Our areas of expertise

We cover the business needs, security and design of the following domains.

Nowadays security should be on everyone’s radar. The question is not whether you will be subject to an attack, but when. Prevention is better than cure, so companies should prepare themselves.

There are a lot of different areas to protect and a lot of security vendors/service providers are specialized in their specific domain. This leads to a disperse security landscape:

• Network security (e.g. Firewall, IDS/IPS, Network Access Control)
• Datacenter security (e.g. DNS, containers, storage, e-mail protection)
• Endpoint security (e.g. Antivirus, EDR)
• Data protection (e.g. DLP, PKI, encryption)
• Cloud security (e.g. CASB, WAF)
• Risk & compliance
• Application security
• Identity management (IAM, PAM)
• IoT/OT control systems
• Security operations (e.g. SIEM/SOC/MDR, vulnerability mgt., incident management and response)

It is not always easy to determine what is really needed for your company to get the best results and which technologies to choose. Tam Tam Consulting has the experience to help you in this journey by creating transparency in your current environment, analyse the as-is, identify the gaps and define the steps to take to get to the desired end-state, this all underpinned with an authentic and proven methodology.

When we talk about strategy, we actually talk about a smart plan moving forward.
Taking into account the current reality, but moreover anticipating on all know and probably unknown elements of the next coming years.
In our daily jobs, most companies are working hard to get things done and hardly not get to the strategy part.
BUT, having a full funded plan in place is key to be successful, avoid wrong investments and use the already limited resources wise.

Tam Tam Consulting has a long track of helping companies in an efficient and effective way to conduct this so important plan. The methodology is based on experience, market knowledge, the DNA of the customer, can do mentality and positive interaction with the companies team. The result is a “ready to execute” plan, combined, if desired with business cases, risk assessment and “step by step” implementation plan. All-in line with your needs and desired outcome.

The term ‘SASE’ (Secure Access Service Edge) was first introduced by Gartner in 2019 and aims to combine networking and network security, delivered as a cloud service. It is not new technology, but rather a framework that try to combine different components in a consolidated, unified solution. Typical components of a SASE solution are SD-WAN and underlying networking features, security components like CASB, Firewall as a service, Secure Web Gateway (SWG) and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) to replace traditional VPN’s. Some vendors  focus only on the security part and partner with a SD-WAN vendor to have a complete solution. In that case we call it Secure Service Edge (SSE).

There is a lot of marketing hype around SASE. A lot of vendors claim to have a full SASE solution, where in practice, these solutions are built on different components from acquisitions, and not that well integrated as they claim.

An important question to ask yourself is whether to go for one solution from one vendor or choose to build a ‘best-of-breed’ solution with some extra effort to integrate them together. There is no unique answer to this question. All depends on the current state of the network and network security landscape and the desired end-state.

Tam Tam Consulting has a broad expertise in both networking and network security, and has a good view on market players and their capabilities, and can help you in your journey to a future proof solution.

We do see a strong evolution in the world of Wide Area Networks (WAN). Software-Defined is becoming the new normal as companies are looking for solutions that offer them flexibility, agility and efficiency, combined with cost stabilisation or reduction. The move to cloud and the focus on end user experience (application availability and performance) are even putting more pressure on ICT environments to implement solutions like SD WAN.

However, it is important to make a choice based on your specific needs, the current market offerings and the maturity of the proposed solution. Starting from a clear (business) strategy which is then translated into the realism of an implemented solution guaranteeing the best end user experience for the future.

Tam Tam Consulting has many years of experience in the domain of WAN, on a technical, tactical and commercial level. On top of that, the real practical experience on SD WAN projects will bring your company the insurance ending up with a solution fit for purpose. This combined with a complete and readable contract providing the necessary flexibility to cover future market evolutions.

UCC
Unified Communication and Collaboration, a term with as many solutions as meanings. For Tam Tam Consulting UCC means:

• “a solution to handle all your communication, via phone, PC (voice & chat), smartphone, making use of any available network (voice, data, wired, wireless)” combined with
• “a solution to work in a team environment, exchanging documents, working on a document with a team, storing your project information…” combined with
• “a platform, in the cloud, on-premise, hybrid, that handles the different communication streams internally and externally.”

