data-center-transformation

Administering Efficient IT Management with Datacenter Virtualization

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:49:08 +0100

The management of IT assets and services determines the results in a business. To enable a smooth and gainful operation every process and application has to be optimized. You can think of achieving better goals only when your IT system is in the perfect working condition. If your IT management is complicated, time-consuming and expensive you will have to struggle to move onto the next level. And that is not a very good sign in a competitive world where every player is testing his limits to the maximum to move ahead of the pack.

A datacenter has a relevant role in business. It is your datacenter that provides you the convenience of storing and accessing hardware assets that are critical to your business. Your datacenter has to enforce and maintain quality standards so that the services delivered are prompt, accurate, safe and relevant. Some businesses employ dedicated datacenters but may not have experienced and skilled force to extract the best. Some generally tie up with some datacenter vendors that provide cheap, insecure and restrictive services.

Datacenter virtualization is a blessing for businesses in terms of management as well as the cost aspect. The scenario is one where you do not have to employ any additional experts or facilities to get what you need. In a virtualization environment the management of your IT assets and services is carried out in an automated efficient and cost-effective manner with amazing disaster recovery capabilities, giving you the advantage of concentrating on the core needs of your business.

It provides you enriching experiences as all your IT processes are optimized. The environment is an integrating one exhibiting high levels of coordination. It has commendable backup qualities along with upgrading and monitoring facilities. It completes configurations and builds a virtual infrastructure for installation of hardware. The promotion of green technology is gathering momentum as more and more businesses are realizing the ill-effects of blatant misuse of the environment. Choosing a vendor offering green datacenter virtualization service ensures a healthy business environment with the ideal use of energy and conservation practices.

These vendors practice best policies for consolidation, cooling and power management purposes. They help you in premium utilization of your IT assets as well as in acquisition and lifecycle maintenance of hardware. They advise you correctly regarding your asset disposal processes and help in forecasting too. Thus a green datacenter virtualization process results in only positive and healthy manifestations.

End User Computing Solutions to Collaborate Efficiently

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:02:07 +0100

In today’s highly competitive world, it is essential for end-user to have the right tools to work and collaborate efficiently. That is not all; IT needs to secure and manage the endpoints that people are using; right from desktops to laptops to mobile devices. “End user computing” comprises of a group of approaches that helps in efficiently assimilating end users in to a computing platform and making them more productive. This helps organizations realize the possibilities of a high quality computing in an organized manner.

End-User Computing Solutions help accelerate innovation and boost productivity—individually and in teams and at the same time, help IT manage the lifecycle of endpoints automatically and keep everything secure.

End user computing solutions service providers offer business value to customers with their range of service offerings and products that includes end user infrastructure planning, migration, deployment and on-going management across distributed mobile and virtual flexible computing platforms to help simplify client infrastructure. They offer end-to-end customized solutions with a single point of contact for hardware, software, services and on-going support.

The new age end user computing solutions include-

Messaging & Collaboration Services – offering collaboration capabilities to boost productivity and accelerate innovation. Collaboration helps build, operate and provide professional services on email and collaboration platforms and monitor and support mailboxes globally regardless of location. It also helps automate IT and business processes to improve efficiencies, reduce cost, complexity and risk with solutions.

End Point Management - Simplify and reduce the cost of endpoint device lifecycle management across platforms and locations. Streamline and reduce the complexity of IT operations by standardizing and automating management capabilities that include asset management and security management for all individual and networked endpoint devices.

Infrastructure Application Management -Manage your infrastructure even when the situation calls for extreme processing. Helps convert IT Operations to a transformational player offering "Plan – Design - Implement – Operate – Optimize" services across all the elements of IT Infrastructure Lifecycle.

Service Desk Operations - Service Desk operations are delivered through a consistent set of tools and processes providing efficient and cost effective IT Services to our customers.

