Articles

nlyte Software launches Version 6.0 for integrated analytics & intelligent capacity planning in the data centre

22 Dec 2010

nlyte 6.0 now incorporates nlyte Analytics, a set of fully integrated business intelligence capabilities allowing data centre professionals, managers and executives to quickly gain visibility into the information and key performance indicators that help optimise the critical resources of power, cooling and space leading to reduced data centre operating expenses and extended data centre life.  Users can gain detailed visibility into the current status of the business, enabling them to track how their data centre operations are performing against strategic goals and how day-to-day execution is aligned with the broader corporate strategy.

TBWA Group - File transfer problems, Solved.

17 Dec 2010

Leading Advertising Agency eliminates email attachment problems, and shares visionary ideas through Accellion Secure File Transfer.

In the fast-paced world of advertising, the award-winning TBWAGroup companies have earned a reputation for creating and delivering challenging, visionary ideas for some of the world’s largest consumer brands, including Apple, Adidas, Sony PlayStation, and Nissan. Part of Omnicom Group Inc., a global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company, TBWA has 291 offices spanning the globe in 77 countries.

TBWA had an ever increasing need to distribute files to clients, suppliers and other third parties and a large proportion of these files exceed the size restrictions imposed on their own email system and those of email recipients.

Ten tips to get more resources from IT

16 Dec 2010

The Top 10 Things IT Should Be Doing (but isn’t)

Wendy Yale, Senior Director of Worldwide Marketing, Varonis provides some good advice for anyone on a budget or drawing one up – she shows you how to make your resources go further and keep your IT secure – all at the same time. These top ten tips will help you polish off your budget planning and keep on the right side of the boss. 

Why Automating Private Key Management Holds the Secret of Real Security: What Your PCI Auditor May Not Be Telling You

15 Dec 2010

The PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS and PCI 2.0) is nothing more than a series of guidelines that constitute security best practice. Companies that institute programs to better protect cardholders’ data can also improve and extend these efforts throughout their business, ensuring that all other sensitive corporate and partner data is better protected. As the new PCI Point-to-Point (P2P) roadmap points out, there are still significant threats to the data as it moves within and beyond organisational boundaries.

After this years’ security Tsunami – tips on how to survive 2011

15 Dec 2010

In-house and internal threats will be a big element of 2011 as organisations begin to understand that anti-virus, malware, and phishing software is no longer effective. There will be an epiphany that critical infrastructure is under constant attack and that there is a serious need to implement more comprehensive security software, security perimeters, data loss prevention and human assets to counter the existing and expanding security threats. This will translate into a significant need for the modernisation of infrastructure and enhanced education in human resources to implement these systems.

Hactivism 101

13 Dec 2010

Hacktivism is the use of cyber attacks and sabotage to communicate politically motivated causes; it is as old as the internet. Sole hacktivists have always acted in an individual manner to demonstrate their protest using various attack methods. One popular attack has been, and continues to be, the defacement of websites- Microsoft’s website, for example, was displaced with a Saudi Arabian flag.  

Well-managed IT Projects should be vital elements of Enterprise Change – so why are they often not?

08 Dec 2010

Ivan Lloyd, a Director at Corporate Project Solutions, discusses problems and issues faced by organisations when managing IT projects and the potential disconnect between business objectives verses ‘technology tunnel vision’ - a phrase Ivan uses to describe IT projects that are selected based on a desire to implement a particular technology as opposed to aligning to business objectives.

Virtualization: Benefits and Challenges

07 Dec 2010

Virtualization is a high-tech buzz word in broad use today, but its increasing importance is based on more than just the passing fancy of the crowd. With its potential to reduce capital expenses and energy costs, virtualization presents an attractive solution for enterprises looking to save money and generate value from their IT investments. Virtualization can indeed offer many benefits to enterprises, but the benefits must be weighed against the potential threats to information assets and the business itself.

What a network manager really wants for Christmas

07 Dec 2010

Network managers are not superhuman, you know. Sure, they can perform feats of dazzling IT acrobatics. They have the patience of a churchyard yew. But they can get stressed out too. Look closely and you’ll spot the signs of strain: a throbbing vein beneath the left eye, perhaps, or the frayed cuff of a cardigan.

Securing your privileged Identity - is anyone in control of Cloud security?

07 Dec 2010

There are those who argue that the age of Cloud computing is merely in the minds of the more far-sighted IT visionaries. I have even met those whose businesses are indifferent to the Cloud. This indifference may cost them dearly – and soon. The UK’s new Coalition Government is implementing the “G-Cloud” strategy (actually the strategy of the last Government) and there are some who claim that it will save the government £3.2bn from its annual £16bn IT budget of £16bn. That’s not just a big saving for the Government – it’s an obvious opportunity for suppliers who can ensure it is secure. 

Automating the Virtual Data Center

02 Dec 2010

If your company is like most organizations, virtualization has become a fact of life in your data center. And it is transforming many aspects of the data center – resulting in better system utilization, application availability and cost savings in hardware and energy use. For these reasons and others, virtualization technologies are being deployed to drive the efficiency and effectiveness of data center resources.

There’s a Bounty on your Applications

29 Nov 2010

Can you afford to wait for hackers to find flaws in your security defences?

In the last year there have been a number of organisations offering rewards, or ‘bounty’ programs, for discovering and reporting bugs in applications. Mozilla currently offers up to $3,000 for crucial or high bug identification, Google pays out $1,337 for flaws in its software and Deutsche Post is currently sifting through applications from ‘ethical’ hackers to approve teams who will go head to head and compete for its Security Cup in October. The winning team can hold aloft the trophy if they find vulnerabilities in its new online secure messaging service – that’s comforting to current users. So, are these incentives the best way to make sure your applications are secure?

Data Center Transformation

29 Nov 2010

Data centers today are undergoing a dramatic shift in terms of the design objectives, technology options and configurations, and functional requirements. The combination of increasing service and availability requirements, continued data growth, and capacity constraints is placing substantial pressure on organizations to adopt new approaches to accommodate current and future business needs.

Why education is required to win the data centre temperature debate

25 Nov 2010

In 2010, the energy consumption of the data centre industry has continued to climb the political and financial agendas. Tightened budgets mean that companies around the world are looking to reduce energy costs, while the regulatory environment is evolving to a state whereby heavy emitters could be penalised financially.

Do GB consumers & UK businesses understand the real cost of the data carbon footprint?

24 Nov 2010

Survey of 1,000 GB consumers & 100 CIOs/data centre mangers at UK enterprises.  

Research conducted by TNS & Vanson Bourne on behalf of nlyte Software

10 CRM Lessons from 2010

24 Nov 2010

Having a more sophisticated approach to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is fundamental to a businesses' sustainability and progress. It not only prioritises the importance of the end-user in the supply chain; it ensures complete visibility and control of the management processes needed to address customers’ needs efficiently and accurately. Paul Elswood of CDC Software, MD, CDC Software UK & Ireland describes his top 10 CRM lessons which have been learnt from 2010 and how to move forward in 2011.

How to incorporate cloud computing into your BC plan

23 Nov 2010

The term ‘cloud computing’ has been widely adopted by the technology industry to describe any on-demand services provided via the internet. It has had a drastic impact on businesses and the technology channel. 

As we begin to emerge from the hype around ‘cloud computing’ many businesses are seeing it with more clarity and are focusing on how the cloud will fit into their existing infrastructure, services and solutions.  Cloud can be used as a way of accessing a wide variety of services from security, data backup and storage to IT infrastructure, enterprise applications and business continuity.

