Meridian
ECHO Internal News from Meridian Group International June 2019
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
To Succeed, Be Like Them! The 1954 classic big bug sci-fi film “Them!” was based on the premise that the only thing keeping humankind safe from destruction by ants is that we’re bigger than they are. Not only were the movie’s monsters of unusual size, but they could also communicate with each other for coordinated attacks. “Them!” may be fiction (phew!), but ants’ ability to communicate is real. According to myrmecologists (a real job), ants use scent, touch, sound and body language to communicate in at least a dozen different categories. They use communication to tell each other to help gather food, be alert to dangerous aardvark attacks, tend farms, influence others through enticement or peer pressure, and exert influence over various groups. An individual ant’s own skills and abilities surely contribute to the insect family’s survival, but if they hadn’t developed means of communication, they never would have attained such complete success — 12,000 species and counting! That’s about one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) ants invading our global picnic baskets. If a queen ant couldn’t pass down directions, workers wouldn’t know what to do for the good of the colony. If scouts couldn’t pass on information to the queen, she couldn’t make informed decisions. If a worker encounters a flood but was unable to alert others, there’d be no alarm to tell populations to evacuate to higher ground. News of a nearby food source, if not passed on, could mean needless starvation. Opportunities to expand, overcome obstacles, increase production and avoid disasters would all be lost.
“Communication is necessary for organizations to evolve.” We would not be the first to note the similarities between ant colonies and corporations. Communication is necessary for organizations to evolve. Without communication — be it between management and project teams or engineers working in separate verticals on opposite sides of the world — organizations can become stagnant. From the dawn of publishing to the handheld internet, sharing information is what moves civilization forward, and gives members of civilization the opportunity to keep pace. Whether you’re an ant or an electrician, it’s your means of communication that makes it possible to not only survive but help the organization you’re a part of to grow, innovate and change. Communication is imperative, because the future is made of change.
Fran Blumenfield VP, Communications
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EXECUTIVE UPDATES Meridian IT Ltd Executive Summary Steve Young, Managing Director In a difficult and competitive climate I am pleased that we ended the year in profit, though not as profitable as the heady days of four or five years ago when our infrastructure-based transaction business was flying high. But we are in the new reality, reflecting the changing industry landscape that has evolved the past few years, with a slow but steady decline in those large deals that pushed up our profitability. It is fast becoming a ‘Software Defined’ World, and the IT community is consuming its requirements in an ‘As a Service’ or ‘On Demand’ style, and the buzz around AI and IOT is hard to ignore, as is the growing concern over Cyber Security. Well, MITUK are ignoring none of the above and have set out on our transformation strategy to mitigate the effect on our business of these market changes. We will continue exploit our traditional commercial and technical expertise around infrastructure as, although they are in decline, these deals will never dry up absolutely and we are aggressively going after such business. But in order to be successful, and recognising the ways of the new IT world, we are driving annuity Managed Services/Cloud business and also putting significant focus on Software – Dev/Ops activity, both of which are in the ascendancy and deliver contracted recurring revenues. We now have hundreds of contracted days of software consultancy, and each month we are signing new Managed Services clients on to our IBM Power Cloud. All of which is great news, but none of the large associated profits can I see in my accounts today. The nature of such annuity business means that the profits ‘drip-feed’ into the accounts as we deliver the service – so it is future guaranteed ‘money in the bank’ – though I guess Brad would like to see it sooner!... However, these profits will continue to grow as we strive for the ‘holy grail’ of being able to pay our bills before we even start the month. The other new initiatives indicated above are also fertile hunting ground. We have developed a significant AI practice which is beginning to gain traction in the market, and is also gaining commercial viability; it is true to say that whilst we are in the general AI ‘noise’, the discussions in this area have led to some very profitable business across our other offerings, - so AI is more than paying its way in this context. The same can be said for our Cyber Security initiative, where we are seeing further business that we would not have even considered twelve months ago. Key to our success in these areas going forward is the ability to handle our marketing in a focused and agile fashion, to ensure that the IT market gets the message of how our new offerings can benefit their business. We will ensure that we can make this happen. All of the above contracted recurring business serves only to strengthen the client relationships we are building, and for the long term, delivering an element of account control, not unlike leasing! Our best deals are where we can incorporate all of the offerings in our portfolio and in these situations, I believe we are unbeatable, and we will go from strength to strength in driving further profitable business as those clients are unlikely to go anywhere else... On the basis of the above, and the results we have seen to date, I’m looking forward to returning to those more profitable years, building on the foundations established by our diligent technical and sales teams. I would encourage our other Meridian Group companies to consider similar strategies, though I’m sure that is already in scope.
