May 17, 2012

You are here: Home / Archives for Best Practices

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

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

Bookmark and Share
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: , , , , ,

Best Practices for Implementing a Multimedia Contact Center

March 22, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

Bookmark and Share
In an era where companies are trying to do more with less, the contact center is a good place to look for ways to improve employee productivity. In many cases, companies are relying too heavily on voice when they should be augmenting with technologies including chat, text, email and interactive voice response (IVR), says Zach Shankle, Director of Call Center Services for Carousel Industries. One customer Carousel worked with was quite proud of the service its call center provided, pointing out its great stats for call handling times and high customer satisfaction ratings. “But have you thought about how much… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Contact Center, IT Strategy Tagged With: , , , , ,

Resist the Urge to Chase Technology: Define Business Objectives and Requirements First

March 20, 2012 By Editor 1 Comment

Bookmark and Share
As we mentioned last week, Carousel will have a big presence at the Enterprise Connect Conference in Orlando next week, including a presentation by Ed Walbrook, our vice president of applications and collaborative solutions. We caught up with Walbrook to learn more about what he’ll be discussing; it’s thought-provoking stuff, to say the least. He has been in the IT industry in various capacities for 30 years, so Walbrook has seen a lot of trends come and go. But he is somewhat uniquely qualified to talk about trends related to unified communications because he’s been involved in the IP voice… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Carousel Industries News, IT Strategy, Unified Communications Tagged With: , , ,

Carousel is Prepped for iPad Data Onslaught – Are You?

March 13, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
Using-ipad-tablet-in-business

Bookmark and Share
The new iPad is set to hit the streets on March 16, an event for which Carousel Industries has been preparing for about 18 months, says Scott Moody, the company’s Manager of Corporate Technology. “We recognized these were going to be a game-changer,” says Moody, who is responsible for Carousel’s internal IT requirements. “We’ve been preparing for the influx of Wireless connectivity and mobility for a year and a half.” Faster iPad Connection = More Data With its support for 4G/LTE networks, the new iPad (which everyone but Apple calls the iPad 3) will support far greater data transfer speeds… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Mobility Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

CFD Modeling Podcast: Get a Handle on Your Data Center Airflow

March 6, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
Computational-Fluid-Dynamic

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Bookmark and Share
Listen to the Computational Fluid Dynamics Podcast Jamie Davis as been working in and around data centers for some 25 years, so when he gets excited about any given data center technology, you can bet it’s with good reason. And he is absolutely excited about how computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology is being used to create 3-dimensional models that help data center engineers make solid decisions on data center layout and cooling infrastructure.  Listen to this information packed Podcast to get all the details. “Gartner says by 2013 all data center design is going to be done with 3D modeling,”… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Data Center, Energy Management, Energy Savings, Green IT, Podcasts Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Calls for Cooperation and Threats of Doom from RSA Conference

March 4, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
many small light bulbs equal big one

Bookmark and Share
The week-long RSA Conference 2012 security confab wraps up in San Francisco today and after hearing several of the more than a dozen keynote speeches, two themes emerged: companies have to help each other deal with threats and getting hacked is now inevitable. Dealing with Threats Requires Close Cooperation In his opening keynote Art Coviello, Jr., Executive Chairman of RSA, was the first to call for morecooperation in sharing data about threats. Of course, RSA itself was the victim of a well-publicized attack last year, the result of a well-executed phishing attack. The sting of that attack was evident, and… Continue Reading ›

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

4 Best Practices for Developing a Strategy for Mobile Security

February 28, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
Phone with key

Bookmark and Share
Today’s workers are more mobile than ever before, depending on a wide variety of network-enabled electronic devices to get their jobs done. As a result, wireless networks are no longer just a convenience, a nice-to-have feature that impresses visitors to your building. They are crucial to the everyday performance of most any organization. In this kind of environment, companies must have an effective strategy for providing not only mobile communications, but also ensuring the security of those communications. Coming up with such a plan requires a willingness to review how your organization works, and how the needs of your users… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Mobility, Network Architecture, Wireless, security Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Magic Question

February 23, 2012 By Tracy Wadsworth 1 Comment
The Magic Question in Technology Sales

Bookmark and Share
I am often asked by the Account Executives I support, “Since you were a customer for so long, how would you respond to this offer?” Not to sound existential, but I typically respond with another question. There is no silver bullet question, but this one is pretty close and is deceptively simple. This “magic question” simultaneously focuses and broadens the conversation for ourselves and the customer. At a minimum, it elevates the conversation from a granular discussion of bits and bytes to one of high level business strategy. This article examines the “magic question,” its ramifications, and how the answers –… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Carousel Industries News, Industry Trends and News Tagged With: , ,

Data Backup Best Practices: How Carousel Does It

February 16, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
Storage-concerns

Bookmark and Share
Data backups are crucial to any IT organization but given the vast and ever-growing quantities of data that exist in most organization’s data networks, it can be a challenge to come up with a backup plan that adequately addresses business requirements but doesn’t break the bank. To learn more about backup best practices, we turned to Scott Moody, who as Manager of Corporate Technology for Carousel Industries is responsible for the company’s internal IT needs. “It’s a battle,” Moody says of the backup challenge. Many users figure that, since disk drives continually drop in price it should be no problem… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: Data, Disaster Recovery, Network Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Effective Security Breach Response Takes Planning and Testing

February 14, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment
IT Security Breach Response

Bookmark and Share
IT Security breaches are in the news seemingly every day, at companies both large and small. (For evidence, look no further than our own monthly security breach roundups, such as this one and this one.) No company is immune from a potential security breach, so no company should be without a sound breach response plan. “It’s a little like a fire evacuation plan,” says Thorsten Behrens, lead IT security architect for Carousel Industries. “Don’t figure it out when the building’s on fire; do it beforehand.” We talked to Behrens to learn what a good security breach response plan should look… Continue Reading ›

Filed Under: security Tagged With: , , , , , ,
« Older Posts