Latest News from Dana Gardner

Cloud Data Analytics, Mobile Support, and Managed Services Procurement

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:45:00 EDT

Ariba Vice President Chris Haydon explains the company's latest news and offers insights into how Ariba will be broadening its services procurement management value, mobile push, and AribaPay rollout. We have some really exciting innovation coming in the near-term to Ariba in a couple of areas. First, let's talk about Network RFQ or the Spot Buy. We think this is part of the undiscovered country, where, according to The Hackett Group, 40-plus percent of spend is not sourced. By linking this non-sourced spend to the Ariba Network, we think we're going to be able to address a large pain-point for our buyers and our sellers. Network RFQ or Spot Buy is a near-term solution that we announced at LIVE, and we're bringing that forward over the next six months.

Getting a Grasp on Services Management

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:45:00 EDT

HP Software today announced four products that aim to tackle the thorny reality that traditional apps deployment is broken, and that the new requirements make automation and comprehensive management an inescapable necessity. HP is also banking on the role it can play as a neutral party to better orchestrate the apps lifecycle because -- unlike most other large enterprise software vendors -- it doesn't have a legacy applications, operating system, hypervisor, database and/or middleware heritage (and cash cows) to favor and protect. That means supporting heterogeneity in total is the imperative, not the exception, for HP.

Taking a Cloud-of-Clouds Approach

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:00:00 EDT

We'll learn why a cloud-of-clouds approach is providing new types of IT services to Thomas Duryea’s many Asia-Pacific region customers. We've been talking about cloud computing for years now, and I think it's pretty well established that we can do cloud computing quite well technically. The question that many organizations keep coming back with is whether they should do cloud computing. If there are certain risks, how do they know what risks are important? How do they get through that? What are you in learning so far at TD about risk and how your customers face that?

Streamlining Online Payments

Sat, 11 May 2013 13:45:00 EDT

New cloud-based service leverages applications and insights within Ariba Network to streamline and enhance settlement and reconciliation of business commerce. Ariba, an SAP Company, and Discover Financial Services has unveiled Ariba Pay. The new service, to be offered by Ariba, is expected to transform B2B payments by eliminating paper transactions, providing better visibility into cash flow, and producing rich remittance information that improves reconciliation processes for buyers and sellers. AribaPay will provide a way for buyers to create purchase orders, receive invoices, and send payments, while sellers receive more-detailed remittance information in a fast, secure, electronic environment.

New Boost from Dell for Virtualization

Mon, 06 May 2013 09:45:00 EDT

Dell Software this week delivered Foglight for Virtualization, Enterprise Edition to extend the depth and breadth of managing and optimizing server virtualization as well as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Building on the formerly named Quest vFoglight Pro virtualization management solution, Dell re-branded vFoglight to Foglight for Virtualization to make it the core platform to the Foglight family. Foglight is not sitting still either. Improvements this year move beyond monitoring support for VMware View VDI, to later support for VMware vCloud Director, OpenStack, and Citrix Xen VDI. The higher value from such ecosystem and heterogeneous management support is the ability for virtualization server and system administrators to comprehensively optimize various flavors of data-center server virtualization, as well as the major VDI types, with added capabilities to track and analyze performance from the application level all the way to the server and storage hardware level. This week's announcements have also shown a spotlight on the recently updated Foglight for Storage Management 2.5.

Business Collaboration Is the New Landscape

Sat, 04 May 2013 13:00:00 EDT

“Just as consumers tap into personal networks like Facebook, Twitter and Amazon.com to connect with friends and family, share and shop, companies are leveraging digital networks to more efficiently engage with their trading partners and collaborate across the entire commerce process,” said Sanish Mondkar, Ariba Chief Product Officer. “This new, more social and connected way of operating is redefining the way business is done. But it demands a new set of tools and processes that are only possible at scale in a truly networked environment. Ariba is delivering these tools today.”

