software as part of the services they consume from us, as the licensing is provided for a contracted term and paid on a monthly basis.

Effective January 1, 2022, Microsoft is raising the price by 10% for Microsoft Windows Server and Office SKUs offered through the SPLA program. This applies specifically to the product families in the following table.

These changes are directly tied to the new capabilities available in Windows Server 2022  (which will enable more hybrid and migration solutions) and Office (which is inclusive of the numerous features added over the past decade).

Microsoft Office 365 Increases

On March 1, 2022, Microsoft will update its pricing for the following commercial products: 

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic (from $5 to $6 per user)
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium (from $20 to $22)
• Office 365 E1 (from $8 to $10)
• Office 365 E3 (from $20 to $23)
• Office 365 E5 (from $35 to $38)
• Microsoft 365 E3 (from $32 to $36)

These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions. There are no changes to pricing for education and consumer products at this time.

Additionally, Microsoft announced they are adding unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings across enterprise, business, front-line and government suites over the next few months. While currently included with Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5, Microsoft has come to see dial-in as an important part of the complete Teams experience since consistent Internet connections are not always available.

We’ve Got Your Back.

While price changes are a given in today’s modern business climate, as an experienced Microsoft Gold Partner, we can work with you to understand the impact and help you make the best decisions regarding your SPLA licensing for your business. Contact your OneNeck account manager today to discuss.

Agility is a major concern for modern businesses, especially those in the technology sector. Being slow to act can result in missed opportunities, performance drops and lower earnings reports. Hybrid IT helps technology-based organizations stay agile by combining private IT infrastructure with cloud-based services.

The combination of private and cloud resources means that organizations can scale and introduce new tools without immediately needing to expand their infrastructure. Additionally, because cloud-based services are readily available, there is less ramp-up time for deploying new applications. All of this means a faster time to market.

This is just scratching the surface of how Hybrid IT can benefit your business. Let’s take a detailed look at five advantages it brings.

Give Your Business an Edge With Hybrid IT

1. Flexible scalability. Business workloads aren’t perfectly predictable and will fluctuate depending on the needs of your departments. Hybrid IT enables teams to adapt quickly to spikes in activity through cloud bursting. This network configuration allows the private cloud to overflow into the public cloud and access additional computing resources without disrupting service.

   Hybrid IT plays an important role in infrastructure planning. It gives businesses more time before they have to expand their private cloud. Teams can observe spikes in server usage over time and determine if usage spikes are an anomaly or an indication of a true need.

2. Disaster preparedness. Disaster recovery is crucial to ensuring the unexpected doesn’t knock out your business. However, backing up all of your company’s data can take a lot of server space. Hybrid IT can help you leverage the public cloud to give you the necessary space while controlling your organization’s server costs.

   One way that businesses can ensure that they have ready access to essential data in a hybrid model is by splitting data into categories. For example, data needed for day-to-day operations can be kept on private servers, while data that merely needs to be stored can be uploaded to the cloud. Sensitive data may be a third category you need to consider depending on your industry. More on that later.

3. Robust data privacy. Every business should be concerned about data privacy since failure to protect customer data will impact trust. But, industries that deal with sensitive data like healthcare are even more privacy-conscious. They must worry about meeting government regulations, including HIPAA and HITECH.

   The Hybrid cloud model allows organizations to isolate applications and data that contain sensitive information from the public cloud. This gives the organization complete control over data that must be protected. At the same time, these organizations can leverage the cloud to test applications, scale quickly, and access cloud-based applications.

4. Better big data analytics. Many big data tools are not available on private infrastructure. These tools allow businesses to tailor their messaging and offers to the unique behavior of each customer. In e-commerce, some data shows that
   80% of customers are more likely to buy from a company that personalizes their experience
   .

   Additionally, Hybrid IT gives teams a single dashboard where they can visualize the performance of all of their IT infrastructure both on the private and public cloud. Quickly viewing performance metrics across the organization is crucial to making informed IT infrastructure decisions.

5. Scale your computing infrastructure manageably. It’s impractical and costly for businesses to make large computing investments every time they start to hit the limits of their computing infrastructure. It’s more efficient to make infrastructure upgrades gradually, based on consistent needs instead of usage anomalies. How does this work?

   As we discussed, Hybrid IT allows teams to push work to the cloud when workloads peak. This gives teams time to adopt a wait-and-see approach, testing whether these new peaks will hold or if they are anomalies — avoiding costly upgrades made on short-term data.

Hybrid IT Is Empowering Businesses to Scale Effectively

Scalability and flexibility are two essential qualities for business growth, especially when it comes to computing infrastructure. Hybrid IT can help augment your business’s computing capacity while helping to control costs and gain more visibility into your infrastructure’s performance.

Our team is well versed in Hybrid IT, multi-cloud, and cloud bursting technologies. We can help your team identify its computing needs and design solutions that keep you flexible. If you’d like to talk about how Hybrid IT could benefit your business, contact us.

Healthcare is undergoing a radical transformation. In response to the pandemic, IT teams have had to accelerate digital transformations, greatly expand telemedicine, support an increasingly remote workforce, and cope with an increasing number of Internet of Medical Things (IMT) devices – all while ensuring that their systems and data remain secured. To move so quickly, many organizations have embraced hybrid cloud.

Cloud is not a one-size fits all model. Hybrid enables each workload to live on its best venue and provides the needed level of security, elasticity, and application-aligned infrastructure better than a ‘one-size-fits-all’ ecosystem. According to Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud Index 2020, 94.5% of healthcare companies said hybrid private/ public cloud is the ideal IT operating model and they’re evolving their infrastructures to get there.

But adopting a hybrid cloud approach is not without its own challenges – particularly in an industry as highly regulated as healthcare. For success, organizations need to have the right strategy in place.

We’ve curated a collection of relevant resources from OneNeck and our trusted partners with the Healthcare IT professional in mind to help you facilitate a more holistic approach to patient care with hybrid cloud. Access the toolkit now.

Hybrid Cloud, We’ve Got Your Back

OneNeck can help you build a realistic roadmap that ties IT strategy to business outcomes, and identifies the people, processes, and technologies required at every stage of the hybrid cloud journey, so as an IT leader, you can move forward with confidence to a multi-cloud operating model including:

• Private Cloud: Leverage a pre-engineered solution like ReliaCloud to help you get up and running quickly, reduce TCO, minimize risk, and simplify the cloud migration experience. With a an agile, automated, software-defined private cloud like ReliaCloud, your organization can get all the benefits of public cloud, without the interoperability and dependency challenges that cause so many hybrid cloud strategies to flounder.
• Hyperscale Cloud: We help you determine which workloads can take advantage of the full suite of services Azure provides, and then we can migrate and support them for you.

Contact us today to learn more.

On August 26, Internet security firm, Wiz, announced it had found a security flaw in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, a global multi-model NoSQL store used by thousands of enterprises around the world.

The exploit, named “ChaosDB,” allows bad actors to access the primary keys to a Cosmos DB account. The exploit was found in the recently added Jupyter Notebook feature of Cosmos DB.

In response to this threat, Microsoft immediately disabled this feature for a full security audit.

Our Recommendation

OneNeck recommends everyone who has implemented a Cosmos DB account immediately regenerate the primary and secondary access keys. This will ensure continued data privacy.  While Microsoft doesn’t believe any customer data has been leaked, but your keys should immediately be regenerated to be safe.

If you have any questions regarding this vulnerability, we are here to help. Don’t hesitate to reach out.

Keep Moving Forward. We Have Your Back.

You may have heard that Nutanix recently launched the Nutanix Elevate Service Provider Program, which OneNeck was excited to be a part of. This gives us the opportunity to expand and differentiate our managed cloud services to our customers and deliver even more value that accelerates our customers’ growth.

But beyond the technology, what is it about the OneNeck/Nutanix partnership that brings value to our customers?

CHOICE: As the lines between the public cloud, private cloud and on-premises environments have more or less disappeared and we sit in the middle of hybrid complexity, at OneNeck we’re trying to ensure our customers have the cloud options to succeed in their unique environment.

OneNeck Product and Strategy Director, Jim de la Pena, summed it up this way. “What we see as a huge advantage of working with a service provider like OneNeck partnered with Nutanix is that we give our clients the choice of where their workloads should land, whether that’s hyperscale public cloud, on a private cloud, a hosted private cloud or even on-prem. Often there’s a gap in their in-house expertise on where the workload would optimally run, and we can provide that advice that enables them to make the right choice, in some cases, even across multiple platforms.”

SUPPORT: Support is a huge part of the service provider relationship, support in migration and professional services that get the workload into the cloud. Then there’s the day-2 support beyond migration that manages the day-to-day uptime, as well as cost-optimization recommendations for future-facing decisions.

In a recent joint podcast with Nutanix, Jim goes into additional reasons the service provider relationship brings value to OneNeck customers.

Ultimately, when weighing the option to work with a service provider vs. going it alone, there are always many factors to consider. But it really can be summed up with this quote…

Stop asking people for directions to places they’ve never been.

It’s that hands-on experience that leads to context – that’s where the value in the service provider relationship really emerges. We’ve been there, and we can help guide you around the pitfalls and get you to your goal faster and more efficiently – because we’ve been down that road before.

Keep Moving Forward. We Got Your Back.

No doubt about it — if your company has employees, you have shadow IT. According to a survey conducted by Stratecast and Frost & Sullivan, 80% of employees say they use applications on the job that aren’t approved by IT.

Shadow IT brings up security, integration and operational challenges and companies have three paths to choose from when it comes to dealing with it — they can accept it, try to suppress it or ignore it. The latter option may be the path of least resistance but can put the organization at tremendous risk. Ignoring shadow IT can threaten enterprise systems and data, and a security-conscious enterprise must have a plan for effectively dealing with it.

What Is Shadow IT?

Shadow IT is an umbrella term referring to any technology, be it an application or device (smartphone, tablet, laptops, etc.), deployed within an organization without the approval from the IT department. IT departments are often unaware that applications are being used by either individual employees or entire line of business units.

Most employees who adopt unsanctioned solutions do so with good intentions, not to undermine security, but to more effectively do their job. With the plethora of business and productivity applications available and the ease of installing these applications, shadow IT continues to propagate. Oftentimes, the process of seeking official IT approval for new applications is onerous and long, so employees take matters into their own hands. The cloud and mobile are large contributors to the problem.

Common examples of shadow IT include:

• Productivity apps (Trello, Slack, Asana )
• Messaging apps on corporate-owned devices (Snapchat, WhatsApp)
• Physical devices (flash drives, external drives)
• Cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive)
• Communication apps (Skype, VOIP)

Shadow IT Risks

According to Cisco, 80% of end users use software not cleared by IT, 83% of IT staff admit to using unsanctioned software or services, and only 8% of all enterprises actually know the scope of shadow IT within their organization!

Shadow IT, without a doubt, adds risk into your organization, and your employees are your weak link. Michael Bruemmer, vice president of Experian Data Breach Resolution explained, “As we have seen in our incident response service that we do for clients, about 80% of all the breaches we service have a root cause in some type of employee negligence.” When non-sanctioned applications and devices are in use, vulnerabilities can be introduced into the infrastructure, and without IT oversight, the root-cause is very difficult to find.  Some examples of risk includes:

1. Software Asset Management (SAM): Organizations need to track all software applications used and licensing information. Unauthorized software makes this already difficult task nearly impossible, leading to our next risk.
2. Compliance: Unauthorized applications once discovered can mandate a complete audit of the infrastructure to ensure you are compliant. Organizations who do not take this seriously risk hefty fines from non-compliance.
3. Testing: IT infrastructures are complex organisms that require management. Introducing new applications without proper testing can compromise the entire infrastructure. Shadow IT also adds more complexity to the entire testing process by having to involve a third party.
4. Configuration management: Creating a configuration management database (CMDB) and defining relationships between different systems is labor-intensive. When other employees use shadow IT, those systems are not included and can have compatibility issues as a result.

How Do You Control Shadow IT?

Organizations must place a high value on reigning in shadow IT and work closely with lines of business to mitigate their risk. Suggestions include:

• Continuously monitor the network for applications and systems.
• Conduct an audit, and ask your employees to come forward, promising that they will not face consequences for using shadow IT applications.
• Create a system for ranking and prioritizing risk. Not all applications outside of IT control are equally threatening.
• Develop a list of devices approved for BYOD use, and make sure employees know that “jailbroken” devices are prohibited.
• Develop an internal app store for all applications that have been evaluated and approved for use within the corporate infrastructure.
• Block applications that are deemed dangerous and require users to seek approval before downloading.

In the long run, CIOs need to develop comprehensive procedures for approving cloud applications that are fast and efficient so that employees will not need to go around the system in a rogue manner. When employees are given a choice on what devices and applications they can use, it improves productivity, drives innovation and increases morale. So, embrace shadow IT in a way that manages risk and keeps your organization safe and compliant. Explore our cloud solutions or contact us for support in dealing with shadow it security risks.

According to Flexera’s State of Cloud 2021 report, organizations are continuing to rapidly increase their cloud spend. In so doing, they struggle to accurately forecast their fast-growing cloud costs.

In the figure to the right, respondents reported their public cloud spend was over budget by an average of 24 percent. Respondents also expect their cloud spend to further increase by 39 percent in the next twelve months. This trend means it’s more critical than ever to get a handle on forecasting and cost optimization.

When there is a lack of visibility and control over their cloud resources, organizations are in trouble. Cloud sprawl is one of the biggest pitfalls associated with minimal oversight. Cloud sprawl refers to the unchecked proliferation of an organization’s cloud instances, services and service providers, which can lead to unexpected costs and security vulnerabilities.

3 Causes of Cloud Sprawl

Too much cloud can be a bad thing. Here a few common reasons cloud sprawl occurs within an organization.

1. Shadow IT: The self-service, user-friendly nature of the cloud has made it easy for various LOB employees to spin up resources, commonly implemented without the knowledge of IT. As a result, knowing exactly how many cloud services and subscriptions that are being utilized companywide are difficult to track. (Learn more about Shadow IT.)
2. Failing to Right-Size Your Environment: Oversized infrastructure is one of the most common sources of overspending. When enterprises don’t match cloud resources to their current demand it often leads to over-provisioned and underutilized resources.
3. No Governance Plan: It’s easy to keep throwing money at cloud resources; however, without a clear strategy and governance plan, costs can spiral under the radar.

4 Tips to Help Managed Sprawl in Your Organization

Every cloud sprawl symptom has a cure, and below are a few tips on where to start reining in your cloud.

1. Assess Your Current State
   Start with an initial analysis of your current cloud estate and identify any optimization opportunities for rightsizing, helping to identify and eliminate wasted spend.
2. Develop a Clear Governance Plan
   Define and implement a plan regarding cloud purchasing and cloud spending. Your end users should know how to make use of cloud services by adhering to policies that control costs, minimize security risks, improve efficiency and accelerate deployment.
3. Continuously Monitor
   Continue to monitor your cloud environment to identify any unused, idle or duplicate resources that can drive up costs.

OneNeck, We Got Your Back

Cloud can be complex. Understanding consumption, identifying patterns and then determining how (or where) to optimize is a huge challenge. Working with a credible IT provider, with experience optimizing cloud use can help reduce budget overruns while accounting for wasted cloud spend.

At OneNeck, we have hands-on experience helping our clients identify exactly how much they are spending, along with providing recommendations on how and where waste can be controlled.

Can your organization save on cloud costs with an Azure Cost Optimization Assessment? Start your free assessment now .

The stats are crazy. There are roughly 3.7 billion humans using the Internet, with 5.6 billion Google searches every single day! Data is the center of our lives, personal and business, leading to roughly 2.5 quintillion bytes of data being generated every single day – and that number just continues to grow. But not unlike water, so pivotal in our existence, too much of a good thing can lead to drowning.

As businesses have started to realize the potential insights they could be gleaning from their data, and the absolute necessity of using it to their advantage, they’ve also realized that harnessing it and making it usable can be daunting. But most recognize that data has to be a priority to remain relevant. So, where is a good place to start when embarking down the get-insights-from-my-data path? Here are some basic steps we follow as we help our customers tackle their data…

Step 1 – Define what you’re trying to achieve.

Before data even comes into the conversation, it’s critical to determine where are you trying to go. It does no good to embark on a data modernization initiative until you determine what your end state is – what are you trying to accomplish with your data? Some organizations are just looking for a way to capture the data more efficiently, where others actually want to take it to the point of using it, to analyze it and drive their business forward. Defining your end goal will ensure you don’t waste time and money on a pointless quest.

