May 17, 2012

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BYOD Drives Need for Context-aware Security and Consolidated Management: Aruba Networks Podcast

May 16, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

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In seemingly the blink of an eye, we’ve witnessed an evolution from employees carrying almost nothing but Blackberry’s to the bring your own device era, driven by iPhones, iPads, Androids, Windows phones and all manner of computing and communication devices. In the midst of it all is Carousel Industries’ partner Aruba Networks, which builds the wired and wireless networking components and tools that make BYOD possible. To check the pulse of the BYOD movement, we checked in with Robert Fenstermacher, director of product and solutions marketing at Aruba, who brought us up to speed in this information-packed podcast. 4 Steps… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: BYOD, Podcasts Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Telework Week Demonstrates Big Savings from Home Worker Strategies

May 11, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
working from home

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Working from home saves the time and fuel associated with commuting, and thus real dollars, but can also improve employee productivity and make employees happier. Not surprisingly, management is taking notice and becoming more receptive to the idea. Those are some of the key takeaways from Telework Week 2012, co-sponsored by Cisco and the Telework Exchange, a public-private partnership focused on demonstrating the tangible value of telework and serving the educational and communication requirements of the Federal teleworker community.  This was the second year of the weeklong event and participation was up fairly dramatically, with an 80% increase in the… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Energy Savings, Green IT, IT Strategy, Industry Trends and News, Mobility, Network, Network Architecture, Productivity, Telephony, Unified Communications, VoIP Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Streamline Wireless PCI Compliance with Centralized, Automated Tools

May 10, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

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In a previous post we talked about what you need to know to keep in compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) when you’ve got a wireless network – or, as it turns out, even if you don’t, because you still have to prove you don’t.  In the way of follow-up, we talked to Chris Williams, a pre-sales systems engineer for Carousel Industries and one of the company’s wireless experts about what goes into meeting those compliance requirements and how to make the job easier. Outlining the PCI-DSS Requirements First let’s take a quick look at what… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Wireless, Wireless LAN, security Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

3 Important Roles that SIP Plays in a Contact Center

May 8, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
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Anyone who runs a contact center has to be concerned about issues like disaster recovery, business continuity and smooth, reliable communications, including for call transfers and between applications. Increasingly, the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is playing a big role in enabling those capabilities and more in contact centers. SIP, as we’ve covered before, is a signaling protocol that handles call setup, tear down andsession management for a variety of call types, including voice and video but also extending to applications that may play into a call center environment, such as interactive voice response and recording systems. SIP also provides the… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Contact Center, Productivity, Telephony, VoIP Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Virtual Desktops: A Key Component of BYOD Success

May 4, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

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At Carousel we get a lot of questions from customers about the BYOD (bring your own device) trend.  One topic that comes up over and over is how to securely enable employees to interact with the corporate network from any device while allowing them to be as productive as possible.  In this regard, Virtual Desktop, or VDI, is a powerful solution – albeit one that is part of a  comprehensive, holistic solution and does not exist in a vacuum.  We had a chance to catch up with Phil Magnuszewski, the Director of Cloud and Virtualization Solutions at Carousel, to discuss… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: BYOD, Desktop Virtualization, IT Strategy, Mobility, security Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Security Breach Roundup: From Human Error to Well-hidden Malware, There’s No Shortage of Threats

May 1, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

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This month we’ve got four stories that neatly sum up the challenges IT security professionals face in their attempts to protect corporate data. They include a mix of breaches caused by human error, a lack of encryption, and some cleverly disguised malware. Two States Suffer Medicaid-related Security Breaches This headline from an InformationWeek story pretty much says it all: “2 Medicaid Data Breaches, 1 Weak Link: Employees.” Here’s the story of the latest Medicaid-related breach: The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (SCDHHS) discovered on April 10 that an employee of the state’s Medicaid program had transferred personal… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: IT-Security, Industry Trends and News, security Tagged With: , , , , , ,

SaaS Optimization: How WAN Acceleration Speeds Up the Cloud

April 30, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
SaaS Optimization Performance Acceleration

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For years WAN optimization technology has been helping companies improve the performance of applications that must be delivered over long distances while also reducing the bandwidth required, in some cases dramatically so. But with the advent of software-as-a-service applications (SaaS), companies that use WAN optimization technology were basically out of luck. Since they don’t own both ends of the connection, they couldn’t very well install a WAN optimization appliance at each end. Carousel Industries partner Riverbed Technology has changed that equation, as we cover in this information packed podcast with Joe Ghory, senior product manager at Riverbed. His company recently… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Cloud, Podcasts, Productivity, WAN Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Taking a Look at 2012 Green IT Trends

April 26, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
Green-IT-Trends

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One of the first posts we wrote when we launched this blog back in early 2011 was about Green IT trends and tips. Given how much time has passed, we thought it was time to take another look at current trends in Green IT. Server Virtualization Rolls On Then as now, server virtualization is still a big one. But as we noted in a recent post based on a conversation with Phil Magnuszewski, director of data center technologies at Carousel Industries, it’s not just big companies virtualizing their servers any more. Now small and medium size businesses are getting in… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Energy Management, Energy Savings, Green IT, Industry Trends and News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Defining Use Cases is Critical to a Successful Virtual Desktop (VDI) Rollout

April 25, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
Virtual Desktop Use Cases

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We’ve discussed previously how getting the proper infrastructure in place is one key to a successful virtual desktop deployment. Another is defining exactly how the platform will be used by various groups of users, and ensuring you meet all of their requirements. These definitions are known as “use cases,” meaning a common set of functional requirements for a given set of users. Whether it’s contact center agents or sales people, each group within a company has certain software that they use, including operating systems and applications, along with hardware requirements, from desktops and laptops to tablets, printers and input devices… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Desktop Virtualization, Virtualization Tagged With: , , , , ,

3 Enterprise Video Trends, from the Polycom Systems Integrator of the Year

April 19, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

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Carousel has long been a partner with Polycom, implementing its audio and videoconferencing systems for our customers. So it was gratifying to be recognized as System Integrator of the Year in North America at Polycom’s TEAM Polycom Partner Awards in Orlando earlier this month.   Carousel has also been named a Platinum Level Polycom Choice Partner, a designation that shows we’ve made the investments in technical expertise and go-to-market capabilities required to address the complex needs of today’s UC customers. Dan Hofferty, Carousel’s national sales director for visual communications, is at the front lines of some of the most exciting work… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Industry Trends and News, Managed Services, Visual Communications Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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