Cumulus Global Named to Inc.’s Second Annual Power Partner Awards

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Power Partner Award highlights B2B partners that support startups
across all business functions and empower growth

Westborough, MA – Cumulus Global is pleased to share that Inc. Business Media announced the second consecutive inclusion of Cumulus Global in the Power Partner Awards.  The Inc. Power Partner Awards honor B2B organizations across the globe with proven track records supporting entrepreneurs and helping startups grow. The 2023 list recognizes 389 firms in marketing and advertising, information technology, health and wellness, financial services, legal, logistics, and productivity, as well as other areas of business.2023 Inc. Power Partner

“Trusted B2B partners provide guidance and expertise that founders rely on at various steps of their organization’s journey. Partners that possess a demonstrated ability to deliver quality support are at the core of entrepreneurship and help bring big ideas to life,” says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. Business Media. 

Cumulus Global, like all 389 winners, received top marks from clients for being instrumental in helping leadership teams navigate the dynamic world of startups. Like other award recipients, Cumulus Global supports entrepreneurs, leaders, and teams, allowing founders to focus on their core missions. 

“Our team is humbled and honored that our clients appreciate the value we strive to deliver to their businesses,” stated Allen Falcon, CEO of Cumulus Global. “Our managed cloud services go beyond technologies. Our services strive to empower individuals and teams to enable business growth.”

Examples of Cumulus Global services and client success include: End user education programs that boost personal and team online productivity up to 60%; Replacing servers with services to eliminate capital expenditures while lowering operating costs; Active monitoring and management to prevent and catch issues before they impact business operations; and off-loading IT administration, management and support in a co-management model that keeps client in control of their IT environment.

“Many managed service providers shy away from sole practitioners and very small businesses,” Falcon noted. “We have unique service offerings designed specifically for these entrepreneurs and businesses. We design our managed cloud services to be productive, secure, and affordable.

Cumulus Global has four tiers of managed cloud services, allowing clients to match services to their needs and budgets. Small and midsize businesses can move to managed cloud services for less than half the cost of traditional IT and managed service offerings. With the ability to add services needed to meet industry-specific and regulatory requirements, Cumulus Global meets the diverse needs of small and midsize businesses across industries and markets.

To view the complete 2023 Inc. Power Partner list, go to: https://www.inc.com/power-partner-awards/2023. The November 2023 Issue of Inc. magazine is available online now at https://www.inc.com/magazine and is on newsstands beginning October 31, 2023. 

About Cumulus Global

Cumulus Global is an industry-leading managed cloud service provider with a mission to deliver solutions with tangible value.

  • What We Do: We translate your business goals and objectives into solutions and services.
  • How We Do It: We start with your business needs and priorities. Planning and migration includes guidance to help your team adopt and utilize new services. Your team benefits from co-managed services, on-going support, and client success services. We help you adapt as your business changes and grows.
  • What We Offer: Managed cloud solutions featuring Google, Microsoft, and more than three dozen providers.

About Inc. Business Media 

The world’s most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community they need to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

Upgrade Coming to Spaces in Google Chat: From Conversation Topics to in-line Threading

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upgrade from conversation topics to in-line threading in spaces

A Google Chat upgrade is rolling out as of September 30, 2023. Google will be upgrading the format of all spaces organized by conversation topic to in-line threaded spaces in batches. The changes take place over the course of several months. Upgrades for each space may take a few minutes to complete. In some cases, it may take up to 12 hours to complete. The space will be unavailable to users during the upgrade.

Most users’ spaces will be upgraded during non-peak hours on weekends to try and ensure minimal disruption. Upgrades for all customers are expected to be finished by March 31, 2024. If you have a preferred month during which you would like the upgrade to happen, fill out this form by September 28, 2023.

Spaces organized by conversation topic have messages and replies grouped together in the main chat window. In-line threaded spaces, on the other hand, allow direct replies to any message, and allow creating a separate in-line thread, which is a sub-conversation that appears in a separate pane in the UX to a sub-conversation where smaller groups of people can continue a conversation on a specific topic. 