With the latest developments of IT and IT enabled service end user computing has gained prominence. Opt for the right endpoint user service provider who will work with you to gain an understanding of your business objectives and IT strategy, then design plans that are flexible enough to adapt to current environments and structured to scale to future requirements.

Information Security- Benefits of Information Security Services

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:59:24 +0100

To Keep the IT system secure and simultaneously improve the information value is the primary objective of enterprises today. Therefore, information security is not only about having usernames and uncommon passwords. Data protection and privacy laws impose certain obligations on users. There are office staffs that defraud and even make careless errors. These apart, other threats to information security are hackers, viruses, phishers, worms and many others. To quote Howard Schmidt “We need to build security into core fabric - the DNA - of the computing world.” This rightly defines the need for information security services.

There are various benefits of information security services. They help in increasing productivity by minimizing the extent and number of security breaches. This in turn, brings down the direct and direct expenses, that are-

Low productivity that results from the loss of time in resolving and investigating security attacks
Costs that are incurred in recovering the lost data
Customers notifications and regulators
Fines for violating regulations
Loss of reputation that results in brand devaluation and user defection

Eminent IT brands have introduced sound and efficient information security services. The portfolio of the security products and solutions have been designed in such a manner, that it provides technical, financial and strategic benefits to the users or customers. Further, these services help in elevating an organization to its desired level of information security strength.

These innovative information security tools works like a scanner. It first scans the entire internet and data set up along various verticals, detecting their strengths and weaknesses. In addition to this, most eminent brands dealing in information security have adapted a partnering approach than that of service provider. This enables them to deliver quality services within a short time.

The various types of information security services provided by IT companies are-

Information security consulting
Identity & Access management
Managed security services
Professional SI services

A consistent and comprehensive information security system helps in minimizing the company’s total risk profile. This boosts up the management trust and confidence, thereby allowing the company to strive ahead and grab profitable opportunities, for instance eBusiness deals and projects. For this the management needs to be fully aware the extent to which a security attack can trigger down, and simultaneously the significant benefits of a security solution.

Benefits of Datacentre Hosting

Tue, 24 May 2011 09:01:00 +0100

An upcoming trend in internet technology and computer science is the concept of datacenter hosting. Owing to the forthcoming trends and changes, clients today are in search for swift and responsive infrastructure that is delivered via highly systematized and secure datacenters. This makes it possible for them to respond as per the business requirements and certain untimely fluctuations. This can be attained by adding a well managed hosting, clustering, virtualized servers and other network services.

Briefly, few features of datacenter hosting and datacenter virtualization are as follows:-

Having a virtualized network system
There are common development tools and application platform
There is an efficient and systematic virtual and physical management
There is a service-oriented and automated management that is followed
Other advantages that are accrued are data protection, integrated identify and access other types of technologies

Eminent companies are coming up with innovative datacenter hosting solutions. These solutions can be applied to different places around the world through the activation of the Certified Alliance Partner Program. They are set up in the most rigorous way with high quality standards that ensure higher power, greater security, efficient connectivity and other helpful environmental controls. Global names in this segment are including numerous components in their datacenter hosting solutions that offer various benefits to the users. Some of the components are listed below-

Increased floor space
Efficient datacenter hosting capacity
Usage of a dual power feed
Has a UPS capacity and generator
There is also a 42 U standard Cage/ Rack
HV AC
There is access to physical security services with the usage of swipe cards
There is a loading bay space for asset transfer and lift
There is the facility for fire suppression with FM200 gas
Presence of fire detection services
There are advanced cable structures

Few professional benefits and services are stated as follows:-

Onsite feet and hand assistance
Reporting facilities
Security and network support
Efficient management and other allied handling

With increased demand for streamlining of services and processes, datacenter hosting helps an enterprise to maximize its productivity and enables smooth functioning across various centers.

