It’s that time of year for many organizations. “What are we going to do next year and what will cost?” Often, trying to determine where to allocate resources, particularly as it related to technology, can be a challenging ordeal. “Should I keep that device after it’s out of warranty? Do I really need additional storage based on current projections? …
Read MoreAzure Active Directory: One to rule them all West Monroe Partners Performance Services team partners with organizations to help manage their infrastructure and organizational technology environment. For many organizations, Active Directory is central to operations, providing administration for user credentials and application access.
Read MoreWhat kind of relationship do you have with your IT service providers? Many organizations make the mistake of choosing an IT service vendor and not an IT service partner. West Monroe Partners’ Performance Services strives to build partnerships, not just a contract driven support relationship. Service providers in the traditional sense have been vendors. …
Read MoreIn a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) 2012 R2 environment, there are two common ways that users receive published resources. One way is through the “RemoteApp and Desktop Connections” applet in the Control Panel, typically controlled by Active Directory Group Policy and the other way is through the RDS Web Access webpage.…
Read MoreBusinesses choose to outsource IT services for many reasons that range from quality to cost to focus. The Performance Services (“managed services”) team at West Monroe Partners helps clients by outsourcing applications and infrastructure management. A key component of our offering is our Service Desk which is our face to our client’s employees and in some cases, our client’s...
Read MoreAs mentioned in our previous blog post, West Monroe Partners Performance Services practice is deploying ServiceNow to improve our service offering to our clients. Even before we complete our rollout, client enthusiasm is high, and a number have already volunteered to act as early adopters. On the surface, it would seem like the largest hurdle to clear would be getting clients to ‘buy in’ to...
Read MoreNetwork Monitoring Systems (NMS) are powerful platforms that can deliver monitoring services at many levels if implemented correctly – potentially providing a competitive edge. IT and business leadership often expect to get some sort of silver-bullet when implementing these platforms that will enable uninterrupted service and performance to its end users and customers, alike.…
Read MoreAs West Monroe Partners continues to grow our Performance Services practice, an upgrade to our IT service management system was identified as an important differentiator to our offering. After reviewing multiple systems, we ultimately settled on ServiceNow. The tool’s built-in modules for managing various aspects of service delivery and the flexibility to customize workflows within the tool...
Read MoreI work with dozens of companies on the development of their IT delivery strategy. The acceptance and attitude regarding cloud adoption has changed dramatically over the past few years. Previously, IT and business leaders were suspect of cloud technologies and hesitant to use them for anything other than low-business impact workloads. …
Read MoreLet’s face it: IT fire drills happen. Nobody likes them and everybody tries to prevent them, but yet you’ve found this blog post because you have an urgent need to delete a message from every mailbox in your organization. Maybe there’s a virus infestation, maybe a disgruntled employee sent an inappropriate email to everyone, or maybe HR accidently sent around some social...
Read MoreOf all the engagements I have either seen, or been a part of, expectations can mean the difference between success and failure, regardless of the actual outcome or the project. In this post I will write about what both clients and consults, in partnership, may be able to do to assure expectations are properly set and managed.…
Read More[Update 2015 June 3: Windows 10’s kernel version number has changed from 6.4 to 10.0 – as a result, some additional updates to MDT are required as outlined below] When Microsoft released the Technical Preview of Windows 10, I was excited to try deploying it using WMP’s Automated Build Environment (ABE) deployment tool.…
Read More
