How to Build a Global IT Organization: Learning from New Signature’s Model As businesses grow, they focus more and more on business continuity, on keeping the lights on and having the support they need to maintain relevance and extend to a global scale. But what type of IT environment is required to push your business from a mid-size or large business into hosting a global presence with success? New … Read more
Blockchain Xenophobia As New Signature commits itself to being at the forefront of innovative technologies, we are proud to present a piece around Blockchain by Suresh Kannan, New Signature consultant and Founder of digiBlitz, a revolutionary IoT technologies company. For the past few years, Blockchain has transformed itself from mere a Buzzword for selling Cryptocurrencies to truly innovative technology … Read more
Securing Your On-Premises Systems with Azure Most people think of Azure and on-premises systems as two separate islands that are only loosely joined, but this shouldn’t be the case and sometimes only a combination can keep you secure and compliant. Microsoft has ensured that Windows 10, Azure and Office 365 all have strong authentication controls in place, and it is these … Read more
Transforming Insight into Automated Actions at Scale Leveraging automation and IoT technologies can transform your company’s tomorrow by connecting your existing machines to Microsoft’s Cloud and unlocking insight that would otherwise be untapped. New Signature Advanced Analytics experts have experience generating revenue and modernizing data processes for business across many different verticals. One challenge to the IoT solution implementation is that 71% of IoT … Read more
CRM is This Year’s Biggest Law Firm IT Trend Law firms have specific needs, unique to any other industry vertical. New Signature experts are award winners in walking businesses through industry-specific technologies to gain insight and understanding about how Microsoft technologies can benefit their specific business and industry. We have also—in working with law firms in the past—been able to research, observe and pinpoint trends and industry pain points. Roughly 67% … Read more
A New Era of Privacy Regulation: GDPR Readiness As of May 25, 2018, a European privacy law, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), will take effect, and even companies that are not headquartered and located in Europe can face the effects of the new regulations. Any company that has a web presence and that markets products on the Internet will also have some adjustments to make in regard to their … Read more
Infrastructure-As-A-Code Imagine if all of your VM builds and configurations were predictable and consistent. Imagine that updating the configuration of your SharePoint farm could be executed reliably from one place and applied to all 10 servers in the farm. Imagine if the specifics of your build and configurations were executed from text rather than point and … Read more
Blockchain: Proof of Authority The last proof of mechanism we’ll explore is Proof of Authority. Like the previous example, this one leverages a conceptual model that should be immediately familiar to any student of corporate governance. You “earn” the right to write the next block in a Proof of Authority model because your peers, the other nodes in the … Read more
Blockchain Technologies: Proof of Stake Last week on the New Signature blog, I delved into Blockchain technologies and Proof of Work, and the how it awards the right to write the next block based on completion of some verifiable effort. As we’ve seen, Proof of Work’s prioritization of anonymity over efficiency may not make sense in an enterprise setting where we … Read more
Blockchain Technology: Proof of Work “Are we confident in our trust of the implementation of blockchain that we decide to deploy?” My colleague Peter Day raised this question in his recent post on blockchain governance. As a first step towards answering that question, in this post I’ll be exploring “proof of” mechanisms along the dimensions of anonymity and efficiency and … Read more
Hub Sites in the Modern Workplace As customers embark on their SharePoint Online cloud journey, one philosophical debate always seems to bubble up to the surface: What do we do with the intranet? The discussion swirls around whether or not the intranet should be used strictly for communication, or should it also be used for collaboration. … Read more
Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin: Use Cases for Real Life We’ve seen a huge increase in interest in Bitcoin and the technology behind it, Blockchain. But like many other exciting technologies, many organizations are unsure how it could be useful for solving problems that matter. In this first part of our series on Blockchain, we introduce a few key scenarios to illustrate how Blockchain can … Read more
The Evolution of my Organization Transformation with Microsoft Office 365 Planner I am by nature a writer of all things: thoughts, notes from meetings, plans, processes and lists upon lists. I also carry an innate need to over-organize everything I touch. My need for organization is a bit intense, and over the course of my professional career I had settled in quite well to my pattern … Read more
Digital Differentiation – Part I Digital Differentiation – noun; the art of applying digital transformation to compete and win in your market. Digital transformation. It’s such a wonderful, commonly used phrase which can actually mean anything to anyone and for which everyone has a different interpretation. The conversation around digital transformation and the debate about how best to achieve it … Read more
