Aruba scores a 6/6!

For 15 years, Convergent Technologies Group has been delivering effective IT solutions and strategies that help transform companies and move businesses forward. We give the same care and attention to every client, whether you are a small business, or a Fortune 500. CTG works with various partners to provide the perfect solutions for your business, Aruba being one of them.

In addition to being a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Report: Magic Quadrant for the Wired and Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure, Aruba is thrilled to be recognized as having the highest scores in 6 out of 6 use cases in the 2020 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure Report.

  

An AI-driven enterprise embraces experience as the new uptime. It’s about leveraging tools, interfaces and data to reduce reliance on manual actions, as the future becomes more focused on operations.

 

From configuring and deploying your network, to monitoring and controlling it, Aruba solutions simplify your life and bring you a step closer to realizing the benefits of a secure and automated multi-cloud enterprise to drive powerful business outcomes for years to come.

See why Gartner has scored HPE (Aruba) highest in all 6 Critical Capabilities use cases and why we believe this shows the depth of Aruba's end-to-end portfolio.

 

Read the Gartner Critical Capabilities Report

Read the Gartner Magic Quadrant Report

 

We would love to discuss Aruba with you further! 

 

Notes from the (Work From) Home Front: Episode 2

Episode 2: Day 7: March 23, 2020

As we begin the second work-from-home week, I’m happy to report everyone seems to be handling this pretty well. We’re able to serve the majority of our customer's needs in this remote capacity and for everything else, we’re diligent about reducing exposure as much as possible.

I did notice something this past weekend though. I have no idea if anyone else experienced this or not, so I’m speaking purely of my own story.

I had a hard time keeping myself busy. I had this nagging feeling that I should have been in my home office and working on things. I chalked it up to Saturday feeling just like Friday which felt like Thursday (and so on). Wash, rinse, and repeat for Sunday. I knocked out my normal weekend chores, but I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling that I was supposed to be working.

Blurring the line between home and office definitely has the potential to (& did) cause me to continue to have my "work brain” engaged whenever I wasn’t actively doing something else, which can’t be all that healthy and could quickly lead to burnout. Without my commute as the transition signal that I was no longer at work, I was on duty all the time. I realized this is how I’ve felt at the end of each day since we started the work from home thing.

This is no Bueno.

It wasn’t until Sunday that I started to really understand what was going on. I thought I’d immediately write down these things that my brain wants me to do, then perhaps it would relax for a bit. To a degree, it helped. It took a little while to capture all the tasks, calls, ideas, etc., and by late afternoon, I was more mentally home again. I still need to figure out how to reliably transition out of work mode. The odd thing is that I have purposely kept my morning routine the same to help me transition into the working frame of mind. It just never occurred to me I’d need to equally find a way to transition back to a home life mindset.

Jeff Garell

On a final note, last night was the best sleep I’ve had since we started this work-from-home effort. I’m hoping that’s the new trend and I can give credit to this revelation.

Notes from the (Work from) Home Front

Episode 1: Day 3: March 19, 2020

Two days ago my company started working from home and so far it seems to have gone smoothly. Over the past few years, we’ve been making decisions about our own technology infrastructure to enable operation from pretty much anywhere there is an Internet connection. I won’t be brazen enough to think we had forecast some global pandemic or other disasters, it simply was to make it easier for our employees to get their job done regardless of location.

This line of thought led us to provide a laptop to almost everyone. As well as put our email, CRM/Sales tools, customer support services, and most recently our phone system with SaaS (Software as a Service) providers. The only exception still is our accounting system, and it’s not out of fear of it being in the cloud, it’s that the cloud versions don’t yet offer the full suite of features that we need. Notice I said yet, I’m sure it’ll continue to improve and expand and we’ll one day make that move.

Needless to say, the decision to send everyone to work from home was, in a technological sense, easy. In the days leading up to this, we reviewed our processes and made sure there weren’t any “paper hand offs” in our workflows. We made some adjustments to status settings in the electronic workflows to make it a little easier to glance at a screen and have an overall view of things. Some of which probably could have been considered in the past, but when we see each other every day, it’s easy to just go ask for a status or update.

We also scheduled a daily all-hands call to check-in, to see how everyone’s doing, and to clear any issues that are happening.

