Now Micro Blog
Thursday, September 27, 2012 |
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Bring-Your-Own-Device is all the rage these days. With Aruba ClearPass for BYOD, employees onboard their own mobile devices. Guests can self-register to get access and you don't need software on the device or any upgrades on your network.
By centralizing access policies across the entire network, ClearPass automates differentiated user and device access, policy management and the provisioning of devices for secure network access and posture assessment. This ensures that each user has the right access privileges based on who they are and what device they’re using.
Watch the video about ClearPass.
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Thursday, August 23, 2012 |
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In a survey conducted by Techaisle, an SMB market research organization, 54 percent of SMBs claimed that their IT difficulties actually increased over the past 3 years. Another 39 percent said these IT struggles outweighed their business challenges.
Dealing with IT issues rather than reaping the benefits of these solutions is causing SMBs to lose precious time and resources.
With the rise of Big Data, increasing amounts of information is available from sources. This gives SMBs, a whole new level of insight about their customers that they’ve never seen before. According to IDC’s Digital Universe Study, the digital universe doubles every year.
As data needs continue to rise, there is a pressing need to simplify IT, but SMBs don’t have the resources to spare for dealing with it. According to Techaisle, 72 percent of SMBs say that IT vendors should simplify technology.
To help SMBs focus on generating new revenue streams and increasing profits rather than IT headaches, many are turning to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to deal with technical obstacles so that employees can shift their focus to their primary task of growing the business. MSPs, like Now Micro, can eliminate the need to hire in-house support staff, allowing SMBs to increase their technical capabilities while maintaining cohesiveness.
By using cloud-based solutions, MSPs can help SMBs store and analyze more data than ever before, without risking a drop-off in performance. By harnessing the power of Big Data, SMBs gain valuable insight which can help them shape the direction of their business.
To find out more about how a MSP like Now Micro can help your organization, contact us at sales@nowmicro.com
Source: Andy Monshaw, IBM
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Tuesday, August 07, 2012 |
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Are you looking to leverage the benefits of desktop virtualization, but don't want to spend an arm and a leg?
The all-in-one design of Citrix's VDI-in-a-Box simplifies virtual desktops so you get a production-quality solution with built-in high availability at less than half the cost. VDI-in-a-Box eliminates over 60% of traditional VDI infrastructure - including management servers and shared storage (SANs) - by creating a grid of off-the-shelf servers using local storage.
Now Micro recently installed VDI-in-a-Box for the University of Minnesota Foundation. They were looking to get into VDI and wanted to be able to access VDI from multiple devices while keeping costs low. VDI-in-a-Box from Citrix was the perfect solution.
Eliminate management overhead
A traditional enterprise-class VDI deployment includes a pair each of load balancers and connection brokers to manage the desktop sessions and ensure high availability, compute servers to provision and manage the desktops, and management servers to control the environment. VDI-in-a-Box consolidates this functionality into its virtual appliance; connection brokering, load balancing, high availability, desktop provisioning and management are all built-in.
High availability without shared storage
Traditional VDI solutions require shared storage to deliver high availability. This is expensive. VDI-in-a-Box eliminates this requirement and provides high availability and scaling using inexpensive direct-attached storage (DAS). Simply run VDI-in-a-Box on two or more servers and the grid automatically load balances and ensures redundancy.
Start small and deploy in phases
VDI-in-a-Box runs on inexpensive commodity servers. You can start with one or two and scale the deployment as needs grow. Since the upfront investment is minimal, VDI-in-a-Box can be used to prove virtual desktops and scale incrementally.
Source: Citrix
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Tuesday, July 24, 2012 |
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Many companies are looking to the cloud to cut costs and drive IT efficiency. Over the next several years, enterprises are expected to spend $112 billion on software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). There are a few essential steps that companies can take to create a cloud model that maximizes ROI . Here are ten ways to get the most out of the cloud according to Kerrie Holley (global CTO for application and innovation at IBM) and Pam Isom (a former leader of cloud integration with IBM).
- Promote Cloud as Fifth Utility – like power, water and gas, it can now establish an ecosystem for IT as a service
- Create a Cloud Vision – all top decision makers must agree on goals for differentiation, market-share growth, increased revenue and improved efficiencies
- Identify Cloud Use Cases – Map opportunities within business-process improvement, business intelligence, innovation and other essentials
- Do the Math – To get at true value, project overall revenues, expenses, growth potential and market share changes with and without deploying cloud solutions
- Ensure Alignment – Your choices for cloud solutions must take into account interoperability and integration with your existing environment
- Get Users on Board – Empower employees to participate in planning, so they don’t feel like cloud has been forced upon them
- Give Clear Directions – Without clear marching orders for each group involved, planning sessions are meaningless
- Launch Trial Run – Try out apps before deploying enterprise-wide to see if they fit overall strategies before spending big bucks
- Pursue Continuous Improvement – Solid metrics can keep raising standards for project release cycles, self-servicing users and cost cutting
- Define Governance – Establishing policies to ensure consistency in procurement, data usage, integration and other procedures
Source: CIO Insight
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Thursday, July 19, 2012 |
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There's no escaping that fact that technology is a necessity in today's business and critical to your business success. But for many small and medium businesses, IT staff, bandwidth, and expertise can be stretched thin just managing the day-to-day operations and fielding emergencies.
