The question of how enterprise end users can access the applications running in the data center, and do so cost effectively and reliably, given the ever increasing bandwidth demands that many of today's media-rich applications have is one of the biggest bottlenecks IT managers face. MPLS is a reliable but very expensive way to access enterprise data centers. The price per bit for Frame Relay and MPLS service has barely come down over the years, and today seems to be coming down 10% - 15% per…

Here at Park Place Technologies, we’ve seen and heard it all. Having worked with over 900 customers, we’ve heard many false perceptions of third party maintenance providers. In fact, these are very common misperceptions that could possibly lead to making the wrong choice for your hardware support. So, here are 4 third party maintenance myths and what you really need to know.

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Predictive analytics has been around for a while and is applicable in several forms, most notably in business intelligence or BI where you see it applied in areas such as web trends and consumer data analysis. What we're talking about is predictive analytics “for IT.” Predictive analytics for IT is about understanding vast amounts of real-time data to forecast IT performance issues before they affect customers and users. Our predictive analytics software is powered by what Gartner calls…

Many of today’s enterprise data centers employ virtualization technology to more efficiently use computing resources. Virtualization however introduces new challenges for data centers: In a virtual environment, all resources must be shared. This creates a complex resource allocation problem that if not solved, causes performance bottlenecks, poor ROI, unhappy customers and will only worsen with scale.

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Many of today’s enterprise data centers employ virtualization technology to more efficiently use computing resources. Virtualization however introduces new challenges for data centers: In a virtual environment, all resources must be shared. This creates a complex resource allocation problem that if not solved, causes performance bottlenecks, poor ROI, unhappy customers and will only worsen with scale.

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he weight of the enterprise rests on IT, and complexity is spiraling out of control. IT manages an increasing number of geographically distributed applications and infrastructure with so many moving parts that something nearly always is broken or degraded. The widespread adoption of new technologies, such as server virtualization, network attached storage, and cloud computing, provide greater flexibility and perhaps even cost savings, but new layers of management and complexity are added as…

Virtualization technologies represent an enormous growth area in the enterprise data center. Yet existing management tools are inadequate to manage the new virtualized environment. Businesses are extremely hesitant to fully migrate to virtualized environments without comprehensive and real-time visibility into the entire infrastructure (servers, network, storage and end-user devices), as they absolutely need to maintain the same application performance and availability in a virtualized…

The process of modeling financial options for IT service delivery is evolving as service delivery components become more fragmented, service provider options multiply, contract maturities decrease and enterprise IT organizations adapt to a service delivery “assembly” culture.



Before the economic meltdown of 2008 – 2009, the rate of change in enterprise IT service delivery models proceeded at a glacial pace. Most organizations operated with an internally focused set of service…

The process of modeling financial options for IT service delivery is evolving as service delivery components become more fragmented, service provider options multiply, contract maturities decrease and enterprise IT organizations adapt to a service delivery “assembly” culture.



Before the economic meltdown of 2008 – 2009, the rate of change in enterprise IT service delivery models proceeded at a glacial pace. Most organizations operated with an internally focused set of service…

Reducing storage costs is a top agenda item for enterprise data centers, yet data is an organization’s most valuable asset. Struggling with the performance, scalability and management complexity required to maintain conventional file-based storage systems is a losing battle if you need to store your data more than 90 days. Object-based storage delivers better value and reduced cost of ownership as well as improved performance, scalability and near-zero administration. Object storage systems…

The ideal is a monitoring system that is comprehensive (alerting on all conditions that need attention) and noise free (NOT alerting to any conditions that do not need attention.) A noisy alert system is almost as bad as no monitoring – it will train people to ignore their alerts.

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It boils down to providing protection for databases during a crucial period of time. Patches are regularly issued by database vendors to address known vulnerabilities in their DBMS software. But for a variety of reasons, enterprises are not always able to install those patches in a timely manner; often, they are not installed at all. Yet, once the patch is released, hackers know about the weakness, and can exploit systems that are not yet patched, gaining access to sensitive records. That’s…

The cost and complexity of managing security requirements in today’s enterprise data centers has created a major need in the marketplace. With new threats emerging all the time, and growing data traffic volumes and bandwidth demands, data center managers are challenged to cost-effectively manage and scale their security infrastructure, without sacrificing the performance-levels required to meet the needs of the business.

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The cost and complexity of managing security requirements in today’s enterprise data centers has created a major need in the marketplace. With new threats emerging all the time, and growing data traffic volumes and bandwidth demands, data center managers are challenged to cost-effectively manage and scale their security infrastructure, without sacrificing the performance-levels required to meet the needs of the business.

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Space is a premium in today’s racks

With today’s increasingly thin and dense servers, the tendency for many IT professionals is to stack more equipment into their racks. Doing so creates new challenges in airflow, power capacity and serviceability. With these thoughts in mind, Crenlo is now offering rack-mounted accessories to help IT managers keep their equipment running smoothly and easily serviceable.…

Why is data replication useful in today's enterprise data centers?

In today's data-driven economy, a few minutes of downtime, or losing a “few” gigabytes of data, can cause substantial financial loss and damage a company's reputation. Enterprises large and small face the challenges of protecting enormous volumes of data, complying with complex regulations, controlling rapid data growth, and managing geographically-dispersed data centers.

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Given the rapid adoption of shared and virtualized infrastructure in the data center environment, a new approach is needed to ensure the effective performance of the IT infrastructure. Rather than monitoring individual nodes and components in the data center in a piecemeal manner, organizations need to monitor the performance of supported services instead - by correlating all the underlying components of the service. The monitoring approach for applications and services has to account for…

Today’s CIOs face many challenges. For example, they are asked to do more with less and must prepare for and become more familiar with rapidly evolving technologies like virtualization, cloud computing, consolidated fabric, etc. I find the relentless demand for increased bandwidth remains a near constant requirement as a fundamental enabler.



Following the formal adoption of 40 and 100 Gb/s Ethernet Standards, the question of upgrading to 40 and 100 Gb/s is no longer…

Proactive Monitoring Helps Maximize ROI and Maintain High VM Performance

In a virtualized environment, applications compete for shared, dynamic infrastructure resources such as storage, CPU and memory. This resource sharing makes capacity management in a virtual environment an order of magnitude more complex than in a purely physical environment. As a result, proactive capacity management is critical as once problems manifest themselves, they can be difficult to…

Virtualizing users is important in today's enterprise. By virtualizing the user and treating it as a separate layer on top of the Operating System and the Application Layers, the user can now move seamlessly throughout an environment, across any delivery mechanism, and cross Operating System. Allowing for a way to centrally manage the entire environment from a single location, as well as enabling administrators to tailor policy based on the context of their users such as assessing device or…