Telecom Reaps Benefits from Service Virtualization

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:00:00 EDT

TTNET, the largest internet service provider in Turkey, with six million subscribers, significantly improved applications deployment while cutting costs and time to delivery. What was the situation there before you became more automated, before you started to use more software tools? We're the leading ISP in Turkey. We deploy more than 200 applications per year, and we have to provide better and faster services to our customers every week, every month. Before HP SV, we had to use the other test infrastructures in our test cases.

Mobile App Development Strategies

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:00:00 EDT

In mobile app development, we're seeing a major philosophical split between the "nativists" (running directly on the device hardware) and the "virtualizers" (with their scripting and interpretive layers and containers). Both enterprises and independent software vendors (ISVs) know the software-development game's changed. Not only do they need to rapidly develop and deploy more mobile apps across multiple interfaces and device platforms, but they need to really rethink all of their client development -- and even try and come up with a singular approach to most of them. Fast to their rescue, the suppliers of development tools and testing systems are tripping over each other to appeal to them in this new game. And as in the past with other deployment advances, we're seeing a major philosophical split between the "nativists" (running directly on the device hardware) and the "virtualizers" (with their scripting and interpretive layers and containers).

Key to Solving New Data Challenges

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 15:00:00 EDT

A data dichotomy has changed the face of information management, bringing with it huge new data challenges for businesses to solve. The dichotomy means that organizations, both large and small, not only need to manage all of their internal data to provide intelligence about their businesses, they need to manage the growing reams of increasingly external big data that enables them to discover new customers and drive new revenue. What are the biggest challenges that businesses need to solve now when it comes to data and information management?

Adding Security to Cloud-Based Storage

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:45:00 EDT

Boston-based startup nCrypted Cloud recently launched software of the same name designed to address the security and privacy concerns that have emerged with the use of popular cloud-based storage services. Available in consumer basic, consumer pro, and enterprise editions, nCrypted Cloud encrypts information stored on popular cloud services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft’s SkyDrive. The software is as simple to use as the services it works with, says Nick Stamos, the CEO and Co-Founder of nCrypted Cloud, while offering the robustness and controls that enterprise IT departments need. Stamos says nCrypted Cloud’s security privacy protections fill a glaring gap in cloud storage services today. The promise of the cloud is 'put everything in the cloud and it will be available' – but that’s the problem as well as the promise. “The promise of the cloud is 'put everything in the cloud and it will be available' – but that’s the problem as well as the promise,” says Stamos, who is also principal and founder of The Stamos Group.

Business Architecture and Enterprise Transformation

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:00:00 EDT

The Open Group’s first conference in Australia will focus on enterprise transformation. Speakers and a variety of sessions will place the transformation in the context of such vertical industries as finance, defense, exploration, mining, and minerals. As a prelude to the event, BriefingsDirect recently interviewed two of the main speakers at the conference -- Hugh Evans, the Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Architects, a specialist enterprise architecture (EA) firm based in Melbourne, Australia, and Craig Martin, Chief Operations Officer and Chief Architect at Enterprise Architects. As some background, Hugh is both the founder and CEO at Enterprise Architects. His professional experience blends design and business, having started out in traditional architecture, computer games design, and digital media, before moving into enterprise IT and business transformation. In 1999, Hugh founded the IT Strategy Architecture Forum, which included chief architects from most of the top 20 companies in Australia. He has also helped found the Australian Architecture Body of Knowledge and the London Architecture Leadership Forum in the UK. Since starting Enterprise Architects in 2002, Hugh has grown the team to more than 100 people, with offices in Australia, the UK, and the U.S. With a career spanning more than 20 years, Craig has held executive positions in the communications, high tech, media, entertainment, and government markets and has operated as an Enterprise Architect and Chief Consulting Architect for a while.