As a result, the maintenance of technologies that protect your business – such as data backups, server monitoring, and security– is often forgotten about, leaving your business vulnerable to outages, productivity and revenue losses, and threats. By partnering with a managed service provider, like Now Micro, you get a reliable, cost-effective, and headache-free option that ensures the technologies you depend on to protect your business are doing just that.
What Does Managed Services Include?
The term “managed services” can seem broad and undefined. A managed service provider, like Now Micro, can help your business with the following:
Take the Worry Off of Your Plate
There are a many benefits to removing these responsibilities from your IT environment and placing them a managed service provider’s capable hands. In addition to ease of use, ease of management, and less worry:
- Now Micro has 19 years of dedicated IT experience in installing, maintaining, and managing our customers’ IT environments
- We have some of the best technology specialists in the area, including Microsoft Certified Professionals
- Now Micro partners with all of the major manufacturers, including HP, Lenovo, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, IBM and VMware
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Tuesday, July 03, 2012 |
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The rapid explosion of mobile devices is changing the traditional IT environment in enterprises, according to a survey by Gartner. Nearly all (90 percent) of enterprises surveyed have already deployed mobile devices, with smartphones being the most widely deployed. Eighty-six percent of respondents surveyed said that they plan to deploy tablets this year.
Gartner had 938 qualified respondents worldwide participate in this study. These respondents came from organizations with an in-house data center and 500 or more total employees. The nine countries covered were the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Russia, India, China and Japan. The survey centered on the deployment status and plans for mobile device adoption. Gartner's survey found that many enterprises are allowing personal mobile devices to connect to the enterprise network. Here are 10 highlights from the study:
- 90% of respondents have already deployed mobile device
- 86% of respondents say they will deploy tablets this year
- 32% of respondents say that they provide technical support to smartphones brought into the office by employees
- 37% of respondents said that they also service tablets brought in by employees
- 44% of respondents say that they will provide technical support on personal laptops that employees bring in to the office
- 66% of respondents in the US, UK, Germany and Australia will convert to HVD in the next year
Source: CIO Insight
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Wednesday, June 27, 2012 |
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Cloud is gaining in popularity and when planning a digital signage deployment, users are faced with the decision of whether or not to host the network on-premise or use Software as a Service (SaaS) based digital signage platforms. Here are some of the fundamentals of both cloud computing and on-premise hosting models that will be helpful in determining which is better suited for your business.
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing describes a wide variety of online services that provide remote, scalable computing resources that are accessible from the Internet instead of from a local computer or network. Cloud can provide reduced capital cost, software installation and maintenance requirements.
Users are not limited to one type of cloud infrastructure. SaaS is only one option in the cloud; other options include Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). With SaaS, software applications are owned and managed by a third party service provider and accessed by customers over the Internet. This allows the user to run their network with minimal software installation or hardware purchases.
In the case of IaaS, the server infrastructure (hardware, storage, servers, etc.) is fully outsourced to an external vendor. With PaaS, users handle only their data and software applications but pay a service provider to manage the server hardware, operating systems, storage, etc. over the Internet.
There are also three types of cloud-based deployment models: public, private and community. A public cloud involves a third party service provider making common resources available to many clients. A private cloud provides hosted services to a single organization. A community cloud shares its infrastructure with a group of organizations with similar system requirements.
When considering the cloud, it is important to take into account the workload trends within your organization. What do you require of your digital signage system? If your workloads come in batches, then you might waste resources with an on-premise system. The cloud also deals well with unpredictable bursts in system demand, and responding quickly to market changes.
On-Premise
There is still a strong argument for an on-premise solution for digital signage. The cloud promises lower upfront costs and reduced infrastructure requirements, but it comes at a price in terms of security, control, customization and licensing costs.
On-premise digital signage networks offer users complete control of their system needs and requirements. They are able to tailor the network and integrate it with their other on-premise systems to ensure it provides the right message. If your objective is to deliver graphically rich, highly impactful messaging, then an in-house system will provide you with more advanced tools.
Cloud is not a good fit for every business environment. Do your research before and understand the various advantage and disadvantages of both on-premise and cloud-based solutions.