At the end of day two, signs are showing of potential issues. Not with our tech or processes, it’s the fever, cabin fever. Those of us on the technical side are used to spending a week at home to attend our manufacturer partners live virtual classrooms for the variety of certifications we have to achieve or maintain. Additionally, most of us are not really extroverts anyway and regularly dream of getting some extended focus time.  I expect weeks 2 and on will start affecting my services team.

For those that are extroverted or thrive on human contact - some early cracks are showing up in their armor. For others, it’s having young children at home that aren’t used to leaving mommy or daddy alone for extended periods. Heck, my 12-year-old has achieved a level of boredom such that she’s doing the take-home assignments the teacher gave them, without any reminding (which she would call nagging) that she needs to do it. Perhaps there is a teeny tiny silver lining to this thing. Managing the kiddos that crave (demand!) attention and trying to maintain a working mindset and flow is a challenge that requires the patience of a saint.

Jeff Garell, VP Services

So at the start of Day 3, we will spend some time on the mental health of our folks. Talk about how to get a break from the home office if they need it. It’ll probably be in the form of reminding them that the office isn’t a plague-infested Petri dish and they can always go there to work for a few hours or a day. We just need to coordinate that “respite” with their co-workers so we can still maintain safe distances and all of that other advice we’ve all recently heard a thousand times.

Disrupted: Now what?

Whether or not you’re all in on the news reports about the Coronavirus (COVID-19), it will affect you. Whether it’s simply not being able to buy toilet paper or that there are school closings and cancellations, it will impact all our daily lives in some form or fashion for a while. As business owners and leaders, we have an obligation not only to our customers that we serve but to our employees as well whenever there is a significant disruption.

Today's disruption is this current pandemic but living in the mid-Atlantic we also endure the risks of hurricanes, tornadoes, heavy snows, torrential rain and on a rare occasion, earthquakes. All of which could severely disrupt an organization's operations which could start a ripple effect on our economies and communities.

You may be thinking, well, "my company doesn’t really meet much with the public so we’re probably okay." And you might be until external forces make decisions that directly impact your employees. Many school systems are preemptively closing schools for weeks at a time. If you’ve got high schoolers, it's not much of an issue except for the mess you’ll probably come home to every night. But if you or your employees have younger children, there may not be any place to take them. This means an office full of kiddos or some employees may just have to take time off. Assuming, every employee brings some benefit to the organization, that loss of productivity will hurt.

And now you have been disrupted...

Almost every organization we work with has some sort of Disaster Recovery plan, even if it’s just in someone’s head that will get their servers and data recovered in an acceptable amount of time. Some of these customers think this is also their business continuity plan. It’s not. What do you do when a significant number of your employees, or simply one critical employee, cannot do their work for an extended duration? This is just one of many business continuity scenarios that need consideration but seems to be one of the most relevant.

Remote work is the answer for those not in a position that requires direct hands-on work at a specific location. For example, factory line workers, hairdressers, any of the trades (plumbing, electrical, etc.), retail, and other professions where remote work is impossible. But for the rest, being able to work remotely is incredibly beneficial not just to the organization but to the individual as well. Unfortunately, it’s not just buying a bunch of laptops and waving to the employee as they head home.

Processes, processes, processes

To be successful in a work from the home scenario you must first design your internal processes and workflows to enable a near seamless and uninterrupted transition to the at-home worker. Every process starts with some sort of inputs that must be acted on and completed. Assuming it’s not the last step of the overall process, this then needs to be handed off to the next department who does their thing and passes it to the next. Here at CTG, our support process starts with a call or email that generates a ticket, that ticket gets assigned to a technician and then gets scheduled for work. The ticket then gets worked, documented, closed, and then heads over to finance to get billed or applied to a contract. There are at a minimum three distinct functional areas in that flow, our dispatch takes the call and works it through getting it scheduled. Our technicians work the ticket until it’s resolved and can be closed, then finance bills the customer and receive in the funds when paid. As such, we need coordination, notifications to the relevant tech or departments, and acknowledgments of those various hands-off. As you can imagine, this is all electronic. We’re not shuffling papers from one person or department to the next. 

Ditch the paper everywhere possible

While an environmental nicety, that’s not the point here. If you must move physical documents from one step to the next you are already doing things inefficiently. It’s time to review those processes from the section above and figure out how to perform those actions electronically. Added benefits to moving to an electronic-based system include; savings over time in buying paper, the ability to have all the records backed up to an off-site location, and the new flexibility you’ll gain in your workforce. For your paper people, how much would it cripple your organization if an environmental disaster (hurricane, tornado) destroyed or scattered your documents across the city or county? Do you have a way to recover those documents? Now imagine that the disaster really didn’t matter to your business because your employees can still perform their job from anywhere.

