Moving business critical applications, such as Microsoft SQL Server, to virtual server and cloud environments requires high availability and a solid disaster protection plan.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, David Bermingham, Director, Technical Evangelist at SIOS Technology, simplified the confusing array of availability and redundancy features offered in Windows Server Failover Clustering, SQL Server, and leading cloud and virtual server software vendors. Attendees learned how to protect SQL Server and other Windows applications from downtime and disasters, all the while ensuring configuration flexibility and infrastructure efficiency.

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You think you know what’s in your data. But do you? Most organizations are now aware of the business intelligence represented by their data. Data science stands to take this to a level you never thought of – literally. The techniques of data science, when used with the capabilities of Big Data technologies, can make connections you had not yet imagined, helping you discover new insights and ask new questions of your data.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Sarbjit Sarkaria, data science team lead at PHEMI, discussed how data science is changing our ideas of what’s possible with data, using examples and case studies drawn from finance, precision medicine, and genomics.

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«Peak 10 is a national cloud data center solutions managed services provider, and part of that is disaster recovery. We see a growing trend in the industry where companies are coming to us looking for assistance in their DR strategy,» stated Andrew Cole, Director of Solutions Engineering at Peak 10, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 18th Cloud Expo, held June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.

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It feels like the barbarians are continually at the gate. We can’t seem to go more than a week before a new data breach is in the news, impacting potentially millions of individuals. The targets range from companies like Omni Hotels, which had been breached affecting up to 50,000 customers whose personal and credit card information was exposed, to North Carolina State University, where over 38,000 students’ personal information, including their SSNs, were at risk. As I mentioned in a recent blog ‘Internet of Things and Big Data – who owns your data?’, we have been storing our personal and credit card information in a variety of systems, credit card companies, banks, online retailers, hotels – and that’s just naming a few. The information in those systems is more valuable than gold to the hackers. The hacker attacks are constant, creative, and changing frequently.

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Aspose.Total for .NET is the most complete package of all file format APIs for .NET as offered by Aspose. It empowers developers to create, edit, render, print and convert between a wide range of popular document formats within any .NET, C#, ASP.NET and VB.NET applications.
Aspose compiles all .NET APIs on a daily basis to ensure that it contains the most up to date versions of each of Aspose .NET APIs. If a new .NET API or a new version of existing APIs is released during the subscription period – it will be included in .NET package and you are fully entitled to download and use it.

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Cloud analytics is dramatically altering business intelligence. Some businesses will capitalize on these promising new technologies and gain key insights that’ll help them gain competitive advantage. And others won’t.
Whether you’re a business leader, an IT manager, or an analyst, we want to help you and the people you need to influence with a free copy of “Cloud Analytics for Dummies,” the essential guide to this explosive new space for business intelligence.

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Even though almost three quarters of the major UK councils say they use cloud technologies for data storage in some capacity, almost half say they are yet to formulate plans to use cloud computing.

That’s the main finding from not for profit IT service provider Eduserv, in responses provided by the top 100 councils in the UK. 44% of those polled said they did not have a strategy or IT policy in place – and of that number, only 15% say they are exploring or considering a cloud policy.

63% of councils say they have two or more on-premise data centres, and a third use no external data centres. Only 10% have a pure cloud IT model, while 93% hold all but a negligible amount of data on-premise.

Worryingly, more than a quarter (27%) of councils approached by Eduserv said they could not provide a full breakdown of where their data was held. The overall sense of the findings provide a complex landscape for councils. “Information management maturity is still relatively low in local government, which needs to be addressed in the move to digital delivery,” said Andrew Hawkins, Eduserv public sector director.

Jos Creese, Eduserv principal analyst, argues the results are not especially surprising, but more can be done. “As cloud use becomes more ubiquitous, local authorities cannot afford not to have plans to ensure that it is used safely and with controls in place to ensure data is managed in a way which reduces risk,” said Creese.

“From a strategic perspective, the prevalence of on-premise IT shows that the majority of councils are still poorly positioned to exploit digital change in a way which generates both service and financial benefit,” added Creese. “If councils are to go down this path then it will be critical to address the apparent lack of clarity around where data is stored which emerged from our research.”

Writing for this publication last month, Hawkins argued organisations in the public sector needed to provide cultural, budgetary, and technical readiness before fully committing to cloud migration. “You can’t move to the cloud until you understand fully the shape of your current IT estate and the applications which support the organisation,” he wrote. “Mapping these will allow you to understand areas which are compatible and incompatible with a cloud operating model ahead of time.”

(c)iStock.com/adrian825

Box, Citrix, Dropbox, and Egnyte represent the leaders’ section in the latest Gartner enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) Magic Quadrant.

The 2016 rankings show an interesting correlation year on year; Dropbox and Egnyte move from the challenger and visionary sections respectively, while the overall number of vendors, 13, represents a step down from 16 last year. VMware AirWatch, CTERA Networks and Acronis fall off the niche player section this year, while EMC fell off altogether – partly down to the firm’s acquisition by Dell for $67 billion (£43.7bn) in October last year.

“We’re proud to be recognised as a leader, and this recognition underscores our company vision, product innovation, and our commitment to helping drive customer success,” wrote Thomas Hansen, global vice president for revenue at Dropbox in a blog post. “We’re honoured to be recognised by Gartner as a leader in this rapidly growing and highly competitive global market.”

For Egnyte, placed in the leaders’ section, the concept is validation not just for them but for the space overall. “In today’s rapidly evolving digital workplaces, businesses need to maintain flexibility, security, and performance in dealing with their data,” said Vineet Jain, Egnyte CEO. “Hybrid solutions, like Egnyte, are unique in having an open architecture that allows businesses to customise their digital workplace, enabling secure access to their data via any storage, any applications, and any device.

“With this level of customisation and freedom, hybrid has become a popular choice for both IT and end users,” Jain added.

In June, Egnyte announced the launch of Egnyte Protect, positioning the firm away from the traditional EFSS bucket but evolving its market strategy. “We see ourselves as a content intelligence platform,” Isabelle Guis, chief marketing and strategy officer, told CloudTech. “EFSS has great benefits to be a service used by the line of business, but also be of interest to IT.

“We decided that the highest demand for now was content governance,” Guis added. “That’s what our customers were asking for, and that compliments very well our enterprise file sync and share.”

Box was considered by Gartner analysts at the top for completeness of vision, while Citrix was placed as the best for ability to execute.