Staying current with the latest in technology and information security can be challenging and costly for businesses of any size. Yet, not enough businesses understand the benefits of outsourcing their IT support and managed services.

Don’t worry; we’ll make it easy. Here are the top three questions decision-makers considering outsourcing their IT support should ask themselves.

1. Can we handle our IT support ourselves?

To really answer this question you have to consider everything from your budget and size of company to your availability of personnel and level of information technology expertise. If everything is running smoothly, this may not seem overwhelming. But in the event of a security breach or loss of data, chances are an outsourced managed service provider has the capability and availability to offer a much larger array of solutions that may not be available to an in-house IT department.

2. How can we benefit from the expertise of outsourcing our managed services?

Like many fields, IT and managed services is constantly changing. If you partner with an experience managed service provider, they will be on top of the latest technology advancements so you don’t have to be. And chances are, they will have the latest in tools and monitoring systems that would prove too costly for your business to have to maintain. Since managed service providers have multiple clients with various needs, you will also benefit from their experiences and lessons learned.

3. What level of support do I need?

At DataVizion, we know there is no one-size-fits all approach to IT support and managed services. Each of our clients’ needs vary. We create custom solutions that best fit your needs. So whether you need help with implementing a unified communication system or someone to fully monitor and manage your IT infrastructure, we can help.

Outsourcing your IT support can help you stay focused on your core business and give you piece of mind knowing that should you run into an issue, you have a dedicated partner to provide the support you need.

Contact us for more information or to discuss managed services.

Aruba ClearPass Helps You Embrace BYOD

Regardless if you run a bank, hospital or retail organization, one thing’s for certain: your employees and customers have come to expect Wi-Fi access. But if the thought of letting anyone and everyone onto your network scares you, you’re not alone.

With the Aruba ClearPass Access Management System you can embrace the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) culture allowing guest and employee-owned devices like smart phones, tablets and laptops onto your network without losing control and visibility.

Here’s five other key benefits ClearPass offers:

1. Customized Guest Access Portal

Use your company logo and branding or create unique data-entry fields that users have to fill out to log on. You can even post customized advertisements and offers or other targeted content to create a unique user experience.

2. Seamless Integration

ClearPass is available as both a hardware-based or virtual appliance and can be deployed with any existing network infrastructure from any major vendor, which means you don’t have to replace existing infrastructure.

3. Real-time Analytics

With ClearPass, you have the ability to see which devices have connected to your network in real-time, which can be helpful when it comes to reporting, planning, auditing and compliance.

4. Comprehensive Security

ClearPass has an abundance of security procedures in place to protect your network. You can ensure devices are compliant with your policies before they connect, set a policy according to device type, block applications that don’t meet company policy, provide different service levels based on the user and more.

5. Easy Troubleshooting

ClearPass provides advanced troubleshooting and the forensics needed to easily pinpoint the root cause of a user’s network access or authentication issue. Your IT department will thank you.

So whether you have 10 users or 10,000 on your network, ClearPass will help create a better user experience while keeping your network secure. Curious if ClearPass would work for your business? Contact your account manager today.

We recently hosted our First Annual Charity Golf Tournament.  On Aug. 29, more than 100 participants including our partners and customers all came together for a fun day of golf, food and drinks.  

More importantly, we all came together to raise $5,500 for Child Saving Institute. This nonprofit provides services including counseling, therapy, education and support for children and families in the community.  

A special thanks to Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, who sponsored the event and to all our other generous hole sponsors who helped make this event possible. We certainly hope to do it again next year!

View the photos from the event here. 

Southwest Airlines was one of the latest companies to fall victim to what’s been referred to as a “computer glitch” resulting in hundreds of flight cancellations, delays, lots of unhappy customers and a negative impact to the company’s bottom line.

A router breakdown that led to a series of failures in critical technology systems has been blamed. The backup systems in place also failed to work as expected.

Even if you aren’t operating one of the nation’s largest airline carriers, if your company relies on technology (which, let’s face it, is most) a disaster recovery plan is a critical business need. Here are three reasons why:

1. Machines and Hardware Fail

Even the best hardware is not completely immune to failing. That’s where Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) comes in. In the event of a failure, your physical or virtual servers should be backed up by a third party so you can quickly and cost-effectively recover your data with as little down time as possible. In addition, you should be conducting regular network assessments and testing to avoid unreliable redundancy.

2. Human Error is Common

Ever had your computer crash or lost an important document? It happens to everyone. Having a disaster recovery plan in place can ensure you have online data backups that allow you to easily restore your data. In addition, having redundant firewalls, anti-virus, and anti-spyware software can help prevent security breaches that are often the result of human error.

