Not entirely unexpected, the optical capabilities in our switch have provoked questions from customers and potential customers on whether the Plexxi solution could be used to create campus, metro or even long distance multi site fabrics. The answer to that question is a resounding yes, and with the newly introduced switch 2 platform, some of the connectivity options added to that platform make it extremely flexible to do just that.
The whole topic of Data Center Interconnects tends to attract strong supporters and strong opponents at the same time. In a world without constraints, the ability to tie public or private clouds together across distance without losing any of the L2 or L3 capabilities and freedom is very attractive. Virtualized platforms love networks that provide seamless L2 and L3 connectivity from anywhere to anywhere. Virtual machines can be moved around at will without much worry about VLAN and subnet boundaries. The reality of course is that this is not necessarily easy to create or maintain.
Five Things Developers Need to Know About PaaS
Although PaaS is new, it’s rapidly gaining momentum, with growth projected at 48 percent annually by Technavio, the research firm, and topping $6 billion in value by 2016. If PaaS is treated as a strategic opportunity to align agendas across IT and across the business, it may well prove to be a ʺonce in a generationʺ opportunity to clarify, improve, and strengthen everything developers do.
As with any new technology or approach to doing business, PaaS will appeal to different groups for different reasons. The clear business value is that PaaS is added at the application layer. For ISVs, PaaS can help extend the availability of a traditional software product or enable organizations to add new capabilities to their existing IT spectrum. It’s also helpful to anyone wishing to achieve productivity gains, speed time to results, or reduce their costs. But like any technological shift, PaaS adoption requires changes in how people work and demands collaboration if it is to be as successful as possible.
Egnyte Expands Global Operations to Meet Rapid Growth
Egnyte, the provider of the most comprehensive file-sharing platform for the enterprise, has announced its global expansion plans, with the establishment of regional centers in Spokane, Washington and New York, as well as a European headquarters in London and broadened operations in Poland. This expansion will enable Egnyte to meet the rapidly growing global demand for enterprise file sharing.
Egnyte’s revenue has doubled year-over-year for the past two years, and the company expects to more than double revenue ending 2014. Egnyte’s accelerating growth and the rapid expansion of the enterprise file-sharing market overall underscores the need for a platform-based approach that provides complete file sharing, sync, and storage capabilities, and also enables complete control over data and user access.
What IT Can Learn From Sochi
By Ben Stephenson, Journey to the Cloud
It’s no secret that the Winter Olympics in Sochi has had its fair share of problems. From infrastructure issues, to handling incidents, to security, to amenities for athletes, it seems like anything that could go wrong has gone wrong. So, what can IT learn from what has unfolded at Sochi?
Have your infrastructure in place beforehand
There are plenty of examples from Sochi about the proper infrastructure not being in place before the games started. There was unfinished construction around the city that consisted of exposed wires, uncovered manholes and buildings that weren’t finished. Many of the hotels were also unfinished. Some didn’t have working elevators, completed lobbies, or even running water (not to mention toilets that don’t flush). There’s a great picture circulating the web of an employee spray painting the grass green outside of an Olympic venue. Even the rings at the opening ceremonies malfunctioned. There were also safety concerns regarding the infrastructure of some of the ski / snowboard courses. The women’s downhill ski training runs were delayed after only three racers on the opening day because it was deemed too dangerous because one of the jumps was too big and athletes were “getting too much air.” In addition, Shawn White pulled out of the slopestyle event over safety concerns.
The first takeaway for IT from Sochi is to have your infrastructure in place and running properly before trying to start new projects. For example, if your organization is going to rollout a virtual desktop initiative you better take the proper steps beforehand to ensure a smooth rollout or you’re going to have a lot of angry people to deal with. For example, you need the correct WAN bandwidth between offices as well as the correct storage requirements in place for suitable performance. You also need to ensure that you have the correct network infrastructure in place beforehand to handle additional traffic. Finally, you need the proper server infrastructure set up for the redundancy and horse power necessary to deliver virtual desktops.
Make sure you have a way of handling incidents as they arise
There are always going to be unexpected circumstances that arise during the course of an event or project that have the potential of throwing you off. For example, there was a pillow shortage for Olympic athletes in Sochi. The following message went out to surrounding communities
“ATTENTION, DEAR COLLEAGUES! Due to an extreme shortage of pillows for athletes who unexpectedly arrived at Olympic Village in the mountains, there will be a transfer of pillows from all apartments to the storehouse on 2 February 2014. Please be understanding. We have to help the athletes out of this bind.”
I’m not going to pretend like I know what the plan was ahead of time to deal with supply shortages, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it wasn’t to borrow used pillows from strangers.
IT needs to make sure they have detailed plans in place BEFORE starting a project so there is a protocol to deal with unexpected issues as they arise. For example, a few months back GreenPages moved its datacenter. Our team put together an extremely detailed plan that broke out every phase of the move down to 15 minute increments. They devised teams for specific phases that had a communication plan for each team and also devised a backup emergency plan in the event they hit any issues the night of the move. This detailed planning of how to deal with various issues in different scenarios was a big reason why the move ended up being a success.
Have proper security measures in place
Another picture that is circulating the web was taken by a journalist who returned to her hotel room to find keys in her door and the door wide open…even though she left the room with the door shut and locked. There were also reports that visitors in Sochi faced widespread hacking on their mobile devices. IT departments need to make sure that the proper security measures are in place for its end users to protect corporate data. This includes implementing authentication and encryption, using intrusion detection technologies, and edge scanning for viruses.