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EXECUTIVE UPDATES CONCAT Executive Summary Olaf von Heyer, Vorstand Fiscal year 2018-2019 was overall positive for Concat. Business with existing customers performed very well and we gained many new customers, including a globally operating DAX company in the automotive industry. The proportion of total sales accounted for by services increased once again. A heartfelt thank you to all employees for their excellent commitment and tireless dedication. How are we going to develop as a system house in the coming years? What direction are we heading? Our customers’ projects and IT environments are becoming increasingly complex and dynamic. For this we need qualified personnel, the right strategy and the right tools to support our customers. With our partnerships with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and our self-operated data center infrastructures in Germany, we are optimally positioned as an enabler of multi-cloud platforms. To help our customers transform their IT, we have decided to merge our technical, cloud, and support departments into a single service unit called ONE. With this strategic decision, we are pursuing the goal of optimizing internal processes in order to become more flexible and agile. By using the right tools, we want to strengthen the sense of togetherness in the various departments. With the new organizational structure, we are focusing on offering our customers a perfectly coordinated portfolio. ONE spirit means: We want to inspire our customers with our actions and have the courage to just do things. Also important are initiative and end-to-end responsibility, playing for the team, acting quickly, and with commitment. The new alignment was announced at a big meeting in Koenigstein, where 160 representatives of sales, technology and support department gathered in mid-May. Olaf von Heyer, Astrid Dissmann and Stefan Tuebinger explained the strategy in detail and committed the Concatlers to become part of ONE. As an immediate reaction to this, many participants expressed themselves positively.
The name Concat originates from “concatenate”, which means “link together”, “unite” etc. It’s used in programming and other contexts, and it’s perfectly suited for the Concat family. Olaf shared the story of Dexter McGinnis, who had this in mind when he founded Concat and was searching for a name in the year 1990.
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EXECUTIVE UPDATES CONCAT Executive Summary (continued) Olaf von Heyer, Vorstand Further milestones in the past FY were: Dell EMC has awarded us as EMEA UDS Solution Partner of the Year 2018 in the area of Unstructured
Data Solutions (UDS). The award recognizes our revenue growth with the innovative dsmISI solution in conjunction with Isilon as the backup target. With dsmISI, IT organizations can drastically reduce the total cost of ownership in IBM Spectrum Protect environments. Thanks to Stéphane Criachi and his team for this achievement.
ISO 9001 recertification: On 16 May we successfully passed the first surveillance audit for ISO 9001
certification. Many thanks to all employees in the service and support department for the cooperation and for bringing our quality management system to life!
TOP Service Excellence Award: “I am proud to announce
that we were able to take 12th place out of a total of 60 competitors right away,” says Andreas Adam, head of service and support. With the good results of the customer survey, we succeeded in getting into the Excellence Group. “Many thanks to all those who have contributed to creating a good impression with our customers. Such a good ranking is not easy to achieve.
Additional offices in Bensheim: Due to the shortage of space at our headquarters in Bensheim, we have
recently rented additional office premises in Bensheim. Sales and technical staff moved into the new offices in March.
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EXECUTIVE UPDATES CONCAT Executive Summary (continued) Olaf von Heyer, Vorstand
Concat event with employees from sales, tech dept and support
Concat event in Koenigstein: Teambuilding 01-03
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EXECUTIVE UPDATES Meridian Singapore FY19 Achievements & Highlights Eugene Eng, MITS APAC Director of Sales •
The Singapore team managed to double FY18 revenues in FY19.
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MITS added about 25 new customer names in FY19.
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Top 3 customers included Accenture, FARO & Jewel Singapore. These 3 customers represent about 30% of revenue.
Meridian Singapore FY20 Moving Forward Plans •
We strive and target to double our FY19 revenue once again
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One of the key go-to-market strategy for the Team Singapore is Managed Services. We have commenced our project known as ‘Project Lion King’ which emphasizes and encourage sales to focus on Managed Services.
