ON September 2015 | Page 25

Leveraging Office 365 also helps streamline email, a directive many CIOs are receiving from their CEOs, as the average office worker now receives 121 emails per day, according to research from the Radicati Group. “With a sound implementation, full organizational buy-in, a robust user education strategy and, in some cases, help from an IT services partner with the necessary expertise, every day with Lync can be a great one,” wrote Kevin McCarron, Director of the Business Innovation Group at Atrion in a recent blog post. 2. Emphasis on Detection and Response for Security: For years, prevention was the top information security priority for CIOs and CISOs; organizations used most of their resources to ensure attackers could not exploit vulnerabilities and gain access to their networks. Prevention remains an important pillar of a security strategy, but the rapidly increasing number and complexity of attacks have made it unrealistic for businesses to completely protect against breaches. In fact, a recent report from the Ponemon Institute found that the average U.S. firm experiences an average of 138 successful attacks per week. As a result, IT leaders need to start placing greater focus on security strategies and solutions that detect and mitigate breaches when they occur, thus limiting costly downtime and data theft. 3. Embracing IT co-sourcing and outsourcing models: Increasingly, CIOs and senior IT leaders are turning to third-party IT services firms to achieve certainty in their environments. In fact, a recent report from TechNavio predicted that the global managed services market will expand at a 13.7 CAGR from 2015 to 2019. The pressure has never been greater for CIOs to drive successful business outcomes by leveraging technology solutions that function optimally 24/7/365. Consequently, many leaders are turning to third-party vendors for expertise in areas of technology—such as next-generation data center projects that support the cloud—that their in-house team may not possess. “Over the last five years, we’ve seen a huge movement toward the co-sourcing or outsourcing model,” notes Ken Brindamour, SVP of Service Delivery at Atrion “And this macro shift makes sense. After all, there are a number of struggles CIOs face daily that keep them from running IT at peak performance.”