Financial institutions can harness the power of the cloud and managed services to make a positive investment in their continued success.

Financial institutions typically have their own infrastructure hardware, which requires regular equipment updates and maintenance even as it continually moves toward end of life. This cycle requires significant capital requirements and involves specialized personnel and skill-sets.

Hosting mission-critical financial and office management systems off-site, or “in the cloud,” allows institution to save money while giving them the confidence that confidential information and customer data are secure. At the same time, these institutions can address stringent compliance and regulatory requirements.

Financial institutions should seek out cloud providers that specialize in “enterprise-class IT,” rather than services best suited for small businesses that do not have the exceptional speed, reliability, scalability, and security requirements of a financial organization.

CBTS managed cloud services deliver enterprise-class IT models that financial institutions – and their clients – need and expect. Our cloud is secure, robust, scalable, and optimized for any financial institution at a predictable monthly rate.

Financial institutions and the requirements of the cloud

FDIC regulatory requirements are designed to keep customer and client information safe.  Any financial institution that migrates to a cloud-based IT operations model must hold the cloud provider to those same high standards.

As financial institutions grow, so do the demands facing IT resources. When the FDIC and other regulatory bodies implement new regulations, which require compliance, it can be cost prohibitive for a single institution – especially one with multiple branches – to meet those requirements.

CBTS as your managed cloud service provider

All cloud service providers are not created equal. Even those that meet all regulatory requirements have internal features that vary from provider to provider.

The CBTS cloud and managed services give your institution a team of dedicated IT professionals that work to ensure compliance is met at all times.

When you work with CBTS, your IT staff is freed from the necessity of “patching” or upgrading infrastructure software, and from the daily firefighting of mundane tasks. Partnering with CBTS allows your staff to focus on service requests and high-priority initiatives that drive the bottom line.

You can then invest your IT staff’s increased availability into improving the client’s experience and satisfaction, or to introduce new efficiency boosting systems across your organization.

Summary

Financial institutions that utilize the power of the cloud can grow or, if necessary, downsize infrastructure needs with ease, while being economical and compliant.

Our IT teams provide managed cloud and data services that are customizable to your financial institution. Our experts are deeply experienced providers of cloud essentials for the financial sector. CBTS remote monitoring and management services like anti-virus, cyber defense, and disaster recovery solutions are critical to the security of your institution’s confidential information and ability to stay relevant as technology rapidly progresses.

To learn more, read our case study on how CBTS cloud and managed services provided successful results for a credit union experiencing rapid growth with limited IT resources.

Today’s business world is filled with seemingly unending e-mails, phone calls, and meetings. In order to keep your organization’s various departments running smoothly, all team members must stay updated on project developments and day-to-day operations.

A new cloud-based unified communications solution can help transform your business activities — and having the right partner will lead your team toward success. CBTS provides industry-leading cloud-based unified communication solutions, and we’re sharing our advice on how to choose a partner that will ensure long-term prosperity with your new technology. Check out the four unified communications essentials below.

Training and support 

The new solution will greatly enhance your overall communications experience, including new features and functionalities that your old PBX lacked. High-quality training and support is crucial to guarantee your teams maximize the solution.

CBTS is there to provide 24x7x365 coverage to keep your system working properly and make sure your teams understand all of the available tools and assets. We are with you from day one, providing support with planning, implementation, and management to provide a seamless transition. Additionally, we offer on-site and WebEx-based training, and a robust self-service portal.

Monitoring tools

When migrating to a new cloud-based system, you want to be certain all the moving parts work properly. Network monitoring and analytics tools can help establish an optimally performing solution for your business.

CBTS cloud unified communication solutions offer network monitoring tools and constant analytics that can enhance management control and monitor for service issues. By partnering with us, you get a bird’s-eye view of your system and the ability to catch and fix issues before they occur.

Auditing and road mapping

Keeping the big picture in mind is vitally important when implementing a new cloud-based solution. Communications auditing and road mapping is key for boosted performance. Your audit should cover three essential elements:

• Technology: Compile an inventory of your current tools and features, physical equipment, and underlying network.
• Processes: Outline all of the current communication avenues operating within your business.
• People: Who could be impacted by the transition? Audit everyone affected including staff, partners, suppliers, and customers.

