Converged Infrastructure Bets Are In: Where Are They Paying Off?
"These conversations have shifted to one that optimizes the infrastructure and creates a much more simple-to-manage, simple-to-scale-up, and simple-to-scale-out architecture and platform," Flowers said. ... "Fewer moving parts and fewer steps equals fewer administrators to manage the platform," he said. "Streamlining the administrative and operational costs for customers allows those extra administrators to focus their attention on adding additional value to the business with other IT initiatives that simply fell to the wayside before."
SSNs Exposed In Most Data Breaches In California
"If encryption had been used, over 1.4 million Californians would not have had their information put at risk in 2012," Harris said. "It is my strong recommendation that companies and agencies implement encryption as a basic protection and reasonable security measure to help them meet their obligation to safeguard personal information entrusted to them."
EMC Bets on Flash Storage with ScaleIO Buy
"The addition of ScaleIO to our portfolio will enable EMC customers to build protected, shared storage pools from in-server direct-attached storage (DAS), such as XtremSF PCie Flash cards -- while not limiting them to any storage media type or form factor," wrote Zahid Hussain, senior vice president and general manager for EMC Flash Products Division, in a blog post announcing the pending acquisition.
Executive Report: Business Enterprise Architecture
This Executive Report discusses a new way of looking at enterprise architecture that encompasses both advanced and traditional design concepts. The EA framework that we propose here is called BEAM, short for Business Enterprise Architecture Modeling. ... More and more organizations are extracting value from their EA programs at a variety of levels. These organizations are increasingly aware of how critical enterprise architecture is to their enterprises over both the short and long term.
ACG HotSeat with Sanjeev Mervana from Cisco on Core Router
The trend has been to make the edge router "smart" and the core router "dumb and fast." Does this trend still hold true today? How are service providers using routers? Ray Mota of ACG Research and Sanjeev Mervana of Cisco Systems, discuss what defines core routers from edge routers, the architecture requirements of core, drivers for these requirements, forwarding and control planes, service substantiation and what makes both Cisco's and Juniper's products true core routers.
Is Quantum Computing Practical?
Of course, it’s easy enough to say the costs of such a quantum computer will fall over time, and advances in technology will enable smaller and more power-conscious models. But it’s just as easy to claim that the need for cryogenics and problems with decoherence may never be overcome in an economically feasible manner. Money is a greater driver of technological development than bare physical possibility. A flying car is conceivable (and likely possible, technologically), but the economics of development and marketing make it a practical impossibility.
Intercloud Architecture for Interoperability and Integration
The report briefly presents the architectural framework for cloud based infrastructure services provisioned on-demand being developed by authors that can be used as a basis for building multilayer cloud services integration framework that can allow optimised provisioning of both computing, storage and networking resources. The proposed architecture is intended to provide a conceptual model for developing Intercloud middleware and in this way will facilitate clouds interoperability and integration.
Are You Data Driven? Take a Hard Look in the Mirror
Data-driven companies work to drive decision-making to the lowest possible level. One executive I spoke to described how he thought about it this way: "My goal is to make six decisions a year. Of course that means I have to pick the six most important things to decide on and that I make sure those who report to me have the data, and the confidence, they need to make the others." Pushing decision-making down frees up senior time for the most important decisions.
Disruptive Leadership: Bowdoin College CIO Mitch Davis
The way he took a different tack on every issue was what caught my attention the most. While others sorted through the complexities of bring-your-own-device policies and supporting a variety of mobile operating systems, for example, he suggested it was far simpler to just provide iPads. He dismissed talk about the disruptive potential of massive open online courses as overblown, telling me later that MOOCs are "just an add-on to things we have been doing in the past."
Agile Concept of the Week: Retrospective
One common problem I notice with teams is that they’re unwilling to challenge what they perceive as organizational requirements outside of their control, and that’s where executive sponsorship of an agile transformation is invaluable. If “we’ve always produced a detailed design specification” even though nobody really uses it, having an executive on your side to say “we’re not doing it any more” helps tremendously.
