Blogs
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Arthur Cole
Data center and networking architecture to keep your data safe and moving
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Mainframes Warming Up to the Cloud
If, as the saying goes, what is old is new again, what does the future hold for the mainframe? Quite a lot, actually, considering everything we hold dear in virtual environments and the cloud — scalability, flexibility, logical partitioning — has been comfortably ensconced in big iron for decades. ...More >
Susan HallCharting Your IT Career
“So if you're a manager who can't offer more money, training might be the lure to keep your staff invested in your company. Or flexibility.”
All Blogs
Expert tech insight and advice for small businesses with big goals
05.23.12
How to Utilize the Cloud in Your SMB and Mind the Pitfalls
I've written a large number of blogs about cloud computing in the context of small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) over the last two years. While the reliability and acceptance of the cloud have certainly evolved over the past two years as the industry matured, many of the facts that were relevant... More >
5/21/2012 11:11:00 AM
The Dangers of BYOD in Small Businesses
Much has been said about the security risks inherent to the BYOD (bring your own device) trend. What is often not spoken about though, are the dangers that BYOD could bring about. This lack of information on possible attack vectors makes it difficult for some organizations to convince executives and... More >
Turning knowledge into advancement
05.23.12
IT Unemployment Levels Low, Poaching Stakes High
One network engineer told me about being hounded by recruiters when she was in the job market — people who wouldn't respect that she wouldn't talk to them while driving on the freeway and other irritations. Though she was annoyed, turns out their job was extraordinarily difficult. Data from the... More >
5/22/2012 12:01:00 PM
San Diego Shines as Tech Job Market
Last year, I wrote about tech employers in San Diego whining that they couldn't find the tech talent they need because the city's considered more of a beach town "than Silicon Valley South." Like being a beach town is a bad thing. The takeaway was that San Diego's a great place if you're in the... More >
The real truth about technology and IT
05.21.12
EMC World 2012: The Galactic Edge
I’m at the EMC World 2012 conference this week and I am writing this during the keynote. The opening visual was the launch of the EMC space ship into the galaxy of data and opportunity. The core message the company is driving, given its first point, is that EMC has grown massively over the last... More >
5/17/2012 3:22:00 PM
BMC: Hostile Takeover Defense and Mega Trend
BMC, one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world, just got a hostile takeover warning this week after Elliott Associates moved to take over its board and package the company for sale. BMC immediately adopted a poison pill, hostile takeover defense and moved to block the takeover.... More >
Begin with business processes and then progress into leading-edge technologies
05.21.12
Cattle, Fraud and Integration: Big Data for the Rest of Us
When was the last time you saw a cloud offering based on heads of cattle served? Never, right? That’s because, by and large, technology doesn’t target farms. Enter Farmeron — a SaaS solution that lets farmers track all types of information about the farm’s performance. It targets large, modern... More >
5/15/2012 1:04:00 PM
IT Leaders: Time to Study Up on Real-Time Data Integration
Companies are starting to really explore the business use for real-time data integration. The most recent TDWI study (2011) on data integration found IT leaders rated real-time fourth in a list of possible reasons for replacing an existing data integration platform. Over the next two years (three... More >
The more sensitive it is, the more it warrants discussion
05.22.12
How Nasscom Is Harming the Indian IT Industry
The Indian IT trade association Nasscom exists to advance the interests of Indian IT companies and, by extension, those of Indian IT workers. In truth, this organization is setting those companies and workers up for failure in the United States, the market on which they’ve become so dependent for... More >
5/14/2012 9:01:00 PM
Ex-Microworkz CEO Changed His Name, but Not His Deception
In my previous post, “Former CEO of the Failed Microworkz Has Failed to Learn the Lesson of Truthfulness,” I wrote about Richard Keith Latman and his new book, “The Good Fail: Entrepreneurial Lessons from the Rise and Fall of Microworkz.” That post, written from my standpoint as a partner in QVerity,... More >
Companies’ communications strategies must be agile in a rapidly evolving market
05.23.12
The Cable Industry Turns up the Heat
The movers and shakers at The Cable Show 2012, which wrapped up today in Boston, clearly sought to take the initiative from upstarts that had spent the better part of the past decade sniping away at its business. Broadband Technology Report offered comprehensive coverage of the industry's major... More >
5/21/2012 8:20:00 AM
Gartner: Apple, Samsung Score in First Quarter
Gartner’s numbers on mobile phones were released last week. The firm outlined a quarter that could have been better. Overall device sales of 419.1 million represented a 2 percent decline compared to the first quarter of last year. Samsung and Apple had good quarters compared to the year-ago... More >
Securing your data and network, inside and outside the perimeter
05.23.12
McAfee Report Finds Rise in Malware Across Platforms
Think you are using a platform that is safe from malware? You may want to think again. McAfee just released its Threats Report: First Quarter 2012, and its primary finding is an increase in malware across all platforms. Malware to PCs is at its highest level in years. Android is a major target,... More >
5/17/2012 10:06:00 AM
Are Women More at Risk for Spear Phishing Attacks on Social Media?
