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SolarWinds Launches "Big Hairy Sweepstakes"

SolarWinds launched the "Big Hairy Sweepstakes," a Facebook-based contest in which IT pros vote on four short videos of the most obnoxious help desk stories for a chance to win an enormous beastly wall cling to guard the help desk from more ridiculous queries.

From April 17 to May 3, IT pros can log on to the Facebook contest page and cast their votes for one of four detestable characters that bother their IT help desk manager with zany issues.

Choose from:

- The Know-It-All - Have you ever had a user think he knows more than you? The nerve!

- The Paranoid User - Everyone is out to get this guy and only you can stop them!

- The Horror Story - We're sure you've seen some disgusting things on the job...

- The Boss' Son - When you have to stop everything important and deal with this guy.

Brought to you from the geeky minds of SolarWinds, this contest chronicles characters that seemingly every IT help desk has had to deal with at one time or another. As quirky as some of the end-users above are, all are inspired by actual help desk tickets.

Sweepstakes voters will be entered to win one of eight monstrous, wild-eyed wall clings and will be announced on the SolarWinds Facebook page May 6. Participants must be legal residents of the United States to be entered to win in this sweepstakes.

Related Links:

Find out more about the Big Hairy Sweepstakes

Image removed.

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SolarWinds Launches "Big Hairy Sweepstakes"

SolarWinds launched the "Big Hairy Sweepstakes," a Facebook-based contest in which IT pros vote on four short videos of the most obnoxious help desk stories for a chance to win an enormous beastly wall cling to guard the help desk from more ridiculous queries.

From April 17 to May 3, IT pros can log on to the Facebook contest page and cast their votes for one of four detestable characters that bother their IT help desk manager with zany issues.

Choose from:

- The Know-It-All - Have you ever had a user think he knows more than you? The nerve!

- The Paranoid User - Everyone is out to get this guy and only you can stop them!

- The Horror Story - We're sure you've seen some disgusting things on the job...

- The Boss' Son - When you have to stop everything important and deal with this guy.

Brought to you from the geeky minds of SolarWinds, this contest chronicles characters that seemingly every IT help desk has had to deal with at one time or another. As quirky as some of the end-users above are, all are inspired by actual help desk tickets.

Sweepstakes voters will be entered to win one of eight monstrous, wild-eyed wall clings and will be announced on the SolarWinds Facebook page May 6. Participants must be legal residents of the United States to be entered to win in this sweepstakes.

Related Links:

Find out more about the Big Hairy Sweepstakes

Image removed.

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Regardless of their scale, business decisions often take time, effort, and a lot of back-and-forth discussion to reach any sort of actionable conclusion ... Any means of streamlining this process and getting from complex problems to optimal solutions more efficiently and reliably is key. How can organizations optimize their decision-making to save time and reduce excess effort from those involved? ...

As enterprises accelerate their cloud adoption strategies, CIOs are routinely exceeding their cloud budgets — a concern that's about to face additional pressure from an unexpected direction: uncertainty over semiconductor tariffs. The CIO Cloud Trends Survey & Report from Azul reveals the extent continued cloud investment despite cost overruns, and how organizations are attempting to bring spending under control ...

Image
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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...