Flashback – it’s early 2020 and suddenly you and your entire staff need to work remotely as quickly as possible. Set up accounts, laptops/devices, get video conferencing services and applications running yesterday. On top of all that, it had to be seamless and secure, with everyone working just as they had before except in comfy pants!
We at IT Vortex can only imagine how this great reset went for you. We fielded many desperate calls for help and got a large number of new and existing clients into our cloud both efficiently and securely.
Many of you got a remote workforce going. But did you do it in a manner that…
- incurred additional and hidden expenses,
- sacrificed ease of collaboration with security, creating Shadow IT solutions and
- created a web of services and apps that make administration and user access a nightmare?
There was really no roadmap – because there was no road!
Not long-ago, IT departments had absolute control and dictated most technology decisions. Most employees only accessed company technology at their workstations in the office. Remote workers were the minority and most likely all equipment was issued by IT. The COVID-19 lockdowns caught many IT departments by surprise. Consequently, they were not prepared to offer remote solutions at such a rapid pace, and had to cede many decisions to the new at-home and BYOD (bring your own device) employee.
Those pesky additional and hidden expenses
Despite using hosted services like Web EX, and Office Suite apps like Word and Excel, you may have bought licenses and usage plans that were either too little or plainly too much. Software vendors offer all sorts of levels and plans, and each level has its own distinctions. You may have bought email space or video conferencing usage that was too low as a base, leading to overage charges. Or conversely, you bought too much and are leaving usage on the table. In either case, you may not notice because, well, you were too busy figuring out the new normal and now you just think the costs are just that normal!
If this is the case for you, IT Vortex can help you audit, assess and migrate to a solution better suited for you and your clients. Let our world class engineers successfully implement your technology goals.
Sacrifice ease of collaboration with security: Shadow IT
In 2020, users just needed to get something done, and didn’t have the patience or time necessary for IT to approve and issue solutions. Therefore, your organization may have allowed using whatever solution got things working fast. If that is the case, then you have what is called Shadow IT.
Classically, Shadow IT is the use of hardware or software by individuals without the knowledge of the organization. This could be any cloud services, software, and even hardware that employees obtained on their own without explicit permission. Here is an example that you may have encountered and let pass due to the lockdowns:
- An employee is unable to collaborate with someone in or outside your company, so they use their personal file sharing service like DropBox or Google Docs. That means your organization’s Intellectual Property and/or data is no longer under your compliance controls.
A scattered web of different accounts and services that you don’t administer
It may be the case that there were employees (even before lockdowns) frustrated with existing tools. So when the lockdowns came, they began purchasing and using cloud hosting solutions from free video solutions like Zoom and paid project management solutions like BaseCamp, Slack or Trello. These new solutions divide and splinter where files and data exist and who has governance over them. That means you have no control over how often company data and IP is uploaded on free services or your employees’ personal devices.
IT Vortex can help build your Cloud Solutions Roadmap, even now that there is a road!
If you find yourself in any (or all) of the cases above, you can now build strong relationships with those who have solutions. Reinsert IT as the collaborative gatekeeper for your organization’s technology landscape!
Let IT Vortex help audit, identify, inventory, understand, plan, migrate and execute all your cloud hosting needs.
We at IT Vortex have experienced IT engineers who understand what you went through. We possess the skill sets and certifications to rapidly implement all your cloud needs in-house, from theory, to design, to implementation. It doesn’t matter if it is a first move to the cloud or a re-clouding.
IT Vortex can help you maximize your IT investment as well as your organization’s effectiveness and security. We have the cloud hosting solutions and expertise ready and on hand to help, whatever your needs may be.
- Cloud/Infrastructure as a Service Hosting (IaaS) to manage your physical infrastructure.
- Desktop as a Service (DaaS) to manage your virtual or physically distributed desktop infrastructure.
- Business Continuity (BCPaaS) to recover from a disaster and swiftly resume business operations.
- Security as a Service (SECaaS) to protect your technology assets and data.
- Unified Communications (UCaaS) to deploy all your telephony solutions.
IT Vortex maximizes technology investment by avoiding the evaluation and proof of concept phases. Our knowledge base and portfolio of technology vendors have done all the trial and error, so we already know the best practices you need to be successful. We only sell the solutions we know and believe in, so that means no sales pitches full of empty promises.
We partner with leading software and hardware vendors like VMWare, EMC, Mitel, Microsoft, Dell, Fortinet, Condusiv, TrendMicro, and ACTi. Our top-notch portfolio of software and hardware vendors can help your organization fulfill all of its needs.
Contact IT Vortex for any of your Hosted Cloud Services and/or Managed IT Services today!