Virtualization Aids Health-Care Compliance

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:00:00 EDT

Associated Surgeons and Physicians, LLC in Indiana went from zero to 100 percent virtualized infrastructure and as a result, met many compliance and efficiency goals. In part one of a two-part interview series, we discuss how a mid-market health services provider rapidly adopted server and client virtualization, and how that quickly lead to the ability to move to mobile, bring your own device (BYOD), and ultimately advanced disaster recovery (DR) benefits. Associated Surgeons and Physicians found the right prescription for allowing users to designate and benefit from their own device choices, while also gaining an ability to better manage sensitive data and to create a data-protection lifecycle approach.

ownCloud Tackles File Synch and Sharing

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:00:00 EDT

ownCloud allows organizations to integrate existing security, storage, monitoring and reporting tools with simplicity and flexibility. OwnCloud, Inc. recently released the latest version of the ownCloud Community Edition with a number of usability, performance, and integration enhancements. Based on an open-source project of the same name, the ownCloud file sync and share software, deployed on-premise, not only offers users greater control, but allows organizations to integrate existing security, storage, monitoring and reporting tools, while still taking advantage of the software’s simplicity and flexibility. File sync and share services like Dropbox, Google Docs, and Box Inc. have revolutionized the way users share information. These cloud-based services make it easy to share files with clean interfaces and seemingly endless amounts of storage. However, not everyone wants to turn over their information to a service provider – for those who prefer to control how and where their data is stored there’s ownCloud.

Achmea Holding Runs IT Like a Business

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 10:15:00 EDT

Achmea Holding, one of the largest providers of financial services and insurance in the Netherlands, has made large strides in running their IT operations like an efficient business itself by rearchitecting its IT operations based on clear metrics. Gardner: Why is running IT more like a business important? Why does this make sense now? Aarnink: Over the last year, whenever a customer asked us questions, we delivered what he asked. We came to the conclusion that delivery of every request that we got was an intensive process for which we created projects. It was very difficult to make sure that it was not a one-time hero effect, but that we could deliver to the customer what he asked every time, on scope, on specs, on budget, and on time. We looked at it and said, "Well, it is actually like running a normal business, and therefore why should we be different? We should be predictive as well."

The Challenges of Architecture and Analysis

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:45:00 EDT

Having delivered many talks on business architecture over the years, I’m often struck by the common vision driving many members in the audience – a vision of building cohesion in a business, achieving the right balance between competing forces and bringing the business strategy and operations into harmony. However, as with many ambitious visions, the challenge in this case is immense. As I will explain, many of the people who envision this future state of nirvana are, in practice, inadvertently preventing it from happening. There are a host of standards and disciplines that are brought into play by enterprises to improve business performance and capabilities. For example standards such as PRINCE2, BABOK, BIZBOK, TOGAF, COBIT, ITIL and PMBOK are designed to ensure reliability of team output and approach across various business activities. However, in many instances these standards, operating together, present important gaps and overlaps. One wonders whose job it is to integrate and unify these standards. Whose job is it to understand the business requirements, business processes, drivers, capabilities and so on?

Avaya and Cloud Collaboration

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EDT

New cloud-collaboration tools from Avaya ease the way for enterprises to deal with the growing trend toward Bring You Own Device. The adoption of UC and CC as a service (UCaaS and CCaaS) brings utility-based pricing to cloud-service providers (CSPs) so they can offer varied and flexible packages to many types of clients. This creates new revenue streams for CSPs by allowing them to deliver app integrations, mobile collaboration and multichannel customer service for their customers. And it allows buyers to only pay for the IP-based communications services they want and need.

Help Desk Solution Empowers Employees

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 08:30:00 EST

BMC Software this week launched MyIT, an enterprise IT help desk solution that empowers employees to take more personal control over their IT services and to get the right type of help they need -- anytime, anywhere, from any device. Frustration with company IT departments is a widely shared experience. Forrester Research reports that just 35 percent of business decision-makers say IT provides “high quality, timely end user support.” What’s more, employees are increasingly circumventing their IT organizations in search of faster IT support and problem resolution. Moreover, studies show that the friction between users and IT help capabilities saps as much as 20 percent of productivity away from workers. That's a day a week when things go wrong.

