Blogs

Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are transforming the way we communicate and collaborate like never before.  The convenience, ease of use, technical capabilities and mind-boggling array of apps have been pivotal to increasing productivity and customer and employee engagement.  Yet mobility comes with some caveats, such as the need to secure confidential customer and financial data.  This challenge has gained prominence this year due, in part, to the headline-grabbing news of hackers across the globe breaking into supposedly secure corporate and government databases.

Today, we are more connected than ever before. We rely on the Internet to stay informed and to perform our day-to-day jobs. It’s hard to imagine our lives without the Internet; yet for all of its advantages, increased connectivity brings increased risks for cybercrime. Recognizing the importance of cyber security, President Obama designated October as National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), as has the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). At West, we are committed to ensuring the ongoing success of our business processes and operations, which requires information that is accurate, complete, consistent and, above all, secure. This makes cyber security one of West’s most important priorities.

Mobile technology can be a great time saver, or a time-sink, depending on the apps you’re using and how you use them.  At West, we recognize that it’s important to choose your apps wisely.  As we begin to build our Mobile App Store, we are focused on applications that enable us to be more connected and forward-looking – foundations for being successful in a globally competitive world. Since there’s an app for almost every purpose these days, we believe that it’s critical to reduce distraction by focusing on apps that will improve productivity wherever our work takes us.

Have you ever wanted to fly among the clouds? To rapidly deploy apps or manage IT services with greater flexibility? To support real-time analytics across all types of data from email to ERP? West IT is leveraging cloud computing to help realize those goals. West began its journey to the cloud several years ago by looking first at cloud service offerings for all new IT services. Such services allow IT to satisfy the strategic goal of cost-effectively enabling high availability of IT services in a more mobile and globally competitive world.

Innovation at West is at the cornerstone of enabling both top-line growth and bottom-line results, and IT plays an important supporting role.  West views social media, mobility, analytics and cloud computing as game-changers, as well as the biggest opportunity for IT to move quickly to innovate with the business.  The consumerization of IT has driven down the cost of deploying technologies, and cloud computing has offered the ability to acquire IT as a service. So when it comes to plug and play, IT can move quickly with the business to innovate.

With the explosive growth in social media, mobile devices, cloud computing and access to data both internal and external to West (now referred to as Big Data), West IT has been working to ensure that we are able to leverage these transformational trends. In 2012, we updated our IT strategy to allow us to be part of the revolution while making it feel more like an evolution. The initial phase began with investments in cloud technologies – both private and public – to drive down IT operating costs and to enable us to take advantage of software enhancements made by our strategic partners.