Once you have a clear picture of your technology, processes, and people, analyze what will change with the new transition. What are the benefits each group will see from leveraging the cloud?

The auditing process can seem overwhelming, but CBTS offers a range of resources to support your transition and benefit your team at every stage. We also proactively suggest new services for improving your experiences, always ensuring you’re getting the most out of the cloud.

Experience

CBTS has implemented cloud unified communications solutions for organizations large and small, within every industry. With our experience, we understand that no IT solution is one-size-fits-all. We tailor each of our solutions to meet your business goals, always keeping client relationships top of mind. When you work with CBTS, you are partnering with an organization that truly appreciates the nuances of your business and will be by your side as your company evolves.

To learn more about the steps for a successful cloud communications journey, download our free guide.

State and local government organizations across the country are facing a variety of new challenges.

Budgets are tighter. New technologies offer ways to be more efficient, but government agencies may not have the time, talent, or resources to implement them properly. There is pressure to be more innovative—not just to improve services, but also to attract jobs.

But each of these challenges also offer an opportunity to transform and better serve your community. And that opportunity is in tailored cloud solutions.

Governments are expected to do more with less.

Whether you’re a state government serving millions, or a small local agency serving a specific need for a small community, your constituents’ expectations are constantly growing.

Thanks to the instant gratification of the digital world, the community you serve is less likely to tolerate the slow pace of traditional bureaucratic processes. They want to access their benefits, communicate with your organization, and find information to solve their problem—and they want it now. Your constituents want to see your organization using technology to improve their lives and communities.

At the same time, your organization is tasked with making responsible use of taxpayer funds. Can your organization meet those always-on demands while staying on budget?

A managed cloud solution can make it happen. In addition to always-on reliability, your organization will be able to leverage new and innovative technologies like AI, big data, and IoT to better serve your community. And you’ll be able to keep everything up and running with robust cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery options.

Governments face evolving security threats, increasing privacy standards.

Your organization is entrusted with large amounts of personal data, and it’s your duty to protect it. But this data makes government organizations and agencies valuable targets for cybercriminals. Governments are taking these threats seriously, and many are enacting stricter privacy and security regulations to help combat these attacks.

Attacks are also becoming increasingly sophisticated, so it can be time consuming and expensive to stay several steps ahead of the threat. By migrating to the cloud, you can offload the burden of security to a trusted cloud provider and security expert.

No matter what cloud option you select—public, private, or hybrid—your organization will be able to access the enterprise-level security measures that keep your data safe. And cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery solutions can help protect your organization from everything from natural disasters to ransomware.

Streamlining and consolidating your organization’s technology is more important than ever.

Departments and agencies across your organization should be able to work together and collaborate easily—but thanks to disparate systems, software, and applications, it doesn’t always work that way. And managing and maintaining a complex web of different technologies across your organization can be a headache.

Streamlining your technology improves productivity and collaboration, and also saves your IT team both time and resources. It can also help provide a more seamless experience for your constituents.

Centralizing your IT solutions in the cloud will not only simplify your IT operations, it will allow for automated deployments, updates, and support across your organization.

CBTS provides tailored cloud solutions for state and local governments

No two cloud migrations are the same. But the cloud experts at CBTS have helped organizations of all sizes and across all industries navigate their journey to the cloud. CBTS offers end-to-end cloud solutions that assess, plan, implement, manage, and support the cloud solution that meets your organization’s unique needs.

The cloud offers a variety of benefits for state and local governments:

• Scale easily as your organization’s needs change
• Move from a CapEx model to an OpEx model
• End the cycle of maintaining, repairing, and replacing outdated technology
• Meet your constituents’ expectations with the latest technology
• Cut costs by paying only for what you use
• Protect your organization’s data with enterprise-level security features and robust backup and disaster recovery solutions
• Comply with government regulations

Your organization’s cloud options seem limitless, so partnering with an experienced cloud provider is a great way to find the right fit. The CBTS Cloud Assessment services will take stock of your organization’s goals and existing IT environment. Our cloud experts will then offer you clear guidance on the cloud solution and migration strategy that meet your needs.