ITIL and Cloud Computing

Wed, 11 May 2011 09:39:07 +0100

Cloud computing grew out of the concept of utility computing. It was believed that computing resources and hardware would become a commodity to the point that companies would purchase them from a central pool and pay only for the amount of CPU cycles, RAM, storage and bandwidth that they used, much like the way you buy electricity from the electric company. This is how it became known as utility computing. The fundamental concept of cloud computing is that the processing (and the related data) is not in a specified, known or static place, but the server location, place and controls are still known to someone in the service delivery chain. It is no wonder then that cloud computing is considered a complex and dynamic IT service production and distribution system in which different layers of service producing infrastructure are controlled and managed by different entities. On the other hand, ITIL books document best practices for managing the complex and dynamic business of delivering IT services. They are not a theory, a standard, nor a detailed how-to, but a collection of what actually works.

In other words, the core guidance and concept of ITIL can be tailored to design the service management processes for the IT service management environment of the cloud. What processes need to be used to fix them? Is it any different from incident management or problem management? Will there be changes made in the cloud? Will it then be called change management? The argument that ITIL does not apply to the cloud is in fact a cop out on behalf of cloud solution developers and application management service providers to basically get rid of controls because this is a new technology. They do not realize that ITIL is a technology independent framework. The cloud will of course demand strong “built-in controls” around event management, and that is prominently defined in the operation part of ITIL V3.

ITIL for the cloud can vary in scale and complexity as one logical process spans across one or more systems. In order to transform the service management processes that were designed for legacy IT infrastructure based service, two basic techniques are used: Process Engineering and Process Integration. The process engineering technique breaks the core of processes into multiple sets of tasks surrounded by the key characteristics of input, output, rules and roles. Process Integration is one of the key techniques for implementing multi-vendor ITIL. It is a technique of attaining close and seamless coordination and interaction of processes. Therefore ITIL, when applied correctly by managed network services, can provide the best incident management solutions, such as providing symptom data and diagnosis, and can also provide observations about the incident.

Related Links: IT infrastructure outsourcing

Information security

Need for Optimizing Integrated Operations Management

Thu, 05 May 2011 06:32:28 +0100

Integrated Operations Management integrates application support into the run side of business and achieves effectiveness and efficiency in running application support by creating application knowledge clusters and cross training to ensure that operations knowledge is institutionalized and is independent of people supporting it.

Need for Integration

Integrations is necessary as it leverages integrated operations management framework to grow its application revenue service. It makes sense to consolidate all infrastructure and application operations at one time. Some of the benefits of integrated operations management are:

Cost Optimization

Various activities at the application layer, both technical and administrative, are very similar to the ones carried out at the infrastructure layer, like Release to Production, Security and User Administration, Patch Administration, Output Device Management, etc. Moreover the ease to clone all these activities at the database layer provides a sound opportunity to integrate both Infrastructure and Application support activities into one robust support function. For resource optimization and cost savings, it is best to have a common team for this unified function.

Operational Excellence

All the monitoring activities are carried out in order to ensure healthy, hassle-free business transactions. If any critical business transaction is facing an issue, then it makes sense to drill down further into the relevant layer (application or infrastructure). This helps in focusing on the real issue rather than monitoring each and every event irrespective of any impact on business transactions. An integrated layer of application and infrastructure allows you to measure response time SLAs for your business applications by focusing on the core activities.

Quick Resolution

Creating a common enterprise help desk, command center and an admin team, both for Application and Infrastructure layers, ensures that a large number of incidents are triaged to relevant teams resulting in significant improvements in First Call Resolution.

As there is a growing need to revisit the existing norms that are prevalent in the IT industry, IT operations need to be viewed as specialized services that are different from application development. In Integrated Operation Management, a pplication management services and support are closely linked with the Infrastructure Support services rather than the application development function. IT Service Providers use ITIL processes and information security services to ensure that the best breed of processes is followed 24x7. Typically, Application Support and Maintenance has been aligned to Application Development, especially in the case of bespoke applications to retain knowledge and provide instantaneous reactive support in case of problems. Application Support is based on a good understanding of the domain and is a project driven activity whereas IT Infrastructure support requires SLA driven regular maintenance and user support.