Get off-site

Do all your services (email, CRM, accounting package, resource planning, phones, etc.) reside on-premise? Remote work capabilities improve dramatically when some or all your business services reside in the cloud. First, you eliminate the need to invest in infrastructure to allow remote workers to get into your on-premise systems. Second, it will reduce your Capital Expenses (and the long depreciation cycle). It will convert a portion of those checks you stroke for bigger hardware, new operating systems and versions of your key applications (and the service charges by your IT provider for performing all of those upgrades) into an operational expense that you get to claim in the same year it was incurred. Third, everything in the cloud is usually at the latest and greatest version that you would otherwise have to go back to the second item and stroke those checks. At CTG we’ve built our own IT in this way, which quite honestly, we could close our physical office and continue to operate as we do now.

Get off-site part Deux: But Jeff, I just can’t.

Let’s go with the assumption that for regulatory or other reasons you just can’t move application X to a Software-as-a-Service provider or host it yourself in the cloud. We see this a lot, especially in healthcare. In those cases, there are options. Starting with getting remote access to your network environment via a Virtual Private Network. This is generally a piece of hardware at your location (often a firewall with this capability) and piece of software on your employee’s PC/Laptop (or tablet even) that will connect your employee to your network securely. Another fantastic option incorporates a hardware device that automatically connects back to the network and some (such as the one we sell) even includes extending your corporate wireless network into the employee’s home, provides Ethernet connections (and power-over-Ethernet connections for IP phone handsets) so that it's EXACTLY like being in the office. These devices are fully manageable remotely and you can push down the same network access policies that you have on-premise. This option is VERY good if you’ve got the right recovery plan for your servers and infrastructure. All the VPN in the world will do you no good if the hardware or software you’re trying to remote into is down.

Management and Oversight

It is incredibly important to put some sort of metrics tracking in place so you can be confident that the work is getting done. If your management style is watching people look busy, then this will be a pretty dramatic change. While it may make you feel better that Mary or Joe always look like they're overwhelmed or appear to always be heads down, you just may be fooling yourself. So, whether you decide to make it possible for employees to work from home or not, it’s probably a good idea to figure out these metrics and measures anyway. I would say the best point of entry for beginning this is during the first two sections above: Processes & and Ditching Paper. Once you understand what they’re doing, how they’re doing it and how long it takes to do it, you can put the digital process in place, and inherently have it keep track. Then you’ll know if Joe processes 50 purchase orders a day on average with a backlog of 10 and that average suddenly drops to 10 but the backlog is 50 when he’s working from home. Well, at that point it's time to have a conversation with Joe. Please notice I referred to averages. Everyone has a bad day, some people take a little longer to adapt to working at home, and some people (like I did) have family members that take a little longer to adapt to my work from home occasions. So, dropping the hammer on Joe right away is probably not the best approach. Consider it a good coaching opportunity to help Joe get up on plane even at home.

Practice makes perfect

We all know this idiom and it’s true here as well. Consider letting your employees work from home on a semi-regular basis. They’d probably consider it a benefit and it doesn’t cost you a thing if their productivity doesn’t drop. There’s some "getting used to it" for the new work-from-home person. If they can overcome that productivity hurdle before an event requires them to work-from-home, your organization will be all the better for it.

Collaboration

Whether you end up with your whole office working remotely or just a few people, being able to communicate effectively is critical to your operational success. Not to mention, it totally can get lonely working from home when you’re used to an office community. There are plenty of tools out there to satisfy this need. Many are free or come packaged with some of the services you may have moved to in the "Get off-site" section. We use Office 365 and Microsoft Teams. They offer chat, voice, and video as well as integrations into SharePoint and many other Office 365 features. Teams also has a full-blown phone system option that we’ve recently adopted. Your extension can follow you wherever your Teams client is. Working from home (or wherever) is completely transparent to the customers that call you. Video calling is also an important option to consider in your solutions. You’d think that video calls are an extravagance, but in work-from-home scenarios, it’s a fantastic way to stay in touch. First, it maintains a more community-like feel when you see your coworker and they aren’t just a disembodied voice. Next, you get to read body language. You know when you thought you could practically hear someone’s eye-roll on the other end of a phone call? Or wondered if they were paying attention? Now you’d know. Also, being able to review or work on documents, spreadsheets, presentations together or simply share your screen with the other person is invaluable. As I mentioned, our office uses Office 365 and Teams, but these same options are available with Google Apps and others as well. 

