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 ›
Streamline Wireless PCI Compliance with Centralized, Automated Tools
May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment
3 Important Roles that SIP Plays in a Contact Center
May 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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 ›
This Year, Resolve to Lower Energy Bills with Automated PC Power Management
January 18, 2012 By 1 Comment
We’re more than halfway through January, which means that probably 90% of all new year’sresolutions have been broken. Here’s one resolution that, even if you didn’t make, you should take seriously this year: adopting a PC power management solution. As we’ve reported previously: Surveys have consistently shown that over 75% of employees leave their work computers and monitors on every night. This results in a tremendous (truly shocking!) amount of wasted energy. A blog post at GreenBiz.com puts a price tag on the practice – and it is astounding: CIOs must ensure that they are making as many savings (in… Continue Reading ›
Desktop Virtualization ROI: 4 Benefits that Change the Equation
January 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Desktop virtualization technology has been rather slow to gain favor in the enterprise in part because of perceived cost concerns. Let’s face it, with the plummeting cost of hardware, you can likely buy replacement desktops for $600 to $800. The cost to implement desktop virtualization may run closer to $1,000 per seat. But those figures are misleading, says Phil Magnuszewski, director of data center technologies at Carousel, because they don’t take into consideration the many benefits that desktop virtualization delivers. When you add up the soft dollars associated with these benefits, the cost equation quickly tips in desktop virtualization’s favor.… Continue Reading ›
6 Keys to Saving Energy in Your Data Center
January 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
As companies look for ways to reduce expenses, energy savings is a rather obvious target. That’s especially true when it comes to data centers, which can consume 100 times more energy than the offices they support, according to David Cappuccio, Research VP with Gartner. But there are ways to ease the pain. Here are six key actions every business should consider when working to deploy a modern and highly energy efficient data center. 1. Perform an Energy Audit The first step in planning for efficiency is determining how much energy your data center is consuming. Areas to examine include your… Continue Reading ›
Carousel Industries Partner, Westcon Group, Goes All-In On Virtualization
December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
——————————————— Guest Post: Today we are pleased to welcome Bill Hurley, the CTO of our partner Westcon Group, speaking to the passion and philosophy our businesses share around the topic of server virtualization. ——————————————— One of the best things about my job is I get to have some great conversations with partners. Working together, we float potential ideas, collaborate, and share best-practices. It’s also a nice way to validate some of our own strategies. I love talking with the team at Carousel, because we have very like-minded philosophies and ideas. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to hear about their own virtualization… Continue Reading ›
The (Many) Business Benefits of Video Conferencing and Telepresence
April 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Last week we reviewed the business benefits of telework or telecommuting, something Carousel has been enabling our customers – via Unified Communications solutions – to do for years. The recent research reports we highlighted provide details on how positively teleworking impacts businesses, how much money it saves employees, how much more productive and happy it makes them and how positively it benefits the environment. These add up to make an extremely strong business case for providing the infrastructure to support teleworking, and encouraging it when appropriate. So that got us thinking. What about another capability we have been huge proponents… Continue Reading ›
The (Many) Business Benefits of Telecommuting
April 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment
At Carousel, we have been touting the business and personal benefits of telework to our customers for years. Companies that invest in Unified Communications and security solutions to enable work-from-home opportunities not only generally receive a rapid return-on-investment, but they also consistently report improved productivity, and due to reduced commuting requirements, employees report substantially improved work / life balance. Ensuring your business is ready for this trend is rapidly moving from a nice to have to a need to have. A report just came out from The Telework Exchange, sponsored by Cisco, detailing the impressive results from National Telework Week… Continue Reading ›
Video Conferencing Adoption in the Enterprise
February 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Enterprise – or as it is more commonly thought of, video conferencing - has been around for years. In the past several, however, enterprise adoption has been skyrocketing in virtually every industry. So what has been driving this trend towards virtual video collaboration? Your initial thoughts might center around the recession and the need to cut travel budgets, or the drive towards sustainability in the workplace, and you’d be partially right. According to Carousel’s Director of Visual Communications Michael Petracca, “Those trends are certainly important and are accepted as key drivers, but there are additional factors that have created a ‘perfect storm’ to… Continue Reading ›
Green IT Trends – What’s Working For Business
February 2, 2011 By 2 Comments
Although the recession has worn away some of the luster and enthusiasm around sustainability, it is becoming more and more clear that ‘Green’ is good business. This is especially true in the IT realm. If your operations are not as green as possible, there is waste – energy, unused capacity, heat, equipment – and that translates to money. Companies that are executing on a Green IT strategy are delivering efficiency improvements and substantial ROI. Here are some of the trends, products and projects we are seeing and helping our clients execute on: Green IT Tip #1 – Server Virtualization You… Continue Reading ›
