August 06, 2014

One Click to Disaster Recovery
Quorum says that the system is secure with all data transferred from the appliance to the disaster recovery cloud going through a 128bit advanced encryption standard (AES) session over a 256bit AES virtual private network tunnel that directly connects the Cloud to the local appliance. There is a dedicated firewall to isolate each virtual network. Moreover, with more than a nod to the retail businesses it hopes to attract, Quorum is Payment Card Industry (PCI) certified, meaning that in the event of a failure all confidential financial information, such as credit card details, is handled in a fully PCI-compliant way.


The antidote to shadow IT: Trust and transparency
Making the situation worse, most IT departments do a poor job of explaining to users what enrolling a device in an enterprise mobile management (EMM) solution means -- they don't clearly explain how they can set restrictions, monitor the device and enterprise assets on it, and wipe some or all data from the device. (Sometimes they're deliberately vague so they don't have to explain how limited those capabilities actually are.) Even when policy documents and guides are explicit about what control and access employees are giving, many users don't trust them. So it's easy to see why surveys find most users are reluctant to hand over control of a personal device to IT, or to accept a device that they're told to treat as their own under the CYOD


Optimize Your Virtual Environment with Software-Defined Storage Approach
With flash storage technology becoming more prevalent and cost-effective, a new approach to consider in virtualized environments is software-defined storage, which employs software as a means for controlling data center storage. In the coming year, current flash-based storage systems are expected to transition to a software-defined approach, producing a new landscape that will change the industry permanently. A software-defined storage tier has the flexibility to scale up or scale out easily as application and business needs dictate.


CIOs Cede Digital Transformation Ground To CMOs
Altimeter's "2014 State of Digital Transformation" report defined digital transformation as "the realignment of, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage digital customers at every touch point in the customer experience lifecycle." Some 88% of executives and digital strategists indicated that their company is undergoing a formal digital transformation effort this year, according to the report. But only one quarter said they mapped out the digital customer journey and have a clear understanding of new digital touch points.


The CIO and CMO Perspective on Big Data
CIOs can be a good check on the business value of the latest shiny big data tool and force CMOs to put the business outcome first. “Marketing is often used to take quick action and get quick results,” says Meyers of Biogen Idec. “Since much of this is still so new, and the technology is still so immature its important we focus on the handful of things that really matter and spending the time together to work through an experiment and scale it up to something that can be sustainable for the long-haul.”  “CMOs and marketing organizations need to hone their focus on both the business questions they need answered, and the decisions they want to inform, with analytics,” says Suzanne Kounkel, principal and leader of Deloitte Consulting’s customer transformation practice.


Why Data Should Be a Business Asset: The 1-10-100 Rule
The 1-10-100 rule can be applied to data quality challenges at various stages in the database lifecycle, since it illustrates the importance of maintaining a high standard of data quality continually rather than occasionally. The rule applied to data is as follows: Verifying the quality a record costs the business $1. This is known as the prevention cost; Cleansing and deduplicating a record costs the business $10. This is the correction cost; and Working with a record that’s never cleansed costs $100. This is the failure cost. ... Data quality is not a problem that can be tackled once and forgotten, and tackling it soon and often is better than late or not at all.


Blackrock: measuring risk in a datacentre
In engineering risk terms, at first glance Blackrock appears to deliver fairly standard resilience. As a minimum standard Tracy says it offers "n+1" resiliency. “We generally have two independent power trains which have their own generators and UPS. Our independent emergency generator and UPS can handle half of the load out on the A and B cord. We could lose an entire generator line and still have ample cover to run the full operation,” he says. After the company bought Barclays Capital in 2010 it had 28 datacentres around the world. Then it began a migration strategy to move to a single platform. Today BlackRock has 11 datacentres and the plan is to get that down to six or eight.


Cybersecurity should be professionalized
"There were a lot of self-described doctors, but no standards," she said. "We need some kind of focal point to gather around to foster minimum, basic standards and frameworks so people have a way to navigate the cybersecurity field." Currently, it is difficult to determine the actual skills and abilities of professionals based on their education or certification credentials, she said. It is even harder to map those skills to real-world job requirements, she said. "There's nothing that prioritizes different educational programs. There are no standards across different specialties. There is no single organization that can take ownership of this field" as the AMA and the American Bar Association do, Spidalieri said.


Transition tips for new leaders
A leadership transition is one of the most important yet underappreciated aspects of a new leader’s experience. It helps to frame the new leader’s role and the relationship that he develops with his team. If managed well, such transitions can make all the difference in promoting acceptance from within the ranks, and allowing the new leader the time and patience necessary to get acclimated and begin to build equity. One of the most successful transitions on record occurred in antiquity.


The Impact of Personalized BI
The biggest challenge in BI is the volume of data that is accessible. When faced with a comprehensive body of data from multiple overarching business systems, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Many leaders use BI as the foundation for reporting, pulling vast amounts of data from disparate systems to create multipage reports that are never actually analyzed. By personalizing your BI, you can streamline the reporting process and create effective, meaningful analytics that help you reach your goals.


Leading a Culture of Effective Testing
Once a team of individuals are given the responsibility to develop, test and support a system, we can either wait for them to come to the conclusion that manual verification isn't going to cut it, or we can avoid gambling and educate them. Making the leap to automated testing can take years without guidance, especially when individuals are overwhelmed with daily responsibilities. Once individuals buy into it, it will take years to become proficient. Most of this can be avoided by leveraging expertise to demonstrate the value.



Quote for the day:

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards" -- Vernon Sanders Law

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