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Details     Published on Friday, 28 June 2013 15:25 Data centers are complex and expensive to run. Upgrading and managing custom infrastructure is hard and costly. The rise of cloud computing is a direct outcome of the desire for organizations to reduce reliance on custom design at every layer and gain the benefits of speed for competitive advantage. Workload portability is an essential ingredient to platform automation. Having an operating system that runs comfortably in the datacenter delivering mission critical workloads as well as scaling to support cloud demands is the foundation. Ensuring the middleware is built on open technology allows for flexibility in application development that is critical in a world of developer choice and polyglot affinity. All the scaffolding requires continuous build, integration, and source code management for the platform to be attractive to developers. Reducing pain in platform configuration and enhancing self-service for developers lowers barriers

Details     Published on Tuesday, 13 January 2015 07:19 Spending on ICT products and services in the Middle East and Africa will cross the $270 billion mark in 2015 and the IT market expected to grow 9% year on year in 2015, according to IDC. This makes MEA the second-fastest growing market with the SaaS segment set to perform particularly strongly, expanding 29% year on year to total. Converged systems will be another key area of growth as more organizations look to leverage the agility, productivity, flexibility, and cost-saving benefits presented by such solutions. "Converged systems will gain prominence in 2015 and serve as the building blocks to software-defined environments across the MEA region in 2016 and beyond," says Megha Kumar, research manager for software at IDC Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. "In the Middle East, demand will be strong from Smart City initiatives and the implementation of large-scale transportation projects, while in Africa the lack of leg

Details     Published on Wednesday, 07 August 2013 06:56 Middle East organizations should devote more time and effort to gathering and using cybercrime intelligence, as it will give a good return on investment and assist in the establishment and review of IT security strategies and the creation of eCrime investigative measures. The most important and obvious question surrounding this point is “how do you get that type of specialized intelligence?” The answer is companies and organisations should ensure they have a 360-degree view of their data, which includes data in motion, static data and volatile data.  In order to achieve this, organizations should consider the implementation of a network capture and monitoring capability. This functionality, particularly during a network attack, would provide and identify essential information contained within the network data packets. This can assist the forensic analyst in determining whether the data traffic is routine or alternatively assist

Details     Published on Saturday, 01 January 2011 00:00     Written by Craig Sutherland Whether you like it or not, life is a never ending set of SLAs (Service level agreements). The SLA you have in place to collect your kids from school at 3:15pm, the escalation that will occur if you are not waiting outside the school gate at 3:30 pm or perhaps your job which expects you to arrive by 9am. The management of an IT network is no different, except we often forget to put in place SLAs to improve operational efficiency. There are three types of SLAs when managing networks. An operational SLA, an infrastructure SLA and a service SLA. Operational SLAs deal with the execution of service delivery. Infrastructure SLAs deal with the systems in place to manage the device management in a break/fix situation. Finally, the service availability SLAs take care of the applications and services which operate over the infrastructure. In each of these SLAs one or more components are likely to be outsourc

Details     Published on Thursday, 05 January 2012 16:29     Written by Craig Sutherland At some point you will want to start the process of evaluating NMS suppliers and equipment. The proof of concept (PoC) is an important phase of the NMS evolution process. Sometimes it is difficult to be impartial during this process. Organisations often have a long standing relationship with one of the vendors involved in the PoC process, and they may have intimate knowledge of your network and its challenges. To get the most from a PoC, you need to furnish each perspective vendor with as much information about your network and application as possible. In many cases, you may even find that a vendor withdraws from the evaluation process because its solution does not meet the PoC criteria. The following template can be used to send to perspective equipment vendors before the PoC starts. You will need to adjust the PoC criteria section to suit your own need.  However, I have included some relevant sec