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Englewood, Colorado, March 18, 2024 — Zunesis, a ProCern Company, today announced that CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, has honored Zunesis on its 2024 Tech Elite 250 list.

This yearly compilation showcases solution providers based in the U.S. and Canada, that have distinguished themselves by attaining top-tier certifications and specializations from leading technology vendors in the areas of infrastructure, cloud, and security.

To help customers navigate today’s IT complexities and harness the advantages of state-of-the-art solutions, solution providers—ranging from strategic service providers and systems integrators to managed service providers and value-added resellers—strive to uphold rigorous levels of training and certification from strategic IT vendors, often aiming for the pinnacle tiers within these vendors’ partner programs.

“CRN’s Tech Elite 250 highlights leading-edge solution providers within the IT landscape, distinguished by their comprehensive technical proficiency, expertise, and commitment to achieving top-level certifications in critical technology areas,” said Jennifer Follett, VP, U.S. Content, and Executive Editor of CRN at The Channel Company. “These solution providers persistently strengthen their capabilities to bring the advanced IT solutions to market that customers need.”

Coverage of the Tech Elite 250 will be featured in the April issue of CRN Magazine and online at www.CRN.com/techelite250.

 

About Zunesis

Zunesis can help your organization compete in the digital economy with infrastructure transformation aligned to your business goals. We have more than 19 years of experience serving customers throughout the Rocky Mountain Region and Southwestern U.S., including Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and Nevada. Our staff of solution architects have decades of expertise and in-depth product knowledge to customize IT solutions with success. www.zunesis.com

Follow Zunesis: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Zunesis Contact:
Rachael Stiedemann
Zunesis
rachael.stiedemann@zunesis.com

About The Channel Company 

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers, and end users. Backed by more than 40 years of unequalled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelcompany.com

Follow The Channel Company: X, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

© 2024. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, Inc.  All rights reserved.

The Channel Company Contact:
Kristin DaSilva
The Channel Company
kdasilva@thechannelcompany.com

 

 

A New Routine

The morning alarm is still ringing, and the scramble to get to work on time is real for me. However, now the kids are in the living room on laptops. I have made an office in the bedroom. My new name is Ms. Mommy. I offer advice in trying to keep your daily routine as healthy as possible.  In addition, some tips to make it through the day without an anxiety attack as you embrace the 2020 homeschool in a global pandemic.

 

I have invented entirely new courses, like “Honors Laundry,” “AP Vacuuming,” and “Cat Litter Box Cleaning and Fine Scooping Skills 101.” With love and support, I write to encourage (mostly myself) and others that this new way of life is possible if we stop to find humor, beauty, and the lessons in all of this.

 

Building a sales pipeline of business is no easy task. It takes time to build those relationships, to learn about their wants needs and budget constraints. One must prove their tenacity, steadfastness, and determination to win the sale and all while the economy is moving, this has its uphill battles. Now imagine trying to build that pipeline while businesses have closed, employees are laid off, and we have all been quarantined. This is all still easier than homeschooling two elementary kids! 

 

Schedules: Structured Routine

Mean Ms. Mommy promises you that all children, even the middle-aged ones love routine. Keeping to a schedule that is close to one similar to the school day will help the littles, and yourself get through the next 60 days of the school year at home. Here is our daily schedule that guides us to the glorious hour known as HAPPY.

 

Now that we have the schedule in place let’s talk about TED. It is an excellent resource to engage the kids on all sorts of topics. Most schools have sent home curriculum to keep the kids learning on track, but who couldn’t benefit from a TED talk?

Parents aren’t all alone when it comes to thinking up educational content for their kids.

Here are a few resources:

• Scholastic is offering free online resources and activities.
• NASA’s Kids’ Club has space games and learning modules for the younger crowd
• Technology Projects for Kids
• 8 First Projects to Get Students Using Technology
• HPE’s Activity Guide

Stay Connected

Staying connected is essential for human social growth. We’ve slowly distanced ourselves over the years because of technology with the ability to text instead of call or IM instead of writing a letter. Now that same technology that kept us apart is bringing us back together. We have been chatting with grandma over Zoom and setting up play dates with friends in Google Hangout. My family’s most favorite way to spend time with friends has been Messenger Kids. Messenger Kids connects through Facebook. Once set up, they can open the app and try calling friends (at the appropriate scheduled time) by themselves. That’s the bonus for Ms. Mommy, who can keep working on building pipeline instead of explaining how to use the address bar.

