Recently David Cearley, vice president and fellow at Gartner gave a presentation discussing SOA and application development and integration, and he said something that on its face seemed almost sacrilegious in this age of outsourcing applications and cloud computing services.

According to Cearley, SaaS (software as a service) will have a role in the future of the data center, but perhaps not the dominant role originally envisioned by many prognosticators. His reasoning for this stems from the fact that many bad practices that have plagued on-premises software paradigm are happening similarly in the SaaS world. For example, “shelfware,” where a given subscription to a SaaS solution is not being accessed by its intended end user, is a problem. “It [can] happen to any company, especially those that have downsized their workforce, or one that has oversubscribed to trigger a volume discount,” Cearley said.

Cearley’s assertion that organizations need to re-evaluate the rationale for using SaaS solutions is primarily a recommendation that enterprises must apply best practices for evaluating solutions for their data centers, regardless of their delivery model.

Complete Article: Time To Re-evaluate SaaS Solutions? Assess Your Software Needs Before Taking The Plunge

Cables in the data center lend themselves to a variety of fairly unflattering analogies. “The stuff piles up like books on a coffee table,” says Rudy Rangel, sales manager at IT equipment vendor Rackmount Solutions (www.rackmountsolutions.net). “It takes discipline to organize them, but it’s easier said than done.”

Unlike those books, however, haphazard cables are, at best, a nuisance and, at worst, a danger. “Mismanagement of cables can lead to significant lost revenue from unnecessary downtime,” says Nick Schmidt, senior manager of IT infrastructure at CDW (www.cdw.com). “Cable management is the foundation for space maximization, overall performance, safety, and cooling efficiency.”

Putting together an organization and management plan for your cabling infrastructure is tedious and takes a lot of work, particularly if you’ve inherited several nests of tangled, lint-covered wiring from your predecessor. Block out some time during your business’ off-hours and put together a plan that keeps some of the following tips in mind.

Complete Article: Cable Organization & Management: Though Easily Overlooked, Cables Are Integral To A Well-Organized Data Center

Provisioning resources has always been a challenge for most data centers. Spikes in traffic can range from something basic, such as a retail site that knows it will face more online traffic around the holiday buying season, to something more sudden and extreme, such as the Web traffic that no doubt hit the New Orleans Saints’ Web site when the team won the Super Bowl.

Traditionally, planning for these variances in traffic required IT departments to estimate future traffic needs, which often translated into having to buy more infrastructure than was often needed for daily use. Cloud computing services improved this situation to some degree, but enterprises still needed to secure and pay for more “cloud” than they typically needed.

Recently, however, the term “cloudbursting” has become a popular concept in cloud circles. “Cloudbursting is the ability to increase internal capacity by provisioning resources for the overflowing capacity on a different cloud,” says Guy Naor, CTO of cloud solutions provider Morph Labs (www.mor.ph).

Complete Article: A Burst Of Capacity: Cloudbursting Gives SMEs Extra Computing Power When It’s Needed Most

Houston, Texas,-based networking and security solutions provider FutureSoft understood the importance of filtering network traffic back when SME IT departments had their hands full with the Anna Kournikova virus back in 2001. The company’s DynaComm i:filter product has been so successful in monitoring online activity that Microsoft bought the technology from the company in 2006 to incorporate it into its Threat Management Gateway offering.

However, FutureSoft (www.futuresoft.com) retained the rights both to upgrade and modify i:filter and to sell it as a standalone product, says Tim Farrell, CEO of FutureSoft. “We provide and maintain the data stream that is being fed to Microsoft. We are their verification arm for guaranteeing a Web site’s validity,” he says.

Complete Article: Intelligent Web Filtering: FutureSoft’s DynaComm i:filter Efficiently & Effectively Monitors Online Activity

Before deciding on Keno Kozie, [Dechert CIO Mike] Shannon and a few Dechert colleagues went to Chicago to visit Keno Kozie’s facilities. “We didn’t want to get sold on a sales pitch [but] on real analysts supporting real law firm applications like Autonomy’s iManage and Sage’s Carpe Diem. We asked them to give us three analysts so we could ask each of them sample help desk calls, such as, ‘How do you do this in [iManage]?’ or ‘How do you style this Word document?’ Then we chose three random analysts, which made [Keno Kozie] a bit nervous, but they did fabulously, too,” Shannon says.

