Tags: BaaS

Future-Proof Your Data with UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER

Posted by Mike Mitsch on Posted in Cloud, Security, Servers and Storage Tagged , , , , , ,

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an above normal hurricane season is predicted in 2021. And while ransomware attacks are decreasing in number, the costs have been steadily increasing, including hidden costs such as downtime, stolen data and IT upgrade costs.

Data is one of your organization’s most valuable resources and must be protected from cybercriminals, as well as weather emergencies, global health crises and more. NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER offers peace of mind for business leaders with secure data storage, management and recovery from the cloud.

Emerging Challenges Call for Evolving DR Requirements

According to a 2021 IDC Data Protection and Disaster Recovery Readiness research study, these emergencies have redefined the top IT priorities for organizations.

Other report findings include:

  • 95% of organizations are rethinking data protection due to work from home requirements.
  • 43% of organizations suffered unrecoverable data within the past 12 months.
  • 63% of organizations suffered a data-related business disruption within the past 12 months.

More companies are looking to cloud deployments and cloud-based disaster recovery solutions to ensure their data is safe and readily accessible.

Data Protection in 3-2-1

A tried-and-true best practice for ensuring no single point of failure in a backup strategy is the 3-2-1 methodology. Three copies of the data are backed up to two different storage media types with one copy saved offsite. The data integrity must also be certain so that recovery from any of these copies is complete and uncorrupted. NEC UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER offers control and compliance that meet these data protection best practices.

Top Technology Needs for Backup

According to the Evaluator Group Backup-as-a-Service Fundamentals Technical Insight Report, flexibility is one of the top considerations when implementing a new Backup System. “Today, recoveries are flexible (for example, recovering an entire VM or an individual file, to a few different target options)”.

NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER addresses this requirement through a solution that supports any type of infrastructure configured and tailored to your business’s unique requirements. Built on industry-leading data protection software and NEC’s award-winning HYDRAstor® storage platform, the infrastructure is hosted in data centers such as those provided by Iron Mountain®, serving as an offsite, disconnected copy for protection against ransomware and other malicious attacks. Replication includes:

  • Complete on-premises or off-premises data backed up to and recovered from the cloud.
  • VM snapshots replicated between regions and across clouds, so that one major cloud outage does not preclude access to the data.
  • Most major databases are also replicated, including SQL and HANA.

Learn more about NEC UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER from this Evaluator Group Product Brief.

Top Support Needs for Backup

According to the Evaluator Group Backup-as-a-Service Evaluation Guide that was recently released, “customers expect continuous availability of their backup service as well as fast resolution of any technical issues.

In a recent evaluation of NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER by the Evaluator Group, NEC received the highest Value Scale Mark of “Exceeding Requirements” on six (6) out of ten (10) selected criteria and “Meets Requirements” on the other four (4).

NEC UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER services are managed by NEC with supplemental support from an NEC partner. Managed services are provided via NEC’s Network Operations Center (NOC) that is staffed and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days per year. Through documented access control lists and SoC audits, the compliance and security of this NEC solution provides proof of best practices for Cyber Security Insurance. Reducing the workload of your IT staff and reducing the risk of threats provides more valuable time for fulfilling proactive business needs.

Learn More About NEC UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER

Through NEC UNIVERGE BLUE’s flexible and affordable pricing, backup and recovery services can future-proof critical data from hackers, ransomware attackers, on-site catastrophes and natural disasters. Your organization can also customize the solution to meet your own requirements, with the choice to manage the solution in-house or through NEC’s managed services.

Learn more at https://www.univergeblue.com/cloud-services/backup/ or schedule a no obligation consultation with an NEC BACKUP & RECOVER expert to determine which solution fits your needs and budget. Simply fill out the form below, and we will get back to you soon.

Or to become authorized to sell UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP & RECOVER solution, click here.

Contact Us Today

To learn more or to speak with a NEC subject matter expert, please fill out the form below and we will get back with you.