Download our free infosheet to learn more about our Cloud Assessment services and start your journey to the cloud today.

While more companies are moving to the cloud every year, some organizations still aren’t sure that cloud migration will meet their specific business needs.

Thankfully, the following concerns can be overcome, especially if you have the right cloud partner on your side.

Budgets are too tight to invest in new technology.

Some organizations aren’t convinced that embracing new technologies like the cloud can fit into their budget or provide an acceptable ROI. But the reality is cloud migration and other cloud solutions should never be “one size fits all.” Instead, they should be tailored to meet your unique business needs.

Owning a data center can be an incredibly expensive endeavor. And it’s not unusual for companies to invest in more space and power than they need. And your IT team spends valuable time managing the data center, instead of focusing on initiatives that help your business grow.

Your cloud partner should optimize your cloud journey to meet all of your business goals, at the right price. Managing your own data center can mean costly capital expenditures with repairs, replacements, and upgrades. With the cloud, you pay a predictable monthly fee and scale easily, paying only for what you need.

Moving the day-to-day management responsibilities to your cloud partner doesn’t just mean cost savings—it means freeing up your IT team to focus on the projects that help you grow.

The benefit to the organization and to customers is unclear.

While every organization faces different challenges and has different needs and goals, nearly all organizations can use the cloud to improve operations.

Cloud can help your organization:

• Improve collaboration internally
• Better address customer service issues
• Streamline your technology
• Take advantage of new technologies like IoT, AI, and big data
• Increase the availability of your mission-critical applications
• Automate deployments, updates, and support across your organization

It can’t meet our security and regulatory requirements.

IT leaders across the world are focused on security.  A breach can put your business and its reputation at risk. And if your industry has high regulatory standards, you may have doubts that the cloud will keep your business safe and compliant.

By partnering with a managed cloud provider and implementing cloud migration, you’ll offload the ongoing burden of staying several steps ahead of cybercriminals. You can rest assured that your data is safe under the protection of IT professionals and security experts providing 24x7x365 support.

The right provider will have experience in your industry and understand the complexities of even the strictest regulations and hold certifications that prove their capabilities.

Partner with CBTS for a tailored cloud solution

The good news is you don’t have to tackle these challenges alone.

CBTS has helped organizations just like yours move to the cloud with end-to-end solutions. Public, private, or hybrid, the cloud experts at CBTS can help you find the perfect cloud solution that:

• Fits your budget
• Meets your needs today
• Helps reach your organization’s goals
• Provides agility as your organization evolves

Download our free Cloud Readiness Workshop infosheet to learn more about partnering with CBTS for your cloud migration.

The IBM iSeries has enjoyed a remarkable run. What started as the AS/400 in 1988 evolved into iSeries in 2006 and survives to this day under IBM’s Power Series brand.

But three decades of rock-solid performance have not overcome the challenges of hanging on to legacy iSeries systems. Dedicated hardware and software are difficult and expensive to upgrade. Seasoned iSeries experts are getting harder to find. Cloud technologies, meanwhile, offer power, flexibility, scalability, and economy that are too attractive to pass up.

Fortunately, embracing the cloud doesn’t force you to unload your iSeries infrastructure platform. You just need a sound strategy for migration to the cloud. Most likely, you’ll need a hybrid strategy that keeps some IT workloads in-house but seamlessly connects to others in the cloud.

Preparing for that move requires you to have three things in place: proper staffing and management, adequate power and space, and robust backup and recovery.

Let’s walk through each of these issues:

1. The staff to implement, manage, and support it.

Before you launch an iSeries cloud migration, you must solve several core challenges:

• A cloud migration must be carefully crafted to suit your existing technologies and unique business needs. If you’ve never designed an iSeries cloud migration, the learning curve can be time consuming and expensive.
• Staffing. Due to the maturity of the iSeries platform, younger IT professionals haven’t always been trained to master iSeries technologies. Many iSeries experts are close to retirement age and replacing them gets more difficult all the time. There’s still an abundance of iSeries talent available—the challenge is connecting them with your IT department.
• Management and support. If you’re short on iSeries talent, managing and supporting your new cloud environment will also be a big challenge.

