We talk about the “cloud” today just like we used to talk about the “Internet” back in 1996. Now the Internet is an integral part of our lives and we hardly even use the word—we talk about the applications and services it enables, such as web applications and services (we get more of our information from the Internet than anything else), instant messaging and Internet telephony.
Parallels is a vendor of hosting and cloud services enablement and cross-platform solutions for service providers. Established 14 years ago, Parallels offers a well-regarded software platform for its large service provider ecosystem and prides itself on its industry knowledge through Parallels Cloud University and consulting.
BYOD makes employees more productive by empowering them to make better, quicker and more-informed decisions, but it also gives birth to concerns around corporate data security, regulatory compliance, employee ownership issues, employee access expectations, etc. In Part I of this two-part article we explored the technology, and in Part II we explore the challenges associated with BYOD technology.
Bring your own device (BYOD) is a user-led as well as user-centric phenomenon that is being embraced by CIOs in droves. They understand the new workplace reality is that the knowledge worker is now mobile; therefore, CIOs are mandating IT to make information available on external mobile devices. According to research firm Gartner, in 2013 mobile phones overtook PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide.
Today’s economic turbulence has enticed organizations of all sizes to consider cheaper alternatives to their in-house IT. An in-house infrastructure that IT must assemble and manage can be a very costly proposition, and at a time when CIOs are constantly being challenged to cut costs, these high operational expenditures stick out like a sore thumb. Managed service providers (MSPs) offering cloud-powered pay-per-use alternatives to in-house IT can be a very attractive substitute to these CIOs.
The cloud presents an entirely new set of value propositions for enterprise computing environments, offering myriad benefits including application scalability, improved economies of scale, reduced costs, resource efficiencies and more. Such benefits enable companies' vision of the truly dynamic data center and further a new level of agility and nimbleness that is unfathomable with the traditional silo computing model.
Solid state drives (SSDs) have much to offer the data center—they're faster, generally more reliable and less expensive to buy and maintain than hard disk drives (HDDs). But are they ready for data center prime time as primary storage? Let's take a look.
Disaster recovery (DR) is an essential part of any company’s IT portfolio, yet most organizations don’t give too much thought to the type of DR solution best fits their needs. Whether to keep DR onsite or push it to the cloud, however, can be an important decision based on numerous factors including cost, downtime and manpower.
The foremost concern of any business in the event of a disaster is how quickly their critical applications can be restored to resume Business Continuity (BC). Data loss events like hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, fires, and tornados – although rare – are a fact of life and require meticulous BC planning. These events destroy buildings, annihilate infrastructure, and devastate entire regions rendering businesses inoperative for extended periods.