Step 2 – Understand and document what data you have and where it is ingested.

The majority of organizations don’t even know what data they have, as it lives all over their environment in various data silos. This is where due diligence comes in, understanding and documenting the who, what, when and where of your data.

Step 3 – Ingest and consolidate your data.

Once you’ve figured out where your data resides, it’s time to transfer it from those disparate systems to a single target destination. You must transform unstructured and semi-structured data via an ETL/ELT (extract, transform, load/extract, load, transform) process into usable formats, enabling a continuous flow of updated data that combats data decay. Effective analytics requires clean data, so this is critical in any data initiative – without accurate data feeding into the analytics tools, the value is greatly diminished.

Step 4 – Train and model your data.

AI and machine learning are two of the most impactful technology trends in generations, and really where data starts turning into insight. Define AI/ML models and desired outcomes, and then determine and ensure you have enough compute capacity to employ those models, and whether they should be in the cloud or on-premises.

Step 5 – Visualize, analyze and serve up the data.

Provide the organization with relevant analytics and data visualization, along with self-service analytics for daily line-of-business and departmental uses. There are many tools to accomplish this, depending on your specific environment and goals, making an experienced partner a strategic asset in determining the right-fit tool(s).

The bottom line.

When it comes down to it, the really critical part of any data initiative is… rather than taking a system-centric approach to data, take a step back and take a business-centric approach. Define what you’re trying to achieve, and then use your data to get you there. Data modernization is more than just buying a bunch of data management tools. It’s much more a strategy and methodology than it is a shopping list.

The right methodology for data modernization starts with the end goal in mind. When you know what you want to get out of your data, then you can work with an IT services partner to evaluate your existing tech stack, personnel and in-house skills to discover what needs to evolve and which new tools should be added.

Interested in learning more? Check out this informative eBook on why data modernization is key to unlocking business opportunities – and how to get it right.

Containers are quickly becoming commonplace in workplace applications, even replacing virtual machines in some instances. But how do you know if containers are right for your IT environment? In this article we explore containers vs vms

What Is a Virtualized Container?

Tech giants like Google, Microsoft and IBM have all invested heavily in virtualized containers. At its most basic, a container is an OS-level virtualization method for executing and running applications. Containers eliminate the need to launch an entire virtual machine (VM) for every application. They run on an isolated system and single control host and access a single kernel.

You may have heard the name Docker, for example. Docker is the leading provider of enterprise-level containers. LXC, a Linux userspace interface that lets users create and manage containers, is another big name in virtual container provisioning.

What is a Virtual Machine (VM)?

A VM allows users to run an operating system in an app window on the desktop. The VM acts like a separate computer complete with its own virtualized hardware. This enables users to experiment with different operating systems, software and apps – all in a safe, sandboxed environment.

VMs run on a firmware, software or hardware manager called a hypervisor. The hypervisor itself runs on a physical computer – also known as a “host machine” – that provides the VM with resources like RAM and CPU. Multiple VMs can run on a single host machine with resources distributed as needed.

Containers vs VMs – Which is Better?

Containers are a newer concept, and many argue that they hold several advantages over VMs. The latter consumes more resources since it runs on a full copy of the operating system (OS) as well as a virtual copy of every hardware component running the OS. This eats up quite a bit of RAM and CPU.

Containers, on the other hand, can generally handle about two to three times the number of applications as a VM since they require only parts of an OS, like the libraries and other system resources necessary to run a specific program. Modern containers also run in the cloud, giving users a portable operating environment for deploying, developing and testing new systems.

So, containers are the clear winner then, right?

Well, not exactly. VMs do have certain advantages. They’re relatively easy to create, so developers can install whatever OS they need and get straight to work since there isn’t much of a learning curve. With easily-accessible software on the market, users can even return to an earlier iteration of an OS, or create/clone a new OS entirely.

For enterprises and small businesses, however, containers may still be preferable. Containers use considerably less hardware, making them ideal for running multiple instances of a single application, service or web server. Containers function like VMs but without a hypervisor, resulting in faster resource provisioning and speedier availability of new applications.

Finding Which Solution is Best for Your Business

Every organization’s business needs and infrastructure are different and each requires its own unique strategy. In the big scheme of things, containers in no way make VMs obsolete. Containers simply provide a new solution for improving overall IT efficiency in specific areas of operation. If you think you could benefit from a single service that can be clustered and deployed at scale, then containers may be the better option for your organization. Or, instead of a full transition to containers, the best solution for you may be a hybrid approach. By implementing containers alongside VMs, you’ll be able to capitalize on the respective advantages of each.

Unsure of what’s best for your organization? Contact us and we’ll help you figure it out.

Microsoft Teams is the Hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365. To maximize Microsoft 365 investments, it’s important to plan for a successful deployment and adoption. Planning to ensure that users adopt new services and embrace those services and use them as part of their natural rhythm of work is critical to Teams success.

I sat down with Paul Frederickson, Senior Business Systems Analyst at TDS to discuss the value of Teams and best practices for driving Microsoft Teams adoption.

Why Teams and how are companies leveraging it to drive productivity?

With employees accessing unsanctioned SaaS applications, dozens of ways to share files, and multiple communication channels, the modern workplace presents many challenges for teamwork. With Teams, you get built-in access to everything employees need to work, in one place.

We do often find that many organizations aren’t leveraging Teams in its entirety, but rather as a point solution i.e. the messaging functionality of Teams. The full value comes from leveraging the entire collaboration platform including chat, calling, meetings and content sharing; allowing Teams to become the Hub for an organizations’ teamwork.

What is the best approach to implementing Teams and driving adoption?

I like to break this down into 3 phases, pre-pilot, pilot and post-pilot.

• Pre-Pilot: An organization needs to ensure all the IT tasks are complete; determine baseline configurations and make key decisions on governance. For example, who can create teams, and Teams naming conventions, data security, etc. Adjustments can be made throughout the process, but organizations should attempt to do as much up front as governance decisions may impact the end-user experience.
• Pilot: Onboard early adopters to Microsoft Teams. Engage with your users, send a message or post in a channel, this will encourage them to interact with the platform. The feedback loop is a critical step in this phase. Knowing how your users are using Teams and what their experience is with Teams gives you insights on where to prioritize training and adoption efforts in your wider rollout.
• Post-Pilot: After an organization has onboarded an initial group of users leverage your go-forward plan to deploy Teams across the rest of your organization and continue to drive adoption.

How can OneNeck help organizations with Teams adoption?

As a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, our goal is to get clients up and running so they can begin their journey with Teams. Our Teams Foundation Services offering includes consulting implementation and adoption services to help our client’s gain the most value out of the platform including: getting started with Teams and planning for the initial adoption, making the key decisions on governance that I addressed in the pre-pilot phase of implementation, determining baseline configurations, piloting and training.

Let OneNeck help you deploy Microsoft Teams and realize the power of modern teamwork in your organization. Contact us today.

Paul Frederickson is a member of the TDS Corporate Content & Collaboration Services Team. Paul is an expert with the Microsoft 365 toolkit, specifically with SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams and drives technology adoption within the TDS Family of Companies, comprising 10,000 associates. He is an MBA graduate from the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater.

Today’s fast-paced world makes DevOps essential to all enterprises seeking to respond rapidly to changes in customer demands, market conditions and competitive pressures. But, what is DevOps and how do you get started? What tools do you need to leverage? How do you bring all the right technologies together successfully?

I sat down with Lee Grant, a Principal Application Architect at OneNeck, to discuss what DevOps means and how enterprises can implement it to gain the promised business benefits.

What Is DevOps and Why Embrace It?

DevOps is an abbreviation for Development and Operations. DevOps is not a tool, it’s a way of doing things that unifies people, process and products.

By adopting a DevOps culture, along with DevOps practices and tools, teams can build, test and release applications at the speed of digital business.

What’s Driving DevOps Adoption?

The reasons for adopting DevOps vary based on the business need for it and the challenges that it addresses. The forces we typically see driving adoption include:

• Accelerating time to market- Many enterprises seek to move at high velocity. DevOps allows them to innovate faster, adapt to changing markets better and grow more efficient at driving business results.
• Adapting to the market and competition- DevOps enables an enhanced customer experience by having the ability to deliver more, faster, better, continuously and in an automated fashion helping to build a competitive advantage.
• Maintaining system stability and reliability- Leveraging DevOps to deploy applications with repeatable, reliable processes also allows for continuous automated deployment and testing, lowering the risk of failures at release time.
• Improving the mean time to recovery- With DevOps, recovery is much faster when the development and operations teams collaborate, sharing challenges during development. Recent research shows that high-performing DevOps teams recover from downtime 96 times faster, have a five times lower change failure rate, and deploy code 46 times more frequently.

How Do Organizations Get DevOps Right?

The DevOps journey involves significant changes in culture, processes and technologies.

DevOps should be structured to meet the unique needs of your organization. Consider your current culture. Identify the silos and bottlenecks that prevent rapid development and deployment to understand where to improve.

How Can OneNeck Help?

We have a team of highly certified and knowledgeable experts to help our clients improve application development and operations, using effective DevOps strategies and tools.

We start by defining clear objectives with your team. Then we conduct practice workshops to help define use cases for your business that deliver a cohesive goal for stakeholders. This alignment is the critical first step in the journey to transformation.

Finally, we architect and deploy solutions that help standardize application development and releases.

Contact us today to learn more.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” True, Juliet, but a name does matter, especially when it’s simply arbitrary versus describing what it actually is. And this seems to be a truth that Microsoft has taken to heart…

After rebranding Windows Defender as Microsoft Defender in early 2019, Microsoft announced in September that they are renaming and bringing more products under the Defender brand.

The Defender product line is now larger and split into two buckets:

• Microsoft 365 Defender for end user environments: Microsoft 365 Defender delivers XDR (Extended Detection and Response) capabilities for identities, endpoints, cloud apps, email and documents. It uses artificial intelligence to reduce the SOC’s work items, and in a recent test we consolidated 1,000 alerts to just 40 high-priority incidents. Built-in self-healing technology fully automates remediation more than 70% of the time, ensuring defenders can focus on other tasks that better leverage their knowledge and expertise.
• Azure Defender for cloud and hybrid infrastructure: Azure Defender delivers XDR capabilities to protect multi-cloud and hybrid workloads, including virtual machines, databases, containers, IoT, and more. Azure Defender is an evolution of the Azure Security Center threat protection capabilities and is accessed from within Azure Security Center.

The Microsoft 365 Defender line now includes:

• Microsoft 365 Defender (previously Microsoft Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (previously Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (previously Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Identity (previously Azure Advanced Threat Protection)

The Azure Defender line now includes:

• Azure Defender for Servers (previously Azure Security Center Standard Edition)
• Azure Defender for IoT (previously Azure Security Center for IoT)
• Azure Defender for SQL (previously Advanced Threat Protection for SQL)

This rebranding of Microsoft’s security offerings is in alignment with other product renaming initiatives (such as the renaming of the Office 365 SMB SKUs) that have taken place over the last year or so.

OneNeck Product Director, Jim Brown, states, “It just makes sense. As Microsoft is striving to simplify and unify their security offerings to cover an end-to-end security portfolio, the names need to reflect this strategy and enable clear consumption models and make it easier for organizations to understand how to use them to be more secure.”

We’ve Got Your Back.

As an experienced Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) and Microsoft partner, we’re here to help. So, if you have any questions regarding the new Microsoft product names and how to use them to secure your data and applications, let’s chat.

For any modern organization, protecting business-critical data is vital. Yet protecting data assets has become complex and difficult as the rising tide of data grows in double to even triple digits compounding year over year.

Businesses are also facing increasingly stringent regulatory compliance and IT governance mandates. The bottom line is that this is putting data at risk – and creating enormous pressure on IT budgets and resources.

However, very few organizations have evolved their data protection processes with the times, leading to the perception that backup is complex, and change will bring unnecessary risk. In short: it’s too hard.

If your organization falls into the backup challenged, then it could be time to consider a managed backup as a service (BaaS) solution for an easier, more efficient way to backup your data and applications across the enterprise.

What is BaaS?

Managed backup service provides backup and recovery operations from the cloud. The cloud-based BaaS provider maintains necessary backup equipment, applications, processes and management in their data center. So, there is no need to buy backup servers and software, run upgrades and patches, or purchase dedupe appliances.

What are the benefits of BaaS?

BaaS offers many benefits including the ability to:

• Replicate your data to the cloud without the capital and operational costs of deploying, managing, and maintaining one.
• Hire backup expertise, without adding headcount.
• Keep your data and applications protected and easily accessible in the event of a major outage or disaster.
• Reduce costs (CapEx and OpEx).
• Improve security, disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC).
• Enable faster implementation which leads to faster speed to market.

OneNeck’s BaaS solutions provide a resilient, cloud-based backup and recovery service offering the high levels of reliability demanded by organizations today. Our BaaS solutions offerings are powered by best-in-class technologies and services.

Let us conduct a Backup and Recovery Assessment to identify the first steps towards creating an efficient, reliable and appropriate backup and recovery solution for your business. Contact us today.

If you’re one of the organizations that are still using Office 2013 with Microsoft Online Services, then you’ll want to know the changes coming this fall.  Microsoft recently announced the following updates…

• After Oct 13, 2020, Microsoft will not support the use of Office 2013 with Microsoft Online Services. You may experience performance and/or reliability issues over time, and new tenants created after October 13 will be unable to use Basic Authentication.
• Sometime in 2021, Microsoft will disable Basic Authentication for existing tenants to improve their overall security posture. Any applications still depending on Basic Authentication will need to be migrated to Modern Authentication before this happens. While Microsoft has yet to set a hard date for this move due to the COVID-19 crisis, it’s important to know it’s coming, as it can affect users accessing applications utilizing Azure Active Directory authentication. 

Why is Microsoft doing this?

It really comes down to modern security best practices, and that means changing from Basic Authentication to Modern Authentication. In a recent blog post, Microsoft stated that…

…Basic Authentication makes it easier for attackers armed with today’s tools and methods to capture users’ credentials (particularly if not TLS protected), which in turn increases the risk of credential re-use against other endpoints or services. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) isn’t easy to enable when you are using Basic Authentication and so all too often it isn’t used.

Simply put, there are better and more effective alternatives to authenticate users available today, and we are actively recommending to customers to adopt security strategies such as Zero Trust (i.e. Trust but Verify) or apply real time assessment policies when users and devices are accessing corporate information. This allows for intelligent decisions to be made about who is trying to access what from where on which device rather than simply trusting an authentication credential which could be a Bad Actor impersonating a user. 

With these threats and risks in mind, we’re taking steps to improve data security in Exchange Online.

So, what is the solution?

You will need Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise/Business (formally known as Office 365 ProPlus) or Office 2019 clients in mainstream support to connect to Office 365 services.

Note that for Office 2016 users, Microsoft is continuing support for Office 365 services through October 2023 to allow for more time to fully transition to the cloud.

We can help.

Whether it’s updating your Office 2013 to a newer, more-secure version, or implementing a modern multi-factor authentication solution, our experts can help. Reach out today to set up a conversation.

Keep Moving Forward. We Got Your Back.

Many enterprises are amid a digital transformation, seeking to engage with customers and satisfy their needs through digital technologies.  Many are looking up to the clouds to enable this agility, scalability, and simplicity—but no two models are created equal. And because businesses cannot afford to sacrifice control and security, going all-in on a public cloud only approach isn’t always feasible. To deliver on the promise of digital transformation, you need a unified infrastructure that fuses both public and private cloud.

Reasons to Consider Workloads On-Premise

According to Nutanix, there are several key considerations to consider when determining where your workloads should live including:

• Data Gravity – Applications must go to where the data is generated. To move data from where its generated whether it’s from applications, machines or employees and customers is incredibly expensive and time consuming.  Next it’s very hard to move legacy applications to the public cloud and there’s big costs associated with it.   
• Compliance– Regulatory concerns such as GDPR and others can severely limit the ability to even use the public cloud and place data there.
• IT Control– Loss of control that IT feels that it gets to do such things as the inability to deploy custom applications, to protect those applications and the data.
• Unpredictable Cost– Egress charges and getting data out cannot be overlooked and costs can be quite high.

On-Premise, You’ve Got Options

There are many routes to deploying an on-premise private cloud. To be successful, enterprises must first map out their goals and expectations, define their cloud requirements and then build on that model leveraging the technologies that best suit their needs.

Traditional Systems

Traditional data center infrastructure includes high -performing, enterprise data center storage, network and compute systems.

