IT Strategy

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.

CIO Insight – Why Adaptability Is Critical for State CIOs

To keep up with tech shifts and changing business demands, today’s state government CIOs must constantly redefine the way they manage a wide range of IT systems and applications, according to a recent survey from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), Grant Thornton LLP and CompTIA. The accompanying report, titled “The Adaptable State CIO,” indicates that most state CIOs, for example, are moving toward outsourcing, managed services and shared services models for IT infrastructure and operations. Most are exploring or adopting agile software development approaches. They’re also looking to modernize the wealth of legacy systems that account for a substantial portion of their overall tech portfolio. In addition, many are focusing on ongoing innovations in mobility and the internet of things (IoT). In other words, our nation’s state CIOs face very similar challenges—and opportunities—as those in private industry. “(State government) CIOs are adapting to changing circumstances and expectations,” according to the report. “This requires agility to respond quickly to the unexpected, but also the strategic vision to anticipate and to plan for a future that cannot be easily predicted.

More of the CIO Insight slide show from Dennis McCafferty

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11
Oct 16

The Register – Inside the Box thinking: People want software for the public cloud

Analysis On-premises file sync and share and collaboration is yesterday’s story. The future is the public cloud with dedicated software service suppliers, like Box.

File sync, share and collaboration is not a feature, but a product, best expressed as a service (SaaS) through Box’s three data centres and the public cloud, and not subsumed into part of an on-premises storage array offering. The company says it is now a content platform for the modern enterprise.

That’s the Box message and it’s working, though not dramatically, given that Box is growing and increasing its services.

Box has grown its base service with specific offerings for, for example, IBM, Salesforce, Microsoft Office, and Google Android for Work. It has also announced its Box Platform, an open API set for authentication, user management and content access.

More of The Register post from Chris Mellor

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10
Oct 16

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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05
Oct 16

Data Center Knowledge – Hospital Pays $400,000 HIPAA Breach Penalty for Obsolete ‘Business Associate’ Agreement

HIPAA has teeth. Are your BAAs accurate and up to date?

A Rhode Island hospital agreed this month to pay $550,000 in settlements after failing to properly update business associate agreements as required under the privacy and security rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), federal authorities said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island (WIH) after receiving a report of a data breach in November 2012.

WIH told federal authorities it had lost unencrypted backup tapes containing ultrasounds of 14,004 women, including patient names, dates of birth, dates of exams, physician names and, in some cases, Social Security numbers.

More of the Data Center Knowledge post from Aldrin Brown

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04
Oct 16

Continuity Central – The IT DR program: a crucial, but not well understood, aspect of disaster recovery

This is the shortest, most complete treatment I’ve ever seen of what it takes to be successful with IT Disaster Recovery. Worth the read.

While the hardware and software costs for disaster recovery are well understood many organizations do not fully realize that, in order to be assured of successfully executing the plan in the event of an outage or disaster, a comprehensive IT DR program must first be in place. An organization can have all the right IT DR hardware and software, but without a properly managed program, its efforts will fail.

Even the organizations that do have this understanding often underestimate the complexities involved in creating an IT DR program and the associated costs.

The DR program consists of the people, processes and tools necessary to implement the IT DR solution and manage its lifecycle. Because this implementation process requires considerable expertise and experience, organizations must carefully consider the costs of developing their in-house skill sets as well as those of purchasing, implementing, and maintaining their own hardware and software in house. They should then compare this expertise and the hardware and software costs to those they could access by going to a third-party managed recovery provider that specializes in providing IT disaster recovery services.

Only by understanding what goes into a full IT DR program and the complete total cost of ownership (TCO) of both an in-house versus a ‘selectively outsourced’ solution can organizations make the right choice.

The DR program consists of five processes: application mapping; developing disaster recovery procedures; test planning and execution; post-test analysis; and recovery lifecycle management. The discussion below will address what each step involves.

CIO Insight – Do IT Workers Lie About Certifications?

A surprising minority of CIOs and other IT leaders actually check to see if their staffers’ claims of tech certifications earned are actually true, according to a recent survey from TEKsystems. But they should—because many IT pros admit that they do not always report this information accurately on their resumes. The lack of verification could result in long-term consequences, as the majority of IT leaders take into account tech certifications in making decisions about the hiring, developing and promoting of their staffers. Among the certifications most in need: Those related to cyber-security, programming and development, project management and software engineering. Given that many organizations pay for these educational opportunities, CIOs need to do a better job of making sure that their employees aren’t fibbing when they indicate they’ve earned them. “(Organizations) need to be more diligent in actually verifying certifications in order to avoid getting trapped in a certification shell game,” said Jason Hayman, research manager at TEKsystems. –

More of the CIO Insight slideshow from Dennis McCafferty

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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

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.