2. The power and space you need.

Many organizations have far more processing power in their legacy systems than they’ll ever need or use. Making the move to the cloud means you can still get the power and space you need, while cutting costs at the same time. This is especially important for organizations whose needs fluctuate throughout the year.

Moving portions of your iSeries environment to the cloud will reduce the overall iSeries IT spend while matching your processing power with the precise needs of your applications.

And with a managed cloud solution, you can scale easily and pay only for what you use as your needs change.

3. A robust backup and disaster recovery program.

Breakthroughs in virtualization, containerization, and replication allow any organization to develop robust backup-and-recovery systems. You no longer have to buy a duplicate data center that goes unused for years on end.

Cloud backup and recovery systems can be configured to create real-time failover for mission-critical systems like ERP’s or eCommerce, where downtime is a killer.

You’ll need these things in place when you migrate to iSeries cloud backup and recovery:

• Tape-drive replacement plan. The cloud enables you to dump tape-drive systems. However, many legacy forms of archival data might be best retained on tape. Your backup-and-recovery system needs to work this out.
• System design. You can build a system that uses virtual servers and containers to replicate real-time backup and recovery. The challenge is developing a system that accounts for your complex business needs and computing architecture.
• Recovery goals. You have to establish recovery time objectives (RTOs) determining how soon you need to get critical IT operations back up and running. You also need recovery point objectives (RPOs) determining how many hours, days, or weeks of data you want to recover.
• Testing. Conducting backup and recovery drills is the only way to ensure your systems work when you need them most. Testing often requires taking critical systems down temporarily, so it must be done with care.
• Documentation and support. You need thorough directions so that your backup expert doesn’t have to be available in a crisis. Moreover, you need backup support staff who will monitor your systems and escalate at the first sign of trouble.

A partner for your iSeries cloud migration

This provides only a glimpse at the complexities of migrating iSeries technologies to the cloud. For many enterprises and organizations, it makes sense to partner with an iSeries expert like CBTS to design and implement their cloud migration and then manage everything under a service level agreement.

A cloud migration can help you embrace transformative, data-driven technologies like AI and the IoT. You can make it happen faster with CBTS, where our managed services division will deliver the talent, experience, and knowledge you need for a smooth migration of your iSeries technologies.

Want more? Download our free eBook for more on migrating iSeries to the cloud.

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Five ‘Rs’ to successful DR program

Hurricanes impact everyone from Houston to Miami to Manhattan—especially people running IT operations often times without a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution.

The push for digital transformation presses this point home during hurricane season which starts in June and runs through November. Organizations depend on constant access to data, networks, sensors, and servers like never before.

There’s plenty to worry about in Hurricane Alley and population-dense areas of the Eastern Seaboard. High winds knock out power lines in the storm’s path. Heavy rains flood cities and towns hundreds of miles inland for days after a hurricane makes landfall. Evacuations clog highways and separate people from their homes, offices, and workplaces.

The hazards became all too evident in 2017. Hurricane Harvey hovered off the coast of Houston in late August, delivering pounding rains that swamped vast swaths of the city and inflicted $125 billion in damages, the worst since Hurricane Katrina. In the days and weeks to come, Hurricane Irma menaced South Florida and Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico.

Moreover, few IT professionals can forget the impact of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when high winds and flooding punished organizations that lost their data centers and their backups. If your organization requires always-on IT access, you can’t afford to ignore even remote risks of hurricane-related outages.

How DRaaS reduces hurricane risk

One way to mitigate hurricane hazards is to partner with experts in DRaaS, which has four core advantages:

• Distance: IT operations can be hosted in data centers beyond the reach of powerful storms.
• Real-time failover: Replication and virtualization technologies allow your DRaaS provider to create a redundant version of your critical systems, holding downtime to a minimum and protecting your business reputation.
• Cost: You don’t have to invest millions designing, configuring, and managing a redundant data center that goes unused for months or years at a time. Your DRaaS provider takes care of everything. You pay a predictable monthly fee based on usage.
• Expertise: Replicating all your IT services is an incredibly complex prospect, requiring deft design, careful implementation, precise documentation, and thorough testing. Typically, it’s more efficient to hire experts than it is to spend months learning all the facets of disaster recovery yourself.