Cloud, Mobile, and Agile Coming Together

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:00:00 EDT

Agile software development is increasingly enabling developers to better create applications that meet user needs quickly, and the advent of increased mobile apps development is further accelerating its power. As IT aligns itself with business goals, Agile software development is increasingly enabling developers to better create applications that meet user needs quickly. And, now, the advent of increased mobile apps development is further accelerating the power of Agile methods. Though it’s been around for decades, Agile’s tenets of collaboration, incremental development, speed, and flexibility resonate with IT leaders who want developers to focus on working with users to develop the applications. This method stands in contrast to the more rigid and traditional process of collecting user requirements, taking months to create a complete application, and delivering the application to users with the hopes that it fits the bill and that requirements haven’t changed during the process.

Cloud and Open Source Draw Big Wagers

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:34:00 EDT

Big players are now involved in open source and cloud services orchestration and they're placing increasingly large bets. Combine the supercharged cloud computing marketplace with the ubergeek cred of the open source movement, and you’re bound to have some Mentos-in-Diet-Coke moments. Such is the case with today’s cloud service orchestration (CSO) platforms. At this moment in time, the leading CSO platform is OpenStack. Dozens of vendors and cloud service providers (CSPs) have piled on this effort, from Rackspace to HP to Dell, and most recently, IBM has announced that they’re going all in as well. Fizzy to be sure, but all Coke, no Mentos.

Tapping EA Tools to Handle Complex Trends

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:00:00 EST

Simultaneous and complex trends, such as big data, cloud computing, security, and overall IT transformation, can be helped by the combined strengths of The Open Group Architecture Framework and the ArchiMate modeling language. There is less of a focus on the traditional things we come to think of EA such as standards, governance and policies, but rather into emerging areas such as the soft skills, business architecture, and strategy. To this end I see a lot in the realm of working directly with the executive chain to understand the key value drivers for the company and rationalize where they want to go with their business. So we're moving into a business-transformation role in this practice. At the same time, we've got to be mindful of the disruptive external technology forces coming in as well. EA can’t just divorce from the other aspects of architecture as well. So the role that enterprise architects play becomes more and more important and elevated in the organization. Two examples of this disruptive technology that are being focused on at the conference are big data and cloud computing. Both are providing impacts to our businesses not because of some new business idea but because technology is available to enhance or provide new capabilities to our business. The EA’s still do have to understand these new technology innovations and determine how they will apply to the business.

Strategies for Big Data, Cloud, and Mobile

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 08:00:00 EST

Large enterprises should not just wade into big data as an isolated function, but should anticipate the strategic effects and impacts of big data -- as well the simultaneous complicating factors of cloud computing and mobile -- as soon as possible. When we collect data, we have some sort of goal in minds of what we might get out of it. When we put the pieces from the data together, it either maybe doesn't fit as well as you thought or you are successful and you continue to do the same thing, gathering archives of information.

On-Ramp to the Cloud

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:45:00 EST

NetIQ today announced new appliances that help enable businesses and other organizations to simply and securely access the power of two mega trends -- cloud and social media.

The Challenges and Benefits of Big Data

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 09:15:00 EST

A panel of experts explores how large enterprises are delivering better risk assessments and risk analysis, and how big data can be both an area to protect, but also a tool for understanding and mitigating risks. The information security industry has struggled with getting the attention of and support from management and businesses for a long time, and it has finally come around to the fact that the executives care about loss exposure -- the likelihood of bad things happening and how bad those things are likely to be. It's only when we speak in those terms of risk that we make sense to those executives. And once we do that, we begin to gain some credibility and traction in terms of getting things done.

Best Practices for Successful Implementation of Enterprise Architecture

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 07:15:00 EST

The implementation of EA means that an organization adopts processes for the development and governance of EA artifacts and deliverables. The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) was developed in the 1980s with a strong focus on the information systems landscape of organizations. Since those days, the scope of the discipline has slowly widened to include more and more aspects of the enterprise as a whole. This holistic perspective takes into account the concerns of a wide variety of stakeholders. Architects, especially at the strategic level, attempt to answer the question: “How should we organize ourselves in order to be successful?”

