Disasters come in all shapes and sizes. From natural catastrophes like floods and fires to cyberattacks and hardware failures, unexpected events can cripple a business’s operations. These seismic events cause downtime – which equates to lost revenue, damaged reputations, and a potential competitive disadvantage.
Traditionally seen as physical rooms filled with activity, data centers have become the silent workhorses of the digital world. They house critical infrastructure, from basic communication tools to advanced applications and cloud services. However, with growing demands, how we manage these networks needs to be transformed.
A recent Gartner report identified simplifying and automating IT infrastructure as the top strategic priority for businesses. This shift is driven by the limitations of data centers often burdened with complex, short-term solutions that sacrifice long-term reliability. The result? Slow innovation, frustrating user experiences, and costly downtime. By embracing automation and optimization, businesses can streamline processes, reduce costs, and unlock new opportunities to drive them forward in today’s dynamic market.
Many enjoy capturing photos and videos with their phones, but we often forget that our phone storage can get full fast. To solve this, some store their photos in the cloud. To keep our memories safe from loss or hacking, we utilize passwords and other security measures. But it's tough to keep our data organized and protected online.
Just as you rely on business-critical applications every day in the workplace, those same applications rely on a network that is available, scalable, and secure. But if an enterprise’s network architecture falls on the traditional side, this can complicate matters with the utilization of middleboxes like firewalls, load balancers, and tunnels for packet forwarding. This complexity comes with a high cost, hindering the deployment of new applications and creating challenges for intensive workloads like supporting video or connecting a widespread mobile workforce.
Just like many other industries embracing digital transformation, the healthcare sector is also on a transformative journey. Many local hospitals and clinics that were once buried in paperwork have hopped aboard the digital train via the cloud. This move is motivated by the goal of improving patient care, making patient information easier to access by patients and their families, enhancing treatment outcomes, and streamlining business operations.
The University of Phoenix once faced a myriad of IT challenges: outdated infrastructure, technical debt, and annual data center costs upwards of $1.7 million. The online university’s previous attempts to switch to a hyperscale cloud failed due to the complexity of modernizing old applications and workloads.
Their story took a better turn when the university adopted Expedient Enterprise Cloud and started migrating its most challenging workload. Their success enabled a more efficient and cost-effective digital transformation which replaced technical debt with modern solutions.
As a minority-owned IT services and solutions provider, a long running mission of WEI is to build a company workforce that is representative of our diverse community. There is tremendous value in unifying our unique perspectives to solve complex problems, and we prove this every day.
Picture this: You've just been involved in a minor car accident. Thankfully, you have car insurance, and while you hoped to never use it, it sits available at a moment’s notice. In the business world, that's the essence of Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS). It's like insurance for your critical data and applications: it might seem unnecessary at first, but when disaster strikes, you'll be grateful for the investment.
As the leader in the virtualization landscape, VMware introduced vSphere 8 Update 1 in April 2023. With its impressive improvements in security, automation, and storage, the new update prioritizes stability and expands on the groundwork of vSphere 8. This means customers can expect a seamless approach to VM management and improved cluster design that will not require new license keys. After a recent conversation with VMware expert Mark Gabryjelski, we identify and summarize our findings of Update 1.