Securing Azure Datacenters A common misconception about consuming Azure public cloud services is that Microsoft is taking care of all security aspects. Although this is partially true, as a consumer of Azure public cloud services, you are responsible for some of the security controls. The number and areas of security controls you are responsible for depends on which … Read more
Windows 10 Adoption: Flying Solo or with an Expert Windows 10 has revolutionized the way that organizations will manage operating systems. It provides the features that you have come to know and rely on, while also elevating security and data analysis features and providing more available updates. Knowing the benefits of the newest Windows platform, many companies are eager to upgrade and deliver the … Read more
Teams Extensibility Constant innovation has become the new normal and is spurring the exponential and accelerating technology growth. Faster and shorter cycles of iteration are imperative to keep the platform evergreen, but equally important is the extensibility of the product. Extensible platform enables unique workflows and scenarios, eliminates context switching, and empowers users to interact and engage … Read more
Bringing Progressive Technology to Progressive Education One of New Signature’s core values is innovation. We are constantly curious, and we work with each customer to deliver solutions that work best for them and bring them into a more competitive place, driven to compete as modern businesses by leveraging Microsoft technologies. We have experience in all Microsoft’s technologies, and across the full spectrum of industries and business sizes. This includes academics, an industry area that is … Read more
Who’s Watching Your Azure Spend This Week? You probably check your Azure spend once a month to make sure things are on track. But what happens if things go off track when you’re not looking? Or if some recent changes quickly start racking up big charges? We’ve got you covered. We’re thrilled to announce the release of three new Azure spending alerts … Read more
Cutting Through Red Tape for Government Entities Budgets are everything in government. Not only are they limited, but they are also derived many times through tax dollars. This makes every penny important. Unfortunately, government entities and organizations can be losing money without realizing it through outdated IT infrastructure that lacks the tools needed to drive productivity. Beyond budget, principle IT concerns for government entities are … Read more
Enabling great quality calls with Microsoft Cloud UC If there is one thing that many people have come to expect at work, it’s audio working when they make a call. Although the proliferation of cell phones has made some people a bit more tolerant of issues with calls, when dealing with enterprise UC, the expectation of quality audio every time is prevalent. When working with Microsoft UC solutions, there are … Read more
The Value of Automation and Power of the Digital Twin The manufacturing industry is undergoing a rapid transformation thanks to the application of machine learning. While many industries have focused on collecting massive quantities of data over the years, gaining predictive analysis into this massive data set has been difficult. Predictive analytics are now able to predict errors and problems in factories and machines before they occur – preventing shut downs, failures and more, which … Read more
Five Steps to Enable Azure Rightsizing One of the easiest ways to take control of your Azure expenses is to ensure that your resources — most notably VMs and Azure SQL databases — are appropriately sized. The Cloud Management Portal’s rightsizing feature makes this easy for you. The CMP uses the Azure Resource Manager to obtain the utilization and performance data for … Read more
Azure Rightsizing Made Easy Good financial stewardship of your Azure environment requires that your resources – most notably VMs and Azure SQL databases – are appropriately sized for your ever-evolving business needs. But how do you know if you’ve chosen the right tier or are getting the best rate for a given resource? We have updated our rightsizing feature … Read more
A New Workforce Requires a New Unified Communications Model Seventy-eight percent of people say that they collaborate with co-workers or colleagues who are located somewhere else in the world at least once per day, and 4 out of 5 information workers use web conferencing at least weekly to communicate (Microsoft User and Adoption Survey, 2014). The workplace is changing, and employees are becoming more mobile, more remote, and are working within more teams, departments … Read more
How to Keep the Lights On When disaster strikes, your business can face downtime. And downtime costs money. For this, Microsoft offers DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) to provide for back up response when tragedy strikes. But beyond individual instances of tragedy lie a whole slew of potential pitfalls that may cause downtime. You see, acting as an umbrella to … Read more
U is for Updates One of the many benefits of the cloud is that the new always on always up to date lifecycle means that as customers we are able to take advantage of new features as soon as they are ready, or sometimes even before they are ready, without having to wait for large milestone updates. This is … Read more
