Archivo de la categoría: Featured

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 10/27/2014

Were you busy last week? Here’s a quick tech news recap of articles you may have missed from the week of 10/27/2014.

Tech News RecapTech News Recap

This week there were some interesting reads about network virtualization, the concept of the chief integration officer, common/costly mistakes made by CIOs, and the impact big data could have on mid-term elections. Amazon is sitting on $83 million of unsold Fire Phones. Meanwhile, former Apple CEO John Scully is launching a new low-cost smartphone brand. Hackers went after unclassified White House networks. A survey done by EMC and IDG revealed information about the popularity of private clouds in Singapore.

 

 

What top tech news did we miss? Leave a comment with links to any quality articles from last week that other readers may enjoy!

 

Corporate IT departments have progressed from keepers of technology to providers of complex solutions that businesses truly rely on. Download this ebook to learn more.

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

Featured, Network Infrastructure, Network virtualization, SDDC

Network Virtualization: A Key Enabler of the SDDC

In this video, Steve Mullaney, VMware’s SVP of Networking and Security Business Unit, discusses network virtualization. Network virtualization is a key enabler to delivering a software defined data center. According to Steve, from a customer perspective there really ends up being two use cases. The first is an agility use case to increase speed to innovation. In the past, organizations have had to separate infrastructures for development and dev and production. Network virtualization is allowing people to have one common computing infrastructure that they can logically isolate and create separate networks. This easily allows them to move from production to dev to test.

The second use case is security. Network virtualization allows organizations to provide additional security mechanisms within their data centers by using microsegmentation. If a company were to do this with physical firewalls and exiting technology, it would be extremely expensive and close to impossible operationally to implement. Network virtualization makes this a possibility.

You can hear more from Steve on Twitter. Follow @smullaney

 

Network Virtualization and the Software Defined Data Center

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfiYqF9EU10

 

 

 

GreenPages is one of VMware’s top partners in the country and last year won its Global Virtualization of Business Critical Applications Award. Email us at socialmedia@greenpages.com to see how GreenPages can help with your VMware initiatives.

 

 

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech New Recap

Tech News Recap for the Week of 10/20/2014

Were you busy last week? Here’s a quick tech news recap of articles you may have missed from the week of 10/20/2014.

Tech News Recap

Tech NewsA top story in the industry this week is that EMC bought out Cisco’s stake in VCE. A study shows that consumers think Apple Watch is the most exciting piece of wearable technology on the market. Microsoft is offering cloud tools in the fight against Ebola. The Pentagon’s VDI environment reaches 18,000 computers. Google is rolling out Inbox – its new email set up. There were also a couple of good articles around cloud predictions for 2020, trends in the transformation of enterprise IT, and the potential impact the internet of things has on healthcare costs.

What tech news did we miss this week? Leave a comment with any links to quality articles from last week that other readers might enjoy!

The fundamentals of the corporate IT Department have evolved. Read this eBook to make sure your IT Department is not falling behind.

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

Cloud computing, Featured, IoT

Cloud Computing in 2020: Looking into that Crystal Ball

Cloud Computing in 2020Recently, @thedodgeretort of Enterprise CIO Forum held a Twitter chat about what cloud computing in 2020 will look like. I decided to write up a quick blog sharing my thoughts on the topic. Looking into the crystal ball, I see a few things happening with cloud by 2020 — call it 5 years out. First, cloud will transform into more of a utility and a grid of computing power. Second, we’ll see a much deeper manifestation of the core characteristics of cloud computing, especially with regard to flexible capacity, consistent access, and high portability. Third, I anticipate a lot of activity in machine-to-machine transactions and communications (call it IoT if you like). Fourth: superesilient applications. Fifth: compute traded as a commodity. And finally, within 5 years, I think IT and the overall business will come together to actually take advantage of these technologies. Read on for more detail.

Cloud Computing in 2020

 

1. A utility and computing grid

In 5 years, large companies will still hang on to their datacenters to run some services. However, with security more robust, I think that corporations will make available their own computing resources as much as they consume cloud resources – just like some households generate their own electricity and sell it back to the grid. I think Cisco’s Intercloud concept has an angle on this.