Many organisations are still nervous about offering cloud services but in these new lean times, the allure of being able to pay as you go is gaining traction. Cloud solutions should be no different to standard solutions.

Experts predict cloud-based crack of SHA-1 passwords is a taste of things to come

18 Nov 2010

Reports that a German hacker has successfully cracked a secure hashing algorithm (SHA-1) password using a pay-as-you-use cloud computing based parallel processing environment is very worrying, says Credant Technologies.

Data Center E-Book

18 Nov 2010

Deploying, Managing and Securing an Efficient Physical Infrastructure

This white paper covers key 10 Gigabit Ethernet drivers, current need and future adoption expectations, Intel’s paper lays out 10Gb/s cabling media and architecture options, including a comparative look at backwards compatibility, power consumption, latency and cost. 

Oracle Cloud Computing

15 Nov 2010

Cloud computing is a significant advancement in the delivery of information technology and services. By providing on demand access to a shared pool of computing resources in a self-service, dynamically scaled and metered manner,  cloud computing offers compelling advantages in speed, agility and efficiency. Today, cloud computing is at an early stage in its lifecycle, but it is also the evolution and convergence of several trends that have been driving enterprise data centers and service providers overthe last several years.

J.R. Simplot Data Center Refurbishment

05 Nov 2010

As part of a data center refurbishment, the J.R. Simplot data center management team wanted to improve energy efficiency to meet corporate green initiatives. They also wanted to increase IT rack density, be better able to troubleshoot equipment and put in systems to manage potential risks. 

Cabinet Power Monitoring, Management & Control Within the Data Center

05 Nov 2010

Increased cabinet densities combined with reduced power availability and greatly increasing power costs are driving power monitoring and management solutions within the Data Center. Only through power monitoring, management and control can greater efficiencies be achieved with the key being “You cannot improve what you are not measuring.” As groups like The Green Grid advocate continuous power monitoring at the device level, most IT and Infrastructure Managers are struggling with not only making these measurements, but also what to do with the information.

If you ignore it, it won’t go away...

05 Nov 2010

The deadline to register for the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme may have only just passed, but many companies left it until the last minute, no doubt hoping that it, like the Housing Information Packs, would just disappear when the government does yet another policy ‘U-turn’.  Despite the swathing cuts to public services and Quangos, the CRC is still in force, albeit all pretence of it being neutral has been removed and it is now simply a ‘green’ tax.  High tech industries, especially the data centre sector, are going to have to get up to speed on the scheme very quickly in order to minimise any losses as a result of it.

Desktop Virtualization: Concept Becomes Reality with Quest

01 Nov 2010

CIOs and senior IT management are tuning their focus to desktop virtualization as they look for new ways to enhance their desktop strategy with simultaneous benefits to the end-user and IT operations. VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) has been the industry buzz word and may be the right fit for certain scenarios, but successful desktop virtualization implementations view VDI as one of many deployment models.

Exadata Smart Flash Cache and the Sun Oracle Database Machine

28 Oct 2010

The Sun Oracle Database Machine delivers extreme performance and scalability for all database applications including Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), Data Warehousing (DW) and consolidation of mixed database workloads. One of the key enablers of this is the Exadata Smart Flash Cache and the intelligent Oracle Exadata Storage Server Software that drives it.

Claranet launches virtual hosting services; bridging cloud gaps

26 Oct 2010

Tier1 Research analyst, Antonio Piraino writes:  UK (and France) based Claranet has been working rapidly on making its cloud services generally available in rapid succession over the past few months. In September, the company launched its Managed Virtual Hosting to complement its managed dedicated virtual server environments – or private clouds.

Fixing weak passwords

26 Oct 2010

Passwords have been with us since before the age of the desktop PC but, as Chris Stoneff, senior product manager with Lieberman Software explains, administrators and their users need to rethink their password security policies if they are to be truly effective.

Maximizing Business Continuity and Minimizing Recovery Time Objectives in Windows Server Environments

25 Oct 2010

Maximizing business continuity while minimizing business disruption can be especially challenging for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) following a server failure. Resources are limited, so there isn’t a lot of help to get systems back online. Having a server out of commission is never pleasant, but the consequences of business disruption are grimmer for SMBs than they are for large enterprises that can disperse the effect of a server meltdown.

University of Bath Computing Services

22 Oct 2010

The University of Bath

Located in an attractive campus about a mile from the centre of the city, The University of Bath is one of the UK’s leading universities, with an international reputation for research and teaching at the highest academic standard. It is ranked in the top ten of the country’s annual university league tables.

Setao Depends on Pillar to Keep Things Moving

21 Oct 2010

SETAO (Société d’Exploitation du Tramway et duréseau de bus de l’Agglomération d’Orléans) manages the urban transportation network of the city of Orléans,about 130 km (80 miles) southwest of Paris in north central France. With about 100,000 passengers per day, SETAO manages data from their trams and buses, vehicle radios, billing systems, electrical systems, traffic lights, and video feeds from surveillance cameras throughout the city.

Force10 Networks Dynamic Cloud Infrastructure

19 Oct 2010

The data center has been, and continues to be, one of the key resources of innovation helping businesses become more agile and efficient while reducing total cost of ownership(TCO) — as well as being the focal point for green IT initiatives.

Technology specialist improves security and data resilience

19 Oct 2010

Prestige Technology Solutions (Prestige) is an experienced technology company formed in 1989, renowned for delivering expert technology and infrastructure solutions to UK businesses of all sizes. It was established during the boom years of the dot.com revolution in the late 1990s, and now in the more challenging economic downturn, Prestige has become a trusted IT advisor to many of its customers by offering an expanded portfolio of solutions covering the main aspects of the ever broadening IT landscape including cloud computing applications, mobile devices and virtualisation infrastructure.

Oracle’s Optimized Solution for Oracle Database — A Business White Paper

14 Oct 2010

Virtually all IT organizations in both the private and the public sectors use a database system at the core of their operations. These databases are integral to day-to-day operations. If they are not available around the clock it will have a significant detrimental effect on business and in some cases the safety of employees.

Private Key Management: Best Practice Tips From the Real World

14 Oct 2010

It has always been taken for granted that the entire IT security industry understands that, as part of digital certificate management, it is necessary to manage the private keys associated with those certificates. A recent conversation with an analyst made it clear that this assumption was just that – an assumption. 

Avoiding System and Data Loss with Windows Desktops and Laptops

13 Oct 2010

More and more businesses are becoming less centralized in the 21st century – with many workers relying on laptops as their computing environment. In addition, a lot of small businesses are foregoing the use of servers in favor of using desktops and laptops to run their organizations.

If Your Head’s In the Cloud, Keep Your Feet on the Ground!

11 Oct 2010

Keep an eye on the must-have requirements of Cloud-based network security

While some of the technical underpinnings that make up the Cloud’s ‘secret sauce’, are relatively recent innovations, the business case for managing critical IT functions as services – inside or outside the firewall - is not a new concept. At the end of the day, the Cloud is just another way to outsource IT functions, and the same fundamental concerns that exist with more mature outsourcing offerings need to be addressed – such as, how does an organization manage its security and compliance posture when critical systems and data are hosted or managed by a third party? 

Mainframe―The Ultimate Cloud Platform?

08 Oct 2010

CA Technologies today announced the results of a new independent study revealing that 81 percent of IT organisations in the U.K. believe the mainframe is an essential component of their cloud computing strategy. Over 300 IT decision makers in ten countries responded to the CA Technologies commissioned survey, “Mainframe―The Ultimate Cloud Platform?” 

PICC Group Invests in CommScope Network Infrastructure for its Data Center in South China

07 Oct 2010

The PICC Group(People's Insurance Companyof China Group) has been China’s biggest insurance company since 1949. Today, it has 5,750 branches, including 80 outside of China, employing a total of more than 110,000 people.

