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Cisco’s Storage Trap

Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds

Recent commentary from Barclays Capital analyst Jeff Kvaal has me wondering whether Cisco might push into the storage market. In turn, I’ve begun to think about a strategic drift at Cisco that has been apparent for the last few years. But let’s discuss Cisco and storage first, then consider the matter within a broader context. Risks, Rewards, and Precedents Obviously a move into storage would involve significant risks as well as potential rewards. Cisco would have to think carefully, as it presumably has done, about the likely consequences and implications of such a move. The stakes are high, and other parties — current competitors and partners alike — would not sit idly on their hands. Then again, Cisco has been down this road before, when it chose to start selling servers rather than relying on boxes from partners, such as HP and Dell. Today, of course, Cisco partners with EMC and NetApp for storage gear. Citing the precedent of Cisco’s server incursion, one could make t

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VMware CEO: We want to make you technologically hip

GigaOM

NEWS FLASH: Your company’s IT practices are archaic, and young, talented employees want nothing to do with you! While VMware (s vmw) CEO Paul Maritz didn’t come out and say exactly that, his keynote Tuesday morning at EMC World (s emc) did certainly did try to drive home that point. The “Facebook generation,” as Martiz called it, is post-PC and post-paper, and they want to experience information within the context in which they’re consuming it. And like it or not, they’re the future. They need applications that appeal to them and tools to help them develop applications how they want to. As he has explained before, the infrastructure software that pads VMware’s bottom line is critical to this vision, but it’s just an enabling technology for new applications. It needs to become “invisible.” That means automation like many enterprises have never experienced it — even VMware. Maritz shared a story (one he also shared at Stru

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Casting Light on Shadow IT and ID

Cloud Security

It’s not a new term or concept. You probably recognize that it’s happening within your own organization. Shadow IT is the appropriation and use of IT assets and applications without organizational approval. And it happens more than you know. Sally the sales rep gets a label template design application, Marco from HR downloads software that manages inbound resumes. Kelsey in marketing sings up for a WordPress page and social media accounts. All too often, employees are not going through corporate channels to get what they need to achieve their goals. And every time they do, the vulnerability cracks in your network widen. Now on top of the obvious issues with unauthorized applications is the creation of Shadow Identities. For all of these applications there are user names and passwords. Across an enterprise that could mean thousands and thousands of identities. And, because some are even using their personal commercial mail accounts to create these new IDs, you now have your corpo

Destiny’s Child

Cryptocog

People ask us about “the cloud” all the time. How do you define it? How can we use it in our small business? Since the World Wide Web went live in 1990 the cloud has been gathering. The cloud consists of IT resources that reside on the internet. You access those resources through any browser rather than a request to your IT person or local file server onsite. In-effect, the cloud is a planetary-scale IT department available to anyone with an internet connection and a browser on any laptop, tablet, or smartphone. Today everyone can have their very own IT department that takes care of offsite backup, storage, security, anti-virus, and applications. Consider WordPress. Bloggers on WordPress.com need only be concerned with posting and commenting. Backups, application upgrades, server maintenance, content management, database configuration, page layout, design, and much more are provided as a cloud service—for free (slightly more than free if you want your own domain name)

Datahero aims to turn us all into analytics stars

GigaOM

Cloud to beat Olympic business disruption

netmetix

How to deploy Vaadin applications to Jelastic cloud

Jelastic — Rock-Solid Java in the Cloud, Java Server Hosting, Java Cloud Computing

Benefits of the Financial Crises

inlab

One Secret for Success in Cloud Computing – Fewer Choices

Boundaryless Marketing by Paul Barsch

There’s a lot of legacy ERP out there, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon

Cooper Mann Consulting Group

What is Cloud Computing Anyway?

ParvaSemina

Leading IT staffing firm TEKsystems has released the results of their new IT survey. Their Q2 2012 survey of over 1,500 IT leaders, mostly IT managers and directors (77 percent) and IT executives (23 Percent) has found that while 78 percent of IT leaders define the cloud as including web services, 70 percent report that it includes SaaS, 62 percent say it can also refer to external application hosting, and 59 percent feel that it can also refer to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). There seems to be some confusion, or at least ambiguity, as to what cloud computing actually is. “The dream of cloud computing comes from the hopes of creating a virtual mainframe where everyone and everything can communicate together from anywhere,” says TEKsystems Global Services Vice President, Randy Verdino. “It sounds simple enough, but ambiguity occurs when you start looking at public vs. private clouds, best data storage practices, allocating computing resources to meet application demand and support

Oversight Systems Focuses on Saving Money and Preventing Fraud

I recently spoke with Oversight Systems, an operational intelligence analytics company that uses predictive analytics and optimization to help companies save money, reduce the risk of loss and fraud, and reinforce corporate governance and compliance efforts. Ventana Research views operational intelligence as an emerging technology with the potential for a high return on investment. By continuously monitoring activities in a company’s IT systems, Oversight’s Web-based software continuously, consistently and objectively monitors all business processes to identifies opportunities to save money, cut fraud, minimize risk and provide real-time controls to support governance. Today, corporations generate large amounts of operational data that should be monitored as part of routine management oversight. These data sets provide foundational intelligence that can be used to automatically spot deviations that require management attention. The variations may be specific values that diverge from th

