Category Archive for : ‘Trends’

While climate change been a hot topic of discussion among politicians and environmentalists, it could be one of the top things IT experts will be talking about in the upcoming years. At least that seems to be the opinion of one of New York’s chief technology officers.

In a CIO article, Cordell Schachter, who works for the New York’s transportation department, pointed out that weather events like Hurricane Sandy are occurring more frequently and, as a result, putting IT operations at risk.

“At one time, you could go through a whole career

Just as consumers don’t have a high tolerance for glitches that make the lights go out or other utilities to crash, they will fully expect data center uptime to be around the 100 percent rate with the increasing emergence of connected devices at home and at work.

That’s what a speaker told attendees during the recent Dell World conference in Austin, Texas. “For data centers, the idea that you need to be perfect will not be far from the truth,” said practical futurist Michael Rogers. He went on to say that

With the federal government getting more aggressive about tackling its own data centers that aren’t energy efficient, more companies may soon follow its lead in determining if it’s time to shift to more energy-efficient models. In a move to drive down spending and waste, the Office of Management and Budget announced that it is streamlining its federal data center operations under its new Data Center Policy. Under the plan, experts say, about 52 percent of all federal data centers will close by 2018.

As part of the initiative, federal agencies are

Although reliability-centered maintenance is nothing new, progressive data centers are increasingly exploring this protocol when wanting to completely eliminate the possibility of failure. Commercial airlines and military operations have been trying to develop RCM since the 1970s, according to various reports. The commercial nuclear power industry followed shortly afterward.

Even Disney, with its millions of visitors relying on the amusement park for entertainment, turned to RCM protocols in 1997.

The appeal of RCM, when done right, is obvious, according to Lifeline Data Centers’ Rich Banta, who recently spoke at the 2016 Data

It appears that cybersecurity could soon be on the minds of nearly every single business executive out there. According to a recently released survey, 86 percent of executives are now expressing concerns about cyber threats and lack of data security — up from 69 percent in 2014. In the study of 1,409 CEOs polled, energy costs, tax burdens and speed of technological change also were listed among the top 10 threats to their organization’s growth in 2016.

The study by PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed “there’s a general rise in concerns across a number

With cyberattacks looming large as the nation’s No. 1 security threat, President Obama recently unveiled the Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP) — a $19 billion initiative to update cybersecurity measures, boost the number of college students pursuing careers in cybersecurity, streamline federal computer networks, and certify Internet-connected devices as secure.

The plan also includes measures to establish a Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and a Federal Privacy Council, which will oversee how government entities are storing Americans’ personal data. It also will create the position of Chief Information Security Officer.

In announcing

With EMP attacks and other events becoming a topic of political debates, it could be tempting to dismiss them as merely sensational topics as some media outlets have done recently.

Here’s what a recent article on Fortune.com had to say about recent predictions about the potential of an EMP attack: “Senator Ted Cruz wants us to freak out about a new threat: Satellites over the eastern seaboard detonating a large electromagnetic-pulse that knocks out anything with a circuit board and results in the deaths of millions of Americans.” As it turns

With Winter Storm Jonas living up to its Category 4 rating, crippling everything in its path throughout 14 states, IT experts encountered another test in ensuring that their data centers were able to operate and recover against the brutal conditions. Yet, as a recent study revealed, natural disasters still aren’t among the top 3 culprits of data center downtime.

However, there have been some interesting developments in the top 5 culprits of data center outages. Take a look at how they ranked, according to a n​ew report​ by Ponemon Institute and

Meet the new rogue IT — a growing trend that may have already found its way into your organization.

Back in the day, “rogue IT” typically entailed departments building servers and putting them under their desks in an attempt to circumvent the IT department and all of the pesky security controls that came with IT-approved servers.

Often, those servers sat under a desk, inside a closet or back room — unpatched, unprotected, and non-compliant — for long stretches of time before finally being discovered.

Those were the good ol’ days, compared to the

If you’ve done any research on data centers, particularly colocation centers, you’ve likely come across Uptime Institute’s rating system — which have been guiding standards in the industry for more than 20 years.

The Institute awards Tier ratings ranging from I to IV based on a number of complex factors, with the Tier IV rating qualifying the data center as a “fault tolerant site infrastructure,” compared to a Tier I rating for a basic site infrastructure.

When seeking a colocation center, it’s important to understand these ratings as they can give you