I was browsing through some headlines and articles on cybersecurity issues, and this one from UPI jumped out at me: "Ladies at higher risk for social media 'spear phishing'." After reading the article, I’m still not exactly sure what puts women more at risk than men, but I have a good guess. While... More >
Revealing the Business Value of Innovation
05.23.12
VMware Acquisition Boosts Intelligent Desktop Virtualization
The difference between VDI and intelligent desktop virtualization (IDV) is that the latter is a Type 1 implementation of a hypervisor on the client, sometimes known as client-hosted virtualization. VDI, in contrast, hosts the desktop environment on top of a virtual machine on a server. Type 1... More >
5/22/2012 12:23:00 PM
Analytics Comes to Project Management
The trouble with project management software is that while these applications help people keep track of what tasks need to be done, they don’t really help people manage the overall project. This is because historically there has been no real ability to do any analysis in terms of what impact any... More >
From regulatory compliance to corporate governance structure, everyone is involved
05.07.12
Moving Past Rules Enforcement in Your Compliance Culture
The problem with focusing intensely on rules enforcement is that you tend to develop a culture where folks comply only out of fear, not because it’s in everyone’s best interest. As Saint Paul advises, “the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.” Of course, you... More >
5/3/2012 4:12:00 PM
Know Your Options for ITSM Adoption
Adoption of IT Services Management (ITSM) frameworks, particularly the sector bell cow, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), has probably never been as rapid or comprehensive as tech press coverage might lead the casual observer to believe. We say “probably” because, frankly, it’s next to impossible... More >
Alignment, staffing and culture are often more critical than software and apps
02.24.12
State of Cloud ERP: Small but Growing
Back in December I wrote a post about how SaaS was making inroads into the ERP market, citing studies from both Aberdeen Group and Forrester Research. It's hardly making huge inroads, however. As Panorama Consulting President Eric Kimberling revealed during a recent webinar, 58 percent of the... More >
1/17/2012 3:05:00 PM
BPM Is Key to Proactive CRM
As useful as business process management has been in helping companies improve and streamline their internal processes, I think it holds even more promise as a way for them to perform the same kind of magic on their customer-facing processes. Lots of experts seem to feel the same way. A few months... More >
05.22.12
How Nasscom Is Harming the Indian IT Industry
The Indian IT trade association Nasscom exists to advance the interests of Indian IT companies and, by extension, those of Indian IT workers. In truth, this organization is setting those companies and workers up for failure in the United States, the market on which they’ve become so dependent for... More >
05.21.12
Cattle, Fraud and Integration: Big Data for the Rest of Us
When was the last time you saw a cloud offering based on heads of cattle served? Never, right? That’s because, by and large, technology doesn’t target farms. Enter Farmeron — a SaaS solution that lets farmers track all types of information about the farm’s performance. It targets large, modern... More >
05.22.12
Analytics Comes to Project Management
The trouble with project management software is that while these applications help people keep track of what tasks need to be done, they don’t really help people manage the overall project. This is because historically there has been no real ability to do any analysis in terms of what impact any... More >
05.22.12
Mainframes Warming Up to the Cloud
If, as the saying goes, what is old is new again, what does the future hold for the mainframe? Quite a lot, actually, considering everything we hold dear in virtual environments and the cloud — scalability, flexibility, logical partitioning — has been comfortably ensconced in big iron for decades. ... More >
05.21.12
EMC World 2012: The Galactic Edge
I’m at the EMC World 2012 conference this week and I am writing this during the keynote. The opening visual was the launch of the EMC space ship into the galaxy of data and opportunity. The core message the company is driving, given its first point, is that EMC has grown massively over the last... More >
05.21.12
Managing Your Way Out of the Silo
It's probably nice to think of the coming virtual/cloud era as the end of duplication, inefficiency and performance bottlenecks. And maybe someday that will be the reality for many organizations, but for now there is still a fair amount of resource silos out there that must be redesigned into... More >
05.22.12
Setting up a Compliance Amnesty Program
The problem that most organizations have with insecure cloud services such as Dropbox.com is that not only is the data stored in these services at risk, there’s no easy way to get their data out of those services and into something more secure. With that issue in mind, the folks behind the open... More >
05.21.12
The Dangers of BYOD in Small Businesses
Much has been said about the security risks inherent to the BYOD (bring your own device) trend. What is often not spoken about though, are the dangers that BYOD could bring about. This lack of information on possible attack vectors makes it difficult for some organizations to convince executives and... More >
05.21.12
Making IT Process Automation More Accessible
The question facing many IT organizations at this point is not whether they should automate the delivery and management of IT services, but rather which ones and how many should they get started with. For the most part, IT automation has been the province of large enterprise organizations that had... More >
05.18.12
How Mobile Computing Will Transform the Way Organizations Work
Mobile computing is about to transform the way companies work at all levels. Instead of merely being a device that makes it convenient to access data while outside the office, mobile computing devices will soon be the preferred method for interacting with enterprise applications. The reason for... More >