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We have engaged in a Regional Partnership with Singapore Telemedia Global Datacentre (STT) & TATA Communications (TCL). STT is a Singapore Temasek owned company with 128 datacentres in the Asia-Pacific region. TCL, who’s international HQ is in Singapore and owned by the huge TATA Conglomerate from India, has several offerings including SAAS, Cloud & SOC Services, amongst others we can partner with. The partnership will see sales, technical trainings, lead-generation events with leads passing from both STT & TCL.
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EXECUTIVE UPDATES Meridian IT India Krishnan Subramanian Meridian IT India closed FY19 with a record company performance, beating budget estimates. The year saw some elite multinational corporations added to our esteemed customer list. MIT India also achieved the prestigious distinction of ‘Oracle Gold Partnership’ which is opening up new and promising avenues of business. Our notable achievements till date include: • Oracle Gold partner • Cisco Premier partner • Plantronics Gold partner • VMware solution provider • Palo Alto Silver partner • Trend Micro Bronze partner Our notable wins in FY19 include: • Oracle storage solution at MasterCard India. • Complete Datacentre refresh at Faro India • New Datacentre setup at Belden India • Dell Storage solution at Robert Bosch India • Green field Infrastructure solution at TPG capital FY20 marks the fifth year of MIT India existence and the company has grown exponentially after a modest beginning. The management are positive about Meridian IT India carving a niche in the global IT market and increasing its foot print year-on-year. As a part of our vision to gain market leadership we will continue to induct, nurture and develop the best talent in the industry as we seek to increase the sales presence and support skills. The technology landscape is perpetually changing and MIT India are well equipped to quickly adapt to these paradigm shifts and have continually been agile in offering customers the latest state-of-the-art technology solutions. Furthermore, we help customers to transition from legacy-based infrastructure to next generation, cutting edge technologies. Additionally, we are closely working with the Concat team in Germany on their unique DSMISI backup solutions to target the Indian market. On the service front, we are collaborating with MIT Singapore to build a specialised cyber security platform to complement our offerings to customers. Moreover, we are working with MIT US to assemble a local team offering 24/7 technical assistance to our global customer base. Furthermore, we are hiring enterprise engineers to assist MITUS Professional Services team in all their ongoing and forthcoming projects. In addition, our support team successfully follow ITIL practice methodically and have individuals with these certifications. ISO 9001 certification is at the final stages of completion and is expected to add a thrust to business. In conclusion, MITI remains optimistic about its growth and intends to close FY20 on a progressive note.
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COMPANY KICKOFFS Meridian IT Ltd Company Kick-Off , April 11th We held our kick-off meeting this year in Stratfordupon-Avon on the scheduled eve of our leaving the European Union; though it didn’t happen, and an extension is now in place until Halloween – maybe quite appropriate! This was probably just as well as I was delighted to welcome Astrid Dissmann from our German cousins at Concat to join us for this event, and she might not have been able to make it back home easily if the anticipated Brexit chaos had come to pass, and all European flights from the UK put in jeopardy that next morning. Our theme for the company meeting was twofold; Change and Working Together across our diversified company initiatives to accommodate that change profitably. We are set about a significant change in the business as we develop our more diversified offerings, including Cloud and Software Development. The danger is that we develop in silos rather than working as a cohesive team and I wanted to put this messaging out there, to try to encourage a more unified working environment, accompanied by some appropriate music and video footage to lighten the atmosphere, as change can be a little uncomfortable sometimes. I also felt that our little island business could maybe learn something from a much larger company which must have already gone through much change as it grew over the years to a much bigger business than our UK Company, and Astrid was able to talk to us about the challenges that she had experienced. It is nice to know we are not alone, and it felt good to share our companies’ growing pains together. It also gave a perspective to our team that they are in fact part of a larger Group, and I’m sure that this will help bring us closer, and we will find ways of working together to the greater good of our mutual businesses.
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COMPANY KICKOFFS Meridian IT Australia April 2019 kicked off with our All-hands session to review the year just closed out; award top contributors and long service legends; and present the FY20 business goals. Departing from our traditional Kick Off held in May, this year we have elected to commence with a mini Sales Team event to build ideas for collaboration, to be followed by a Kick On in July with our partners and partner vendors. The MITA team will relaunch core offerings during the first half of FY20 and focus sales and marketing activity accordingly.
Meridian IT Australia End of Year Client and Partner Event 2018 100 Clients, Partners and Staff in attendance!