 

Stay Healthy

Aside from work, school, virtual playdates, staying healthy is always a challenge. In these last few weeks, I watched my daughter become more engaged with exercise than ever before (because I’ve negotiated with the little terrorist for iPad time). Before I built a sales pipeline for a living, I was a fitness instructor. I was always working out in my home studio. I came up with new routines, and my daughter would watch. Now that we have been doing everything as a family, she is bicep curling with the rest of us. She even participates in some live Facebook workouts.

 

The lesson worth sharing here is that there are only 60 more days left of homeschooling, and you can survive anything for 60 days! During this time, we have had to find new ways to live, learn, and communicate.

Now that Grandma is on TikTok and has more likes than you, it’s time to reflect and take a breath. Find the value in the last slice of bread, reusing a Ziplock bag, and using less toilet paper from here on out (that shortage was no joke)!

As our consumer society quickly came to a halt and conservation of items set in, so has the normal of working and homeschooling from home. I offer some advice from a working mom educating two young kids at home:

1. Keep to a schedule that has been in place year after year. Routine is key. You can do it! Get out of those pajamas and get everyone moving before 8 am.
2. Spend time to find new sources of educational enjoyment. Googling “How to make fractions easy” is a real search. You are not alone.
3. Stay connected to friends and family with the incredible technology we have out there today.
4. Most importantly, get out and walk around the block, holding a gallon of water in both hands, do a few lunges, and breathe deep and with intention!

 

Microsoft, a year ago, announced that they are bringing the capabilities of Skype for Business in the cloud into Microsoft Teams to deliver a single hub for teamwork, with built-in, fully integrated voice and video.

 

According to Microsoft, “As users are working on more teams, we see the opportunity to more seamlessly integrate our communication capabilities into Teams so users can have a single place for their conversations, contacts, and content. We believe Teams also provides a modern cloud infrastructure that enables us to take advantage of our assets for artificial intelligence such as AI, Microsoft Graph, and LinkedIn to deliver intelligent communications. With Teams, we’re creating new experiences for meetings and calling, including the prep, delivery, and post–follow-ups.”

 

What will this mean for current users of Skype for Business?

 

While the recommendation for Office 365 users is to move to Teams, the Skype for Business on premises infrastructure is not going away anytime soon, in fact, a new version (Skype for Business Server 2019) is in preview and should be released later this year. Even though there is a new version of the on premises solution, it is clear that Teams is where the innovation dollars are going.

 

What Can Teams Bring to Your Organization?

 

Teams started as Microsoft’s implementation of Slack with deep integrations into Office 365 applications. As of September 2017, Microsoft reported 125,000 organizations were using it in one form or another.

 

PLATFORM FOR TODAY’S WORK TEAMS

 

Teams is built for today’s diverse workforce. There have been many changes across the methods that organizational teams use to communicate and collaborate. Teams provides an open, digital environment that makes work integrated, visible, and accessible across the board, keeping everyone involved in the know.

 

Microsoft Teams provides a versatile conversation experience using persistent threaded conversations. Every conversation within Teams automatically becomes information assets and are saved, searchable via Microsoft Graph, and visible to everyone on the team. It also provides the ability of launching private discussions.

 

Teams’ deep Skype integration brings video and voice capabilities and a wide variety of visual communication tools that help increase engagements among team members.

 

COMPLETE ONLINE MEETING SOLUTION

 

• Online Meetings – Host audio, video and web conferencing with anyone inside or outside the organization. Features include scheduling assistant, note taking, desktop sharing, file sharing, and chat messaging.
• Live Broadcasts – For big meetings, go live with Teams Meeting Broadcast. Host webinars, all-hands meetings, and other one-to-many presentations with up to 10,000 attendees internal or external to the organization.
• Meeting Spaces – Extend Teams with one-touch join to every meeting space with Microsoft Surface Hub.
• Cloud Video Meetings – Microsoft Partners are delivering video solutions which seamlessly connect H.323 compatible videoconferencing solutions to Teams meetings.
• Audio Conferencing – Join meetings from a phone or use Teams to dial anybody directly. Meetings include a local dial-in number spanning 400+ cities across the globe.