Firewall Cleanup

29 Sep 2010

Firewalls are designed to provide access control. Although there is risk associated with any access, by limiting what access is permitted the risk is limited and understood and can be evaluated against business need to effectively justify the risk. However, poor firewall management defeats this purpose by ineffectively controlling access and limiting visibility into what access is actually permitted; poor management also increases the cost associated with security management.

Too much data can mean insecure data storage is the result

27 Sep 2010

Data exists in many forms in most organisations and, as IT managers find to their annoyance when they start trying to archive that data in a coherent manner, its sheer volume can often be overwhelming.

LGR Telecommunications Improves the Power and Versatility of Its Solutions with a Data Warehouse

27 Sep 2010

LGR Telecommunications (LGR) is a specialized solutions provider to the global telecommunications industry, offering a unique business solution that taps directly into the source of each customer interaction with the network by accessing the call data record (CDR) it creates. LGR’s approach intelligently captures CDR data in real time, appends additional business information to the record, stores the data within a comprehensive Oracle data warehouse solution, and provides real-time analysis to the telecom service provider.

Point-to-Point vs Structured Cabling

24 Sep 2010

The old adage that history repeats itself is very true. If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Many data centers today are victims of historical point-to-point cabling practices.

Executives must re-think!

24 Sep 2010

Many companies and institutions focus on the investment side of the business case as they assess their Information Technology(IT) investments. In some cases, IT investments are even treated as costs. The Return, i.e. the IT enabling business benefits in line with the strategic agenda, is seldom understood aswell as the correlating IT expenditures. Not is it assessed to a similar level of detail. Hence, significant imbalances between IT spend and Return are built into the business case.

Cabling Infrastructure and Green Building Initiatives

23 Sep 2010

In a recent study, Gartner analysts revealed that IT activity accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions, equivalent to the amount produced by the aviation industry. We typically think of emissions as coming from forms of transportation, heavy industry and power generation, but with recent work to address global issues we see that in fact, IT and IT related products can have an impact in several areas.

Managing Central Monitoring in Distributed Systems

21 Sep 2010

Companies with multiple locations rely on a highly efficient IT infrastructure to ensure the smooth running of IT processes and reliable communication both internally (across company locations), as well as externally (with partners and customers). Ongoing monitoring is vital for multiple-location companies, as it enables them to keep a constant and close eye on the availability and bandwidth usage of locally distributed networks.

Making network management simple, effective, and rewarding

17 Sep 2010

Managing a network can be daunting, especially if your small or mid-sized business (SMB) lacks a full-time IT expert or dedicated IT department. It is not unusual for the role of “network manager” to be added to an employee’s real title – as in President/Network Manager, Sales Rep/Network Manager, or Administrative Assistant/Network Manager.

Does Application Security Pay?

15 Sep 2010

Measuring the Business Impact ofSoftware Security Assurance Solutions

The last decade has seen a dramatic shift in the way companies manage information security and protect vital data. In the past, businesses confronted the threat of cyber attacks and data breaches primarily by building firewalls and other “perimeter defenses” around their networks, but the threat has continued to evolve, and more criminals are hacking into applications that are running on a plethora of new devices and environments, including cloud, mobile, and social media.

How Operations Management & Intelligence Helped the Makers of Pom Bears Improve Factory Productivity, Efficiency and Costs

13 Sep 2010

Intersnack is a leading European snack manufacturer, best known in the UK for its Pom-Bear, Penn State Pretzel and Mr Mash brands. Over the last year it has significantly improved the operational efficiency of two of its factories in the Netherlands following a review of factory processes. The cost saving and productivity gains were so significant that Intersnack is now going to install the same factory management solution, CDC Factory, into 10 more factories across Europe.

Consolidate Storage Infrastructure and Create a Greener Datacenter

08 Sep 2010

As data volumes grow and budgets shrink, datacenter managers are looking for ways to scale storage infrastructure and reduce operating costs. StorageTek tape drive and tape library solutions from Oracle provide the answer, helping companies grow automated tape environments without disruption, and consolidate mainframe and open system operating environments while minimizing power, floor space, and operating costs.

Freestyle Interactive - Case Study

08 Sep 2010

Freestyle Interactive is a full-service digital agency offering strategic consultancy, creative design and technical build across a range of digital channels. Since its inception in the mid 1990s, it has grown to become one of the leading independent full-service digital agencies in the UK. Currently ranked the largest digital agency in the Midlands, the company brings together first class strategic thinking and straight forward business logic to deliver tangible results for brands and businesses alike.

The Internet Group Case Study

06 Sep 2010

The Internet Group is an award winning provider of managed IT services which has recently been awarded the Service Desk Institute (SDI) 3 Star award for its adherence to industry best practice. It specialises in technology-enabled business solutions including consulting, systems integration and design, IT outsourcing, and virtualisation applications. The London based company employs more than 60 people including 35 highly qualified engineers and was founded in 1999 by managing director Adam Maurice and sales director Mitchell Feldman.

Cloud computing: resilience is the key to success

03 Sep 2010

Our 21st century society has become so used to change and new developments that genuinely progressive concepts are initially not recognised by many people. There is then a rush to implementation once the benefits become obvious. Virtualisation is a good example of this, with the technology being around for a decade before its benefits really became understoodand appreciated.

We are now on the cusp of a significant evolution in information technology, one which has the potential to completely change how organisational IT is provisioned, managed and protected. Welcome to cloud computing.

Visit Britain - Case Study

02 Sep 2010

Working in partnership with key UK tourism associations, Visit Britain is responsible for inspiring the world to explore Britain and for developing the UK’s visitor economy. The organisation works in collaboration with representatives from 35 countries to provide tailored information to promote Britain and its tourist attractions via a global network of 46 websites. It’s goal is to increase overseas visitor spend to all parts of Britain and improve Britain’s rankings on the destination wish list for international travellers.

The Data Centre Boom: Finding the right site just got serious

01 Sep 2010

With the data centre market continuing to grow at an astounding rate, co-locating operational servers or finding space for an expanding server business is only going to get more difficult. With a 30 per cent increase in data centre floor space since March last year¹ and a finite amount of resources available (land, suitable buildings, adequate power and data connections), finding a site that ticks all of the boxes could be a real struggle in the future.

Oracle Exadata at Work

01 Sep 2010

Oracle Exadata and the Oracle Database Machine move information faster to make business better.

Faster access to data can certainly help answer questions from business users, but can it fundamentally change the way a business operates? Jonathan Levine thinks so.

By David A. Kelly

Do’s and Don’ts of Firewall Audit Tools

31 Aug 2010

Firewall management is becoming increasingly important as both networks and security attacks become more complex. Firewall management tools vary in effectiveness and therefore there are certain “do’s and don’ts” to consider when purchasing for your own business.

Data Centre Virtualisation: Context is Crucial

25 Aug 2010

Virtualisation has rapidly become one of the key foundation stones for operations teams as they look to realise greater data centre efficiencies. One of the main reasons for this is that virtualisation allows consolidation. Single physical systems can support multiple platforms at the same time, hence operating expenses are reduced. Owen Cole, Technical Director, F5 Networks writes.

Shared Data Centres: The Application Delivery Solution Approach

25 Aug 2010

The US government recently announced one of the largest data centre consolidation projects ever. When complete, more than 1,100 data centres across the country will be consolidated into a smaller number of extremely large data centres. It is thought UK public sector organisations will follow this lead.