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RETIREMENTS Anthony Hughes
Financial Controller for Meridian Asia-Pacific and Meridian IT UK Anthony Hughes, Financial Controller for Meridian Asia-Pacific and Meridian IT UK, is “hanging up his pencil” this year. Nick King sent out the announcement to everyone with some very kind words. The responses to Nick’s email share how highly-regarded Anthony is at Meridian. All, It is with a degree of sadness I announce that Anthony Hughes will be retiring from the Meridian Group on 31st July 2019. Anthony has been a stalwart for the Meridian Group, operating in Europe and Australia for 19 years and prior to that working with Ian Pye in predecessor companies since 1988. His later years focused on operations in Australia, which he made home and has been vital in assisting with the emergence of Meridian Group companies covering Asia, whilst still ‘accounting’ for Meridian in the UK. Anthony’s methods have always held the highest level of integrity, backed with a solid working culture to ensure the job is done. Admittedly his diversification in operational methods varied constantly, but never taking his eye of the ball in covering multiple financing tasks with the utmost professional style. Anthony will be missed by many of us when he leaves and we wish him well in his retirement with Jackie and family. Regards, Nick
I found Anthony to be the best Finance Director I ever worked for and he made my years at Meridian good ones to remember. I wish him all the very best in his retirement - in the sunshine! Anna Wathen
Anthony, Cheers to the next journey – time with your growing family! Forever grateful to you and Jackie for your friendship, and I wish you all the best in retirement. Regards, Frances Blumenfeld Vice President, MGI
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RETIREMENTS Anthony Hughes (continued) Anthony, Greetings from Meridian India team, In my current stint of over four years with Meridian I must admit that you were not only my boss, but also a great friend that I can turn to. It always hurts to lose that one best person, who leads the pack at work and gets things done. The Boss who moves ahead and takes everyone else along, who builds a winning team by making everyone strong It’s hard to believe that you’re retiring, but I know that your invaluable insights will be with me and all of us forever. Congratulations and Cheers to a hard-earned and well-deserved retirement! We’ll miss you, Warm regards, Krishnan Subramanian Country Manager, MITI
To my Meridian Colleagues, Just a brief note following on from Nick’s email - as I couldn’t let this go without adding my own comments, having known and worked with Anthony for very many years - going way back into pre-Meridian-as-weknow-it times. And latterly as our UK Finance Director, helping me oversee the significant changes that we are making to the business here, for which I am very grateful. During all this time I have regarded Anthony as a friend as well as a colleague, and have greatly respected the integrity and intellect that he has brought to the table. He will be missed and I’m sure I echo the sentiment of all at Meridian IT in the UK, as we wish him well in retirement; now with plenty of time to go walkabout... ...and to spend more time with Jackie and his family, which I’m sure they are looking forward to! Regards, Steve Young Country Manager, MITUK
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RETIREMENTS Peggy Cremonese
Director, Human Resources
How long have you been at Meridian? Since November 1995
Where did you come from?
I worked for Xerox for 15 years
Why did you choose HR as your career?
I’d say HR chose me. I have a degree in education and my background is in customer service management and training. While at Comtech, we saw a need for someone to focus on the HR function for the company so I raised my hand, took classes, learned along the way…and here I am!
What is the best part of your job?
It’s always about the people. Being a part of helping employees, whether it be with benefits, pay, developing skills to advance one’s career, being a better corporate citizen…
What is the best part of each day? I learn something new every day
Can you share any anecdotes without compromise?
I don’t have a specific anecdote, but what I love is when I see the kindness of others…it could be buying lunch to say thank you, all the donations we receive for the toy drive every year, or hearing how employees banded together to help another in need. We are a kind bunch and it always renews my faith in goodness and humanity to see that kindness at work.
What will you miss about working? Each and every one of you!
What’s on the horizon?
Move to NC to be close to the ocean, spend more time with family, travel (hopefully back to Italy next year!)
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EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT Congratulations to Karell Garcia MITA FY19 Employee of the Year! Karell balances multiple hats in her hybrid role as Inside Sales Representative, Sales Support Representative, Global Deals Desk for Australia and Marketing Support, with unwavering high energy and positivity………..as well as often prompting the team with ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’ Karell consistently demonstrates drive and determination to successfully exceed her personal quota; to strive for continuous self-improvement; whilst looking for ways to support the business in delivering on our team goals. Karell’s constant focus on meeting her individual commitments in tandem with supporting overall business goals reflects a significant and valued contribution to the business – a very well-deserved result, Karell!