Before the Spaces Google Chat Upgrade

  • A few weeks before the Google Chat upgrade begins, users will see a banner in spaces that are organized by conversation topic. The banner will notify users of the upcoming upgrade. It will also have a link to a Google Help Center article which will have more details about the upgrade.

Who’s Impacted

This update to spaces in Google chat will impact admins and end users.

During the Transition From Spaces Organized by Topic to in-line Threading in Google Chat

  • When users attempt to open a space while it is being upgraded, they will see and error message.  The message will state the ‘Space is temporarily not available. We are updating this space to an inline threaded space.’
  • If users are viewing a space when the upgrade starts, most features will become unavailable until the upgrade completes, including sending and receiving messages in that space.
  • Search in Google Vault for Chat messages will still function, but results may contain duplicated messages from spaces that are being upgraded.
  • Chat APIs/Chat Apps that are trying to access a space during the upgrade will not work and will receive errors when trying to update space content.

After the Google Chat Upgrade To in-line Threading

  • Messages sent before the Google Chat upgrade will be retained. They will be arranged chronologically, instead of by topic. There will also be a separator titled “Begin New Topic” to indicate every time a new topic was started.
  • In some cases, when people have responded on older topics, the new chronological order takes precedence. Messages may not appear next to the original topic, but rather by the time they were sent. When this occurs, the new response will quote the last corresponding message.
  • Users will see a separator between the last message sent before the upgrade. They will also see  a notification in the space indicating that the space has been upgraded to use in-line replies.
  • The upgraded spaces will have their conversation history turned on by default. This will match the existing history behavior of spaces organized by conversation topic, which always have history on. Depending on organization-level history controls, space history settings may be changed by space managers. New messages sent after the upgrade will respect applicable organization-level history controls configured by administrators.
  • Users might need to close and reopen Chat in order to get access to the upgraded spaces.
  • Messages sent after the upgrade will have the same experience as the existing in-line threaded spaces.

No Action Required During the Spaces Upgrade in Google Chat

You can learn more about in-line threaded spaces, and you can always contact us with your questions at info@cumulusglobal.com.

About the Author

Chris CaldwellChristopher Caldwell is the COO and a co-founder of Cumulus Global.  Chris is a successful Information Services executive with 40 years experience in information services operations, application development, management, and leadership. His expertise includes corporate information technology and service management; program and project management; strategic and project-specific business requirements analysis; system requirements analysis and specification; system, application, and database design; software engineering and development, data center management, network and systems administration, network and system security, and end-user technical support.

AI and Privacy Issues: Data Leaks and Breaches

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We recently posted about the AI warning we received from a partner about the use of AI tools and protecting their confidential information. Beyond the specifics of the warning, we quickly saw a much broader context. Using AI tools, if not managed carefully, will result in unauthorized data disclosures, breaches, or leaks. These disclosures may easily violate laws, regulations, industry standards, and contractual obligations. Before exposing your business to unnecessary liabilities, understand how your AI tools and services manage, and ensure, data privacy.

Scope of the AI and Privacy Problem

To gain a better sense of the issue, we decided to look into the data privacy practices of meeting assistants.  Meeting assistants are one of the most commonly used AI tools for small and midsize businesses.  Traditional meeting assistant tools transcribe discussions. Newer versions use AI engines to capture action items, summarize discussion points, and analyze the attitudes and sentiments of participants. We reviewed the terms of service, privacy policies, and FAQs for several services.

Here are some excerpts from our findings (company and service names redacted):

AI Terms of Service

Do not use the service if you need to keep protected or confidential information private:

You hereby represent and warrant to [Company] that your User Content … (ii) will not infringe on any third party’s copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other proprietary right or rights of publicity, personality or privacy; (iii) will not violate any law, statute, ordinance, or regulation (including without limitation those governing export control, consumer protection, unfair competition, anti-discrimination, false advertising, anti-spam or privacy);

The [Company] is not liable if you use their services:

… the user understands and accepts the risks involved with the use of AI or similar technologies and agrees to indemnify and hold [Company] harmless for any claims, damages, or losses resulting from such usage.

