Valentin Danner

I came across this really interesting post this morning. For those of you looking to virtualise your Oracle environment, and looking to get actual insight on Before and After, look no further than EMC’s own journey to virtualisation.

In his post, Darryl Smith gives you detailed information what improvements and efficiencies to expect from going through that journey.

Read the full blog post now: Running Oracle on Virtual Infrastructure Really Pays Off: Save Big on Capital, Operating and License Costs.

If you’re looking to virtualise Oracle and are based in the UK & Ireland, get in touch and take the next step to virtualisation.

This year, we’re bringing back EMC Forum to the UK and Ireland. This essential one-day event shows you how cloud and Big Data are transforming our industry — and how you can transform your business to stay competitive.

At EMC Forum you can learn, connect and network. You will hear local and international insights from high calibre keynote speakers and presenters, and case studies featuring the latest integrated solutions from EMC and our partners. A hand-picked selection of partners, such as Cisco, Computacenter and MTI, will be exhibiting their products, and our VLab will offer technical training from EMC engineers.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the latest solutions, products and services direct from EMC specialists and partners, network with the EMC Community and
discover our vision for the future. Continue Reading

Whoop Whoop!!!

We’re only a couple of days away of what promises to be an exciting 24 hours of data science bonanza. Official Website

EMC Greenplum, EMI Music and Data Science London have been teaming up to put together an online competition that will the the largest consumer dataset collected for the music industry be the centre stage for what we’re calling a Hackathon.

Data Scientists from the UK and across the globe will be entering a 24 hours challenge to help predict how music fans might like songs released by artists. (see press release)

Over 3 years, EMI have been collecting information from customers around the globe through different sets of surveys. Reaching nearly 1 million entries, this is the largest dataset of its kind in the music industry.

David Boyle, SVP of insight at EMI, has been heavily involved in making this contest a reality, working closely with EMC Greenplum in the UK and the USA. More importantly are the data scientists who will compete to win the £6500 cash Continue Reading

A very short post today about the new blog design. We’ve revamped Thoughtfeast.co.uk and very much hope you like the new look.

You can now post comments on blog posts by logging in with your social accounts, no need to register anymore.

Also, feel free to click on the bloggers pages and connect directly with them, either via their social media accounts, or by clicking on “Ask me a question”.

Would love to hear your feedback, so please do not hesitate to get in touch with me or comment on this post.

Big data – is it much ado about nothing or is it, as it’s hyped to be, the saviour to many an organisation? People are still struggling to come to terms with big data and exactly what it is. Either way, it has certainly established itself as the key technological trend for 2012.

For a variety of reasons, organisations are now gathering and storing more data than ever before. In its raw form, however, data is useless. It is information which is of benefit to a company – thus begging the question, how do you get information from data? Simple: data analysis.

Big data is the process of taking large, complex data sets, which may come from a range of sources and in a variety of formats, and analysing it to extract relevant, tangible information from it. Whether it is garnering greater insight into the behavioural patterns Continue Reading

Ealier this month, EMC organised a get together event between EMC executives and customers and partners at the swanky Soho Hotel in London.

As I listened to the presentation from Mark Thurmond, SVP Worldwide Sales at RSA, on APT (Advanced Persistent Threats), I could not help but notice jaws dropping one after the other in the audience. Mark has a very punchy delivery style, which could have explained this reaction… but on the serious note, I think his revelations about the engineering of the attack on RSA and how today’s organisation are ill-prepared, created a sense Continue Reading

Are you one of the 65 per cent of organisations that regularly experience lost data in a virtual environment?

According to a new survey by Kroll Ontrack, this is not the end of it, because out of the 53 per cent of the 369 IT professionals questioned, more than half have witnessed five incidents over the last year.

Meanwhile, 12 per cent of individuals admitted that in the past 12 months, more than five data losses have occurred.

If this has happened to you, it should give you cause for concern, as data loss is not something you want to be regularly entertaining.

It could be time for a data disaster recovery overhaul!

The 65 per cent figure uncovered by the organisation is 140 per cent higher than the result of last year's study, so it would appear that something is amiss.

Let's have a think about where your data management could be going wrong – perhaps it is simply human error, or a virtual disk corruption? Maybe corrupt files are being stored within your virtualised environments?

"Virtualisation contracts often claim no liability for data corruption, deletion, destruction or loss. As a result, Continue Reading

Spending on the public cloud will hit $35 billion (£22 billion) this year.

This is according to the IHS iSuppli Mobile and Wireless Communication Research Area, which stated that this figure is a 52 per cent increase from 2010.

Public clouds enable storage and software to be shared across a communal, internet platform and can be enjoyed by both consumers and businesses. Individuals only pay for the amount they use, rather than having to fork out for space which lies dormant.

"Usage on a cloud network is scalable, rapidly elastic, dynamically provisionable and minimally managed, allowing increasing demand to be met without users having to make significant upfront investments in any new hardware and capacity," principal analyst and senior director for communications and consumer electronics at IHS Jagdish Rebello said.

Such comments come as ABI Research claimed that by 2016, more than 40 per cent of users of enterprise communications will have moved to a virtual infrastructure.

The Guardian reports in an article that the Isle of Man Government has set up a cloud based infrastructure for its public services, moving more than 1,000 applications including email, financial accounting, customer relationship management and health services to the service.

This has helped them save 15% on costs and also better utilise their storage resources.

Many public organisations are looking to reduce costs due to increased budget cut pressures… So the Cloud could be a solution!

The advantages of cloud computing far outweigh any potential risks, one expert has claimed.

Joe Drumgoole, founder of FeedHenry, said that most businesses will only experience benefits – rather than disadvantages – from using the technology.

"Really, most of the stuff that people scaremonger about – security, accessibility and who might be looking at your stuff on the cloud – is kind of redundant in many cases," he explained.

According to Mr Drumgoole, while large-scale enterprises dealing in multi-billion dollar contracts may need to take further precautions, the majority of firms do not need to worry.

Around 95 per cent of companies will be able to reduce costs, boost productivity, access new user groups and get products to market quicker, he stated, drastically improving their current business procedures.

His comments followed a recent study by KPMG, which revealed that of the 29 per cent of organisations in the UK that have invested in cloud