Data Center

Continuity Central – Enterprises struggle with increasing complexity of IT systems

Enterprises today are employing hybrid IT as they struggle to keep up with digital transformation, according to the recently released Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report ‘Hybrid IT Takes Center Stage’.

Sponsored by Verizon Enterprise Solutions, the report presents the results of a survey of 310 business and IT executives worldwide which found that most say their organizations are struggling to keep up with the pace of change in business today while working to ensure the complexity of their IT systems do not jeopardize performance, agility or security.

In fact, 63 percent of respondents indicated they are pursuing a hybrid IT approach to keep up with their existing infrastructure that consists of a mix of private clouds, public clouds and legacy data centers / centres – either on-premises or managed by service providers.

To enable hybrid IT, the report singles out the need for a secure, high-performance network architecture that can deliver the kind of security, flexibility and responsiveness required to stitch all these systems together.

“The vast majority of CIOs and line of business owners are working within the constraints of legacy apps, networks and investments,” said Chris Yousey, vice president of managed services for Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “And while the move to hybrid IT is about protecting their investments, it’s really more about improving performance, availability and above all, agility in today’s business climate.”

IT Business Edge – Digital Transformation Starts with Infrastructure

Business models around the world are rapidly shifting from selling products to monetizing services. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, if you are not generating revenue by digitally connecting to consumers, the future of your enterprise is in doubt.

While this digital transformation requires new approaches to organizational structures, workforce skillsets, business processes and customer relationships, it all starts with infrastructure. Static, silo-laden data systems are out; agile, software-defined architectures are in.

But how, exactly, are traditional enterprises supposed to implement such a radical upgrade in time to ward off competition from digitally driven upstarts who are unburdened by legacy infrastructure? To be sure, it will take a concerted effort, and a clearly defined strategy as to how digital transformation can be optimized for the enterprise’s unique market strengths.

More of the IT Business Edge post from Arthur Cole

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31
Oct 16

Data Center Knowledge – “Right-Sizing” The Data Center: A Fool’s Errand?

Overprovisioned. Undersubscribed. Those are some of the most common adjectives people apply when speaking about IT architecture or data centers. Both can cause data center operational issues that can result in outages or milder reliability issues for mechanical and electrical infrastructure. The simple solution to this problem is to “right-size your data center.”

Unfortunately, that is easier to say than to actually do. For many, the quest to right-size turns into an exercise akin to a dog chasing its tail. So, we constantly ask ourselves the question: Is right-sizing a fool’s errand? From my perspective, the process of right-sizing is invaluable; the process provides the critical data necessary to build (and sustain) a successful data center strategy.

When it comes to right-sizing, the crux of the issue always comes down to what IT assets are being supported and what applications are required to operate the organization.

More of the Data Center Knowledge article from Tim Kittila

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20
Oct 16

The Register – Internet of Things will turn up the compute heat for data centres

IPExpo The Internet of Things will put more demand upon mid-range and co-lo data centres, according to the marketing manager of data centre kit firm Minkels.

Speaking at London’s IPExpo conference this morning, Minkels’ Niek van der Pas explained how, in his view, the explosion of IoT device usage will push more and more workloads into smaller data centres.

Highlighting how IoT devices, by necessity, spend their time talking to what he called the “edge layer”, comprising “metro/local” data centres – as opposed to core layer “public cloud and hyperscale” data centres – Van der Pas said the main effect of this is going to be to scale up the age-old problems of cooling and power demands.

Two graphs on one of his slides illustrated the problem. LINX handles just under 3Tbps of internet traffic at 9pm. While the graph showed the usual peaks and troughs during the day, a similar graph showing power drawn by LINX was almost flat.

More of The Register post from Gareth Corfield

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19
Oct 16

SearchCloudComputing – Optimize your enterprise network design for hybrid cloud

Public and hybrid cloud adoption has a major ripple effect on enterprise network design. New bottlenecks arise, and some businesses need to alter their network configurations — particularly those for wide area networks — to ensure they get the performance they need.

With hybrid and public clouds, in particular, the networking focus shifts heavily to wide area network (WAN) connections. Businesses need to link their data centers to their public cloud provider’s sites, and often rely on their existing internet lines to do so. But this approach has shortcomings.

First, bandwidth is an issue. Traffic that used to roam about the data center now needs to move off-site, often increasing WAN traffic. Consequently, organizations may need to upgrade their internet lines, which can be expensive; pricing depends on a business’ location and amount of bandwidth needed.

