SBT Partners

How to Modernize Your Backup Infrastructure

admin — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:28:39 +0000

Ever get the feeling that your backup system is behind the times? Do you read trade magazines and wonder if you’re the only one still using an antiquated backup system? The first thing you should know is that you’re not the only one. But your backup system could probably use some modernization.

Server Technology Hits A Crossroads

admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:04:37 +0000

One-quarter of the 579 business technology professionals who responded to our 2010 State of Server Technology Survey told us their organizations plan to invest in more physical servers in 2010/11. But far more — 44% — said they intend to decrease their server counts, indicating that system consolidation and virtualization are becoming increasingly critical to efficient data center operations.

Fake Anti-Virus Launches Legit AV Uninstalls

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:48:36 +0000

A new variation on the Fake Anti-Virus scam actually launches legitimate uninstallers of anti-virus programs from Symantec, Microsoft, AVG and others.

The phony anti-virus scam keeps getting new wrinkles, the latest being a pop-up Anti-Virus alert that warns users that their security program is uncertified and must be replaced. When the alert is clicked, it launches the user’s legitimate anti-virus uninstall program.

CloudAudit Gets Real

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:53:01 +0000

For enterprises, one of the biggest challenges with cloud computing include transparency into the operational, policy and regulatory, and security controls of cloud providers. For cloud providers, one of their pressing challenges is answering all of the audit and information gathering requests from customers and prospects. CloudAudit aims to change that.

The Rise — and Risk — of the Composite Clouds

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:47:36 +0000

Many cloud providers are learning to eat their own dog food, and they’re leveraging other clouds to augment missing pieces of their offerings. As a result, you may find that a cloud provider offering software as a service (SaaS) is actually leveraging another cloud for storage, another cloud for compute, and perhaps other components as well.

As cloud computing evolves — and providers try to get the market quickly — we could find that offerings appearing to be from a single provider are actually a composite of various cloud providers brought together to form a solution. I’ve found myself in briefing after briefing where this is the case. But should you care?

The Danger of Cloud Silos

admin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:14:23 +0000

Many consider cloud computing a revolution in how we do computing. However, we could find we’re falling back into very familiar and unproductive patterns.

Although clouds can become more effective and efficient ways of using applications, computing, and storage, many clouds are becoming just another set of silos that the enterprises must deal with. But it does not have to be that way — if you learn to recognize the pattern.

The (Better) Future of Tech Support

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:59:50 +0000

Right now, getting help when something unusual goes wrong is a frustrating experience for customers. They’ve come to stereotype the experience as waiting endlessly on hold, deciphering strangely cheerful foreign accents, humoring technicians who are incapable of understanding — let alone answering — their questions, and taking time off to wait for a tech who doesn’t show.

Thin Client Computing: Central Management, Anywhere Access

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:52:51 +0000

Few IT duties are as universal as the care and feeding of the corporate desktop. While other aspects of IT get easier thanks to new technologies like server virtualization, there’s still no magic pill to alleviate the day-to-day drudgery of maintaining and securing hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of desktop systems.

The drawbacks of desktops go beyond the burdens of management and maintenance. They involve employee mobility, client hardware refreshes, data security, and, under certain conditions, even power consumption and cooling.

Bowing to IT demands, Cloud Providers Move to Reserved Instances

admin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:53:59 +0000

With the rising interest in private cloud computing, many public cloud providers are moving to service offerings that promise reserved portions of clouds they are calling reserved instances or sometime virtual private clouds. This is a step in the right direction, considering that many enterprises and government agencies are pushing back on public clouds. This is more around control issues than any legitimate technical arguments.

Cloud security 101: Start cramming now

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:44:00 +0000

There will be internal (private) and external (public) clouds that you will have to deal with, but they are so much more complicated than the traditional terms — LAN, WAN, intranet, and extranet — can describe. For one, the term cloud denotes a fuzziness about where the application bits and data are hosted. This is not only because of the business requirement for fault-tolerance and performance (which means the application servers and data are usually hosted at multiple locations), but also because virtualization is becoming almost an essential component of cloud computing.