Sat, 30 January 2010
Time to Give Server Virtualization's Twin, Storage Virtualization, a Top Place at IT Efficiency Table

The latest BriefingsDirect podcast discussion hones in on storage virtualization. You've heard a lot about server virtualization over the past few years, and many enterprises have adopted virtual servers to improve their ability to manage runtime workloads and high utilization rates to cut total cost.

But, as a sibling to server virtualization, storage virtualization has some strong benefits of its own, not the least of which is the ability to better support server virtualization and make it more successful.

We'll look at how storage virtualization works, where it fits in, and why it makes a lot of sense. The cost savings metrics alone caught me by surprise, making me question why we haven't been talking about storage and server virtualization efforts in the same breath over these past several years.

Here to help understand how to better take advantage of storage virtualization, we're joined by Mike Koponen, HP's StorageWorks Worldwide Solutions marketing manager. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Read a full transcript or download a copy. Learn more. Sponsor: Hewlett-Packard.

Direct download: BriefingsDirect-Storage_Virtualization_Comes_of_Age.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:56pm EDT
Fri, 29 January 2010
Security Skills Offer Top Draw Across Still Challenging U.S. IT Jobs Outlook

The latest BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition, Volume 48, centers on the IT job landscape for 2010. We interview David Foote, CEO and chief research officer, as well as co-founder, at Foote Partners LLC of Vero Beach, Fla.

David closely tracks the hiring and human resources trends across the IT landscape. He'll share his findings of where the recession has taken IT hiring and where the recovery will shape up. We'll also look at what skills are going to be in demand and which ones are not. David will help those in IT, or those seeking to enter IT, identify where the new job opportunities lie.

This periodic discussion and dissection of IT infrastructure related news and events, with a panel of industry analysts and guests, comes to you with the help of our charter sponsor, Active Endpoints, maker of the ActiveVOS business process management system, and through the support of TIBCO Software. I'm your host and moderator Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Read a full transcript or download a copy. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Learn more. Charter Sponsor: Active Endpoints. Also sponsored by TIBCO Software.

Special offer: Download a free, supported 30-day trial of Active Endpoint's ActiveVOS at www.activevos.com/insight.

Gain additional data and analysis from Foote Partners on the IT jobs market.

Direct download: BriefingsDirect-IT_Jobs_Market_for_2010.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 11:28am EDT
Mon, 18 January 2010
Technical and Economic Incentives Mount for Seeking Alternatives to Costly Mainframe Applications
A growing number of technical and economic incentives are mounting that make a strong case for modernizing and transforming enterprise mainframe applications -- and the aging infrastructure that support them. IT budget planners are using the strident economic environment to force a harder look at alternatives to inflexible and hard-to-manage legacy systems, especially as enterprises seek to cut their total and long-term IT operations spending. The rationale around reducing total costs is also forcing a recognition of the intrinsic difference between core applications and so-called context -- context being applications that are there for commodity productivity reasons, not for core innovation, customization or differentiation. With a commodity productivity application, the most effective delivery is on the lowest-cost platform or from a provider. The problem is that 20 or 30 years ago, people put everything on mainframes. They wrote it all in code. The challenge now is how to free up the applications that are not offering any differentiation -- and do not need to be on a mainframe -- and which could be running on a much more lower cost infrastructure, or come from a completely different means of delivery, such as software as a service (SaaS). There are demonstrably much less expensive ways of delivering such plain vanilla applications and services, and significant financial rewards for separating the core from the context in legacy enterprise implementations. This discussion is the third and final in a sponsored series that examines "Application Transformation: Getting to the Bottom Line." The series coincides with a trio of Hewlett-Packard (HP) virtual conferences on the same subject.
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Helping to examine how alternatives to mainframe computing can work, we're joined by John Pickett, worldwide mainframe modernization program manager at HP; Les Wilson, America's mainframe modernization director at HP, and Paul Evans, worldwide marketing lead on applications transformation at HP. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Read a full transcript of the discussion or download a copy. Sponsor: HP.
Direct download: BriefingsDirect-Mainframe_Alternatives_v2.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 2:58pm EDT
Tue, 5 January 2010
Game-Changing Architectural Advances Take Data Analytics to New Performance Heights
New architectures for data and logic processing are ushering in a game-changing era of advanced analytics. These new approaches support massive data sets to produce powerful insights and analysis -- yet with unprecedented price-performance. As we enter 2010, enterprises are including more forms of diverse data into their business intelligence (BI) activities. They're also diversifying the types of analysis that they expect from these investments. At the same time, more kinds and sizes of companies and government agencies are seeking to deliver ever more data-driven analysis for their employees, partners, users, and citizens. It boils down to giving more communities of participants what they need to excel at whatever they're doing. By putting analytics into the hands of more decision makers, huge productivity wins across entire economies become far more likely. But such improvements won’t happen if the data can't effectively reach the application's logic, if the systems can't handle the massive processing scale involved, or the total costs and complexity are too high. In this sponsored podcast discussion we examine how convergence of data and logic, of parallelism and MapReduce -- and of a hunger for precise analysis with a flood of raw new data -- are all setting the stage for powerful advanced analytics outcomes. To help learn how to attain advanced analytics and to uncover the benefits from these new architectural activities for ubiquitous BI, we're joined by Jim Kobielus, senior analyst at Forrester Research, and Sharmila Mulligan, executive vice president of marketing at Aster Data Systems. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Read a full transcript of the podcast, or download a copy. Sponsor: Aster Data Systems.
Direct download: BriefingsDirect-Architectural_Advances_Take_Data_Analytics_to_New_Heights.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:46pm EDT