technavadmin – Page 11 – Technology Navigation Inc.

Author: technavadmin

Multi-cloud Strategy: the more, the merrier 

technavadmin Cloud / Data Centers , , , ,
Multi-cloud Strategy: the more, the merrier 

By Chis Newell
Founder & President

Cloud technology has been highly adopted by businesses across the country. According to Gartner, 85% of enterprises will adopt a cloud first strategy by 2025.  

What comes next? Cloud diversification: the process by which a business uses multiple cloud environments (Hybrid, Private and Public) to house everything from software applications to workloads to assets to redundancies. This multi-cloud strategy is a simplistic concept of using multiple vendors for security, flexibility, redundancy, and cost savings.  

Having all your eggs in one basket is seldom a good idea for any enterprise. By using more than one cloud service, companies can augment their organization’s ability to stay online, all while lowering costs and maximizing the different strengths of different cloud environments.  

Security & Uptime 

Anytime a company is putting its assets into a cloud environment, it is taking the risk of attacks from cybercriminals, hackers, and unexpected downtime. By having different resources on disparate cloud services, even a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack won’t be able to shut down your business entirely. If one cloud goes down for legitimate or criminal reasons, the rest can shoulder the load until the attack is rebuffed.  

According to Gartner, the average cost per hour of downtime for a company ranges from $140,000-$540,000. That is not a hit most companies can afford to take. Wrapping multi cloud security posture will also enable clients to limit a security event to a “north / south” penetration and not “east / west”, effectively containing the issue until it can be resolved.  
 

Flexibility 

Cloud-hosting providers have diversified their product offerings from simple storage environments to dedicated heavy processing private clouds, hyperscale clouds like AWS and Azure, community share resource clouds and so on.  

Different parts of your organization will have different requirements for workloads, and there is no point in overpaying for something you’ll never use. Picking and choosing from different cloud vendors to find the best match for each part of your business is the smarter play. Using multiple cloud providers and product offerings is becoming the norm.  
 

Catastrophe-Proof 

An acronym no IT person wants to see is SPOF – single point of failure. It can be a flaw in design without the proper, implementation, or configuration. If one SPOF goes down, it takes everything down with it. Think the Death Star from the original Star Wars film; one well-placed Luke Skywalker proton torpedo and the whole place turned into an ashtray.  

A well designed multi-cloud strategy keeps a SPOF from taking an environment down at any point. There have been a few cloud companies that have unexpectedly gone out of business or locked their clients out of their environment in the past decade.  

Most recent well known example of this was when AWS suspended Parler in 2020, effectively taking down the conservative social media site. Albeit this is an extreme example, it shows the importance of having a well-designed multi-cloud strategy.  

Conclusion 

Diversity and functionality are the goals of every IT organization., By engaging a multi-cloud strategy, companies can keep costs and security threats down while raising their ROI by choosing the right cloud design for all their needs.  

Number Porting: What You Need To Know 

technavadmin Voice, VoIP/POTS , , ,
Number Porting: What You Need To Know 

By Chis Newell
Founder & President

Multiple number porting seems straightforward at a glance, but it’s a process with a lot of complication behind the scenes that can potentially bottleneck and impact the process.  

My team and I have assisted in porting hundreds of thousands of numbers and the questions remain the same: What happens if the numbers do not transfer correctly? Can we roll back to the existing voice solution (typically called a “Snapback”)?  

What happens if some of the numbers work and some do not? What happens if the numbers get stuck in the porting process and they are unable to work on the new solution or the existing? All of these are good questions.  

What happens if some numbers work and some don’t? 

This is traditionally the easiest issue to fix. If all the numbers are on one LOA or RESPORG and on one account with the losing carrier, only some numbers are working, most of the time it is not the paperwork that is the issue.  

If some of the numbers work and some do not, it usually means they are not programmed correctly with the winning carrier. Typically, the winning carrier can make quick changes to bring the number up.  

However, we strongly encourage having an experienced team on a conference call with the winning carrier during a number port to assist with any call routing or programming.  

Numbers that are Stuck in the port

Numbers stuck in the porting process traditionally means they were not programmed correctly to be released from the losing carrier and the winning carrier can’t find them to bring them into their solution.  

If this happens you need to work with the losing carrier to ensure the numbers are released and then with the winning carrier to find them and program them correctly in their switches. 

Snapback Process

This is a last resort during a port gone bad. Snapback means you have successfully ported the numbers to the winning carrier and for whatever reason the numbers are not working, and services can’t come up, you need to start the Snapback process pulling the numbers back to the original carrier.  

The winning carrier needs to release the numbers back to the losing carrier. Then the losing carrier needs to place the numbers back into the routing solution they were once on.  

If done right, the numbers should come right back up once they are brought back to the losing carrier (routing is not usually purged from the losing carrier right away, so bringing the numbers back quickly will ensure they fall right back into the previous routing tables if this is done correctly).  

8xx numbers traditionally are quickly completed for a Snapback (20 minutes to 2 hours) if you can get the proper teams at both the losing and winning carrier to make it a priority. DID’s and 1FB’s are a different situation. It can take 4 – 48 hours to bring a DID or 1FB back into production depending on how busy the teams are from both carriers and the complexity.  

Because of the downtime for a Snapback, it is very important to have tribute numbers during the port process. “Tribute numbers” are test numbers to port with little to no traffic associated to them, and this will ensure interoperability.  

Once the tribute numbers test clean, it is good practice to port numbers in batches. If something starts to go wrong not all numbers will need to be put through the Snapback process.  

