Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

A recipe for better IT services and happier teams

The traditional wall between IT operations and IT services—along with tedious, antiquated processes for resolving IT issues—is harmful to a company’s productivity. It’s also soul-sucking for team members. Those conditions hinder data sharing and collaboration. As a result, IT staffers must spend hours on cumbersome tasks rather than focusing on meaningful, strategic projects that make them look forward to their workdays.

Five essential KPIs your MSP business needs to be tracking to improve growth

With 2022 winding down, many MSPs will be using this time to reflect on their performance during the past year, and strategizing on how they can improve in 2023. There are many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that MSPs should be continuously tracking as part of their normal business activity to help measure the health of their organization. In this blog I’m going outline what I believe the five most important ones are.

Insurance Policy for Microsoft Teams Quality of Service is More Than Just A 'Nice to Have'

Like any piece of tech, sometimes things can go wrong on a Microsoft Teams call. But, as a business, you want to maintain productivity at all times, through a positive user experience, that isn’t impacted by drops in service. Having coverage when it comes to Teams might seem like a ‘nice to have’ but it’s actually a lot more than that when it comes to Microsoft Teams quality of service. You wouldn’t skip insurance, after all.

Too many tools? Best practices for planning and implementing a successful IT tool consolidation strategy

IT tool consolidation is the ongoing and combined effort of all members of an IT organization to ensure that employees (only) use IT hardware, software and services that create and demonstrate explicit value for stakeholders in the business. The best metaphor for tool consolidation is in my kitchen, where common sense principles around value creation provide useful guidelines for any consolidation process.

Discover Database Servers In 3 Steps

I recently had a cloud migration client who was at the beginning stage of their discovery phase and looking to jump straight to “which database platforms should I be using in the cloud?” - a tall ask you might say, but following the three steps below they were able to discover and analyze all of their database servers in just two weeks.

Five Hidden Security Risks You May Find with Traditional Backup Mechanisms

It’s always been important for managed services providers (MSPs) to exercise backup best practices but this has become even more important with the pandemic having reset employees’ expectations around remote work. Up to 74% of professionals believe that remote work is here to stay according to Growmotely, while 16% of companies globally are already completely remote and 40% offer hybrid working.

How You Can Work with Microsoft And Telcos To Tap Into Global Business Infrastructure

Microsoft does a great job investing in its network, to the point where it has the second-largest reach of any business in the world. Tapping into that connectivity, and the partner telcos who help make it happen, is a big factor in getting the best Teams service quality available.

Your Checklist for an Application Blocklist

With the advent of remote and hybrid work, the line that separates work from personal life is increasingly hazier. This thinking applies especially to our digital lives. When work still revolved around fixed hours on-site, admins could easily determine which applications to block. For example, a worker should not be able to access the Netflix application at the office during business hours.

Java vs Python: Code examples and comparison

As two of the most popular and practical languages out there, should you choose Java or Python for your next project? Is one of these languages a clear-cut better option? The answer is a long one. According to GitHub’s annual Octoverse report, Python has now climbed to the second most popular language in usage, pushing Java down to third place.

Overcome your virtual machine monitoring woes with OpManager

As enterprises move towards a digital-first strategy, they rely much more on their IT infrastructures. An organization’s infrastructure drives the entire business and thus must be aligned with the organization’s business goals. This crucial task of managing an enterprise’s infrastructure brings its own share of difficulties to the table. However, the primary concern is to ensure the infrastructure’s scalability and optimal performance.