Shannon says that the analysts’ expertise in all the applications Dechert uses sold Shannon’s team on Keno Kozie’s capabilities. “My level-two help desk manager can trip up some good analysts, but he had a hard time tripping up [the Keno Kozie analysts],” Shannon says.

According to Shannon, Keno Kozie hires analysts with ample experience either working in law firms or supporting them and then provides them with in-depth, hands-on instruction from professional application trainers. In addition, Keno Kozie analysts get more specialized training whenever they join a specific client team and as applications and technologies evolve.

For example, all of Keno Kozie’s analysts either have Microsoft Office Specialist Certification or are in the process of getting their certification. “There are so many nuances in Word with regards to tables, formatting, and so forth that it’s difficult to learn them all,” says Shannon. “The [analysts] at Keno Kozie understand the specific way Dechert styles its documents, and Keno Kozie analysts are expert with the use of styles and know our specific needs.”

Shannon says it helps that Keno Kozie is a full-service law firm support organization that includes engineering staff, Citrix specialists, document management experts, and advanced applications support. “Keno Kozie has a depth of legal technology experience that cannot be easily found in other support organizations. When complex calls come into the help desk, the support analysts have extensive resources and experts that they can consult with or bring onto the call in support of users,” Shannon says.

Complete Article: Dechert Trades Help Desk for Keno Kozie

Minneapolis-based advertising agency Preston Kelly boasts a client list that larger firms in Los Angeles and New York might envy, including Roundy’s Supermarkets, Taco John’s, Physicians Mutual, Health-Partners, STAGG Chili, Hormel Foods, and the Minnesota Zoo, among others.

In December 2008, the agency introduced a new holiday game for its partners and clients, an online version of the White Elephant game that lasted for a week. Clients could virtually steal and resteal one of three-dozen mostly gag gifts as many times as they could during the time period in the hopes of getting a Wii Fit or an iPod. Those who won canned goods had their gifts turned into a cash donation to feed the hungry.

However, the agency ran into a problem as the week wrapped up. “We had traditional hosting, [where] we had to pay for it based on what our average traffic is. Our average traffic is fairly low, but during those last 10 minutes, people were hitting the servers so hot and heavy that the game didn’t fail, but the servers were so slow that it didn’t register that you had actually clicked to steal a gift until the game was ended,” says Melody Lentsch, director of interactive at Preston Kelly.

Despite the glitch, the game was a success with Preston Kelly’s clients, and the agency decided to bring it back the following holiday season. But the agency didn’t want to pay $10,000 for 10 minutes of traditional hosting. During its search for a solution, the agency came across ReliaCloud (www.reliacloud.com), an Eden Prairie, Minn.,-based cloud provider with a hosting solution that was just going into beta.

“We told [ReliaCloud] our dilemma, and they said that because of the way cloud computing works, we could pay for a model that would meet the needs of our game,” Lentsch says.

Ultimately, Preston Kelly decided to take a chance on ReliaCloud, and according to Lentsch, the agency was thrilled with the results. “Sure enough, our game did not fail. We had thousands of hits to the server every second during the last 10 minutes of trading, and the game functioned at about 100% during that entire time,” she says.

Complete Article: On-Demand Cloud Hosting: ReliaCloud Offers Ad Agency A Burst Of Affordable, Reliable Computing Power

Given the plethora of companies out there that sell security, encryption, and communications networking products for the SME, the average data center manager must find it daunting to choose the right solutions that integrate well with his network; provide secure, seamless, and fault-tolerant access to confidential information; and are able to do so at an affordable price.

However, Somerset, N.J.,-based AEP Networks (www.aepnetworks.com) offers its customers a level of security and reliability so impressive that its products are used worldwide by financial, government, and other enterprises that require top-notch security and communications capabilities and appreciate the modular approach that the company takes with its solutions.

Complete Article: Enterprise-Grade Security: AEP Networks Offers Network Security Solutions That Are Fault-Tolerant & Affordable

Circulation: 125,000
Frequency: Bimonthly
Special issues: None

Background: Purchased by Sandow Media in early 2008, the now 19-year old Worth magazine was completely revamped in 2009, from its physical design to its method of circulation. Only select readers with a minimum net worth of $2 million are invited to subscribe. Those who don’t qualify can buy individual issues for $18.95 a copy at select bookstores, such as Barnes & Noble and Border’s, or at major private airports. Copies are printed on book-quality paper stock, and its elegant graphic design makes it a worthy addition to even the priciest coffee table. And while the magazine still targets the high net worth reader, its focus has changed to a much younger demographic, says managing editor Emily DeNitto.