The Cloud Management Portal and Change Management There is no question, moving IT operations to the cloud means big change for your IT department. Individual roles and responsibilities may change significantly – as may expectations for the department. Last month, our blog highlighted how New Signature’s Cloud Management Portal (CMP) aids IT managers with financial governance. But don’t stop there. Hoarding this … Read more
Q is for Quantum Computing Quantum computers have been talked about for years, but it is only recently that they have come into existence. But what is a quantum computer? A quantum computer simply makes use of quantum mechanics to perform operations. To go any further into explaining quantum computers would mean to enter the world of superposition, entanglement and … Read more
Financial Governance with the Cloud Management Portal Moving to the cloud is full of promise. IT managers welcome the opportunity to put mundane operational tasks behind them, offload risk management, and operate in a more flexible environment geared towards growth. The value proposition of Microsoft’s public cloud platform, Azure, is to make it simple to spin up a VM, add storage, deploy … Read more
O is for Office 365 Technology can be pretty ironic sometimes. For example, Office 365 is at the center of cloud productivity and collaboration. It makes sharing ideas, working remotely, and accessing information simple. But in order to bring simplicity to the table, there’s actually a good deal of technological complexity involved. Imagine your Office 365 cloud platform is a … Read more
Choosing Your Datacenter Wisely When you make wise decisions, there is never just one factor involved. In fact, that is arguably a way in which to be considerably unwise. If you choose to buy a house solely on price, you may be living in a very outdated house with a leaking roof. If you choose to buy a house … Read more
M is for Machine Learning Pervasive and simpler access of mobile, social, and cloud have led to the unprecedented data generation and exponential information growth. Companies are hoovering up the data under the notion that it could become a valuable commodity resulting in business success, but all of that data can be a bane or boon depending on how … Read more
Managed Services: What Are We? “What are we?” It’s a common question you may hear when in a personal relationship. The difference between strangers, friends, boyfriends/girlfriends, and spouses spreads from one end of the spectrum to the other. What are the differentiators between strangers, friends, and more? What helps to cultivate the varying levels of relationships, and how can we … Read more
K is for Kinect Video games have come a long way from huddling around a CRT monitor and smashing buttons with your friends. With video games rapidly evolving over the years, it was only a matter of time before your body itself became the controller. The Microsoft Kinect has revolutionized video games and captured the imaginations of children and … Read more
I is for IoT What is the Internet of Things? The Internet of Things, or IoT, is an umbrella term for the idea of connecting new types of devices to the Internet – devices that have not been Internet-connected in the past. For a home user, this might be their heating or lighting systems, whereas for a business, it … Read more
Member Management for Dynamics 365: Key Trends and Challenges in the Age of Digital Disruption Is your member-based business keeping up with digital trends and positioned as a progressive company prepared for growth? New Signature has the tools you need to succeed, and there are some questions that you can filter through to do a periodic check to ensure that you’re implementing the best technologies for your unique situations. Does … Read more
H is for Heterogeneity As consultants, we have the opportunity to interact with different customers’ environments on a regular basis. Though seemingly overwhelming at first, the advantage is that we are exposed to a large amount of variability with respect to how IT systems are conceptualized, deployed, and maintained. Through these types of experiences, we often run into scenarios … Read more
Unleash the Power of Open Innovation with Microsoft GigJam Digital business is disrupting every industry and to stay relevant and thrive in the digital economy, more and more companies are embracing open innovation and are breaking the traditional barriers. Rapid innovation is essential to accelerate time to value by harnessing the power of iterative and on-demand feedback from internal and external experts in the … Read more
G is for Groups Collaboration has long been the hallmark of innovation and led to many great inventions including the most important invention of the 20th century – Transistor, which paved the way for miniaturization of complex circuits and was the harbinger of the information age. Collaboration is exigent in an age where the innovation iteration cycles are waning … Read more
F is for Flow Microsoft Flow is a service that helps you automate repetitive tasks that eat up your time. It works with over a hundred services – the possibilities are almost endless. You can create a condition in one service, and then specify what action should be taken as a result in a different service. It is even … Read more
E is for E5 2016 – The Year of Monkey, an interesting US election year and a year that was dominated by a string of high profile cyber-attacks. Cyber threats are showing no sign of relenting in 2017. There is an increased awareness of importance of security among governments, individuals and businesses. There is no longer a denial and … Read more