By Jeff Garell, VP of Services 

Finally, there are some additional things to consider in enabling a remote-capable workforce that is generally industry related. It’s not too late to get started, so give us a call.

At CTG we’ve been helping to develop and design solutions like this and many more for 15 years. Even more significant is that we use all these processes and technologies to run our own business. In other words, we practice what we preach.  

Inaugural State, Local Government, and Education Technical Summit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

INAUGURAL STATE, LOCAL GOVERNMENT, AND EDUCATION TECHNICAL SUMMIT

Are you ready for Hyper-Converged?

Midlothian, VA.- Convergent Technologies Group in conjunction with Hewlett Packard Enterprise is hosting a live Technical Summit at Convergent Technologies Group headquarters on August 7th, 2019.

The Summit will showcase four top technologies; Hyper-Converged, Nimble storage with AI, ClearPass network access control from Aruba Networks, and Synergy hybrid cloud technology. Attendees will see all the technology solutions running in a live production environment by subject matter experts.

The event is on August 7th from 9:30 am- 2:00 pm, registration opens at 9:00 am.

To register for the event, visit https://ctgva.com/events.

Convergent Technologies Group is a full-service solutions-based IT company headquartered in Midlothian, VA. CTG is a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Platinum partner. For more information, visit www.ctgva.com.

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Benefits of SDWAN from a Network Professional

Benefits of a Software-defined Wide Area Network from a Network Professional

Software-defined Wide Area Network or SD-WAN has been a hot topic in networking and security circles recently.  There’s a good chance you’ve heard of it even if you’re not in the technology field.  But what is SD-WAN?  SD-WAN provides control and flexibility with multiple types of connections including MPLS, broadband, and LTE.  Policies are put in place based on metrics (bandwidth, latency, jitter, etc.) to load-balance or provide redundancy for services on the WAN.  WAN traffic can be shaped or routed across specific WAN links based on configured policies.  Once policies are defined, the software can re-route and/or prioritize traffic automatically based on those policies.

Multiple broadband circuits can be used in combination to increase bandwidth by sending traffic out all healthy links.  In the event of a circuit outage, traffic is automatically shifted to remaining healthy circuits for seamless redundancy to the end user and no manual configuration from system admins.  When the down circuit is once again healthy, SD-WAN technology detects the change and makes the resource available for use.

Mixing circuit types allows lower-priority traffic to be routed over less expensive broadband services while sending business-critical traffic over higher-SLA connections.  This flexibility allows companies to save money in communications costs while continuing to maintain a high level of service.

Security is arguably the primary benefit of SD-WAN.  Being able to segment out traffic based on business policy, visibility into branch network connectivity and problem-solving, and end-to-end encryption of data transmissions can help tighten up security deficiencies.

If you’re not already taking advantage of SD-WAN, it’s certainly a technology to investigate and see how it could benefit your company.  CTG can assist with designing and installing an SD-WAN solution for you today.  Call your CTG Sales Representative for more information.

About Convergent Technologies Group

Convergent Technologies Group, an HPE Platinum Partner, has been helping clients improve efficiency, reduce costs and increase profits since its founding in 2005. A full-service solutions-based IT company headquartered in Midlothian, Va., CTG provides businesses and organizations with the best in class solutions by partnering with the most innovative companies in the industry. CTG designs, manages, and deploys cost-effective solutions specifically aimed to address clients’ unique technology needs.

About the Author

Jeff Joyner has 25+ years of experience working in the technology field.  Jeff came to CTG after spending 20 years in the corporate IT arena and brings an additional perspective on the inner workings of corporate IT operations.  His corporate career includes working at a national printing company as well as one of the oldest brokerage firms in America.  During his career, he has architected large and diverse Data Center, Local and Wide Area Networks as well as being a leader in the security field.