Source: Omnivex
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Monday, June 11, 2012 |
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Since the popularity of connected devices took off in the last ten years, many IT shops have struggled to keep with data growth. With increasing demands on data storage from content like rich digital media and social media, small and midsize businesses are challenged to incorporate sophisticated methods to backup business-critical data. For many small businesses, it doesn’t make sense to buy all of the storage hardware, software and services that were required before cloud backup.
According to a Gartner poll, respondents reported that dealing with growing data/storage requirements was their largest data center challenge. A well-thought-out backup and data protection strategy is vital in today’s business environment, since it can optimize storage costs, lead to better data organization and minimize risks related to IT failure and data loss.
Improved Accessibility and Affordability
A few technological advances have made cloud storage more accessible for SMBs, like data deduplication. The cost of online data storage has decreased as well as Internet bandwidth costs.
Security for Mobile Devices
With an increasingly mobile workforce, securing data on smartphones, laptops and tablets should be a top priority. Mobile devices often carry critical data but are not adequately protected. Cloud storage can ensure that a company’s on-site data is safe, as well as that of its employees.
The availability of turnkey storage solutions at price points that many SMBs can afford means that SMBs can deploy a very cost-effective, multi-tiered backup and data protection strategy by using cloud backup. According to a study by Spiceworks’ Voice of IT, nearly 60% of SMBs interviewed think cloud computing will be important to their organization’s storage infrastructure plans. Among those storage solutions, cloud backup provides a foray into the cloud.
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Wednesday, March 07, 2012 |
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Cloud computing is the antidote to inflexible, overly complex IT infrastructures. It’s not an end state you can jump to instantaneously, but a transition achieved in stages. During each phase, IT becomes more agile, responsive and efficient; ROI increases while IT costs go down. The journey results in a cloud that is unique to your company – a private, public or hybrid cloud environment perfectly aligned with your individual business needs and goals.
Agile and responsive IT is critical for business success in our global, highly networked economy. But traditional IT platforms aren’t equal to the challenge. In fact, with their inherent rigidity and multiple layers of complexity, they could be described as the opposite of agile.
Phase 1: IT Production
In the first phase, IT virtualizes production workloads as well as development, testing and staging environments, consolidating servers to increase use and reduce costs. Storage, computing and network resources are pooled into streamlined and flexible “virtual compute clusters” for increased efficiency.
The primary focus of this phase is enhancing infrastructure efficiency. The initiative to virtualize IT Production workloads is driven by a desire to reduce the cost of hardware, power, cooling and physical space.
Phase 2: Business Protection
In this phase, the cloud computing initiative expands beyond IT assets to the company’s business-critical applications with the support of application owners. The emphasis in this phase is improving application availability. At this juncture, cloud computing sponsorship shifts to the owners of business applications. IT begins virtualizing the company’s business-critical, multi-tier applications such as supply chain, finance, human resources and other commercial packaged applications.
At the same time, the private cloud infrastructure is enriched and augmented with solutions for performance optimization, high availability and disaster recovery. An automation plan is implemented to manage application delivery based upon defined business rules, policies and agreed service-level requirements.
Phase 3: IT as a Service
During this final phase, the organization approaches the desired end-state of an enterprise hybrid cloud, in which IT provides the highest business value at the lowest possible cost: IT as a Service (ITaaS). With a highly automated, low-maintenance cloud infrastructure in place, IT can focus on delivering innovations that drive revenue growth, enhance the customer experience, and minimize business and compliance risk.
With advanced management tools in place from the desktop to the data center, IT achieves unprecedented gains in performance, availability, scalability and responsiveness – all while maintaining full control, airtight security and compliance.
With its attention, assets and resources fully focused on business optimization, IT collaborates closely within lines of business, driving continuous improvements in outbound IT service levels, including high-governance workloads.
Source: VMware
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Wednesday, February 22, 2012 |
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Will 2012 be the year of PaaS (Platform as a Service)? While many people are still unfamiliar with the concept of PaaS, Garnter has been tracking PaaS since 2007. In its latest report, the research firm said that PaaS revenue would rise about 38 percent from $512.4 million in 2010 to $707.4 million in 2011.
PaaS represents the on-ramp to the cloud in that it provides the link between application platforms and underlying cloud infrastructures, according to Forrester Research. PaaS combines an application platform with managed cloud infrastructure services.
With more IT suppliers moving their offerings to the cloud and more enterprises adopting cloud computing, the cloud model continues to grow and offer a viable alternative to on-premise solutions. PaaS is a foundation for a major transformation of how people build software, according to an analyst with Forrester.
The PaaS space is in the process of evolution. It represents a new development paradigm and can enable users to move existing applications to new platforms. Despite its immaturity, the PaaS space deserves continued monitoring by enterprise IT managers and development teams. According to a report by Garnter in January 2011, “By 2015, most enterprises will have part of their run-the-business software functionality executing in the cloud, using PaaS services or technologies directly or indirectly.”
Source: Darryl Taft, eWeek.com
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