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Do Your Employees Know What to Do in a Disaster?

Posted on June 5, 2020November 19, 2024 by Bluewave

When an emergency or disaster strikes a business, employees have to recover operations quickly and get back to full productivity if the business wants to avoid becoming one of the nearly 40% who never reopen their doors after a disruption. With statistics like this, your company should have a business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plan in place, with specific consideration to the people on the front lines tasked with keeping everything up and running—your employees. See how you can ensure the right disaster preparedness strategies are in place.

Here are some of the key features of a BCDR plan necessary to help your employees do their jobs:

Offsite work capabilities

Many companies these days allow employees to work remotely. But when a disaster occurs, additional employees may need to work off-site, especially if the safety of the office is compromised or if employees aren’t able to physically get to the facility. A unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) system can help keep everyone connected, as this disaster recovery (DR) solutions will enable organizations of all sizes to continue business as usual by automatically rerouting calls to any location and any device–landline phones, mobile devices, and PC-based softphones—to maintain telephone service. In this instance, a hosted PBX solution is an ideal option for supporting working remotely in case of an emergency or interruption, as the core communications infrastructure is housed elsewhere.

Succession plan

Disaster is a case of “all hands on deck,” but there may be situations when key employees are unable to work or are not available. If that happens, you’ll need to fall back on a succession plan, which replaces those key individuals with other employees who have been trained to step in and assume leadership positions or other roles on short notice to execute the…. IT checklist. A BCDR plan is not complete without identifying an IT team responsible for overseeing and implementing the technical portion of the plan which helps your employees access their online work environments and data.

This team needs to be responsible for creating and managing an IT checklist, which should include:

Mapping application dependencies Today’s business environments comprise a vast network of interdependent components–many of which are essential to their operations. Before disaster strikes, it’s imperative to understand the relationships among them and then map dependencies to inform an overall strategy for maintaining (or restoring in some cases) normal operation.
When you understand application dependencies for data migration to a cloud platform, you can create: A formal DR policy. Disaster Recovery policies are living documents that guide you through all possible scenarios and contingencies in case disaster strikes.
Plans should specify designated hot and cold sites in case the primary facility is uninhabitable, consistent objectives or timeframes for getting back online, and data backup protocols such as a 3-2-1 plan (in which at least 3 copies of mission-critical data are kept, stored on 2 different devices, and 1 copy physically kept offsite).

Get help with disaster preparedness

While it’s impossible to plan for everything, continuously poking around for weak spots through periodically or regularly scheduled practice drills will help to ensure maximum coverage. Downtime and outages are a fact of life in today’s digital, data-driven environment. Having well thought out plans and the right systems in place may not be able to fully prevent disasters but can help to ensure that you’ll at least have a business to come back to after the problem has been fixed. Get help with disaster preparedness.

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Productivity Showdown: Microsoft Office 365 vs Google G-Suite

Posted on May 8, 2020May 2, 2024 by Bluewave

When it comes to business productivity, Microsoft Office 365 and Google’s G-Suite stand head and shoulders above the other software options. But even with the choices seemingly narrowed down to just two, it can still be a challenge to decide which is right for your business. This guide will help highlight some differences between the two popular platforms and make selecting the right productivity suite for your business a bit easier.

Subscriptions and plans

Delivered as services, both Office 365 and G-Suite offer a variety of subscription options for access to productivity tools without downloads or additional purchases. G-Suites plans are slightly more limited, with three options—Basic, Business, and Enterprise—but offer increasingly more tools and features at each level.

By contrast, Microsoft Office 365 has compiled a list of options that includes one more package option than G-Suite for a more comprehensive selection. You should note, however, that Microsoft does not present its plan options in order of increased pricing; the lowest cost option is listed second, which might cause some confusion among visitors comparing the service with other options.

File Storage

One of the most convenient aspects of productivity services is the cloud storage availability. Both G-Suite and Office 365 offer storage options that eliminate the need for storing data and files at your office. At the entry level, Microsoft appears to have an advantage, providing 1TB of storage per user with their Business Essentials plan, which is significantly more room than Google’s 30GB offering on its Basic plan. Also, note that Google counts emails as storage space within the 30 GB limit.