 

PRODUCTIVITY

 

The ability to meet virtually anywhere is an important and cost-effective feature for businesses. Teams increases productivity by bringing together conversations, meetings, files, Office applications, and third-party integrations, enabling the organization to participate in more productive meetings with less context switching. It provides a view of scheduled meetings, the timing, the subject, and a list of other persons who’ll be attending.

 

Teams also provides simple and easy to use mobile apps that allow chat with teams via text, have a voice conversation, or a video meeting.

 

COLLABORATION

 

Teams makes teamwork easy. Teams was built around the idea of leveraging the maximum capability of Microsoft Graph, so workgroups and teams have the ability to share insights, intelligence, and data anywhere within the Microsoft Office 365 suite; PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Planner, OneNote, SharePoint, Delve, and Power BI.

 

CUSTOMIZATION

 

Teams can be tailored to meet unique business and cultural needs of the organization. Teams provides a platform with options for extensibility and open APIs. Through the leveraging of Microsoft Exchange Connector’s model, Teams can provide updates and notifications from third-party services such as GitHub and Twitter. Along with Microsoft’s BOT Framework, organizations are able to create and customize applications and intelligent services to integrate with Teams.

 

SECURITY

 

Teams stands apart from its competitors and ensures peace of mind. All of Office 365’s platform services are built with cutting-edge security and compliance capabilities. The data is encrypted in flight and at rest. Teams and all Office 365 services meet compliance standards including ISO 27001, HIPPA, SOC 2, and the EU Model Clauses. The Teams account is provisioned within Office 365 and managed via the Admin console.

 

In conclusion, Microsoft has taken many of the features provided in Skype for Business and built them into the Teams platform. This platform is built with today’s organizational work teams in mind, providing a complete online meeting solution, increased productivity and collaboration, all built on Office 365’s already secure services infrastructure. Even though Microsoft has announced that Skype for Business will be going away in the future, the on-premises version has one release version left (later this year). Office 365 users are being pushed to Teams instead of Skype for Business in the cloud.

 

 

 

 

The Threats are Many and so are the Protection Methods

 

In a modern society, the need for cyber security touches a surprisingly large portion of our day-to-day lives. Because of the Internet of Things (IoT), we can scarcely climb out of bed each morning before we use a device that is connected to the internet in some way. Whether it’s our smart phones, Alexa, Siri, tablets, laptops, television or even our automobiles, we are potentially putting personal data out on the internet before we’ve even had our first cup of coffee (or even as we order our coffee for pickup as we head into work). We pay our bills online, we use our phones to deposit checks and we even have wi-fi enabled automobiles.

 

As individuals, we are responsible for looking out for our own security. As IT Professionals, we are responsible for protecting the data our company produces and collects. In many cases, the data we are protecting in our professional role is personal data, possibly our own. But, the recent Equifax breach is a harsh reminder that, even companies we associate with security are vulnerable. If there is any lesson we can take away from our personal experiences, and the stories behind the headlines, it’s that there is not single solution that will protect us from the threat of our data ending up at the mercy of people with bad intentions. Those of you reading this post are intimately familiar with the steps needed to protect company data. From the network to the desktop, and all points in between, there are many layers to a data protection strategy. One such layer is the Data Backup solutions we use.

 

Backup, the Original Data Protection

 

Decades ago, during simpler times, data protection meant being diligent about performing regular backups of data in case a file was accidentally deleted, corrupted or the hard drive crashed. Back in that simpler time, the media to which businesses directed those backups was almost always Tape, lots of tape! This process typically included keeping a set of tapes onsite for immediate restore needs and sending a second set offsite in case of catastrophe and for longer term retention. However, over time, Tape has been increasingly replaced by disk-based backup targets (think HPE StoreOnce, Data Domain, ExaGrid).