Meet Nina Wadkien
Online Marketing with Concat since May 1st, 2019 Why should the company get to know you better? What do you do? Drawing on my expertise in online marketing, I would like to improve the media presence of Concat AG. I bring many ideas to the table and show how we can set ourselves apart from the competition in online presentation. Concat is a great and family-oriented company, so why not show it on the outside. What does your typical day look like? In addition to spreading a good mood, I work on content for Concat’s social media channels which generates added value to our customers. To do so, I am researching heavily in all directions. What was your very first job? I’m originally from the medical field. I completed my training as a medical assistant with a radiologist and worked there in nuclear medicine and radiation therapy. What lesson did you learn on that job that you keep with you today? The most important lesson I have learned is to listen carefully. Everyone has their own desires and agendas, which are shared with you when you have an open ear. And only those who listen well can respond to customer needs.
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EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT Meet Nina Wadkien (continued) What’s the number one skill or practice that has contributed to your success? I approach people impartially. In this way I succeed very quickly in having an open conversation. What is the strangest request you ever had from a customer or coworker? Fortunately, I’ve been spared strange requests so far. What came as a strange surprise was when Concat offered me to work in digital marketing. That is a dream come true. Do you have a personal motto, philosophy or favorite quote? I agree with Colin Powell who once said: “A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.”
Meet Kelvinder Singh
Technical Consultant, MITS Kelvinder Singh has been in the IT Industry for the past 10 years holding various prestigious positions. Kelvin started his career in one of the learning centres within NTU. During his 4-year stint with the centre he was also promoted to Senior IT Executive. He then went on to join the Oil & Gas Industry for 2 years as a Systems Administrator and was promoted again to Regional Systems Administrator for the APAC region. His next position was as a Senior Systems Engineer for the local systems integration company where he mainly worked on local and overseas government projects for the following 3 years. In September 2017, Kelvin joined Meridian IT as a Technical Consultant, where he first started with Pre and Post Sales work but has now moved more into the Solutions area for the Technical Department. Kelvin played a key role in securing the Jewel Changi Airport Development Pte. Ltd. (Singapore Airport) contract. In Kelvin’s words, this project is a special project in helping the customer setup their new Corporate IT Infrastructure for their new office in Jewel and thereafter support through a managed service. The project included set up of their security network, virtualized server farm, backup solution for backend as well as migrating of O365 to new tenant and end user migration. This project also was the first full managed services project awarded to Meridian IT covering a 2-year term. With the guidance of Jimmy Pang and the support of Pauland, MITS successfully implemented and delivered the project on time. With the Managed Services support desk in place MITS now provides support to Jewel on a daily basis.
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EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT
Meet Joe Burgio
Finance Manager, MITA Meridian IT Australia have recruited Joe Burgio into the permanent role of Group Financial Controller. Joe is an experienced Finance Manager and has started work with us today. Learn more about Joe from the excerpt below: “Outside of work I spend most of my time with my family. I do MMA (Mixed martial Arts) fighting and have been doing this for the past 30 Years. On weekends I try and go fishing. In winter we target large Tuna between 80kg plus and in the summer we fish for Yellow Tail King fish. I also have 1 child aged 8. He currently plays Soccer for under 8s and I’m currently the coach of the team. “
Meet Ufuk Ozdemir Shining Star Award
The Meridian IT Australia Shining Star recipient, Ufuk Ozdemir, conducts himself with the upmost professionalism, always provides a high level of customer service, willingness to do whatever it takes to get things done, always accepting the challenge to add additional skills to his repertoire, all with minimal fuss. Very meticulous in his approach, and has been a super star assisting in presales in his area of expertise. Ufuk is our resident IBM Spectrum Protect Guru, with a strong IBM Power systems background, coupled with IBM and NetApp storage skills, and now adding Nutanix HCI to his kit bag. Well done and Congratulations!
