Like it or not, some enterprises have already entered a post-PC world — where their business communication network must accommodate new user-driven choices. These include traditional applications, mobile apps, social apps and operating systems; various server architectures; and an array of mobile devices ranging from smartphones to tablets and other mobility tools. Are you experiencing this phenomenon? If not, you will soon. Moreover, this latest business technology trend has huge ramifications.

Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) conducted extensive research and analysis to uncover key insights about BYOD (“bring your own device”) and desktop virtualization trends in U.S. enterprises. The Cisco IBSG Horizons BYOD and Virtualization study surveyed 600 enterprise IT leaders from 18 industries.

The Top 10 Market Insights

Insight 1: Mobility Is Pervasive

• Seventy-eight percent of U.S. white-collar employees use a mobile device (e.g., laptop, smartphone, or tablet) for work purposes.
• Respondents indicated that 65 …

Are all rogue IT projects bad things? Could this type of activity be beneficial? If rogue IT projects could be beneficial, should they be supported or even encouraged?

Recently, I took part in a live Twitter chat hosted by the Cloud Commons blog (thanks again for the invite!) that was focused on Rogue IT. After hearing from, and engaging with, some major thought leaders in the space, I decided to write a blog summarizing my thoughts on the topic.

What does “Rogue IT” mean anyway?

I think that there are rogue IT users and there are rogue IT projects. There’s the individual user scheduling meetings with an “unauthorized” iPad. There’s also a sales department, without the knowledge of corporate IT, developing an iPhone app to process orders for your yet-to-be-developed product. Let us focus on the latter – rogue IT projects. Without a doubt, rogue IT projects have been …

Remember the heady dot.com days circa 1999? We thought we were reinventing business, forming a New Economy, revolutionizing the essential nature of commerce. In our dreams! By late 2001 the bubble had burst, and what we thought was a new paradigm for business—the World Wide Web—turned out to be little more than a new marketing channel.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not trying to disparage the power and importance of the Web. After all, the Web, and the Internet in general, have deeply affected so many aspects of business today. It’s hard to remember the time when you had to talk to a teller to use a bank or a stockbroker to trade stocks! But we were wrong that the Web was a revolution. It wasn’t a paradigm shift.

Fundamentally, the rise of the Internet was more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Not wanting to …

Despite perceptions to the contrary, small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) are benefiting from increased IT data security as a result of a move to cloud computing, according to new research from comscore and Microsoft.

The results of the research, carried out among SMBs in Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore and the US, oppose the perception of security as the Achilles heel of the cloud argument.

The study shows that 35% of U.S. companies surveyed had experienced noticeably higher levels of security since moving to the cloud. In addition, 32% said they spent less time worrying about the threat of cyber attacks.

U.S. SMBs using the cloud spent 32% less time each week managing security than companies not using the cloud. They were also five times more likely to have reduced what they spend on managing security as a percentage of overall IT budget.

More US survey results …

Whether your data is stored in the cloud, on your desktop or on your server, you should be backing it up at least daily.

There are a myriad of backup options available on the desktop, from Windows NT Backup to Symantec and other more advanced options.

Some are mirror image backups, some are file by file. As well as backing up we should also be testing our restore processes to make sure our backup files are not corrupt and that we know how to restore if and when that disaster does strike!

These days, thanks to the cloud, backing up has become more simplified and in some cases, more secure and accessible than ever.

By signing up to a Cloud based backup agency such as Livebackup.com.au or Cloudbackup.net.au, or some desktop providers such as McAfee, Western Digital or Symantec, you can be backing up to your …

Hewlett Packard has released its first public beta cloud services with over 40 companies publicly supporting the move.

The company announced that its three services – HP Cloud Compute, HP Cloud Object Storage and HP Cloud Content Delivery Network – were to be made available through a pay-as-you-go system after the free beta ended last week.

HP stated that their goal was to “enable developers, independent software vendors and enterprises of all sizes to build the next generation of web applications.”

Among those rousingly proclaiming their support were storage companies StorSimple and TwinStrata, and cloud testers SOASTA and Spirent, with companies ranging from database and management to Platform as a System (PaaS) providers on board.

SOASTA roared that the partnership will “add…thousands of additional servers to our global test environment to further ensure optimal performance testing for our customers”, whilst Spirent beamed that “being able to test from within HP Cloud …

Many IT decision makers feel they are more likely to have a close encounter with a flying saucer than see the completion of their company’s cloud migration in the next six months.

This was one of a number of alarming findings contained within Cisco’s 2012 Global Cloud Networking survey this week.

The company polled 1300 IT decision makers in 13 countries spanning five continents, and revealed a lack of universal confidence in the cloud among IT professionals unless a proper cloud migration strategy is adopted.

The survey included a series of irreverent comparisons designed to put “cloud deployments in perspective”, with 31% of the experts surveyed stating that they could train for a marathon or grow a mullet in less time than it would take to migrate their business fully to the cloud.

Nearly a quarter of those polled stated they would in the next six months be …

No doubt, cloud computing brings with it the promise of choice:choice in how you source and deliver services to drive out cost, in how you ramp up delivery time, and in how you achieve higher quality. But choice typically comes with complexity, raising questions like:

• How do I know which services are right for cloud and which are not?
• What is the appropriate mix of private cloud and public cloud, and how does it change over time?
• What is the most effective way to build a private cloud for today and tomorrow?
• How secure are my cloud services?
• How do I manage my service portfolio to see that I get the benefits I expected?
• How do I build a flexible environment that can adjust rapidly to changing business requirements?

The best cloud solutions are designed to help you and your IT organization become the builder and broker of services …

A report from Gartner has indicated that the personal cloud will overshadow the PC as the main element of consumers’ digital lives by 2014.

The IT analysts claim the rapid growth in the usage of apps has led to this verdict, meaning a sea-change in how consumers stream, share and synchronise content providing more flexibility, user satisfaction and productivity with the cloud.

Michael Gartenberg, research director at Gartner and co-author of the report, said: “The personal cloud isn’t a single offering, but a reflection of consumers’ expectation that their content will flow seamlessly as the result of a combination of services that overlap the consumer, business and government domains.”

The report stated that, as no company has complete dominance of the field, “the stakes are high” – in essence, the competition will only improve the services currently available.

An example here is that, with the release of Google’s personal …

Let me start out by saying that I am not an Apple fan boy. I am not a Microsoft zealot or a Linux aficionado. I use them all daily; it is all about usability to me.

I wanted to talk about the shift I have seen in technology that we use in business every day. This transformation has been just as large and disruptive as virtualization. 10 years ago, the end user hardware and software was set and had very little diversity or customization. It was Win/Tel (Windows running on Intel processors) all the way with Microsoft Office. There was very little or no working from home, and you had to be in the office or have a VPN to the office to do your work.

Fast forward to today and the end user client and software environment has a lot more options. The other architects and I have …