Creating and maintaining a successful digital experience that drives business results requires the right research insight, design, technology, and ongoing optimization. Forrester conducted an online survey of 209 digital experience professionals in the US to evaluate current practices around Web site monitoring and digital experiences. Read about the adoption, benefits, and challenges of current data-driven design processes.
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This paper highlights the environmental impact of printing and discusses how a managed print service can support an organization's sustainability goals, while also lowering costs and driving business efficiency.
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The causes of a cloud outage can differ—software updates, networking interruptions, a bolt of lightning. But one thing is for certain: a cloud computing outage can significantly impact revenue generation, business continuity, and customer satisfaction. That’s all the more reason for companies to stay on top of their cloud computing environment. This white paper offers five ways to better manage a cloud-based IT infrastructure.
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In the coming years, a new Internet protocol, IPv6, will gradually succeed IPv4. The two Internet protocols aren’t interchangeable or compatible, so organizations will have to run them both in parallel on their networks for some time. This checklist offers five steps as a phased, cost-effective approach to move to the next-generation Internet protocol.
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As private equity investors acquire manufacturing enterprises, it becomes increasingly important to centralize the growing mass of performance data. A new breed of ERP provides the oversight and control necessary for private equity managers to ensure resources are working toward the same goals. Download this paper for key considerations private equity-backed manufacturers need to look for when evaluating technology enablers.
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Lawmakers and auditors have begun to require extensive safeguards for personal data residing on laptops, distributed personal computers, and handheld devices. They are also mandating protections for data being transferred to and from mobile employees over wireless connections and public networks. This white paper discusses the ensuing challenges faced by financial institutions and describes some of the tools that exist to prove compliance.
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Corporate purchasing is no longer the primary way devices come into your organization; employees will bring their favorite devices and you have to make them work with your infrastructure and corporate policies. There are practices and tools available that can help you do this, but you need to have an enterprise mobility management (EMM) strategy that suits your users and your organization.
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The Federal Information Security Amendments Act of 2010 (FISMA 2.0) contains several major new provisions, the most significant of which may be a requirement that every agency’s security program include “continuous automated monitoring of information systems used or operated by an agency or by a contractor of an agency or other organization on behalf of an agency.” This paper examines the implications of this requirement and looks at a set of host-based services that can be used to monitor and manage mobile and remote endpoints.
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While companies seemed willing enough to let the applications that surround and extend their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system reside in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment, they were less willing to place their systems of record in a cloud they did not specifically own or control. But that is changing. This white paper discusses the advantages of a SaaS environment for ERP and argues that the cost savings can be substantial.
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Organizations today face fierce competition. One strategy for gaining a competitive edge is to look to advanced technological options focused on the core business. With the rapid adoption of cloud computing, organizations can take help from technology partners to cope with their technology requirements. Know the key points and get guidance for selecting a technology partner for Windows Azure cloud computing platform.
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Social networks offer many opportunities for businesses to gain a closer engagement with their customers. This appears to be an unstoppable bandwagon that all organizations must leap on before they are left behind, but is it that simple? The social network landscape is packed with choices and pitfalls for the unwary, so a careful and appropriately nuanced response is required. Read more on how to best use social media.
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This Network Monitoring and Troubleshooting for Dummies book introduces you to common network performance management (NPM) issues and gives you a new way of looking at solving them. This perspective allows you to see your network from your users’ point of view—namely, the services and applications they use and their experience with them. Of course, you can still get down to the other flow and packet levels, but macro-level visibility is a key differentiator in your ability to monitor and troubleshoot network performance efficiently.
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Much of a network professional’s time is spent in the weeds—fixing what breaks and trying to keep infrastructure humming so users don’t call the help desk. Climbing out of the weeds to take in the big picture and lay the groundwork for better future performance seems a luxury. This report introduces best practices for improving the performance of mission-critical networked applications and provides pointers for what to look for in a measurement tool in a WAN-optimized environment.
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Riverbed Cascade is a new type of tool that incorporates traffic monitoring, packet capture, and protocol analysis to provide an application-aware view of the network. Now you can see the path of applications as they traverse the network, and get a user’s eye view of availability and performance. Download this white paper from NetMedia to learn how Riverbed Cascade can help to solve your IT performance challenges.