At CBTS, we have extensive experience with data centers, replication technologies, and system design. Our DRaaS experts have set up these kinds of systems for a broad range of industries and marketplace requirements. Our expertise arrived just in time for a South Florida company in 2017.

Case study: Wittock CPA

CBTS helped an accounting firm keep its operations online during Hurricane Irma in 2017. Wittock CPA was working with a large volume of data related damage claims from the 2010 Blackwater Horizon oil spill. The company required a 15-fold jump in staff to handle the claims and could not afford the prospect of days or weeks of downtime from a hurricane.

CBTS implemented a cloud-hosted environment with high-availability data centers hosted in the Midwest, far from the hazards of storm-related downtime. When Hurricane Irma made landfall, employees had access to their data, and all critical systems remained online. CBTS support staff helped resolve employees’ questions as they came up.

“I’ve had a long career in the IT industry and know what it takes to protect a rapidly growing firm like Wittock CPA from simple incidents to much larger threats like a hurricane. Irma would put any organization to the test, but because we took the preemptive steps to implement business continuity and cloud hosting with CBTS, it was business as usual from an IT perspective.”

– Craig Turner, Director of IT and Continuity, Wittock CPA

To find out more about how CBTS helped this company dodge a disaster, download our free case study.

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CBTS: We have you cloud covered

It seems like everyone is talking about cloud these days. Research from Cisco Systems, for instance, predicts that more than nine out of 10 IT workloads and compute instances will happen in the cloud by 2021. By contrast, a mere 6 percent  of IT will be in traditional data centers three years from now, Cisco predicts.

Meanwhile, many organizations keep chugging along with three-decade-old legacy technologies like rock-solid IBM’s iSeries. Stable companies whose IT demands stay within predictable boundaries can argue with conviction that there’s no need to fix technologies that aren’t broken. Large, complex enterprises with heavy computing demands like ERP systems also may be hesitant to explore uncharted opportunities in the cloud.

The challenge is that legacy technologies are not like fine wine—they don’t necessarily improve with age. Eventually, legacy systems cross a cost threshold where the price of maintenance exceeds the expense of replacement.

As your organization weighs its options on legacy IT systems, keep a few central points in mind:

Replacing your hardware will cost you

The bigger your organization is, the more it’ll cost to replace your data center infrastructure. A capital expenditure in the neighborhood of $10-$20 million can be difficult to justify when those funds could be put to use in driving additional sales or improved customer service.

You also have to pay to configure, install, and support the hardware and network. Electricity remains a major cost for data centers. Moreover, your equipment is well on its way to obsolescence on the day you install it. You also could have a difficult time recruiting professionals to staff your data center.

This challenge underscores why the cloud is so popular: Somebody else has to be the data center expert and on top of the latest technologies. You avoid the 7- or 8-figure CapEx hit and switch to an OpEx model that’s billed on a pay-as-you-go model. Your cloud vendor keeps the equipment up-to-date, pays all the cooling costs, and goes the extra mile to maintain security.

You’ll probably buy more compute capacity than you need

The price of computing power declines over time. This usually means that when companies replace racks of servers, the new equipment can have four or five times more computing capacity than the old equipment, if not more.

This often means you pay for a wealth of computing resources you won’t be using. That’s not the most efficient use of your IT budget.

A cloud provider, by contrast, bills only for the resources you use. You don’t pay for capacity you don’t need. And the agility of the cloud ensures you can easily scale up during your busy season and add more capacity if your business grows suddenly.

You could have trouble recovering your systems in a disaster 

Legacy systems tend to have legacy backup technologies to match like tape and optical drives. These devices can take days or weeks to provide a full backup. And these backups can fail, leaving organizations in a serious bind.