The 1TB limit is standard to all Office 365 plans and if you’re just using conventional Office applications such as Outlook, Word, or Excel, the 1TB storage limit per user should be adequate for SMBs.

With the exception of Office 365’s entry-level storage plan, G-Suite boasts a significant storage advantage. Starting with the Business Plan ($10 per month, per user), Google offers unlimited storage, a huge benefit to any business that produces large volumes of data, uses large multimedia files, or doesn’t want the hassle of having to delete files to clear additional room. Another side note: the G-Suite Business Plan only provides unlimited file storage for purchases of more than 5 user accounts; otherwise each user is restricted 1TB of data like Office 365.

Applications and Services

Microsoft is a pioneer of productivity apps, so it’s no surprise that Office 365 offers both local and cloud-based versions of its apps, while G-Suite emphasizes cloud-based access only.

With the exception of its Enterprise E1 plan, Office 365 offers a desktop version of apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, which also includes cloud access. Each tier provides access to OneDrive and Skype for Business, including HD video conferencing and 50GB user email boxes starting with the Enterprise E1 tier.

Where Office 365 really shines is in its Enterprise E5 service tier, which offers a comprehensive unified communications solution including all the productivity apps your business could need, along with SharePoint, cloud-based call and conferencing management, and advanced threat controls for increased security.

Meanwhile, G-Suite was specifically built for the cloud and is better suited to businesses simply wanting to streamline sharing and enhance document-specific collaboration. G-Suite offers essential tools such as word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software that mirrors Microsoft’s Office point products for creating files, automatically saving them, and one-click sharing capabilities for effortless collaboration. The solution also integrates natively with the ubiquitous Gmail platform, as well as Google Hangouts for video collaboration, and offers enterprise-grade security and data loss prevention controls at the top end of its offering.

Though G-Suite does allow users to open and save Microsoft Office documents, you should be aware that the formatting may be affected, which can impact some collaborative efforts, particularly when users are working offline. Learn more about working offline here.

User Interface

Usability is a key component to adoption and getting the best return on your investment, so a solution’s user interface is an essential consideration prior to purchasing. Most companies and users likely have had prior experience with Microsoft Office products, so the learning curve for adoption should be pretty short, as Office 365 will have a consistent and familiar user experience such as a classic folder structure for users to categorize their emails and up to 50GB of dedicated storage for their inbox.

However, for some users or businesses, Office 365’s interface may be a bit too busy or overwhelming. G-Suite provides a fresher, cleaner, and simpler interface with a consolidated apps menu offering one-click access to each productivity tool. The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, as apps tend not to get lost in the shuffle. G-Suite also employs many of the organizing features like email filters and labels Gmail users are familiar with, making it easy to get up and running with little need for instruction or training.

Security

Few topics are as important or prevalent in today’s digital landscape as network and data security. Both Microsoft and Google are at the forefront of integrating protection into their productivity platforms, albeit in slightly different ways. Office 365 provides an array of security features including email filtering, rights management, and compliance solutions for standardizing archiving, auditing, and data storage. You can get a full list of security features for Office 365 here.

Meanwhile, as a service born in the cloud, G-Suite prides itself on providing an easily managed, secure infrastructure for its productivity solution that includes data loss prevention (DLP), access controls with security key enforcement, 2-step verification, and user audit reports to track suspicious activity. Learn more about G-Suite’s security features here.

Microsoft Office 365 and Google’s G-Suite have dominated the work productivity landscape. While many of the features and functions are similar in design and intent, each comes with its unique twist on the user experience and standard features list. Please reach out to Bluewave so our team can assist in determining which will work best for your team and identify the best partner to help with migration, implementation, licensing and support.

Need help with Microsoft Office 365 and Google’s G-Suite decisions? Bluewave can help.