Northern Rail - Case Study

24 Aug 2010

Serving a population of nearly 15 million people, Northern Rail plays a vital role in the northern region of England by connecting tens of thousands of those people everyday to their places of work, leisure, education, and more. It is owned by a 50:50 joint venture between Serco Group plc, the international services company, and Abellio, a subsidiary of NS Dutch Railways. Northern Rail was formed in December 2004 when those parent companies won the franchise contract, awarded by the UK Government, to operate train services in the north of England until September 2013.

Transformational DR in a hybrid universe: Physical, Virtual, Cloud

23 Aug 2010

Virtualisation and Cloud Computing have been touted for the last few years as the panacea for the IT industry and, in a time of economic uncertainty, both have the ability to help companies get the most out of their existing server and storage infrastructure. With both technologies at the forefront of the IT debate once again, what effect are they having on the backup and recovery arena?

Choosing a data centre designer

23 Aug 2010

When choosing a designer for a proposed data centre it is vital to understand that the process should not just focus around price. The role of designer has evolved over time and it is no longer acceptable for price to be the only factor on which to base a decision. If you don’t get it right at the design phase, it could end up costing you more at a later stage.

Five Imperatives for Extreme Data Protection in Virtualized Environments

19 Aug 2010

Transforming an organization through server virtualization requires a strategic and coordinated approach. Data protection – which includes not only backup, but also secondary storage and disaster recovery considerations – is an area that can easily complicate virtualized data centers if implemented hastily. It is essential that data protection efforts reduce hardware purchases, rather than require additional hardware to make it work. The following are five critical data protection imperatives that organizations must consider during virtual server planning.

Quality cabling infrastructure gives Yorkshire Water information on tap

19 Aug 2010

Yorkshire Water is the principal UK subsidiary of Kelda Group plc and provides water and waste water services to more than 4.7 million people and 140,000 businesses throughout the Yorkshire and Humberside areas of the UK. Every day it supplies 1.3bn litres of drinking water which is equivalent to a glass of water for every person on the planet! The water company is also responsible for collecting, treating and disposing of around a billion litres of waste water each day. It operates more than 700 water and sewage treatment works and 120 reservoirs.

Considering Deduplication for a Midrange Datacentre? Seven questions you should ask.

19 Aug 2010

Deduplication has been one of the hottest technologies in the storage industry for almost three years. During that time, it has generated marketing wars, industry consolidation, and comments and controversy from vendors. IT managers in most midrange data centers typically have limited staff and few backup specialists, and it can be hard to figure out how deduplication might fit into their situation. Following are important questions for IT managers to ask as they consider deploying deduplication in a midrange datacentre.

Cloud Solutions for Enterprises

17 Aug 2010

Recent surveys have shown a steady increase in enterprise adoption of cloud-based services, with numbers reaching as high as eighty-three percent in the US alone. In parallel, some enterprises have begun the process of deploying private clouds as a way to benefit from having cloud-based services in an on-premise data center.

The Firewall Whisperer

17 Aug 2010

Rule Breaker

Sometimes firewalls just don’t behave. Despite being “told” repeatedly what to do via commands known as rules, over time these rules are forgotten resulting in unpredictable firewall behaviour. At this point your firewall becomes a lethargic beast quivering under the strain of confusion and its effectiveness depletes.

Strategies for Solving the Datacenter Space, Power, and Cooling Crunch: Sun Server and Storage Optimization Techniques

16 Aug 2010

By meeting the requirements to deploy new applications and support a larger number of internal and external customers, IT organizations are facing a space, power, and cooling crunch. Silo-architected legacy applications that do not share resources and energy-inefficient legacy servers that are sized to handle the maximum possible workload have pushed data centers to the limits of space and energy consumption. Many datacenters built to last 10 to 15 years have reached a premature end of life because they were not meant to support the growth that has actually taken place.

How do we manage the quality of the supply chain whilst maintaining efficiency?

16 Aug 2010

An enterprise-wide quality management initiative is required to maintain supplier quality without sacrificing bottom-line objectives.

By Yaniv Vardi, managing director EMEA, Sparta Systems

Biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturing has for years witnessed and experienced the struggle between two opposing forces—supply chain efficiency and supply quality. This is often characterised by the detachment between C-level executives concerned with boosting the bottom line with an efficient product lifecycle, and quality managers responsible for enforcing strict procedures and ensuring product quality.

Firewall Economics

13 Aug 2010

There are three main processes that drive the firewall administrator’s responsibilities – the periodic changes made when adding, modifying, or removing rules from the rulebase, the ruleset audits and reviews in concert with security and compliance efforts, and log monitoring and review associated with forensics work.

Data Centre Network Virtualisation – The Final Frontier

12 Aug 2010

As demand for greater processing continues to outstrip available space, power and air-conditioning, the market has turned to server virtualisation in order to maximize resources. Recognising that having hundreds of servers running at 5% utilisation is a waste, virtualisation has become a key driver for energy efficiency as well significantly reducing organizations’ IT infrastructure spend.

DBSi Case Study – The Evolution of Network and Application Performance Management

12 Aug 2010

DBSi is a leading regional provider of high availability disaster recovery, managed hosting, and data centre services. Headquartered in Pennsylvania USA, its business model is based on flexible, cost-effective solutions tailored to the specific needs of its clients. DBSi operates multiple advanced technology recovery and hosting centres which also contain seats for workspace recovery; and through its high-speed fibre optic networks provides seamless connectivity between its facilities, clients and the world.

Data Centre Consolidation: Relying on Application Delivery Solutions

11 Aug 2010

The UK Government announced in January 2010 that it will cut the number of public data centres it uses from 130 to 10. HP made a move to consolidate its 85 data centres into 6, and Intel over 130 into eight dense data centres. Reader’s Digest, one of the world’s longest established traditional publishers announced as early as 1994 that it was commencing a five year plan to consolidate its 17 data centres, demonstrating that consolidation is not new to the IT agenda.

Authenticating the cloud

11 Aug 2010

While much has been discussed about the security of applications and data in the cloud, there’s a blind spot when it comes to authentication. Dave Abraham, CEO at Signify sheds light on the issue.

We can certainly expect to hear more about cloud computing in the next few years. Gartner puts it at the top of its Technology Trends list for 2010 and estimates that worldwide cloud services revenue will surge to more than $150 billion in 2013.

Elastic Cloud Computing

10 Aug 2010

Following the hype through 2001 as we move into the second half of 2010 cloud computing is becoming less a dream of the marketers and true contenders are starting to claim their market share. Both private and public sector organisations are starting to migrate some or all of their IT infrastructure to a virtual network. Last January the Cabinet Office announced that a UK cloud computing strategy could save up to £3.2bn a year. Industry analyst, Martin Hingley or IT Candor, predicts the UK cloud computing market will be worth £119bn by 2013.

Understanding the cost of data accuracy

10 Aug 2010

LCP Consulting estimates that data inconsistency between the UK’s top five retailers and their suppliers is costing as much as 1 per cent of revenue or £1.4billion per year. This is significantly more than a recent report from GS1 UK and Cranfield School of Management, which placed a cautious estimate for a narrower scope at £200million per year.

Optimising application delivery in a virtualised world

06 Aug 2010

Server virtualisation has dramatically changed the landscape in the datacentre but server consolidation is just the beginning of what can be achieved. Owen Garrett, Cloud Computing expert at Zeus Technology, explains.

Power viruses can kill productivity

05 Aug 2010

What are the six most common types we should be aware of and how should we deal with them? Rob Morris, Country Manager, POWERVAR discusses the issues

Cloud Buyers' Decision Tree

05 Aug 2010

This White Paper describes a Decision Tree that could be used to help you discover where Cloud opportunities and solutions might fit in your organization. It is put forward for discussion, with the intention that this discussion, and validation in the field, will result in a practical tool for use by enterprises.