Allowing an AI engine to analyze your information, or allowing a service to use your information to train their AI-based services, is a disclosure:

When you post or otherwise share User Content on or through our Services, you understand and agree that your User Content … may be visible to others

AI Privacy Policies

Using AI tools has inherent risks:

By utilizing [Company]’s services, the user understands and accepts the risks involved with the use of AI or similar technologies and agrees to indemnify and hold [Company] harmless for any claims, damages, or losses resulting from such usage.

Some tools have service options, at added costs, to ensure data privacy:

… customers that want their data to be strictly segregated (for example, customers dealing with PHI) can choose the [service] option to exercise complete control over their compute and data infrastructure, ensuring that their data is separated per their compliance requirements.

Some services explicitly tell you that sharing confidential information violates their privacy policy:

You may also post or otherwise share only Content that is nonconfidential and that you have all necessary rights to disclose.

The Risks and Challenges with AI

With justifiable concerns about data protection and privacy, we have been trained to think about data leaks and breaches in terms of cyber attacks. We also look at “insider threats,” which are often human errors such as accidentally sharing files externally or putting confidential information in an unsecured email.

The use of meeting assistants and other AI-powered productivity tools creates a new category of risk.  In order to learn and improve, AI tools need to train using information. The easiest way to provide information to train an AI tool is to capture information provided by the users.  The users get their results; the AI tool trains, learns, and improves.

While this works for the AI tool or service provider, it creates a data breach platform for the users unless the tool has specific policies and services to ensure compliance with data privacy laws and regulations. 

Using an unsecured AI meeting assistant creates an incidental, if unintentional, breach. 

Some examples of incidental breaches caused by unsecure AI meeting assistants:

  • Two doctors discuss a patient consult, disclosing personal health information (PHI) to third parties in violation of HIPAA
  • You discuss project details with one of your clients, disclosing confidential intellectual property in violation of your contract
  • Your financial advisor discusses your financial holdings and accounts with you, disclosing personally identifiable financial information in violation of industry regulations and standards

Protect Yourself and Your Business from AI and Privacy Issues

From our review of several AI meeting assistant services, very few will keep your information private. Those that do will charge additional fees.

When you get on a video meeting or conference call, ask the host if their meeting assistant is secure. If not, or if they are unsure, ask them to turn it off.

More generally, take a step back and plan your approach to AI.

  • Consider how and when you want to use AI in your business
  • Make sure you and your team understand your contractual and regulatory responsibilities with respect to information privacy
  • Assess the AI tools and services you plan to use:
    • Understand their data privacy commitments
    • Match privacy policies and commitments against your business and legal requirements
    • Opt-in to agreements that ensure data privacy, even if it requires paying for the service,

With an understanding of your requirements and AI services, AI can add value to your business without introducing significant avoidable risk.

We Can Help

To discuss your technology service needs and plans, click here to schedule a call with a Cloud Advisor or send us an email.

About the Author

Allen Falcon is the co-founder and CEO of Cumulus Global.  Allen co-founded Cumulus Global in 2006 to offer small businesses enterprise-grade email security and compliance using emerging cloud solutions. He has led the company’s growth into a managed cloud service provider with over 1,000 customers throughout North America. Starting his first business at age 12, Allen is a serial entrepreneur. He has launched strategic IT consulting, software, and service companies. An advocate for small and midsize businesses, Allen served on the board of the former Smaller Business Association of New England, local economic development committees, and industry advisory boards.

Cumulus Global Grows its Sustainability with Evertreen Reforestation Initiative

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Cumulus Global Partners with Evertreen to Offset CO2 with Reforestation Projects 

ReforestationAugust 10, 2023 – Westborough, MA – Cumulus Global announces a dramatic expansion of our company’s sustainability efforts. Partnering with Evertreen, Cumulus Global is supporting reforestation projects in four countries trees. Joining a reforestation program helps the company offset emissions from commuting, business travel, and other business activities. Each monthly planting will remove over 4.2 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.  This is equivalent to the amount of CO2 created by driving over 11, 000 miles in a car getting the average miles per gallon in the United States. 