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Things to Consider Before Switching to SD-WAN

Posted on April 10, 2020May 2, 2024 by Bluewave

The expectation of anytime anywhere access to bandwidth-intensive enterprise applications, including the growth of cloud services, has put a tremendous strain on traditional WAN infrastructures. Not only that, but as remote offices have also become the norm and mobile devices, video, and real-time applications continue to increase, many believe legacy enterprise WAN has reached its breaking point. Let’s take a look at SD-WAN.

Some see the introduction of Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) as the answer to this increased strain on Wide Area Networks (WAN). Software-defined WAN is an extension of Software Defined Networking (SDN) because it uses software and virtual network overlays to take advantage of available WAN connections. It also centralizes control of and visibility into the entire WAN fabric and thus lowers the cost and complexity of WAN management. SD-WAN technology applies policy-based routing of traffic across multiple WAN connections. It essentially pushes data on the most optimal route across the network. Packets travel the network to and from different branch locations, taking the best route, to avoid latency issues and network slowdowns. SD-WAN offers many significant benefits:

Lower costs– enterprises can rely more on lower cost, public broadband and less on MPLS networks.
Flexible management and reduced complexity– SD-WAN routes and reroutes traffic based on the current state of the network, as configured by policies.
Greater redundancy options– Predetermined routes are created and data is automatically re-routed from primary to a secondary Internet connection.

Although SD-WAN offers more agile internet connections at a lower price point, it’s important to remember that not all SD-WAN solutions or service providers that offer it, are created equal. If your organization is considering moving away from a traditional WAN, it’s important to consider possible limitations of the technology and how it may impact your business.

Bandwidth lock-in

Calculating the potential return on investment of adopting an SD-WAN seems relatively straightforward at first. Because software-defined WAN uses public internet broadband and minimizes the need for private circuits, most companies report significant cost savings. Companies surveyed by IDC estimate a 20% cost savings with SD-WAN, compared to traditional WAN deployments. (Source: IDC July 2016).

However, consider the fact that your organization may be locked into a multi-year deal on private circuits. Downsizing could trigger severe penalties or fines for early termination. This and other service-level changes could further impact ROI, meaning it will take longer for your SD-WAN technology to pay for itself.

Challenging transitions

Just like any changes involving the enterprise network, transitions can create complications very quickly−especially when manual processes are involved. Configuration mistakes will happen and, unfortunately, they’ll probably happen at severely inopportune times. Consider network automation tools and testing tools that help you maintain a logical IP network and the capabilities to manage the underlying infrastructure of the network. There are generally three types of software-defined WAN solutions and each has its advantages: Controller-based solutions auto-discover and configure network devices and can help in this transition period. Second, appliance-based overlay solutions create a virtual IP network between the vendor’s appliances across any network, combined with management tools. Last, advanced automation and change control solutions enable and manage SD-WAN and the underlying infrastructure through existing hardware.

If you’re evaluating software-defined WAN solutions, look for one that gives you centralized control of your networking environment. With a central point of control, you’ll have simplified access to management, policy setting, analytics and reporting of the SD-WAN fabric, which will be critical during the transition and once the SD-WAN is fully deployed.

Models for growth?

Another factor when evaluating SD-WAN technology is how the architecture will scale with your business over time. For instance, what options are there for adding remote offices or changing your network? Also, consider where your controller software will run. In the cloud, as a virtual machine in the local network or in the datacenter? There are several SD-WAN products on the market and many are incompatible, so it’s important that part of your evaluation process includes looking at the potential long-term commitment to the vendor or service provider.

Many software-defined WANs give enterprises the ability to deploy a wide area network on-premise or cloud. Before selecting a vendor, ask the provider if they offer a pay-as-you-grow subscription model for cloud-based management.

Also, consider your organization’s long-term needs in terms of overall network efficiency. Some software-defined WAN solutions have analytics capabilities and allow administrators to analyze enterprise network traffic. Some also provide real-time and historical performance data to identify and address service issues. While network analytics may be too advanced during your initial SD-WAN deployment, don’t get stuck with a solution that has limited capabilities because of a shortsighted evaluation process.