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TRENDING NOW
Security
Phishing, Spear-phishing and Whaling
By Dean Knight, Compliance Analyst, MIT US
No, “Phishing, Spear-phishing and Whaling,” is not the title for my review of the next 3 Sharknado movies. These are names of prevalent and harmful social-engineering attacks ranging from crude to sophisticated that can potentially damage any organizations financial business as well as reputation. Organizations need a strategy to prevent their employees from getting “hooked”. Phishing has been around awhile and many of you are already aware of these types of attacks, mostly because they show up in your inbox all the time, typically as a poorly written email from your bank, or a friend or even your boss, telling you to click the link to protect your account or send money. Once clicked, there’s no turning back – you’ve been hooked! Your data could be encrypted with a money demand (and yes, it can encrypt your cloud-based backup also), or your files could get deleted, or your mouse could go “wonky,” and not let you click on any icon (that one came from my Dad). These attackers who send out thousands of emails are “phishing - dropping their hook and worm in the water and hoping to catch anything. Spear-phishing is relatively newer and a bit more insidious. They are directed attacks targeting individuals like you. The attacker starts with a bit of recon to learn more about you. For example: Sam has Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and a number of other social media accounts. The attacker finds out that Sam’s best friend is Mary, she eats at ACME Seafood every Tuesday night, and takes pictures of her favorite meal, Shrimp Parmesan. Now the attacker can create a personal email to Sam “from the manager” of her favorite restaurant. “Hi Sam, My name is David and I’m the manager of ACME Seafood. I was talking to your friend Mary and she told me how much you enjoy our seafood. We’d like to reward you for being such a loyal customer. Click the link to get a coupon for a 2 for 1 special this Tuesday night. https://donteverclickme.com Thanks again, David” Meridian ECHO
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TRENDING NOW Phishing, Spear-phishing and Whaling
(continued)
The recognition makes Sam feel great, and she can’t wait to take her friend Mary for dinner! However, in that split second when she clicks the link – her PC is compromised. We live in a social world, and our lives are very public. Try doing a little recon on someone you barely know and see how easy it is to find out all about them. Be careful what you click on! Whaling is the last attack. These are Spear-phishing attacks directed at a smaller audience. In Vegas, a “whale” is a rich person that spends a lot of money gambling. In the B2B or B2C world, the “whales” are the C-Suite, or anyone else that has the keys to the Kingdom. It’s extremely easy to gather intel on favorite foods, sports, vacations, or even the families of executive leaders today which is why they must take care when going through their mounds of daily emails. One wrong click, and there go the keys!
Every employee at Meridian has an obligation to protect our assets. This includes equipment assigned to us and our office space, but more importantly, our data. Think responsibly like you would if you were about to spend your own money – is it worth it? Protect Meridian by never clicking a link in an email. If you receive a suspicious email, call the person who sent it for verification! Notify the helpdesk. Keep your Anti-virus and firewall on. Ensure all your applications and Anti-virus signatures are up to date and patched, and always update your Operating System. Caution and skepticism can go a long way to making Meridian more secure, profitable and trusted.
Environment
What is Your Office Doing to Support the Environment?
Hit the Saddle: Concat Offers Employees Job Bike via Leasing Since January, employees have been able to obtain their personal desired job bike conveniently and inexpensively from Concat. To this end, we have signed a contract with JobRad.
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TRENDING NOW Hit the Saddle: Concat Offers Employees Job Bike via Leasing
(continued)
Whether it’s touring bikes, mountain bikes, racing bikes or e-bikes - Concatlers will find everything their heart desires from the more than 5,000 JobRad specialist trade partners and online providers. Employees can use the JobRad to get to work and, of course, privately. Save taxes without effort: Concat is the official lessee of the service wheel, and also takes over the administration. Financial processing is automatically handled via payroll. Meanwhile, 19 employees have already ordered a JobRad. Willi Runge from Logistics was one of the first employees to accept the offer. “I love cycling and have been fond of e-bikes for quite some time. So, the offer came at exactly the right moment,” Willi alias Slawa is pleased. “For the 30 kilometres to the company I need a little more than an hour. I wouldn’t be so fast with the mountain bike”. For more information to go: https://portal.jobrad.org/concatag/ZBjh8REmpd
Willi Runge alias Slawa with his new Job bike, leased through Concat
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TRENDING NOW
Launch of our redesigned sites for China, Hong Kong, Singapore and India offices Corporate Communications recently launched redesigned sites for our China, Hong Kong, Singapore and India offices! Incorporating the new system that builds these sites, these offices have a refreshed, cleaner and more vibrant look which will engage our clients and community even more. Coming up soon will be the launch of the redesigned sites of our Australian office and a newly redesigned Meridian International Group site by the end of the month. Stay tuned for further updates!
Meridian China site:
https://www.meridianit.com.cn/
Meridian Hong Kong site:
https://www.meridianit.com.hk/
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TRENDING NOW Launch of our redesigned sites for China, Hong Kong, Singapore and India offices (continued)
Meridian India site:
https://www.meridianitindia.com/
Meridian Singapore site:
https://www.meridianitsingapore.com/
Loof or the newly redesigned Australian and Meridian International Group site really soon!
