ConvergeOne

Microsoft has issued an Exchange Server Security Update on April 13, 2021 for companies with an on-premises deployment of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, 2016 and 2019. This affects both on-premises and hybrid deployments of Exchange Online. Exchange Hybrid users are less affected. However, the FBI’s recommendation is to patch this vulnerability as soon as possible.

The thought of migrating your entire business, with all its complexities, to the cloud, can feel daunting. However, the need to modernize has never been more urgent. In fact, it is estimated that 81% of companies with 1,000 employees or more have a multi-platform strategy. The number is expected to rise to more than 90% by 2024. Financially, worldwide spending on public cloud services is expected to grow to 73%, from $160B to $277B between 2018 and 2021. 

About 90% of colleges and universities see fewer than 70% of students graduate within six years. Clearly, student retention is a big goal for provosts and other institutional leaders. Higher Education is seeking ways to engage students to not only keep them rooted to the campus community, but also to ensure they graduate. Additionally, as campuses expand within their own footprint or to new locations, they look to modernize and future-proof investments.

To no surprise COVID-19 has forced organizations to provide communication solutions and offerings that address today’s challenges and ensure resilience. While many companies know that this is a need more than ever, migrating IT workloads can seem cost prohibitive due to the time and challenges most organizations face when trying to do all the work internally.

Challenges can compound when the migration includes mission-critical data, infrastructure and moving to the cloud. Since there is no single method for all sizes and types of cloud migration, you can significantly bolster your chances of cloud security success by leveraging best practices, well-executed plans, and partners with experience.

Steve Brock, Avaya OneCloud Marketing Leader, recently wrote a great article about the four new mindsets Avaya has noted that have enabled customers to maintain and even increase their workforce productivity during these challenging times.

Campus Security

We ask our educators to do a lot. The threat of school violence on campus and from remote sources has district decision-makers needing answers. Risks need to be identified, with consideration given to protecting the student wherever they are. Security needs to be conducted in a way that doesn’t feel like a prison. What’s more, innovation with physical security provide new feature sets only possible on IP networks ⏤ meaning that IT teams now have partial or new responsibility for physical security. ConvergeOne coordinates a mix of digital applications to shield against/respond to threats and other hazards. Key areas of focus include:

Parents and communities place the highest degree of trust in local educational agency (LEA) schools to not only educate their children, but also to keep their children safe. LEA instructional and technology leaders are innovative and tireless in managing this enormous responsibility—and at ConvergeOne, so are we. Inspired by the mission of educators, we develop solutions for academic equity, student access, ransomware readiness, and other matters of concern to school leaders, including:

Has your organization realized the full potential of your Microsoft Office 365 subscription by adopting Microsoft Teams?

It’s an irrefutable truth: COVID-19 has quickly changed the modern workplace. At the onset of the pandemic, many businesses rushed to put temporary solutions in place to protect their employees and keep up their operations. Because these solutions were only meant to be short-term, they are now starting to show their weaknesses and concerns around their reliability and security are beginning to arise. The result: Obstacles are looming everywhere for CIOs.

ConvergeOne’s customer had what was once considered a best-of-breed contact center solution, but faced challenges leveraging its legacy solution to satisfy the rapidly evolving needs of its business. Over the past decade, the company’s leadership team recognized that although its investments in self-service had paid off well, they’d also created a challenge. The basic transactional calls that once dominated call queues—address changes, balance inquiries, new-service activation—had all but disappeared. The queue was dominated by the complex and varied issues that customers couldn’t solve on their own.

In the last blog post in this series, we explored the first three steps to delivering an excellent and secure customer experience: starting with a CISO, involving senior leadership, and adopting a risk-based approach. In this blog post, we’ll pick up where we left off and explore the final three steps.