Stories From The Wire

It goes without saying that UC and UCC tools are the lynchpin of the remote workforce. Without the ability to dial up a far-flung coworker in seconds via the desktop, remote users are truly cut off from the people and resources they need to be productive.

But as workers begin returning to the office and users adopt an actual work-from-anywhere schedule, the issue with UC performance becomes not just about availability, but consistency in how these tools perform based on where a user logs on.

How can IT teams ensure that the UC tools their employees rely on to connect in this WFA world are as consistently reliable as possible?

Seth Differ, AppNeta’s Director of Solutions Consulting, joins the show to help us understand UC management (and to share some real-life examples).

In Q3 2021, Microsoft Cloud saw revenues jump 36 percent year-over-year to $20.7 billion. But Microsoft wasn’t the only Big Tech company that saw their fortunes grow thanks to a hunger for enterprise cloud during 2021: AWS saw cloud revenue jump by 39 percent to more than $16 billion last quarter, while Google Cloud saw revenue jump 45 percent to $5 billion.

So as we’re firmly past the 1.5 year mark on pandemic-induced network transformations, it’s high time we take a look at the specific projects that helped fuel such major boosts in cloud adoption.

AppNeta's VP of Product Sean Armstrong joins resident tech journalist Paul Davenport and Director of Product Marketing Alec Pinkham for a chat through what's fueling the hunger for enterprise cloud today, and strategies to navigate adoption successfully. 

This episode marks the third and final installment of a conversation with AppNeta’s Chief Customer Officer Adam Edwards and Director of Global Alliances John Tewfik. 

In this chat, Adam and John have marching orders for IT and a specific IT checklist that outlines how teams can both expand their effectiveness and visibility while streamlining their processes and tools. This includes a look at a few specific customer transformations, including a Microsoft Teams overhaul, as well as one hospitality client’s unexpected and unique pandemic-era IT challenges, with actionable takeaways for each scenario. 

The discussion includes some questions from attendees of the original roundtable that delve into the new realms of IT accountability in the WFA era, as well as a breakdown of BYOD policies, shadow IT and the need for teams to start setting their own internal SLAs—and to start leveraging network performance monitoring to track them. 

You’ll hear Adam speaking first after I tee up the first question. Enjoy the show!

In this next installment of our conversation with AppNeta’s Chief Customer Officer Adam Edwards and our Director of Global Alliances John Tewfik, we’re going to discuss the hot-button topic of security, privacy and trust in a hybrid work world.

Adam kicks us off by discussing some of the most popular networking strategies teams have been leveraging to support remote workers, before him and John dig into specific customer examples where security, privacy and trust either conflicted or complemented network performance. 

From a discussion on remote, global access to Microsoft Teams, to some real-life customer deployment scenarios, Adam and John detail the specific metrics teams need to have a handle on to ensure both safe and performance network and app experiences for end users.

Recently, we hosted a webinar with our Chief Customer Officer Adam Edwards and our Director of Global Alliances John Tewfik that discussed the concept of Hybrid Work; specifically, how both the definition and perception of hybrid work has evolved over the past couple of years, and what strategies need to be transformed in kind to navigate a Hybrid Work world.

For today’s episode, we’re sharing Part 1 of that conversation, where you’ll hear Adam kick us off with his take on how IT and ops teams used to manage hybrid workers, before John joins in to discuss some of the winning networking technologies that came in handy throughout the pandemic (specifically VDI), before unpacking some of the findings of AppNeta’s recent 2021 Future of Internet Outlook.

While this is just the beginning of our larger conversation around Hybrid Work (more to come in next week’s podcast), there’s a lot of valuable food for thought and considerations for any IT professional managing a decentralized worker footprint.

Enjoy this excerpt and be sure to tune in next week for Part 2 of our conversation, where we unpack what the future holds for Hybrid Work and share an “IT Checklist” for next-gen enterprise network management. Enjoy the show! 

In this Bonus Episode of Stories From The Wire, Technical Account Manager Joseph Ochs returns to the mic to discuss the “Two Big Vs” that enterprise IT teams have had to reckon with during the pandemic: VDIs (or Virtual Desktop Interfaces) and VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). 

Along with unpacking the what, how and why of those two networking technologies, Joe shares his views on the best infrastructure strategies for securing Microsoft Teams, general voice and video management tips, and his views on the future of work. 

We’ve all likely had consumer-side experiences with poor contact center performance, especially as the pandemic pushed many of us to rely more than ever on new purchasing channels.

But according to market intelligence from GEP,  contact centers witnessed an increase of 300% more calls than usual during the early stages of the pandemic. And research shows that the sudden increase in call volumes had a significant impact on contact center KPIs, as the Average Handle Time (AHT) increased from an average of 3-6 minutes for most contact centers to closer to 10+ minutes at the pandemic’s start. 

We’ve invited Technical Account Manager (and at this rate, contact center guru) Joseph Ochs onto the podcast to talk about some of the challenges contact centers and agents faced over the course of the pandemic, how Joe and the team helped customers navigate some of the hairier scenarios, and what lessons IT leaders can take with them as they future proof their call centers for whatever the future of work looks like.

Of all the industries embracing long-term remote work, Software & IT companies are the ones offering workers the most flexibility, according to the latest LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Index.

Forty-eight percent of Software & IT employers will offer full-time remote options long-term, according to the survey of almost 9,000 professionals in the United States, while 46 percent of Transportation & Logistics employers will follow suit. On the flip side, the industries with the fewest full-time remote options for employees are Public Administration (25 percent) and Education (31 percent).

[Blog reference: https://www.appneta.com/blog/software-it-are-the-top-fields-for-remote-work/]

While many companies are still ironing out whether they’ll offer full-time remote work at all (and how), others have taken a strong stance on hybrid work that marries the benefits of a shared office with the flexibility craved by potential workers.

Today, we have our VP of Business Operations Eva Maloney joins us to talk about what makes Software and Tech companies so compelling to work for, what remote tech workers are striving for in a job, and the new challenges of staffing in a Work-From-Anywhere world.

According to a new survey by Deloitte, spending on new tech is forecast to jump 37 percent for K-12 students and 16 percent for college students over 2020 levels, with parents and students seeking out an estimated $11.8 billion in new computers, smartphones, tablets and wearables.

And with remote work and schooling potentially still on the table for Fall 2021, users that had been jockeying for their share of internet capacity at home throughout the pandemic will likely  have even more devices crowding their residential WiFi after Labor Day.

To help us unpack it all, AppNeta’s Chief Customer Officer Adam Edwards joins us to discuss how IT teams can better support remote staff who may be working from a crowded residential connection, the security considerations that come with Work-From-Anywhere setups, and how to leave the WFH mistakes of the past year behind us. 

According to the latest estimates from Gartner, businesses are exiting survival mode and diving straight into growth mode as worldwide, IT spending will increase by 9 percent in 2021 to $4.2 trillion. Data center systems, enterprise software, devices, IT services, and communications services are all IT arenas that will see investment grow as enterprises map out their long-term prospects in a post-pandemic world. 

AppNeta's Director of Solutions Consulting Seth Differ joins Paul and Alec to discuss where IT should be focusing their investment as they navigate a Work-From-Anywhere reality.