Disk-based backup targets started out as a faster way to get data backed up. Tape was still used but typically as a secondary backup target and for longer term retention offsite. The need to go to an offsite backup for file recovery was rare and so tape became that insurance policy that was never going to be needed. As use of disk-based backups became more prevalent, the technology employed to store data evolved. Improvements in compression, deduplication, and replication improved the efficiency of storing larger amounts of data (in the petabytes) and replicating that data to offsite facilities. In fact, with the ability to replicate data from one disk-based target to another over distance, we have started to see Tape being replaced at offsite facilities as well.

 

Backups As Our Last Defense

 

While we originally used backup for recovery from accidentally deleted files, random corruption and the occasional disk crash, the world we live in today requires a broader definition for Data Backup. Today, we may need to leverage our backups to recover from a Cyberattack that has either corrupted our data or rendered it unusable as part of a Ransomware attack. Because these kinds of attacks target files on volumes that are persistently mounted to hosts, the vulnerability of disk-based backup targets has come under some scrutiny lately.

 

Of course, many question whether the risk to disk-based backup targets is very high. After all, backup environments are typically isolated from other, more accessible, areas of the IT infrastructure. Moreover, because of the potential for Cyberattacks on the disk-based backup targets, other processes have been documented and are being implemented to mitigate the risk further. We are starting to see some of these added protections built into the backup software we use and many manufacturers of the disk-based backup devices are providing their own best-practice processes.

 

Despite the fear of risk for disk-based solutions, we aren’t seeing a trend away from disk-based backup, but we are hearing reports that some companies are once again turning to Tape as their last form of defense against the type of Cyberattacks that would corrupt, delete or encrypt their data. And while disk-based technology has been evolving, tape technology has also continued to evolve. LTO7 technologies provide capacities as high as 15TB (compressed) per tape cartridge. In addition to high capacities and a low TCO, Tape offers encryption at-rest, can be kept offsite and most importantly offline.

 

So, as we implement safeguards to keep the bad guys out of our IT infrastructure, we need to remember that our plans should include multiple layers. We also need to prepare for the possibility that our best efforts will be thwarted and that our data will be compromised. So, as part of our protection against malicious behavior and risk to our data, we need to carefully plan our Backup processes by taking the layered approach as well.

 

In today’s hectic and time-pressed technology environment, IT leaders often don’t have the time to work with multiple technology manufacturers for purchasing, confirming compatibility with existing infrastructure solutions and of course the importance of post-sales/implementation support.

 

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have come up with an innovative solution for organizations to make their entire IT solution purchases with one trusted organization; under a program called “Complete”. What is Complete you may ask?

 

HPE Complete

 

HPE Complete is a resource that enables customers to purchase best-in-class, third-party branded products through their trusted solution partners like Zunesis. HPE Complete benefits include:

 

• One-stop shop: Purchase complete solutions from Hewlett Packard Enterprise on a single Zunesis purchase order.
• Validated solution: Confidence of the HPE interop assurance validation for third-party branded products that complement HPE Storage and Server Solutions.
• Customer Experience: HPE helps ensure complete customer satisfaction by troubleshooting the solution and facilitating third-party expertise for the installation, support and warranty of their products.
• Unique Value: Minimize risk, complexity and cost when deploying multi-vendor products and technolgies into the HPE ecosystem.
• Contract Facilitation: In many cases, using HPE Complete can assist with lack of procurement vehicle as the HPE SKUs may be eligible for existing Public Sector Contract applications, such as NASPO ValuePoint, E&I, MHEC, etc.

 

What are some of the top HPE Complete partners whom Zunesis works with today?

 

Veeam

 

Veeam Backup and Replication is a powerful, easy-to-use and affordable backup and availability solution. It provides fast, flexible and reliable recovery of virtualized applications and data which brings virtual machine backup and replication together in a single software solutio. Veeam Backup and Replication delivers award-winning support for VMWare vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments.

 

NVIDIA GRID

 

NVIDIA GRID is a graphics virtualization platform that extends the power of NVIDIA GPU technology to virtual desktops and applications. The software delivers an immersive, high-quality user experience for users from designers to mobile professionals to office workers. NVIDIA GRID technology lets IT organizations tap into a powerful graphics-accelerated cloud solution to centralize applications and data with virtual workspaces for improved security, productivity and cost-efficiency.