“We are excited about expanding our sustainability efforts in ways that will also benefit local communities around the world,” stated Cumulus Global CEO Allen Falcon. “This is a creative way that we, as a small business, can make a difference.”

Each month, Cumulus Global will plant at least 7 trees across four projects. The projects are located in Ethiopia, Madagascar, South Africa, and the United States. Beyond reducing carbon in the atmosphere, the reforestation projects also address local community needs.  Evertreen designs each project to provide local employment. Tree selections help increase local food supplies, prevent soil erosion, and protect local watersheds.

“We chose Evertreen for their holistic approach to the reforestation projects,” noted Falcon. “Their monitoring program and existing partnerships with IT industry leaders further proves their credibility and integrity.”

Beyond planning and planting forests, Evertreen actively monitors the health and growth of its forests with staff on-the-ground and advanced satellite imagery. View a summary of Cumulus Global’s participation, add trees to Cumulus Global’s forest, and learn more about Evertreen.

This tree planting program further extends the company’s sustainability program, that also includes recycling and the use of renewable energy. Since October 2020, Cumulus Global has relied on 100% renewable energy for all of the electricity needs at its main office. 

About Cumulus Global

Cumulus Global is an industry-leading managed cloud service provider with a mission to deliver solutions with tangible value.

  • What We Do: We translate your business goals and objectives into solutions and services.
  • How We Do It: We start with your business needs and priorities. Planning and migration includes guidance to help your team adopt and utilize new services. Your team benefits from co-managed services, on-going support, and client success services. We help you adapt as your business changes and grows.
  • What We Offer: Managed cloud solutions featuring Google, Microsoft, and more than three dozen providers.

About Evertreen

Evertreen (www.evertreen.com) helps individuals and companies offset CO2 emissions by planting trees around the world. In addition to reducing CO2 in the atmosphere, Evertreen forests contribute to local economies and ecosystems. As of the date of this post, Evertreen has planted more than 707,700 trees in more than a dozen forests spanning 10 countries. 

Our First AI Warning: Why Using AI Services Can Breach Your Contracts

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We recently received our first AI Warning. This was not a a general warning such as, “anything built for good can be use for evil” or “AI can replace you.” We received a direct warning about specific uses of artificial intelligence services and our contracts. The warning we received applies to you as well.

Some Background About this AI Warning

Cumulus Global is known for our professional services, including our ability to successfully manage cloud migrations from a variety of local environments. We often provide these services to other technology firms that need our expertise and experience to solve specific client needs. We have standing partnership agreements with several of these firms.

The AI Warning came from one of our partners.

The AI Warning

The warning we received centered on our potential use of AI services and the implication for confidential information belonging to our partner and their clients. The warning stated that providing this data to any AI system or tool is a likely violation of our contract, confidentiality, and non-disclosure agreements.

Specifically:

  • Providing confidential information to any AI system or tool is an authorized disclosure unless we have a contractual agreement in place with the AI vendor that ensures all data remains private and confidential.
  • The use of any confidential information for feeding or training AI system or tool is considered an authorized disclosure. Even if the AI system or tool is private the confidential information will be used outside the scope of any project, work, or need.

In addition to clearly defining limits on the use of their data with AI services, the warning included the company’s intent to pursue any and all contractual and legal methods to prevent, or in response to, disclosures.

Bigger Context

While this AI warning was specific to one business relationship, we see a bigger context. The current flood of AI services is exciting, and the potential uses and benefits are great. If we want to engage, however, we need to be careful. Whether we are deliberately training an AI system or creating prompts and providing feedback to refine answers, we are placing information in the hands of others. Unless we take explicit steps to ensure privacy with AI tools, our expectation must be that the information we provide will be used train the AI service, effectively placing the information in the public domain.