If your organization is looking to improve the performance of applications and services in the cloud, as well as improve connectivity and reduced complexity of remote office networks, an SD-WAN architecture offers many benefits for forward-thinking enterprises.

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Best Practices for Global Enterprises Moving to Multi-Cloud Environments: How SD-WAN Can Help

Posted on April 5, 2020November 19, 2024 by Bluewave

You Have a Multi-Cloud Environment – Now What?

Whether they set out to use multiple clouds or not, large enterprises today end up with several cloud suppliers. In fact, it’s probably hard to find a company that isn’t using some mix of Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, IBM Cloud, Salesforce.com, Oracle, Google G-Suite, ServiceNow or Box. The list goes on and on. This is more pronounced with enterprises that have a global site footprint. Let’s take a look at multi-cloud environments.

The cloud, after all, gets you out of the business of hosting applications and worrying about upgrading hardware and software constantly. It also enables you to sidestep the capital commitments otherwise required.

However, the more clouds you use, the more complex connectivity becomes. Security concerns skyrocket as it becomes hard to figure out who is accessing what, from where and how. In addition, the network becomes central to application performance across the organization.

Forces at Work

Despite the network challenges multi-cloud creates, multi-cloud is here to stay and will become even more complex with time as:

Companies turn to even more SaaS offerings that enable them to embrace best of breed rather than multi-purpose on-premise solution bundles that have to meet various requirements of legacy environments
Technologies, such as serverless computing and other advances, that are only possible with cloud native applications attract more enterprise workloads
Adoption of Internet of Things technologies and strategies require organizations to collect and analyze data closer to scattered sensors at the edge of the network, probably in specialized cloud services
Companies try to mesh cloud tools with on-premises systems in hybrid configurations because stringent security or compliance requirements – or the tightly integrated nature of those legacy systems – prevents going all in with cloud

20-year-old legacy MPLS networks are not modern

Unfortunately, this shifting, demanding and dynamic environment is not a good fit for the 20-year-old legacy MPLS wide area networks that many organizations still rely on. Besides the fact that MPLS simply can’t provide off-ramps to many cloud tools, adding bandwidth is expensive and simple network changes can take months. It’s like trying to erect a shiny new skyscraper on a stone foundation fit for a mountain cabin. Businesses are short changed on time to market and this is a big no for CxOs driving WAN transformation initiatives.

The good news is software defined-WANs promise agility and enable enterprises to realize the full potential of what multi-cloud environments have to offer. But traditional SD-WANs don’t own the network and have to partner with telcos and service providers that do, creating a suboptimal solution. This is where a fully managed SD-WAN solution, where the provider owns both the network and the software definition provides the “best of both worlds.”

Managed SD-WAN

A fully managed SD-WAN running on a private network can connect far-flung employees to various data centre resources while also providing direct connections to public cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, Google and Oracle as well as connectivity to SaaS platforms such as Office 365, Salesforce, WebEx and Zoom, without compromising on application performance.

A managed SD-WAN allows enterprises to shift higher value human resources from the business of assessing technology, building out the network and then constantly tweaking and optimizing it as requirements change. Patching edge-routers or boxes from traditional, SD-WAN vendors is often an operational nightmare.

When managed SD-WAN is delivered as a service, it is akin to a SaaS provider, delivering connectivity as-a-service.

While SD-WAN services can help any organization deliver consistent application performance to employees around the world, the benefits for IT are magnified in multi-cloud environments because they get a unified view that is cloud provider agnostic.

However, not all managed SD-WAN services are alike. Speed of provisioning new circuits, the reliability of the backbone, the quality of the support and ease of engagement – all make a huge difference! Look for a fully managed SD-WAN that leverages a private network for the middle mile, uses built-in acceleration and optimization tools to improve application performance, and uses best of breed layered security from partners for mission-critical applications.