D is for Dynamics Dynamics: a pattern or process of change, growth, or activity. Merriam-Webster.com. 2017. http://www.merriam-webster.com (2 February 2017) That definition certainly describes Microsoft Dynamics 365. Originally released as Microsoft CRM 1.0 in 2003, its capabilities have expanded tremendously since then. With a combination of shrewd acquisitions and rapid in-house development, Microsoft has invested heavily in the Dynamics … Read more
C is for Cognitive Services It’s a frequent and time-honored tradition; a child goes to their parent after dinner with a homework assignment they need help with. “Can you help me write a story due tomorrow?” That is often quite an ask of a parent with little preparation. Constructing a story is a difficult task for many people. One of … Read more
39 Tapes vs. 1 Azure Backup Cloud Backup is always that unsung hero. It’s there in the background, and no one notices it, that is until it’s needed. And with the ever-growing volume of data, backing up becomes more and more of a challenge. Sure, storage companies continue to push the envelope on hard drive sizes, now reaching upwards of 10+ TB … Read more
New Signature and The Team Data Science Process Technologies like Azure Machine Learning allow organizations to develop incredibly powerful predictive analytics capabilities, but the complexity of building and maintaining these models demand that we approach analytics with a thorough, rigorous approach. The Team Data Science Process provides a tested framework for managing advanced analytics projects and delivering solutions that create sustainable value. Regardless … Read more
A is for Azure Automation The development of Microsoft Azure has virtualized infrastructure, and created Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), allowing businesses to streamline their IT workloads and maintain their infrastructure more easily, and at a reduced cost. Today, Azure has developed into a robust cloud platform that supports IaaS and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) models and has changed the way we do business across … Read more
Leveraging the New Features of Office 365 E5 In 2015, Microsoft elevated their Office 365 platform to an enterprise level when they unveiled Office 365 E5, a new premium Office 365 Enterprise Suite. The platform includes new functionalities including Skype for Business services, new analytics features, and advanced security features, and New Signature has a team of collaboration experts ready to help you … Read more
How to decrease complexity in the Cloud with governance and advisory services Digital Business Transformation is now in full swing across North America and Europe, and much of it is driven by cloud strategies. In its Worldwide Cloud 2017 Predictions, market research firm IDC states that “IT buyers are shifting steadily toward cloud-first strategies, and nearly all are reconsidering their IT best practices to embrace hybrid and … Read more
Eventual Consistency via Domain Events and Azure Service Bus I’m going to start this article by explaining what Eventual Consistency is, how it compares to Transactional Consistency, and when we should consider designing a solution with this approach. Next, we’re going to look at Domain Events, see what their role is in relation to eventual consistency and also how we can identify them in … Read more
Cloud Security: The Three Responsibilities You Can Never Give Away, Part III Incident Response What happens when an incident has occurred in your SaaS environment? It’s important to have an actual solution, meaning that you must have the plan, the tools, and the resources to look after it. If you have a security or privacy incident, the next steps are to profile and assess it, and respond … Read more
Cloud Security: The Three Responsibilities You Can Never Give Away, Part II Access Control and User Identities When it comes to the SaaS solutions, the mechanisms and access controls are as diverse as the plethora of products and line of business applications available on the market. This doesn’t change the fact that controlling who has access to your data is still your problem. From within the application, … Read more
Cloud Security: The Three Responsibilities You Can Never Give Away, Part 1 I spend a lot of time these days speaking with people about embracing cloud technologies; and conversations quickly turn to the topics surrounding cloud security, cloud trust, and generally protecting assets in the Cloud. These are not necessarily simple conversations to have, because they generally involve thinking about things differently. As you move from infrastructure … Read more
A First Look at the OneDrive Admin Center There have been many enhancements to the OneDrive for Business product over the past year. From the increase in storage to unlimited, to the introduction of the Next Generation Sync Client (NGSC), Microsoft has made it clear that OneDrive is a true contender as a business cloud storage solution. While the majority of enhancements targeted end users, … Read more
From Data to Action: Embracing IoT in 2017 If 2016 had a buzzword in the tech community, it surely must have been the Internet of Things (IoT). Like the cloud a few years back, IoT has been on the tips of the tongues of CTOs across every vertical this past year, and for good reason. This past September, Gartner forecasted that 6.4 billion … Read more
The Changing Face of Communications The way people communicate today, both in our personal lives and in a business setting, would be nearly unrecognizable to someone 25 years ago, when we relied heavily on land lines, faxes, and traditional postal mail to connect with each other. Our current methods of communication are continuing to shift and evolve, and are dramatically … Read more