Converged Infrastructure (CI)

CI tightly integrates compute, storage, networking, virtualization and automation resources into a proven private-cloud architecture.  It scales to the largest environments with a lot of flexibility in components.  

Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

HCI adds additional elements like backup software, snapshot capability, data deduplication, inline compression and WAN optimization into one appliance using inexpensive commodity hardware – all managed under a single management interface. Now IT can simplify their infrastructure and take advantage of global, unified management. Now any size business has access to CI without the complexity.c

OneNeck, We’ve Got Your Back

At OneNeck, we understand there are many routes to on-premise private cloud, and it can be overwhelming in a market that is becoming more crowded daily. We’re here to help. We can assess your goals, whether it be reducing cost and complexity, increasing performance and efficiency, or merely trying to simplify your infrastructure. We will look across our numerous vendors to make recommendations that fit your business.

So you think you’re ready to build a cloud inside your data center – but do you know the technology inside and out? It’s imperative to get all your cloud questions answered before you make the move. Find the top 20 cloud questions answered in this ebook.

No doubt about it, for Microsoft Office 365 (O365), business is booming. At their Q3 FY19 earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Office 365 is now used by 180 million monthly active users and growing at more than 4 million users per month – and that was before the recent surge in the demand in collaboration tools!

But, for many organizations utilizing O365, there is gray area on whether or not Microsoft’s native tools support backup and recovery, and if so, to what extent. The confusion boils down to the backup that Microsoft provides and what the customer assumes they’re getting are often different.

So, what does Microsoft cover? Microsoft O365 comes with what’s known as geo redundancy, which is not the same thing as backup. Backup is when a historical copy of data is made and then stored in another location. But a critical component of backup is having direct access to and control over that backup so if data is lost, accidentally deleted or maliciously attacked, you can quickly access and recover it. But with geo redundancy, it protects against site or hardware failure, so if there is an infrastructure crash or outage, users remain productive and rarely aware there’s been a problem.

The bottom line and key takeaway here:

• MICROSOFT is responsible for the uptime of O365.
• The CUSTOMER is responsible for the protection and long-term retention of their O365 data.

The Shared Responsibility Model is further detailed in this Veeam graphic…

Clearly, it’s important to recognize that in the case of O365, you need a backup plan. While Microsoft has a solid reputation for high availability of O365 infrastructure and applications, there are numerous things that can happen, and likely will happen, that can open your organization to risk:

• Data loss and security breaches: Data can be lost from internal and external sources, ranging from accidental deletion, ex-employee actions or even external breaches (e.g., malware and ransomware).
• Retention and compliance: While Microsoft offers retention policies to hold your O365 data for a longer period of time, these are not available to all licensing types, and preserving your data for a longer time is different than backups. A third-party backup strategy is a must to meet an offsite (outside of the O365 ecosystem) copy and maintain the control you would expect in a restore situation.
• Lack of control in a hybrid world: With today’s SaaS-driven environment, visibility and data control is a challenge that backup can help address.

There’s no doubt that Microsoft O365 is a great solution that brings increased productivity to the modern workforce. But ensuring the access and control of your O365 data is imperative in avoiding risk. If you’d like to learn more about why you need a backup solution for O365, check out this informative eBook from our partner Veeam: 6 Critical Reasons for Office 365 Backup.

And if you’d like to talk with one of our backup and recovery experts, we’re here to help.

As Esther Dyson so eloquently put it, “Change means that what was before wasn’t perfect.” And as we all know in technology, change is a given.

Today brings more change. As of today, Microsoft is changing the names of Office 365 SMB SKUs and making way for Microsoft 365.

Their reasoning was that customers have had difficulty deciding which SKU is right for them. Their SKUs were:

• Mid-priced SKU is called Office 365 Business Premium.
• The premium SKU is called Microsoft 365 Business.
• The Office 365 Business Essentials SKU has more cloud services value than the Office 365 Business

We get it. That’s confusing. So, here’s a quick glance at what’s changing.

Note that there are no naming changes for the Office 365 Enterprise or Microsoft 365 Enterprise SKUs. It is also important to note that subscription prices, product features, offer IDs and SKUs, and Office 365 Enterprise SKU names are not changing.

If you’d like to learn more about these changes, check out the Microsoft Office 365 SMB Naming Update Page. And as always, if you have any questions regarding Microsoft’s solutions, we are here to help.

Keep Moving Forward. We Got Your Back.

There’s no doubt that everyone is full-on in love with the cloud these days, and for many good reasons. The cloud has treated us well and continues to give us many reasons to continue to embrace it. However, there still a common misconception due to the nebulous nature of it, especially when it comes to hybrid cloud architectures and the advantages they have over public or private clouds.

There’s a good reason for this lack of clear understanding, and it stems from the fact that hybrid cloud is not a technology, but more of an approach to how we use cloud, especially when compared to public and private clouds. If you look for a cut-and-dried hybrid cloud solution that cookie-cutter fits in your organization, you’ll find yourself forlorn.  Benefits of hybrid cloud are really more about how you manage and orchestrate your public and private cloud resources into one, cohesive hybrid cloud solution, and in this solution, your applications and data live in one or both clouds.

There are many factors that go into deciding on where your workloads best fit: the critical nature of the data, latency, redundancy, required implementation speed, etc. But the beauty of the hybrid cloud solution (and why we love it so) is that your end-users have no idea where their application or data lives, because to them, the experience is the same. With careful upfront planning on where each workload should reside, it will be placed where it will serve the business best, making it a win-win for both IT and the end user.

So, if you are considering hybrid cloud, what are some top hybrid cloud benefits you might enjoy?

• Secure data and applications: As businesses grow and change, IT constantly struggles to stay ahead of security and compliance issues. Hybrid clouds enable IT to leverage cloud provider expertise, infrastructure and processes to ensure critical applications and services remain patched, secure and compliant.
• Manage Shadow IT: Going the hybrid cloud route ensures IT can quickly and efficiently address the needs of business units. Many IT departments have a broker of services that users access dynamically on demand using a self-service model to minimize Shadow IT. Consequently, business units consider IT a partner, not a hurdle to bypass it to get work done.
• Achieve scalability: Hybrid clouds allow IT to scale to capacity as needed and handle peak loads and seasonal variations, and just as easily decrease capacity (and costs) when demand is lower.
• Cut costs: IT is often tasked with competing mandates to provide more, better, faster service at reduced costs. Moving to hybrid cloud helps both shorten time to market and reduce expenses by offloading new, expensive workloads to the cloud.
• Maintain control: With hybrid cloud, IT can manage and maintain sensitive workloads on-premises, while offloading less-critical applications and services to the cloud. Such flexibility means IT can apply processing power and capacity where needed to deliver consistent security and performance, across even the most distributed organizations.
• Ensure performance, reliability and availability: By offloading workloads to the cloud as needed, IT is freed up to focus on more value-added tasks like application development and operational improvement. This ensures IT applications and services maintain the highest performance, reliability and availability, even as the business grows.
• Implement new capabilities and innovative technology: Instead of investing in expensive software and infrastructure as technology evolves, hybrid clouds ensure IT can always access the latest technologies and releases in the cloud. In addition, IT can always match the right workload to the right infrastructure, be it on-premises, in the cloud or both.

These are just some of the hybrid cloud benefits you can bring to your organization, but if you want to see even more specifically the impact it might have for your unique environment, consider one of our Hybrid Cloud Assessments. Hybrid cloud has an obvious potential to benefit many organizations; however, it is dependent on each distinctive situation and the desired outcome. There is rarely a one solution fits all scenario when it comes to complex IT infrastructure, so a hybrid cloud solution needs to be approached as customized as your needs are. But don’t be afraid of it – take the leap, and you just might fall in love.

Want to discover more benefits of hybrid cloud?  Read our Buyers Guide to Hybrid Cloud.

You want performance, you want reliability, you want flexibility, and you want it all tied together with your organization’s unique needs in mind. You know that a multi-cloud strategy is essential to your organization’s digital transformation, but where do you start?

Let’s begin by digging into some of the reasons why more businesses are adopting a multi-cloud strategy vs hybrid cloud for more control over their workloads and data.

Multi-Cloud Benefits

As the cloud has come into its own and been widely adopted at enterprises around the globe, many organizations have started seeking services from a multitude of cloud providers to meet diverse application requirements and data needs across different business units. Multi-cloud has become incredibly popular in recent years and many point to it as the future of cloud computing.

There are a variety of factors fueling the drive to seek out multiple cloud solutions. These include everything from geographical concerns to outage worries. All are good reasons for pursuing a multi-cloud environment, which offers the following benefits:

1. Multi-cloud adoption eliminates single points of failure

Using cloud services from multiple providers with different offerings means you eliminate the risk of a single point of failure. Using multi-cloud is your insurance policy against anything from a weather-related natural disaster that disrupts business operations to a major loss of data. If one cloud point goes down, you can rely on another cloud as your backup while you attend to the outage.

2. Multi-cloud adoption enables you to match services and apps, while also meeting diverse workload requirements

A multi-cloud strategy gives you more choices when you’re matching specific apps and workloads among a mix of cloud providers. Using services from different providers enables you to more effectively address the diverse performance, privacy, security and geographic needs of various business units, departments and teams in your organization. It also goes beyond just fulfilling internal IT needs to better meet the external demands of partners and customers.

3. Multi-cloud adoption frees you from vendor lock-in

A multi-cloud strategy helps to prevent vendor lock-in, which means you also avoid possible widespread outages if one provider’s services are down. It also means you get to sample the offerings and ideas of many providers as technology evolves and grows. Relying on a single cloud vendor puts you at risk in the event the provider comes up short in areas of security or continuous innovation. Diversifying your portfolio of cloud providers is a much smarter strategy and protects you from those risks.

What’s Next?

The benefits of a multi-cloud approach are clear, but knowing where to start can be challenging. Download our Multi-cloud toolkit to get you started on the path to multi-cloud adoption.

Hybrid Cloud solutions have proven to be a highly effective, flexible and scalable hybrid IT strategy for businesses of all sizes across a wide variety of industries.  But an expert strategy is needed to ensure the safety of mission-critical data. Partner with OneNeck to launch your business higher.

Developing a Hybrid Cloud Strategy

Deploying your businesses sensitive data and mission critical applications to a cloud platform feels a bit like launching astronauts into deep space. Although you know they’ll do their best work out there, you can’t be certain of what they’ll encounter along the way. You need a rock solid strategy in place to ensure their safety.  Not only do you need to send the appropriate resources into the clouds, but you have to have the proper resources on the ground to support their mission.

Not unlike Mission Control, businesses need a hybrid cloud strategy that best balances the physical security of keeping mission critical assets on-premises with the nearly unlimited opportunity of the cloud.  Hybrid Cloud allows firms to access the economies of scale associated with a public cloud solution and still provides scalability and security for their most mission-critical data and applications.  By delegating distinct functions to the public and private clouds, many businesses have been able to build an IT solution that brings them the best of both worlds, and helps to drive business growth while keeping costs down.  But how do they do it?

A Capable Strategic Partner is Key

The downside of the Hybrid Cloud is the high level of complexity involved with migrating and deploying different functions to different parts of your IT infrastructure, and maintaining their interoperability once they are deployed.  Beyond that, businesses often need help understanding what resources need to go into the cloud, and what resources need to stay private.  It can be difficult for a firm to determine the capabilities of their own staff and infrastructure versus what is available in the cloud.

This is precisely why the experts agree how important it is for organizations to partner with a capable cloud IT provider and consultant.  They need a partner with expertise to provide a holistic view of their requirements, recommend a hybrid cloud solution specifically tailored to their needs and back it up with the people and equipment to do the job right.

OneNeck Delivers World-Class Infrastructure

Whether you’re sending your data to the cloud to grow your business or sending astronauts to deep space to advance mankind, you need a solid hybrid cloud strategy.  OneNeck IT Solutions offers the ultimate in security, accessibility, compliance and customization for your database and applications management, which allows your business to be more responsive, more flexible and smarter.

Learn more about developing your hybrid cloud strategy in our Buyers Guide to Hybrid Cloud.

If it’s been a while since you have looked at Azure Reserved instances, now is a great time to revisit them. Not sure what Reserved Instances are for? Read on, you may just save some money.

With the number of services Azure has available, it is easy to get lost in the new shiny and forget about the things already deployed. Consequently, when Microsoft updates services we rarely go back and see what we could be taking advantage of. Reserved Instances (RIs) sure seem to have followed that MO.

Released more than a year ago, RIs have seen very little adoption. At the time the RI pricing model went against the grain of the Cloud Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) model. You had to pick a machine type and then pay for that machine for a year – or three. It also felt like vendor lock in. If I pay for 3 years now, what happens a year from now when there is a better machine?

Microsoft has all of this figured out.

To be clear Reservations are currently available on VMs and the compute component of Azure SQL and Cosmos DB. For the sake of this article, we will only be discussing VMs, however the same principles apply to all Reservations.

Azure Reserve Instances Pricing

In a recent announcement, Microsoft made it possible to spread the RI purchase out monthly over the term of the RI. This returns the spend back to the PAYG model making the finance part a simple comparison between VMs associated with an RI and those that are not. The original pay up front model is still available if that is more enticing.

The lock-in for pricing is also extremely flexible. It is still true that RIs are associated to a specific machine type (like an F8s for example). However, an RI is not (and cannot be) linked to a specific machine. If you buy an RI for an F8s, that RI can apply to any F8s in the selected scope. The scope can be a single resource group, a subscription or any subscription associated with the tenant. If, at some point in the future, you decide the F8s is not where you need the RI, you can roll it over to a new machine type (like an N-series) and Microsoft will roll over any money spent on the existing RI to the new one. In the event you decide that the RI is simply not working, maybe because the dev/test servers don’t really need to be running 24/7, you can cancel them and get some credit back. It won’t be a full credit, after all you did commit to a term for a cost savings. However, depending on the term you have left, you may still end up ahead.

If a single VM type (like the F8s) is too restrictive, there is an option to purchase instance size flexibility. This type of RI will look for machines associated with a specific family type. For example, the DSv2 family. With a flexible RI, any VM that belongs to the VM family will be considered for a discount. The calculation involved in applying the credit across the VM family is more involved than a standard RI and will not be covered here. If you would like more details, the Microsoft doc can be found at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/reserved-vm-instance-size-flexibility

Hopefully with the costing and lock-in issues aside you are now thinking about the implementation of it.

Implementing Azure Reserve Instances

RIs are shockingly simple to implement. The choices that need to be made are: machine type, quantity, term and the scope of the RI. That’s it. The scope can even be changed at a later time.

Ensuring the Reserve Instances are being utilized correctly

When we think of our Azure bill, we generally think in terms of monthly buckets. On the surface RIs appear to work the same way, giving you a monthly credit for your VMs. That’s not quite accurate. An RI provides an hourly credit for the VM type specified. That means to take advantage of the credit you have to a have a VM of that type running every hour. If you don’t, you lose that credit. It doesn’t cost you anything for that hour, except you have already paid for it through the RI purchase.

That does not mean you must have the same machine running every hour. If you have 2 machines of the same type you could run each one of them staggered for 12 hours a day and you would be covered. The trick is to make sure they do not overlap. If they did, for every hour of overlap you would accumulate 2 VM hours and be granted only 1 credit hour, so you would pay for 1 VM hour.

Where Azure Reserve Instances Make Sense

RIs make the most sense for production workloads, ones you know will be running 24/7. You have already committed to run your business in Azure, you should seriously consider adding savings to that commitment.

However, production is not the only application that makes sense. Any machine, or series of machines, that will be running a combined 24/7 can take advantage of RIs. If you are a DevOps shop and have your build machine running continuously, that would apply. Have a development shop or support service that follows the sun? Spinning up dev or QA machines for the teams that start and shutting down the ones for the teams ending their shift would also qualify.

One thing to keep in mind that RIs are strictly applied to the compute cost associated with the VM. If you are paying for Windows or SQL licensing, you will still be billed separately for that.

It’s clear that RIs are not a good fit for every type of workload, but if you can find a workload that does apply you should investigate the savings they can bring. You might even be able to convince the powers that be to use some of that saving to get the PowerApps license you’ve had your eye on.

If there’s anything that can be said about today’s IT environment, it’s that choice abounds, which is why we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of this hybrid reality in which we now exist.

In a recent 451 Research study, they asked respondents how they would best describe their overall organization’s IT strategy, and 57% said hybrid IT environments, where there’s an integrated environment of on-premises and off-premises resources. And for all of the buzz about going all-in to the public cloud a few years ago, they found that only 19% of organizations have taken a completely off-premises approach.