So, when it comes to looking for an SD-WAN delivered as a service to support growing multi-cloud needs, look for:

A simple, managed global solution for multi-cloud connectivity
End-to-end reliability SLAs guaranteeing 99.99% uptime
24x7x365 monitoring and CCIE-level support
Built-in WAN acceleration and optimization, regardless of the cloud resource targeted
Off-ramps to all the cloud providers
Deployment capabilities measured in hours at any site globally
Support for on-demand site and bandwidth changes

CIOs invest considerably in their public and multi-cloud strategy. The productivity of developers and corporate applications is compromised, if the underlying network connectivity is flaky or if it takes too long for a predictable site connection to be up and running. Digital transformation and the move to the cloud should start with the network. That is ground zero for a multi-cloud world.

Reach out to the experts at Bluewave to help your team select the best SD-WAN solution for your company’s needs.

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Business Factors Driving UC Adoption

Posted on March 8, 2020November 19, 2024 by Bluewave

In today’s ultra-competitive business environment, there are multiple factors driving the growing appetite for Unified Communications (UC). Pressure to reduce IT spend, coupled with a distributed workforce and rising expectations for always-on connectivity by employees, customers and partners are just some of the contributors pushing organizations to rethink the way they manage communication processes.

Companies that have adopted UC solutions are making tremendous gains in employee productivity and satisfaction as well as improved customer service. Before making the decision to adopt a unified communication platform, either on-premise or a cloud-based system, it’s important to consider these factors:

The need for improved collaboration and productivity

The speed of business today is so fast and so multifaceted, even one negative customer experience can cost a company dearly. Consider a study by NewVoiceMedia, that says that an estimated $41 billion is lost by US companies each year following a bad customer experience. (Source: NewVoiceMedia). That means if a company’s sales and customer service departments aren’t communicating clearly and working together, there is a huge potential for loss.

Unified Communications systems combat these issues by connecting people in more efficient and intuitive ways. By converging all communications media and devices into one interconnected platform, employees can respond to customer, partner and supplier requests in a more expedited and personal manner. That means the lines of communication are not only open, they are open 24/7. Today’s sophisticated UC applications do this by delivering advanced audio, web, and video calling features, IM, email and collaboration tools like shared workspace and whiteboarding. When used strategically together, these tools go a long way in bridging the communication gap, boosting productivity and building lasting relationships.

Real-business example: The impacts of a unified communications platform can be seen clearly when systems are tied directly into critical business applications (i.e. CRM, supply chain, inventory management systems, etc.). By integrating communication features into business processes, managers can be alerted automatically when an issue arises. This can speed response times and enhance customer service. For instance, alerts can be set up via IM, text or email if product inventory is low. Inventory managers can then interact quickly and directly with purchasers via audio or video conferencing tools. They can also collaborate using a shared document to review past inventory numbers and sales records. From there they can hash out ideas using online whiteboards and shared screens. In this example, customers are automatically alerted to the inventory adjustment. These streamlined processes help to reduce delays and human errors as well as improve customer interactions.

Greater mobility needs with a distributed workforce

It’s not uncommon today to have teams that are separated across many miles, borders, oceans and even cultural barriers. Thus, keeping teams connected and communicating efficiently has become a top priority. On-premise applications and cloud-based UC platforms offer organizations even greater flexibility and scalability.

When managed centrally, Unified Communications platforms can shrink IT maintenance/upgrade costs and improve corporate agility by giving all employees access to the same collaboration and communication technologies. These communication features also improve the productivity of all employees, whether they are working remotely via a mobile device, or they are hardwired into the corporate IT network.

Companies of all sizes and vertical industries are benefiting from unified communication platforms that tear down the barriers and complexity of once ‘siloed’ corporate communication tools. By taking a more centralized approach− and linking business processes to communication platforms−organizations can further enhance customer and partner relationships as well as facilitate anytime, anywhere communications.

Those that leverage UC effectively are also ultimately supporting worker productivity and enthusiasm. Because let’s face it, good communication is the key to good business. And, when employees have access to world-class tools they are more empowered and engaged. That means they are at their best and delivering the best customer experience possible. That type of positive energy is good for any corporate bottom line.

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