Cloud Services Deliver at Scale

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:00:00 EST

AT&T has developed the ability to provide virtual private clouds and other computing capabilities as integrated services at scale. To learn more about implementing cloud technology to deliver and commercialize an adaptive and reliable cloud services ecosystem, we sat down with Chris Costello, Assistant Vice President of AT&T Cloud Services. Why are business cloud services such an important initiative for you? Costello: AT&T has been in the hosting business for over 15 years, and so it was only a natural extension for us to get into the cloud services business to evolve with customers' changing business demands and technology needs.

From Metrics to Success

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:30:00 EST

Ford Motor Company has scoured the metrics from the company’s best processes across myriad manufacturing efforts and through detailed outputs from in-use automobiles -- all to improve and help transform their business. What's different now in being able to get at this data and do this type of analysis from five years ago? Cavaretta: The biggest difference has to do with the cheap availability of storage and processing power, where a few years ago people were very much concentrated on filtering down the datasets that were being stored for long-term analysis. There has been a big sea change with the idea that we should just store as much as we can and take advantage of that storage to improve business processes.

Addressing the GRC Market

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:00:00 EST

Startup Convercent builds tools to fill void in GRC market by implementing and measuring compliance to corporate values and culture. GRC has traditionally provided companies with tools to help customers meet government and industry regulations, enforce corporate policies and better deal with risk. Yet the areas of corporate culture and values -- which are becoming increasing important in today’s business climate -- were rarely addressed. “Our platform allows companies to take the fuzzy-wuzzy of ethics –- to take the sign off the wall -- and turn it into structured data to measure employee actions against the organization’s stated values and culture,” said Patrick Quinlan, Convercent's CEO.

Defining and Managing Risk

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:00:00 EST

IT professional have a poor track record when it comes to defining and assessing risk. One of the most important responsibilities of the information security professional (or any IT professional, for that matter) is to help management make well-informed decisions. Unfortunately, this has been an elusive objective when it comes to risk. Although we’re great at identifying control deficiencies, and we can talk all day long about the various threats we face, we have historically had a poor track record when it comes to risk. There are a number of reasons for this, but in this article I’ll focus on just one -- definition.

Developing BYOD Strategies: Follow the Workers

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST

Significant business benefits often follow when BYOD-adopter companies empower their employees with their preferred devices and work habits. What's more, the rapidly improved productivity and enhanced collaboration among employees -- as well as greater communication and better service with customers, suppliers and partners -- are proving to be competitive advantages for companies that do BYOD best. The survey was recently conducted by Dell Software Group and market researcher Vanson Bourne from nearly 1,500 IT executives around the world. It clearly demonstrates that, while BYOD shows promise, many organizations are struggling with making the most of BYOD.

Easing Up on Application Integration

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 07:30:00 EST

Jitterbit's integration solution is designed to be the glue between on-premise, cloud, mobile and social data and applications. Jitterbit focuses on simple yet powerful integration technologies that can be quickly and easily deployed to create integrated processes and data views. We've seen a lot of interest in light-weight, low-coding integration capabilities as more SaaS and cloud services need to be coordinated. This is now becoming even more pertinent to bringing data together from a variety of sources. Jitterbit 5 aims to raise the level of simplicity even higher with new features that streamline process integration, said the Oakland, CA company. The wizards-based approach allows non-technical users to design integration projects through a graphical, point-and-click interface. I think making more people able to tailor and specify integrations can significantly boost innovation and productivity.

Networked Economy Prompts New Directions for Collaboration

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:00:00 EST

Rapid trends in collaboration and business networking are driving innovation and new social interactions, so BriefingsDirect invited a Harvard Kennedy School researcher and a chief strategist at business network provider Ariba to explore the ramifications. The opportunities for collaboration are expanding even as we speak. The networks around the world are volatile. They're moving fast. The speed of change is coming at managers and executives at a terrific pace. There is an incredible variety of choice, and people are empowered with these great digital devices that we all have in our pockets.