But why has hybrid become the primary approach for today’s IT organizations? It really comes down to flexibility – flexible workload migration and placement options that enables each workload to live on its best execution venue (as 451 likes to call it).

But alas, with hybrid comes complexity, often making it difficult to determine exactly which platform aligns best with each workload. So, with so many options out there – on-prem, on-prem private cloud, hosted private cloud, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS – how does one determine the best execution venue (BEV) for each workload? 451 breaks the BEV considerations down (in order of importance) as:

• Cost (55%)
• Security (53%)
• Application performance (32%)
• Platform reliability (31%)
• Government regulation/data sovereignty (22%)
• Regulation/compliance (18%)
• Governance/company policy (17%)
• Latency considerations (13%)
• Software vendor requirement (9%)

There’s a lot there to be considered when making the BEV decision. So, at OneNeck, we follow a wheel of fortune of sorts when we’re working with our customers in determining their BEV across their portfolio of applications. OneNeck’s VP of Advisory Consulting, Jeff Budge, describes our wheel like this…

“A lot of what we’re trying to do with our customers involves identifying needs, setting the governance, understanding their application portfolio, looking at business value and technical fit, and that very important task of assessing TCO at a detailed and comprehensive layer. Then we come up with a scoring methodology to let us figure out not just what applications are the most important for them to make business decisions, but then can those priorities indicate which venues they need to gain better skills in sooner rather than later. From there, we can determine placement of the workload in the venue.”

But even when you find the perfect-fit venue for a workload, it may not be permanent. Melanie Posey, 451 Research VP stated in a recent conversation with Jeff Budge, “One of the key things about best execution venue is that it’s not a static, permanent kind of thing. At one point in time, a workload might be best suited to run in, say, an on-premises private cloud environment, but then at another time, it might make sense to run it in a public cloud. But overall, what we tell our clients at 451 Research is that it’s a multi-faceted equation figuring out where the application should go, but top of mind for this decision should always be cost, security and application performance.”

When it comes down to making the BEV decision, there are always going to be multiple factors to consider that ensure the right decision is made, which is why in a recent 451 Research and OneNeck webinar, Jeff and Melanie explored this topic in depth. If you’d like to hear their advice, you can listen to the webinar below.

WATCH THE WEBINAR NOW

When it comes to selecting the best backup— NAS (network-attached storage) or cloud-based—there are a multitude of factors IT leaders must consider. To break it down, a recent TechTarget article written by John Edwards highlights the pros and cons of the two approaches, and includes insights on which backup, NAS vs Cloud, might be the best choice.

In the article, Scott Morley, Principal Application Architect at OneNeck, told Edwards, “Both have a place in a comprehensive backup approach, and the business requirements around recovery time objective [RTO], recovery point objective [RPO] and long-term retention should drive the decision on when to use which.”

With more than 20 years of IT and business experience, Morley has expertise working with Microsoft Dynamics AX and Azure solutions in the areas of architecture, performance engineering, application integration and leveraging hybrid cloud solutions. When it comes to NAS vs. cloud-based back-up, Morley suggests NAS allows for a much shorter backup window because the data copy will be local.

John Hein, Product Director added, “Even if a cloud-based solution is selected exclusively, some amount of local storage needs to be planned for, to keep backup windows small and allow for a trickle copy to the cloud. The same is true for a restore. Copying hundreds of Gigs across a WAN or internet connection will not meet most company’s RTO. An improved or dedicated network connection may be required for cloud-based solutions.”

NAS vs Cloud backup- 5 factors to consider:

1. Security: Both can be made equally secure; maintaining native encryption is the key.
2. Cost: Cloud storage is among the cheapest components in the cloud, so cloud generally wins here. It also offers near infinite capacity without need for additional hardware.
3. Reliability: Storage reliability is typically much greater with a cloud backup solution since it can be configured for geo-redundancy; most major cloud providers also offer a 5+ 9s SLA on storage.
4. Accessibility: Because they are local, NAS solutions are generally more accessible; however, in the case of a local disaster, a cloud solution will be available almost immediately, at any location, with an internet connection.
5. Control/ownership: A NAS solution comes with a guarantee of control and ownership, though version upgrades can make existing backups unusable or in need of conversion. On the other hand, cloud backup solutions are generally provided by companies that guarantee access and ownership of data; they are also generally simpler to use, which reduces the need for specialized management knowledge.

As IT leaders review the options, Morley points out, “NAS and cloud-based backups have complementary strengths and weaknesses and a hybrid solution will provide the best overall backup strategy. The speed and availability of a NAS solution teamed with the cheap and easily expandable storage of a cloud solution for long-term retention can allow a company to meet most RTO/RPO objectives while keeping storage costs under control.”

When it comes to setting up and running a cloud-based IT environment, businesses of all sizes (including small and mid-sized companies) can benefit from leveraging a hyperscale cloud. 

While the hyperscale cloud environment does not differ based on company size, the speed of change, availability and connectivity requirements delivered in this environment can make it more difficult for smaller companies, with already lean IT resources, to maintain the required specialized knowledge.

To prevent the lean IT resources from wasting time with hyperscale cloud issues, there are three components that must be put in place: governance, automation and log analytics.

• Governance is the number one limiter in unexpected cloud cost growth. The ease of cloud deployments is enticing to mid-sized companies as they can distribute some work to power users. With the right discipline and monitoring around new and unused resources, this is a great benefit. Without it, costs will continually grow.
• Automation will allow admins to focus on business initiatives instead of infrastructure. Auto scaling, spin up/down of intermittent workloads and even security automation, such as conditional access, can make an environment extremely robust while limiting admin interaction.
• Analytics is the glue that will enable admins to quickly react to changes in their environment. Without it, maintenance of a cloud environment is cumbersome and will lead to wasted time and money.

The above requirements are true for any size company; however larger companies can employ dedicated resources to manage them, and mid-market companies often must rely on their current resources. For smaller companies, working with a knowledgeable partner is crucial to fully understanding the capabilities, implementation, and then keeping pace with new features that can improve overall management.

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Want to learn more about success in a multi-cloud world? Check out these resources from leading cloud experts.

I need backup for Office 365? Isn’t it already included?  In short, no. The misconception that Microsoft fully backs up your data on your behalf is all too common.  To the contrary, Microsoft is primarily focused on managing the infrastructure and ensuring uptime; you are responsible for your data.

According to 451 Research, data backup remains one of the key principles in data protection for several reasons, and while SaaS vendors focus on providing infrastructure resiliency and application availability for their own platform, the traditional 3-2-1 backup rule still applies as a best practice for ensuring data protection and resilience.

Bottom line, businesses using Office 365 need to backup their data and here’s why:

Critical Reasons to Backup Office 365

Veeam, a data backup and recovery, data protection and data security company and OneNeck partner, surveyed hundreds of IT professionals across the globe who have migrated to Office 365, six vulnerabilities in data protection rose to the top in their findings:

1. Accidental Deletion- If you delete a user, whether you meant to or not, that deletion is replicated across the network, along with the deletion of their personal SharePoint site and their OneDrive data.
2. Retention Policy- Gaps & Confusion- Office 365 has limited backup and retention policies that can only fend off situational data loss and is not intended to be an all-encompassing backup solution.
3. Internal Security Threats- Businesses experience threats from the inside, and they are happening more often than you think. Organizations fall victim to threats posed by their very own employees, both intentionally and unintentionally.
4. External Security Threats- Malware and viruses, like ransomware, have done serious damage to organizations across the globe. Not only is company reputation at risk, but the privacy and security of internal and customer data as well.
5. Legal and Compliance Requirements- Legal requirements, compliance requirements and access regulations vary between industries and countries, but fines, penalties and legal disputes are three things you don’t have room for on your to-do list.
6. Managing Hybrid Deployments & Migrations to Office 365 – Organizations that adopt Office 365 typically need a window of time to serve as a transition window between on-premises Exchange and Office 365 Exchange Online. Some even leave a small portion of their legacy system in place to have added flexibility and additional control. These hybrid email deployments are common yet pose additional management challenges.

Comprehensive Backup from A Trusted Partner

We’ve worked with many organizations to safeguard their data with a flexible, secure and efficient cloud-based backup and recovery service your business can rely on.

OneNeck can enable and support your Office 365 backups helping to eliminate the risk of losing access and control over your Office 365 data.  Our backup solution give you the power to securely backup Office 365 and:

• Protect your Office 365 data from accidental deletion, security threats and retention policy gaps
• Quickly restore individual Office 365 email, files and sites with industry-leading recovery flexibility
• Meet legal and compliance requirements with efficient eDiscovery of Office 365 items

Let us help you gain complete access and control of your Office 365 data and avoid the unnecessary risks of data loss. Contact us today!

Topic: Microsoft Office 365

When it comes to moving to the cloud, businesses of all sizes are feeling the pressure. On one hand, the capabilities offered by the cloud are too good to ignore. If you don’t take advantage of the cloud’s flexibility and scalability—and its ability to support artificial intelligence, automation, real-time business analytics and more—you can bet that your competitors will. A Cloud Vision 2020 survey estimates that by the year 2020, 83% of the enterprise workload will be in the cloud—with almost half of that (41%) in the public cloud.

On the other hand, a move to the cloud is not to be taken lightly. The time, cost and potential risks involved in a change of this magnitude can be significant—and there are no guarantees. Many companies are hesitating, knowing they must make the jump at some point, but needing assurance that their approach will propel them into a brighter future rather than miring them in unexpected expenses and delays.

The most common question asked by potential cloud customers is, “How much does the public cloud cost?” The answer is…it depends. You’ll need to ask yourself a few other questions before you can get an answer that you can take to the bank—or to the board. Several important factors influence the cost of migration. Companies that overlook these factors can seriously sabotage their cloud migration and waste a lot of money in the process. In fact, according to the RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Report from Flexera, cloud users today are wasting a whopping 35% of their investment.

Here are the four important questions you’ll need to answer before you’ll be able to get a solid estimate of your costs:

1. How much connectivity will you need?

Connectivity is the biggest unknown in moving to the cloud, and it can have the biggest impact on cost—potentially up to 20% of your entire monthly bill. Yet when estimating cloud workload, many companies overlook the cost of connectivity. For example, if your current workloads are in your on-premises data centers, close to your users, you don’t incur any provider connectivity fees in most cases. But if you move those applications and workloads to the cloud, those same users will now have to connect to the cloud to do their jobs, which involves connectivity fees you didn’t have to account for before. Not only that, cost estimates from public cloud vendors don’t include those fees. To really know what connectivity will cost you, you’ll need to know as accurately as possible the amount of traffic that will be going to the cloud and what you’ll be charged for it. And keep in mind that unlimited connectivity can be very expensive unless you maintain continuous utilization over about 60% of the bandwidth.

2. What’s your governance model?

After your company has completed its cloud migration, if you’ve done a good job of evangelizing the new cloud strategy and trained your workforce, you may find that everyone is pretty excited about it. Although that’s a good thing, you can end up with too much of that good thing—and it can cost you. If you’re not careful, before you know it, lots of users are spinning up virtual machine (VM) instances, and things are out of control. Without governance―those important, clearly defined, well-communicated and tightly controlled cloud usage parameters―unbridled usage could amplify your costs by two or three times your original projections. Don’t let “cloud sprawl” break your budget. Check out these helpful hints for good data governance.

3. What type of software platform are you using?

Take a close look at the current makeup of your environment. Workloads that are currently running on legacy software could be exponentially more expensive to support in the cloud when compared to cloud-ready workloads. Also take into consideration the interdependencies among your applications and processes—you’ll need to decide how to split up or containerize your workloads. If you only want to move some of your workloads, be aware that you’ll incur additional connectivity fees to keep your on-premises data connected to your cloud assets. And before you make any decisions on splitting up workloads like this, be sure to test the latency between these workloads to ensure you maintain the proper user experience and connectivity of all components.

4. How certain are you about the cloud user experience?

When moving to the cloud, you’ll want your user experience to be the same as or better than it is on-premises, for the same or a lower cost. Focusing on the user experience will help ensure that your cloud migration will be a success. For example, delivering a consistent user experience across cloud and on-premises environments can streamline training and interdepartmental processes. Rather than making a massive (and expensive) cloud migration all at once, it’s better to start small with a pilot or proof of concept so you know what the experience will be.

A pilot can also help you avoid a very expensive mistake. For example, some companies have moved their workloads to the cloud, only to discover that having those workloads in the cloud was too expensive. Unfortunately, it’s even more expensive to get those workloads back out of the cloud in some cases. If your business can’t easily absorb the costs of the downtime required to shift workloads back on-premises or to another provider, you need to make sure that you not only choose the right workloads to go to the cloud, but also make sure you have identified your exit strategy from the cloud before entering it―should you need to invoke it.

The Cost of Failing to Do Your Due Diligence

Here’s a true story about one company that entered into its cloud migration without considering these factors. The company didn’t have any rules around cloud usage, its server allocation wasn’t designed to meet its needs, and connectivity costs weren’t even on its radar. Within one month, the company’s anticipated monthly cost projection skyrocketed from $60,000 to $150,000. The company wanted to pull its data back out of the cloud but learned it would cost another $180,000 to $200,000 to do that. Luckily, OneNeck was  able to help the company optimize its cloud usage and brought its costs down to around $75,000 monthly. That was a painful and roundabout way to get to cloud optimization.

How do you make sure you have the right answers to these four questions before you move to the cloud? As part of our discovery and design sessions, we do very thorough due diligence based on these four factors, to make sure that you have the best estimate of your ongoing public cloud costs.

Moving to the cloud can be a great thing for your business, and it doesn’t have to break the bank. Just make sure you’ve asked all the right questions ahead of time.

There are a lot of opinions to be had about what goes into a solidly-architected cloud. But with so many considerations around reliability, performance and security, too many options can get overwhelming. So, I thought I’d ask one of our resident cloud experts, Derek DeHaan, and get his thoughts on the matter…

How would you define a well-architected cloud?

A well-architected cloud optimizes workload performance, reduces overall cost to operate and provides the best user experience possible. This can ultimately be achieved through the correct workload placement (public, private, etc.) and the continued perseverance to achieve cloud optimization through the use of a cloud management platform.

What are the elements that go into a well-architected cloud?

The elements of a well-architected cloud include:

• automation to optimize cost by only running workloads when they are needed;
• resiliency at all levels of the architecture—specifically including the infrastructure and application layers;
• a cloud management platform to view and optimize consumption and thereby reduce expense/cost;
• governance and security measures to ensure a rock solid perimeter; and
• access/authentication methods to protect the data.

What’s the best way to achieve a well-architected cloud?

Engaging a service provider or partner who has experience and expertise in providing a well-architected cloud has many benefits…

• First, they are able to hone in on and define existing application dependencies. They will also perform a thorough inventory of your current infrastructure in order to establish a baseline.
• Next, they will help analyze where your workloads should go, based on the workload’s characteristics.
• Then, as you embark on your cloud strategy, they will help migrate your workloads to the best possible platform and can also help manage your cloud.
• Finally, through optimization and fine-tuning, they will help you put the final touches on a well-executed cloud architecture.

What should IT never do when constructing a cloud architecture?

• Never assume all workloads are the same.
• Never forget the business criticality of the application. This drives workload placement and architecture redundancy decisions – and also directly affects cost.
• Never assume the cost will always be lower in the cloud.
• Never forget about the network connectivity component of the architecture. User experience is driven by latency to each workload/application.

What are the cloud architecture pitfalls that IT might fall into?

A few common pitfalls, when it comes to cloud architecture include:

• It is always thought to be cheaper to do it in house.
• Start down a path and never complete the project due to lack of understanding the end state.
• No testing ahead of production migration.

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Derek DeHaan leads the Hosting Architecture team at OneNeck IT Solutions. He has more than 15 years of experience in IT architecture, data center design and strategy, and data center migration services. Derek has also spent significant time in the software development space while working to develop a thermal and capacity management software platform. His career spans a variety of technical and leadership positions, and includes providing guidance, recommendations and strategic visions for many of the Fortune 500 companies based in the Twin Cities area. Derek has multiple certifications and specializations across a breadth of hardware, software and business application areas.

Two terms that get thrown around a lot in our industry are APM and NPM, and it seems they are often interchanged (or confused). So, what is APM (Application Performance Monitoring) and how does it differ from NPM (Network Performance Monitoring)?

What is APM?

APM tools are inherently software-based and usually use agents that monitor the application run-time to track performance and connectivity details around application transactions. These details can be used for alerting on slow transactions, troubleshooting and user experience optimization.

What is NPM?