Needless to mention that it is necessary for every company to have a clear view on the existing environment in order to setup a plan to cover your end users’ needs today and in the future.

Typical projects in this domain are:

• Discovery sessions of end user needs
• Strategy and roadmap building
• Full sourcing track covering business requirements, technical requirements and future proof contracting
• UCC and office environment: guidance to make the best choice for your company

Voice
Fixed voice and related infrastructure, mobile voice and mobile data; more and more companies do see both topics as commodity services. However, reality is that many companies are still confronted with a large estate of “invisible” legacy infrastructure, different ways of handling voice, invoicing streams and no people and time available to manage operations, contracts and costs. Rethinking voice is for most companies a challenge (Fix-Mobile integration, Fix-WAN integration, fixed and mobile end points…)

Talking about mobile is talking about a multitude in offerings, cost models, confusing invoices and keeping your fleet under control. Assigning the correct bundle to the user’s “future” traffic pattern is a challenge where “out of bundle” traffic leads to higher costs. And when you combine this with the reality that you, as mobile manager, are responsible for the activation of the best suitable bundles, managing a migration towards BYOD or even worse, managing all devices from order to delivery yourself, you understand that voice is not really a commodity.

Tam Tam Consulting is helping companies with large, complex environments since 1999 with the optimization and day-to-day management of both fix and mobile environments. When you talk about one-time inventory and auditing, ongoing technology expense management, sourcing projects, rationalizations, mobile policy setup, guidance from current to full BYOD, … Tam Tam Consulting is your partner in realizing a controlled environment by implementing a solution fit for purpose.

The Local Area Network (LAN) has been seen for many years as ‘commodity’, with the only purpose to connect the company PC’s. This vision has strongly changed by introducing into the enterprise, amongst others, mobility, BYOD, HD videoconferencing, video surveillance and converged storage. Besides the wired access, wireless access via Wi-Fi to the corporate network is something that is considered as normal to the majority of the employees. They bring their devices into meetings and want to connect to their working files and e-mails. Also, external people visiting the companies find it very natural to get access to the internet to be able to connect to their presentation, which is stored on e.g. their OneDrive or Google Drive.

Together with the developments in the WAN area, we also see in the LAN more and more trends towards automation and software defined environments. To have a safe journey towards this new model, you can rely on the experience of Tam Tam Consulting to make your actual situation transparent, identify risks and potential gaps and define together your network of the future.

Monitoring is no longer a case of having a view on the network performance. Since many years the focus is more on the application availability as end user experience is key for a company valueing work efficiency and employees happiness.

Inventory of the key business and operational challenges and direct input of the team generated via interactive workshops, will bring valuable insights in order to create a realistic roadmap for the future.

As from there, a huge number of different suppliers offering all different solutions with a multitude of products will be available to offer you their services. It is key to make the right choices for your specific environment.

The Tam Tam Consulting methodology guarantees a smooth path from roadmap through selection process and implementation of a fully (managed) monitoring environment.

When we talk about mobility, we think about “people connected anywhere, anytime”. This forces companies to

• rethink their strategy; providing the necessary tools, devices and connectivity for example by means of a device agnostic approach
• setting out clear boundaries; access to company data, eligibility, defining a set of rules which crystallizes into a mobile policy

And not to forget, implementing the BYOD/CYOD (Choose Your Own Device) model right for your environment, and/or outsourcing the entire mobile handling requires detailed considerations with a multitude of stakeholders (HR, IT, Procurement, Legal, end users, …)

To conclude, mobility is a broad range of services and activities linked to communication anywhere, anytime, enabling your end users to work in the most efficient way in many different situations.

For companies not the easiest exercise, but our experience is that a first workshop can bring insights that help you defining a clear and realistic plan to tackle any kind of challenge in this domain.