Articles

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.