BYOD has been on the minds of many administrators. However, there are several considerations that must be made before an organization implements a bring your own device (BYOD) program.

BYOD can be a powerful supplemental solution for any organization. The ability to deliver full desktops with a variety of personalized elements can create a great end-user performance experience. Still, there are cautions that need to be examined before such a program is rolled out.

But if an organization implements BYOD poorly, it can lose control over its infrastructure and, even more importantly, its data.

**Read more by clicking on the TechTarget link below!**

Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

*As seen on TechTarget.com*

Windows Server 2008R2 has always been a powerful platform. Now, many organizations have begun their own BYOD initiatives. They main idea behind BYOD is to give control of the endpoint device to the end user while managing applications and workloads centrally in the data center. With this in mind, administrators can focus on improving their Windows Server environment – thus also improving the end-user experience.

Still, engineers are beginning to see a logistical workload nightmare in managing these virtual desktops, applications and sessions. The question quickly becomes: How can we manage all of these users, their environment and virtual sessions within our existing Windows Server environment?

**Read more by clicking on the TechTarget link below!**

Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

*As seen on TechTarget.com*

Planning within an IT environment is one of the most important jobs that can be performed. Good IT planning lets engineers reduce costs, increase the likelihood of a successful project and help foresee road bumps in the future. Planning for a deployment or a piece of technology takes time and dedication. Although data center planning exists in full swing, the problem is that the planning phase of a project is sometimes underdone or not fully thought out. Nothing is ever set in stone and the IT world fluctuates daily. So, IT planning will still have its limitations, but knowing how to plan and what to plan for can reduce headaches for managers and engineers alike.

When planning is skipped, overlooked or just sped through, the consequences for a company can be pretty drastic. Imagine rolling out a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for a medium-sized environment. Some planning is done for the project, but it’s certainly not as thorough as it should have been. The project is five months in, 75% of the way through and over 250,000 dollars have been spent on it, when a bombshell drops on the IT manager’s lap indicating that a major system component is not compatible with the new ERP system. To make it compatible, the company would either have to scratch the entire project and start over or put in another four months and an additional 100,000 dollars just to make it work. The issue, as seen in hindsight, is a simple one and could have been easily caught had the planning phase been done properly.

**Read more by clicking on the TechTarget link below!**

Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

*As seen on the TechTarget.com Advisory Board Q&A*

In almost any environment, managing licenses has never been an easy process. Many times, entire licensing teams are needed to analyze concurrent licensing models, user accounts, various levels of licensing for a given product and upgrade paths for future software packages.

When cloud-based workloads began to appear in many environments, administrators and licensing professionals all realized one very clear challenge: Technology has changed; most licensing structures have not.

With cloud integration, a few issues began to arise: how software is purchased, how it is allocated across instances of the cloud, and how the use of licenses is monitored and tracked.

**Read more by clicking on the TechTarget link below!**

Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

*As seen on TechTarget.com*

Managing a data center’s hardware lifecycle is an ongoing process in constant need of updating. Since the economic downturn, IT administrators have seen their budgets become much leaner, forcing IT to get more value from hardware investments. This usually means extending the technology refresh cycle and getting more service life from servers.

A typical server service life is about three to five years, but that number can now be as long as eight years. Some data centers are so strapped for cash that servers must run even longer than that. Machines wear down, break and often require increased maintenance as they get older. But this boosts data center costs. So the question becomes, how can data center engineers extend the life of their machines while keeping everything cost effective?

**Read more by clicking on the TechTarget link below!**

Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

*As seen on TechTarget.com*

Building a corporate IT test and development lab traditionally meant having to struggle with older hardware, clunky machines and an uncertainty in overall system integrity. As cloud computing technologies have evolved, so have lab environments. And building a test and dev lab in the cloud has its benefits.

Building an entire environment from the ground up for test and development as well as lab work is time consuming, said Rich Brumpton, virtualization director at MTM Technologies, an integration services provider headquartered in Stamford, Conn. Cloud computing allows IT teams to skip the first few steps.

By using pre-existing hardware at a centralized location, engineers can build technologies directly in the cloud with global access. “Using [public or private] cloud-based labs allows for the rapid provisioning and de-provisioning of sometimes valuable resources, ” Brumpton added. Running test and dev in the cloud allows IT managers to ramp up additional resources on-demand — without affecting production environments.

**Read more by clicking on the TechTarget link below!**

Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

*As seen on TechTarget.com*

It’s no longer a question of whether or not to virtualize, but rather a question of how much and when. Access this expert podcast to learn about important tips to managing your virtual environment, and what tools and metrics to use to maximize your virtual performance, including:

• Existing platform tools
• Sprawl control
• Long-term monitoring
• And more

Listen to the webcast here: Business Week Podcast – Overcoming performance-monitoring challenges in virtual infrastructures

Speaker: 
Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

Building a private or hybrid cloud is a major undertaking, and security and identity management should be important facets in the planning process. In the first part of this series, we outlined seven best practices for securing data in a private cloud. Identity federation can make it easy for IT managers to protect the cloud without complicating how end users access data.

Pushing one or two cloud-based applications into an environment is one thing, but what if a company has 10 or more Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service or Platform as a Service applications in the cloud? Identity pools become a serious issue as users struggle to remember multiple credentials.

**Read more by clicking on the TechTarget link below!**

Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

*As seen on TechTarget.com*

Data security is a concern for any enterprise, and cloud computing often can magnify security anxieties. Adopting a few ground rules will help protect users, their data and your overall cloud investment.

The list of security concerns with cloud computing may seem lengthy. In reality, though, cloud security tactics can fall into two main categories: partner-based security or security for Software as a Service, Platform as a Service or Infrastructure as a Service models and end user-based or client-based security. Here are a few guidelines for securing a private or public cloud.

**Read more by clicking on the TechTarget link below!**

Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

*As seen on TechTarget.com*

Virtual machines (VMs) and their corresponding hypervisors have come a long way in development and ease of use: VM creation is now done in five to six mouse clicks. Today, it’s easier than ever for each hypervisor to create a “stock” VM with an operating system. A user operating VMware, XenServer, Hyper-V or any other hypervisor can click on New Virtual Machine and follow the wizard provided by the manufacturer.

However, with such simplicity comes the uncertainty of whether a VM can handle the workload. It’s possible to over-allocate many computing resources to a VM. Administrators must set metrics and understand what’s running on a VM for effective workload management. Simply clicking the Next button may not result in the most efficient workloads.

**Read more by clicking on the TechTarget link below!**

Bill Kleyman
Virtualization Solutions Architect
MTM Technologies

*As seen on TechTarget.com*