“Worth used to focus on trusts, estates, and other end of life issues, but under Sandow, it has a younger, more entrepreneurial feel to it,” DeNitto says. “Our readers are mostly in their 40s and still very much engaged in building their personal fortunes and their businesses.”

Although Worth’s ostensible competitors include financial titles like SmartMoney and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, DeNitto says that no other magazine targets this exclusive, wealthy audience the way Worth does. “Worth vets its readers, so we really know whom we’re reaching,” she says.

Complete Article: “How To Pitch: Worth” (Avant Guild subscription required)

An excerpt from the article:

But back when I was still pecking out the occasional text on my Motorola RAZR, many large news and entertainment companies were anticipating and developing apps for the iPhone OS. I realize TidBITS tends to focus more on small developers, so why should we care about what these corporate behemoths are doing? Apart from the sheer reach of these companies, they have a very different mindset from the small developer. With that in mind, I spoke to a number of executives at large content companies to find out what they thought about the iPhone.

What I found interesting – even surprising – about these companies is that they typically aren’t interested in devices or platforms per se, but in getting their content out to as many people as possible and making a profit in a quick yet sustainable fashion. If their market research departments were to provide statistics that, say, Windows Mobile 6.5 would provide them the best traction in the mobile space, you would see a plethora of apps for that operating system. They care about content, not technology.

That said, while many of the people I spoke with said they are selling and developing apps for other mobile platforms like Android and BlackBerry OS, all seemed to view iPhone OS apps as a crucial part of their mobile strategies. And they consider debates over open versus closed environments as mostly minutiae.

Complete article: Talking with Giants in the iPhone App Space

From its beginnings in 2001, Austin, Texas,-based network security provider TippingPoint, now a part of HP, has focused on network security. At the time of its inception, most network security solutions were reactive in nature. “You’d look at your network traffic, and you’d see that you had some malicious traffic come through last week, and someone was able to take such and such,” says Michael Callahan, senior director of worldwide security product marketing for HP TippingPoint. “Our team [felt] there had to be a better way of monitoring network traffic.”

The engineers at TippingPoint (www.tippingpoint.com) subsequently developed an appliance that could be dropped inline into a network without requiring any network downtime, while at the same time providing a high accuracy rate of stopping malicious traffic before it could do any damage with almost zero false positives. This strategy of providing real-time network protection before it was common to do so led to its purchase in 2004 by network infrastructure giant 3Com. In April, HP completed its acquisition of 3Com and has since integrated TippingPoint into its network solutions division.

Complete Article: Inline Threat Prevention: TippingPoint Focuses Its Attention On Effective, Easy-To-Use Intrusion Prevention Systems

Storage solutions provider Thecus likes to define NAS as “next-generation advanced storage.” The Taiwan-based company (with U.S. offices in Milpitas, Calif.) offers more than 30 different NAS solutions that range from low-priced home and consumer solutions to enterprise-class designs that offer VMware, eSATA, and iSCSI compatibility as standard features and can handle 10GbE connections, among many other features.

Thecus (www.thecus.com) was founded in 2004. Through its global sales channels, the company distributes its products in more than 30 countries and territories worldwide.

According to Thecus’ General Manager Florence Shih, Thecus strives to be a pioneer in data storage integration no matter the environment. “Our design philosophy focuses on not only how NAS can improve the working productivity process but also how globally networked systems can meet changes in an organization’s environment,” Shih says.

Shih points out that the ability to provide critical information efficiently and safely to the right people while keeping costs low is key to an organization’s survival, let alone prosperity. “Businesses need a storage solution that is not only cost-effective and flexible but also has the expandability to be easily upgraded and adapted to new technologies without the need to spend a fortune when replacing an existing storage infrastructure,” she says.