Oversight Systems Focuses on Saving Money and Preventing Fraud

I recently spoke with Oversight Systems, an operational intelligence analytics company that uses predictive analytics and optimization to help companies save money, reduce the risk of loss and fraud, and reinforce corporate governance and compliance efforts. Ventana Research views operational intelligence as an emerging technology with the potential for a high return on investment. By continuously monitoring activities in a company’s IT systems, Oversight’s Web-based software continuously, consistently and objectively monitors all business processes to identifies opportunities to save money, cut fraud, minimize risk and provide real-time controls to support governance. Today, corporations generate large amounts of operational data that should be monitored as part of routine management oversight. These data sets provide foundational intelligence that can be used to automatically spot deviations that require management attention. The variations may be specific values that diverge from th

Echopass Demonstrates Value of Contact Center in the Cloud

Our benchmark research into the contact center in the cloud shows that almost all companies now support multiple communication channels to engage with customers. Most of them also involve multiple business units in handling inbound and outbound interactions. More companies now support at-home agents, and contact centers are becoming more distributed. These scenarios are a good fit for cloud-based systems, and the research finds that the top three ways organizations said they can meet these challenges, and thus improve the way interactions are handled, are to improve training and coaching, adopt applications in the cloud and adopt communications in the cloud. It also shows that organizations have high expectations of cloud-based systems, expecting them to require less capital expenditure, facilitate innovation in interaction handling, lessen demand on in-house resources, including IT and better support home-based agents. The research shows as well that organizations have reservations ab

Confused about the cloud?

DigitalConfetti

For the last live episode of DelCor Social Media Sweet Spot I decided to explore that fuzzy and oh-so-popular term, “The Cloud.” There are a ton of misconceptions out there about what a cloud is and can/can’t do, so I met with Partner and Vice President of DelCor, Brian Sheehan to discuss in advance of the live show. My DelCor Sweet Spot guest later that week was Laurence Hart, CIO, The Global Community of Information Professionals (AIIM), and master tweeter @Piewords. While he wouldn’t let me in on the secret story behind his Twitter handle, he did answer a wide range of questions surrounding cloud computing. If you can’t view the Sweet Spot interview with Laurence (above), please just follow this link.

Windows 8 RP Today? (And Other Items of Interest..)

Tech - for Everyone

Folks, here are a few news items worthy of your consideration.. * Microsoft’s Windows 8 Release Preview looks to hit on May 31 (that’s today..) “Microsoft may be set to deliver the near-final release preview of Windows 8 to testers as early as May 31, according to an accidentally posted blog entry.” Read more.. * Free Wi-Fi could boost Ultrabooks in business laptop market “Intel could one-up Apple in the business laptop market thanks to free Wi-Fi on Ultrabooks and tablets.” Read more.. * Cloud Computing: do you have a clue? “Big systems vendors are spreading misconceptions about the cloud because it helps them sell more kit.¹ Here’s a rundown of some of their tactics” Read more.. * RIM’s impending collapse: By the numbers “RIM is in dire straits. This week it announced it would suffer an operating loss and suspended its shares on the Nasdaq. Here’s what you need to know before market open.” Read more.. * App

Enterprise applications in the cloud

Virtualized Geek

Networkworld.com has a pretty interesting article on the topic of acceptance of cloud computing for enterprise applications. The article highlights a Gartner research note that indicates %73 percent of the respondents greatest concern dealt with security in the cloud. I’m not personally concerned with security as I’ve seen firsthand the infrastructure and controls these providers have. I tend to agree more with David Goodman of Unisys that was quoted in the article that the issue is surrounding more of the nature of enterprise applications. For startups building applications on AWS or any cloud provider makes financial since. However, if you are an enterprise with an existing data center and no capacity issues what’s the motivation to moving the application to the cloud? These applications are resource intensive and therefore expensive to host in a public cloud. I’ve done the exercise of designing a cloud hosted SharePoint environment for an organization that already has a datacen

What Makes the Cloud a Cloud?

vikram's blog

While talking to CxOs at a few medium to large enterprises about cloud, I was pleasantly surprised to see the change in the content of their concerns and queries over the last 2 years. Two years ago, the two most common questions I had to address were: (i) what is this “cloud” business? Isn’t that marketing jargon for hosting? And, (ii) what about the security of my data? But a year later, I saw a shift happening. It is no longer about what is the cloud, but more about what can I effectively do with the cloud. The two most common queries I get today are: (i) is the cloud worth it for me? What about my existing investments (read hardware, software licenses or in-house apps)? And, (ii) How will I manage cloud based apps? Won’t this make my environment more complex? This shift in concerns tells me that the market has matured considerably and enterprises have evolved from being skeptics to adopters. But with the availability of a range of solutions and offerings under the cloud umbrella, w

Capacitas exhibiting at Cloud Computing World Forum

Capacitas's Blog

Following our well-received Strategy Briefing on Cloud Computing, Capacitas will be exhibiting at the Cloud Computing World Forum on the 12th and 13th of June at Earls Court, London. If you’re planning to attend then please come along to visit us at our stand, 1370, where we will be available to discuss Cloud Computing, its advantages and disadvantages.