What’s New with BLUE? Introducing UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP for Salesforce

Posted by Mike Mitsch on Posted in Cloud, Contact Center, Education, Enterprise, Finance, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, Retail, Servers and Storage, Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Earlier this year, Salesforce announced the retirement of its Data Recovery Services, stating that “the data recovery process does not meet [its] high standards for customer experience due to the length of time and reliability of the process.” Now, many organizations are left without a solution to protect their valuable data against the ever-growing risk of a cyberattack.

To address this need, NEC recently introduced UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP and RECOVER for Salesforce. With UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP and RECOVER for Salesforce, organizations can consolidate and protect all data at the enterprise level. The solution provides reliable backup and protection of all Salesforce data, including standard and custom objects, documents and attachments, and Salesforce CRM content, files and metadata.

Salesforce identified two primary reasons for retiring its Data Recovery Services: restoration time and data integrity. The company stated that the restoration would take at least 6-8 weeks, and they were experiencing difficulty restoring data; therefore, it could not guarantee 100% data recovery.

NEC understands there are immense liability issues if the provider cannot guarantee the restoration and accuracy of data. Additionally, compliance standards, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) of 2018, requires that the proper compliance protocols are in place, including where data is located, who has access to the equipment and data, and the chain of custody of who has accessed the data.

UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP and RECOVER for Salesforce ensures consistent corporate compliance through standardization and simplifies the overall backup and recovery processes. The solution ensures that all Salesforce data is backed up in accordance with the organization’s overall backup policy and reported through standardized corporate policies that ensure compliance. It also consolidates all server, application, client and Salesforce data into a unified environment – providing a better, more secure way to work.

UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP and RECOVER is built on award-winning NEC HYDRAstor® Storage technology, industry-leading CommVault® BACKUP Software, Iron Mountain® Data Centers, and is complemented with daily reports and always-on monitoring. The solution is highly scalable and flexible, delivering backup strategies that can scale with an organization’s evolving needs.

Interested in learning how NEC can protect your Salesforce Data?

Fill out the form below and speak to an expert today!

Enabling Long-Term Continuity with Feature Rich On-Line Meeting Solution

Posted by Jennifer Elting on Posted in Cloud, Contact Center, Customer Experience, Enterprise, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, Servers and Storage, Unified Communications Tagged , , , , , , , ,

In March 2020, many began working from home and relying on remote meeting tools to communicate and collaborate. During this time, most organizations’ focus was just to keep their business up and running until employees were permitted to go back into the office. Organizations kicked into survival mode, some quickly implementing solutions that were intended to be a temporary fix until things went back to normal.

As time goes on, it is clear the business world will likely not “go back to normal” for the foreseeable future, and possibly never will. Now for some, the swift adaptions implemented because of the crisis have proven only to be effective for a short period of time, and not sustainable as long-term solutions.

The spread of COVID-19 has led to a rapid shift in how employees and customers communicate. Now, organizations must start thinking purposefully about redesigning their business operations with the right collaboration tools that will help to enable a sustained future. The future now depends on an organization’s ability to adapt their business by rethinking business continuity and resiliency plans.

Rethinking Business Continuity

Before the pandemic, many organizations associated business continuity with operations and services in the wake of a disruptive event, such as disaster recovery. Now, we realize that business continuity and resiliency go beyond just disaster recovery and disaster planning. Now, business continuity means that employees have the tools and resources to do their jobs from anywhere at any time.

To ensure that productivity happens from anywhere, the tools must be easy to use, always available, highly secure, mobile-ready, tightly integrated, and well supported. NEC UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES makes this possible.

Embracing Digital Collaboration Tools to Enable Business Continuity

"Business as usual” may have changed. What we consider “an office” may have changed. But what hasn’t changed is the need to keep doing what we’ve always been doing, and that means keeping employees connected and engaged, providing great customer support, and winning new business.

Feature rich online meeting tools allow employees to collaborate with their colleagues as effectively as they would in a physical office and meet with prospective customers to pitch their products and services – from anywhere.