UPS - only for emergency power backup?

04 Aug 2010

Companies often install uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) to provide backup power if the main supply is lost. But power outage is relatively rare. Are we missing a trick by not looking at other issues around power quality and the potential impact on businesses? Rob Morris, UK Country Manager, Powervar, discusses the issues.

Yorkshire Water Case Study

04 Aug 2010

Yorkshire Water, a subsidiary of Kelda, provides water and waste water services to domestic and business customers across Yorkshire, servicing more than 4.7m people and 140,000 businesses. The company is committed to using advanced techniques and technologies to drive efficiencies and minimise environmental impact by reducing the energy consumption of its IT facilities.

Building Return on Investment from Cloud Computing

03 Aug 2010

Cloud Computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This enables users to avoid over-provisioning and under-provisioning, to improve cost, revenue, and margin, and to provide new business services based on new ways of operating.

Shifting The Mix: A Practical Approach To Making IT More Strategic

03 Aug 2010

Today’s IT budget is spent mostly on “keeping the lights on”. In fact, roughly 70% of the budget is spent on sustaining and running existing capability while only 30% is spent on providing new capabilities to the business. The business, together with IT, needs to find ways to increase the value created by the existing and new investments in IT.

Reducing Costs Through Better Server Utilization

02 Aug 2010

As IT organizations support dynamically changing business priorities and cope with economic pressures, maintaining datacenter agility is critical By consolidating systems onto the latest server technology and taking advantage of virtualization techniques, enterprises can optimize datacenter efficiency, gain flexibility, and reduce operating costs—without sacrificing performance or impacting service levels.

Global CIO: Oracle Reveals Strategy And Customers For White-Hot Exadata

30 Jul 2010

Transcending data warehousing and OLTP, Oracle's Exadata is triggering an industrywide redefinition of the core IT systems that fire the global economy.

Oracle's 22-month-old Exadata Database Machine has leapfrogged the data-warehousing market and become a major player in high-end OLTP environments, and is now being positioned as a core database-consolidation platform due to its unprecedented capacity and throughput.

Vizioncore’s “hot” backup solution, vRanger Pro, helps keep things “cool” at Emerson Climate Technologies

30 Jul 2010

Emerson Climate Technologies, Inc. utilized virtualization for server consolidation to reduce operating costs. The company needed to deploy a comprehesive back up and recovery solution for its virtual environment.

How cloud is affecting business continuity solutions

27 Jul 2010

Cloud Computing has had a drastic impact on businesses and the technology channel. Many organisations are still nervous about offering cloud services but in these new lean times, the allure of being able to pay for only what you need when you need it, the proposition underpinning the Cloud, is gaining traction.

Data Protection and Disaster Recovery within the Cloud

27 Jul 2010

Cloud computing is an increasingly persuasive business model for many organisations, and especially for those with remote offices or for small-to-medium (SMB) businesses that are looking for cost-effective technology offerings. Analyst firms predict significant growth and use of the cloud for data storage; however, SMBs and start-ups are, in fact, more likely to adopt these services into their IT infrastructures than large enterprises.

Quo Vadis, SNMP? Part 2: Putting SNMP into practice

21 Jul 2010

In the first part of this White Paper, we looked at the basic features of SNMP, the history, problems, and future prospects. Alternatives to the established, yet frequently problematic, protocol were also shown. This second part focuses on the technical side – from the use of MIBs to the practical setup of network monitoring. As the developer of an established network monitoring software, Paessler AG has been dealing with SNMP extensively since 1996 and has looked closely into its options – and inadequacies.

Quo Vadis, SNMP? Part 1: Introducing SNMP

21 Jul 2010

As business efficiency becomes more and more dependent on connected computer systems, monitoring and ensuring their reliability in performance is absolutely necessary. Because of the huge amount of devices on the market, supplied by various manufacturers, it was imperative to introduce a standard for this kind of monitoring. That is why IETF1 developed Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) towards the end of the 80s. Today, the third generation of SNMP is still the standard for network management – not least because there is no practical alternative. However, the use of this protocol as a basis for extensive network management is not unproblematic – it requires comprehensive know-how and sometimes the ability to improvise.

Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) - Case Study

21 Jul 2010

Leading oil exploration surveyor Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) data centre required a high performance data centre solution at the company’s head office in Weybridge, Surrey that would significantly reduce power usage to achieve considerable cost savings and reduced carbon footprint. Keysource was appointed to design, build, install and manage the facility following a competitive tender.

PGS offers a broad range of products to the oil industry including; seismic and electromagnetic services, data acquisition, processing, reservoir analysis/interpretation and multi-client library data. The company helps oil companies to find oil and gas reserves worldwide, offshore and onshore.

Top reasons why businesses should not fear the cloud

21 Jul 2010

Cloud computing is gaining momentum, but has yet to become a widespread phenomenon. Many organisations see the (public) cloud as a solution purely for a few hosted software applications, but would not dream of running their vital business processes anywhere but on their own premises. Cloud computing is not a new concept, however. It has been evolving since companies understood the impact the internet can have on service delivery and management – from Network Computing, Application Service Provision (ASP), Utility Computing, Software as a Service (SaaS) and now, cloud Computing.

Swift Horsman Group - Case Study

19 Jul 2010

Established in 1971, Swift Horsman Group is one of the UK’s leading innovators in the development and application of off site-manufactured fit-out solutions, with an annual turnover of approximately £60 million (92 million USD).

The company invests significantly in design and manufacturing technology to position itself at the leading edge of the construction industry, while developing and nurturing the traditional fit-out skills of the trade. Its clients include the architects and designers of some of the UK’s most prestigious office developments— design businesses which are, themselves, heavy users of technology in the pursuit of excellence.

Carnival UK Cruises Towards Greener IT - Case Study

19 Jul 2010

When Carnival UK, a leader in the UK cruise industry, moved its corporate headquarters to a new, ultra-modern landmark building overlooking Southampton Water, its IT department made the most of the opportunity to make changes to its infrastructure. The company, which operates leading cruise lines including P&O Cruises, Cunard, Princess Cruises and Ocean Village, made a number of significant improvements in IT, primarily with the objective of reducing costs and driving efficiencies.

“Spend analytics: A gift from IT to the business”

19 Jul 2010

Cloud-based IT services are far cheaper than attempting to develop a similar system in-house so why build one? Don't is the recommendation.

Redstor and Education Bradford

15 Jul 2010

Education Bradford Select RBUSS to Improve Services.

"The online backup service from Redstor has completely transformed how we backup school data so much so that we have no hesitation in recommending it to other authorities"

The Local Education Authority is based on collaboration between Bradford Council and Serco PLC, an international service company which combines commercial know-how with a public service ethos. It improves services by managing people, processes, technology and assets more effectively.

Site selection – top five things to consider when building a data centre

15 Jul 2010

Whether you’re an in-house IT manager, developer or collocation provider looking to build a new data centre, one of the most important decisions in the whole process has to be where you build it. Over the last 10 years various factors have been jostling for position as the most important consideration.

It is essential to recognise that each site is different and every company has separate requirements. There is no such thing as a one site fits all.

In this article, Adam Tamburini, UK country manager at e-shelter, draws on over a decade of experience to discuss how requirements for data centre land has changed in recent years and what the industry top five now look like.

DMS UK manages exceptional data growth with highly scalable solution from Overland

14 Jul 2010

Digital Media Services (DMS) UK is one of the world’s leading media monitoring and trailer distribution companies in the digital media sector.

