If you enjoyed yesterday’s tongue-in-cheek video showing what online checkout might be like if we encountered it in real life, you’ll like this companion video from the same crew:
Archivo mensual: enero 2013
Staying Dry With Office 365: How the Cloud Beat Sandy
We have a saying here at ‘wichcraft: Make people happy while being proud of what you do.
We’re in the retail food business. Our job is to feed our customers, and our customers are at the core of everything we do. As Director of Technology for a sandwich company spanning 15 locations and three states, it can be easy to forget this simple fact. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the daily grind of maintaining servers and networks just so we can keep our business humming along.
When we made the jump to Office 365 earlier this year, we were able to take our existing on-premise servers and move them to the cloud. As a result, we eliminated layers of complexity, and I no longer needed to spend valuable time and resources administering legacy systems. This has allowed me to shift my focus toward new and exciting ways to better serve our guests, like launching a new loyalty platform and implementing tools to help us engage customers through social media.
In addition to being easy to manage, Office 365 is much more reliable than a traditional on-premise server environment. This was really put to the test when Hurricane Sandy struck New York City in late October.
Summary, EMC VMAX 10K, High-End Storage Systems Stayin Alive
This is a follow-up companion post to the larger industry trends and perspectives series from eariler today (Part I, Part II and Part III) pertaining to today’s VMAX 10K enhancement and other announcements by EMC, and the industry myth of if large storage arrays or systems are dead.
The enhanced VMAX 10K scales from a couple of dozen up to 1,560 HDDs (or mix of HDD and SSDs). There can be a mix of 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch devices in different drive enclosures (DAE). There can be 25 SAS based 2.5 inch drives (HDD or SSD) in the 2U enclosure (see figure with cover panels removed), or 15 3.5 inch drives (HDD or SSD) in a 3U enclosure. As mentioned, there can be all 2.5 inch (including for vault drives) for up to 1,200 devices, all 3.5 inch drives for up to 960 devices, or a mix of 2.5 inch (2U DAE) and 3.5 inch (3U DAE) for a total of 1,560 drives.
ServerCentral to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that ServerCentral, an established leader in managed data center services, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
ServerCentral provides highly reliable IT infrastructure in secure facilities across North America, Europe, and Asia. Delivering industry leading service levels on colocation, cloud, IP connectivity and managed services, ServerCentral is a trusted name to a wide range of global companies seeking turnkey data center solutions.
IBM’s stack on big data management and governance
By Madan Sheina, Lead Analyst, Information Management, Tony Baer, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Solutions, Fredrik Tunvall, Analyst, Information Management
The big data phenomenon presents a challenge for data management, a complex IT discipline that many organizations still struggle to deal with effectively today, even with their “small” data sets.
As data grows, so too does data uncertainty – and with it lowered quality and trust. IBM is in the process of extending its InfoSphere family of data integration and governance tooling, with a sharp focus on targeting the Hadoop framework.
However, technology is only part of the equation. While the end goal for managing and governing big data should be the same as that for traditional enterprise data – i.e. to provide the business with reliable data – the exact methods vary and continue to gel. IBM (and its customers) is still only a short way along the path of creating best practices …
CohesiveFT Unveils OS Catalog
CohesiveFT, a provider of enterprise application-to-cloud migration and application software defined networking (SDN), today announced the availability of the OS Catalog on their two Server3 SaaS implementations. The OS Catalog is part of an image management system based on CohesiveFT’s Server3 offering, providing cloud users with improved import experience and expanded operating system support.
The OS Catalog is available both in IBM SCE on Smart.ElasticServer.com and AWS EC2 along with many other clouds on beta.ElasticServer.com. Users can choose to build and customize their own VM starting with the available base OS images and add custom software component stacks. Cloud and software providers can offer cloud users improved import experience and expanded operating system support. Currently, cloud users can select images from the CentOS Server family to build and deploy to a cloud of their choice. Additional operating system families will be rolled out over the coming weeks.
Acceptance of “Bring Your Own Device”
Businesses welcome BYOD for the operational cost savings and user experience
London, 16 January 2013 – Company policies supporting Bring Your Own Device are being widely embraced as a win-win initiative that improves employees’ experience and reduces IT costs, according to results released today of the (ISC)2® 2013 Global Information Security Workforce Study, conducted on behalf of the (ISC)2 Foundation by the analyst firm Frost & Sullivan. At the same time, information security managers admit that companies must do more to understand the security of the technologies behind the trend, particularly for cloud-based systems and applications.
A preview of select results of the (ISC)2 («ISC-squared») study were featured at a press conference hosted by Reed Events in advance of Information Security Europe 2013, April 23 -25. The largest study of its kind examining workforce trends in information security covered BYOD as one of three game-changing technology trends that are having a significant impact on information security practice. The global study’s 12,396 respondents, one in four of which work in the EMEA region, clearly establish that BYOD is a prevalent practice – with 53 percent saying their companies actively allow users, either employees, business partners or both, to connect their devices onto their networks. A similar percentage, 54 percent, identified BYOD as a growth area for training and education within the information security profession.
Security professionals, however, are concerned that companies are not prepared for the risks introduced by this trend. Seventy-eight percent consider BYOD to present a somewhat or very significant risk. This reflects increased levels of concern compared to the 2011 study, when mobile devices were identified as a significant risk by 68 percent of respondents.