2. Flexible capacity, consistent access, and high portability

A cloud/compute socket just like an electrical socket. Standardized applications and connectors that “plug in” to the grid and are removed just as easily. Virtualization has the first stab at this, encapsulating the OS, data, and applications neatly in a VMX and VMDKs. Containers are the next stab. Redhat has an angle on this with their CloudForms PaaS. Raw compute power becomes more and more of a commodity as portability improves; meaning downward pressure on IaaS prices will remain to some degree (see #4).

3. IoT or machine-to-machine communications/transactions

One machine determines that it needs to acquire more compute power to complete its work. It makes a “deal” to go out and acquire that compute power, uses it, and gives it back to the grid. Or, on the flip side, a machine that knows when it can stand idle and rent its own power. Another angle on this, a virtual machine or application has knowledge of its SLA, and moves to the provider who can deliver on that SLA at the least cost. Love it or hate it, Apple’s Siri has an early angle on this. From what I’ve read about the technology, queries to Siri find their way back to Apple datacenters, not only to obtain answers, but to improve the accuracy of queries for all Siri users.

4. Superesilient applications

As prices for cloud trend downward and portability improves (see #2 and #5), disaster recovery will take a new shape. Instead of running on a 2-site/2-region DR architecture, applications will run on a 5, 10, 20, or 30-site “DR” architecture, with all nodes being active. Does it matter where your application is running at that point? Potentially, it’s running all over the east coast, or all over the country. Some services from AWS already have an angle on this with services that are redundant across regions (a.g., S3, elastic load balancing, etc.), not to mention things like DNS on the Internet. I think it will become cost-effective to do this, in general, within 5 years.

5. Compute traded as a commodity, just like crude oil

This might be a stretch in 5 years, but with the trend of IaaS being more commoditized and portability improving, we’ll see a day when compute power is traded in a commodities market. In the channel, this is already fairly common – IaaS providers are eager to cut favorable deals with resellers who agree to purchase large chunks of infrastructure upfront, only to resell at a later date.

6. IT and the business coming together

DevOps was the first marriage of two groups that had been previously at odds (oftentimes). Within 5 years, I think maturity in IT will improve to the point that they become as focused on the business as any other traditional LOB. IT becomes an Innovation Center — they are focused on the business, and behave proactively. Corporate IT shifts its focus from requirements to possibilities. See my previous posts on the emerging idea of a cloud architect who will be important in this shift.

 

To sum up… we’re just at the beginning of possibilities in cloud computing.

 

To hear more from John, you can download his eBook, “The Evolution of the Corporate IT Department“

Photo credit http://bestpaperz.com/ct/8766019-crystal-ball.html

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech New Recap

Tech News Recap for the Week of 10/13/2014

Were you busy last week? Here’s a quick tech news recap of articles you may have missed from the week of 10/13/2014.

Tech News Recap

Tech News Recap Another week with some big stories from the industry. EMC bought cloud management vendor Cloudscaling. Meg Whitman faced questions about HP-EMC merger talks. VMware expands its vCloud Air offering. Google widens the downloads lead over App Store. Apple patched 144 security flaws across seven products. VMware’s AirWatch Secure Content Locker was named a leader in Aragon Research Globe for MCM. There have also been some important updates around Cisco’s ASA line.

What top tech news did we miss? Leave a comment with links to any quality articles from last week that other readers may enjoy!   Listen to on-demand webinar to learn how your organization can modernize IT operations by killing the transactional treadmill.   By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

Cisco, Featured, Network Infrastructure

Cisco ASA Line Updates: What You Need to Know

As many of you know, Cisco acquired Sourcefire last year. Now that the acquisition has been completed, there are updates to the Cisco ASA Line you need to know about. In this video, Solutions Architect Dan Allen provides a detailed run-down of important product changes and updates.

 

Cisco ASA Line Updates

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF134pqIQGQ

 

 

Would you like to speak with Dan to get more information? Email us at socialmedia@greenpages.com

 

 

 

 

 

CIO Focus, Cloud computing, Featured

CIO Focus Interview: Stuart Appley, Shorenstein

We’re starting a new CIO Focus Interview Series on the blog to get insights from some of the top thought leaders in the industry. For our first interview, I spoke with Stuart Appley, CIO at San Francisco based Shorenstein, to pick his brain about the current and future IT landscape. You can hear more from Stuart on Twitter.

