Data Center

Wall Street Journal – CIOs Say Focus on Customer Is Paramount

We asked chief information officers how they expect their role to change in 2016 and beyond. They said the “seat at the table” discussion is over, and that the CIO exerts greater influence inside the C-suite as technology permeates every line of business.

Many CIOs said they now shape corporate strategy, not just support it. While they still have a mandate to improve operating performance, keep costs down and drive productivity using technology, they also guide product development and user experience design.

“Regardless of industry, CIOs will have more responsibility directly to the customer,” said Bill Bradley, CIO at CenturyLink Inc.

While in the past viewed as mostly a technical position, “the CIO…is now considered very valuable in the ability to bridge the gap between IT and internal and external customer needs,” said Erika Lance, CIO at Nationwide Title Clearing Inc.

Baseline – Why IT Pros Give Tech Transformation a Weak Grade

Few front-line technology workers give their companies high marks for adapting to new, transformative tech, according to a recent survey from Business Performance Innovation (BPI) and Dimension Data. The resulting report, “Bringing Dexterity to IT Complexity: What’s Helping or Hindering IT Tech Professionals,” indicates that most organizations haven’t even begun to transform IT—or are just getting started. A major sore spot: A lack of collaboration and/or alignment with the business side, as most tech staffers said business teams wait too long to bring IT into critical planning processes. This, combined with a lack of funding and other resources, results in tech departments spending too much time on legacy maintenance and far too little on essential advances that bring value to the business. “Instead of ushering their companies into a new age of highly agile innovation, IT workers are hindered by a growing list of maintenance tasks, staff cutbacks and aging infrastructure,” according to the report.

More of the Baseline Magazine article from Dennis McCafferty

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Data Center / IT Strategy — Comments Off
02
Feb 16

Arthur Cole – Weighing the Pros and Cons of Commodity Infrastructure

Data infrastructure built on commodity hardware has a lot going for it: lower costs, higher flexibility, and the ability to rapidly scale to meet fluctuating workloads. But simply swapping out proprietary platforms for customizable software architectures is not the end of the story. A lot more must be considered before we even get close to the open, dynamic data environments that most organizations are striving for.

The leading example of commodity infrastructure is Facebook, which recently unveiled plans for yet another massive data center in Europe – this time in Clonee, Ireland. The facility will utilize the company’s Open Compute Project framework, which relies on advanced software architectures atop low-cost commodity hardware and is now available to the enterprise community at large in the form of a series of reference architectures that are free for the asking. The idea is that garden variety enterprises and cloud providers will build their own modular infrastructure to support the kinds of abstract, software-defined environments needed for Big Data, the Internet of Things and other emerging initiatives.

More of the IT Business Edge post from Arthur Cole

Cloud Computing / Data Center / DevOps / IT Strategy / Virtualization — Comments Off
22
Jan 16

About Virtualization – The Network is Agile, but Slower with SDN and Microservices

Have you ever moved something in your kitchen because it fits better, only to find that you spend more time having to go and get it where you used to have it closer at hand? This is a simple analogy, but does relate to some confusion that is happening around SDN and microservices implementations.

As new methodologies and technologies come into your organization, we assess what it is that they are meant to achieve. You’ve worked out a list of requirements that you want to see, and from that wish list, you check off which are attained by the product of choice. As we look towards microservices architectures, which I fully agree we should, we have one checklist for the applications. As we look at the challenges that SDN solves, which I fully agree that we should, we have another checklist.

Let’s first approach this by dealing with a couple of myths about SDN and microservices architectures:

Data Center Knowledge – Data Centers as a Competitive Tool in Today’s Business Landscape

Twenty years ago, data centers were looked at through a Wizard of Oz tinted lens. They were a big, powerful and expensive means for data storage, but few business stakeholders outside the IT department really understood their impact – or knew what was going on behind the curtain. The digital revolution flipped this reality on its head. Today, data centers are no longer bulky cost centers, but drivers of business, enabling the data processing and availability modern enterprises need to maintain continuity and gain competitive advantage.

The Importance of Data

Data is everywhere: it is created by nearly everything – tollbooths, online transactions, instant messaging, telephone calls – and it has become earth’s most abundant digital resource. In fact, every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. As a result, data has transformed into businesses’ greatest asset and competitive differentiator.

More of the Data Center Knowledge post from Russell Senesac

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.

Wall Street Journal – CIOs Say Focus on Customer Is Paramount

Baseline – Why IT Pros Give Tech Transformation a Weak Grade

Arthur Cole – Weighing the Pros and Cons of Commodity Infrastructure

About Virtualization – The Network is Agile, but Slower with SDN and Microservices

Data Center Knowledge – Data Centers as a Competitive Tool in Today’s Business Landscape

Hello, I’m Doug Theis.

Cloud Computing and Data Centers

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