NPM tools on the other hand are agent-less appliances that live on the network, capturing packets and analyzing them as they’re sent over the network. NPM gathers metrics like response times, server and port protocols and route analytics, with the goal of monitoring the health of the network infrastructure.

APM vs NPM or Both?

With the rapid explosion of cloud-based applications and mounting data congestion, there are going to be performance issues which cause slowing on both the applications and the network. This is where network and application visibility can play a critical role in the customer experience (aka, today’s new currency).

With today’s application-centric world, organizations need deeper visibility at the application layer regardless how fast packets are traveling through the network, and NPM can’t necessarily provide the real-time detail your application and DevOps teams need to diagnose, troubleshoot and identify problem root causes. Even though it’s possible to achieve some level of performance monitoring with NPM, you’ll find yourself running into limitations in application visibility pretty fast.

OneNeck’s VP of Advisory Consulting, Jeff Budge sums it up like this… “Overall, the broad advantage of APM is the ability to shift the focus of service delivery measurement by centering it on the user and application. This model differs from traditional bottom-up approaches which focus on disconnected server, network, database, etc. metrics and then attempt to piece meal these and interpret the user experience. In the APM context, IT and the Business initiate conversations on similar footing – the user perspective; and by seeing a common view, become more aligned by allowing this to drive action into the technology stack.”

Who Rules the World? Apps do!

It’s an application-run world we live in today. And your customers aren’t going to settle for less than stellar engagements – and more importantly, they’re loyal to the brands that deliver them. That’s the new reality. An effective APM strategy helps businesses deliver consistently flawless digital experiences by connecting end-user experience and application performance to business outcomes in the most complex, distributed, multi-cloud environments.

In today’s digital world, terms like hybrid cloud and multi-cloud are thrown around interchangeably.  But there is a difference, and understanding it is key to getting the most out of your cloud strategy.

Both hybrid cloud and multi-cloud solutions have their use cases, but a new breed of applications and services is driving the need for highly flexible service delivery, pushing multi-cloud to the forefront of today’s cloud conversations. But which approach is most appropriate for your unique needs?

Multi-Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud: What’s the Difference?

TechTarget defines Hybrid cloud as a cloud computing environment that uses a mix of an on-premises, private cloud and a third-party, public cloud, with orchestration between the two. The intent is to enable the flexible deployment of workloads, applications and data across private and public clouds.

On the other hand, Multi-Cloud refers to a combination of multiple public cloud services and providers.  These aren’t necessarily managed through orchestration software and could very well be separate deployments where never the twain shall meet. 

When Does a Hybrid Approach Make Sense?

While there are still many misconceptions around hybrid cloud, hybrid cloud deployments are frequently found in large enterprises with significant investments in IT infrastructure and large, skilled IT teams. This approach provides the flexibility to leverage the existing IT infrastructure to test a cloud deployment without the risk of making a full switch.

The approach is ideal for organizations that already have a virtualized environment. It allows for a slow migration to the cloud by retiring old equipment as it reaches end-of-life and using an orchestration solution to switch virtualized workloads.

But… Multi-Cloud Sounds Good Too.

It’s hard to argue with one of the big benefits of mult-cloud – CHOICE. The ability to operate from anywhere and move and deploy workloads to any cloud brings a plethora of options to a cloud strategy. You don’t have to change your business requirements to fit a specific provider’s processes, but multi-cloud allows you to shop around and find a provider that matches each part of your business.

One of the big benefits of a multi-cloud approach is the risk of being locked into a single cloud provider can be avoided. If you’re not housing all your data, apps and workloads with a single cloud vendor, you’re not at the mercy of that provider’s pricing and exit fees, or should you outgrow them, you’re not locked into just their cloud.

Additionally, we all acknowledge the reduced capital expenses that cloud offers, but downtime can be extremely costly to the bottom line. This is where finding the right cloud provider for specific areas of your business can help alleviate costly downtime – cloud provider services can vary, so the right combination of providers can be the ideal mix for your business needs, not to mention that in the case a provider fails, you’re not locked into just one cloud.

Businesses that are less locked down in terms of technology have more freedom to rapidly grow (and shrink) technology services in alignment with business need. Those businesses will have a lot more options and flexibility. This is perhaps the most compelling business case for a multi-cloud environment which incorporates multiple cloud vendors.

Is Hybrid Cloud or Multi-Cloud Right for You?

Ultimately, for most organizations it’s a combination of hybrid and multi-cloud that offers true flexibility in terms of cost, resilience and elasticity – especially for enterprises with existing on-premise data centers or private-cloud deployments. There is no “one size fits all” in a multi-cloud world, so no need to force-fit your workloads into one cloud. After all, your cloud starts with YOU.

Ready to look for a multi-cloud provider?  Get practical advice from this eBook.

Multi-cloud environments are on the rise thanks to benefits that include easier disaster recovery, the flexibility to spin up and offload resources on demand, and freedom from vendor lock-in.   

Multi-cloud strategy vs hybrid cloud

Multi-cloud strategy isn’t the same as a hybrid cloud strategy, which mixes private on-premises cloud and a third-party online cloud from a single provider. A multi-cloud environment may include a hybrid cloud. But with servers spread across multiple vendors, there is no orchestration to unify the entire environment. When you consider the de facto use of cloud services by employees and business units outside of IT, many companies are already multi-cloud, whether they call it that or not.

Multi-Cloud Management

With no one cloud model being the best for every workload, there’s growing consensus that multi-cloud environments will be mainstream within a few years. Requirements between business functions and departments can vary significantly.

A multi-cloud architecture gives organizations more flexibility to address different requirements. But without orchestration or connections between the servers run by multiple vendors, it also gives companies more to manage. This creates a number of multi-cloud challenges, including:

• Tracking what’s stored on each server and their uses
• Securing data spread across multiple clouds and providers
• Managing performance — The more cloud environments in use, the harder it is to track latency issues and maximize uptime

To make the most of their multi-cloud environment, companies need to leverage a multi-cloud management platform (CMP).

Why Use a Multi-Cloud Management Platform?

An effective cloud management platform simplifies the deployment and operation of apps and databases across several different cloud providers. It does so by acting as a broker between providers and cloud users to improve enterprise visibility of cloud resources, reduce administrative headaches and optimize resources. With a CMP, organizations enjoy the benefits of multi-cloud without the complexity by:

• Optimizing costs. A CMP provides insight and visibility into cloud spend and can help with budgeting, allowing companies to stretch IT budgets across multiple cloud providers while minimizing costs.
• Improve efficiency. Managing individual clouds is heavily time- and resource-intense. A CMP automates and streamlines many tasks, and improves efficiency by enabling administration from one dashboard.
• Ensure security and compliance. Security isn’t just hard to manage with multiple vendors, silos can become so opaque that it’s hard to spot risks. By providing a top-level view of security and allowing IT to drill down into the security of each cloud, a CMP ensures that cloud environments are as secure and compliant as possible.

Right Application, Right Cloud, Right Management Platform

Managing your multi-cloud environment doesn’t have to be complex, and neither does selecting the right CMP.  OneNeck’s ReliaCloud CMP will unify your on-premises, public, private or hybrid clouds together via a single platform, providing you with a “single pane of glass” to automate, manage, monitor, secure and govern your clouds, from a consolidated view.  Contact us today to discuss your cloud management needs or to schedule a demo of ReliaCloud CMP.

For more valuable reading, download our multi-cloud toolkit.

 Organizations are rapidly embracing cloud services to gain agility and thrive in today’s digital economy. This has created a strategic imperative to better manage cybersecurity risk while keeping pace at scale as firms move critical apps to the cloud.

Cloud security is a shared responsibility, where the cloud provider and the tenant each have a role to play. Although it sounds relatively simple, customers are often not clear where their provider’s role ends and their obligations start, creating gaps.

Download our Who Owns Cloud Security eBook, for valuable insights on what measures you and your provider should take to protect your cloud deployments.

What we’re seeing in the industry today is that most of our customers aren’t adopting a single platform for all of their workloads. Depending on a plethora of factors (RTO/RPO, application requirements, latency requirements, etc.), it truly is becoming a multi-cloud world.

But with lots of options comes complexity.

In this blog series, we attempt to tackle some of the key considerations you should consider when making workload placement decisions. This month, we’re talking with Derek DeHaan on interoperability in multi-cloud when deciding the best execution venue for your workloads.

You spend a lot of time with OneNeck’s customers, helping them weigh their options when deciding what platform best suits their workload. When it comes to interoperability, what should they absolutely consider?

So, when we talk about interoperability in multi-cloud, the most important consideration we hear from our customers is around multi-cloud security. When tying workloads together across multiple platforms, it is critical to understand how the workloads and data can interact and traverse between those platforms in a secure manner. This includes the data and user/administrator access to ensure your data is protected.

Another key consideration with interoperability is what sort of bare metal compute requirements does your organization have today and can those be fulfilled by the new platform of choice. What I mean by that is that customers today currently have legacy applications and hardware they’ve invested in, either in their own data center or in a colocation provider, and maybe those things are a year or so into a 3-year lifecycle. With a hosted private cloud option, if required (especially at OneNeck – I can’t speak for other providers), if you have those investments in hardware, we can bring that into our data centers and attach it directly to our private cloud while still giving you access over our backbone to the hyperscaler’s as well.

What that gives you is the flexibility to go ahead and finish the usable life on that equipment before you make the full migration to a public cloud. Some of the hyperscale providers do not offer this as an option. So, if you have an appliance or a network device – something that cannot be virtualized or is not end of life – it’s important to know that you do have options to bring that equipment with you in some of the hosted private cloud scenarios and still connect it and use it for the rest of its usable life.

Are platform requirements still a big interoperability consideration?

I would have said they were even more of a concern probably about a year ago, before Azure started supporting Linux and other operating systems that are outside the Microsoft stack. So today it’s probably a little bit less of a consideration, because the hyperscale public cloud providers and the hosted private cloud providers have realized the need to go across the gamut on platforms.  And what I mean by that is X86, Solaris, Linux, Unix – they’ve all implemented solutions to allow many if not all of those operating systems on their platforms.

The same thing used to be an issue around hypervisor choice, but the hyperscale providers are going down the path of offering different hypervisors now too, so it’s not as big of a concern as it used to be either.

As a cloud and data center provider, we often help our customers understand the importance of carrier connectivity in their overall cloud strategy. What connectivity advice would you have for organizations looking at moving to a cloud provider?

Carrier connectivity is all about understanding how you’re going to connect to your applications and how are your users going to connect to those applications. The big keys here are connectivity options can vary greatly and depending on your choice of dedicated circuits or over VPNs on the internet the costs and user experience associated with connectivity can vary greatly.

Hosted private cloud options with private carrier circuits are usually more cost effective than connecting to a large pubic cloud where you’re going to be bringing a ton of data in and out, as you’re going to get hit with those ingress and egress charges. So, something to consider ahead of making the decision, hyperscale public cloud may look a lot cheaper up front, but I’m going to have to take all of this data out of the database servers, access more data for reports, and now the cost of pulling that data out becomes a measure that you really didn’t calculate up front. Maybe it looked cheaper up front, but now that you see all your data transfer costs, it really isn’t as cheap as you thought initially.

Obviously, having a plan B is critical in any IT strategy these days, so what should one consider around replication in the cloud?

Bottom line: replication technology is incredibly important. And there are many different offerings out there today that are leaps and bounds ahead of what used to be just hardware replication or vendor-specific replication – we’re now in the software-replication space. So, software utilities that can go across platforms, irrelevant of vendors, and can replicate from on premise, hosted private cloud or into the hyperscale private clouds are always the best option. Some examples are Zerto or Azure Site Recovery, but there are many others.

But it’s important to define your replication strategy if you’re going to do DR, if you’re going to have multiple environments like dev/test or any other environments that might reside in a disparate place from production. This just makes sense in today’s world, as you can take advantage of a multi-cloud approach and get economies of scale and cost optimization. So, it’s important to understand how you’re going to replicate and get that data between those sites most effectively and for the lowest cost.

Any final thoughts on interoperability considerations for our readers?

The final thought I would leave you with is there are many considerations as I mentioned above and the importance of each is different for every organization – so I would say test a small amount of workloads in the decided platforms if possible. This will allow you to test the interoperability, security, connectivity, etc. to make sure it is as you expect and you don’t negatively affect the end user experience.

Want to read some more of Derek’s multi-cloud tips? Check out our conversation on critical security considerations as you build your multi-cloud strategy.

Download our Multi-Cloud Toolkit

A database management transformation is underway. Some say it threatens the long-term future of database administrators (DBAs). As more enterprises shift to multi-cloud and hybrid cloud solutions, automating their products with self-driving, self-patching and self-healing features, it has some in management thinking they don’t need managed DBA services anymore.

While the role of the DBA may change, this transformation does not mean the DBA will disappear. According to Biju Thomas, Principal Solutions Architect at OneNeck, “Data is—and will remain—the lifeblood of business. DBAs will continue to play a central role, providing valuable insights into how organizations will best harness their data to produce business value.”

In a recent CIOReview article, Thomas discusses the six traits you should expect from the future DBA and the ways in which they will add value to the business in the cloud era.

Outsourcing is becoming an increasingly popular business strategy. By carving off business processes and giving them to outside vendors companies save money and resources. Outsourcing enterprise computing processes using cloud services, for example, allows you to hand off the cost and responsibility of maintaining on-premise hardware and software. However, just because you outsource your enterprise infrastructure does that mean your cloud service provider assumes total responsibility for your network? What about issues such as cloud security, which is a major concern for every IT manager and CIO? Can you hold your cloud service provider accountable for providing watertight data security?

As the use of cloud continues to grow, concern for data security grows with it. When data is an important business asset, management is hesitant to surrender control. However, it has been demonstrated over and over that cloud-based services tend to be more secure than on-premises systems. Most cloud services providers maintain rigorous security protocols for disaster recovery and protection from cyber-attack. Since providing secure and stable computing services is their primary business, cloud service companies use sophisticated tools to continuously monitor systems, identify vulnerabilities, and plug holes in cloud security. They also have service-level agreements (SLAs) to assure customers that security problems are remediated quickly.

So when you engage a cloud services provider you no longer have to worry about data security, right? Wrong!

Enterprise computing is more than just hosted enterprise hardware and services. Your cloud service provider is responsible for securing the foundation of your enterprise infrastructure; the computing systems, power, data storage, database, and networking. As the customer, you are still responsible for securing applications and related services.

Your cloud provider is generally responsible for cloud security at the network layer, including network segmentation, perimeter services, DDOS spoofing, and so forth. As the cloud customer, you are responsible for threat detection, security monitoring, and incident reporting. In other words, your provider offers cloud security for hosted switches and networks, but your responsibility is to secure the network applications and data traffic. Most SLAs are structured to make it clear that the customer is responsible for host layer data traffic, such as access management, patch management, security monitoring, and log analysis, i.e. any application security elements.

Finger Pointing Doesn’t Stop Attacks

Assuming that your cloud service provider will include comprehensive cybersecurity as part of their contract is a mistake. There are areas where they have control over the infrastructure and therefore can take responsibility for data security, but there are other areas that have to be the enterprise customer’s responsibility. Developing a collaborative cloud security strategy is the best approach to address risk management and deal with security threats.

Let’s consider some of the most prevalent security threats and where they tend to compromise enterprise networks. According to the 2018 Verizon Data Breach Report security issues affect both enterprise network owners and cloud service providers:

• 73 percent of attacks were perpetrated by outsiders but 28 percent were by insiders, usually employees. Maintaining internal security is largely the responsibility of the cloud customer, since attacks tend to be mounted against corporate targets and not cloud providers.

• 17 percent or one in five data breaches were from phishing attacks, which includes employees being spoofed into surrendering sensitive information such as passwords – again, the responsibility of the network owners, not the cloud service provider.

• Malware, especially ransomware, is one of the most insidious types of cyberattack. Ransomware attacks have grown 56 percent in one year, and many of these attacks are targeting file servers and databases, locking them until a ransom is paid. These types of attacks tend to target end users, but MIT experts predict that more ransomware is targeting the cloud.

• Inadequate identity and credential management is a universal threat. Stealing the right credentials is like having the keys to the kingdom for both corporate computers and hosted resources.

• Account service hijacking has become commonplace and affects cloud services and in-house systems. With the right account credentials, cybercriminals can eavesdrop on activities and transactions, return falsified data, and send users to bogus web sites.

• Infiltrating cloud services directly is also becoming more common. Bad actors are increasingly leveraging cloud resources to target end users or other cloud providers.