Complete Article: Next-Generation Storage Solutions: Thecus Has What It Takes To Keep Your NAS Systems Up-To-Speed

When Montréal-based email security solutions provider Vircom opened its doors in 1994, it specialized in designing software that let people dial in to and access bulletin board systems. But as the Internet began its ascendancy in the mid-1990s, Vircom switched its sights to email security. “Back in 1997 and 1998, spam started appearing, and our founder, Sylvain Durocher, made us one of the first players to address this security problem,” says Damien Ramé, Vircom’s marketing manager. “Email security defines us to this day.”

Vircom (www.vircom.com) has more than 2,500 customers from a wide range of industries, including Match.com, Remington Arms Company, Goya Foods, Pitney Bowes, and the Philadelphia Phillies. According to a recent case study, more than 70% of Remington’s email traffic consisted of spam, and the company was unable to stop a rash of virus outbreaks. Remington, a classic SME, purchased Vircom’s modusGate appliance with a 1,000-user license. Spam disappeared almost from the moment Vircom’s support engineers implemented and configured the appliance for Remington’s needs.

Complete Article: Comprehensive Email Security: Vircom Covers All The Bases For Protecting Your Company From Email-Borne Malware

Fortune
Circulation: About 867,000 subscribers; 4.13 million total readership
Frequency: 18 issues/year (about once every three weeks)
Special Issues: In 2010: Fortune 500 (May 3), Investor’s Special 1: Retirement Guide (June 14), Global Forum (July 5), Global 500 & Brainstorm Tech (July 26), Careers Special (August 16), Fastest Growing Companies (September 6), Business of Style (September 27), Most Powerful Women (October 18), 40 Under 40 (November 1), The New Rich: America’s Entrepreneurs (November 15), Businessperson of the Year (December 6), Investor’s Special 2: Investor’s Guide 2011 (December 27).

Background: Fortune celebrated its 80th birthday this year with a design and editorial facelift that makes the venerable Time Inc. business title at once easier for its readers to engage in and more substantial. Although the magazine now publishes seven fewer issues a year than in its previous incarnation, the average size of each issue has grown by about eight to 12 pages, and has become physically heavier because of its switch to higher quality paper stock. Meanwhile, its editorial layout seems to have borrowed some successful online conventions, such as its use of single letter or numeral icons in the top left corner on each left-side page in the FOB portion of the magazine that function similarly to tabbed navigation on a website.

Executive editor Stephanie Mehta describes the updated FOB sections as having a consistent and orderly editorial focus. “While in the past our sections were more an amalgam of story ideas and news that were on the tips of the tongues of the editors, these new sections are more targeted, with specific rubrics under which [readers and contributors] can plug into,” Mehta says.

The “First” section of the magazine offers a nice example of the change that Mehta describes. The section always opens with “By The Numbers,” that consists of a big visual combined with some eye-grabbing figures that break down the story numerically. It is then followed with “A Closer Look,” typically an investigative piece about a particular issue or person in the news. “It tries to move the ball forward or tries to alert the reader about something that will be in the news by the time they pick up the magazine,” Mehta says.

Fortune also has added two new sections, “Career” and “Venture,” each of which will run in about five issues a year. The latter concentrates on fast-growing, cutting-edge companies that have the potential either to break into the Fortune 500 someday or to disrupt the current ways of doing business in a given market. “This section appeals to entrepreneurs as well as corporate executives who want to understand the entrepreneurial mindset and inject some of that into his or her business unit,” Mehta explains. The former, meanwhile, is a service-oriented section designed to help readers best manage their careers, particularly during these uneasy economic times. “Our readers told us they wanted more advice on how to advance and enhance their careers and put them on the fast track,” Mehta says.

Despite these changes, Fortune’s mission remains much the same as it was during Henry Luce’s time. “Our hallmark since the magazine’s beginning has been the in-depth business feature,” says Mehta, who points out that the first issue sporting the new design has several features that are more than six pages in length. While [now Bloomberg] BusinessWeek and Forbes have traditionally been Fortune’s rivals, at least in terms of advertising, Mehta also considers any publication that features long-form pieces on the business world, including New York, and The New Yorker, as competition.

But unlike the aforementioned generalist titles, Fortune distinguishes itself by approaching topics from a business context. “We are steeped in the business conversation. We like to think we understand how the business person thinks and the kind of information the business person wants and how to balance a really great read, which is what we all want to do as writers and journalists, with what those executives and individuals need and want to know,” Mehta says. “It is our mandate.”

