Internetwork Engineering Blog

Technology helps us communicate and collaborate across barriers that once confined us, were costly to bridge or extended the length of processes. The ease and convenience that’s brought by today’s digital technologies have also ushered in a time of unease and vulnerability. Information exchanged and stored digitally holds personal information that can be troublesome on its own if in the wrong hands or be used like a puzzle piece to achieve a hacker’s end goal. Handling this information in today’s data-rich world has its own set of challenges, and for businesses who process these important pieces of information like social security numbers, medical records, and credit card information, there are also compliance regulations adding to the complexity of it all. To help organizations operate more efficiently and securely, we’ve partnered with XMedius for secure file exchange and communications. Their solutions help reduce costs and are simple to use, secure, automated, flexible, and compliant.

I attend a lot of collaboration conferences every year. Over the last couple of years, I routinely hear the same question: Is email dead? In this post, I hope to shed some light on the reason people are asking this question, and why it should matter to you.

A short time ago, our IE account team met with a customer to show-off the new SparkBoard from Cisco. When challenged by the customer that they were pretty much already set on a competitive solution, I made the comment that they should at least entertain our conversation because the newer video units were now more affordable than ever and amazingly easier to use than their predecessors. The customer was skeptical and told me, “I’ll be the judge;” so we set out to make our case.

I took some time off one Friday morning and went fishing on Lake Murray. Despite being off, I had a couple meetings that I needed to attend, one of which required me to participate via Cisco WebEx on my laptop. I wasn’t about to let a little bit of water stop me from participating, nor was I about to let one meeting stop me from enjoying a day out on my boat. So, I grabbed my Cradlepoint IBR1100 router with Verizon SIM card and loaded it on the boat along with laptop, tackle box, and fishing rods. We pushed off before 8:00 AM; it was a beautiful peaceful morning on the lake. I plugged the router’s vehicle power adapter into the boat’s 12v power socket and had the wireless network up and running within 3 minutes. I popped open the laptop, looked up fishing reports, checked the weather, and streamed music thru the IBR until my meetings started. Once it was time for my meeting, I jumped on WebEx, screen-shared, and participated in the meeting as if I was in my office. All the while the kids fished and had a great time. When my meetings ended, I put the laptop away and went back to fishing. A great morning on the lake, productive and fun.

Part One Of a Five-Part Series

2017 marks my twentieth year in the IT field and fifth working in the reseller space. I feel like I’ve seen it all, but one thing that seems constant regardless of the organization is the struggle to reconcile the relationship between vendors and the business. I think I’ve heard every theory and strategy out there. Some want a different vendor for each architecture: the different eggs in different baskets theory. Some take every purchase as a challenge to get an ever-cheaper price: the pit them against each other theory. While others go with my personal favorite, “I like to spread it around:” the I want everyone to like me and get an equal cut of my budget theory.