Further, nearly three-quarters of respondents (74 percent) highlighted that new security skills are going to be required to manage the security risks associated with BYOD. The biggest concerns were over the state of application security (72 percent) and the cloud (70 percent), also a developing area in business systems. Another 66 percent suggested companies needed to get more of a grip on how compliance requirements are being affected with the prevalence of BYOD.
Companies are more open to allowing user-owned smartphones (87 percent) and tablets (79 percent) onto corporate networks than laptops (72 percent), while they are supporting a multitude of platforms, with iOS leading the pack (84 percent), closely followed by Android (75 percent); RIM Blackberry/QNS (62 percent), and Windows Mobile (51 percent).
«Whether approved or not, user-owned tablets and smartphones are connecting into corporate networks and cloud environments,» states Michael Suby, Stratecast VP of Research at Frost & Sullivan. «Furthermore, the escalating capabilities of these devices, such as dual-core processors and multi-gigabytes of storage, add to the level of risk these devices pose to corporate assets and sensitive information. The positive news is that information security professionals are using a growing array of security technologies to stem this risk.»
The business drivers given for turning to BYOD puts the user at the centre of IT strategy. The desire to improve end-user experience at 60 percent was almost equal to the business requirement of supporting a mobile workforce (64 percent). A significant number of respondents (44 percent) also noted the goal of reducing operating and end-user support costs; while the desire to lower IT inventory costs was noted by a much lower 21 percent.
«From a security perspective, BYOD is gaining attention, but current efforts are focussed on the end -point rather than on protecting business data and assets,» says Wim Remes, CISSP, member of the (ISC)2 Board of Directors.
The top technologies identified to mitigate risks include: encryption, the use of virtual private networks, and remote lock and wipe functionality. Less than half (42 percent) are working with applications access control or authentication (40 percent), basic controls that exist on traditional IT infrastructures.
«This can be an opportunity for IT operations to fully seize the role of a business enabler. If approached correctly, with a focus on the data, BYOD can actually improve security and enable the business to compete at a pace that was but a remote dream half a decade ago,» concludes Remes, who presented the results at the conference.
The (ISC)2 Foundation will release the full report of the 2013 (ISC)2 Global Information Security Workforce Study in February as a resource to industry. Based on findings of an industry survey conducted in the autumn of 2012, the study is unique in its focus on issues affecting the security profession rather than general market developments, products or security breaches. Participants from 145 countries around the world contributed to offer insights into the changing profile of the profession, training and development needs, salary levels, attitudes and developments toward risk management, and the impact of key trends in business systems on security management.
About the (ISC)2® Foundation
The (ISC)2 Foundation is a non-profit charitable trust that aims to make the cyber world safer for everyone by supporting cyber security education and awareness in the community through its programmes and the efforts of its members. Through the (ISC)2 Foundation, (ISC)2‘s global information security expert membership of over 87,000 seek to ensure that children everywhere have a positive, productive, and safe experience online, to spur the development of the next generation of cyber security professionals, and to illuminate major issues facing the industry now and in the future. For more information, please visit www.isc2cares.org.
About (ISC)2®
(ISC)² is the largest not-for-profit membership body of certified information security professionals worldwide, with over 87,000 members in more than 135 countries. Globally recognised as the Gold Standard, (ISC)² issues the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSPÒ) and related concentrations, as well as the Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLPÒ), Certified Authorisation Professional (CAPÒ), and Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCPÒ) credentials to qualifying candidates. (ISC)²’s certifications are among the first information technology credentials to meet the requirements of ISO/IEC Standard 17024. (ISC)² offers education programmes and services based on its CBK®, a compendium of information security topics. Visit www.isc2.org.
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© 2013, (ISC)² Inc. (ISC)², CISSP, ISSAP, ISSMP, ISSEP, CSSLP, CAP, SSCP and CBK are registered marks of (ISC)², Inc.
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Media Contact:
Nikki Alvey
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nikki.alvey@mediahoundpr.co.uk
Cloud computing features heavily in 2013 CIO tech priorities
The importance of cloud computing in the overall tech sphere has again been emphasised in a Gartner report surveying over 2,000 CIOs on their technology priorities for 2013.
Cloudy areas featured heavily in the top 10 priorities for CIOs, with cloud computing itself – alongside software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) ranked at number three.
Elsewhere, legacy modernisation – a big element of companies moving into cloud-hosted solutions – was ranked at five, with customer resource management (seven), virtualisation (eight) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) apps (10) also make the top 10.
Yet the two priorities ahead of cloud computing in the pecking order, analytics and BI (business intelligence) and mobile technologies, make for interesting reading as of course the areas are all inextricably linked.
Back in 2011, Louis Columbus wrote of how analytics and BI was accelerating cloud adoption, citing the …
ExchangeDefender to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that ExchangeDefender, an Internet-based message hygiene and business continuity network, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
ExchangeDefender is an Internet-based message hygiene and business continuity network that can secure and save your business by providing enterprise-grade AntiSPAM, Virus Filtering, Web File Sharing, Web Filtering, Encryption, LiveArchive, and so much more.
Salesforce.com and Three Other Companies Getting Viewpoint Right
The godfather of Viewpoint in the new era of cloud computing is clearly Salesforce.com. As I have written here, SalesForce.com’s «The End of Software» created a unique and compelling Viewpoint that aligned with the aspiration and frustrations of their target customers who needed faster and easier visibility into sales pipeline and performance. As they and the market have matured, they have adeptly shifted to «The Social Enterprise», seeking to capitalize on the technology, environmental and business shift to social computing. So far, this seems to be a big win again for Benioff and team as even conservative Gartner Group now calls this category «Social CRM» .