Technology News: IT Maintenance

Why Business Transaction Management Is Hot in 2009

Tuesday - June 30, 2009

Business transaction management has been getting a lot of attention lately: IT organizations want it, and every major vendor in systems and performance management has rushed to claim they do it. The promise of BTM is to finally be able to manage IT from a business perspective and make sense of the complexity of modern applications broken down in services that run across environments distributed behind the firewall and in the cloud. [More...]

Why You Need a Network Analyzer

Wednesday - June 24, 2009

In today's world, it seems that more of the people I run across do not feel they need -- or, more accurately, don't understand why they need -- a protocol analyzer for their network. A few years ago, it seemed that more people understood just how important the analyzer was. For some reason, as networks have become smarter and much more complex, this understanding seems to have dissipated. [More...]

Is It Quality Assurance or Quality Control?

Tuesday - June 23, 2009

Is there a difference between quality control and quality assurance? Just night and day. Unfortunately, many companies believe they are the same, when in reality the differences are overwhelming. Quality control, or black box testing, is chartered to ensure that the product is going to meet the user's needs -- not just to demonstrate that the program runs. [More...]

Legacy Software: Rebuilding the Ship in Rough Waters

Thursday - June 4, 2009

As the market recedes further and companies look to shed cost in any way feasible, many look inwardly in order to find key areas for improvement. Aberdeen's research shows that the top business pressures forcing companies in the direction of legacy application modernization are largely internal. The top two pressures have to do with agility. [More...]

Bite the Bullet and Throw Away Your Data

Wednesday - June 3, 2009

It should come as no surprise to any IT manager that your organization's appetite for data keeps growing every minute. No sooner than a new set of storage tools is deployed, it becomes clear there's a need for more, and you start planning the next wave of hardware purchases. [More...]

Reining In IT Excess With Software Asset Management

Thursday - May 28, 2009

Think of the ideal software asset management system as a monitor that displays what exactly drives your business operations. It provides a readout of all the software installed throughout the company's computer systems, and much more. SAM programs also help IT departments rein in duplicate or redundant software applications. [More...]

The Cloud's Mix 'n' Match Muddle

Tuesday - May 26, 2009

Cloud computing is a hot tech growth category that shows no signs of cooling. These are still early days, though, and companies that are experimenting with this computing model are doing so in a piecemeal fashion, or on a case-by-case basis. The result, for some firms, is a mishmash of IT functionality -- some of it in the cloud, much of it still on the ground. [More...]

The Enterprise Architect: White Knight or Wallflower?

Monday - May 25, 2009

The role of enterprise architecture has never been more important, and never have IT departments had to be as responsive to the businesses they support as now. So how are enterprise architects perceived in a daunting economic recession, as saviors or door stops? During a recent panel discussion, at The Open Group's 22nd annual Enterprise Architecture Practitioner's Conference in London, this question was probed. [More...]

Getting IT on the C-Suite's Radar

Thursday - May 21, 2009

Aberdeen's research shows a 16 percent increase in the number of organizations that are satisfied with the performance of business-critical applications since March. However, the disparity among respondents is profound. Ninety-three percent of Best-in-Class organizations are satisfied with their application performance, and only 48 percent of Industry Average and Laggard organizations show the same level. [More...]

Gadgets on the Run: Keeping Tabs on Moving IT Assets

Wednesday - May 6, 2009

It's no secret that the business world is going mobile. Companies are beginning to move to a virtual environment -- especially sales teams who have to be on the road more often. The trend of telecommuting is also starting to catch on. With this in mind, IT managers are faced with a new headache: managing what they can't see. Companies are struggling to create and understand mobile IT strategy. [More...]

Is Five Nines Feasible for SMBs?

Monday - April 27, 2009

The concept of five nines availability has its roots in server deployment. That standard demands that the IT department or the service provider hired by an enterprise deliver access to applications and data 99.999 percent of the time. Even with today's migration to cloud storage and SaaS product delivery, much can happen to extend downtime to more than the remaining 5.26 minutes of every year. [More...]

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