( 2 Votes )
Historically the move to outsourcing was seen as the traditional method of removing entire cost lines/centres from an organisations operational budget. Very often this meant that the IT staff simply TUPE'd over to a large IT outsourcer to provide the same service, very often on the same physical hardware, whilst application licenses and contracts remained with the end user. For the first year at least the IT understanding of the business remained as did boundaries of responsibility.  So what's the difference with cloud.

( 2 Votes )

With the change in fine level for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act (1998) rising from the inadequate £5000 to business closing £500,000, company boards need to re-assess the business cases for introduction of privacy technologies. It is my view that in the past many commercial organisations made a blunt Cost vs Risk analysis and made the decision that they would accept the fines rather than implement protection. Those industries where the consequences were far higher such as retail and PCIDSS compliance, companies addressed this small portion of data privacy, (often outsourcing it completely, so they had no visibility of data that risked their position) yet left other equally sensitive data unprotected.

( 2 Votes )

Earlier this week IBM announced its range of next generation x86 based servers lovingly named eX5.  The eX5 features a new range of Intel Xeon processors, which I'll cover in more detail after the official announcement by Intel on 20/3/2010.  As we are all well aware, IBM do not have exclusive rights to Intel Xeon processors, so these same processors will be springing up in all of IBM's competitors servers over the next few months.  The question is, what are IBM planning to do different, if anything.

( 2 Votes )

Storage at it's most fundamental level is a bucket, where you store useful stuff that you may or may not want again later. Of course what you put that stuff into can vary in design; it might not be a bucket but a box instead, or a sieve, or a safe, or the dog's basket because he never sleeps in the damned thing anyway. Likewise with disk based storage there are various methods to implement a storage subsystem design, all slightly different, all have their own way of doing things.

( 0 Votes )
A  web posting for a cloud/remote backup provider asked the question “is a 30 day retention policy sufficient?” and suggested that a much longer  retention policy was the way to go to ensure availability of data, whether it be 60 or 90 days or even longer. I challenge this question and believe that for many 30 days retention is excessive.

Why?

( 0 Votes )
When looking at content management system it is essential to be clear on what you are looking to gain . is it really Content Management or  is Workflow Management or even full Business Process Management part of the vision or  already "configured" in the enterprise? Some historically competent content management systems have next to no workflow support and modern ones may require 3rd party add-ons to automate classification or retention/compliance/deletion policies. Be as granular as you can in the matrix/scorecard decision process being used as this should allow you to differentiate functionality and the value to your organisation of having/not having the differentiators between vendors. At one end you could end up with a base Sharepoint installation and out of the box workflow to the other end of the scale with a Isis Papyrus or Filenet p8 with all the whistles and database archive and MDM but critically you will know the value of that decision not just its cost. The next challenge is to accurately document the current position. Simply porting a poorly defined and understood file system will end up in a poorly defined and confusing content management system.

With restrictions under the Data protection Act 1998 limiting the cross bordering of personal data Forrester have released a map to highlight individual country legislation and compliance with EU adequacy tests.
see http://www.forrester.com/cloudprivacyheatmap

Informatica's announcement in the India online Press  (CIOL)  of the industry first Cloud based archiving solution has got me thinking.

As much as I'd like to say that IBM is faultless and standing proud above the competition, I can't say that in good conscience. Sometimes I feel nothing but frustration towards IBM and their desire to make things so unnecessarily complex and difficult. This is especially true when it comes to customer support, though in fairness to IBM this seems to be a common trend with most hardware or software vendors these days.

As a result I sometimes see support as a "wall". Not because a wall is a fundamental element to any building providing both reinforcement and safety for the overall structure, but simply because that's what it feels like my head is banging against when I'm talking with them.

Capacity on Demand (CoD) is a feature of IBM's Power Systems designed to provide an easier way to upgrade your server resources when the need arises.