We must also recognize that the generative nature of AI increases the risk of improper disclosure. While we may not intend to disclose information, AI engines can recognize and correlate information. In other words, AI services can piece together data to create and share  information that should be private.

Your Action Plan to Prevent AI Issues

Take a step back and plan your approach to AI.

  • Consider how and when you want to use AI in your business
  • Make sure you, and your team, understand your contractual and regulatory responsibilities with respect to information privacy
  • Assess the AI tools and services you plan to use;
    • Understand their data privacy commitments
    • Match privacy polices and commitments against your business and legal requirements
    • Opt-in to agreements, even if it requires paying for the service, that ensure data privacy

With an understanding of your requirements and AI services, AI can add value to your business without introducing significant avoidable risk.

We Can Help

To discuss your technology service needs and plans, click here to schedule a call with a Cloud Advisor or send us an email.

About the Author

Allen Falcon is the co-founder and CEO of Cumulus Global.  Allen co-founded Cumulus Global in 2006 to offer small businesses enterprise-grade email security and compliance using emerging cloud solutions. He has led the company’s growth into a managed cloud service provider with over 1,000 customers throughout North America. Starting his first business at age 12, Allen is a serial entrepreneur. He has launched strategic IT consulting, software, and service companies. An advocate for small and midsize businesses, Allen served on the board of the former Smaller Business Association of New England, local economic development committees, and industry advisory boards.

Small Business Summer Savings

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Small businesses and solopreneurs depend on their technology in ways that differ from larger organizations. Our laptops and desktops are critical to daily operations and access to cloud services, including Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, is our lifeline. Without IT staff and spare equipment, we rely on our own abilities and outside help to keep things running and to respond to problems. Too often, we face disruptions and unexpected costs. Our Small Business Summer Savings options give you protection and security without busting your budget.

The Need

To ensure the availability and reliability of our IT services, small businesses need to protect their systems and be able to quickly recover should something bad happen. Essential services should:

  • Prevent malware, phishing, ransomware, and other cyber attacks
  • Protect files and data on computers and in the cloud
  • Secure access to systems and services
  • Help you and your team with issues, problems, and questions

As important, when something does go wrong, we need to be able to return to work quickly and efficiently.  We cannot sit idle for the 3 to 7 days it can take to repair or replace and restore a laptop.

The Services

Cumulus Global’s Managed Cloud Services provide the security, protection, and support services you and your business need.  Our Essential and Basic packages tailor to the specific needs of small businesses.

Our PC Continuity solution goes beyond backup/recovery for laptops and PCs.  In addition to backing up your files, we capture images of your entire system. In an emergency, we can spin up the image of your computer in a cloud data center.  Within a few hours, you are up and running from any device with a browser and Internet access.  You business keeps running while your computer is fixed or replaced.

The Offer

Through August 31, 2023, bundle our Essential or Basic Managed Cloud Services with our PC Continuity solution and save:

  • No setup fees
  • Up to 30% on monthly recurring fees for the first year

The Action

To learn more and get a quote, click here to schedule a call with a Cloud Advisor or send us an email.

About the Author

Allen Falcon is the co-founder and CEO of Cumulus Global.  Allen co-founded Cumulus Global in 2006 to offer small businesses enterprise-grade email security and compliance using emerging cloud solutions. He has led the company’s growth into a managed cloud service provider with over 1,000 customers throughout North America. Starting his first business at age 12, Allen is a serial entrepreneur. He has launched strategic IT consulting, software, and service companies. An advocate for small and midsize businesses, Allen served on the board of the former Smaller Business Association of New England, local economic development committees, and industry advisory boards.

Cumulus Global Recognized on the 2023 MSP 501

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Company’s Best-in-Class Innovation, Services, and Growth Recognized for Second Consecutive Year on the Most Prestigious List Of Managed Service Providers Worldwide

JUNE 29, 2023 – Westborough, MA – For the second consecutive year, Cumulus Global received recognition in the 2023 Channel Futures MSP 501 rankings, landing at 220 on the list. The global ranking identifies premier managed service providers across multiple benchmarks. These benchmarks include: annual sales, recurring revenue, profit margins, revenue mix, growth, supported technologies, and innovation.