Built-in Security: Making Applications Security Pervasive

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 10:00:00 EST

A major telecommunications provider is tackling security, managing the details and the strategy simultaneously, and extending that value onto their many types of customers. We definitely are at the time and place where attacks against organizations have changed. It used to be that you would have a very focused attack against an organization by a single individual or a couple of individuals. It would be a brute-force type attack. In this case, we're seeing more and more that applications and infrastructure are being attacked, not brute force, but more subtly.

Opening the Way for Software Vendors

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 07:00:00 EST

Government ruling paves the way for software vendors to sell to US government agencies, even if some of their code is written in non-designated countries. Open-source provider Talend has received a favorable advisory ruling from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency concerning the government's ability to purchase open-source software, opening the way for all software vendors to increase their share of business with US federal agencies. The CBP has determined that software products comply with the Trade Agreement Act (TAA) when that software is manufactured in what is known as a "designated country," even if the majority of its source code was created in a non-designated country.

Move to Cloud Accelerates

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:00:00 EST

Many organizations say they rely on real-time processing of big data to fuel their business, and many of them say they are thinking about taking their big data to the cloud. It's no surprise that most enterprises are now taking big data more seriously. But what might raise an eyebrow is how many organizations say they rely on real-time processing of big data to fuel their business, as well as the number of companies who say they're thinking about taking their big data to the cloud. These findings come from a recent survey conducted by GigaSpaces, which asked 243 IT executives in various industries about their big data perceptions and plans. GigaSpaces, a provider of end-to-end scaling solutions for distributed application environments and an open platform-as-a-service (PaaS) stack for cloud deployment, conducted the survey online during the fall of 2012.

Better Services Mean Better Performance

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:15:00 EST

AIG International Group is among IT leaders who are improving performance of their services to deliver better experiences and payoffs for businesses and end-users alike. Many organizations are now focusing more on the user experience and the business benefits and less on pure technology -- and for many, it's a challenge. From a very high level, how do you perceive the best way to go about a cultural shift, or an organizational shift, from a technology focus more toward this end-user experience focus? There are several paradigms involved from the COO and CFO’s push on innovation and efficiency. A lot of the tooling that we use, a lot of the products we use, help to fully diversify and resolve some of the challenges we have. That’s to keep change running.

Embarcadero Expands Their Stable of Tools

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:30:00 EST

Embarcadero on Monday made generally available C++Builder XE3, which allows a common development effort to natively target Windows 8, Mac OS X and Intel clients. The modern class of C and C++ tools are workhorses of PC applications development. And Objective-C tools have proven the rapid application development means of choice for native mobile development for iOS and Mac OS X. So wouldn't it be nice to let the developers with the skills and proficiency in building native applications for the prominent enterprise computing clients of yesteryear (like Windows) gain ease in bringing better apps to all the mobile and fat client types demanded for the foreseeable future? Embarcadero Technologies thought so, and long enough ago that they began re-architecting their compiler and C++ Builder development architecture in time to now provide write-once, run-natively-anywhere-that-counts benefits. And now is when it really counts, with the advent of Windows 8, growing Mac OS X use and exploding sales of iOS and Android clients. And now is when it really counts, with the advent of Windows 8, growing Mac OS X use and exploding sales of iOS and Android clients.

Making Sure the Mail Gets Through with Cloud-Native Messaging Service

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 07:00:00 EST

Message Bus has a simple goal: help customers keep their legitimate email messages out of recipients' spam folders. Message Bus has a pedigreed CEO, an impressive list of customers and partners, and technology that makes its cloud-based service highly scalable and resilient, yet the young company's goal is simple: help customers keep their legitimate email messages out of recipients' spam folders. With Twitter co-founder Jeremy LaTrasse at the helm, Message Bus is navigating the often dark waters of email delivery so that its customers don't have to. The company's Global Delivery Network, launched in mid-November, aims to be to email and mobile messaging what Amazon Web Services are to cloud computing and Dropbox to cloud storage.

