Research & Analysis

Find original analysis, case studies, analyst research, and technology news on business trends, strategy, innovation, tools and technologies.

BMC and VCE Partnership Shows Consortium Is Gaining Power

Is there strength in numbers? The deal VCE recently struck with BMC suggests that a consortium of companies layering in best-in-class technology might be a more effective approach to win large-scale government and enterprise customers in the private cloud space, writes CIO.com's Rob Enderle. Full Story »

SaaS, APTs and Asymmetric Risk Take Spotlight at Security Threats 2012

What's your stance on SaaS? Is your perimeter as secure as you think? How can the insurance calculus on asymmetric risk illuminate your company's security exposure? CIO.com's Bernard Golden recaps the provocative discussions entertained at the Security Threat 2012 conference.

8 CRM Trends You Need to Watch

Customer relationship management vendors and industry analysts discuss which CRM trends will continue to gain strength and what new trends IT professionals need to watch.

Rethinking Software Development, Testing and Inspection

Michael Fagan first found software inspections yielded a massive productivity improvement when working for IBM in the early 1970s. Now, 35 years later, we need to ask certain key questions: Are the dynamics of software development the same, are Fagan's findings still relevant in today's world of agile development and "extreme programming"? And, if so, what should your organization do about it?

Can Facebook Replace Traditional Business Websites?

Integrating your website with social media sites is typically the best approach to online marketing and ecommerce, but are there times when it makes sense to use Facebook instead of a traditional business website?

IT Outsourcing Deal Size Data Shows Decade-Long Decline

The proliferation of IT and business process outsourcing contracts worth less than $100 million is creating governance headaches for CIOs. How are IT outsourcing service providers responding?

Is WebOS the Next Desktop Linux, Java or Symbian?

HP is taking WebOS open source with the hope that it can attract developers by providing a write-once-run-everyplace platform. However, Rob Enderle writes, history hasn't been kind to operating systems as only few survive, but while WebOS has risks it also has potential, if HP willing to invest properly.

Tech Titans Talk: The IDG Enterprise Interview Series

In the IDG Enterprise Interview Series, you'll hear from technology CIOs and CEOs on today's burgeoning trends, ongoing headaches and upcoming product plans. Check out this informative series from IDG Enterprise Chief Content Officer John Gallant and his team of editors.

How to Make IT Irreplaceable

How do you turn captive IT users into loyal customers? Start by asking whether they'd use your IT operation for their next project.

Why Big Data Means a Big Year for Hadoop

Companies from IBM to Amazon are turning to Hadoop to manage the surge in data that needs storing. Our CEO Michael Friendenberg says the buzz around Hadoop is no joke.

Why Pricing Should Be Done on More Than Just Instinct

CIO magazine editor in chief Maryfran Johnson discusses her take on pricing and the role the CIO needs to play in this business function

What We're Reading From the Feb. 1, 2012, Issue of CIO Magazine

Books on innovation, leadership and careers chosen by the editorial staff of CIO magazine

Five Tips for Dealing with Your CFO

CFOs are increasingly calling the shots, which means CIOs are reporting to them, not the CEO. Do you know how to talk business in a way they'll understand? If you're all about the tech, the answer is no.

Cloud Computing Both More Agile and Less Expensive

Are cloud services attractive because they are less expensive than traditional offerings or are IT professionals drawn by greater agility? Bernard Golden writes that it's not an either-or debate. Much like those famous 'tastes great ... less filling" beer commercials, the beauty of cloud computing lies in the beholder.

Are You at Risk? What Cybercriminals Do With Your Personal Data

When hackers attack a company's systems and steal your personal data, what risk does that pose to you and other victims? How much is your name and email address worth to cybercriminals anyway? To find out what's really at stake, CIO.com asked security experts six key questions about data security breaches.

Your Complete Guide to Facebook Timeline

Whether you like it or not, Facebook Timeline is becoming mandatory. Here's CIO.com's complete guide on everything you need to know -- including first steps and privacy changes -- to help ease the transition.

HDD Crunch May Have Far-reaching Effects

The global supply of hard disk drives may be slow to rebound, with a ripple effect that's threatening small businesses and PC makers. The shortage may also drive demand for SSDs.

Google's a Great Place to Work and Where You Work Sucks

Google is where every technology professional wants to work. The great benefits come from a business model driven by ad revenue that just keeps coming regardless of how and where the company spends money. However, the bad news is two-fold, writes Rob Enderle: Your employer will never be in this position and Google won't be in it forever.

How Open Source Licenses Affect Your Business and Your Developers

Copyleft licenses have been the most popular choice for new open source projects. Recently, however, developers and companies seem to be moving from the GPL in favor of less restrictive permissive licenses for open source projects. What's behind the trend and how does it impact your business?

How to Apply the Principles of Network Management to Talent Management

Talent management shares many similarities with IT network management, according to consultants Maya Townsend and Bob Akerley. They explain what IT networks can teach CIOs about talent, and how IT leaders can optimize the essential human networks inside their organizations.

