Data deduplication solution ‘can save money’
Companies looking for ways in which to reduce their outgoings could do well to reduce the number of files they have stored on central servers using a data deduplication solution.
A blogger for the Register has suggested corporate information such as employee contracts and pensions advice is just one area in which an organisation can vastly reduce the number of individual copies that are stored.
However, a deduplication solution could yield "spectacular results" on backup data, which is often replicated on a weekly or even daily basis.
Making Old Computers Feel Brand New
Each time a new version of Windows is released, many computer users find that their hardware is suddenly outdated. For cash-strapped schools, upgrading to the latest hardware with each major software release is simply impossible. A New York startup called NeverWare is offering a possible solution—a server that lets even decade-old PCs upgrade to the latest Windows 7 operating system.
IT’s Preference for Private Clouds No Surprise
Earlier this week I wrote about how creating private clouds won’t be fast or easy. In addition to virtualizing their infrastructures, organizations will need to rearchitect their applications to standardize them as much as possible. Many experts also advise introducing a chargeback mechanism to acclimate business units to usage-based cost structures.
Data quality ‘critically important to governments’
Governments should have strategies in place to bring about high data quality standards, it has been advised.
This is the view of Laurence Miller, editor-at-large of the Future Gov website, who said public sector administrations create and manage much more information than private companies.
Despite this, many government departments are failing to get proper command over their records and are therefore unable to make the most of the data they have at their disposal.
Mr Miller recommended such bodies think about making use of data-as-a-service tools to aid their operations in this area.
Public Versus Private Cloud Distinction Starts to Blur
When it comes to the distinction between public and private cloud computing, the lines are starting to blur as most IT organizations try to figure out where they want to use each type of cloud computing platform.
A new survey of 100 senior IT managers conducted by Osterman Research on behalf of Electric Cloud, a provider of tools for managing the application development process in cloud computing environments, makes it clear that most IT organizations are still investigating the various forms of cloud computing, and as a result, the budgets being allocated for cloud computing in 2011 are, on average, not all that substantial.
Non-IT companies to enter cloud service fray
Brian Prentice, research vice president at Gartner, said that regardless of the verticals they are in, non-IT Global 500 companies that have an "interesting" business process would be able to monetize it by making available the service through cloud computing, specifically through SaaS.
By 2015, about 20 percent of these non-IT companies will enter the cloud fray as service providers, he forecasted during Gartner’s Predict 2011 conference held here on Tuesday. He cited automaker Volvo, which had earlier made available its service maintenance process to rival BMW, as an example.
s Massive Infrastructure Always an Asset?
Why Amazon’s Cloud Competitors Won’t Follow into PaaS
Slow and Steady Toward the Cloud
Whenever we talk about the challenges of cloud computing, we’re primarily talking about getting systems and data up and running on the cloud.
To be sure, there will be management and security issues once a new resource tier has been added to the mix, but the immediate problem is getting there in the first place.
Master data management processes ‘needed by majority of businesses’
Most companies would benefit from implementing master data management initiatives.
This is according to a new report from IT analyst Gartner, which noted there is a myth that such work is only suitable for large organisations with a complex structure.
It said this is not the case, as master data management processes are applied whenever two or more business processes need to make use of the same records for their operations.
"This means that most organisations have a need for the discipline of master data management, even if they don’t call it that," the study suggested.