Focusing on two specialist areas within the digital market, DMS manages vast amounts of data for its clients. Firstly, it provides cost-effective media monitoring solutions. Secondly, its Panther product works with 80 percent of the world’s major film studios to provide thousands of film trailers online.

Change the Channel Please

14 Jul 2010

Where are we now?

Every so often the technology channel has to adapt to changing economies and technologies. 2009 saw the start of one of these channel changes with the onset of a recession. Despite the initial belief that the technology industry would not be hit by the recession a survey of 270 CIOs by Datamonitor confirmed that 23% of senior executives felt budget cuts stopped them winning business and new technologies seemed more of a nice to have than a necessity, many were happy to "make do" with what they had already paid for.

Countdown to 2050 - The Climate Change Challenge by Ian Brooks

13 Jul 2010

Universal momentum

It has been almost universally acknowledged that the risk to our planet from the effects of greenhouse gases is a real and present one. The scientific evidence is overwhelming and it demands an urgent global response.

Old Mutual Mitigates Hardware Spend and Halves Helpdesk Calls with Triometric

13 Jul 2010

Old Mutual is a leading international long-term savings group. Established in 1845 in South Africa, the FTSE 100 Company now serves the growing demands of customers, companies and their advisors in 35 countries.

United Bank & Trust Banks on vEssentials™ for Its Virtual Foundation

12 Jul 2010

United Bank & Trust decided to virtualize systems for the first time because it wanted to reduce the growth of its IT systems and the support they required. To make the decision worthwhile, the company needed to architect a highly reliable, easily managed virtual infrastructure.

Increasing IT Efficiency in a Dynamic Datacenter with a Virtualized Storage Solution

12 Jul 2010

End to End Efficiency Delivered by Microsoft Server Virtualization and Compellent Storage Virtualization

Datacenter efficiency is a large concern for Information Technology (IT) management as demands for services continue to increase while budgets continue to be reduced. Supporting growth and maintaining availability per the service level agreements while mitigating the risks to critical data, systems, applications, and the computing infrastructure in the event of a system outage or a complete disaster presents an ongoing challenge from both a technological and a business perspective. Organizations must consistently find solutions that not only meet application and data requirements for capacity, performance, and availability, but also have proven return on investment and cost reduction capabilities.

Is your network monitoring equipment still working for you?

12 Jul 2010

Any IT Manager worth his salt knows a corporate network cannot run efficiently without some degree of network performance management. But with corporate networks becoming progressively more complex and being required to support increasingly sophisticated applications, how many can confidently claim their network monitoring and performance management systems are still up to the job?

Sean O’Donnell, SevOne’s director for EMEA, looks at the impact of developments in enterprise applications on the corporate network and the risks faced by businesses which fail to invest in effective network performance management tools.

Managing the Cloud: An Even Greater Need for IT Cost Transparency

12 Jul 2010

While there is considerable controversy about what technologies and approaches constitute “Cloud Computing,” the overall idea is that customers can buy and use computing on demand. The computing power resides on the Internet – the Internet is often represented as a cloud in architecture diagrams– and people access this computing power as they need it via the Internet.

ACCESS CONTROL INDUSTRY BEST PRACTICES

12 Jul 2010

Holly Sacks, Senior VP, Marketing and Corporate Strategy, HID Global looks at the best practices to be followed when choosing and installing access control technology in a dat centre.

Choosing the Right Reader

With a wide variety of reader technologies to choose from, it’s important to ensure that the technology selected properly balances risk, cost, and convenience factors. Prox technology is a viable choice, especially for sites where there are existing Prox cards in use, but contactless smart cards represent the next generation Prox technology and offer all of the convenience of Prox along with increased security and additional benefits such as multiple applications, read/write and increased memory. However, when selecting a vendor’s system, be aware that some manufacturers, in an attempt to sell “universal” readers capable of reading almost any contactless smart card, bypasses the security measures of contactless smart cards in order to achieve their goal. These readers, known as “CSN readers,” only read the card’s serial number, which, as per ISO standards, are required to be able to be read by any reader for the express purposes of being able to read multiple cards presented to a reader at the same time. Furthermore, because the ISO specifications are publicly available, details of how this process works can be employed by unknown persons to gain unauthorized access.

Vizioncore solutions provide Jentjens with cost effective business continuity

08 Jul 2010

Jentjens Machinetechniek BV is a specialist in machinery for the automation of, otherwise manual, production activities, where client-oriented and market-oriented systems are developed, assembled, installed on location, maintained and serviced as required. Their customers cover a wide range of market segments, such as the medical, automotive and consumer goods industries; in addition they specialize in automated applications for the food industry and greenhouse horticulture. As an internationally-operating company, Jentjens Machinetechniek BV is known by the keywords ORIENTED HANDLING.

Controlling Datacenter Costs With Virtualization

06 Jul 2010

Switch on a server and you've just doubled its cost. According to Gartner, between 2007 and 2012, most U.S. enterprise datacenters will spend as much on power and cooling as on the hardware itself. Couple this with increasing infrastructure demands needed to handle the petabytes of data flowing through organizations as well as increasing energy costs, and Gartner also predicts that energy costs for IT could double by 2012.

vEcoShell, vRanger Pro Give Middlesex Networks the Power to Prevent Problems

29 Jun 2010

Middlesex Networks provides network administration, system implementation and other IT services to small and midsize businesses in New England. The company uses its expertise to manage systems more efficiently, reliably and conveniently than customers can do for themselves. The business model drives Middlesex Networks to continually improve its own performance and productivity.

Major U.S. Healthcare Provider ‘Prescribes’ BMC Software To Ensure High-Quality Patient Care

24 Jun 2010

When Novant Health needed to replace its IT service management (ITSM) tools and processes, the North Carolina-based non-profit healthcare system selected BMC Software’s (NASDAQ: BMC) Business Service Management (BSM) platform to ensure the changes supported the hospital system’s No. 1 priority – providing quality patient care.

Fosters EMEA - Case Study

23 Jun 2010

Foster’s EMEA, part of the Foster’s Group, having deployed VMware Infrastructure required an easy-to-use efficient backup solution to ensure high availability of all its virtual machines in the event of a disaster or failure.

How virtualization helps companies transform their approach to IT.

22 Jun 2010

Virtualization made its way into the mainstream data center with a strong cost-reduction value proposition centered around a straightforward tactic: server consolidation.

Powering IDE’s Cloud Solutions

21 Jun 2010

IT outsourcer IDE already had their own data centre, but it was filling up fast. Instead of building a new one, they decided to take space from an external data centre operator.

Siemens Case Study

21 Jun 2010

When Siemens IT Solutions and Services consolidated more than 150 physical servers into only 15 virtual ones, it found its hypervisor-based management tools were inadequate to monitor and ensure availability of the large-scale virtual environment. It also experienced scalability issues with its legacy backup solution.

Limited Investment in DR Tools Yields Big Returns for Small Financial Firm

15 Jun 2010

When JKMilne Asset Management relocated its offices from Pittsburgh to Fort Myers, Florida, it decided to leave its servers behind. The institutional investment management company runs its systems from a collocation center in Pittsburgh, far from the reach of hurricanes. JKMilne manages more than $1.7 billion of financial assets and must comply with numerous financial industry and federal data retention and security requirements. Even with these large responsibilities, JKMilne is a small company, with just one IT employee. It must carefully balance its strict business continuity and data management requirements against the support and budget limitations of a small business.