3. Customers Have Little Patience

With the Internet, and especially social media, customers are quicker than ever to voice their frustrations and concerns to anyone and everyone. Those affected by the recent Southwest Airlines flight interruptions are a prime example. It’s not easy to earn a customers’ trust, and any downtime or inconvenience they experience, even if due to an IT disaster is a quick way to send your customers to your competition.

At any time, something unwelcomed can happen and affect your organization's overall IT infrastructure and your company’s bottom line. Call us to learn more about how VizionVault, our disaster recovery service, can help you prepare for the unexpected.

Here are 6 statistics you need to know.

Flexibility, scalability, mobility – the benefits of moving to a cloud-first network go on and on. If you’ve even been considering a cloud-first strategy, you’re probably already aware of at least some of these advantages. But these six key findings revealed in the RightScale 2016 State of the Cloud Report* may surprise you.

1. Security concerns are decreasing.

In past RightScale reports, security has always been the top concern among respondents. However, from 2014 to 2016, security concerns for Enterprise central IT teams, who typically have the most responsibility for security, declined from 47 percent to 37 percent. Is seems as cloud providers and best practices mature, security concerns will continue to decline.

2. Top cloud challenge cited is lack of resources/expertise.

Nearly 32 percent of respondents indicated lack of resources/expertise as their No. 1 cloud challenge, an increase from 27 percent last year. As companies continue to place higher demand on the cloud, the need for technical expertise has grown.

3. Cloud cost management is a significant challenge.

Cloud cost management as a challenge has steadily increased each year from 18 percent in 2013 to 26 percent in 2016. From reducing or eliminating data centers to utilizing flexible capacity, companies have significant opportunities for savings if they know what actions to take.

4. Cloud adoption is on the rise.

This year’s survey findings revealed that private cloud adoption increased from 63 percent to 77 percent, and hybrid cloud adoption increased from 58 percent to 71 percent since 2015. More enterprise workloads are also moving to the cloud – mainly the private cloud – from 22 percent to 31 percent since last year. Overall, 95 percent of respondents are using cloud, up from 93 percent last year.

5. Cloud users see increase in speed.

The survey findings show the two benefits that had the largest increase were faster access to infrastructure, which grew from 57 to 62 percent, and faster time-to market, which grew from 48 to 52 percent. 

6. Cloud initiatives differ based on company size.

The study showed that 2016 cloud priorities differed among Enterprises and SMBs. Enterprises, who generally have a larger number of applications, are more focused on moving more of those workloads to the cloud (57 percent). Small and Medium-sized Business (SMBs) indicated optimizing existing cloud use to achieve cost savings (43 percent) as their No.1 initiative.

Whether you’ve just starting to think about moving some applications to the cloud, have a robust cloud-first strategy in place, or you’re somewhere in-between – we can help. From cost savings to workplace efficiency, our experienced team of technical engineers will help you fully take advantage of all the benefits a cloud-first network can offer. 

* Source: RightScale 2016 State of the Cloud Report reveals results from a survey of 1,060 technical professionals across a broad cross-section of organizations about their adoption of cloud computing.

The DataVizion team would like to extend a sincere “thank you” to all of our customers, partners, family and friends who took time out of their busy schedules to come and help us celebrate our 15th anniversary.

Since we first started back in 2001, DataVizion has grown to become a top provider of managed IT services in the Midwest and beyond. In the past five years alone, we’ve experienced 30% year-over-year revenue growth and quadrupled our staff.

With that kind of growth, we’ve been moving quickly for so many years and our anniversary party provided a great reason to slow down for a moment and enjoy some food and a beer with you all.

Again, thank you to everyone who was able to stop by- we always appreciate your business and your support!

Click here to view the winners of the raffle.

School districts, government agencies and utility companies are just some of the businesses making the headlines as the latest victims of ransomware, a malware that encrypts your files and limits or eliminates access. Victims are then forced to pay a ransom to regain access.

The inability to access important data and the loss of confidential or proprietary information can have a crippling effect on companies. But it’s not just businesses that are being targeted – home computers are also at risk. The loss of personal information, family photos, video and other information can be devastating.

What to look for:

Email attachments containing malware are often the culprit, but not always. Your computer could become infected simply by clicking on a compromised website, often being lured there by a phishing attempt.

How to protect yourself:

• Keep regular backups of your data, because without a backup, there is nothing to recover if your files become encrypted.
• Do not open suspect email attachments, even if you know the sender. Email accounts can get spoofed and attachments will look odd with references to attached resumes, tracking numbers, payroll information, photos, etc.
• Ensure your anti-virus software is enabled and up-to-date.
• Only download software from official sites you know and trust.
• Use the same precautions on your mobile phone as you would on your computer when using the Internet.

