A new Payment Card Industry (PCI) survey finds that respondents anticipate significantly increased spending on PCI compliance this year, which should drive security-related budgets across numerous IT areas. The survey of 500 IT executives on what’s happening as a result of the recent update to the 5-year-old PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS 2.0), conducted by InsightExpress on behalf of Cisco, also found that the majority of respondents believe their organizations are more secure than they would be if PCI compliance wasn’t required.
Network Computing
PCI To Drive IT Budgets In 2011
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CommVault Releases Results Of IT Storage Spending Survey
The economy is improving, and backup and recovery is the function that is both the most and least costly, compared to expectations, according to a recent straw poll that Commvault Systems performed with its customers to determine how they saw their budgets and resource allocation shaping up for 2011. Other major priorities determined by the non-scientific survey included managing the growth of data and spending on networks and equipment, particularly in the context of consolidating data protection. While the economy itself may have stalled, the growth of data has not, and IT organizations are expected to do more with the same or fewer resources.
Network Computing
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NephoScale Jumps Into IaaS Cloud Market
There’s a new entrant in the growing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud market who is claiming innovative technology which rivals that of established players such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace and Go Grid. NephoScale says that its cloud infrastructure is built from the ground up to overcome some of the limitations of legacy cloud providers. NephoScale, which has been in beta testing for eight months and emerged from stealth mode just two weeks ago, introduced on Wednesday its IaaS offering which includes an application programming interface (API) for customers that simplifies movement of IT resources to the cloud.
Network Computing
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Bring-Your-Own Laptop Won’t Help VDI
When I made my 2011 predictions, I didn’t hold out much hope for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). I don’t think that the upsides in moving to VDI–fast ROI, reduction in operations expenses, security enhancements, etc.–are enough for IT shops to change what they are doing. And I mean any type of VDI, from the traditional remote desktop that Citrix and Microsoft have offered for years to the newer VDI products that run as virtual machines on a desktop or off removable media, some of which we reviewed in 2009. One of the drivers, as Forrester Analyst Andre Kindness notes on Twitter, is that bring-your-own computer is forcing companies to VDI. I disagree, not because you can’t use VDI in that situation–if you are going to support bring-your-own laptop, then VDI would be preferred for company apps–but because the costs associated with supporting bring-your-own laptop and transitioning to VDI for most companies are too high compared with the organizational benefit that would be gained.
Network Computing
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JouleX Updates Software For Emerging ECEM Market
Energy management software maker JouleX is introducing on Monday JouleX Energy Manager (JEM) version 2.5, which helps control energy use within IT systems, and includes the addition of a smartphone application for remote control of those systems. The software product joins a growing market for what the research firm Forrester describes as Enterprise Carbon and Energy Management (ECEM) software.
Network Computing
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More on Advanced Erasure Codes
As we’ve previously discussed in “What Comes After RAID? Erasure Codes,” forward error correction coding is a leading contender to replace parity RAID as disk hardware evolves past the point where parity provides effective protection. The question remains: Are Reed-Solomon and related coding techniques the inevitable replacement for parity in the RAID systems of the future?
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Cisco ‘Outs’ Switches From The Closet
Cisco says that freeing data switches from the confines of the enterprise data center/wiring closet is a billion-dollar opportunity. Targeted at a host of new endpoints in customer checkouts, kiosks, warehouses, conference rooms, classrooms, hotel rooms, cruise ship cabins, gaming floors, labs, doctors’ offices and call centers, Cisco C-Series Switches are described as the first switches to provide enterprise-class features, including security, Power over Ethernet+ (PoE+) pass-through capability, PCI compliance and zero-touch setup.
Network Computing
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Ethernet Has A Goldilocks Problem
We’re in the midst of a collision between data center networking and enterprise storage. Convergence is the clarion call from the halls of storage giants like EMC, Brocade, NetApp, QLogic and Emulex, as well as from networking powerhouses like Cisco, Intel and Broadcom. Although everyone seems sure that the future will converge on Ethernet, it is not clear how we will get there. Gigabit Ethernet is too slow for converged I/O, and 10Gbit hardware and cabling remains prohibitively expensive. Proponents of “everything over Ethernet” are stymied when they try to make a cost-based use case.
Network Computing
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Data Centers: The Next Frontier For WAN Optimizers?
Signs of the increasingly pivotal role that WAN optimization is playing in the enterprise can be seen in the emergence of hybrid cloud architectures within corporate networks. As Mike so poignantly pointed out in his blog, the simple ability to run a VM does not make an application ready for the cloud. If developers are to leverage on-demand services, such as Amazon’s EC2, they need to rethink how they architect their software to leverage a hybrid cloud environment.
Network Computing
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