Taking a Holistic Approach to IT Security

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 06:45:00 EST

Lake Health's Information Security Officer has been expanding the breadth and depth of risk management there to a more holistic level -- far more than just a series of security products. Many people are practicing IT security and they're employing products and technologies. They're putting in best practices and methods, of course. But you have a different take. You've almost abstracted this up to information assurance -- even quality assurance -- for knowledge, information, and privacy. Tell me how that higher abstraction works, and why you think it's more important or more successful than just IT security?

Simplify Data Backup and Protection in Complex Enterprise IT Environments

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 06:00:00 EST

Backup of enterprise information and associated data protection are fragmented, complex, and inefficient. But new approaches are helping to simplify the data-protection process, keep costs in check, and improve recovery speed and confidence. If you look back 20 years ago, we had heterogeneous environments, but they were much simpler. There were NetWare and UNIX, and there was this new thing called Windows. Virtualization didn’t even really exist. We backed up data to tape, and a lot of data was in terabytes, not petabytes. Flash forward to 2012, and there’s more heterogeneity than ever. You have stalwart databases like Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle, but then you have new apps being built on MySQL. You now have virtualization, and, in fact, we're at the point this year where we're surpassing the 50 percent mark on the number of servers worldwide that are virtualized.

Improving Software Services

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 06:00:00 EST

HP has broadened its BSM solutions to deliver better end-to-end visibility into IT applications and services by exploiting powerful, real-time and historical analytics. As organizations have adopted virtualization and cloud technologies, the complexity to effectively monitor trouble across these systems has skyrocketed. And, with the rise of shared services, IT no longer knows or controls all the technologies supporting their businesses. “IT organizations are looking for new ways to deliver predictable service levels," said Ajei Gopal, senior vice president and general manager, Hybrid and Cloud Products, Software at HP. “The new HP Business Service Management software delivers end-to-end operational intelligence to help IT make better decisions and improve service levels in complex, dynamic IT environments.”

Cloud Gaining Traction

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 10:00:00 EST

A new survey about cloud computing explores the business growth opportunities for buyers and consumers of cloud services alike, with surprising findings about confidence and a high degree of ongoing experimentation. The multi-year annual survey on the cloud market provides a springboard for examining some of the implications for where the growth opportunities are and where the inhibitors for the growth may be. To learn more about where the cloud business has been and where it’s going, BriefingsDirect sat down with Michael Skok, Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners. The interview is conducted by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Protecting Data Despite Server Sprawl

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 05:00:00 EST

Idera sets its sights on addressing server sprawl by allowing enterprises to back up all their servers, easily and economically. Idera wants to make it practical to back up every server on the planet. With the release of its Server Backup 5.0 and new pricing structure, the company believes it can change the minds of enterprises that may have viewed backing up all their servers as too expensive and complicated. Server sprawl is a serious concern in enterprises today. With the advent of commodity and virtual servers, there's been a massive growth in server deployment across organizations. Using traditional back up, solutions becomes untenable when these offerings are priced at $1,000 or more per server.

Commercializing the Cloud

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 03:35:00 EST

A cloud-of-clouds approach is providing new types of IT services to Thomas Duryea’s many Asia-Pacific region customers. Why cloud services for your consulting and business customers now? Have they been asking for it Certainly, the customers are the big driver while we are moving into cloud services. Being a traditional IT integrator, we've been very successful showing a lot of data-center solutions to our customers, but more and more we're seeing customers finding it harder to get CAPEX and new projects and they are really starting to look at the cloud alternative.

The Growing Importance of BYOD

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:00:00 EST

Quest Software has begun supporting BYOD -- even with the full blessing of IT, and this has had benefits far beyond just the users’ sense of empowerment. The growing acceptance of bring your own device (BYOD) at enterprises comes with promise and perils. We'll see how this has had benefits far beyond just the users’ sense of empowerment, in terms of meaningful IT advancements in centralized applications, control and support, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) use, better disaster recovery (DR) practices, better data protection and more. And we'll see how Quest has used a number of tools to manage the risks.