How to protect your company network:

• Raise awareness of ransomware and safe practices to protect the organization’s data.
• Provide corporate training for employees to help identify potential phishing attempts.
• Back up data and verify the integrity of your backups regularly.
• Patch operating system, software and firmware on digital devices.
• Ensure antivirus and anti-malware solutions are set to automatically update and conduct regular scans.
• Set access controls and network share permissions appropriately.
• Implement controls or software restriction policies to prevent programs from executing from common ransomware locations.

DataVizion provides a VizionVault Cloud Backup Service. This service provides daily backups of your files, which can be restored to safe versions if files have been encrypted. We also provide managed cloud-based antivirus, and robust firewall solutions for threat prevention. Questions or want to learn more? Give us a call.

Wireless mobility – what used to be a convenient feature – is now an expectation that’s changing the way we live and work. From restaurants and airplanes to college campuses and sporting events, today’s 24/7 connected world expects anytime, anywhere mobile access.

To increase their competitive advantage, businesses of all sizes need a reliable and secure wireless network infrastructure. Here are five must-have components:

1. Future proofing

All signs point to a steep upward trend in wireless usage. Your network needs to be scalable enough to allow for proper coverage and density requirements as needed. And trust us – you’ll need it.

2. Indoor and Outdoor Coverage

Business doesn’t stop at the door and neither should your wireless network coverage. Even if you don’t start with it, make sure to leave open the possibility of adding outdoor coverage from the same platform.

3. Centralized Management

Regardless of how many access points you have, you’ll need a way to effectively manage updates and configuration changes from one central location.

 4. Access Management

Help solve wireless security concerns with access management systems such as Aruba ClearPass, which allows you to assign a role to the wireless device based on how it’s authenticated.

5. Mobile Device Management (MDM)

With a network full of mobile devices each running their own applications and programs, you need a MDM system to monitor and manage access.

We’ve designed and installed wireless network systems for companies of all sizes across the U.S. So whether you’re starting fresh or your wireless network needs an upgrade, we can help.

For our clients, who already have a lot of on their plate, it can be overwhelming to keep pace with emerging trends in the Information Technology world. Don't worry. We’ve got you covered.

At DataVizion, we stay on top of the latest IT offerings from our partners to provide a level of service unachievable by many of our competitors. Here are just some of the recent certifications achieved.

David Andersen, Project Engineer, and Ken Cousino, Field Services Engineer, recently passed the Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Engineer (PCNSE6) exam. From design and installation to configuration and troubleshooting, David and Ken possess a deep understanding of Palo Alto Networks technologies and can implement the best solutions to fit your needs.

DataVizion has been an Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, platinum partner since 2014, differentiating ourselves from our peers with the highest level of engineering and commitment to Aruba products.

Ethan Shold, Engineer, became our newest member of the DataVizion team to pass the Aruba Certified Mobility Professional (ACMP) exam. And Mat Lehn, Engineer, passed the Aruba Certified ClearPass Expert (ACCX) exam. We’re now more ready than ever to provide the expert support for any Aruba solution you decide to implement.

So whether you’re looking to increase mobility or implement an entirely new network infrastructure, we have the skills and expertise to help make it happen.

DataVizion team attends Atmosphere 2016 in Las Vegas.

Our DataVizion team is back from an action-packed week in Las Vegas where we attended Atmosphere 2016. Hosted by Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, it’s the largest mobility conference on earth and brings together networking experts from across the globe.

A special thank you to our clients: Boys Town, Immanuel, Kiewit Corporation, Lincoln Public Schools, The Buckle, UniGroup and University of Nebraska at Kearney for joining us.

We heard from top-performing industry professionals, attended breakout sessions and technology demonstrations on a variety of topics including creating a digital workplace, securing the #GenMobile experience with adaptive trust, boosting mobile engagement and making the most of agile data centers.

While we were blown away with all of the new features and third party integration with Aruba products, one of our favorites was Aruba Clarity. Many of our clients face increasing connectivity demands. This newly introduced network management tool enables us to better anticipate and resolve connectivity problems– before they happen. Amazing right?

We also had the opportunity to hear from Meg Whitman, president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, who spoke about the success of HPE’s acquisition of Aruba last year. Everyone was incredibly proud of the progress that has been made in the past year and excited for the continued growth that lies ahead.

Conferences like Atmosphere 2016 definitely showcase how Information Technology, the ideas surrounding new technologies and the things we can do with them are constantly evolving. But, we love this stuff and are excited to be on the forefront of implementing these ever-advancing solutions.

If you are curious to know more about Aruba Clarity or the other state-of-the-art products showcased at Atmosphere 2016 and how they can benefit your company, give us a call.

Check out YouTube videos from the conference here.