Quote for the day:
"Time is our most valuable asset, yet we tend to waste it, kill it, and spend it rather than invest it." -- Jim Rohn
"These conversations have shifted to one that optimizes the infrastructure and creates a much more simple-to-manage, simple-to-scale-up, and simple-to-scale-out architecture and platform," Flowers said. ... "Fewer moving parts and fewer steps equals fewer administrators to manage the platform," he said. "Streamlining the administrative and operational costs for customers allows those extra administrators to focus their attention on adding additional value to the business with other IT initiatives that simply fell to the wayside before."
SSNs Exposed In Most Data Breaches In California
"If encryption had been used, over 1.4 million Californians would not have had their information put at risk in 2012," Harris said. "It is my strong recommendation that companies and agencies implement encryption as a basic protection and reasonable security measure to help them meet their obligation to safeguard personal information entrusted to them."
EMC Bets on Flash Storage with ScaleIO Buy
"The addition of ScaleIO to our portfolio will enable EMC customers to build protected, shared storage pools from in-server direct-attached storage (DAS), such as XtremSF PCie Flash cards -- while not limiting them to any storage media type or form factor," wrote Zahid Hussain, senior vice president and general manager for EMC Flash Products Division, in a blog post announcing the pending acquisition.
Executive Report: Business Enterprise Architecture
This Executive Report discusses a new way of looking at enterprise architecture that encompasses both advanced and traditional design concepts. The EA framework that we propose here is called BEAM, short for Business Enterprise Architecture Modeling. ... More and more organizations are extracting value from their EA programs at a variety of levels. These organizations are increasingly aware of how critical enterprise architecture is to their enterprises over both the short and long term.
ACG HotSeat with Sanjeev Mervana from Cisco on Core Router
The trend has been to make the edge router "smart" and the core router "dumb and fast." Does this trend still hold true today? How are service providers using routers? Ray Mota of ACG Research and Sanjeev Mervana of Cisco Systems, discuss what defines core routers from edge routers, the architecture requirements of core, drivers for these requirements, forwarding and control planes, service substantiation and what makes both Cisco's and Juniper's products true core routers.
Is Quantum Computing Practical?
Of course, it’s easy enough to say the costs of such a quantum computer will fall over time, and advances in technology will enable smaller and more power-conscious models. But it’s just as easy to claim that the need for cryogenics and problems with decoherence may never be overcome in an economically feasible manner. Money is a greater driver of technological development than bare physical possibility. A flying car is conceivable (and likely possible, technologically), but the economics of development and marketing make it a practical impossibility.
Intercloud Architecture for Interoperability and Integration
The report briefly presents the architectural framework for cloud based infrastructure services provisioned on-demand being developed by authors that can be used as a basis for building multilayer cloud services integration framework that can allow optimised provisioning of both computing, storage and networking resources. The proposed architecture is intended to provide a conceptual model for developing Intercloud middleware and in this way will facilitate clouds interoperability and integration.
Are You Data Driven? Take a Hard Look in the Mirror
Data-driven companies work to drive decision-making to the lowest possible level. One executive I spoke to described how he thought about it this way: "My goal is to make six decisions a year. Of course that means I have to pick the six most important things to decide on and that I make sure those who report to me have the data, and the confidence, they need to make the others." Pushing decision-making down frees up senior time for the most important decisions.
Disruptive Leadership: Bowdoin College CIO Mitch Davis
The way he took a different tack on every issue was what caught my attention the most. While others sorted through the complexities of bring-your-own-device policies and supporting a variety of mobile operating systems, for example, he suggested it was far simpler to just provide iPads. He dismissed talk about the disruptive potential of massive open online courses as overblown, telling me later that MOOCs are "just an add-on to things we have been doing in the past."
Agile Concept of the Week: Retrospective
One common problem I notice with teams is that they’re unwilling to challenge what they perceive as organizational requirements outside of their control, and that’s where executive sponsorship of an agile transformation is invaluable. If “we’ve always produced a detailed design specification” even though nobody really uses it, having an executive on your side to say “we’re not doing it any more” helps tremendously.
Quote for the day:
"Time is our most valuable asset, yet we tend to waste it, kill it, and spend it rather than invest it." -- Jim Rohn