2023 MSP

“We are humbled to be compared to some of the best MSPs in the world,” stated Cumulus Global CEO Allen Falcon. “We have a great team that focuses on helping clients use cloud technologies strategically and tactically. We deliver services that empower employees and teams, and that enable businesses to achieve business results.”

Since its inception 17 years ago, the MSP 501 has evolved from a competitive ranking into a vibrant group of innovators focused on high levels of customer satisfaction. MSPs on the list span small, medium and large organizations in both public and private sectors. Many of their services and technology offerings focus on cloud, security, collaboration and hybrid work forces. 

“The 2023 Channel Futures MSP 501 winners persevered through challenging times to become the highest-performing and most innovative IT providers in the industry today,” said Jeff O’Heir, Channel Futures senior news editor and MSP 501 project manager. “The MSP 501 ranking doesn’t award MSPs solely on their size and revenue. It acknowledges the business acumen, best practices and trusted advice they deliver to customers every day. They deserve the honor.”

MSPs that qualify for the list must pass a rigorous review conducted by the research team and editors of Channel Futures. It ranks applicants using a unique methodology that weighs financial performance according to long-term health and viability, commitment to recurring revenue and operational efficiency. 

“As a Managed Cloud Service Provider, our approach to IT for small and midsize businesses differs from traditional MSPs,” noted Falcon. “Our Managed Cloud Services focus on replacing on-premise systems, and the associated capital and operating costs, with cloud services whenever feasible.  We help manage costs while improving productivity, security, and resilience.”

This year’s list is one of the most competitive in the survey’s history. Winners will be recognized on the Channel Futures website. They will also be honored during a special ceremony at the Channel Futures Leadership Summit, Oct. 30-Nov. 2, in Miami, Florida.

“We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the 2023 winners, and gratitude to the thousands of MSPs that have contributed to the continuing growth and success of the managed services sector,” said Kelly Danziger, general manager of Informa Tech Channels. “These providers are most certainly driving a new wave of innovation in the industry and are demonstrating a commitment to moving the MSP and entire channel forward.” 

The 2023 MSP 501 list is based on confidential data collected and analyzed by the Channel Futures research and editorial teams. Data was collected online from February to May, 2023. The MSP 501 list recognizes top managed service providers based on metrics including recurring revenue, profit margin and other factors.

About Cumulus Global

Cumulus Global is an industry-leading managed cloud service provider with a mission to deliver solutions with tangible value.

  • What We Do: We translate your business goals and objectives into solutions and services.
  • How We Do It: We start with your business needs and priorities. Planning and migration includes guidance to help your team adopt and utilize new services. Your team benefits from co-managed services, on-going support, and client success services. We help you adapt as your business changes and grows.
  • What We Offer: Managed cloud solutions featuring Google, Microsoft, and more than three dozen providers.

About Channel Futures

Channel Futures is a media and events destination for the information and communication technologies (ICT) channel community. We provide information, perspective and connection for the entire channel ecosystem, including solution providers (SPs), managed service providers (MSPs), managed security service providers (MSSPs), cloud service providers (CSPs), and value-added resellers (VARs). Our services guide distributors, technology solutions brokerages, subagents, agents, leading technology vendor partners, and communication providers.

Our properties include many awards programs such as the Channel Futures MSP 501, a list of the most influential and fastest-growing providers of managed services in the technology industry; Channel Partners events, which delivers unparalleled in-person events including Channel Partners Conference & Expo, Channel Futures Leadership Summit, Women’s Leadership Summit, the MSP Summit and Channel Partners Europe; and a DEI Community Group, our initiative to educate, support and promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the ICT channel industry. Channel Futures is where the world meets the channel; we are leading Channel Partners forward. More information is available at channelfutures.com.

