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.

Benefits for buying 5 years of upfront support

Why Purchasing 5 Years of support with your IT acquisitions is the best decision for you and your company

Convergent Technologies Group has been in the business of selling IT solutions and services for over 10 years and when it comes to support contracts, we have seen the best and the worst. The best involves a customer purchasing a long-term support contract with pre-determined costs and an excellent service experience. The worst involves a customer buying a short-term support contract that will fluctuate in cost annually, that seems to come up for renewal every time they sneeze. We have seen lapses in contracts where the client simply forgets to renew the contract, resulting in some stiff financial penalties when they re-establish the contract. Other not so pleasant experiences include; higher year over year costs for the same equipment due to no new purchases to leverage, forced refreshes due to the extreme costs to extend support on an IT asset, also resulting in disruptions to the business, catastrophic failures after someone missed the email notifying them their support contract was expiring, and many other unfortunate situations resulting from short-term support. 

Reasons for buying 5 years of upfront support:

• Blending the support with a hardware purchase on the front end allows the buyer to leverage the overall value of the purchase for the best discounts on both hardware and support.
• Maintaining a support contract annually requires more administrative work for your business and more chances for someone to miss a renewal.
•  Expired support contract often involves penalties, potentially costing you thousands to re-establish and put your company at risk of an uncovered incident.
• Most IT assets today have a life cycle of 5+ years versus the recommended 3-year refresh cycle of 10 years ago.
• Support costs tend to increase year over year, sometimes forcing a refresh in your technology, leading to unplanned capital expenses and planned downtime for your business.
• Maximize your investment by extending the useful life cycle of your IT assets.
• Company budgets are easier to predict with a 5-year term versus going with an annual or 3-year term with unknown costs for subsequent years.
• Avoiding the sales ploy of a low upfront cost to win the business only to take their pound of flesh in support costs for future years to make it up.
• Most companies will not provide written guarantees as to what you will pay for support beyond the initial terms, only offering estimates which can be far from reality.
• You will look like a hero when you stay within budget!

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About CTG: 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.

Join us at the 2018 Annual Technical Summit!

The time has come for the Annual Convergent Technologies Group Technical Summit! This year we will be condensing the summit into a single day on September 13^th at our Midlothian office. Every year we work hard to listen to customer feedback and wishes in order to put together an agenda focused on what our clients are looking for in their environments. Along with our own Master ASE certified engineers we will be joined by industry experts that will take a deep dive into the technologies that we are seeing have the great impact in the marketplace. This year, the focus will be on the following:

• IT trending towards Digital Transformation
• Composable infrastructure
• HyperConverged Infrastructure and where it fits
• Network Access Control and its positioning in a multi-vendor environment
• Predictive Analytics and how it eases management in your infrastructure

The concept of the Technical Summit was built around providing the end user with an event that is more than just product pitches and slide shows. The Technical Summit allows for attendees to get hands on with the technologies they are learning about, and to see the workflows in real time, running in our Live Demo Lab. The best part? No sales people are allowed in the room! We are strong believers in letting the technologies speak for themselves, and what better way than to see it live and to have a technical expert there to answer questions and work through potential issues or needs in real time!

This year we will be heading to Ruth’s Chris Steak House after the event for dinner and more conversation. There is still time to secure your spot at the Technical summit. Please reach out to events@ctgva.com or to Dalton Gormus (CTG’s Marketing Director) at dgormus@ctgva.com to RSVP today. Space is limited, and seats are going fast! We look forward to seeing you there!

HPE Discover 2018 Recap

Dalton Gormus

Last month, I attended HPE Discover 2018 in Las Vegas, NV. This was my first time in Sin City and I was transported to a whole other world. When I stepped into the Transformation Zone in the Sands Expo, I felt like I was Alice in Wonderland, completely lost but entirely intrigued. You could find everything from Lego displays to the Hack Shack. HPE Discover was a 3-day event that featured various speakers from all over the world discussing topics ranging from Blockchain to Intelligent System Tuning (IST).

The first large session I attended was, Achieving IT Agility in Mobile, IoT and Cloud with Aruba, presented by Janice Le, Aruba Networks Chief Marketer and Parth Narasimhan, Aruba, CTO. Le began the session with introducing the idea that many industries are heading into an experience economy, we are no longer buying just a good or a service, we are buying an experience. The Intelligent Edge is the experience economy we are seeing in IT, it is where smart meets digital. Aruba Networks has recently partnered with major companies like CBRE and HermanMiller Furniture to create smart and digital workplaces to make you workspace feel like home, and this is only the beginning for Aruba. CBRE is using Aruba to create smart buildings for design and IoT sensors. HermanMiller is taking their office furniture to the next level with connected desks that adjust to your height and chairs that know when you are getting up to use the restroom or if you are leaving for the evening. Narasimhan later stepped out on stage to discuss Aruba Introspect, a sensor that is used in the network to alert engineers if there is any suspicious activity going on whether it is inside or outside the company. Introspect was noted by one of our own engineers as an IT trend to keep an eye on within the next year, it is something that many companies are going to want in their tool box.