While video collaboration and/or voice is a great start, businesses cannot sustain by only utilizing video collaboration and phone calls as their primary communication method. Other features are necessary such as team chat, webinar, file share and sync, co-editing, phone calls, screen share, and more.

Introducing UNIVERGE BLUE® MEET WEBINAR

UNIVERGE BLUE MEET WEBINAR is an online virtual event service that provides a complete set of tools and capabilities to help grow business virtually and reach more people, wherever they are located.

Presenters can use video, audio, and screen share to effectively communicate with customers and prospects no matter their location. MEET WEBINAR helps to build personal connections, engagement, and trust by allowing attendees to see the presenter in real-time and engage through Q&A, Emoji’s, live Polls and more. Organizations can reach a broader audience and grow their business with an easy-to-use service that connects and engages anyone, on any device, from anywhere.

Streamlining communication complexity is the key to improving remote collaboration, enhancing security and productivity, as well as saving time, finances, and resources. It’s important that employees and customers don’t lose the power of face-to-face meetings while remote. The good news is they don’t have to! With NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE MEET WEBINAR, employees have access to powerful online meeting and virtual collaboration tools to help keep business moving forward, no matter their location.

With UNIVERGE BLUE MEET WEBINAR you can:

  • Promote webinars with customizable invitations, registration pages, and email reminders
  • Host webinars with up to 12 HD video presenters and up to 1,000 attendees
  • Record sessions and report on who viewed the recording
  • Generate detailed reports on attendance, performance, chat, polls, Q&A, and surveys; follow up with emails and surveys to push attendees down the purchasing funnel
  • Integrate with 1,000 + business apps via Zapier to track your leads, registrations, and more!

NEC’S UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES incorporate a variety of cloud-based communications, collaboration, and backup solutions. Whatever kind of challenge has been imposed on your business; NEC can help you figure out the solution.

If you are interested in learning more about NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE MEET WEBINAR On-line Meeting solution, visit https://www.univergeblue.com/cloud-services/webinar/ or get in touch with a UNIVERGE BLUE expert today.

Who’s Protecting Your Data?

Posted by Mike Mitsch on Posted in Cloud, Contact Center, Education, Enterprise, Finance, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, Legal Articles, Retail, Servers and Storage Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Data is an organization’s most valuable asset. However, many organizations lack the critical software, infrastructure, and security processes needed to mitigate potential loss or access.

A recent Commvault survey shows that nearly half (43%) of IT managers do not have a comprehensive backup solution in place. Of those who do, less than half of ransomware victims were able to fully recover their data after an attack. Even more surprising is the increasing threat by insiders taking malicious action against their firms, with 72% of organizations stating that insider attacks have become more frequent over the last 12 months.

One thing is clear: it’s no longer a question of if a cyber-attack will take place, but when.

Cost of Data Breaches and Ransomware

The price companies pay for data breaches and ransomware attacks is not only the potential data loss or the cryptocurrency ransom that they may pay, but also the cost of recovering from the attack. A prime example is the ransomware attack on the city of Baltimore. While the perpetrators of the attack only demanded $76,000 in Bitcoin which the city refused to pay, Baltimore city officials estimated the recovery from this attack will cost taxpayers over $18.2M.

Losses can come from stoppages in manufacturing, inability to receive payments, employees unable to work, inability to service customers, cost of recovery specialists and implementation of new security protocols, and sadly, even death of a patient in a healthcare setting. This is why it is critical for businesses and organizations ensure that they have the right data protection in place.

UNIVERGE BLUE® BACKUP and RECOVER

NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE® BACKUP and RECOVER offers a broad set of fully integrated services to manage and protect critical proprietary information and data. It is a powerful, cost-effective, and reliable managed Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution that delivers always-on data protection.

