Data Management/Storage

The CIO wish list

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 06:59:56 -0400

If you could start all over again and build a top-of-the-line data center, what would it look like? That question was posed by Computerworld to IT executives and industry experts and, as you might guess, they let their imaginations run wild.

Joshua Aaron, president of Business Technology Partners LLP, said he would want "nearly infinite bandwidth and resiliency'' as well as "the latest and greatest in blade server technology and server virtualization..."

Bill Maguire, CIO of Virgin America Inc., said his wish list would include redundant communications, two separate power sources and a secure building. Colbert Seto, IT director of Hawaii Pacific Health, said he would like a "lights-out data center, where we have close to 100 percent virtualization."

To find out other CIO data center dreams:
- check out this ComputerWorld article

Customer data should drive IT decisions

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Michelle McKenna, the CIO at Universal Orlando Resorts, has some advice for her members of her profession--think like your customers and use your data to focus on your company's markets.

"In today's contracting economy, it's more critical than ever for CIOs to study market trends and find ways to maximize business opportunities,'' McKenna said. Although her IT unit always has had valuable market-defining customer data, McKenna said she didn't always know how best to leverage it.

"Fortunately, I've been able to work closely with executive peers to implement business intelligence that triggers a more analytical, customer-centric approach to marketing and sales,'' McKenna said.

And her knowledge of her company's market, she said, has helped her "drill down into our data to understand what is really happening in our business.''

To read more on the CIO's role as marketer:
- see this CIO.com article

For more tech stories from the FierceCIO network:
> Encryptor 2.0 spotted at 1024-bits. Article
> IBM turns to water to cool processors. Article
> Intel shows off atom processors. Article

Olympics IT in final stages

Thu, 15 May 2008 06:59:59 -0400

The Beijing Olympics are a massive undertaking, and IT services to support the event are a big part of the effort. Atos Origin is the worldwide IT partner for the Olympic Games, overseeing the infrastructure that features 10,000 PCs, 1,000 servers and 5,000 results systems terminals. The system includes a suite of applications for managing the games and publishing the results of events, and is protected by state-of-the-art security.

The IT experts and their teams now are moving from the development of the technology to the testing and operational phases with the games less than 100 days away.

To read more about tech and the China games:
- see this silicon.com article

Data centers becoming mega-polluters

Mon, 05 May 2008 06:59:59 -0400

It may be hard to believe, but the world's data centers are becoming major contributors to global warming and are projected to surpass the airline industry as a major greenhouse gas polluter by 2020. That's the word from a new study by McKinsey & Co., which estimates that the carbon dioxide emissions from electricity consumed by fast-expanding data centers are growing rapidly, are largely uncontrolled and need to be cut. The study focuses on the cost and energy-saving opportunities that it says are being ignored in both corporate and government data centers.

To read more:
- Check out The New York Times article

Lawyers miss the boat on eDiscovery

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:59:59 -0400

With all this talk about eDiscovery and so many companies pushing tools to protect or gain access to key digital information, you would think that lawyers would get it. Experts say that lawyers relying on the disclosure of computer evidence may be missing out on valuable clues if they are accepting CD-Rs containing the requested material. What's wrong with that? Plenty, according to some experts. Alan Philips, chief executive at 7safe, said that taking snapshots and burning them to CDs may provide lots of documents, but no assurance of getting everything that is needed. It is better, he said, to take complete hard drive scans that show what documents have been deleted and where they have been moved.

For more on this pressing digital issue:
- Check out this Vnunet article

Survey: Find a better way to manage risk

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:59:59 -0400

A new survey from Quocirca finds that executives say software development is critical to their businesses, but most are not doing enough to build security into their applications. The survey of 250 organizations in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. found that people are relying on software applications, including some where they modify the code. There's a better way to do this: build security into applications at the design stage and not when the end product has been installed.

For more on this critical issue:
- See this IT-Observer article

Another day, another breach

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:59:59 -0400

A laptop was stolen last month that was owned by a consultant from SunGard, a company that handles the records system used by Buffalo State College. The college was notified on April 11, nearly a month after the machine had been stolen on March 13. There was personal information on thousands of current and former students stored on the laptop. "We've been struggling since we've received the information to make sense of it all as well," said Voldemar Innus, vice president and CIO at the college.

For more on the data theft:
- See this Buffalo News article

Wipe your hard drive

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:59:58 -0400

There are many steps to take to protect your data. One of them is to make sure your hard drive is cleaned before reusing. And remember it is important to use the technology that can sanitize hard-drive data.

For more on products to wipe your hard drive:
- See this CIO Magazine article

Honey, I shrank the data center

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:59:58 -0400

Smaller is almost always better, the sages among us sometimes say. This was the case when a facility near St. Louis run by Schneider Electric and its American Power Conversion subsidiary created a new data center, using a little common knowledge to make it better, faster and smaller. This data center is now a mostly empty building. And it was used as a test bed to show IT managers how to reconfigure their own data centers. Chances are that most IT executives are working with an over-sized and inefficient facility.

For more on developing smaller data centers:
- See this Baseline.com article

More tech stories from the FierceCIO network:
> Windows Mobile 6.1 arriving next week? Article
> AMD to lay off 5 percent of workforce? Article
> Verizon reveals open development plans. Article

Data center growth constrained

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:59:58 -0400

A new survey of CIOs reveals that one-third of enterprise data centers won't be big enough to handle the increasing amount of data that is being generated, according to Hewlett Packard. HP disclosed the results of the private survey recently, which spells out a series of challenges in the next two to five years. The survey reported that many of these CIOs believed they would not be able to find the electricity, cooling capacity, space or budgets that they will need for centers that are expanding at a remarkable rate. "The average data center can't do that," said HP's Deb Nelson, senior VP of alliances, Technology Solutions Group. Of course, the survey results should be taken with a grain of salt, considering that HP is the largest vendor of servers and data center hardware.

For more on data centers and space:
- See this InformationWeek article