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.

It seems now as a consumer you are presented with a vast array of solutions in which to store your data. Pat Gelsinger spoke this week of a desire for VMware to become the “Apple of the data centre”, running all your applications and databases in a virtualised environment. This could be either in your own data centre or one of the many hosted now available for use by any size of organisation. And what about all this data, according to IDC data volumes will continue to double every two years, giving you possibly, a  Continue Reading

Most of my friends and colleagues know that I like to cook so I will be doing a series of “recipes” in the next few weeks to address some of the key challenges based on conversations I am having with major organizations. So, to get started, here is part 1 on Creating a Trusted Cloud.

Clouds and virtualization offer powerful new ways to manage and use digital information, but they also create complexities for organizations in meeting the fundamental challenge of getting the right information to the right people over a trusted infrastructure. Why? Because clouds and virtualization change the nature of control and visibility. Infrastructure becomes virtual not physical. People access information from devices that are outside of IT’s direct control. Information moves at incredible speeds across networks and the cloud is making it hard to know exactly where sensitive information resides. Organisations must learn new ways to gain visibility into risks, threats and compliance performance.

Security is always cited as an inhibitor for cloud adoption. According to a recent Ovum survey when organizations were asked: “What are the biggest challenges or impediments to using cloud Continue Reading

In my day to day job I have conversations with all levels staff within an IT oganisation, from Systems Administrators to CxO, and the one common theme that appears in all levels definition of Cloud Computing is x86 Virtualisation and, you guessed it VMware.

VMware have cleverly targeted their marketing and developement efforts around Cloud Computing and have succeeded in being, in the majority of cases, the first vendor to be mentioned during any discussions around this capability.

Due to this efficient marketing it has also helped to position the virtualisation Continue Reading

My first post for 2012 makes me realise we are now one year closer to IDC’s forecast of 35 Zetabytes of data in the world by 2020!  A zetabyte by the way is a 1 with 21 zeros behind it, or…….1 billion terabytes!  Anyway, we are closer to that number.  My friends, that represents far more than just data in files.  It is in email, databases, groupware repositories (e.g. SharePoint, IBM Domino, Documentum, etc.), email, instant message repositories, and did I mention…..email?  The largest of those repositories and most used is probably eMail.  In a normal business day I receive more than 150 emails.  Do I process each and everyone and then delete them or file them accordingly?  No.  Do I have rules to process them and file them accordingly?  Well, some.  Ahem, candidly speaking, very few.  I would say that I am able to probably process 50 to 75 emails on a good day.  This leaves at least 75 emails that will sit in my inbox until I do something with them and then of the others I did look at, 50% of those will sit in my inbox forever and ever unless a policy is put in place to delete them or they are archived.

I am not unusual (well, not at least with regard to my ever-bloating email box.)  I looked over someone’s shoulder the other day and noticed he had 63,000+ Continue Reading

In my last posting, I talked about our propensity for keeping all electronic data; commonly referred to as ESI or Electronically Stored Information.  I also talked about having to change our habits that we cannot go on this way forever and ever as there is too much data being created.  Ok, fine.  What do we do about it and why should we?  We have great technology today that virtualizes, shrinks, and de-dups data.  Lady Backup talks a great game in convincing everyone that they need a great backup strategy and talks about very, very impressive technology to achieve this.  And yes, we do all need a good backup strategy.  However, the story as told, still is, “go ahead, keep everything.”  No.  We need a different story.  The amount of data growth is outpacing the rate at which the cost of hardware and technology is reduced each year.  It is also outpacing the rate at which we can use clever technology to reduce the net data size and foot print within the data centre and the environment.  Again I reference Lady Backup and one of her postings as an example of the latter: Google consumed the same amount of power as 200,000 American homes last year to support their data centres.

Ok, not every company is a Google undoubtedly.  However, virtually all organisations are faced with similar challenges.  Organisations cannot continue to throw hardware at this data problem.  They need to throw Continue Reading

Now of course if I were to answer yes to that question then this might possibly be the worlds shortest blog post……But, the answer isn’t a straightforward no either.

Transformation is about fundamentally changing what you do, both in terms of the delivery model, processes and underlying technology.  Continuous improvement, as the title suggests, is about improving the performance of your delivery model. If your goal is to transform then you will absolutely need to implement continuous improvements, as the new delivery model will always take time to bed down and require fine-tuning.

But what about using continuous improvement as a spring board for transformation?

Actually it is a very effective approach and I often work with customers in the aftermath of some form of crisis they have suffered to do exactly that.  Many organisations cannot afford to throw all their energy and resources into a significant IT transformation effort that looks like it is trying to “boil the ocean”. They need to keep doing the day job but Continue Reading

Lady Backup loves Copenhagen. I am lucky that we had locals explain the rules for eating traditional Danish cuisine – particularly smørrebrød. And of course Copehagen is a great place for shopping – check out this hat I bought while there last winter.

I’m thinking about Copehagen this week because I’ve been spending time at VMWorld Europe. To mark the occasion, EMC worked with three of our European customers to illustrate their benefits with EMC backup solutions for their virtualized environment.

So, what do a major bank in Poland, a city IT department in Finland and a college in the UK have in common? Click here to read more.

For my English readers, you’ll probably be interested in the Derby College story we captured, where Ian McCormick, IT Infrastructure Manager said backup as gone to 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.