 

Carbonite Double-Take

 

Carbonite Double-Take Availability is a proven, simple, scalable high availability solution for Windows and Linux that defends your business’ profitability and reputation by providing protection from data loss and downtime. Carbonite Double-Take Availability offers exceptional application and data protection in virtual, cloud and physical computing environments. Carbonite  Double-Take moves quickly and easily migrates physical, virtual and cloud server workloads over any distance with minimal risk and near zero downtime.

 

Zerto

 

Zerto Virtual Replication enables alignment across customer’s IT strategy with hypervisor-based replication, allowing you to fully realize the benefits of virtualization. The benefits of a virtualized application carry through to your business continuity and disaster recovery solutions. Zerto moves replication from the array or host, up to all the hypervisor. This provides flexibility, better asset utilization and reduced operational and maintenance costs – all to reduce your overall TCO.

 

Qumulo Core

 

Qumulo Core is a modern scale-out storage system designed from the ground up to address customer challenges for the new ear of multi-petabyte data scale on premises and in the cloud. Qumulo Core uses storage capacity much more efficiently than legacy scale-out NAS. At scale, Qumulo Core’s rebuild times in the case of disk or node failure are faster. This allows technology administrators to greatly reduce the level of redundancy needed to achieve target MTTDL standards, thereby increasing storage efficiency. Enabled by Qumulo Core’s flash-first hybrid design, cost and performance are optimized which simultaneously provides the speed benefits of SSD and the economic advantages of HDD. Qumulo Core does not require any disk space be left available for its internal use. This means user files can occupy 100 percent of provisioned capacity, while legacy scale-out recommends only using 80 percent.

 

These five partners represent only a fraction of the partner networks which HPE Complete have together.  For more information:  HPE Complete and other partner networks

Over the last several months, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has introduced new some technologies and, of course, new terminology to go along with them. We now have terms like “Composable Infrastructure” and the “Virtual Vending Machine” to understand. Here’s a quick overview of what these trendy new terms mean:

Composable Infrastructure

 

This is HPE-speak for one of their newest products: Synergy. Recognized as the infrastructure of the future, Composable Infrastructure is designed to run traditional workloads as efficiently as possible, while accelerating value creation for a new breed of applications that leverage mobility, Big Data, and cloud-native technologies. This is a new approach to traditional architecture is built to allow the IT organization to work with the speed and flexibility of the cloud in their own data center.

For more information, visit the official site here.

Virtual Vending Machine

 

Recently, HPE announced the new Hyper Converged 380. This is based on one of their most proven technologies, the ProLiant DL380 Gen9 platform; and it introduces the concept of a Virtual Vending Machine. The solution integrates compute, storage, and virtualization. It features simplified upgrades, increased uptime and service levels. The new software-defined intelligence layer provides advanced analytics and reduces the costs to start, scale, and protect. The HC380 puts you on a direct path to composability.

Check out the site for more details.

 

Ask us for more information about either of these new technologies and how they can fit into your greater data center roadmap.

 

 

We Live in a Connected World!

 

By all accounts (from a digital perspective), it appears that the 2016 Rio Olympics were a huge success.

Although TV ratings were down from previous years, NBCUniversal said that audience levels promised to advertisers were met. NBCUniversal acquired more than 1.2 billion in advertising sales for its 17 days of coverage across its broadcast network. From a social media standpoint, Facebook saw 1.5 billion interactions for its Rio Olympics coverage, which includes likes, posts, comments and shares related to the Olympics throughout the games. For the two-week span of the games, 277 million people participated in the conversation around the globe on Facebook alone, explicating just how connected the world is during these ceremonial games.
Additionally, Twitter suggested that there were 187 million tweets about the Olympics, which produced 75 billion impressions both on Twitter and around the web. On Instagram, 131 million users made 916 million likes and comments on photos and videos of the games.
Using our social listening analytics and research capabilities at Zunesis, we examined a 10% sample of mentions between August 1^th and 26^th. In this sample selection, there were over 98 million mentions about the Rio Olympics from across the web. This included over 84 million posts, establishing a potential impression count of over 1.4 billion.