More of the SearchCloudComputing article from Paul Korzeniowski

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18
Oct 16

Continuity Central – Many organizations mistakenly leaving cloud business continuity to third-party cloud providers

According to new research published by CTERA Networks, while enterprises continue to migrate workloads to the cloud at a rapid pace, protection of cloud-based servers and applications has not fully evolved to meet enterprise requirements for business continuity and data availability.

CTERA’s new eBook, ‘Game of Clouds’, showcases the findings of CTERA’s inaugural cloud backup survey, and presents a deep look at the state of enterprise cloud data protection. A CTERA-commissioned study was conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne to examine the data protection strategies of 400 IT decision makers and IT specialists in organizations using the cloud for application deployment at US, German and French organizations. The study analyzes the benefits and pitfalls of current backup strategies, offers key considerations for organizations moving to the cloud, and looks at the impact of poor backup practices on business continuity.

ZDNet – Is the IT budget ready to power digital transformation? The journeys of four CIOs

The digital transformation is upon us, with many CIOs expected to lead the charge. These technology leaders must determine how much of next year’s budget will drive internal and external innovation to meet staff and customer needs — and we’ve found a wide variety in investment levels across different industries.

While 72 percent of CXOs report that it is ‘critical’ or ‘very important’ for an organization to turn to a digital business model, only 15 percent said their company is agile enough to build such a system, according to an August survey from Unisys and IDG Research.

Another recent study found that 52 percent of companies surveyed looked to their CIO and CTO to lead their organization’s digital transformation, but only half said they actually had a business-wide digital transformation strategy.

More of the ZDNet post from Alison DeNisco

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06
Oct 16

AFCOM – Dissecting the Data Center: What Can – and Can’t – Be Moved to the Cloud

Practical approaches on cloud migration from the AFCOM folks. Re-platforming is a great opportunity for the move, but there are others as well, including staff changes, entering new lines of business, and financial drivers.

According to the results of a recent survey of IT professionals, 43 percent of organizations estimate half or more of their IT infrastructure will be in the cloud in the next three to five years. The race to the cloud is picking up steam, but all too often companies begin implementing hybrid IT environments without first considering which workloads make the most sense for which environments.

The bottom line is your business’s decision to migrate workloads and/or applications to the cloud should not be arbitrary. So how do you decide what goes where?

The best time to consider migrating to the cloud is when it’s time to re-platform an application. You should not need to over-engineer any application or workload to fit the cloud. If it’s not broken, why move it? For the purposes of this piece, let’s assume your organization is in the process of re-platforming a number of applications and you are now deciding whether to take advantage of the cloud for these applications. There are a few primary considerations you should think through to determine if moving to the cloud or remaining on-premises is best.

Evaluating What Belongs on the Ground or in the Cloud

First, ask yourself: Is our application or workload self-contained or does it have multiple dependencies? Something like the company blog would be considered a self-contained workload that can easily be migrated to the cloud. At the other extreme, an in-house CRM, for example, requires connectivity to your ERP system and other co-dependent systems. Moving this workload to the cloud would introduce more risk in terms of latency and things that could go wrong.

More of the AFCOM article from Gerardo Dada

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28
Sep 16

CIO Insight – Why Enterprise Still Matters

In today’s economy, executives must account for market pressure while keeping focused on the evolution of innovation in technology. This new reality presents both challenges and opportunities for businesses and IT to align on IT strategy and finding balance between the desire to seek value and manage for risk. Due to the difficulty in finding this balance, business leaders are increasingly contracting with cloud-based service providers for the creation of applications, integrations and custom development, with or without the support of enterprise IT. These leads are essentially acting as CIOs by providing their own technology-led business solutions, which leads to fragmentation and delays in accomplishing business initiatives

More of the CIO Insight article from Mike Sommer

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01
Sep 16

IT Business Edge – Preparing for the Evolution of the IT Administrator Role

Just as writing has come to mean texting, blogging or any form of digital writing, the cloud today means one or all of the three Cs: computing, connectivity and communication. And just as nearly all thought to putting pen to paper has disappeared, all reference to the natural cloud is long forgotten. The three Cs have altered the way we consume services. The adage, “change is the only constant,” holds true in the IT landscape like no other, forcing IT admins to constantly learn new skills and make strategic decisions.

In this slideshow Vidya Vasu, head of the ManageEngine Community, takes a closer look at how the role of the IT administrator is changing and how individuals can prepare.

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.