Building The CDW Technoliner

So I get a call from a manger, “ I have a great project for you to work on, West Coast Customs is involved”. Well, being a fan of the show for many years (so many I might show my age), I said “I’m in!”

On the first call I find out I’m working on a bus. But not just any bus, a huge motor 40+ foot coach. When I first saw the rendering it was only the outside and I thought this is going to “wow” a lot of people. But what the heck do we put inside? Read More »

How to Build a Flexible, Secure Mobile Policy in 5 Steps

Mobility is top of mind for everyone these days. The number of connected devices continues to grow as we transition from The Internet of Things to The Internet of Everything. However, we continue to struggle with building an effective strategy to manage mobile devices. I see a myriad of policies that are attempting to address things like smart phones, tablets, bring your own devices (BYOD) and so on, but very few organizations are successful in implementing these. Luckily the technology already exists to make this process easier, so the focus of this blog is to make sure you go down the right path when building a flexible, but secure policy. Read More »

Establishing a Mobile Strategy for Law Firms

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that mobile devices have found their way into every aspect of our personal lives and becoming integral for corporate communications and efficiency. According to Cisco’s IBSG 2012 Horizons Report, knowledge workers will carry over 3 connected devices by 2014. Am Law’s 2012 Tech Survey reported data security is a chief concern for 82% of law firms when considering BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and Trend Micro/Decisive Analytics reports almost half (46.5%) of companies supporting user owned devices have experienced a security breach attributed to a user device.

So what are your options for a Mobile Strategy? Read More »

IBM Connect 2013 (Not Lotusphere)

IBM’s Connect 2013 conference was held in Orlando, January 27 – 31, and it was once again chock full of exciting product announcements, fun times with customers, and sessions filled with great content. Our team is very proud that CDW was recognized as a finalist for the Distinguished Business Achievement award. CDW was also recognized as a ‘key business partner’ during IBM sessions on Social Communications (Unified Communications) and cloud mail migrations. In fact, CDW’s own Rupert Clayton delivered a great presentation on how to move to IBM’s cloud email offering, SmartCloud Notes, sharing tips from the implementations our engineering team has learned from prior migrations. IBM Collaboration Software is the largest segment of IBM software sold at CDW, and thanks to our customers, 2012 was a year of double-digit growth in software sales and services. We spoke with many existing and hopefully future customers at the CDW booth, where we had a little ‘social’ fun putting together a little vine video. A big thank you to our customers who were able to join us for our customer appreciation event at Splitsville in Downtown Disney. Unfortunately the photos of the backwards bowling didn’t survive the night.

This was the 20th anniversary of this conference, previously called Lotusphere. Read More »

Preparing a Next Generation Mobility Infrastructure

Mobility is not just about devices, cell phone coverage, MDM and routers.  An organization cannot effectively deploy a handful of home based wireless routers and provide a streamlined, high performance and secure service to its users and guests.  On the other hand, if the best enterprise wireless hardware is deployed on an aged wired infrastructure, many of the benefits of speed and throughput will be lost.  The tone on nearly every wireless project I’ve been engaged in is high profile and high visibility. Wireless is no longer considered a nice to have, or a convenience.  It’s a critical part of the infrastructure.  As such, the infrastructure that the wireless traffic rides on is also critical.  As more organizations deploy new or upgrade their existing wireless to 802.11n standard technology, focus should be placed on LAN throughput, egress and RF planning, and developing a solid strategy for utilizing the 5 GHz frequency. Read More »