The initial rush to enable work-from-home during a global pandemic had businesses flocking to cloud-based UCaaS—which has limitations when deployed over traditional WANs. A better long-term solution could be SD-WAN, which optimizes available residential bandwidth.
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COVID-related cyber attacks are on the rise. So as companies slowly move at least part of their workforce back to the office, it’s important to review lessons learned since the start of work-from-home orders to bolster IT security during this awkward transition phase.
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More investment is flowing into the cloud as a direct result of COVID-19 and the rush to set up remote workers. But how will that affect parts of enterprise IT which, as a result, now have to make do with a smaller portion of the technology budget?
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COVID-19 has put an end to live trainings for the foreseeable future, so Teresa Nelson, Allstream’s Sales Training Manager, set up a web-based training program to virtually onboard new sales employees. Here’s how she made the sudden switch to virtual onboarding.
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In mid-March, the gradual shift toward cloud-based environments morphed into a frenzied panic almost overnight. Is all of this the beginning of the end for traditional data centres?
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Since mid-March, we’ve seen an increase in the volume and scope of cybersecurity attacks as employees working from home and transitioning back to the office present a tempting target for malicious actors. This could change the way your business evaluates risk for years to come.
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Technology will continue to play a huge role in allowing contact centres to operate while adjusting to the new realities of COVID-19. We look at the IT tools that will help you walk the line between moving some agents back to the office while keeping some in WFH mode.
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The last few months have required huge adjustments for our network techs in the field. From new elevator etiquette to replacing the receptionist candy dish with hand sanitizer, here’s how COVID-19 is changing our daily routines on the front lines as we keep customers connected.
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From practices to protect employees to new workplace safety regulations and planning for a potential new wave of COVID-19, Allstream talks to the experts in an online roundtable about how to safely make the transition from WFH back to the office.
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As we shelter in place during COVID-19, we’re learning a few things about working from home. expertIP talked to members of the Allstream team about what they’ve learned so far and what they’ll bring back to the office when we get to the other side of this global pandemic.
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This year’s Enterprise Connect conference—a gathering of the unified communications and collaboration industry—was well positioned to shift gears and go completely virtual. We sum up some of the key messages from industry experts, from WFH to cloudshifting.
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Network managers still spend a good chunk of their day on reactive troubleshooting. But survey data from IT research firm EMA suggests that enterprises are looking to end network management tool sprawl, while dealing with new demands from IoT and data centre SDN.
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Since China is two or three months ahead of the rest of the world in dealing with COVID-19, a look at how the virus is affecting Chinese IT spending could be prescient for the rest of the global enterprise community.
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COVID-19 has disrupted business as usual. Plans for the year ahead have been thrown out the window, both at work and in our personal lives. But networking technologies have become more critical than ever—now, and when we come out the other side of this pandemic.
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Working from home puts our workplace data and networks at greater risk of being infected by virtual threats like malware, spyware and ransomware. We talk to a security pro for tips on how enterprises can protect their networks while enabling WFH during the pandemic.
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Even if your organization has a remote-work strategy in place, you’re probably not prepared for your entire workforce to work from home. Here are a few suggestions to keep your remote team on track—helping them stay productive, but also feel connected and part of a team.
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You might be working around the clock to support new remote workers—dealing with everything from bandwidth to connectivity to security. But CIOs can respond to the crisis with both short- and long-term actions to build resiliency, according to one Gartner analyst.
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Since they may never find enough skilled IT pros to employ, firms are looking at technologies they can deploy to ease their staffing pain. Here’s how AI, automation and managed services might help harried IT teams who simply don’t have enough human hands on deck.
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It’s not business as usual. But during unprecedented times—like the global coronavirus pandemic we’re experiencing now—cloud-based communications and collaboration technologies can help remote employees stay connected and businesses stay afloat.
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In the 21st century, when contact centres function as the navigational cockpit for customer relations, many brands are turning to artificial intelligence and natural language processing to ensure the customer experience is as free of turbulence as possible.
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New 911 regulations that combine Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’S Act will ensure emergency calls are truly accessible—and it’s all in the name of saving lives. Here’s a rundown of the new rules, what compliance means and why it’s so important.
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The evolution of unified communications offers a modular, cloud-based architecture that makes UC more mobile, flexible and scalable—and it uses APIs to bring levels of integration and convergence that we’ve never seen before. Here’s a look at what’s ahead.
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From 5G network slicing to multi-cloud networking, software-defined WANs are evolving to offer a whole lot more than just branch connectivity. And this is the year industry analysts expect we’ll start to see the vast potential of this foundational technology.
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Secure access service edge promises to change network architecture as we know it—and in this emerging model coined by Gartner, the data centre is no longer the focal point of security. Here’s what you need to know about SASE and how it could transform enterprise networking.
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Collaboration services must always work, but also work with the highest level of quality to ensure a good customer experience. With Allstream IT CloudView powered by Cisco Meraki, it’s now possible to not only prioritize traffic, but also gain instant visibility into your network.
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