Demographic Analysis

 

Our data shows that the male audience was slightly more engaged (mentioning the Rio Olympics over social channels) than females by 10% (55% male to 45% female). However, our data showed very similar engagement activity across age groups. This was led by 25-34 year olds accounting for 19% of the conversation followed by 18-24 year olds with 16%. Those over 65 years old accounted for 8% of total conversation.
Also included in our demographic analysis was ethnicity. Interestingly, we discovered that the Hispanic population drove 19% of the conversation and was over indexed by 2.19% compared to the general Twitter population. Compare this to the Caucasian audience which accounted for 58% of the conversation but under indexed (0.88) compared to the general Twitter population. Indexing allows us to see how much more frequently terms and hashtags are used in a conversation stream or, as in this case, how active specific demographic segments are compared to a controlled audience. In this instance we compared the Olympic Audience to the General Twitter Population.

 

From a geography standpoint, the United States led all countries with 37% of all mentions followed by Brazil with 10% and then the United Kingdom with 7 %. Within the United States, California accounted for 14% of the conversation, followed by Texas (11%), New York (10%) and then Florida (7%).

Looking at the Conversation

When you look deeper into the conversation several athletes stood out, including Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky and Ryan Lochte. Gender conversation drivers were similar between males compared to females. Both men and women commonly used #USA, #Gold and other topics with similar frequency. Looking at conversation sentiment beyond neutral sentiment, positive conversation was significantly higher than negative sentiment (82.1% positive vs. 17.9%).

 

 

There were many influential authors contributing to the overall Rio Olympic conversation. Noteworthy influencers involved in the discussion included Ellen DeGeneres, Zac Efron, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga. Another influencer to note was the Prime Minister of India (Narendra Modi), when he congratulated one of India’s athletes through Twitter.

Popular content included:

 

 

So What Does This All Mean?

Social media analytics represents a shift in the way market research can be conducted on brands. Social media analytics enables brands to make sense of high volumes of data from across the public web. With this knowledge, organizations can better understand brand performance, brand reputation, engagement, affinities, influencers and so on. The ability to make sense of the sometimes senseless and sporadic patterns social media provides us with at first glance is incredible, especially during a time when the world is so fixated on one thing, such as the Olympic games. We can truly hear what everyone is saying, even if that conversation spans an ocean or a continent.
This data reveals that the modern world is more connected than ever before. An event like the Olympics highlights the massive amount of data that’s generated from consumers, influencers and personalities. For brands – the data is available for the taking. This data can be mined to understand a specific demographic, a target audience or market. Take for example; we know that 35% of the conversation came from 18-34 year olds. With this, a brand can create a campaign or generate a conversation amongst this specific age group to not only involve their brand but drive the conversation. What did Nike do during these games? Adidas? Puma? The United Nations? How did they drive the conversation? What did your brand do to get involved?
With social media analytics, brands can better understand a target market, segment or demographic and create specific campaigns to meet the needs of that audience. For example, if only 9% of the conversation came from 65+, can a brand better understand that demographic to better engage with them in the next Olympics? Furthermore, what drove Hispanics to chime in on Twitter at 2.19 over-index (compared to the general Twitter population)? Was it simply a matter of geography since the games were held in a Hispanic nation and continent? Is there insight a business can learn if they are eager to reach a particular demographic?
Yes! Brands now have access to this massive dataset – the questions is how can they leverage this data to their advantage? Much more, consumers also win because brands can now tailor their products to meet the specific needs of the consumer based on data.
This is the bottom line, we live in a connected world and this offers brands incredible opportunity. We found that those in on the conversation were not afraid to express their opinion during the Rio Olympics. If no one is listening to the raw opinions, then no one knows what can be done to cater to specific demographic or even improve the lives of a generation.  The good news is, according to the International Olympic Committee’s own definition, success is measured by media audience engagement- and so we would easily agree that the 2016 Rio Olympics were a huge success!

 

 

You need to be doing research beyond your computer screen.

 

The Zunesis demo lab is fully-equipped with the latest technologies, allowing you to try before you buy.

 

From white papers and data sheets to infographics and eBooks (and the list goes on and on), there is no shortage of information about the different technologies on the market. All you have to do is type the name of a new product into the Google search bar, and voila! Your screen is populated with more than you could ever possibly need to know about the given topic. Right? Wrong!