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Application discovery and dependency mapping (ADDM) solutions automate the discovery and mapping of transactions and applications to the underlying infrastructure. The service models created by ADDM solutions then become invaluable tools for supporting many aspects of data center management. Download the white paper to learn about Riverbed Cascade, an application-aware network performance management solution with built-in ADDM capabilities.
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The increased deployment of mobile solutions in the workplace can make navigating the corporate landscape challenging and risky. While organizations are rightly deploying mobile device management (MDM) solutions as means to secure their mobile devices, there is more to be done. This executive insight examines the need for organizations to deploy a holistic enterprise mobility management solution that goes well beyond MDM.
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In the unwired enterprise, mobile devices connect the boardroom to the shop floor to the consumer across the supply chain. They empower people and companies that employ them. This friendly guide looks at how your enterprise can manage and leverage this technology to ensure your organization is productive and secure. Understand the key aspects of enterprise mobility and know how you can boost your bottom line through mobility.
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An increasing number of organizations are permitting employees to bring their own mobile devices into the workplace to be used for work purposes. While this practice may first appear to reduce enterprise mobility costs while increasing employee productivity, it also poses new risks and may actually increase costs if not properly managed. Know how to cost-effectively manage this Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) phenomenon.
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Today, more and more companies are launching mobile applications, creating a mobile professional workforce across job roles and categories. This white paper provides a framework for CIOs on how to create a mobile application strategy for their business. It gives a step-by-step guide to the different stages involved, from choosing a focus, to building and deploying, to the ongoing support of enterprise mobile applications. Read more.
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This white paper describes the need for IPv6, the benefits it can provide, and how important it is to take a holistic view of IPv6 migration from a business perspective.
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Mobile device interfaces can enhance customer engagement by providing services such as pricing information and user review facilities. The upward trend in the sale of smartphones further validates the importance of creating retail mobile solutions. By leveraging the potential of mobile commerce, retailers can unify the customer experience across channels and better understand customer behavior through analytics. In this context, retailers have started to develop sophisticated mobile platforms that capture shopping preferences and customer location, create shopping wish lists, provide rich product information, integrate social media, and so on. Download this white paper to learn more.
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Due to the growth in mobile lifestyle among customers, the adoption of mobile devices and applications in manufacturing plants and facilities is on the rise. This trend has led to more efficient collaboration and innovation in manufacturing. Indeed, the convergence of mobile devices and networks has enabled an in-depth observation of customer behavior at levels that were not accessible prior to mobility. For mobile success, manufacturers will benefit immensely by partnering with experienced mobility technology and service providers. Download this white paper to learn more.
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The oil and gas industry is faced with not only the challenges of volatile prices but also the various risks from owning and operating critical infrastructures and assets. In order to overcome these issues without compromising cost efficiency, IT services within the process control domain (PCD) need to be transformed. This encompasses the outsourcing of IT services within the business-critical PCD so that the organization benefits from the best practices of wider enterprise IT. Transforming IT services within the PCD not only helps reduce costs but also helps meet the common business challenges faced by the oil and gas industry. Download this white paper to learn more now.
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This paper highlights potential approaches for bringing together mobility technologies, and examines how these approaches contribute to resolving operator concerns about deploying services and combating congestion.
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IT pros managing hospital data centers with mixed network environments, long lists of remote access protocols and applications, multiple user interfaces, and what often feels like way too many tools, are searching for remote access management solutions that are efficient, secure, and cost-effective to deploy. Learn which criteria to use as a benchmark when choosing a remote access solution for a health care environment.
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In this white paper, the author discusses the real-life challenges faced by field technicians and how those technicians can be empowered with mobility solutions to improve field productivity, increase the accuracy of diagnostics, reduce warranty and invoicing cycle times, increase service revenues, and most importantly, improve the customer experience.
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Today, wi-fi is embedded in virtually every mobile Internet device and common hotspot services have formed to fill the gap in ensuring effective coverage for today’s service providers worldwide that offer smartphones. Download this white paper for a deep dive into the impact of wi-fi deployment, wi-fi’s role in data offloading, and best practices for wi-fi and adoption in business models.