The cloud represents essentially infinite storage capacity, which makes it an ideal disaster-recovery environment. Servers many miles from your home location provide a measure of distance between you and a flood, earthquake, or hurricane. Furthermore, technologies like virtualization and containerization join forces with advanced replication software to ensure near real-time disaster recovery.

Global corporate titans aren’t the only ones who can afford fully redundant backups. These days, companies of any size can establish robust disaster recovery programs that hold downtime to a minimum.

 IT experts supporting legacy technologies are retiring

This challenge is happening throughout the industrialized world, but it’s especially acute in niches like the IBM Power iSeries.

Lots of organizations are one or two retirements away from losing the experts who know their systems inside and out. Unfortunately, technical schools, colleges, and universities are not always training the IT professionals of tomorrow on these legacy systems.

That’s not to say there are no experts on legacy systems anywhere. They’re just hard to find.

A managed cloud solution might be your best choice

Cloud providers succeed because their technologies have distinct advantages in cost, capacity, availability and computing power. But you should not underestimate the complexity of embracing cloud solutions and how varying workloads will perform. They must be carefully designed, implemented, and managed in alignment with your distinct business needs and existing IT capacities.

That’s why many organizations are partnering with managed cloud providers like CBTS. We help companies get out of the data center business and focus their IT energies on core business objectives. Our Disaster Recovery as a Service and Unified Communication as a Service businesses help companies deploy powerful, sophisticated technologies that put them on an even footing with their larger competitors.

Our cloud services ensure you have around-the-clock access to IT experts with advanced training and certifications you might not be able to find on your own.

Are you still using IBM’s Power iSeries?

The iSeries product line, now called IBM Power Systems, dates to the 1980s. Many organizations rely on these systems because they perform as expected and deliver rock-solid security.

For all their strengths, these systems are running out of time in on-premises data centers. Our latest eBook explores five signs that it’s probably time to migrate your iSeries environment to the cloud.

Download our free guide to find out more.

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Five Rs to successful DR program

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A well-engineered and high-performance disaster recovery (DR) program can save your company in the event of a major incident that takes your critical IT systems offline. Not only will a DR program protect your private and sensitive data and keep your organization up and running when it counts, it can save your reputation with your customers, partners, and vendors.

The tricky part is ensuring your DR program comes through when a major incident happens. Replicating files, applications, and databases, and restoring them at a secondary location, seems like a straightforward process at first glance, but nothing is simple when a crisis strikes.

Success with your DR cannot be a set-it-and-forget-it approach. Your DR program has to be a living program that adapts to your ever-changing business requirements and IT environment. Ensuring that your DR program performs as expected in a crisis requires careful design, documentation, and comprehensive testing.

The process of planning, designing, documenting, and testing your program must include the five R’s of DR:

• Restoring systems
• Resuming business functions
• Remediating data losses
• Recovering primary sources
• Returning home

Let’s walk through the role of these pillars of DR programs.

1. Restoring critical IT systems

Your DR program design must include your top tier or most important IT applications and infrastructure, and establish recovery priorities for which environment to restore first in a crisis demanding the optimal RTO and RPO.

All critical infrastructure and applications have a place in your DR program: physical servers, virtual machines, containers, applications, system software, databases, user profiles, security appliances, and so on. Your DR program must determine the order these systems come back up so no dependencies get neglected.

You have to accurately document and then test these systems thoroughly to ensure they will restore as expected in an emergency. Testing should be carefully documented and conducted at least twice a year. Robust testing requires bringing up the secondary environment in a controlled manner, and also ensuring your end users can access the information in the same manner as they would otherwise. This process requires thoughtful planning and execution to avoid disrupting active IT operations.

2. Resuming essential business functions

Limiting downtime is a core goal of successful DR preparedness. The longer your systems remain offline, the greater the cost to your business and your brand’s reputation. The strongest DR programs provide near real-time failover that can prevent the most damaging downtime.

As you design and test your DR program, make sure you’re accounting for business-critical platforms: eCommerce, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, and others that are essential to your bottom line.

And don’t forget about your vendors and partners. If you coordinate with third parties when using systems like billing, accounts receivable, and logistics, make sure you collaborate with them when developing your DR program. And don’t forget to include them in your documentation and testing.