No matter what the nature of the threat, everyone has a role in protecting data assets. A data breach can originate from anywhere, and once the infrastructure is compromised the damage can spread to infect applications, hosts, and network systems. That’s why it’s vital that corporate customers and cloud service providers understand their areas of responsibility when it comes to cyber security.

 Develop Collaborative Cloud Security Strategies

To appreciate the respective responsibilities for cloud security, it’s best to start by understanding the cloud service model. Cyber-attacks will happen, so you need to know where your cloud service provider has responsibility and where you need to take charge of enterprise security.

For example, applications are completely your responsibility so it’s vital to secure your code. Whether you are supporting a DevOps coding environment or simply maintaining a basic website, you need to have security in place for the entire development lifecycle. Code that has not been thoroughly tested before it’s deployed could contain vulnerabilities. Use code encryption, testing libraries, and software to scan for bugs to make sure your code is secure.

Patch management is important, both for enterprise customers and cloud service providers. It’s the best way to address known vulnerabilities in software and production systems Cloud service providers will maintain patches for their systems, but you also need to have your own patch management protocols. Automated patch management and security scanning will help, but you need to have an established protocol to update systems software regularly.

Access management is another essential part of systems security. In addition to managing passwords and data access, you need to define roles and responsibilities to control sensitive data and systems. Defining roles and limiting access reduces the risk if someone’s credentials are stolen. Integrating your active directory (AD) and your lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) authentication model into your cloud infrastructure will help contain data access. Also consider using two-factor authentication.

Ongoing monitoring and log management are important for regulatory compliance as well as for security. Reviewing logs provides an overview of data access and traffic patterns that could highlight suspicious activities. Logs also are useful for conducting forensic investigations.

 Matching Security to Different Cloud Services

When working with cloud service providers, you need to match your security protocols to the types of cloud services provided. Public cloud services, for example, are offered over the Internet and tend to be less secure, since resources such as computing time and data storage are shared. A private cloud offers dedicated connectivity and resources and is completely customizable, making it easier to manage systems security. Private clouds tend to be more secure but they also require the corporate IT department to manage more aspects of cloud services, which means more staff, more management, more maintenance, and more accountability for data security.

Depending on your cloud service needs, consider developing a cloud vendor checklist.

For Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service, cloud vendors are responsible for securing the infrastructure and customers secure the applications. With Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Applications-as-a-Service (AaaS) the cloud provider is responsible for securing the applications as well as the infrastructure. However, SaaS and AaaS vendors often use third-party IaaS cloud services, which makes security more complicated. Be sure that your security policies and procedures (e.g. authentication, inspection, and monitoring) can be integrated with SaaS and AaaS services.

Hybrid cloud strategies that combine on-premise, private, and public cloud services are becoming more popular which means standardizing security across environments can be an issue. Security protocols will have to vary to accommodate each environment. Ideally, end users should be able to view and manage security across the entire infrastructure using a common set of tools, i.e., a single pane of glass. Unfortunately, that kind of security transparency isn’t always available.

When considering cloud service providers, be sure you are working with vendors that understand cloud security. That means they have cloud-based versions of security solutions, centralized security management, centralized event management, etc. Also look for vendors who work with leading cloud service vendors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and others. Cloud service contracts change and you want to make sure your security procedures follow you wherever your data resides.

Achieving security in the cloud is possible, but it isn’t guaranteed. Organizations need to implement their security policies and procedures in conjunction with their cloud provider to provide the highest levels of protection against cloud security risks.

Not sure where to start? Contact OneNeck IT Solutions to speak with our cloud security experts.

When it comes to Oracle cloud certifications, there are three broad categories says Oracle ACE Director Biju Thomas, who is also a Principal Solutions Architect at OneNeck. He recently discussed the categories and his insights on Oracle cloud certifications with Alan Earls of TechTarget noting that, “Within each category, you’ll find a variety of choices requiring an array of skill sets.”

Thomas, an author for several Oracle Database & SQL Certification Study Guides (published by Sybex & Wiley), believes in taking certification exams to learn new technologies. It is possible to upgrade your existing certifications to cloud certifications. In fact, when it comes to Oracle database certification levels, Thomas says Oracle Database OCA or OCP are required to earn the “Oracle Database Cloud Administrator Certified Associate” or “Oracle Database Cloud Certified Administrator” certifications. He adds, “There are also a few SaaS certifications, especially Enterprise Resource Planning, which helps one achieve the equivalent cloud certification.”

When it comes to navigating your options and selecting the Oracle certification best-suited for your interest and skillsets, Thomas recommends newbies take time to review the cloud tracks and tests. He says, “There are a ton of choices, so pay attention to the area of expertise you are interested in.”

As the cloud has come into its own and been widely adopted at enterprises around the globe, many organizations have started seeking services from a multitude of cloud providers to meet diverse application requirements and data needs across different business units. Multi-cloud approaches have become incredibly popular in recent years and many point to it as the future of cloud computing.

But simply deciding on a multi-cloud deployment model doesn’t achieve a stable, tranquil IT operation; organizations need to effectively allocate their application workloads to the proper platform to achieve that nirvana.

The first step in choosing the right cloud and/or provider is to match each application’s technical requirements to the cloud features and service offerings of the specified platform. This blog will highlight key considerations when identifying the best cloud for your applications.

Contract and SLA’s Considerations

• SLA Alignment with platform choice– What is driving your business uptime SLA?  Do your applications have specific availability requirements? If so, understanding the uptime SLA’s provided by the various providers will help you determine which cloud is best to meet your uptime needs.

• Platform Choice – It’s important to consider how you plan to manage several platforms/ providers and aggregate the right data to understand what is going on in your environment. How do those workloads work together or specifically stay segregated?

• Data Privacy– Understanding who owns your data can help you to better understand and manage cloud costs more efficiently. Be sure you identify any application dependencies and data flows among servers and the users. By understanding user access patterns and dependencies you can help determine the amount of data that may be leaving a cloud provider. This will help you estimate the amount you may be billed for egress charges. 

• Compartmentalization– Identify whether your application is dependent on other workloads?  Is it tied to anything else in terms of dependencies? If not, it’s much easier to move those workloads to a hyperscale cloud as the application doesn’t have any interdependencies that would require additional resources to be moved as well.

Cloud Risks Considerations

VM Sprawl, Ease of Use & User Experience–   Nowadays, the ease of provisioning resources with the swipe of a credit card can cause your environment to grow 2x to 3x overnight.  It’s critical to understand who has access to what resources and how they can spin things up. In addition, with hyperscale cloud, your IT staff will be most likely be forced to learn a new way of managing your servers via the hyperscale cloud providers portal.  Take into consideration time spent learning this new way of doing business.

Connectivity & Latency-  Prior to selecting a cloud for your workloads, it’s important to determine how much it will cost you to connect and how any latency will affect your overall user experience. It’s recommended to test a workload, preferably a dev/test environment that’s not production impacting to start with to determine what affect it has on user experience, if any at all.

Governance and Application Security–  When you move to the cloud, it’s important to consider, upfront, how you plan to govern who can add/remove, migrate or turn your workloads up/down, to ensure your bill isn’t 3x what you expected it to be. This can also help optimize your environment to minimize operating expense while still providing the right user experience.

Total Cost of Ownership Considerations  

It’s imperative to identify and weigh the value of TCO variables when considering a move to the cloud.  Analysis should include the evaluation of:

• Total cost of hardware/ software; including contracts and licensing renewals
• Cost of a full-time employees for management (or percentage of time of a FTE)
• Risk
• Downtime/ resiliency to downtime
• Flexibility and scalability of solution
• Vendor management
• Data Center space
• Connectivity 

Costs aren’t always linear, so it’s also important to understand the break points; where your infrastructure still has shelf life. This allows you to make the most of the existing infrastructure you have and migrate to the cloud over time versus all at once.

Operational Considerations

 Upgrades & Patches– Understanding who is responsible for what in the cloud is critical to success. Determine, upfront, who will execute the tasks, you or the service provider. It’s also important to note how soon to patch after it’s been released. If the provider does this for you, ensure that they have a roll back strategy in case any issues arise with the patch.

 Managed/ Unmanaged –  Understand the level of support required per workload, then determine who you want to manage these workloads. If you want an SLA and to transfer risk, a service provider can provide the audibility, change management and enterprise grade monitoring/patching tools to support your workloads, freeing your IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives.  

 Process–  Assess the software tools, change management procedures, auditability for compliance and the integration of systems between you and your provider. It’s also important to ask if the provider provides a customer runbook, where everything is documented and issues can be remediated regardless of who would be on staff during a potential outage. This is a major benefit of a 24/7 service provider.  

Workload Mobility–  Having a clear understanding of what your workloads can run on is key for portability. In addition, network configuration considerations come into play. How do you tie your networks together? How do you get from one platform or provider to another? How do you plan to ensure they are secure and enable quick movement of workloads between them? Understanding these variables will help you to better decide where to place your workloads.

 Finding Your Cloud Guru

Deciding how to allocate workloads to the cloud is complex and what you choose will affect the benefits you get from your cloud deployment. Partnering with an experienced provider can help. OneNeck IT Solutions offers a free hybrid cloud assessment to help you understand your cloud needs and balance your workloads the right way. With our experience architecting, deploying, and managing hybrid cloud solutions based on Microsoft Azure, OneNeck is the cloud guru you need to guide you through your hybrid cloud practice.

What we’re seeing in the industry today is that most of our customers aren’t adopting a single platform for all of their workloads. Depending on a plethora of factors (RTO/RPO, application requirements, latency requirements, etc.), it truly is becoming a multi-cloud world.

But with lots of options comes complexity.

In this blog series, we attempt to tackle some of the key considerations when making workload placement decisions. This month, we’re talking with Derek DeHaan about multi-cloud security considerations when deciding the best execution venue for your workloads.

You spend a lot of time with OneNeck’s customers, helping them understand their options for their workloads, as well as the potential risks and rewards. Based on your unique perspective, what do you see as the most important consideration when looking at security’s impact on a workload platform choice?

The most important consideration we’re seeing with our customers today is understanding what security framework you need to comply with. And what I mean by that is, for instance, the NIST framework has a definition of cloud computing and how cloud security should be applied in cloud-like workloads. If that’s what you’re going to conform to, we can absolutely help you with that. Azure and AWS both conform to that, and we at OneNeck are going down that same path. Big key here is that you need to understand first what you are trying to achieve, and then identify what platforms will help you achieve that security framework.

What about regulatory compliance?

If you have PCI, or HIPAA or SOC compliance mandates, it’s important to understand those workloads that are subject to those compliance needs. If those workloads are subject to say SOC 2 or PCI level 1, some of the platforms may not be a good fit for those workloads. It will help you determine which workloads can reside where and help you setup the appropriate connectivity between platforms to ensure a successful multi-cloud strategy.

We hear a lot these days about endpoint protection. Why is it such a critical part of an organization’s multi-cloud security strategy?

Endpoint protection can really be divided into two areas: servers and end-user devices. End-user devices are a little bit different, but always need to be a consideration. The servers however are extremely important. Some of the private cloud managed service providers will provide antivirus and some of those end-point server protections as part of their managed services offering. It’s key to understand if that’s a necessity for your company, and who will be providing the necessary licensing – the MSP or your organization. But this needs to be part of the upfront conversation with any service provider you’re considering partnering with to ensure you have it covered when you go to implement your chosen solution.

With today’s threat landscape continually becoming more sophisticated, we all know a layered approach of defense is critical, so that if an attacker is able to bypass one layer, another layer stands in the way to protect the organization. Two of the more common tools used to secure networks are firewalls and intrusion prevention systems. What should be considered here?

With all the security threats out there today, this is becoming much more of a hard-fast requirement for many of our customers. Some companies already have this implemented in their own hosted data center or hosted virtualized infrastructure, but service providers are moving towards making this a requirement.

You can sign up for this on the hyperscale, public cloud provider side as a virtual machine or appliance that runs in your environment. At OneNeck, we go ahead and provide that as dedicated firewalls to ensure that you’re getting those services. So, it comes back to understanding those workloads, and do we need to have intrusion prevention? What type of firewall services are going to be important? Do we want packet inspection or layer 4-7 detailed packet analysis to understand what our internal employees or customers are doing with transmitted data? All important questions to ask.

Does segmentation of the business applications impact platform choice?

This takes us back to the security frameworks and regulatory compliance discussion. First off, it’s important to understand your application dependencies, and then how you can segment out chunks of the business.

Maybe a simple example is your web servers. There may be a web server connected to a database server, and those two don’t connect to anything else in the business – they serve up your web page and can be a standalone group of servers. That would then be considered a segment that would be an ideal candidate for a hyperscale public cloud, because it can easily and automatically scale for seasonality, and it doesn’t need to be connected to any of the other infrastructure. This can be very cost effective, and you can go ahead and let it do its thing in the public cloud.

As any provider like OneNeck sees on a regular basis, one of the biggest multi-cloud security challenges is around management. What would you recommend as a solution to an IT team looking at centralizing their security management?

When you start looking at all of the different platforms that you can put your workloads on, centralized security management becomes key. You have to understand how you’re going to bring back security data that’s going to be overarching on your public cloud, your hosted private cloud and your on-premise workloads – all of them might have different security software that is analyzing and watching for intrusion and things like that. So, you need to know what’s going to sit at the top and give you that single pane of glass that allows you to look at or tap into all areas and provide appropriate correlation of the events to ensure best response possible should a breach occur.

What’s an example of a common solution you’re seeing our customers use today?

OpenDNS is one that many of our customers are adopting. It allows them to go out and basically make their domain name available in multiple places for redundancy reasons, as opposed to going to a single DNS registrar. So, as you look at security for DDoS attacks and other things that are happening to websites and customer’s environments, OpenDNS is one of those solutions that’s a consideration to prevent that from causing your organization an unwanted outage/down time.

Any final thoughts for our readers?

Remember this is just one small area that needs to be considered in the overall picture, but when you break it down like this, it makes it much easier to tackle. It is always important to do the best you can to define your requirements up front to ensure you get the correct solution and platform for your workloads. Be sure to also vet out the providers and platforms you choose ahead of the final move, as you want to do the best you can to reduce any unwanted surprises around capabilities after a decision has been made. This due diligence will help guide you to the most appropriate solution and will help your organization succeed when it comes to your overall cloud strategy.

Want to learn more? Download our Multi-Cloud Toolkit.

If there’s one thing that large enterprises all the way down to mom-and-pop shops have in common, it’s the lure of the quick win. Every business is hyper focused on the bottom line, and what they can do to drive quick growth, which has been one of the primary drivers in the race to the cloud. It just makes sense. The cloud enables faster delivery of services, in turn, faster profit.

And while it seems like most organizations are sprinting at a breakneck speed to the cloud, there are many reasons it makes sense to slow down and take a more methodical and strategic pace. This means adopting the cloud on a project-by-project basis, leading to an overall cloud adoption based on many individual successes.

The benefits of this approach can lead to…

• Cloud and People Alignment: When you think about how the average person operates, we tend to think and deliver in steps. We see an end goal, sure, but then chunk out the tasks that get us to that goal. It also gives us small accomplishments along the way, which goes a long way to building and keeping us positive as we strive toward a larger goal. Similarly, by tackling the move to the cloud in incremental projects, it gives IT teams, LOB stakeholders, and even leadership quick wins with faster return.
• Leadership Support: By tackling the move to the cloud in smaller increments, it is easier to demonstrate ROI on a more-regular basis, building the necessary trust and buy-in that leads to increased funding for future cloud projects.
• Upfront Planning Pays Off: Like any major initiative, the more time to plan, the better the outcome. Choosing the right cloud is only one part of the equation. The applications and workloads going into the cloud can add huge complexity. And then beyond that, how will they integrate with existing platforms, and where will the data intersect and reside? These are only a few of the factors that must be part of a comprehensive plan.
• Clearly Articulated Migration Path: In a recent study conducted by 451 Research on behalf of OneNeck, they found that the biggest challenge for IT is the migration to off-premises cloud/hosted IT environments. This comes as no surprise as we continue to see our customers struggle with this very challenge on a daily basis. A fail-proof migration plan needs to include extensive upfront analysis to help identify the gaps between where the workload currently resides and what it will take to move it to the cloud. Then the actual migration must be mapped out, including connecting the cloud-based workload to on-premises applications, data migration and then testing to ensure it is optimized and meeting the needs of the business. And don’t forget to include the management of the workload once it is in the cloud.
• Upfront Security Focus: In today’s landscape of increasing cyberthreats, no organization can afford to lose sight of security. Yet often with numerous and disparate cloud migrations in process, things slip through the cracks. Security should be a top priority at all times, but it’s critical to make an evaluation of your security needs in the early stages of cloud migration planning. Do you have visibility across your cloud platforms from a single pane of glass? What security frameworks are your cloud providers utilizing? Are there compliance mandates, like HIPAA or FedRAMP you need to consider? And one of the biggest challenges, what are the dependencies among your workloads in various platforms? A tactical and step-by-step approach to cloud adoption can help ensure that gaps in security aren’t missed, keeping you safe in the long run.

