Top IT Trends for 2012 and Beyond

by Neil Saward and Deepak Bharathan of PA Consulting Group What top trends in IT are in store for 2012? Well, expect a number of trends that have emerged over the last few years, such as cloud, mobility, enterprise social media, the “Internet of things” and Big Data, to continue to gain traction with IT…

2012: The More Things Change …

by Geoff Webb of Credant Technologies It’s the most wonderful time of the year. At least, it is according to Andy Williams. At the very least, it’s that time of the year when people in the security industry start to make predictions about what’s going to happen next year. You’d think that in the fast…

Achieving Agility is More Important than Ever

The quest for business agility became nearly universal as the U.S. was appearing to emerge from recession. The central idea is that organizations of all sizes need the speed and agility of a startup to respond rapidly to changing conditions. Now that the U.S. economy is sputtering again, demands for business agility are becoming even…

A Tale Of Two Infrastructures: Security and the Cloud

At the end of Charles Dickens’ tale of post-revolutionary France, Sydney Carton sacrifices himself in order to preserve the life of a man he considers more worthy. It’s a noble act, immortalized by his final words: “It is a far, far better thing that I do now, than I have ever done;” Of course, he…

How to Avoid SLA ‘Gotchas’ in the Cloud

Much ado is made about the cost savings, profits and agility to be found in the cloud. But whether that is so depends heavily on how service level agreements (SLA) are written. A clause can reach out and seize the savings. A phrase can rob you of anything beyond the faintest resemblance of agility and…

11 Reasons to Adopt Chromebook in the Enterprise

The reviews are in and they are not especially flattering. In the Wall Street Journal Walt Mossberg suggested the innovative, Google-inspired Chrome OS netbook is buggy, pricey, and just not ready for primetime. In the New York Times, tech columnist David Pogue was, if anything, more brutal; dis’ing the device (he reviewed the Samsung edition…

Speed Bumps on the Road to True Utility Computing

By Max Staines of Compass Management Consulting Discussions of cloud computing benefits often turn to the virtues of dynamic, usage based pricing where IT resources are delivered on-demand to customers in response to changing business requirements. Users pay only for what they consume, and don’t have to worry about insufficient capacity or idle resources. The…

Can Cloud Really Replace Offshore Outsourcing?

The cloud is changing much about how IT is done. But has it changed or possibly even eliminated the need for offshore outsourcing? In the short term, the answer is no. That’s mostly because the cloud is not yet in full play. However, given the current momentum behind the cloud, change is inevitable and the…

How CFOs Can Learn to Love Disaster Recovery

I admit it: I’ve always hated the term business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR). It just sounds so broad and like spending money in case something bad happens. And it always comes wrapped with technical terms like “recovery point objectives,” “failover SLA’s,” and “OS compatibility.” Frankly, all those technical terms just don’t resonate with me. What does…

What to do About Sync’d Online Backup

First it was cloud-based apps that were causing CIOs sleepless nights. Business users are wooed by the ease of use, sexy look and feel and the speed of implementation. Sadly, business users are oblivious to the security hazards, the lack of integration into core systems, the scalability and longevity risks to the cloud vendor. This…