Technology Today

As technology and the I.T. industry has changed, so must the methods and practices that have been the basis of I.T. departments and operations to change as well.

Technology lifecycles are no longer measured in 3, 5, or 8 year cycles heavily laden by hardware acquisition, setup, and maintenance, but rather the “as a service” model where major updates are released every 3-6 months with little to no time required to install/setup services to bring functional benefits to end users.

This rapid change means the knowledge and skills needed to “setup and install” systems gives way to pure knowledge and awareness that new functionality is available to serve the needs of the user community as long as those managing the technology are aware that the solution exists, and can successfully enable and onboard the solution to fulfill the needs of the users.

CCO provides the needed guidance in its Advisory Services that:

helps identify the business needs of users in an organization
assess how (or whether) the needs are fulfilled by various solutions
advise organizations of current methods of fulfilling the business need (frequently by simply enabling functionality that the organization already owns)
helps organizations eliminate and consolidate redundant technologies to lower costs and simplify I.T. operations
enable functionality and cross-train I.T. in best practices in managing and maintaining the new solution
assist organizations in the change management and end user adoption and training to take advantage of the added service

The following are examples of such services CCO has provided to organizations recently:

Organization was going to spend $120,000 on an RSA smartcard system (plus $90/token key) to provide users multifactor authentication to their systems and applications
- CCO advised the organization of a token-based solution where the tokens cost $50 each and required NO additional servers, software, licenses, or subscriptions. The solution snapped right into the organization’s existing Microsoft Azure Active Directory logons that they used for Office 365
Organization was going to spend $350,000 on hardware to bridge a migration from on-premise Cisco phones to Microsoft’s cloud telephony. The vendor was incented by a hardware provider to load up the migration with a lot of 1 time use appliances.
- CCO identified a much simpler method of achieving the SAME end results that did NOT require a lot of “throw away” hardware and was able to be completed for less than $100,000.
Organization was spending $40,000 a year on laptop encryption software for Windows devices in one of their branch office sites.
- CCO helped the organization use the built-in Microsoft Bitlocker encryption that they owned in a configuration manner that met their needs and eliminated this additional license cost.
Organization had Active Directory, Oracle Directory, Azure Active Directory in the cloud, Okta in the cloud, and several appliances and gateways to achieve single sign-on across their business applications.
- CCO helped the organization onboard a SaaS add-on to their Azure Active Directory that eliminated the organization’s need for 4 of the directory systems, now providing single identity across all business apps with NO complex services and gateways.

CCO provided hands-on assistance to bring hundreds of thousands of users thrust into a "work from home" environment to gain access to their business applications from anywhere using Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) technology.

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How CCO stays on top of the latest technologies and solutions:

Breadth of Information: CCO works with hundreds of organizations, so in any given day, the consultants run across business challenges and needs, and creates solutions for organizations
Knowledge Sharing: CCO has a knowledge sharing process throughout the organization that melds the work, information, best practices, and skills between all CCO consultants in the organization on a daily/monthly basis
Early Adopter Access: Because of CCO’s 30+ year history working with Microsoft and other industry vendors, CCO is invited to participated in private early (early) adopter programs on products, services, and solutions. CCO’s consultants see, work, and deploy technologies months before they are available to the general public, and thus are aware of solutions before anyone else has even seen or written about it

How decision making is done today, and how CCO’s Advisory Services helps in the process:

In the past, I.T. departments would spend months comparing products, bringing in vendors for comparative “shoot outs,” setup test labs, and walk through every aspect of a solution. This was necessary because purchases typically required a major capital investment (purchasing hardware and software), months of time to setup and test the systems, and all the effort would be implemented and leveraged for several years.
However, in an “as a service” world, organizations can frequently buy 1 license of an application (or may already own and have the rights to onboard/enable a solution) and begin the evaluation and testing process immediately.

The importance these days is:

understanding that the solution exists
knowing whether the solution “actually works” from experiences and best practices from other organizations (and since technologies refresh every few months, even if someone “tried it” or had problems with it “months ago,” knowledge and information must be current, in many cases as recent as “last week” on what’s available, what works, and what doesn’t work)
the best way to implement and roll out to the user community
the best way to manage and administer the solution ongoing
CCO’s awareness to solutions, its work with other customers, its work in early adopter programs, and its shared knowledge across all of the consultants in the organization provides CCO experience and expertise to help organization successfully identify, implement, support, and roll-out technologies and solutions.