AID Sees Security as Essential to Good Business Practices

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:00:00 EST

Liberty Mutual Insurance is building security deeply into its overall business practices, not just viewing it as an IT add-on. This has led to higher enterprise resiliency and responsiveness to risk. We'll see how the requirements of compliance and regulatory governance are aligning with security best practices to attain the higher goals of enterprise resiliency, and deliver greater responsiveness to all varieties of risk. "It’s pretty clear to us that the world has changed in terms of the threats and in terms of the kinds of technologies that we're using these days to enable our business. Certainly, there's an obligation there, a responsibility to protect our customers’ information as well as making sure that our business operations can continue to support those customers."

Collaboration Advances Bring New Productivity

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 09:00:00 EST

Businesses must exploit open collaboration advances in procurement and finance to produce new types of productivity benefits, say an industry analyst and Ariba executive. And the benefits of improved data integration and the process efficiencies of cloud computing are additionally helping companies refine their finances through tighter collaboration with all elements of their procurement and supply chain networks. To uncover how these trends are fostering improved processes in accounts payable (AP) automation and spend management, BriefingsDirect recently sat down with Drew Hofler, Senior Solutions Marketing Manager of Financial Solutions at Ariba, an SAP company, and Vishal Patel, Research Director and Vice President of Client Services at Ardent Partners.

Baking in Security, Not Bolting It On

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 08:30:00 EDT

Heartland Payment Systems moved rapidly from a security breach to an overall improved security stance largely thanks to embedding a security-as-culture position across their operations and into their business strategy. Right now, we’re number six in the US, and with consolidation and other aspects, that number floats around a bit. We're basically the pipeline between merchants and the banking system. We bring in payments from credit cards and debit cards. We handle payroll, micro payments and a number of other types of payroll channel or payment channels that we can then move from whatever that source, the merchant, to the appropriate bank that needs to handle that payment. It's a very engaging process for us, because we’re dealing with card brands on one side, banks on another, and the merchants and their customers. But the focus for Heartland has always been that our merchants are number one for our company.

The Resurgence of SOA

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:30:00 EDT

There's been a resurgent role for service-oriented architecture as a practical and relevant ingredient for effective design and use of cloud, mobile, and big-data technologies. What I see driving it is three things. One is the advent of the cloud and mobile, which requires a lot of cross-platform delivery of consistent services. The second is emerging technologies, mobile, big data, and the need to be able to look at data across multiple contexts. The third thing that’s driving it is legacy modernization. A lot of organizations are now a lot more comfortable with SOA concepts. I see it in a number of our customers. I've just been running a large enterprise architecture initiative in a Fortune 500 customer. At each stage, and at almost every point in that, they're now comfortable. They feel that SOA can provide the ability to rationalize multiple platforms. They're restructuring organizational structures, delivery organizations, as well as targeting their goals around a service-based platform capability.

Cosmetic Giant Aggressively Embraces the Cloud

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 12:00:00 EDT

Revlon's comprehensive cloud has matured, and the benefits from aggressively embracing the cloud have evolved into positive consequences for their data architecture. When you think of Revlon, we're global and we have a huge application portfolio. As we put everything on our cloud and are using our cloud, we realized that all of our data sits in one place now. So when you think of big-data management, we've been able to solve the problem by classifying all the unstructured data in Revlon and we did that efficiently. We still joke that it's like chewing glass. You've got to go through this huge process. But, we have the ability to look at all of our data, a couple of petabytes, in the same place. Because the cloud let us look at it all, we can bring up all of Revlon in our disaster recovery (DR) test environments and have our developers work with it at no cost. We have disconnected that cost and effort. Once we realized we had this opportunity to start working on our big data, the other unintended consequences was our master data model. On top of our big data, we were able to able to efficiently and effectively build a global master data model.

Virtualization Takes Cloud to the Next Level

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 07:00:00 EDT

BancVue creates the services that empower its customers to beat the giants in their field by better leveraging agile IT. The first thing we wanted to do was to abstract the applications and the operating system from the hardware so that a hardware failure wouldn’t bring down our systems. For that, of course, we went to virtualization. We experimented with various virtualization products. Out of those trials, vSphere was the best software for a heterogeneous environment like ours, where we had Windows and different flavors of Linux.