Channel Futures is part of Informa Tech, a market-leading B2B information provider with depth and specialization in ICT sector. Every year, we welcome 14,000+ subscribers to our research, more than 4 million unique monthly visitors to our digital communities. More than 18,200+ students attend our training programs and 225,000 delegates attend our events.

Media Contacts

Jeff O’Heir , Channel Futures Senior News Editor, MSP 501 Manager, Jeff.oheir@informa.com

Ginette Andrem, Associate Marketer, VIP Relations, ginette.andre@informa.com

Cumulus Global in the News: Next-Gen Managed Services Featured on HostingAvice.com

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Cumulus Global Streamlines IT Operations With Next-Gen Managed Services

TL; DR: Meet Cumulus Global, a cloud solutions agency that works to streamline and simplify your IT infrastructure. With more than 40 years of experience in the industry, Allen Falcon, CEO of Cumulus Global, tells us how the company aims to help small-to-medium businesses and the education and government sectors better manage their data in the cloud with Next-Gen Managed Services.

Following an interview with Jordan Sprogis of HostingAdvice.com, Cumulus Global was featured for our long-established history of delivery cloud solutions to small and midsize businesses, and our focus on Managed Cloud Services.

Click here to read the full article.

Backup Your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 Cloud: Use Cases Beyond Restore

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google workspace and office 365 backup

As we discussed in recent blog posts, Google and Microsoft clouds operate under a shared responsibility model for data protection. Google and Microsoft run internal backup systems to protect you should they have hardware or software issues. You, however, are responsible to backup your cloud, including Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. You need to protect your data from user deletions, user overwrites, malware, hackers, and other risks. This all starts with the proper backup solutions for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.

A good backup solution for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 does more than restore.

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace Backup Solutions

These four use cases provide added value when you backup your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 cloud.

1 Preserve Data From Past Employees

If you want to preserve data from past employees you have a few options:

  • In both clouds, you can continue paying for licensing for past/suspended users
  • In Google Workspace, you can also pay for Archive User Licenses
  • Subscribe to a third party archiving solution
  • Preserve backups for past employees after you remove their Google or Microsoft accounts.

With the ability to restore data to other accounts, you can use the backup as a long-term archive.  Doing so is less costly than maintaining licenses or moving to archive user licensing, and is comparable in cost to third party account archive solutions.

2 Transfer Data to New Owners

Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace provide administrative tools to transfer data and ownership between users.  These transfers, however, lack granularity and are generally available at the service level.  For example, you can transfer all documents to one user and emails to another user.

With a good backup solution, you can selectively restore data to any users.  As such, you can transfer specific files, folders, sites data, emails, etc. to different people as needed. An added benefit, you can also transfer data between employees as they change positions and responsibilities.

3 Archive Documents (and other data)

A third party backup solution can preserve and archive documents, as well as email, calendars, contacts, and sites data in support of your document retention policies or regulations.  Granted, both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 offer several licensing options that include the compliant archive/e-discovery services for your data.

You may not need the rigor and cost of an upgrade or add-on service. With one or more backups per day, your preserve data as it exists at specific points int time.  Options for unlimited retention allow you to recover information, even after malicious deletions.

4 Escape Hatch

As a “best-practice”, backups should not be stored in immutable systems without altering the format.  Doing so protects your backups from cyber attacks by segregating your backup systems from your operating environment while preserving content.  With data preserved and the ability to export, the right backup solution provides an easier and efficient means of exporting data from Google Workspace and Microsoft Office.

Cumulus Global Can Help You With Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 Backup Services

We offer a range of backup/recovery, and business continuity services that we match to your needs and budget.

Schedule time with one of our Cloud Advisors or contact us to discuss which backup solutions for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 backup solutions are right for you. The conversation is free, without obligation, and at your convenience.