Allied Irish Bank

14 Jun 2010

Allied Irish Bank (AIB) was implementing a complete virtual data centre strategy, moving almost all of its applications that previously ran on physical x86-based servers into virtual machines. The bank required a simple tool to manage backup and manage its virtual machine images, as well as restore them in the event of an incident.

What LBi does...

10 Jun 2010

LBi is a global digital marketing and technology agency, blending insight, creativity and expertise to solve business problems. The largest genuinely full-service agency of its kind in Europe, LBi provides the full range of digital capabilities, including digital strategy, content, service design, media, CRM, technology, managed hosting and support services.

Nuovi Investmenti Case Study

02 Jun 2010

Nuovi Investimenti is a leading brokerage and trading firm for private customers, institutional clients and investment companies requiring high quality services and a personal business relationship based on the latest technology platforms.

Data Centre Projects: System Planning

25 May 2010

System Planning is the Achilles' heel of a data centre physical infrastructure project. Planning mistakes can magnify and propagate through later deployment phases, resulting in delays, cost overruns, wasted time and ultimately a compromised system.

Extending the Network

24 May 2010

DFN – Deutsches Forschungsnetz – is Germany`s National Research and Education Network. It provides a high performance infrastructure which connect universities and research institutions and supports the development of new applications. Since 2006 the national backbone of DFN has been the X-WiN with about 60 nodes. Connected to the Internet and to European Backbone GÉANT, X-WiN is an integral part of the world wide community of research and educational networks.

New Movie Studio Takes the Mystery Out of Virtual System Performance with vFoglight

20 May 2010

Dr. D Studios is a digital movie production studio formed by two leading companies in the Australian film industry. When the startup launched in Sydney, the IT department got to write the script for creating an IT infrastructure that would be most effective and efficient for supporting Dr. D Studios’ sophisticated digital production work.

Open Source Security Study

19 May 2010

Open source now permeates more than 50 percent of enterprises, and its use is growing rapidly. This trend underlies an assumption held by many IT and business leaders that open source is enterprise class in terms of functionality and scalability. But is it secure? How much business risk is introduced with open source?

Speed to Market for NASDAQ OMX

19 May 2010

The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. is the world’s largest exchange company. It delivers trading, exchange technology and public-company services across six continents, with over 3,800 listed companies. NASDAQ OMX offers multiple capital-raising solutions to companies around the globe. NASDAQ OMX technology supports the operations of over 70 exchanges, clearing organizations and central securities depositories in more than 50 countries.

Housing Stardoll

18 May 2010

Stardoll is the world’s largest paper doll site. Members can create their own paper dolls or style different celebrity dolls with virtual clothes and accessories. Stardoll has around 34million members in over 200 countries with twelve million unique visitors to the site each month. Most users are in the USA and UK, although the Stardoll head office is in Stockholm.

Magic Quadrant for Secure E-Mail Gateways

13 May 2010

The e-mail security market is very mature. Targeted phishing detection, outbound e-mail inspection, encryption and delivery form factor are the major differentiators.

2010 Application Delivery Controller Performance Report

13 May 2010

The following performance report from F5 is a comparative and not a competitive report, which is an important distinction.

Virtualization: Optimized Power and Cooling to Maximize Benefits

11 May 2010

Data centers are routinely and unknowingly missing a great portion of their entitlement from virtualization. Beyond virtualization’s undisputed IT benefits – from reduced rack footprint to disaster recovery – is the parallel story of a substantial benefit from optimizing the physical infrastructure that supports it. In particular, row-based cooling, correctly sized power and cooling, and real-time capacity management are essential elements in realizing virtualization’s full potential in cost reduction, efficiency, and reliability.

At the heart of Cancer Research UK

06 May 2010

Information is the lifeblood of Cancer Research UK, the world’s leading charity dedicated to beating cancer through research. After a characteristically rigorous review of the options on offer, the organisation entrusted its mission-critical infrastructure to Interxion.

Best Practices in Power Management: From Desktop to Data Center

06 May 2010

Power management techniques for reducing IT energy consumption can provide significant opportunities for operational cost savings and other business value. A comprehensive solution, however, must include a variety of approaches to ensure maximum energy reduction effectiveness both on the desktop and in the data center.

Anatomy of a Data Breach

05 May 2010

For companies with critical information assets such as customer data, intellectual property, and trade secrets, the risk of a data breach is now higher than ever before. Here are four steps to take to significantly reduce the risk of a breach. You can watch the presentation of this article captured at InfoSecurity 2010 here.

A Partner for Bezeq in Europe

30 Apr 2010

Level of service is the overriding concern for Bezeq International. Building a partnership with Interxion Germany allowed them to keep a step ahead of rising Internet demand and expand their portfolio of premium-quality data services for multinationals.

10 Reasons to Migrate: Avocent Power Distribution Units

27 Apr 2010

If you struggle with meeting the service level demands of your business and are fi nding it to be more challenging than ever to make IT a more strategic, business relevant function, you have most likely outgrown your current data center infrastructure system.

Secure housing for BNIX

23 Apr 2010

BELNET manages BNIX, the central node through which all the ISP traffi c in Belgium passes. When its own legacy data centre had become too small, BELNET asked Interxion to give the node a new home.

10 Reasons to Migrate: Avocent MergePoint Unity® KVM over IP and Serial Console Switch

21 Apr 2010

If you struggle with meeting the service level demands of your business and are fi nding it to be more challenging than ever to make IT a more strategic, business relevant function, you have most likely outgrown your current data center infrastructure system. Moving to a new system can be costly, and more often than not, the new system requires investment in other assets. With the Avocent MergePoint Unity KVM over IP and serial console switch, you can get more out of existing computing assets and dramatically improve your ability to meet the service level demands of the business.

10 Reasons to Migrate: Avocent ACS Console Server Serial Appliances

19 Apr 2010

If you struggle with meeting the service level demands of your business and are finding it to be more challenging than ever to make IT a more strategic, business relevant function, you have most likely outgrown your current data center infrastructure system.

Best-in-class backup

16 Apr 2010

When SurfKitchen wanted a best in class backup solution they chose Interxion’s Secure Data Service (SDS), a turnkey online backup solution delivered by a business with the infrastructure and expertise to offer total peace of mind.

How to get the full value of virtualization

16 Apr 2010

Virtualization technology offers cost savings through server consolidation and increased efficiency — but only if your IT staff can meet the management challenges it presents.

Scalability and security

09 Apr 2010

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation of Scottsdale, Arizona is a manufacturer of stringed instruments and amplifiers, such as solid-body electric guitars, including the Stratocaster and the Telecaster.

Managing IT in tough economic conditions

09 Apr 2010

We are all feeling the effects of the economic situation facing the world markets today, and IT is no exception. In past economic downturns, those companies that focused on cost containment and process improvement emerged in a stronger position. During the current financial implosion, businesses must look at their expenses and determine where they should spend and where they should cut in order to ride out the storm.

Virtual media

09 Apr 2010

Optimizing the efficiency and security of data center operations.

The vulnerabilities of virtual systems

05 Apr 2010

Robert Winter, chief engineer at data recovery firm, Kroll Ontrack discusses the risks of virtualisation.

Centralized Management Software: Best Practices to Control Your Data Center

01 Apr 2010

How to achieve secure access to any server or network device from a single interface.

The business imperative to gain data centre insight

01 Apr 2010

To manage costs, capacity and operations, today’s dynamic data centers require new tools to understand assets and how they’re used in order to deliver consistent, reliable and fast service to the business.

Alberta Newsprint turns centralized server management into a success story

26 Mar 2010

Thanks to Avocent, we can now remotely access our system from anywhere, anytime, regardless of whether our system is failing at the moment. That’s a huge benefit!”