Master ASE – FlexFabric Solutions

Aruba Certified ClearPass Professional (ACCP) V6.5

Aruba Certified Mobility Professional (ACMP) V6.4

Pros and Cons of Leasing Hardware

Technology seems to change every day. There is a continued acceleration in advancements, improvements, and capabilities. Starting with mainframes and amber or green illuminated monitors, information technology has the rest of the business community in a state of playing constant catch up or teetering on the cutting age. Attempts to keep up with platforms like IoT (internet of things), Converged Platforms, AI, and Software-Defined Networking, have resulted in technology becoming obsolete at a faster rate. What will be the next big thing? How will it benefit business drivers while keeping the finance side of the business happy? With various manufacturers, each doing their own enhancements, how do you find the right solution without breaking the bank as an item of capital expenditure?

Traditionally, the hardware used in today's computing environment has been purchased. While many have embraced leasing for office items like copiers and printers; hardware both for infrastructure and end-user devices, have lagged. There are pros and cons when it comes to leasing, but when working with Convergent Technologies Group, the pros always outweigh the cons.

The Pros

1. Leasing can help with life-cycle management. A company can create standards and refresh equipment based on a lease schedule, many companies do so on a 36- or 60-month calendar. The benefit is that there is no graveyard of obsolete equipment, assets to dispose of, company data left on devices or users feeling slighted when new equipment is purchased for another group or department.

2. Leasing can provide a set monthly budget and becomes an OPEX over a CAPEX, depending on your business needs.

3. Warranty support can match the lease term and help prevent out of pocket expenditures. Remember if leasing for more than 36 months, a company must purchase an upgraded warranty. Convergent Technologies Group can help identify the best support required.

4. Pay as you grow. With Hewlett Packard Enterprise GreenLake you can lease equipment and build the equipment into the lease as a 3-year growth plan. The equipment is put on location for the entire plan and you only pay for the equipment you use. Whether your business is growing or shrinking, the equipment is flexible to your needs and financial responsibility.

5. Often, a lease can be created with no upfront or minimal down payment.

The Cons

1. A company will pay more for the equipment due to leasing rates. Keep in mind, many manufacturers have a financial services group and can extend very low and competitive rates in some instances.

2. End of lease terms – The return of outdated and expiring lease equipment may be cumbersome. Find out the leasing terms before signing any leasing agreement.

3. All monthly leasing payments must be made even if a company stops using the equipment. Investigate how long equipment will be used and deployed. With the rapid pace of changing technology, equipment is normally leased for a maximum of 3-5 years. Servers and storage have seen lease terms up to 60 months in many cases.

4. Many leasing companies do not know the ins and outs of technology. Make sure you work with a technology company like Convergent Technologies Group who understands the nuances of both leasing and technology and the benefits of leasing as a financial solution.

Know the Terms

Capital lease- This is comparable to a loan. The equipment remains as an asset on the organization's balance sheet and includes depreciation.

Operating lease- The equipment's ownership is held by the leasing company and is an operating expense.

Fair-market value (FMV)- Equipment can be purchased at the end of the lease for its fair market value.

Buyout Options- The buyout is the dollar amount owed at the end of the lease. An FMV option and a one-dollar buyout option are choices in most leases. The dollar buyout option means the equipment may be purchased for one-dollar when the lease expires. FMV leases are usually lower than one-dollar buyout leases. If the company wants to upgrade to new technology when the lease expires, move forward with the FMV buyout.

Terms- A predetermined number of months the equipment will be leased. Leases for computer equipment run 24, 36 or 48 months.

Insurance- Learn if the equipment must be insured and whose responsibility it is to ensure it.

Master Lease- This is a fluid lease contract that allows a firm to add equipment to an existing lease. The new lease payment is then recalculated.

Early termination- Find any prepayment penalties if you plan to terminate the lease early. In this case, the company needs new technology sooner than originally planned.

Leasing can be confusing, but as your advocate, Convergent Technologies Group can assist any client in selecting the right plan and lease to facilitate new technology acquisitions.

About Convergent Technologies Group

Convergent Technologies Group, an HPE Platinum Partner, has been helping clients improve efficiency, reduce costs and increase profits since its founding in 2005. A full-service solutions-based IT company headquartered in Midlothian, Va., CTG provides businesses and organizations with the best in class solutions by partnering with the most innovative companies in the industry. CTG designs, manages and deploys cost-effective solutions specifically aimed to address clients’ unique technology needs.

About the Author

Elizabeth Foster has been with Convergent Technologies Group for 3 years. She has years of experience working in information technology with various types of businesses. Elizabeth currently supports our sales and marketing team.