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Open source companies to watch 04 September, 2006 09:34:02
Open source companies and projects are expanding past Linux, to offer alternatives for everything from databases to disaster preparednessOpen source software is a given in most enterprise data centers, so it's not surprising to see the ranks of open source companies and projects swell. It's not just Linux anymore - community-developed software is offering alternatives for everything from databases to application servers to network management to disaster preparedness. How do you know which open source approach is right for you? We've pulled out a few start-ups that you might not be familiar with, but we think should be on your radar. - +
Green Storage Means Money Saved on Power 22 May, 2007 12:09:02
For some organizations, moving to energy-efficient storage isn't just a nice, green idea but an essential part of using less power, which in some circumstances has become an extremely limited resourceIn a perfect world, you easily could rein in the rapidly increasing amount of power that storage systems consume just by telling users to stop stockpiling data. In the real world, you'd lose your job for suggesting that. - +
Security a Top Issue As Teleworking Grows 24 April, 2007 16:02:26
Teleworking continues to grow at an impressive rate in the US, study finds.Security continues to dominate as IT's most pressing concern when it comes to supporting a large telecommuting workforce. But while security is a concern, teleworking, especially in the government realm, continues to grow at an impressive clip according to a study released by the CDW Government consultancy. - +
Simple Steps to Greening Your Data Centre 05 April, 2007 10:34:25
IT companies need to tread carefully if they want to compete in the new carbon economy.As heavy power users, IT departments have a key part to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And apart from the environmental impact, they need to make sure they don't exhaust their capacity. A recent Gartner report notes that 50 percent of data centres will have insufficient power and cooling capacity by 2008. - +
Simple Steps to Greening Your Data Centre 06 June, 2007 15:12:33
IT companies need to tread carefully if they want to compete in the new carbon economyAs heavy power users, IT departments have a key part to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And apart from the environmental impact, they need to make sure they don't exhaust their capacity. A recent Gartner report notes that 50 percent of data centres will have insufficient power and cooling capacity by 2008
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Adobe launches hosted services, adds Flash to Acrobat 03 June, 2008 09:02:44
Adobe to launch Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storageAdobe this week is set to unveil the next version of its Adobe Acrobat software, which adds support for the company's Flash multimedia technology. The company also plans to launch a new Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage. - +
Can Macs conquer the enterprise? 11 January, 2008 10:55:53
The field is wide open for a Macintosh insurrection on the business desktop. It could happen, but probably won't. Here's why.If Apple were a football team, the New England Patriots would have had some serious competition this year. - +
Networking's greatest debates in Management 29 October, 2007 07:16:21
Classic debates include Outsourcing vs. keeping it in-house, Industry standards vs. proprietary technologies and Frameworks vs. point productsA look at the greatest all time Management controversies in the history of the networking industry. - +
Universities struggle to keep up with storage demands 18 October, 2007 11:40:48
Students, faculty clamor for space to store fast-growing audio, video, text filesExploding data growth on college campuses, driven by rich media, virtual classrooms and fast-growing e-mail files, is forcing IT managers to quickly find ways to quickly boost storage capacity. - +
Data centers get religion 10 October, 2007 12:43:32
Would you house a data center in a diamond mine or an old chapel? These organizations did, with great success.Are you looking for a new data center? One that promises an abundant supply of energy and offers the latest in cooling technology?
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. SOA Governance: Rule your SOA
The IP Storage payoff: Turning your investment into efficient, affordable results
A Guide to Next-Generation Backup, Recovery and Archive
The State of Internet Security
Extending Business Solutions across the Organisation
Growth Strategies in Uncertain Times: Building and Maintaining Lasting Client Relationships in Professional Services Organisations
How to Protect Business from Malware at the Endpoint and the Perimeter
Application Modernization: Preserving Your Organization’s DNA
Newsletter Subscription
NAS vs. SAN
The argument over the humble file serving network-attached storage and the data-intensive storage-area network is a popular topic for the less than storage-savvy industry pundit. But a battle between NAS and SAN was never meant to be. NAS came out of the NetWare and Microsoft file servers used in the 1980s to provide access to files for network clients. Network Appliance first commercialized the concept of a NAS appliance, which would serve up files and be based on a stripped down network operating system.
NAS has been adopted by legions of Network Appliance users and bunches of Windows users for hosting Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server. It is used by millions of others for storing their file-oriented data.
SANs were adopted to partition storage traffic from the rest of the LAN and by doing so, speed up transaction-intensive databases, ERP and CRM systems.
"Separating ownership of a server from its storage and placing all the storage devices directly on a Fibre Channel network allows a many-to-many connection from servers to storage, and from storage to other storage devices. This approach grants the benefits of traditional networking to storage devices, such as increased scalability, availability and performance," consultant Barb Goldworm once wrote in a Network World newsletter.
SAN backers say the technology is best when performance is paramount for business-critical applications such as databases, ERP or CRM systems. NAS, they say is hindered by performance concerns. If you talk to some of these NAS users though, they will say that using NAS to host business-critical applications has never been a problem.