05.22.12
San Diego Shines as Tech Job Market
Last year, I wrote about tech employers in San Diego whining that they couldn't find the tech talent they need because the city's considered more of a beach town "than Silicon Valley South." Like being a beach town is a bad thing. The takeaway was that San Diego's a great place if you're in the... More >
05.21.12
Making VDI Work for End Users
While IT organizations generally love the idea of centralizing desktop management, the fact remains that end users need to be convinced. From their perspective, technologies such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) generally equate to a loss of control, which is one of the reasons that there is... More >
05.21.12
Gartner: Apple, Samsung Score in First Quarter
Gartner’s numbers on mobile phones were released last week. The firm outlined a quarter that could have been better. Overall device sales of 419.1 million represented a 2 percent decline compared to the first quarter of last year. Samsung and Apple had good quarters compared to the year-ago... More >
05.23.12
The Cable Industry Turns up the Heat
The movers and shakers at The Cable Show 2012, which wrapped up today in Boston, clearly sought to take the initiative from upstarts that had spent the better part of the past decade sniping away at its business. Broadband Technology Report offered comprehensive coverage of the industry's major... More >
05.23.12
McAfee Report Finds Rise in Malware Across Platforms
Think you are using a platform that is safe from malware? You may want to think again. McAfee just released its Threats Report: First Quarter 2012, and its primary finding is an increase in malware across all platforms. Malware to PCs is at its highest level in years. Android is a major target,... More >
05.23.12
IT Unemployment Levels Low, Poaching Stakes High
One network engineer told me about being hounded by recruiters when she was in the job market — people who wouldn't respect that she wouldn't talk to them while driving on the freeway and other irritations. Though she was annoyed, turns out their job was extraordinarily difficult. Data from the... More >
05.23.12
VMware Acquisition Boosts Intelligent Desktop Virtualization
The difference between VDI and intelligent desktop virtualization (IDV) is that the latter is a Type 1 implementation of a hypervisor on the client, sometimes known as client-hosted virtualization. VDI, in contrast, hosts the desktop environment on top of a virtual machine on a server. Type 1... More >
05.23.12
How to Utilize the Cloud in Your SMB and Mind the Pitfalls
I've written a large number of blogs about cloud computing in the context of small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) over the last two years. While the reliability and acceptance of the cloud have certainly evolved over the past two years as the industry matured, many of the facts that were relevant... More >
05.22.12
Mainframes Warming Up to the Cloud
If, as the saying goes, what is old is new again, what does the future hold for the mainframe? Quite a lot, actually, considering everything we hold dear in virtual environments and the cloud — scalability, flexibility, logical partitioning — has been comfortably ensconced in big iron for decades. ... More >
05.22.12
Analytics Comes to Project Management
The trouble with project management software is that while these applications help people keep track of what tasks need to be done, they don’t really help people manage the overall project. This is because historically there has been no real ability to do any analysis in terms of what impact any... More >
05.22.12
San Diego Shines as Tech Job Market
Last year, I wrote about tech employers in San Diego whining that they couldn't find the tech talent they need because the city's considered more of a beach town "than Silicon Valley South." Like being a beach town is a bad thing. The takeaway was that San Diego's a great place if you're in the... More >
05.22.12
Setting up a Compliance Amnesty Program
The problem that most organizations have with insecure cloud services such as Dropbox.com is that not only is the data stored in these services at risk, there’s no easy way to get their data out of those services and into something more secure. With that issue in mind, the folks behind the open... More >
05.22.12
How Nasscom Is Harming the Indian IT Industry
The Indian IT trade association Nasscom exists to advance the interests of Indian IT companies and, by extension, those of Indian IT workers. In truth, this organization is setting those companies and workers up for failure in the United States, the market on which they’ve become so dependent for... More >
05.21.12
EMC World 2012: The Galactic Edge
I’m at the EMC World 2012 conference this week and I am writing this during the keynote. The opening visual was the launch of the EMC space ship into the galaxy of data and opportunity. The core message the company is driving, given its first point, is that EMC has grown massively over the last... More >
05.21.12
Cattle, Fraud and Integration: Big Data for the Rest of Us
When was the last time you saw a cloud offering based on heads of cattle served? Never, right? That’s because, by and large, technology doesn’t target farms. Enter Farmeron — a SaaS solution that lets farmers track all types of information about the farm’s performance. It targets large, modern... More >
05.21.12
Managing Your Way Out of the Silo
It's probably nice to think of the coming virtual/cloud era as the end of duplication, inefficiency and performance bottlenecks. And maybe someday that will be the reality for many organizations, but for now there is still a fair amount of resource silos out there that must be redesigned into... More >
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Making Information Matter in the New Data Center Economy
In this upcoming live virtual event on June 6, 2012, join technology experts, industry analysts, and your peer IT pros to gain meaningful insights and tactical tips on evolving your data center to maximize efficiency and reduce expenses — all without having to leave your office.