CIO Focus Interview: Main Challenges

 

CIO Focus Interview: Stuart AppleyBen: Could you give me a little background on your company as well as your role as CIO within the organization?

Stuart: Shorenstein is a real estate investment firm and owner and operators of commercial properties. Essentially, we act like a private equity firm by raising money from high net worth individuals. Instead of buying a company, we buy commercial buildings. We buy them and own and operate them for 10-15 years before selling them off and closing the fund. When we buy a building we typically manage it, so the other part of the business is being a property manager, investing in the property, doing redevelopment, etc. As CIO, I’m responsible for running the IT shop and IT’s long term strategic vision

Ben: What sort of unique challenges do you face as the CIO at your organization?

Stuart: A main challenge we face is that the company culture is a little older. This is something we are actively trying to change. We also have a diverse set of workers and a very distributed, mobile workforce. We have leasing agents out in the field, engineers checking equipment on the go, etc. Supporting the needs of this workforce is a challenge. I would say some of our users may not be as tech savvy as they are in other industries. We tend to hire a lot of senior level people, so our age base is a little higher than other companies. This makes it more difficult to get people to adopt technologies and bring them up to speed.

 

CIO Focus Interview: A look back at 2014

 

Ben: What was your main accomplishment in 2014 from an IT perspective?

Stuart: We just completed a large cloud ERP project. Doing this has allowed us to reduce a lot of application sets. This was a huge accomplishment because of the large amount of data and apps we have been moving in the cloud. Overall, the project, which lasted a little over a year, went smoothly.

Ben: How long have you been utilizing the cloud?

Stuart: 4-5 years, maybe even a little longer. Right now, we have 70% of our applications in the cloud. This includes LOBs apps that are standard, like Salesforce, and industry specific ones like Intralinks.

Ben: Did you have any pushback from the CEO, CFO or board of directors when you made the pitch to go cloud?

Stuart: No, it really wasn’t an issue with them. I was able to make the case that we should outsource things that we do not have a core competency in, and they were completely on board. Buy vs. Build.

 

CIO Focus Interview: Looking Ahead

 

Ben: What are you looking to accomplish in 2015?

Stuart: A main focus of ours is to rationalize cloud storage. We have a lot of content management systems right now – about 5-6. It’s time to rationalize that and get it down to 1-2. Another big focus we have is leveraging the beginning of a digital strategy we have been creating. For example, there are a lot of documents that need to be manually signed. We want to automate the signing of documents to save time and increase efficiency.

Ben: Anything else?

Stuart: We’re also going to review our data center and determine whether we want to move things to public clouds or private. We have listed out apps and services and plan to determine where each one would be the best fit. Finally, I want to continue to focus on mobility and try to push ease of access anywhere, anytime.

Ben: Throughout your career, what concept or technology would you say has had the most drastic impact on IT?

Stuart: I would say the idea of the consumerization of IT. This concept has transformed the whole industry. Users go home and use consumer apps and then carry those same expectations into the work place. In their mind, that ease of access should be available anywhere and everywhere across the board. To me, it’s a great thing for IT because it is forcing us to deliver. We have higher expectations and have a high bar to match.

Ben: How do you view IT?

Stuart: IT needs to be an advisor to the business. There is a lot of innovation that is happening with cloud vendors and we shouldn’t try to match that. The challenge is helping users understand that we support them going out and looking at other options. At the same time, we want them to come to us so we can let them know if there are any security concerns or if it will need to integrate with other apps that already exist in the environment. We need to be a consultant to the business and not a centralized just-say-no organization.

 

Are you a CIO/CTO interested in participating in our CIO Focus Interview series? Email me at bstephenson@greenpages.com

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 10/6/2014

Were you busy last week? Here’s a quick tech news recap of articles you may have missed from the week of 10/6/2014.

Tech News Recap

Tech NewsThere were some big stories in the industry this week. HP and Symantec are both breaking themselves in two. The Pentagon is preparing to put high-risk secret documents in the cloud. More ATM malware, a cyber attack on Japanese Airlines, and thousands of user photos leaked through a third party Snapchat app. Rackspace is offering to sell and manage Google Apps for work for its customers. To stay up-to-date on the top news from the industry throughout the week, follow GreenPages on Twitter.

What top tech news did we miss? Leave a comment with links to any quality articles from last week that other readers may enjoy!

