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Is WiMAX the answer?

Ali-K — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:07:44 -0400

Recently IP Telephony ran an article, “Is WiMAX all things to all markets?” The article quoted Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology Officer for Motorola, who said that WiMAX is technologically and economically positioned to be all broadband things to most markets because of its ability to offer ‘Affordable, always-on personal broadband’. I agree with this assertion. It can offer high speed, portable connectivity as well as an always-connected environment for today’s mobile professional workforce.

What do you think, and what do you believe are the challenges and killer apps?

Relevance of fault tolerance: obvious or outdated?

Ken-D — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:01:54 -0400

Perhaps the most timely proof that fault tolerance is relevant in today’s world is the fact many high-tech companies boldly profess to offer five 9s availability in some flavor (ref IBM’s recent webcast), and IT departments still pursue uptime perfection because their clients expect nothing less. Good-enough technology just is not good enough for some businesses operations.

What's your point of view?

The weakest link in your IT infrastructure

Joanne-D — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:14:00 -0400

An IDC survey of line of business managers (“Services & Software Leading Indicators”) reveals their concern about IT support reliability for business-critical systems. Customers complain because the ATM is down; the terminal at the retail store is offline; they can’t book a flight online; and/or worse, doctors cannot access patient files. Yet, the IT Directors can prove that the server was up 99.999% of the time.

What SLAs will your outsourcer sign up for?

Joanne-D — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:17:49 -0400

Many enterprises that I talk to entrust their IT systems to outsourcing service providers with highly generalized SLAs that don’t necessarily deliver critical application availability. Recently a customer was reviewing their operational support model with me, saying they needed someone to manage their business-critical systems. They need the service provider to ensure end-to-end service levels are met while providing impeccable availability and responsive (and scalable) performance. Have you considered outsourcing your business-critical applications? If so, which ones?

Can you have virtualization and continuous availability?

Joanne-D — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:38:36 -0400

I cannot pick up a technology magazine without reading something about virtualization. It is cutting across the entire IT infrastructure — from servers to storage, even clients. Choices must be made, however, with regard to which applications and processes can (or should) be virtualized. The primary factor being: is it a business-critical application? If so, what amount of risk are you willing to take when it comes to availability of those applications?

Electronic Medical Records

Joe-H — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:54:05 -0400

Federal mandates require all healthcare records be stored electronically within the next ten years. This move from paper to electronic medical records will make practices more efficient and add to the patient's quality. However it also heightens the demand for fault-tolerant computing. A server failure can literally halt a practice from seeing patients. I believe that IT-constrained practices will need a robust, always on, easy-to-use EMR solution to meet these requirements. For example

Going (and Saving) Green with Virtualization in Healthcare

Joe-H — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:55:40 -0400

Stratus' recent white paper on Best Practices for Server Virtualization in Mission-Critical Healthcare IT outlines how and why large hospitals and healthcare delivery organizations are beginning to explore server virtualization.

Are payments industry players ready to fight the war against payments risk and fraud?

Andrew-M — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:58:36 -0400

The recent Stratus and Edgar Dunn white paper on fraud and risk management includes a discussion around the business challenges that are leading companies to consider more proactive measures to combat fraud. The authors theorize that as risk management technology advances and the payments space becomes more sophisticated, so do the well-funded, professionally organized crime organizations that are perpetrating the fraud.

Back to the future: Virtualization and uptime

PJR — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:03:41 -0400

I recently attended the VMWorld Virtualization show in San Francisco. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking, “This is not new.” Virtualization has been around for almost 40 years: IBM developed it on mainframes back in the late '60s. In those days of “the Glass House," uptime was a critical focus for the system operators, and mainframes were built differently from Intel/Windows boxes. Now that people are looking at going back to multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, who is worrying about what happens if that physical machine crashes?

Virtualization — The hottest thing in IT!

PJR — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:05:26 -0400

At VMWorld, I attended the keynote from VMware CEO Diane Greene on the first day. It was standing room only -- and she mentioned that four years ago at the first VMWorld held in San Diego 1,500 people attended. In 2007 in San Fran there were about 11,000. That’s just a little bit of growth! What's the appeal for you in Virtualization? Why is it such a hot button right now?