Digitization. It’s a great buzzword. Over the past year it’s reached an all-time high in usage. Every hardware and software manufacturer has written article upon article about it. Many have dedicated entire marketing programs to it. Whoever coined the term should be given a marketing award because it’s a shiny new skin on something that has been around for a very long time. Something we've even encountered seventeen years ago.

At Cisco’s annual partner conference in Dallas, Texas last week, Internetwork Engineering (IE) was honored with Software Lifecycle Partner of the Year for its innovation, leadership and best practice as a Cisco business partner across the South Region. Sean Rollman, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, accepted the award on behalf of the company, and had this to say:

I took some time off one Friday morning and went fishing on Lake Murray. Despite being off, I had a couple meetings that I needed to attend, one of which required me to participate via Cisco WebEx on my laptop. I wasn’t about to let a little bit of water stop me from participating, nor was I about to let one meeting stop me from enjoying a day out on my boat. So, I grabbed my Cradlepoint IBR1100 router with Verizon SIM card and loaded it on the boat along with laptop, tackle box, and fishing rods. We pushed off before 8:00 AM; it was a beautiful peaceful morning on the lake. I plugged the router’s vehicle power adapter into the boat’s 12v power socket and had the wireless network up and running within 3 minutes. I popped open the laptop, looked up fishing reports, checked the weather, and streamed music thru the IBR until my meetings started. Once it was time for my meeting, I jumped on WebEx, screen-shared, and participated in the meeting as if I was in my office. All the while the kids fished and had a great time. When my meetings ended, I put the laptop away and went back to fishing. A great morning on the lake, productive and fun.

Part Three Of a Five-Part Series “Invest” is an interesting word. It implies you’re putting something of value to work and you expect a return, in addition to the initial value. This perfectly describes a client-partner relationship that is a two-way street. A customer expects that their investment will return a stable and dependable IT environment that isn’t a burden to manage and works to achieve the business’s goals. A partner expects that their investment will return the opportunity to sell, install, and service technology that achieves your business’s goals. When both parties invest fully it becomes the ultimate win/win with the principal investments from both parties being time and trust. In this post, I’ll explore two ways to know if you're investing in the right partnership. First, they’ll invest their time to achieve the desired returns for their customers and themselves, and second, they’ll be dedicated to building trust.

Just as the frenzy around Wannacry started to fade, another global ransomware attack was ready to stand in its place. Welcome, Nyetya.

Our partners at Tenable Security put together a great blog post, “Money, Hackers and Spies: Quick Bytes from Verizon’s 2017 DBIR Report,” that shared some highlights and stats from the 2017 Verizon DBIR report, so we created this handy infographic for quick reference.