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While the role of IT in product development and sales has increased tremendously, a disconnect remains between the IT and business sides of an organization. Some organizations also incorrectly believe that IT spend does not add direct value to the business and hence is not justified. The onus is on IT to mend this perception by delivering tangible business value. Learn how.
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Power over ethernet (PoE) allows network administrators to deploy VoIP phones, WLAN access points, IP security cameras, and other powered devices without having to install AC outlets, pull cables, or modify building plans. By eliminating the need for separate electrical wiring and power outlets, PoE technology can deliver savings of up to 50 percent compared to traditional network powering infrastructures. Learn more now.
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Test language is a dictionary of keywords that helps testers communicate with one another and with other subject-matter experts. The keywords replace common English as the testing basis and create an approach called keyword-driven testing (KDT). KDT can be used to improve communication between testers, avoid inconsistency in test documents, and serve as the infrastructure for test automation. Download this white paper to learn more.
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This white paper reveals the results of a survey that examined how companies can intelligently manage devices to create value, and to look at implications for improving energy efficiency. While recognizing there are challenges facing smart management of devices, one third of those who responded to a related survey also acknowledged that such efforts could help cut costs or increase profits significantly across many areas of the business. Learn more. Download this white paper now.
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Cloud and virtualization both help deliver optimal resources, on-demand utilization, flexibility, and scalability. However, business owners often have to address issues that are common with computer networks such as unauthorized use, outside intrusion, data loss and technical support. A managed services solution that is well-planned, efficient, and cost-effective is crucial to maintaining a functioning network. By outsourcing service management, organizations can devote time and resources to more important aspects of the business, while critical systems and data are hosted in a secure environment. Learn more. Download now.
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While technology has improved quality of life, it has also contributed to global environmental imbalance, particularly in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. However, technology, combined with smart policy, can significantly reduce the emissions responsible for climate change. Learn where IT has high-impact potential to reduce carbon emissions while boosting profitability—and how you can use IT to “green” your practices for larger-scale benefits.
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Security breaches are perpetrated by a wide variety of external and internal sources, including hacktivists, targeted attackers, and profit-motivated
cybercriminals, as well as through mundane everyday occurrences, such as missing laptops and thumb drives. To address these compliance and privacy issues, organizations have responded by adding layers of controls and integrating them with varied results. Now, those organizations realize that making security simpler is the ultimate strategy for ensuring end user adoption of new security measures and meeting multiple, overlapping regulatory requirements. This paper is a review of DigitalPersona Pro, its integrated approach, and its features and efficiencies in these areas.
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The growing adoption of laptops and other portable devices is changing the foundation of traveling and telecommuting. Laptops have overtaken desktops as the computer of choice for business users. While endpoint protection has been traditionally associated with solutions like antivirus and firewalls, these technologies don’t adequately protect data against theft, loss or unauthorized access. Learn more. Download this white paper now.
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This report discusses the policy and business drivers of "clean tech," and the development of the clean tech sector in terms of business models, globalization, technological diffusion, and growth. The emphasis on clean tech has increased in recent years due to international concerns about the economic impact of climate change caused by GHG (largely CO2) emissions from energy production and consumption. This report examines government policies in different economies, and focuses on clean tech opportunities for software services such as measurement and monitoring, platform efficiency software, mitigation software, system integration, and managed services consulting.
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Today's organizations, faced with stricter internal security policies and multiple regulatory compliance requirements, continue to struggle in their efforts to make Active Directory auditing simpler and more adept at fulfilling their needs. Native Windows auditing mechanisms don't meet the demands of modern businesses, and administrators are often left in the dark about significant and potentially harmful Active Directory changes. Learn how to easily improve native Active Directory auditing without making dramatic changes to your IT infrastructure in this eye-opening white paper written by renowned industry expert Don Jones.
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These days, the IT department can’t just focus on keeping servers up and running, getting users the access they need, and bringing new services online to benefit the business. IT is, unfortunately, also the last line of defense in the organization’s security and compliance efforts. Microsoft MVP Don Jones recounts the top 5 horror stories associated with poor auditing. Read this white paper and prevent these nightmares from happening to you.
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For the second year, Symantec’s SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey revealed that small to medium businesses (SMBs) are not taking disaster preparedness for their computer and networking systems as seriously as they should. Most SMBs don’t take action to prepare for disasters until after they have experienced loss from downtime, and this lack of preparation has a significant impact on their customers and their business.
