In a best-of-breed virtual desktop infrastructure, where do you turn for help? At the enterprise level, there’s rarely one vendor involved, which means a variety of skills – and team members – may e involved in resolving a particular problem. For your IT managers, this can be frustrating. End users need support, and the IT manager’s reputation is on the line. Time spent hunting for the right people trims what’s available for remediation within standing SLAs.

To make the different virtualization layers work together, a variety of solutions may be necessary. The result is a streamlined infrastructure and improved business user experience, but it can create complications when something goes awry. This is the case when any environment relies on integrated systems for disparate technology vendors, and there are measures you can implement to protect your company.

Read the rest of this entry »

How can virtualizing your server infrastructure help your business development team? Sure, there are clear business benefits to server virtualization, but to draw a straight line to sales and client activity may not seem possible. Step back for a moment and consider how your clients interact with your business, though, and it doesn’t take long to understand how your servers can make a profound difference in your top line.

In just about every business, it’s your existing clients that have the greatest potential for new revenue. New client acquisition is extremely valuable, but it’s also hard-won and far more expensive than engaging your existing client base for new business opportunities. So, if you can deliver a superior experience to your clients, especially if they interact directly or indirectly (e.g., through a call center) with your systems, the IT department has a profound opportunity to influence overall business performance.

Read the rest of this entry »

The lure of cloud computing is multidimensional. Doubtless, it provides a high degree of datacenter agility and helps you extend the value of investments you’ve made in your infrastructure. The cost savings and flexibility, however, can be crucial to startups, where the importance of every dollar is magnified. Traditional cloud computing models may not be sufficient for some startups, though, especially if they are in sensitive or highly regulated industries. In these situations, a hybrid cloud computing model may be most appropriate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Windows 7 has arrived, is popular and is coming to an enterprise near you. Soon. Microsoft has already sold 175 million licenses, according to VentureBeat, making it the company’s fastest selling operating system in history. Many IT departments are already planning their migrations, a process that is likely to be long, time-consuming and packed with risk. Smooth out this operating system migration, and you can lower the total cost of ownership while easing the pressure on your department.

Read the rest of this entry »

Data deduplication solutions deliver benefits across your IT organization. Rather than just provide cost savings concentrated on one aspect of storage management, it impacts several, multiplying the TCO and ROI implications of implementing this solution. Here are five ways you can generate financial results for your company using data deduplication:

Read the rest of this entry »

The hardest part of migrating to a virtual desktop infrastructure is explaining it to company executives. Central desktop management runs counter to what everyone knows, feels, and experiences about their desktops! It can be a challenge for those outside the datacenter to wrap their heads around this concept. Your job, when proposing a virtual desktop infrastructure, is to make it easy to understand.

Read the rest of this entry »

Citrix XenDesktop 4 is the first virtual desktop solution to meet the Burton Group’s Server Hosted Virtual Desktop evaluation criteria. The new capabilities in XenDesktop 4 SP1 make it the first to address all 52 features required for SHVD. In addition to meeting the SHVD requirements, XenDesktop 4 SP1 hits 76 percent of the Burton Group’s preferred features.

Read the rest of this entry »

Few storage solutions have benefits as easy to quantify as data deduplication. Further, few are able to deliver such impressive returns, making the business case powerful and somewhat easier for the executive suite to approve.

The premise behind data deduplication is pretty straightforward. You have more data taking up space in your infrastructure than you need to store. Duplicates are all over the place. Find and remove the dupes, and you can defer additional equipment expenses and derive more value from your previous technology investments.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of letters are getting thrown about, as they always do in the IT business, but there are really only three that matter to you: ROI. Unless you can get a return on your IT investment, there isn’t much point to implementing a solution. Well, to get to ROI, a good place to start is with three other letters: UCS. The Cisco Unified Computing System streamlines your datacenter, making it easier for your organization to gain more value from existing staff and equipment.

Cisco UCS makes your infrastructure easier to manage and your team more efficient. Rather than pull together and integrate a variety of “best of breed” solutions – a process that entails a considerable amount of project and operational risk – UCS brings computing, networking, storage access and virtualization into a cohesive system. As a result, you can scale your infrastructure easily without having to add complexity at the same time.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s always some tension between strategy and leading-edge implementation. You want to take advantage of new systems and technologies that can help your company advance in the marketplace, but at the same time, you don’t want “new” and “exciting” to outpace your core objectives and wind up driving your company at the expense of core business objectives.

Yeah, that’s a mouthful, but it’s incredibly important.

Read the rest of this entry »