 

Corporate IT departments have progressed from keepers of technology to providers of complex solutions that businesses truly rely on. Download this ebook to learn more.

 

By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

Cloud computing, Featured

So You Want to Be a Cloud Architect? Part II

cloud architect In Part I of this cloud architect series, we highlighted that business skills are at least as important as technical skills for the cloud architect. Here in Part II, we’ll propose three levels of cloud architect, describe the specific skills needed for each level, and make a suggestion on how to obtain these skills.

 

Levels of the Cloud Architect

At GreenPages, we think of three different levels of cloud architect. Through many client conversations, it has become clear that there are common perspectives on cloud:

  • Moving to cloud or “cloud as a bucket”
  • Cloud as a DevOps enabler, to take advantage of cutting edge development concepts
  • Cloud as a management paradigm, particularly to enable self-service and request management
  • A service rationalization strategy

So, the three levels of the cloud architect include the Integration, Developer, and Principal.

  • The Integration Architect has the ability to capture requirements, develop a bill of materials, and help an organization migrate their services to cloud providers. I’d want an integration Architect on staff to help me with a datacenter consolidation/modernization/rationalization project.
  • The Developer Architect builds on the skills of the Integration Architect and focuses on the ability to transform an organization’s development community to use cloud services efficiently. I’d want a Developer Architect on staff to take on a DevOps transformation project.
  • The Principal Architect builds on the Integration and Developer levels by focusing on improving the business’s ability to compete, through the use of cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, XaaS) as well as the capabilities of cloud and DevOps. IT Service Portfolio skills are important here to understand an IT organization and what it does for the business as a consumer. Analysis and measurement of the business’s activities/processes/revenues/expenses is also important in this role. An individual in this role might lead a team of cloud architects to transform or build an entire business – perhaps a business that provides cloud services. Further, the individual in this role focuses on possibilities more than analysis of requirements.

 

{Download John’s eBook “The Evolution of Your Corporate IT Department“}

 

Training and Certification

So, which specific skills or certifications are needed for each level?

cloud architect

In a quick look at Coursera, I came across two courses, offered free of charge, that would be helpful for the cloud architect.

On a sidenote, I think Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a great thing and a nice use of cloud technology (the “flexible capacity” characteristic). Looking ahead, I expect that one would be able to obtain, from a MOOC, all of the training they need to become a cloud architect (amongst other things).

Available from a MOOC for $0.00

GreenPages certifies these levels of cloud architects by validating past certifications and industry experience. We also provide a training course to bring together the skills from various certifications and make them relevant for the cloud architect. Instead of needing to know the complete details of every aspect of these certifications, I think there are some core concepts that are highly applicable to the work of a cloud architect. Consider ITIL v3 in particular. While it is helpful to know how Incident and Problem Management processes work, the cloud architect absolutely needs to know the details of Service Strategy for one. Why? Not to understand which cloud services are available, but to help their organization develop their portfolio of IT services – some of which may be great candidates to source to a cloud service. On a related note, why are we hammering the idea that a cloud architect needs to have all of this business expertise? Well, once IT is defined in terms of the services it delivers, the cloud architect can then analyze that portfolio to identify which services provide the business with a competitive edge, and which services do not (I like to call the latter “commodity” services). The cloud architect may make sourcing recommendations based on this analysis. The table below lists the concepts from various certifications that are important for the cloud architect.

cloud architect

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Part III I’ll go into more depth on two things:

  • The training course that we provide to tie all of this together
  • The roles and responsibilities of a cloud architect

I’d love to hear your feedback on the role of the cloud architect, especially anything additional that you think the role needs to have. Leave comments below!

 

 

 

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 9/29/2014

Were you busy last week? Here’s a quick tech news recap of articles you may have missed from the week of 9/29/2014.

Tech News Recap

Tech News RecapMore talk this week about retail store data breaches. Microsoft announces Windows 10. eBay and PayPal will be splitting into two separate companies. Apple has made iPhone theft even harder with a series of security enhancements within iOS 8. Cisco sets $1 billion investment for global cloud network. Microsoft CEO talks about economic boost cloud computing will provide to India. There were also some good articles around qualifications of a cloud architect, security essentials, data analytics & more.

What top tech news did we miss? Leave a comment with links to any quality articles from last week that other readers may enjoy!

The corporate IT Department has evolved. Don’t be left behind.