While a sweeping, let’s-go-for-it approach to cloud adoption can work, the short-sprint approach will most-often be a safer one that allows for demonstrated ROI throughout the process. And who doesn’t love a quick win?

 As you look at moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud, be aware of the myths especially around statements such as “With cloud, businesses can save money.” It’s reality, but can also lead to misunderstanding because true ROI is difficult to calculate. To better understand myth vs. reality, author Kevin Casey asked several cloud experts for their insights on common myths. He shares their responses in a recent The Enterprisers Project article.

In Myth 2, Scott Morley, Principal Application Architect at OneNeck IT Solutions, sheds light on why ROI can be tough to calculate and offers ways to better measure business value. Click to Morley’s insights.

As a business, moving your IT to the cloud is a major decision involving hours and hours of time, review, scrutiny and conversation. The last thing you want is sticker shock following your move to the cloud. Surprise fees are certainly a close second. To help you evade both, author Kevin Casey recently highlighted five tips for avoiding sticker shock and surprise bills in a just published The Enterprisers Project article.

According to Scott Morley, principal application architect at OneNeck, “The cloud is deceptively easy to scale and there needs to be governance set up around it before deployments start. Locking down the environment, so only specific users can add resources, is critical.”

Scott goes on to talk about the number one way to prevent sticker shock and advises on the best means to avoid it, while others discuss the need to automate and implement cloud governance.
Click to read the article
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To best optimize cloud spend, especially in a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environment, Scott suggests it starts with understanding the demand an application will place on a server. He says, “There are many options cloud providers are giving to help reduce costs, such as reserved instances and burstable CPUs.”

Are you tracking how your server is being used? If not, it will be nearly impossible to judge cost savings because a misconfigured burstable server can actually end up costing more than a standard server. There are a number of tools that now offer this analysis.

“It’s really is just a numbers game,” concludes Scott. And OneNeck is ready to help you assess your needs and prepare for a move to the cloud, without sticker shock or surprise fees.

Friday the 13^th – a day many dread. But what is it about the number 13? We’re afraid to have a 13^th floor in buildings, airports go without a 13^th terminal and prospective home owners steer clear of addresses with the number 13.

How have we come to the point where the term paraskevidekatriaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13^th, was created? Some point to biblical history, where the 13^th apostle at the Last Supper, Judas, betrayed Jesus. Others reference Apollo 13, the space mission that never landed on the moon.

The list goes on and on — and the effect it has on our society is immense. According to the Phobia Institute Stress Management Center, approximately 20 million Americans suffer from this fear. An estimated $750 million is lost in business as consumers are hesitant to make purchases, travel or take any type of risk. Some do not even get out of bed for the day.

At the end of the day, the sun still rises and sets on every Friday the 13^th, and people will continue to have their superstitions. So, maybe the best place to start is acknowledging and facing them.

Likewise, we see common fears in the world of technology. In recent years, there has been much fear around the advent, adoption and now management of the cloud. Is my data really secure in the cloud? Who can access it? What if the cloud fails?

But like most fears, with proper investigation, you’ll find them often unfounded. In this informative white paper, we explore some of the common “cloud myths” around cloud security, costs and loss of control, so you can make an informed decision as you move your data to the cloud.

GET THE WHITE PAPER NOW

There’s no doubt, more and more businesses are looking to move to the cloud while making the most of their current IT investments, which in turn has led to the myriad of hybrid solutions that exist today. As a result, the demand for hybrid-savvy IT talent is on the rise.

But what is it? How do you get the experience? And, how do you develop the skills CIOs and IT leaders are looking for?

Kevin Casey recently asked experts to highlight the key skills they consider likely to have staying power or that appear on a hiring managers’ wish lists. Check out Kevin’s recent article highlighting
7 in-demand skills
.

Utilizing multiple clouds from multiple vendors with a mix of public and private clouds is now a way of life for most enterprises today. However, operating in a multi-cloud environment is not without its challenges.  Data egress charges, incurred when data is transferred out of a cloud to another, are a particularly thorny aspect.

I sat down with Derek DeHaan, Former Director- Business Development, Cloud & Managed Services at OneNeck, to discuss the importance of knowing your data to better understand and manage cloud costs more efficiently.

Q: In terms of cloud, what is data ingress and data egress?

A: Data Ingress – data communications and network traffic that is originating from outside the host network and destined for a node in the host network. This includes all data transfers into a hyperscale public cloud provider form your internal data centers or users at the edge of the network accessing resources on the public cloud platform.

Data Egress – data communications and network traffic leaving the host network and traversing public internet or private connections and going to an external site/network/host. Downloading information or accessing a web page from a source/server that resides in the hyper scale public cloud platform would be classified as egress traffic.

Q: What are the different aspects of data transfer in the cloud specifically regions and zone?

A: Regions – inter and intra region transfers are charged for differently as well as data transfer among different countries. Typically providers will have multiple regions within a given country to help provide redundancy and in most cases inter region data transfers are not charged for. Intra region transfers are charged for, but usually at a much lower rate than intra-country transfers.

Availability zones – most providers have a minimum of two availability zones in a region and usually a handful of data centers in a given availability zone. This is provided to help achieve certain levels of resiliency and the specified # of 9’s you will be seeking depending on your application requirements.

Q: How are ingress and egress charges in the cloud typically billed?

A: In most cases egress traffic is billed on a utility style model, you pay for what you use or transfer from one point to another. In some cases the providers offer dedicated connections into the platforms and provide unlimited plans for transfer of data which eliminates the need for doing it based on what is actually utilized. Unless you are transferring large amounts of data continuously this is usually cost prohibitive to go the unlimited route, so most organizations end up getting billed per GB or TB of data transfer out. Ingress traffic in all providers is free as they love to have organizations put data into their platforms.

Q: What are the best practices for minimizing/ controlling data egress costs?

A: The most important thing to consider is be sure you have an understanding of your application dependencies and data flows among servers and the users. By understanding user access patterns and dependencies you can help determine the amount of data that may be leaving a hyper scale public cloud provider. This will help you estimate the amount you may be billed for egress charges. Archive type data is also a great fit for hyper scale public cloud and many companies first step into the cloud – as you don’t access the data very often, so the storage is cheap and there are usually very minimal egress fees when data retrieval is required.

Our previous blog focused on the challenges and opportunities for businesses undergoing application modernization and cloud transformation (the latter required for the former), and the role IT services and infrastructure providers play in facilitating that journey. But that’s a high-level view, and the fact is that practical implementation is going to be unique for every organization and require a wide range of solutions to interesting problems. Every application has a different set of requirements to perform at maximum efficiency, including requisite infrastructure. This is a concept 451 calls the best execution venue; it’s shorthand for deciding where to deploy specific workloads.

Percentage of Workloads Running in Cloud

Source: 451 Research Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud Transformation, Workloads and Key Projects 2017

After more than a decade of rapid growth in cloud computing, some trends in workload placement are shaping up. For example, web and media applications are highly represented in the cloud, with 58% using cloud today and 72% expected to be using cloud in two years. Infrastructure as a service is the largest part of that share – it just makes sense to put online content out in the cloud. Data analytics, on the other hand, is 42% cloud and much more evenly split between software as a service (SaaS), public, hosted and private cloud. Email is heavily weighted toward SaaS.

Another consequence: finding the best execution venue for applications is why so many businesses end up with multiple service providers and cloud platforms, all of which need to be utilized and managed and require expertise.

The role of managed infrastructure and IT service providers here is twofold: first, the provider should have the requisite expertise and experience to understand the application requirements and the (often complex) business needs associated with each workload. Many providers today offer consultative services to assess and plan migrations, for example. Second, the IT service provider should have access to the best execution venue in each case and can bring them along. It can also bring new choices into the mix that a midsized business would otherwise find out of reach.

For example, customer-facing applications are being distributed onto more edge and mobile devices, capturing a growing amount of data. More and more of this data needs to link back to your centralized databases (likely running on a separate platform), so it can be analyzed and acted on. Having a service provider thread the needle from ‘Internet of Things’ platforms such as Google or AWS and edge devices to managed application resources to the business datacenter could allow a business new insights and operational efficiencies it would never get on its own. That’s what an IT service provider should offer today: new ways to think about business IT.

Finding the best execution venue for a legacy application is reliant on a number of factors, many of which are not technical. 451 Research outlines considerations and next steps in this Pathfinder report.

There are currently two deployment models supported by Azure public cloud: Classic and Azure Resource Manager (ARM). How you create, configure, and manage your Azure resources is different between these two models. Understanding the differences between the two is essential to your success of your Azure deployment.

Classic Deployments

Azure Service Manager (ASM), aka Azure Classic is the original version of Azure that was launched in 2010. In this model, each resource existed independently; there was no way to group related resources together. Instead, you had to manually track which resources made up your solution or application, and remember to manage them in a coordinated approach.

Although there are rumors that Microsoft will sunset the platform, they have made no formal announcement about a requirement to make any changes. 

Azure Resource Manager Deployments

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is the newer version of Azure that was launched in 2014, which added the concept of a resource group. A resource group is a container for resources that share a common lifecycle.  According to Microsoft, the Resource Manager Deployment model provides several benefits:

• You can deploy, manage, and monitor all the services for your solution as a group, rather than handling these services individually.
• You can repeatedly deploy your solution throughout its lifecycle and have confidence your resources are deployed in a consistent state.
• You can apply access control to all resources in your resource group, and those policies are automatically applied when new resources are added to the resource group.
• You can apply tags to resources to logically organize all the resources in your subscription.
• You can use JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) to define the infrastructure for your solution. The JSON file is known as a Resource Manager template.
• You can define the dependencies between resources so they are deployed in the correct order.

So which one should you use?

Since both Azure deployment models are still viable options at this point, it is necessary to pay careful attention to the features that each offer and your specific requirements.

However, to simplify the deployment and management of resources, Microsoft does recommend that you use Azure Resource Manager for new resources, and, if possible, re-deploy existing resources through ARM.

 Don’t migrate alone

If you are ready to migrate your resources from classic deployment to Resource Manager deployment, don’t go at it alone, From resource mapping to migration, OneNeck can help with every phase of the journey from Azure ASM to Azure ARM.  Our approach is to fully understand your ASM deployment to ensure that the migration process is as seamless as possible. Contact us today to learn more.

To learn more about Microsoft Azure, Download our eGuide: Move Your Business Forward with Azure.

Embrace help from service providers to deliver the benefits

For many midsized enterprises, there is a significant mismatch between their goals and their ability to take advantage of all the new capabilities available to them in the ecosystem that has grown up around the cloud.

Seventy-three percent of enterprises 451 Research surveys are pushing ahead with cloud migration and modernization, with about 29% in full production and the rest in deployment, planning or piloting.

It’s not a magical journey. Our research also shows that most enterprises need about four years to convert the majority of their production application to a cloud environment.

When we speak with midsized enterprises – those with 250-1,000 employees – we find that journey can be longer and more onerous because these businesses typically have less access to modern IT talent and are often further behind the curve on even the ‘legacy’ hardware and software running their businesses.

That’s why specialized third-party service providers, many of them the next generation of the businesses that set up midsized companies’ IT operations in the first place, can be valuable partners.

What to look for in a service provider

Unlike traditional outsourcing, today’s IT services are not about replacing stuff and staff (remember “your mess for less?”) and squeezing out budget year over year. IT service providers should be able to show that they can be a cost-effective way to make IT a vital investment again, and bridge the gap between a vision of better IT operations (and all that neat stuff in the cloud) and a lack of time or manpower.

The best service providers will work with you to first review your application portfolio and help you prioritize which workloads and processes to modernize based on your business priorities. Before any work begins, they should show a willingness to invest some time in this advisory role.

Other critical capabilities to look for include: experience with multiple cloud types, professional services teams that can help with application migrations, and software development teams current on the latest methodologies.

“One bite at a time.” That’s how the old saying advises you to eat an elephant.

Taking on a cloud migration project can feel almost as overwhelming as grabbing a fork and attempting to consume a pachyderm-sized meal. You’re fully aware of all the potential benefits of moving to the cloud, but you’re also staring at all the hills your organization will need to climb before getting to that point.

A decomposition strategy can help simplify some of the challenges involved in this process by pinpointing the most important business objectives and developing microservices around key systems and applications. Sometimes referred to as factoring, decomposition is an approach that breaks down complexities into components that are easier to comprehend, manage and maintain.

Prioritize Business Goals and Identify Value Streams

Cloud migration needs to be separated into incremental steps, but where do you start?

In larger organizations, there may be pressure from the leadership in certain business lines or departments who want to take advantage of cloud computing benefits as soon as possible.

Your team needs to ask itself what are the greatest needs and the biggest roadblocks? Sometimes it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the oil but, when determining where to focus, you must identify where cloud migration can have the biggest, most immediate impact and where your initial efforts might be wasted.

Understanding your organization’s value streams will help you and your team recognize the ways cloud migration will provide agility and efficiency. Prioritizing what to move to the cloud as well as when and how to move it will be crucial in a successful migration.

If a top business goal for cloud migration is cost-savings, what applications and workflows are directly tied to that initiative? Are there critical applications that should be migrated first? Who in the company might be affected by this change? These types of questions need to be addressed at the start.

If you’re migrating the company’s CRM to the cloud, should you avoid doing so during a certain time of year that will cause disruptions for sales or accounting? Rather than taking a lift and shift approach that duplicates an in-house application in a cloud environment, consider reworking it for the cloud and breaking it down into smaller applications dedicated to specific functions that can be moved over process by process.

While that requires some additional up-front work, it can also reduce the risks associated with an all-in-one migration. Migrating in smaller pieces will help your company’s IT staff gain experience and confidence as the overall project proceeds. It also allows employees (or specific departments) to adapt to change gradually instead of being overwhelmed with a sudden conversion.

Decompose and Deploy Microservices

The concept of breaking down complex systems and applications into independent components is where your decomposition strategy comes into play. Identifying important business capabilities and value streams helps you grasp the bigger pictures. Now, it’s time to get granular.

There will be certain applications that are outdated and won’t transfer to the cloud. So, unless you choose to keep those in-house, you may need to rewrite applications to make them cloud-native.

Adopting a microservices model will help your organization become more agile, improve resiliency and make it easier to scale your IT solutions. That’s because decomposing to microservices puts the different functionalities of an application into separate buckets. When compared to monolithic applications, which are built as a single unit, microservices offer more flexibility and are built around business-oriented APIs.

Decomposing monolith applications into microservices not only provides you with a suite of smaller services that can be moved to the cloud piece by piece, it also makes it easier to alter and update individual functionalities. Microservices remove the possibility of having to rebuild an entire monolith due to one small change in the application.

The strong modular boundaries of microservices coupled with the advantage of these smaller applications being individually deployed allows for scaling of separate elements rather than the entire application. It also allows microservices to be written in different languages and managed by different teams.

The graphic below illustrates the difference between the scalability of monolith applications compared to a microservices architecture.

Make sure to consider how possible failures of components could impact the system. Decomposed microservices make it possible to isolate things that should fail independently so that other components are unaffected. Tech blogger Matt Stine writes on Built to Adapt that this compartmentalization can be achieved with the “Bulkhead pattern,” outlined in Michael Nygard’s book, Release It! This method is named after a structural safety device used in the construction of ships and airplanes.

“Ships are divided into multiple watertight compartments. Why? If they were not, and a ship’s hull was damaged, the entire hull could become compromised and cause the ship to sink. By using bulkheads to divide the ship into multiple watertight compartments, we can limit the scope of hull compromise caused by one incident, and hopefully, save the ship!”

Get Help Eating the Elephant

Even when you’re taking one bite a time, an elephant is still a lot to eat. This wouldn’t be something you’d try to do alone. You’d probably throw a party and invite the hungriest people in the neighborhood to join you in a giant feast.

Cloud migration isn’t something you and your organization should tackle without help either. When you partner with OneNeck for Cloud Services, you’ll get access to our experience and expertise as well as help building out your cloud plan. OneNeck conducts a thorough cloud infrastructure assessment before implementing customized design and migration services to our clients.