About the Author

Bill Seybolt bio pictureBill is a Senior Cloud Advisor responsible for helping small and midsize organizations with cloud forward solutions that meet their business needs, priorities, and budgets. Bill works with executives, leaders, and team members to understand workflows, identify strategic goals and tactical requirements, and design solutions and implementation phases. Having helped over 200 organizations successfully adopt cloud solutions, his expertise and working style ensure a comfortable experience effective change management. 

 

SaaSOps: Adapting the enterprise model for small and midsize businesses

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SaaSOpsThe term “SaaSOps” was first coined by David Politis, founder of BetterCloud. SaaSOps, short for Software-as-a-Service Operations, is the suite of processes, skills, and responsibilities for managing the lifecycle of software delivered as a cloud service. Most small and midsize businesses use multiple SaaS applications.

By effectively and efficiently managing these applications, we reduce operating costs and security risks.

The 5 SaaSOps Processes

Adapting the enterprise model for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), SaaSOps encompasses the following five processes.

1. Adoption

SaaS Adoption begins with discovery.  Discovery includes both (1) Selecting SaaS applications your business needs or wants; and (2) Identifying the SaaS applications in use by your team. In today’s world of cloud services, individual employees are likely signing up to use SaaS applications that they want or think they need. These are often free, or low cost, consumer oriented services. Often referred to as “Shadow IT”, these apps sit outside your control and outside of your security protections.  Selecting which SaaS applications you will use, as a company, and which you will not, sets the stage for successful operations.

2. Optimization

Optimizing SaaS operations requires cross-application and in-application analysis.  By examining SaaS applications and services, and how they are used, you can identify and remove redundant features and data sets.  Streamlining applications and systems in-use lowers complexity, support requirements, and cost.  Within applications, license management is key to ensure you do not under- or over-license your services.  Beyond the cost implications, unused licenses pose a security risk.

3. Management

SaaS Management includes the lifecycles for both users and applications.  If done well, SaaS Management automates common tasks prone to administrative error.

User lifecycle events focus on properly managing on-boarding, off-boarding, and mid-lifecycle changes.  These events cover accounts, access, security, permissions, and integrations users need to perform their jobs across your SaaS applications and services.  User lifecycle management also includes group management.  The ability to automate group membership based on user attributes gives you the ability to manage uses based on roles and responsibilities.

Application management focuses on application configuration, ensuring accounts, access, security, and data management. Active configuration management creates a dependable service for users.

4. Security

This includes five key integrated security pillars:

  1. Discovery of sensitive data, including data subject to industry or legal regulations.
  2. Mitigation of oversharing of data, externally and within your organization.
  3. App monitoring and remediation, spanning availability, access, and performance.
  4. User behavior analytics, providing data to support operations, planning, and improvements.
  5. Least privilege access management, ensuring

5. Experience

SaaSOps changes — improves — your business’ overall experience with your cloud-based services. The impact is visible to your employees and your IT administration.

  • Automation simplifies tasks and reduces administrative, security, and other errors while improving your IT team’s ability to respond quickly to change and support requests.
  • Change management ensures decisions to alter services are known and documented and helps ensure you remain compliant with policies, industry standards, and regulations.
  • Managed Access and Rights reinforces company policies, maintains compliance, and enables employees to access the applications, services, and data needed for their jobs.

In Summary

As your use of cloud services grows, implementing SaaSOps solutions becomes an important management tool.  Beyond monitoring and managing costs, SaaSOps helps reduce management and administration errors, provides a better experience for IT teams and end users, and improves security. The incremental cost to deploy SaaSOps tools delivers savings while reducing risk.

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About the Author

Allen Falcon is the co-founder and CEO of Cumulus Global.  Allen co-founded Cumulus Global in 2006 to offer small businesses enterprise-grade email security and compliance using emerging cloud solutions. He has led the company’s growth into a managed cloud service provider with over 1,000 customers throughout North America. Starting his first business at age 12, Allen is a serial entrepreneur. He has launched strategic IT consulting, software, and service companies. An advocate for small and midsize businesses, Allen served on the board of the former Smaller Business Association of New England, local economic development committees, and industry advisory boards.