GenZ Lego Display

The General Session was the most awaited session of the week presented by Antonio Neri, HPE President and CEO. Neri addressed the digital transformation we are experiencing and the three biggest factors that HPE will be tackling during the transformation. Much like what Le was discussing with an experience economy, HPE will be focusing on transformative technology, people and economics. And to enhance this transformation the products that HPE wants to focus on are, HPE OneView, a software-defined infrastructure that eliminates the complex manual processes and increases the speed and flexibility of storage. And, Infosight, which was discussed by Aruba Networks in the previous session is another product HPE will be focusing on; currently only available for 3PAR and Nimble, but soon it will be available for all HPE products. This transformation will be vital for HPE and how companies operate, Neri said, “our purpose is to advance how we live and work”. The way we can advance and transform all of this, is to live in the intelligent edge, the “future-edge” where we interact with customers. Neri announced that HPE will be investing $4 billion into the Intelligent Edge over the next four years, only to further enhance opportunities for businesses. Following that announcement, Neri brought out Ford Motors CIO, Jeff Lemmer. The two sat on stage and discussed the strong partnership between the companies and how they will continue due to the speed and innovation HPE has shown Ford. The General Session also touched on HPE Greenlake FlexCapacity. Greenlake was featured throughout the week with displays in the Social Media forum and various sessions and booths. It is a pay-for only what you use infrastructure capacity that essentially will never run out. Pat O’Conner from Business Alliances ONX came on stage to discuss the steps to take in order to make Greenlake a part of client’s infrastructure. It is flexible, because you should never run out of the IT resources when using, it is easier for customers to engage with and it will cut down contracts exchanged by a few pages.

HPE Greenlake display

HPE made it a point to mix education and entertainment equally, which made you feel like you were not working all day. The week ended with relaxed networking and a performance by pop-rock band OneRepublic. Discover was incredibly informative, and I am grateful I was able to attend this large HPE event after only being a member of the CTG team for a few months. The biggest piece of information I took from this event was that HPE is moving in a direction that will make things simple and unified to create a better experience for partners and customers. With products like Greenlake, picking and choosing what you want rather than having it all are becoming more popular and are designed to help you save and have stronger structures.

If you are and IT professional and interested in learning more about some of these products and our services, please reach out or register for one of our events to speak with HPE and CTG experts!

Small Business, Big Opportunities!

This week we are celebrating Small Business Week. Convergent Technologies Group is highlighting the ways that IT helps small businesses grow and succeed in a fast past, technology driven world. Our company was founded in 2005 as a small business right here in Richmond, Va. Over the years we have used our technology partners to grow our organization into one that supports some of the largest Enterprise Customers in the state, while maintaining a direct focus on the Small to Mid-Size Market. No two businesses are the same and whether you are a large Enterprise, or a five-person business, IT matters and is equally as important to your success. Convergent works with small businesses to provide big business infrastructures and solutions like data storage, creating a mobile environment and working to give you ease in managing multiple systems.

Storage has become a recurring conversation with Small Businesses. In today’s data driven world, even the smallest companies are creating huge pools of storage that need to reside somewhere. In most cases, this data needs to be accessed quickly and effectively because even the smallest delays to your customers’ needs can result in lost revenue. Whether you require Direct Attach, Network Attached, or SAN attached storage, Convergent has the product portfolio and expertise to evaluate the needs of your business and offer solutions that fit within your requirements and most importantly, your budget.

Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever! Statistics show that the average end user has four to five devices that they use daily. The question that everyone is asking is how to ensure a consistent work experience, no matter the device, while maintaining the highest and most up to date security that is available. If you are like me, no matter where you go for a business meeting, the first thing you do is try to find a guest Wi-Fi to connect to while you are there. This is another point of security that nearly all businesses are having to think about and react to. The balance of providing a reliable network to your employees, clients, partners and guests, while also keeping the network and your Intellectual Property is one that we are uniquely positioned to address for our customers. We have helped customers large and small secure their networks using a variety of products and partnerships. We can sit down with you to discuss your connectivity and security needs to build the right solution for your business.

The third issue that we are consistently addressing with our Small Business Partners is the difficulty in managing multiple systems in the same environment, while finding room for all the equipment to reside. Convergent recognized the trend of the industry to move towards Hyper-Converged and Cloud ready solutions several years ago and has worked to put together solutions that will reduce space, while removing the complexity of managing multi-tenant environments. We partner with vendors that understand that ease of management, along with the ability to work with Cloud solution providers is an important step for any business, specifically small businesses.

Convergent is built around recognizing trends, both in the IT industry and within our customer-base. We work to talking with our customers to get an understanding of the challenges that they are seeing in the marketplace, and how IT will play a role in meeting those challenges head on. We are well-positioned to work with Small Businesses to provide everything from consulting to hardware, all the way down to Managed Services. Let’s sit down and talk about what your business needs out of its IT infrastructure and come up with a solution that fit the need of your specific business!