3. Remediating data loss

You have to accept that some data might get lost in the event of a major incident such as malicious activity. The key here is reducing the potential damage.

You start by developing recovery time objectives (how fast you want to restore systems) and recovery point objectives (how far in time you want to go back). Then you rank the data in order of importance and design your recovery system to ensure the crown jewels of your data survive regardless of the root cause.

After that, you want to limit potential damage. Extra testing and redundancy combined with data-integrity testing can reduce the risk of data loss. Finally, you need to repair databases and IT systems that suffered damage or corruption during the crisis.

4. Recovering your primary IT resources

Establishing your recovery priorities help ensure that primary IT resources like databases, networks, file systems, and security protocols come back quickly and efficiently.

DR testing proves its worth when you’re recovering primary IT resources. New software versions and firmware upgrades can introduce unexpected problems during the recovery process.

Identifying your most mission-critical IT resources also helps identify non-critical resources. That helps you avoid the temptation to restore everything simultaneously. When time is short during a crisis, you don’t want to waste time restoring resources that aren’t mission-critical.

5. Returning systems to their home state

You cannot afford to neglect this final step. Eventually, you must move out of DR mode and find your “new normal.” Many DR solutions on the market do not provide for this in the short term.  It is critical to get back up to full operational capacity quickly to avoid unhappy customers.

Again, your DR documentation and planning plays a critical role. Your program should identify what success looks like based on your business objectives and provide a timeline for returning your IT operations to their home state.

Pulling it all together

Innovations in cloud technologies enable small to midsize companies to deploy DR programs that would satisfy the most demanding enterprise user.

Though the potential of advanced DR is obvious, making it work can be challenging when your IT team is already strapped for time and resources. These systems need a robust architecture, proper testing, and real-time staffing to put DR plans into action quickly and efficiently.

At CBTS, our Managed Data Protection and Disaster Recovery services can address these challenges and allow your IT team to focus on the strategic initiatives that drive your business forward.

Now that you know the five R’s of disaster recovery, find out more in our eBook: “10 pitfalls to avoid when re-inventing your disaster recovery program.”

Also read this case study: Global aerospace supplier taps CBTS to launch a robust disaster recovery plan while diagnosing issues and upgrading core infrastructure.

Ownership has its privileges … but the new normal of Mobile Computing in higher education is challenging this long-held assumption for IT leaders. Rapidly changing technologies and the “Bring Your Own Device” era puts considerable pressure on these IT leaders, who are primarily focused on digital solutions that improve educational outcomes.

Consequently, CIOs in higher education are increasingly transitioning their network operations to the cloud and working with IT partners like CBTS for monitoring and management. This allows CIOs to leverage an OpEx model that delivers predictable monthly costs, and the peace of mind that comes with putting their operations in the hands of experts at IT partners like CBTS.

Brent Flaugher, account manager with CBTS, recently shared insights from his conversations with CIOs in higher education who are embracing this move toward the cloud.

How do you recommend CIOs in this space think about ROI as they analyze cloud-based solutions?

They can start by considering economies of scale. Picture a school system with satellite campuses. With the traditional ownership model, each campus’ IT department maintains servers and storage to service its campus, along with IT staffers to support its operations.

Multiply that configuration by any number of campus locations, and you are looking at rapidly increasing costs brought on by the escalating need for more storage space to satisfy data-hungry initiatives. That’s just one example.

Migrating all of their IT operations to the cloud means, among other considerations, that CIOs no longer have to plan for obsolescence. They don’t have to think about the continual training of their IT staffs, and the expensive equipment upgrades that are part and parcel of the ever-changing technology landscape.

How do the challenges of BYOD Mobile Computing factor into calculating ROI for transitioning to cloud-based services?

Mobile Computing offers the promise of compelling multimedia-based educational content that enriches the educational experience. But it also represents a monumental challenge to existing IT departments because of the increasing bandwidth demands that require better network optimization. As the number of these devices expands, so does the pressure on the capacity of existing networks. This often means IT leaders must invest in upgraded equipment and ongoing training for their IT staff.

