Data Center Consolidation: Stop Wasting Resources on In-House Data Centers

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Published: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 08:00

Why data center consolidation is a good ideaBy Mark Tonnesen
Associate

Over the years, the norm within most IT organizations has been to want to own, manage and control things. The objective has been to have some control over the outcome and, ultimately, the success. As a result, many CIOs are still hosting their own data centers. While this approach probably made a lot of sense in the past, times have changed. The reality is, it's no longer a competitive advantage to own and run your own data center.

To stay competitive, your priority needs to be the delivery of the services that ride on top of your data center infrastructure. That's why consolidating your data centers, virtualizing as much as possible, and partnering with a reputable hosting provider should be part of your strategic IT planning process.

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Leveraging LEAN to Increase Business/IT Alignment

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Published: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 08:00

Leveraging LEAN to increase business / IT alignmentBy Paul Hoekstra
Associate

As an IT executive and consultant I've seen firsthand that many IT organizations are struggling to deliver relevant services to the business. There's a misalignment between what the CIO is trying to do and what his or her counterparts in sales, customer service, finance, human resources, etc. are trying to do. And what I've seen is that this absence of business / IT alignment often stems from the IT group not having the people or approach to understand the business from an operational point of view.

As a result, I often see situations where, for example, the HR Director goes directly to a cloud provider and simply buys a solution – reducing the IT department's involvement to just doing a security check and integrating the solution for the login. This diminishes the value of IT as an organization, which in turn leads to inefficiencies and ineffectiveness across the entire business.

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Business Continuity Planning: Ensure Your Business Survives a Disaster

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Published: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 08:00

Business continuity planning ensures proper disaster recoveryBy Rocky Vienna
Principal

According to the U.S. government, up to 40% of businesses fail to reopen following a disaster. Recent natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy have underscored the need for Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) planning. Here's what you need to know.

Before we delve into the components of BC planning, let's clearly define the difference between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity. Disaster Recovery refers to the IT plan that assumes that an event (usually physical in nature, such as an earthquake or fire) has occurred, resulting in significant disruption to business computer systems. A Business Continuity Plan is the set of business procedures that enable business organizations to respond to an event that has disabled the company's business systems in part or in whole. Some events, such as the sudden loss of a key service vendor or supplier, do not require DR but still need to be considered for BC.

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