Support Center Confidential

We join our story, already in progress………

By: Jeff Garell

Yeah kid, another long, slow day in the support center.  Not like the old days.  When you were either an alpha geek or you got lunch eaten by them.  But only if you brought something good though…no one likes a cheese sandwich, ya know.  Here we only have alpha geeks.  But let me continue…. 

I got memories back to working my way up from level 1..ahhh, them was the days where 12 hours was the rule not the exception.  When your adrenaline pumped like a Texas oil well….non stop and messy.   When the phones never stopped ringing and the bosses were never happy.  You could guarantee one of them big wigs would come crashing through the door looking to take out his anger on the nearest poor soul.

Those were the days, kid.  It was like the wild west, Mardi Gras, and Carnival all rolled into one.  Every day.

But not anymore….not since we got Infosight watching our backs.  Who woulda thought that some AI would steal all the fun?  That we'd provide almost 90% of the support our customers need without sweatin' our gimlet and answer calls in less than a minute.

No call tsunamis wiping us off the map like an uninhabited pacific atoll.  No mass emails that have to be run through the approval gauntlet like a guilty soul looking for redemption.   No all hands calls in the middle of the night to figure out what has bedeviled the systems.

I don't know about you kid, but I can't run through millions of data points every second….no mere mortal can.  I tried once and stumbled like a drunk on a sidewalk made of ball bearings.  Yeah kid, it's not like it used to be…..

Now that we got Infosight watching everything, hoovering up all of that performance data from every device around the globe, we just sit back and wait for that AI to tell us what to do or what to go figure out.  Ya see, if it sees a problem that it already knows about, it'll send the emails but only to those admins that might be affected, it'll do the updates, it'll …. It'll take care of it like Tyson took care of Spinks in '88.

And if it don't know what to do it tells us where to start lookin'.  That's why we're here, son.  If one of dem customers call, we look at what our AI friend shows us and can find the answer lickety split, ya know?   Dat's why this here room is mostly empty…we don't need no level 1 or 2 fellas.

And ya know what?  This thing is spreadin'.  It ain't just gonna be our Nimble storage that the AI sees.   Quicker than a wink it'll be watching over 3PAR and I hear RMC too.  Imagine all of those systems - getting that support like ours do.  Those boys in the ivory tower are already countin' their dough with how much more productive people will be.

So that's the story, kid.  As John McClane once said, "Welcome to the party, pal".  I hope you brought a good Phillip Marlow book to keep ya entertained.    Keep yer head down and eyes open and don't bother trying to beat that AI.  Our competitors can't even get close to it, like it's a flamethrower on Guadalcanal, so you got no chance.

See ya tomorrow, kid….and Merry Christmas…

Thankful

While we wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving, CTG employees share what we are thankful for this year.

Grace SunDance, administrative assistant:

I am thankful for the growth and courage Convergent has given me. Being a part of a supportive, successful, and generous company is truly a blessing. I am enormously thankful for my family, my tremendous friends and my amazing fiancé, Aaron.

Elizabeth "Beth" Foster, inside sales representative:

I am thankful and blessed to have a great family. I am thankful that I work with some of the most talented and dedicated folks in our industry. I am thankful more than anything for my Lord, Jesus Christ and what He has done for me and the miracles that happen every day. He gives me strength when mine fails; He gives me insight when my vision is clouded and gives me Joy, Grace and Peace in turbulent times.

Carley Wessler, smb account executive:

I am thankful for my two gorgeous children, they always keep me smiling and make life beautiful and for my amazing husband who keeps me grounded, happy and loves me unconditionally.  I am also thankful to work with the amazing Convergent Technologies Group team who keep work challenging, entertaining and ensure we remain leaders in IT.

Charles Fowler, director of sales:
I’m thankful for France and Scotland.

James Kay, accounting representative:

I am thankful for my family and the health that I have. I am also thankful for my son Andrew who has brightened my life. 

Jeff Joyner, network architect:

I’m thankful for my family.

Brandon Samuel, sales manager:

I am thankful for most things, including my family, friends and wonderful CTG family!

John Monahan, co-founder and president:

I'm thankful for my staff, another successful year for CTG and my family and friends.

Chastity Loving, purchasing manager:

I am thankful for everything amazing in my life. I am so blessed and my heart is always so full!

Rod Knowles, solutions architect:

I am thankful for my two awesome kids and how much happiness they bring me each and every day.  I am also thankful for being able to work with the some of the best people in the world, old and new friends, family, my job and my health.  

Evan Joyner, smb technician:

I am thankful for my son, my family and my friends. 

Alexandra Suder, marketing director:

I am thankful for my incredibly awesome and loving family - far and near - especially my mother, father, sisters and my brother-in-law. I am thankful for my boyfriend who helps me in so many ways. I am thankful for all of the good energy, happiness, and health I am blessed with. I am thankful for ALL of my wonderful friends and their children, and for having a part in their life. I am thankful for my job and my team. I am thankful for my home. And I am forever grateful to God and for being here on this earth.

Jeff Garell, co-founder and vice president:
I'm thankful for my wife and for our two beautiful, smart, talented and caring daughters.