A recent test of a BlueArc NAS system showed more than 192,900 operations per second. -Deni Connor
Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI
Fibre Channel is dead." That was the controversial conclusion of one participant in a heated debate at an industry conference in 2000. Industry vendors were investigating a new protocol -- storage over IP -- that they said would replace the then dominant Fibre Channel. That newfangled transport protocol, which allowed storage traffic to flow across the Gigabit Ethernet network, would become iSCSI -- it would be implemented by individuals who were familiar with Ethernet networking, but not with the more complicated and expensive Fibre Channel.
Spin forward seven years and the battle between Fibre Channel and iSCSI is now passe. Fibre Channel isn't dead -- it's still the dominant storage protocol -- and iSCSI is being implemented at an increasing rate. According to IDC, while iSCSI commanded just 3 percent market share in external disk storage systems (with Fibre Channel accounting for the rest), the research firm expects that market share to increase to 21 percent by 2010. Now the two technologies even exist in the same network.
Fibre Channel is being used in enterprises to host transaction- and data-intensive operations because of its performance and its assured delivery of data; iSCSI, an inexpensive technology that operates on top of Gigabit Ethernet, is being used by organizations that don't have dedicated and storage-savvy IT personnel and in small and midsize businesses and departments in the enterprise to host mid-range business-critical applications that do not require the blazing performance of Fibre Channel.
Today, the industry is vetting iSCSI to run on 10Gbps Ethernet, where it can take advantage of TCP offload, remote DMA and I/O virtualization capabilities. Research firm Dell'Oro Group sized the 10Gbps Ethernet switch market at 100,000 port shipments in the fourth quarter of 2006 with revenue of US$1 billion. As 10Gbps Ethernet continues to grow, there may be no way to stop iSCSI's market momentum.
Fibre Channel, on the other hand, may at some time be replaced by the proposed Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), a technology that relies on the lossless, enhanced Ethernet specification. This technology, which layers Fibre Channel over Ethernet, will be attractive to companies that want to operate storage and networking on a converged network. FCoE products are expected to be available from Cisco, Brocade, Network Appliance, Nuova Systems, Emulex and QLogic sometime in 2009. -Deni Connor
2008 CIO Summit
19th August, 2008 Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney Developed in partnership with CIO Magazine, IDC, INTEP and the CIO Executive Council.
The world of the CIO is extremely complex and diverse. Multiple priorities demand attention and decisions are needed instantly. Individual teams need to be driven towards common goals, and businesses strive to become more mobile, agile and responsive. For CIOs, the challenge never ends.
Every year the CIO Summit identifies what is top of mind for CIOs across Australia and New Zealand, and offers insight for CIO benchmarking and vendor strategic planning alike.
Recent IDC research shows that over 59% of CIO's believe that 'to achieve their business strategies, technology should be used more aggressively than today.'
Join us on August 19th to discover how this is possible with the latest technologies including Virtualisation, Web 2.0, IP Surveillance and Software as a Service (Saas).
Click here for more information.
Please email Denyse_Robertson@idg.com.au for further information.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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'I have a lost laptop horror story for you' 30 June, 2008 10:08:14
The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow...The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow: Russ Jones tells a tale of woe that isn't particularly dramatic -- or rare -- and yet it's exactly the kind of story that worries me enough to ignore my better judgment and buy identity-theft protection from my insurance provider. - +
SQL attacks lobs onto pro tennis site 02 July, 2008 11:52:19
Wimbledon perfect time for crook's criminal racket.Visitors to the Association of Tennis Professionals Web site have potentially been infected with spyware after apparent lax security allowed a malicious script to be injected across its pages. - +
Hacking tools: A new version of BackTrack helps ethical hackers 30 June, 2008 10:57:21
BackTrack is the quickest way to get access to hundreds of (legal) hacking toolsVersion 3.0 of BackTrack has been released. BackTrack is a Linux-based distribution dedicated to penetration testing or hacking (depending on how you look at it). It contains more than 300 of the world's most popular open source or freely distributable hacking tools. - +
Japanese military loses data again 02 July, 2008 08:17:21
Japan's Self Defense Force lost sensitive data on joint US-Japan military exerciseJapan's Self Defense Force lost sensitive data pertaining to a joint US-Japan military exercise last year, the Ministry of Defense said Tuesday. - +
ACLU, EFF sue US gov't over mobile phone tracking 03 July, 2008 08:37:23
Two civil liberties groups sue the US Department of Justice over mobile phone trackingThe American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are asking a federal court to order the US Department of Justice to turn over records about the agency's tracking of mobile phone users.
Ballarat Grammar Improves Student Access to Computer Based Learning with HP ProCurve 04 July, 2008 16:49:00
Media release: 40 Per Cent of Australian Businesses Do Not Validate Their Data 04 July, 2008 10:29:00
Kaseya helps turbo charge BlueFire’s service delivery model 03 July, 2008 17:23:00
Computershare Selects Symantec for Data Loss Prevention Globally 03 July, 2008 14:52:00
DST International moves to new Shanghai office 03 July, 2008 13:21:00
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The Secrets of C-Suite Success
With help from the CIO Executive Council, we tap into research about successful executives. Read on to learn more about the competencies CIOs need to develop to take the corner office, where CIOs fall short — and what CEOs expect from CIOs.
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