BYOD also introduces another level of security challenges that increasingly require highly specialized IT staffers who can keep pace with security threats and all the other considerations that come with keeping track of a myriad of mobile devices.

Migrating to cloud services that offer 24x7x365 maintenance delivered by experts, and optimized networks, will help schools grow at the pace needed to stay relevant in the highly competitive education sector.

What is a simple way to picture the cloud service-pricing model?

A good, relatable example is thinking about how you pay for utilities like gas and electricity. You pay a monthly charge that is based on the amount of gas or electricity that you use. CBTS offers a number of cloud-based solutions that offer the same model. For example, consider the cost of storing data in the cloud. Our clients pay a fee based on the amount of space they are using in the cloud to store data.

How do CBTS products and solutions meet Mobile Computing demands for CIOs in higher education?

Voice, storage, and security are the cornerstones of their demands. Education CIOs need products and services that can boost their bandwidth and offer them a more robust and dependable wireless technology. Additionally, CIOs are faced with the prospect of providing vast amounts of storage to handle their data needs, and they need IT experts who can keep their operations secure.

CBTS offers shared cloud-based offerings that optimize storage, backup, voice, and security requirements. Our services support the CIO’s bottom line by eliminating the need for large capital expenditures, and the need to recruit, retain, and continually retrain large IT staffs that can handle the critical demands of their connected educational organization.

For more information on how CBTS is helping higher education clients, read this Q&A with Paul Czarapata, VP and CIO of the multi-campus Kentucky Community & Technical College System (KCTCS).

It wasn’t long ago that your C-suite of higher education CIOs didn’t have to worry about trends like Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD). But the advent of BYOD is one of the many challenges education IT leaders face as the mounting demands of mobile computing make transitioning to new IT operating models critical.

We recently asked Brent Flaugher, Senior Account Manager with CBTS, to describe these challenges and how CBTS products and services are helping make that transition easier.

Higher education CIOs are increasingly focused on delivering value-added initiatives and strategies.  What is driving this transition?

The constant 24/7 need for connectivity is a critical underlying factor driving this transition. This need increasingly makes the legacy methods of information delivery – platforms, network structure, and means of content delivery – unable to provide the quality that users expect and demand for a first-class 21^st century education.

What are the main challenges that higher education CIOs face as they transition from their legacy role of “keeping the lights on?”

Higher education CIOs are expected to do more with less. This can represent a monumental challenge as they contend with the increasing bandwidth demands of ever-more sophisticated multimedia-based educational content, which in turn requires better network optimization.  Coupled with these demands is the proliferation of mobile student-owned BYOD that replace the past model of school-provided devices.

BYOD introduces another level of security challenges. And as the number of these devices expands, so do bandwidth requirements – adding more pressure to the capacity of their existing networks.

The traditional model of educational IT ownership is changing. Tell us how forward-thinking CIOs are leading this change?

These CIOs are opting to transition to cloud-based services where they can rely on the deep expertise of IT professionals who can manage and grow their networks to support agile mobile offerings that are in such demand in the educational sector.

How do CBTS products and solutions meet the BYOD demand?

We constantly hear from our clients in the education sector that they are hungry for products that can increase their bandwidth and offer them a more robust and dependable wireless technology. But it is an inconvenient truth that implementing their value-added and data-loaded initiatives comes with a hefty trade-off.  With more data access comes more data center requirements. Additionally, CIOs are faced with the prospect of providing vast amounts of storage to accommodate all of this access and hiring expert staff to support these initiatives.

The CBTS focus is to meet these wishes by offering shared cloud-based offerings that can make wish-lists a reality. We do this by optimizing their storage, backup, voice, and security requirements. It’s not just a smart strategy for delivering a top-of-the-line education to their students. Our services also help the bottom line by avoiding large capital expenditures and the need to recruit, retain, and continually retrain a large IT staff that can handle the critical demands of their connected educational organization.

For more information on how CBTS is helping higher education IT leaders read this case study and this interview with Paul Czarapata, VP and CIO of the multi-campus Kentucky Community & Technical College System (KCTCS).

Explore how the Communications solutions at CBTS can help support your BYOD demand here.