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TRENDING NOW IT History in Chicago “A few months ago, I was working on finding a draft in my house and found some old newspapers used as insulation in my wall. Being my house was built in 1941, I found it very interesting that the clippings were from 1934. Upon scanning through the articles I found a real gem, the announcement of the ‘Wirephoto’ to the Chicago Tribune. Think of this as email before the internet – they could send a picture from Pacific coast to Chicago in 8 minutes. Being in the IT field my whole I life I found this to be a really interesting read and thought might make for a quick read for our newsletter.” Mike Pudio MIT US For further information about the use of Wirephoto you can visit the Wikipedia page at https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirephoto. Here’s an article in “Fishwrap”, a blog about the history of newspapers, entitled “The Forgotten Technology that Changed the News Forever”: https://blog.newspapers.com/ forgotten-technology-that-changednews-forever/
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COMPANY EVENTS Meridian IT Australia – Upcoming Events • • • •
FY20 Sales Kick Off Dinner – All SEs and Sas Dell/EMC ANZ Partner Summit (New Caledonia) – May 28 to 31 MITA Achievers Club (Fiji) – June 4 to 7 Ingram ONE APAC (Singapore) – August 5 to 7
MITA – NSW Gov DC Marketplace Our events focused on the public sector in FY2019. In collaboration with IBM and Sophos we sponsored the NSW Government Digital Marketplace event which delivered a Digital government; Data Analytics and AI; Cyber, Privacy and Risk agenda. Our Break-out session discussed the importance of platform choice for AI projects. Following the digital marketplace event, we ran “lunch and learns” with the IBM Systems team, discussing AI use cases relevant to public sector.
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COMPANY EVENTS Concat Hamburg moved to new premises Numerous Concat employees as well as invited guests celebrated the opening of the new premises of the Concat branch in Hamburg on 21st February. Just like all other guests Dexter McGinnis and Tim Patronik, who honoured the celebration with their presence, were enthused about the new offices. Delicious snacks, burgers from the food truck and cold drinks guaranteed a cheerful atmosphere and there was a lot of talking and laughing. An all-round successful celebration.
Success story: eHealth initiative and DMEA in Berlin The DMEA, Europe’s largest event for the health IT industry, was a complete success this year: Around 40 representatives of hospitals and hospital groups informed themselves in detail about our services at our booth. The visitors perceived us as a provider of innovative solutions for the telematics infrastructure, focusing on the customer and providing competent, manufacturerindependent advice. The trade fair confirmed that we have a unique selling point in Germany with our telematics infrastructure as a service approach. Journalists from various specialist media talked to our experts about our offering and published articles about it.
Had a full schedule at DMEA: Michael Brockt, Ralf Woehlert, Olaf von Heyer, Nadja Stehle, Harald Kaemmerer, Bjoern Brockt (from left).
According to the German e-health law every office of a medical doctor, dentist or psychotherapist must be connected to the telematics infrastructure by 30th of June 2019. So far we have shipped more than 4,000 telematics bundles. A network of 270 certified partners is responsible for connecting the doctor’s medical office IT safely and securely to the telematics data center. As part of our strategic approach to address hospitals we have entered into a cooperation with NEXUS AG, a provider of hospital information systems (HIS). The aim is to connect hospitals to the digital healthcare network Meridian ECHO
Silke Engel and her team presented Concat-as-a-Service for hospitals
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COMPANY EVENTS Success story: eHealth initiative and DMEA in Berlin (continued) so they can benefit from future applications when they become available. At the HPE booth, Silke Engel and her team presented VDI as a Service and Virtual Datacenter as a Service (VDC) for the digital clinic workstation. Both are based on solutions from Hewlett Packard Enterprise and VMware and provide secure, mobile endpoint access for physicians, nurses and administrators. VDI as a service has been in use by BMW since two years.