Stephen Tapp, Systems Engineer, Alberta Newsprint Company.

AMD drives customer innovation with out-of-band management tools

25 Mar 2010

As one of the world's leading integrated circuit manufacturers, AMD designs and produces innovative microprocessors, Flash memory devices and low-power processor solutions for the computer, communications and consumer electronics industries. Since its beginnings, AMD's mission has been to go beyond providing the highest quality integrated circuits and transistors to helping its customers use silicon to add value to their own products.

Allocating data centre energy cost and carbon to IT users

24 Mar 2010

Are complicated software and instrumentation needed to measure and allocate energy costs and carbon to IT users? Or can we get by with simple, low cost methods for energy cost and carbon allocation? How precise do we need to be?

Guidance for calculation of efficiency (PUE) in real data centres

24 Mar 2010

Before data centre infrastructure efficiency can be benchmarked using PUE or other metrics, there must be agreement on exactly what power consumptions constitute IT loads, what consumptions constitute physical infrastructure and what loads should not be counted.

Electrical efficiency measurement for data centres

24 Mar 2010

Data centre electrical efficiency is rarely planned or managed. The unfortunate result is that most data centres waste substantial amounts of electricity.

The advantages of row and rack-oriented cooling architectures for data centres

24 Mar 2010

Room cooling is an ineffective approach for next-generation data centers.

An improved architecture for high-efficiency, high-density data centres

24 Mar 2010

Data centre power and cooling infrastructure worldwide wastes more than 60,000,000 megawatt-hours per year of electricity that does no useful work powering IT equipment.

Implementing energy efficient data centres

24 Mar 2010

Electricity usage costs have become an increasing fraction of the total cost of ownership (TCO) for data centers.

Reducing operating costs and simplifying management

24 Mar 2010

Aramice capitalizes on its Avocent infrastructure to homogenize access to all elements of its distributed IT system.

ServerTech - Background Flier

15 Feb 2010

Founded in 1984, Server Technology is located in Reno, Nevada, where the company develops, manufacturers, and distributes it’s Sentry line of power distribution units and switches.

ServerTech - Corporate Fact Sheet

15 Feb 2010

Server Technology, Inc.® provides a comprehensive line of cabinet power distribution products for enterprise data centers, co-location facilities, and remote equipment sites. Products include both AC and DC power distribution units with local and remote current monitoring, remote monitoring, and power control capabilities as well as a line of fail-safe transfer switches designed to provide single cord devices with fail-safe, redundant power.

Reaching Out - European CEO

10 Feb 2010

As one of Europe’s largest carrier-independent data centre and managed services companies, Interxion has built and operates 25 data centres in 13 cities, spanning 11 countries across Europe. In his role as Group Managing Director, Anthony Foy is responsible for maintaining the company’s core focus – delivering satisfaction to over a thousand customers and developing effective long-term client partnerships in all its countries of operation.

ServerTech - Jewelry Wholesaler in Southwestern USA

25 Jan 2010

A chain of six jewelry wholesale stores across Nevada and Utah had three servers at each store, running that site's point-of-sale, security camera, and business applications. With Raritan's Dominion KX101 for remote administrative access, the chain was able to relocate all its servers to a single site, resulting in fewer on-site troubleshooting trips (across a range of 700 miles), and fewer cabling, HVAC, security and management issues.

UK's Largest Credit Rating Agency: Experian

25 Jan 2010

Experian's £30-million development project, headlined by a new state-of-the-art data center, featured Raritan's Dominion KX KVM-over-IP and Dominion SX Serial Console switches to manage its Wintel and UNIX infrastructure. Raritan's CommandCenter Secure Gateway allowed Experian to centrally control hundreds of devices, with a single sign-on and customized views.

Significant Productivity Increase and Enhancement of Service Level Agreements: Publisher DER SPIEGEL

25 Jan 2010

With a weekly print run of over one million and 6.5 million readers, DER SPIEGEL is the leading news magazine in Germany. The highly traditional publishing company also distributes a wide range of print, online and TV products.

Morgan Keegan: A premier regional investment firm offering full-service investment banking, wealth management and more

25 Jan 2010

With more than 3,200 employees, Investment Firm Morgan Keegan serves the diverse financial needs of individual investors, corporate and institutional clients. The company needed a more responsive way to manage its more than 400 branch offices in the U.S. The IT department wanted a solution that would provide reliable and secure access to branch office servers anytime.

Omnicom Group's Unit 7 Data Center Goes Lean and Green with Raritan's Server and Power Management Solutions

25 Jan 2010

Unit 7, a relationship marketing agency based in New York City, needed to better manage the space and power in its server room. The agency also wanted to move towards energy-saving virtualization and other green computing technologies while continuing to ensure performance and security. Raritan was able to meet these challenges with an impressive array of server and power management solutions.

Duane Morris LLP: A full-service international law firm helping clients address the legal and business challenges of evolving global markets

25 Jan 2010

International law firm Duane Morris required secure, lights-out management capabilities in their data center and branch offices. Raritan responded with multiple IT management products - including our new, intelligent rack PDUs - to give them the information, access and control they needed.

ioko increases connectivity with Telehouse Europe

25 Jan 2010

ioko is a specialist in digital and on-demand media, providing and maintaining digital media technology systems. Since ioko was founded in 1996, the company has grown dramatically. The advent of Web 2.0 has generated consumer and business interest in new web based media technologies such as streamed video, online advertising and online gaming. With businesses evolving to accommodate these developments, the demand for bespoke digital media delivery platforms and hosting facilities increases exponentionally. Recent wins and expanding infrastructure requests from existing customers had resulted in ioko nearing hosting capacity, which in turn prompted the company to review and extend its ten year relationship with Telehouse Europe.

Synetrix enables key public sector initiatives through Telehouse Europe

25 Jan 2010

Synetrix began its partnership with Telehouse Europe in 1998 with a minimal set-up of one server. Since these humble beginnings, Synetrix has grown to become a leading managed services provider and has secured major contracts with numerous central and local government authorities, notable for being the core provider for the London Grid for Learning (LGfL) educational network since 2001. This network comprises of 33 Local Education Authorities, providing services through a high-speed broadband infrastructure, giving 2,582 schools across the capital with over million users a shared online learning platform.

C4L

25 Jan 2010

C4L’s wholesale platform enables any business to easily choose their services over one simple port at wholesale rate, effectively eliminating the headache of managing multiple providers and worrying about redundancy.

Ultraspeed

25 Jan 2010

In summer 2006 Ultraspeed decided to relocate its equipment to a different colocation facility in the UK, to improve its service offering with better equipped, more secure facilities. As continuity of service is paramount to a hosting provider, Ultraspeed needed to find a colocation provider that could guarantee the high levels of connectivity. In order to identify the best colocation provider, Ultraspeed carried out a stringent assessment of potential facilities, visiting over ten data centres in London.

Mapesbury

25 Jan 2010

MCom established its business on the back of government legislation in 2002 that permitted the commercial use of the Wi-Fi spectrum for wireless internet access. The company formed a unique partnership with petrol station Texaco to develop a service offering wireless connectivity to motorists based around petrol station forecourts. These wireless hot spots were useful for business professionals such as sales representatives and engineers that needed to stay in touch with the office while on the move.

Catalyst2

25 Jan 2010

In recent years, Catalyst2 has grown from strength to strength resulting in the need for regular expansion of infrastructure, servers and associated network equipment to accommodate new business. With this growth, Catalyst2 recognised the importance of having a "premium" data centre provider in place and prompted an in-depth review in 2006. Executives at Catalyst2 carefully evaluated key requirements and considered every provider in the London metropolitan area.