Outlined in the Affordable Care Act, the ACO model aims to link hospitals, physician networks, acute care facilities and other organizations in an effort to provide more coordinated care that in turn reduces costs. But ACOs must address four key IT challenges before a strict government deadlines impose financial penalties.

The tried-and-true enterprise service bus--long the foundation of now-dated service oriented architecture deployments--is back in style thanks to the increasing need to integrate disparate applications. The secret to ESB's future success, some say, is a close tie to API management tools.

Companies are turning to fault tolerant servers as a way to improve uptime without experiencing the downtime associated with high availability solutions. But fault tolerant technology may not be right for every enterprise.

One upside to virtualization is that it puts more applications on fewer servers. One downside is that the availability of those servers become of greater importance.

When it comes to developing enterprise applications, organizations are increasingly realizing that user experience is as important as functionality. In response, vendors are taking a more agile approach to building those apps in order to better meet users' needs.

Microsoft SharePoint is increasingly becoming a victim of its own success: As more departments start to use it, bottlenecks occur and performance suffers. To combat this, some companies are rolling out third-party storage systems that move large data sets off SQL Server.

Companies that deploy software-as-a-service often don't know everything about the security provisions their SaaS providers and partners have in place. Experts say it's because they don't know what to ask, they don't know what to test and they no longer know what's standard for a cloud service provider contract.

Small and medium-sized businesses are beginning to find that virtualized network security isn't as different as physical network security as they thought. This makes cloud adoption simpler, but it also presents unique challenges.

As traditional storage environments hinder application performance and increase latency, enterprises are turning to flash storage to improve performance and implement virtual desktop infrastructure. More widespread use of flash storage, though, may require vendors to be flexible with their pricing.

As organizations become decreasingly skeptical about the cloud, they are increasingly willing to outsource ITSM to a SaaS provider. Doing so lowers costs, improves flexibility and easily accommodates ITIL framework principles.

Enterprises replacing legacy network infrastructure are increasingly turning to software-defined networks, which can automate an entire network fabric. Having helped hosting companies and academic institutions, a variety of resellers, system integrators and consultancies are ready to bring SDN to the enterprise.

A cloud service brokerage serves as an intermediary between you and your cloud service provider by aggregating multiple cloud services, integrating then with in-house apps and customizing them to meet your needs. See how this new breed of IT service provider is changing the cloud landscape.

As Salesforce.com's SaaS offerings become more sophisticated, configuration and deployment gets more complex. In response, enterprises are increasingly turning to partners for implementation help.

The Philadelphia university's work with a systems integrator illustrates a shift in the audiovisual market. As readily available, wireless-ready projectors and cameras move from the boardroom to the conference room and the corporate network, AV vendors are finally bringing the conversation to the CIO before implementation occurs.

Implementing VDI strategy requires expertise that many organizations lack. To reap virtual desktop benefits that include cost savings and better security, many IT pros turn to system integrators, resellers and other service providers to set up the VDI and make sure IT staff know how to make the most of it.