Additional items to consider: 

  • Have a QA team available to test numbers as they are ported and propagated through the solution. Make sure you have the phone numbers and escalation list for the losing carriers LNP, RESPORG groups in case you need to Snapback (you should already have the winning carrier on a bridge during the porting time).  
  • Have a predetermined strategy if/when you want to call the port unsuccessful so there are no questions as to what needs to be done and when.  
  • Lastly, it is vital to have a dedicated team (like mine) in place to assist with porting and your project. If you are planning a migration/port and need advice from an experienced team of professionals, contact us here. The sooner you engage us the better. A bad port can be a resume maker. 

How Wireless Management Services help You Manage Your Devices?  

technavadmin Wireless/Mobility , , , ,
How Wireless Management Services help You Manage Your Devices?  

By Chis Newell
Founder & President

Wireless Management Services has become one of the most in-demand IT services. Wireless mobility management, or WMM, is the method of verifying that devices and associated communications services work efficiently. It is designed for companies who are starting on the digital transformation journey.  

The need for services and support in this field is growing as mobility solutions and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) have become more important for our new work reality. Businesses in the post-COVID-19 world can’t afford to ignore mobility. So, the biggest question is, how do you choose from the various wireless management services available since each offers its own unique set of capabilities?  

A wireless connection can be the safest option for a business. It only allows the access of authorized users, and data leakage is less likely than using earlier approaches. Here are some additional benefits of its use:  

  • Through Radio Resource Management (RRM), the wireless solution can analyze the large radiofrequency environment and, as a response, self-tuning. 
  • It may boost IT production by making it easier to troubleshoot issues, manage wireless users, and swiftly detect rogue devices on the network with real-time warnings regarding bandwidth use. 
  • Platforms with a minimum of 50 access points (AP) may be configured and deployed, with controller models capable of satisfying all the wireless business connectivity demands. 
  • It’s important to remember that Corporate Wireless is focused on business functions rather than network standards. In this situation, all the access points are connected to the controller using Split-MAC architecture, resulting in the spread of the wireless network’s functionality.  
  • Using capabilities such as Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR) and NetFlow, users’ applications and protocols are identified automatically and transparently.  

Here are a few of the Wireless Management providers for users looking for corporate mobility management software to meet their demands. 

IBM  

IBM provides managed mobility services to help clients in developing and implementing business mobility and device-choice strategies for better security and efficiency. IBM Managed Mobility Services simplify and customize device delivery, setup, configuration, security, administration, and support for both corporate-owned and employee-owned devices across all device types and operating systems.  

Stratix  

Stratix is a managed mobility service solution that helps customers in designing, delivering, and managing business mobile programs that match the requirements of end-users. With mobile device management support services for IT, the platform’s mobile endpoint management features provide you with real-time visibility and control over your whole mobile network.  

Fujitsu  

Fujitsu provides a cloud-based, flexible solution for monitoring, protecting, and managing mobile users. Fujitsu’s enterprise-grade expandable solution is bundled with Fujitsu Managed Services to ensure quality-assured delivery for its users. IT managers may use the solution to put their mobile strategy into action, completely mobilize sensitive business apps, and accept BYOD (Bring your own devices).  

As more people rely on wireless technologies (5G, WiFi) for their business needs rather than wired connections, Wireless Mobility Management has become increasingly essential. There are several advantages to having strong mobility management in place, and companies who do not presently have it as a standard should consider updating or developing new ways of controlling wireless devices that provide a significant transition.  

The lessons that covid left us  

technavadmin Technology Navigation , , , , , ,
The lessons that covid left us  

By Chis Newell
Founder & President

When Covid-19 hit the US in March 2020, most of us entered a new reality. Being in IT, my team has not only had to find a way to support our external clients but also support their internal clients as well. Here are some of the takeaways and learning moments we have experienced: 

Cloud and Digital Transformation is Beneficial  

Now more than ever clients are moving their services to cloud technologies. With a vast number of employees working remotely or in a hybrid environment, utilizing cloud technologies has become massively important, even more so than it already was. Any way you slice it, today’s employees are not working in a traditional business environment.  

Because of this, UCaaS, CCaaS, O365, Cloud Compute and Storage, Virtual Desktop and Virtual Collaboration services are being migrated to at a rate we have not seen before. Existing cloud projects that were slated for deployment in late 2020 / 2021 have been fast tracked to completion in weeks, not months. 

Reducing IT Costs  

Over the past couple of years, a lot of our clients have been tasked with reducing costs as much as possible. This has taken on many different forms, including re-contracting existing services in the effort to reduce costs, or cancelling portions of services.  

Some clients have asked our team to look at existing services with all suppliers and find ways to aggregate services to a single provider to take advantage of economies of scale. In some cases, clients request to cancel services altogether or re-purpose assets to be more effective. Whatever the strategy, many businesses remain in a mode of scaling back, while still needing to increase performance.  

The Importance of Redundancy and Resiliency  

With most all employees working remotely, if there are services needed at the offices redundancies at your offices for VPN or SD-WAN have become more vital than ever. With a single threaded connection, employees are destined to do their laundry rather than work when there is a blip on the network.  

Security is Being Reshaped 

Most of our clients have seemingly strong security measures for their offices. With a remote workforce, there is the question of how to secure this environment.  Enter Virtual Desktop, Zero Trust and SASE methodologies to help secure and address new security concerns.  

At Technology Navigation, we have been working diligently with our clients to work through their own challenges during the pandemic and subsequent fallout. If you think you are on your own island through this new reality you are not.