Key features of UNIVERGE BLUE BACKUP and RECOVER include:

  • Optimized and secure backup and disaster recovery architecture: Industry leading BaaS software from CommVault detects Ransomware, while NEC’s award winning HYDRAstor® optimizes and protects data with built-in deduplication, compression and data verification.
  • Risk mitigation and reliability: Iron Mountain’s datacenters – some of the most secure, compliant and energy efficient datacenters in the world – safely and securely store at-rest data. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) ensures data remains safe whether in-transit or at rest.
  • Regulatory compliance: Iron Mountain’s national datacenter Level 4 Security offers broad coverage and high levels of compliance ideal for healthcare and federal organizations.
  • Dynamic delivery models: Flexibility to backup between datacenters with an on-premises solution or straight to the cloud, virtual or physical environments.
  • Service and support: 7x24x365 management and support from a fully staffed Network Operations Center (NOC), as well as regular status and performance reports.
  • Simple & predictable cost effective billing options: Pay-as-you-go pricing ensures organizations only pay for storage that is consumed

Let’s Get Started!

Schedule a demo and start protecting your organization’s data today!

Reach Sky-High Communications with UNIVERGE BLUE

Posted by Stoney Reynolds on Posted in Cloud, Education, Finance, Government, Healthcare, Hospitality, Retail, Unified Communications Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Businesses today are rapidly migrating to the cloud. But with upfront costs, unforeseen challenges and the process of getting employees up and running, transitioning to the cloud can feel daunting at times. In fact, 50% of IT professionals say that lack of skills is the top challenge their organizations face in adopting cloud-based infrastructure.

What if there was a simple and reliable solution that could help you transition to the cloud?

Meet UNIVERGE BLUE® CLOUD SERVICES. NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE provides customers with a frictionless, comprehensive and enhanced set of fully integrated, cloud services ranging from integrated phone system, video conferencing, messaging and contact center to backup & disaster recovery.

UNIVERGE BLUE is completely customizable, with no one-size-fits-all solution. So, no matter where you are on your cloud journey, UNIVERGE BLUE is here to fit your unique business needs.

Your Business is Constantly Evolving – So Should Your IT

How we communicate in the workplace has changed significantly over the last decade thanks to rapid advancements in technology. Communications technology was forced to evolve in order to support the growing number of remote employees across the globe. Even before the current COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to support a remote workforce was already becoming a top priority for many businesses.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a new perspective on the importance of being able to adapt at a moment’s notice. In just a relatively short period of time, technology teams were tasked with addressing remote users, enabling multiple devices, building out new locations, implementing cross-channel solutions and more.

On-premises hardware simply cannot keep up. As the world continues to change and business needs continue to evolve, businesses need a solution with the flexibility to adapt and grow with them.

Don’t Fall Behind Because of Your IT

Maybe you’re experiencing increased operational costs for overhead and maintenance. Or, perhaps you’re struggling to balance multiple technology solutions spread across various locations and are at risk of your infrastructure becoming complicated, unmanageable and outdated.

And, further complicating things is security. As the number of detrimental data breaches continues to grow, many IT teams are becoming saturated and overwhelmed with risk management and they could be struggling to keep up.

Read our latest ebook, ‘Reach Sky High Communications’ to learn more about how NEC UNIVERGE BLUE can provide you with a simple and reliable path to the cloud.

Transition to the Cloud with NEC

UNIVERGE BLUE is designed to meet the needs of business of all sizes. Whether you’re a startup of 10 employees or an enterprise of thousands around the globe, NEC specializes in providing flexible options for every type of business.

With UNIVERGE BLUE, business can achieve the following:

  • Remove internal barriers to communication and scalability
  • Keep up with ever-increasing customer demands
  • Connect employee engagement with customer satisfaction
  • Enable remote employees to be efficient and connected
  • Automate maintenance and updates
  • Protect organizational data and reduce risk

UNIVERGE BLUE not only meets your needs today, but it will grow with you and provide a comprehensive solution for the future. It’s time to reach for the clouds with NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE CLOUD SERVICES.

Contact Us Today

Ready to get started on your journey to the cloud? Schedule a demo and speak with one of our cloud experts today!