MIT US There are still reasons to consider on premise data centers, along with discussions around cloud. In many cases a hybrid solution may make sense. In addition PowerAI and big data running on POWER9 has a very compelling story when competing against Intel solutions. Rob McNelly and Samir Yaghmour were in attendance at IBM’s Technical University in Atlanta, Georgia in May. The IBM technical university is a great forum to deepen relationships with IBM experts worldwide and get deep dive education. “It is energizing to be surrounded by others in the industry to get their insights and perspectives,” said Rob. “It is also a great opportunity to interact face to face with Meridian IT employees that I do not see regularly.” Rob and Samir will go over the slides from the conference, and practice what they learned in the lab to be prepared for customer engagements. It was nice to learn that Rob is on the team that writes the POWER9 and AIX certifications, and receives them when they get released. He is “at the ready,” to do what needs to be done to maintain certification status for Meridian. Thanks Rob!!
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COMPANY EVENTS MITA STARTS THE NEW YEAR BY SUPPORTING CHILDREN Senior members of MITA and clients attended the 2019 Emerald Ball on Saturday May 25. This is the 2nd year MITA have sponsored a table for this event. The Emerald Ball is an annual event that raises much needed funds for Kids Rehab at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. Celebrating its 20th anniversary, over a thousand guests packed the International Convention Centre in Sydney to raise $1M on the night for the kids rehab unit.
The Emerald Ball https://emeraldball.org.au/default.aspx
It is a wonderful cause which MITA will continue sponsoring for years to come.
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JUBILEES Concat AG 25 years: Sonia Becher, October 1st 20 years: Frank Geyer, April 1st Dirk Weise, May 1st Miranda Griep, August 1st
10 years: Alexander Paschen, January 1st Olga Habiger, April 1st Petra Keller, May 1st Frank Reichhart, May 1st Maik Zimmer, July 15th Ralf Wöhlert, July 16th Johann Tomaschek, October 1st Ramazan Altintas, October 5th Wadim Wassiljew, December 1st Christopher Pons, December 7th
MITA 20-Year Service Award Matt Powell – Senior Sales Executive Jean Briddick – Senior Finance Officer Paul Warren – Project Manager Dan Milman – Senior Systems Engineer
Congratulations!
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PROMOTIONS MIT US Promotions •
Mark Grimmer to Senior Unified Communications Engineer focusing on MidMarket solutions for both Professional and Managed Services for Avaya UC. Mark has shown through his dedication to Meridian IT, his achievements in various Avaya certifications and his unwavering commitment to servicing our customers, that we are happy to promote Mark to the Senior level.
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Gary Fronczak to Senior Systems Designer focusing on Enterprise solutions for Professional Services engagements for Avaya UC. Gary has also shows through his dedication to Meridian IT, his technical ability to work with each customer to customize their solution that works best for their business, him becoming the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the Avaya tool Provision and his attentiveness to servicing our customers, that we are happy to promote Gary to the Senior level.
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Karyn Falk to Director, Service Operations. Karyn brings great leadership skills and a great deal of knowledge and understanding of Service Operations. Karyn has been with Meridian for nearly 6 years. Karyn will be involved in a variety of operational responsibilities with a focus in Services and working closely with the PMO and Sales Support Teams to enhance our process and to continue to bring a high level of support to the Sales and Engineering Teams. Karen reports to Andrew Daunora.
KUDOS
Subject: Fw: Shambaugh - Service Call # 22473 - ASSIGNED Hi Paula, Fred is doing a great job for Shambaugh/EMCOR, just thought you’d want to know. Mike Reilly Network Administrator Shambaugh & Son, LP an EMCOR Company
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KUDOS
To: Mike Stisser (MIT) Subject: Avery Sudol Mike, I just wanted to tell you this person is GOLD!!! Do not ever lose her. She found out our issue with CMS R18 ACD link going down is a matter of 30 minutes where we worked with APS for over a month now. This makes Meridian IT look great to iQor as well! Just thought I would give my feedback, please forward to her and her manager as well! Thanks, Scott Hogg Scott Hogg Director, IT Telephony Ops | Arch
To: Mike Stisser Cc: Kristy Sholett (MIT); Arif Mustafa Subject: AAEP Training Importance: High Mike / Kristy, I just wanted to pass along some good news for you and your team. I have had a lot of great feedback from my team on the AAEP training the George gave last week. Very thorough, specific and was exactly what we were looking for as a starting point. I am not sure who George reports to, but please pass along. Thanks, Shawn Mitchell | Sr. Manager Voice Services, North America HGS Canada Inc.
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The Meridian Store is officially open for business!
With In-Stock or On-Demand items, this is your one stop shop where you can purchase items for yourself or your customers with easy delivery options. Check out our store at:
https://www.meridianmerch.com/
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