A Look at Collaboration Trends in 2016 The way enterprises work and collaborate is always evolving, and 2016 was certainly a year where technology helped push this evolution along. With companies simultaneously trying to gain competitive advantage, attract top talent, expand into new regions, and bring new products to market, organizations are continuing to realize they need agile technology to support open … Read more
Change The Source Authority from Azure AD to Local Active Directory In the scenario presented here, we need to transfer the source of authority for a user account which was created by using Office 365 management tools to local Active Directory. We need to transfer the source of authority so that the account can be managed through an on-premises Active Directory and using directory synchronization provided … Read more
Disaster Recovery in the Cloud – Where to start? In today’s world, it is possible and we have all the technology needed to guarantee very high availability rates. The introduction of cloud-computing allows us to remove the complexity of maintaining highly available workloads without having to understand the intricate details behind the curtains. Nevertheless, companies are still confused and are often unversed on where to start when … Read more
Three Reasons to consider SharePoint 2016 IT managers and CTOs are routinely presented with options and opportunities to upgrade technologies within their environments. Sometimes upgrades are difficult to justify in terms of cost or effort or the minimal benefit that users or the company will see. Other times, the features and benefits are so beneficial that not upgrading would be a … Read more
Who Stands out in the IaaS Space? Infrastructure as a Service is one of three main areas in the cloud computing stack. Yet, who leads the space The cloud is one of the biggest transformations to computing and businesses since the birth of the internet. As the cloud has rapidly become part of everyday life both personally and professionally, the term “the … Read more
What does IT downtime cost your business? As disasters are through technical issues rather than natural occurrences, it’s becoming important for companies to invest in disaster recovery and backup recovery solutions The most likely answer is too much. Modern businesses lose money, time and even clients as a result of a disaster or security breach. Traditionally, companies would use a secondary data … Read more
Top 5 ways Office 365 connects me to my colleagues and company Companies are getting ahead by embracing the Office 365 suite, entering into the new world of increased productivity and collaboration I’m writing this blog from the comfort of my home office. A steaming cup of coffee next to me and fluffy slippers warming my toes. Tomorrow I might be working on the train or visiting … Read more
EMS – Enabling and Protecting the Mobile Workforce As workforces are becoming more and more mobile, find out how the Enterprise Mobility Suite enables and protects the workforce Workforces all over the world are becoming more and more mobile each year: 75% of organisations now allow employees to use their own devices in the workplace (More). As more work is done on the … Read more
Firebrand discuss; Why migrate to Microsoft Azure and Office 365? With applications and workloads now being delivered through Azure and Office 365, Firebrand discuss reasons to migrate to the cloud Ed Jones from Firebrand is sitting in a meeting room which was once a series of server racks, to discover how Firebrand continues to adopt Microsoft’s cloud first policy with Bevan Miller, the Head of … Read more
The rise and rise of mobile commerce – what does it mean for IT? For many people the dividing line between work and personal computing has become blurred. Yet, how will this affect IT? According to a recent Deloitte report, 2015 is a year of exploding growth in the field of mobile payments. Certainly, their predictions of in-store mobile payments increasing by as much as 1000% seem to be … Read more
Cloud Computing is the New Black The cloud is far more than the latest trend and those adopting it are finding their business processes completely transformed In 2010, an Ovum report famously claimed that ‘IT is a fashion industry and Cloud Computing is the new black’. Before any prison sitcom fans start waving your ‘Orange is the New Black’ merchandise … Read more
The Internet of Things – so what? The Internet of Things is an environment where the physical world is becoming one big information system. Find out more The Internet of Things (IoT) is a computing concept that describes a future where every day physical objects will be connected to the Internet and be able to identify themselves to other devices. In recent … Read more
Moving to Office 365: Two Reasons Why You Should Care About OneDrive for Business Cloud solutions for email, collaboration and productivity are becoming increasingly popular in the enterprise. Many organizations running Exchange on premise are currently evaluating a move to Microsoft Office 365 cloud services. Two of the additional benefits of moving Office to the cloud are user storage and document sharing through OneDrive for Business. … Read more
The importance of interconnectivity New Signature explains how Office 365 gives business professionals a competitive advantage, including benefits of Exchange and Skype for Business How long does it take you to get to work? How long does it take to get home? According to the TUC analysis of the Office for National Statistics the average worker spends a massive … Read more