The Patriot Act and Your Data: Should You Ask Cloud Providers About Protection?

Does the USA Patriot Act give the U.S. government too much access to data stored on the cloud servers of American providers regardless of where those servers are located? That's the concern among European IT leaders.

4 Consumer Technologies That Could Change Your Enterprise

From technologies born out of gaming companies to hardware waterproofing products, we find some gems at the Consumer Electronics Show that CIOs will be glad to welcome to their IT shops.

Microsoft's Revamped System Center Focuses on Managing the Cloud

On Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled the latest version of System Center, which promises to make it easier to manage virtual and cloud environments. Here, Microsoft officials, industry analysts and customers talk about how the new version lets you better manage both private cloud and public cloud services as well virtualization platforms from multiple vendors.

Is Your Cloud Support Agile? Take Our Quiz

Practically everyone working in the cloud says they're doing agile projects. But you'll find some tinges of non-agility, particularly in the support function after you put a system into production. Take this quiz to find out how agile your cloud support organization really is.

No Demand for Windows 8 Tablets? Or Don't Trust Predictive Surveys

The surveys says ... wait. You can't trust surveys, according to CIO.com columnist Rob Enderle. He offers some historical lessons on why you can't believe predictive surveys.

 
Many organizations have deployed disk-to-disk backup technologies to improve the speed and reliability of their backup and disaster recovery operations. A growing number of these now look to data deduplication to enhance retention periods and reduce costs. This ESG Lab Validation Report sponsored by HP + Intel examines a number of backup and recovery solutions and evaluates their ease of implementation as well as their ability to improve reliability and reduce costs.
Enterprise storage has undergone many changes in recent years - with converged storage and infrastructure 2.0 paving the way for reduced IT infrastructure costs and greater performance. This report discusses the latest trends that are setting the stage for the next era of computing. Learn about the new infrastructure and storage trends that are changing the way business storage works today.
Backup is one of the most frequently performed storage tasks; however, the perceived level of cost and complexity is rising dramatically for an activity that has been in practice for many decades. This Gartner research sponsored by HP + Intel details the challenges associated with the current state of backup and recovery, and presents the top best practices for improving the backup process.
As the role of IT increases within organizations, the need to move data when and where it is needed is critical to support emerging business requirements. This has become increasingly difficult due to the huge growth of data volumes. This white paper sponsored by HP + Intel evaluates a solution that aims to enable the movement of data without physical limitations. Read now and see how this could enable agility and efficiency.
HP X9000 IBRIX Storage Systems powered by Intel (circle R) Xeon (circle R) processors allow users to create a virtual file storage environment where they can match storage price/performance with application requirements, yet manage a single, highly scalable system. All three appliance models (X9300 Gateway, X9320, and X9720), or multiple instances of them, can coexist within a single namespace. This gives users the ability to manage various types of storage with different performance profiles as storage pools in a single file system that scales to 16PB and to 1,024 nodes, providing shared storage resources that can grow, contract, and be optimized with uninterrupted data access.

The key to meeting this goal is the X9000 IBRIX scale-out file system software. In combination with these tuned hardware nodes, this software allows organizations to scale independently across multiple dimensions (capacity, I/O performance, throughput) while managing the entire content pool as a single entity. The advantages to this approach include: reduced management staff overhead, highly tunable and scalable capacity and throughput levels, rapid system expansion and upgrade, continuous and real-time view of the past with IBRIX Snap, and reliable and usable data retention.
One of the key strategies that IT teams are pursuing to reduce capital costs while boosting asset utilization and employee productivity is the transition to highly virtualized data centers. However, IDC finds that expectations for further boosts in IT asset use and operational efficiency often surpass the actual results for a variety of reasons. These problems can quickly overwhelm any hoped-for benefits as the scope of virtual server deployment expands.
Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as support considerations
Download this webcast to learn the virtual hardware design considerations for Exchange 2010, deployment using the building block approach, options for high-availability and disaster recovery and support considerations.
Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.
Virtualizing business-critical applications is an essential step in your journey to the cloud. Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint, and Oracle applications, are often the backbone of business IT. The benefits of virtualizing these applications extend far beyond mere consolidation. Understanding how VMware improves quality of service and agility while reducing costs will help you make the case for taking virtualization to the next level in your company.
Virtualizing business-critical applications has become a key focus for organizations as they move along their virtualization journey. With the launch of VMware vSphere® 5, VMware is helping customers accelerate the deployment of business-critical applications, including Exchange, SQL, SAP and Oracle.
Want to say goodbye to missed SLAs? VMware can help you virtualize mission-critical applications such as Oracle, MS Exchange and SharePoint to achieve dramatic improvements in uptime, performance and responsiveness. In this webcast, we'll discuss the key benefits of virtualizing your agency's most critical applications and Oracle databases as a necessary first step in fulfilling OMB's mandate to move IT services to the cloud. With VMware, you'll be on the way to quick, effective and full compliance.
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