Every organization needs to develop its own unique plan for cloud migration, and OneNeck is equipped to support you in developing a plan that produces outcomes to satisfy everyone in your company. Contact us today to learn more.

Modern businesses cannot afford to lose data. Whatever the cause – natural disaster, human error, or cyber-attack – data loss is costly and extremely risky to the life of a business.

The need for a disaster recovery strategy to ensure uptime, minimize data loss, and maximize productivity in the midst of any compromising situation is a necessary digital assurance policy for any company. The question becomes when a disaster will strike, not if it will.

The Silver Lining

Expanding your current data center operation to create a disaster recovery site is expensive, not only in the cost of hardware and software but in time and resources.  The cloud has changed the rules for backup and disaster recovery. In fact, the cloud as a DR solution is a smart choice, since the cloud is more flexible and usually less expensive than implementing a self-owned DR site.

In addition, cloud infrastructure inherently enables easy and frequent data replication between sites and systems – another key component to maintaining data integrity and reducing RTO and RPO times. Because the cloud resources are pooled, the costs to deliver cloud recovery solutions to businesses are a fraction of the cost normally associated with a DR environment.

Developing an effective DR Plan

Every business is unique and has its own needs when it comes to Disaster Recovery. There’s no such thing as a one size fits all DR plan. That’s why it’s important to determine what’s critical to your business and your customers to make sure you deliver on your commitments no matter what. Then tailor a solution to help you meet those objectives. 

At a high level, disaster recovery planning usually involves the following steps:

• Identify the scopes and boundaries – This is typically the first step towards completing your disaster recovery plan. Identifying the scope involves prioritizing the critical systems for disaster recovery and assigning a value to the failures of those systems.
• Establish the Budget – Budgeting for disaster recovery plans can be tricky. Often you will want to do an assessment of the costs to the business via different disaster scenarios. Comparing different options for recovery can vary the costs of the disaster recovery plan. Reducing RPO and RTO requirements can soften the financial costs of the disaster recovery plan but be realistic and ensure executive management understands the risks of data loss and system availability being stretched out. Both IT and executive management must come to an agreement on the budget and IT will work within the constraints of the budget that has been established.
• Develop and Deploy the Plan – Developing and deploying the plan can be the most involved part of this process. Often the plan is actually a ‘script’ of activities that occur in order and are executed by a recovery team made up of resources from IT. Roles and responsibilities are assigned in the plan as well. Deploying the plan involves choosing the tools and technologies needed to meet the RTO and RPO requirements established in the first step while still working within the constraints of the budget.
• Test – Test, test, test. Disaster recovery plans are simply not effective if they are not properly tested frequently. Test the systems you’re going to use in recovery regularly to validate that all the pieces work. Always record your test results and update the disaster recovery plan to address any shortcomings. As your business environment changes, so should your disaster recovery plan.

 A Strategic Disaster Recovery Partner

OneNeck is here to help you maximize uptime, become more efficient and be able to adopt and accelerate with new technologies such as hybrid clouds, while running at the speed of business. We start by conducting a disaster recovery assessment to ensure a planned approach to Disaster Recovery (DR). Taking the time upfront, before implementation, to determine what’s critical to your business and your customers, ensures that you deliver on your commitments no matter what. Then, we tailor our solutions to your particular situation.  So, breathe easy – we got this. Execute your disaster recovery strategy with OneNeck today. Contact us to learn more. 

According to Gartner, the worldwide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market is forecasted to grow to over 72 billion by 2020 – a truly staggering trajectory. But the challenge of finding the right blend of on-premises vs. cloud continues. So, how do you determine which environment is right for your workloads?

As the on-prem IT experience around functionality, performance, cost and control has continually improved in recent years, all while IT has accepted that multi-cloud has its place in IT infrastructures, there will always be applications that run better on a physical platform, especially data-intensive, latency-sensitive applications. As a result, hybrid IT  is expected to remain a viable strategy when delivering services to the business.

In HPE’s Master the Cloud Cliff, they found that “while many of the companies surveyed were using managed or cloud successfully for workloads such as collaboration, legacy storage, cloud bursting, cloud-native apps, and application development and testing, there are times when certain applications, configurations, or workloads run better on a private or hybrid system.” In their interviews with executives embracing a hybrid IT strategy, they found that these were the key drivers for hybrid:

• Performance
• Cost/billing Issues
• Flexibility
• Security/compliance
• Emerging technology
• Customer service
• Lower infrastructure costs

They then narrowed it further by lumping the drivers into three main categories:

• Performance: We’ve heard it hundreds of times, but it still rings true – not all workloads are created equal. The executives interviewed said that often it came down to performance, which included “speed, scalability, functionality, customer service and stability.” And with the improvements in on-prem hardware over the past several years, specifically in virtualization and hyperconvergence, IT can now truly evaluate the workload for optimal platform placement.
• Cost: It’s a rather common theme when it comes to cloud, the cost. While it often is the cheaper venue, it can also have hidden costs when not carefully and strategically approached. And as data loads and input/output operations (IOPS) increase, it can come with a hefty price tag if not carefully monitored. This is where a hybrid approach, especially for those data-intensive applications, may make sense.
• Control: No IT team likes to feel like they’ve lost control, and it can be a valid concern with cloud. “These control-based issues include flexibility, customization, security, and compliance limitations, as well as cloud sprawl and vendor lock-in.” For applications that require a high level on hands on customization, an on-prem or private cloud solution may just be the best fit. Again, it comes down to really understanding your workloads to ensure the ideal platform is chosen to support them.

The report continues with lessons learned when embarking on a hybrid IT strategy:

• Find the best Hybrid IT mix: Both cloud and on-prem have their place in supporting modern applications, but it takes careful consideration upfront to make the right decision. Choice is good, as it allows a best-of-both worlds approach.
• Emphasize IT as a core competency: The importance of IT’s expertise can’t be minimized. Whether it’s internal IT or a qualified partner, expertise is critical when designing, implementing and managing a high-performing hybrid environment.
• Consider data uses and growth expectations: If there’s anything the past couple years have taught us, the rapid rate of data growth isn’t slowing, but rather accelerating. And as a result, it needs to be a key consideration when assessing business applications and their right-fit platform. “By considering these factors up front, companies can plan long-term hybrid strategies and prevent costly mistakes.”
• Hire the right experts: Technology is complex – there’s no getting around it. And it’s not getting any easier, especially as multiple environments converge. So, having the right people on staff and the right partners by your side to help navigate on-prem, cloud and a combination of both is key.

The good news is that today’s IT team is becoming savvier in their understanding of hybrid IT and its place in supporting the demands of the business.  It’s all about the right mix. The report concludes that, “As familiarity with cloud architectures increases, so does the awareness that Hybrid IT is an optimal solution for many IT functions, particularly when it comes to high-volume, low-latency applications such as big data and rich media processing. And by using a hybrid approach, companies are less likely to hit cloud cliff problems related to performance, cost, and control.”

DOWNLOAD the full Master the Cloud Cliff Report
, which also includes real-world use cases for hybrid IT in healthcare, social media, public sector, retail and finance.

How many cloud applications and services do your employees use every day? How much of it does your IT department actually know about? Chances are, IT is unaware of more than you think.

Research from Cisco finds that, on average, CIOs estimate their organization is using only 51 cloud services, while the actual number is closer to 730. That means your IT department – the people who plan your technology roadmap and manage your data, technology and applications to ensure optimal uptime, performance, security and compliance – is managing less than 10 percent of your cloud footprint. The remaining 90 percent runs under-the-radar. Known as “Shadow IT,” it’s creating big risks for enterprises.

What is Shadow IT?

Shadow IT is more broadly defined as any technology used inside an organization without IT’s approval or even knowledge. Often, it’s the result of business units looking to adopt new cloud services but unwilling to wait for IT to completely vet, test, approve and implement them. These business units set aside budget for the (usually) reasonable monthly subscription rate, scan the corporate credit card and get to work.

What are the Risks of Shadow IT?

Unfortunately, while employees are quickly up and running, they may be exposing your organization to:

• Data loss: Shadow IT means there could be corporate data residing outside typical controls designed to ensure security and compliance. While public cloud providers talk a good security game, they still have a ways to go when it comes to providing visibility and transparency into their controls. In fact, fewer than 13 percent of IT decision-makers say they trust the public cloud to secure highly-sensitive data.
• Increased costs: With no centralized control or management over which cloud applications are used, or when, many organizations find employees using (and paying for) competing and sometimes overlapping services. Why pay multiple subscriptions for services like Dropbox and Box when a managed corporate subscription provides the same functionality for far less?

How to Mitigate the Risks of Shadow IT

With the risks mounting, organizations can no longer ignore Shadow IT, but neither can they simply forbid it. To embrace Shadow IT, a subtler, service-oriented approach is required in order to:

• Know your usage: The first step is to discover and identify unknown cloud services so you can better plan usage and control data loss. Tools like cloud access security brokers (CASBs), web application firewalls, or data loss prevention (DLP) can help. Another option that can help you really understand the cloud usage at your business is to perform a Cloud Consumption Assessment.
• Streamline IT processes: Does every request need to go through a 40-point vetting process? Find ways to fast-track cloud applications/services so your users will want to start with IT first and not as a last resort.
• Become pro-cloud: Instead of avoiding the cloud, become the cloud expert and start helping users find the best options for their particular business needs. A good strategy here is to develop a list of sanctioned cloud services designed to address common use cases. For instance, some organizations have set up their own app store to help ensure cloud choices are secure and don’t conflict with business/IT strategy as a whole.

Managing Shadow IT is a balancing act, but by embracing change and moving toward a service-oriented approach, you can reduce its risks while protecting your core business assets — no matter where they live.

Tight budgets and efficiency challenges are par for the course in state and local government. To keep pace with rising taxpayer demands for richer, more reliable online services and stay compliant with ever-growing regulatory requirements, government IT teams are increasingly moving away from legacy technology and undergoing IT consolidation.

The good news: Public sector CIOs are making progress, at least at the state level, according to the 2017 NASCIO report, Shrinking Data Centers: A Playbook for Enterprise Data Center Consolidation. Of the CIOs surveyed, 42% reported they had completed data center consolidations in 2016, with 47% percent saying consolidation was ongoing and 11% percent planning to consolidate.

Data center IT consolidation offers several advantages

Let’s break them down.

• Cost efficiency. Consolidating your environment and reducing your infrastructure enables you to limit expenditures on equipment and maintenance to lower your overall operations costs.
• Better visibility. With consolidation, architecture is easier to monitor, and traffic and volume are more visible.
• Tighter security. With less to manage, there is less risk exposure and fewer targets for exploitation.
• Enhanced disaster recovery. Consolidated infrastructure means it is easier to get back up and running and keep business going in the event an incident impacts data and mission-critical applications.

Because of the benefits, many state and local governments are looking to reduce spending and streamline operations through consolidation. According to the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, state CIOs are increasingly looking to consolidation, with 42 percent reporting that they had completed data center consolidations in 2016, up over just 14 percent a decade earlier in 2007. Another 1 percent said they were planning to consolidate.

Challenges and Factors to Consider When Approaching Data Center IT Consolidation

While the benefits are clear, the process is not without challenges. What do you need to consider first when approaching a data center consolidation strategy to improve security, reduce operational costs and increase efficiency at your public sector organization? Consider the following steps for undertaking a consolidation strategy.

Paint the big picture.

Sit down with all stakeholders so that all concerns are vetted and all needs met in undertaking the consolidation. As the NASCIO report advises, “A state should understand needs, requirements and potential issues before setting a target date or launching any initiatives.”

Set a timeline.

A clear timeline of goals will offer the organization and idea of expectations so that personnel and process will know when and how to expect potential changes and disruptions.

Create inventory.

A detailed list of assets impacted ensures all bases are covered when it comes to considering systems impacted and possible outcomes.

Conduct a cost analysis.

With budgets always a concern in government, a thorough cost analysis will be key in anticipating additional funding necessary, as well as proving ROI for the project.

Keep lines of communication open throughout the process.

Keep stakeholders constantly apprised of any developments, surprises, adherence to the timeline and other relevant information as the consolidation is underway.

Are you ready to undertake a data center consolidation to enjoy the benefits and advantages it offers long term? OneNeck specializes in assisting government agencies with a tailored approach that is mindful of both your organization and individual technology needs. OneNeck can help consolidate your existing environments with cost-effective, scalable, secure and flexible infrastructure solutions necessary to make a difference. Contact OneNeck IT Solutions to find out more about how they can help you get started today.

Every business knows that time is money, and downtime can be costly. But a temporary loss of access to your critical infrastructure — whether it’s your data, your network or other operations — is unfortunately all too common. Weather events, like a hurricane or a snowstorm, and man-made events, like a cyber-attack, leave you looking for backup to get business up and running again as quickly as possible.

 It is crucial to have a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place today, and many organizations are looking to Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) as a way to cut costs and simplify DR planning. DRaaS,  a model involving a third-party managed service provider (MSP) delivering remotely hosted disaster recovery services, is increasingly being offered as a cost-effective option for protecting data and systems.

How To Benefit From DRaaS

Who should consider DRaaS and why? Let’s look at these five reasons for evaluating whether DRaas is right for you.  

1. You want to save money on disaster recovery.

Backup sites are expensive. Owning or leasing space for your secondary data center costs your organization money in payments, power, cooling, storage and travel to and from the site. These are just a few of the associated costs of a backup site.

2. You want to simplify DR planning.

Eliminating the need for a secondary DR site also means eliminating the costly administration and maintenance contracts necessary for maintaining a backup site.

3. You’re striving for interoperability.

DRaaS solutions work with dissimilar systems so that you can protect servers across different hypervisors and replicate data between dissimilar storage systems. These DRaaS solutions are hardware, hypervisor, and application- independent.

 4. You want to reduce IT resources spent on DR.

Using a third party for DRaaS means it will take less time to deploy than your own secondary site, and it also means your IT staff will have the time to tend to other business-critical responsibilities.

5. You want to know your DR covers all the bases.

Companies who implement their own disaster recovery site have to start by protecting the most critical servers first. In some cases, they are never able to protect all their servers. DRaaS enables your organization to protect all servers — physical and virtual —within a reasonable time frame and budget.

Once you’ve decided DRaaS is right for you, it’s critical to evaluate providers and make sure they offer following:

• Multi-platform support
• Multi-cloud support
• Cloud failover
• Flexible licensing
• Real-time replication
• Scalability

 OneNeck understands that each organization is different and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to disaster recovery planning.  With multiple deployment options like ReliaCloud, Azure or your own private on-premises data center, we have the flexibility to serve your unique needs.

OneNeck disaster recovery solutions are powered by best-in-class technologies and services including, Azure Site Recovery, VMware Site Manager and Zerto Virtual Replication to remove the burden of monitoring and managing your backup and disaster recovery infrastructure, which gives reliability, reduced risk and more time to focus on your strategic business initiatives. Visit oneneck.com to learn more.

Proud to announce OneNeck is once again in the top quartile of the Talkin’ Cloud 100 list! Making the list isn’t about us, however, it’s about you, our customers. You see, the list recognizes cloud providers who demonstrate an ongoing ability to meet the needs of their customers. In other words, our focus on you — is being recognized! This year, the list also reflects a changing market as service providers embrace new business models, emerging technologies and innovative support models.

“On behalf of Channel Futures,” said Nicole Henderson, a contributing editor at Channel Futures who oversees the Talkin’ Cloud 100 project, “I would like to congratulate OneNeck and recognize you as a Talkin’ Cloud 100 honoree. Like the other organizations on this year’s list, you’ve demonstrated technological prowess, thought leadership and business excellence across a number of functional disciplines. If you want to understand where the market is heading, watch these companies in 2018.”

While we appreciate the kind words from Ms. Henderson, you should know, that, when it comes to your IT needs, we pledge to do all we can to continue meeting (exceeding) your expectations. And, we’ll continue delivering innovative cloud solutions that help you run your business as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Since 2010, Talkin’ Cloud has been recognizing the top cloud service providers (CSPs) and giving recognition to the top 100 CSPs, including managed service providers, hosting companies, cloud consultants and more. Talkin’ Cloud 100 is a
Channel Futures
project and part of the Informa group, which operates at the heart of the knowledge and information economy. Informa is a leading business intelligence, academic publishing, and knowledge and events business employing more than 7,500 people globally.

The IT department has quickly risen to become one of the most critical and influential departments in a company. It is now the central department around which all other departments work. With a well organized IT department that operates smoothly, the  whole company gains from it. However, if the IT department functions below par, all the other departments suffer and the whole company faces a tough ride.