Fortune.com
Unique Monthly Visitors: 7 million
Monthly page views: 40 million

Background: After wallowing in the backwaters of behemoth financial website CNNMoney.com, Fortune magazine hired award-winning writer Daniel Roth, formerly a senior writer at Fortune, Condé Nast Portfolio, and most recently, Wired, in January 2010 to reinvent the online portion of the 80-year-old business title and distinguish it from the CNNMoney website as a whole. Fortune.com may share resources with CNNMoney and will always be closely related, but Fortune.com will emphasize analysis over straight news, Roth says.

The opportunities at Fortune.com are separate from the magazine itself, down to the budget. Although several pieces from the magazine are published on the website, Roth is looking for newsier pieces to differentiate the site’s content from that of the magazine. “I’m on a much faster timeline than the print edition, and I’m looking for people who can do really smart business news analysis about the biggest companies and topics in business, journalists who can explain what the story is behind some big story and offer takes on what’s going on,” he says. Articles also are more uniform in length, most of them being between 500 to 1,000 words, with 700 being the sweet spot in most cases.

As Roth ramps up the site, he looks forward to expanding his universe of writers. “I may regret this later, but right now I’m looking forward to it,” he says. He also is looking for good freelance editors who can quickly turn stories around. The rate for editing is less than that for writing; nevertheless, it’s a possibility for those who are interested.

Complete Articles: “How To Pitch: Fortune” and “How To Pitch: Fortune.com”(Avant Guild subscription required)

About two years ago, [St. Michael’s RC School in London] migrated to Google Apps for its school workflow. In the past, students would complete work on Microsoft Word or Open Office, save it, print it, bring it to school, give it to the teacher, and then wait for the teacher to mark it up. During this process, Kelly points out, too many glitches were possible—students could lose the flash drive carrying the homework, students often had to hold up their progression waiting for teachers’ annotations, and those annotations could get lost in transit.

With Google Apps, students now can seamlessly share their work with teachers and fellow students by accessing it all through the cloud. When a student finishes his or her homework, the teacher is alerted and can respond with the type of flexibility that facilitates learning.

Google Apps, however, had one major flaw that kept it from being a complete solution for the school. “It had only one level of access—one password—and then you were straight in,” Kelly says. It couldn’t handle confidential information, such as that of a student’s learning disability, so that the student’s teacher could be informed of it in a confidential fashion. “We needed to find an easy way to add another layer that would be simple for the school to use without the complexity of having additional servers in the school or having to pay for the expertise to set it up,” he says.

After looking at several potential solutions, Kelly came across myOneLogin by online identity services provider TriCipher (www.myonelogin.com). “The biggest thing with myOneLogin is its simplicity,” says Kelly. “It takes a click of a button to integrate into Google Apps, and then it just physically works.”

Complete Article: A Single Point Of Entry: TriCipher’s myOneLogin Lets Students Log In To Google Apps Privately & Securely

If you go back to about 1994 or 1995, when Netscape 1.0 became available and the Web started taking off, the network performance needs of the average data center were fairly modest and targeted. Today, keeping networks up and running is not a major concern because connection technologies such as Ethernet are so stable, says Ted Ho, CEO of Gigamon. In addition, the Internet itself is largely resistant to failure, says Jim Melvin, CEO of Apparent Networks. “IP networking is so dynamic that regardless of what happens, it maintains connectivity—one of its greatest features,” Melvin says.

Although basic network connectivity can be described as durable, making sure that the network runs efficiently with a minimum of bottlenecks and outages is a knottier task. Motti Tal, executive vice president of marketing and business development at OpTier (www.optier.com), says that it’s pretty much a given that IT environments have become increasingly complex over the years. “A data center today is composed of so many different moving parts, technologies, and technology expertise areas that [it’s important] to assure that transactions flow smoothly within applications and the infrastructure [in order] to improve compatibility and the end-user experience while reducing costs,” says Tal.

According to Ho at Gigamon (www.gigamon.com), network monitoring and performance analysis in the data center are too often an afterthought. Most network tools purchased over the past decade do not have the capacity to monitor 2010-era networks, many of which employ virtualization, cloud computing, distributed computing, and high-speed connectivity. Given that networks have become so much more complex, how do you analyze network performance effectively? Here are some tips to keep in mind.

Complete Article: Know Your Network Performance: Put A Finger On The Pulse Of Your Data Center’s Flow Of Information