 

While the internet is a fabulous source for doing research and learning about the different technologies on the market, it has its limitations. Primarily, that it’s all on your screen. Why is this a problem? Because any marketer from any technology company can tell you anything they want about their product (as well as anything they want about their competitors’ products). So, while it’s a no-brainer that the internet is the best place to start your research, eventually you’re going to need to go further.

 

That’s exactly why Zunesis has invested heavily in a fully-functional, on-site demo lab. And here is why you need to take some time out of your day to come use it:

 

1. 1. Learn how it works: Sure, your IT staff is stacked with smart and capable people. But let’s be honest, IT can be difficult (and not always intuitive). Our Zunesis solution architects have built our lab, and they are well-versed in the speeds, feeds, and quirks of the various technologies. Save yourself and your staff time by allowing our team to show you how to run and manage the different products.
   2. See it in action: YouTube is the world’s second most popular search engine because people learn best when they see something done. A “How To” video is much more helpful for the average Joe than an instruction manual. In our lab, you get to see the technologies you’re considering purchasing. You can see with your own eyes how different platforms work, how they work together, and even how they don’t work.
   3. Test drive it: You wouldn’t buy a new car without taking it for a test drive, so why would you invest in a new technology platform without doing the same? Our lab allows you and your team a hands-on opportunity to test products before you buy them. Sure, that white paper you downloaded told you everything you need to know about Storage Platform X, but I’m willing to bet there’s something new for you to learn when you actually try that platform out for yourself.

 

 

Below, I’ve listed the technologies we currently have available for demo in our lab. We are consistently expanding our lab, so expect this list to grow as time progresses.

 

• HPE
  • 3PAR
  • OneView
  • StoreVirtual
  • Hyper-Converged 250
  • Moonshot
  • Blades
• Zerto
• CommVault
• Veeam
• Microsoft Hyper-V
• VMware
  • vSOM (vRealize)
  • vVols

 

 

On Tuesday, July 19^th, the Zunesis team joined with Habitat of Metro Denver to work on the construction of the home for this year’s partner family.

 

DENVER, CO: Zunesis, an IT solution provider headquartered in Englewood, CO, has partnered with Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver since 2008. Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit organization that partners with hard-working families to provide affordable and safe housing. Through this long-term partnership, Zunesis and Habitat have been able to fund and build a total of seven – and counting – homes in the Denver community.

 

Habitat for Humanity makes an incredible difference in the lives of their partner families. As a non-profit, they rely heavily on the partnership of the surrounding community to provide both the necessary funds and volunteer hours to build their homes.

 

Zunesis is a regular financial sponsor, and even hosts their own annual gala, the Night of Miracles, to raise funds for Habitat. However, the Zunesis team believes strongly in going above and beyond, so they do not stop with a financial donation. Each year, the entire company joins the Habitat construction crews to put in physical labor to help build homes.

 

“Writing a company check is great. I’m glad we do it,” noted Zunesis Marketing Manager, Megan Shaffer. “However, it doesn’t feel personal because it’s the company’s money. Getting out there, swinging a hammer, and meeting our partner family – that makes it personal. That makes us each feel like we’re investing in our community together.”

 

To add to that, Zunesis CEO Steve Shaffer commented, “This is one of my favorite days of the year. We believe so strongly in what Habitat does that it doesn’t even seem like we’re the ones donating anything. It’s truly our honor to be able to partner with this organization.”

 

As stated in the Zunesis Company Core Values, they believe strongly in two things:

 

1. Building a strong team culture
2. Making a positive impact on their community.

 

The annual build day with Habitat is a testament to these values, and each year, the company’s commitment to these values grows as the lives of both employees and home recipients are changed through partnership with Habitat for Humanity.

 

About Zunesis

 

Zunesis is a leading IT solution provider with locations in Colorado and Nevada. Our vision centers around an intense focus on serving our customers and bringing value to their business through strategic IT solutions. In 2015, Zunesis was added to the CRN Next-Gen 250 list, recognizing them for their innovation and forward-thinking in the industry. Later, in March 2016, Zunesis was named to the CRN TechElite 250 for the 7^th consecutive year as a best-of-breed solution provider with deep technical expertise and premier certifications. For more information visit www.zunesis.com, the Zunesis Blog; or follow us on LinkedIn.