When dealing with top talent, make sure they have the tools to get their jobs done & stay happy
Olympic athletes certainly qualify as top talent, as they represent the best of the best at their crafts in the entire world. When dealing with top talent, you need to make sure they have the tools to get their jobs done and to stay happy. The yellow colored tap water in Sochi is probably not all that appealing to world class athletes who may be looking to quench their thirst after a long day on the mountain. I can’t imagine that the small bathroom with multiple toilets, but no stalls or dividers, goes over very well either.
In the business world, it’s important to retain top talent. IT can help keep employees happy and enable them to do their jobs in a variety of ways. One example is to make sure you’re offering the applications that people actually use and want. Another example is empowering employees to use the devices of their choice by implementing a BYOD policy.
Conclusion
Take these lessons from this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi and apply them to your IT strategy and maybe one day you too can win your very own shiny gold medal.
If you would like to learn more about how GreenPages can help you with your IT operations fill out this form!
Photo credit http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1952496-the-20-biggest-sochiproblems
Veeam Appoints Chris Moore as North American Channel Chief
Veeam® Software on Wednesday announced that Chris Moore has been appointed as the company’s Channel Chief of North America.
“As enterprises deepen and expand their use of virtualization, they’re finding they need more powerful data protection for their modern data centers,” said Ratmir Timashev, CEO of Veeam Software. “To keep up with the growing demand for Veeam (especially Veeam Backup & Replication v7), we rely solely on our ProPartners – our success depends on their success. Chris has demonstrated he has the skills and leadership abilities required to further enable and empower our channel partners. He and his team will play a key role in our effort to provide powerful and affordable data protection solutions to SMBs and expand our presence in the enterprise as we continue our mission to achieve $1 billion in revenue within the next five years.”
Aria Systems: Recurring Revenue Market Disruptions to Continue in 2014
The trend of companies adopting recurring revenue surged in 2013, with brand names ranging from Adobe and Amazon to Target and Toyota using new billing and pricing models to grow sales and deepen customer loyalty. This surge will continue this year as more companies adopt recurring revenue models because of their flexibility and convenience for customers. Today, recurring revenue expert Aria Systems issued a projection on the industries poised for further disruption via recurring revenue in 2014 and beyond.
“Businesses large and small, across many sectors, are adopting the flexibility of recurring revenue,” said Tom Dibble, president and CEO, Aria Systems. “It’s not a fad anymore; it’s the new way to do business.”
The true rate of cloud adoption in healthcare
Although healthcare was once considered an industry that would not adopt cloud computing due to systemic security, legal, and privacy issues, that no longer seems to be the case. Those in healthcare IT are moving even farther into the world of cloud computing.
The use of cloud computing in the world of healthcare seems logical to me. Healthcare providers, and payers, are cost sensitive. They are also experiencing rapid change, thus they could use technology that’s more agile. Finally, they pay close attention to regulations and compliance. That’s all good for the cloud.
The problem is that most in healthcare don’t understand the value that cloud can bring. Instead, many push back on cloud computing, both private and public, typically due to assumptions that are incorrect. However, there are those who are beginning to push back on the FUD to take advantage of cloud computing.
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Service Provider Leverage in Emerging Collaboration Markets
The rapidly growing cloud market and the significant shifts in the voice and data services marketplace have created unprecedented challenges and opportunities for service providers. While the challenges presented to service providers are numerous and of strategic significance, in the interest of brevity, I will focus on opportunities specific to cloud collaboration.
Business OTT services like UC, UCC, and social collaboration are experiencing a surge in demand (Gartner predicts the collaboration market with grow to $21 B by 2018), and offer much greater margins than consumer OTT services, which are harder to monetize. As PWC observed in its recent report, service providers are especially well positioned to serve the business market given their preexisting relationship in business IT departments, and ownership of networks and infrastructure which allows them to offer best-in-market SLAs.
Service Provider Leverage in Emerging Collaboration Markets
The rapidly growing cloud market and the significant shifts in the voice and data services marketplace have created unprecedented challenges and opportunities for service providers. While the challenges presented to service providers are numerous and of strategic significance, in the interest of brevity, I will focus on opportunities specific to cloud collaboration.
Business OTT services like UC, UCC, and social collaboration are experiencing a surge in demand (Gartner predicts the collaboration market with grow to $21 B by 2018), and offer much greater margins than consumer OTT services, which are harder to monetize. As PWC observed in its recent report, service providers are especially well positioned to serve the business market given their preexisting relationship in business IT departments, and ownership of networks and infrastructure which allows them to offer best-in-market SLAs.
IDenticard® Access Control to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York
IDenticard® Access Control is a leading manufacturer of integrated access control solutions to protect employees, visitors, and facilities. Owned by Brady Corporation (NYSE:BRC), a $1.15 billion manufacturer of identification products, IDenticard Access Control draws on its 30 years of experience in security software development to provide innovative products based on its customers’ requirements and the needs of the marketplace. With an in-house engineering team, IDenticard Access Control has developed a patent-pending, revolutionary physical security solution that secures and monitors server rack access at the cabinet level. The system features easy-to-use dynamic mapping and customizable reporting capabilities to identify and track who accesses server racks and specifically where, when, and for how long.