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Objective performance testing was performed on four publicly available small business endpoint protection products and a pre-beta version of another endpoint protection product, on Windows 7. The products were benchmarked using thirteen performance metrics to assess product performance and system impact on the endpoint or client machine. This report presents the results from these performance tests.
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The explosive growth of enterprise data poses new storage and data management challenges for enterprises. This white paper details how organizations can leverage cloud-based storage offerings as part of their data protection plans. The paper also takes a closer look at solutions offered by Riverbed that allow organizations to integrate cloud-based storage within solutions that address a growing set of data protection demands.
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This guide to networking for small to medium businesses (SMBs) is designed to help decision makers quickly identify their specific needs and includes a discussion of buyer types, product requirements, cost considerations, and vendor relationship needs for several areas of networking technology, including server hardware and operating systems, routers, backup, network management, and client security.
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Just to survive, let alone thrive, smaller businesses need a complete Web infrastructure that is stable, scalable, and secure. And it begins at the very first point of contact between vendor and customer: DNS, or Domain Name System. This white paper examines how managed solutions for external DNS can combat Web site crashes, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and plain old downtime.
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Businesses today demand that their information technology (IT) functions deliver certainty, confidence, and agility while improving efficiency. This white paper explains how Attenda provides a way for businesses to achieve their IT goals while avoiding the pitfalls of wholesale outsourcing or uncontrolled consumption of public cloud services.
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This white paper describes some of the common challenges associated with protecting data on laptops and at home and remote offices and portrays proven solutions to the challenges of protecting distributed business data by establishing a private cloud/enterprise cloud. Learn which best practices can ensure business continuity throughout an organization with a distributed information technology (IT) infrastructure.
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This whitepaper delves into the common problem of shifting from one mobile platform to another, in particular, Apple’s iOS to Google’s Android or vice versa. Each platform’s background and features are discussed, along with development considerations, monetization, and deployment. Other aspects included are the differences in hardware and programming languages, multi-platform options, and testing applications.
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Various scenarios can impact the resources for a rollout delivery team when utilized for large technology infrastructure rollouts at multiple locations. Shifting processes, methodologies, and resources can streamline the technology rollout at each site. This paper explains how alterations to the rollout delivery team configuration, as determined by project variables, can impact site delivery and your business. Read more.
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This report focuses on how cloud infrastructures are being used by sales and marketing, finance, and operations in professional service organizations (PSOs). It outlines the benefits of using a cloud infrastructure to manage enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other enterprise systems. With the right solutions in place, globally dispersed project teams have unlimited accessibility to secure and reliable information.
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Balancing employee requests for keeping mobile channels open, while getting the right level of work and commitment from them, should not be left to chance. All organizations need to fully understand their employees’ mobile usage and behaviors to be able to put appropriate policies in place to ensure business requirements are met while acceptable personal use is still enabled. Read this white paper to know how to do this.
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Electronically stored information is a key asset to any organization, but it is often insufficiently cared for. Failure to protect data can result not only in steep fines, but also in loss of competitive advantage of the company. To ensure the safety and integrity of information, read this report on data governance examining how well European businesses understand the risks and what steps they have taken to address them.
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Old-style, one application per physical server data centers are not only nearing the end of their useful lives, but are also becoming barriers to a business’ future success. Virtualization has come to the foreground, yet it also creates headaches for data center and facilities managers. Read about aspects of creating a strategy for a flexible and effective data center aimed to carry your business forward.
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As product lifecycles continue to shrink and product complexity increases, reducing the time it takes to introduce new products has become a strategic imperative for companies. Businesses must have clean and accurate product data that’s consolidated across sales channels and back-end systems. Find out why product information management and master data management platforms are key to getting products to market faster.
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This white paper analyzes the return on investment (ROI) that customers can expect from their enterprise network solution, based on interviews with customers. Additionally, you will read about the business case for proactively managing network and application performance. Get the visibility you need to achieve your IT objectives. Download this white paper today.
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Comprehensive management and protection of information can be achieved only when both data centers and end points are controlled by managed service providers (MSPs). MSPs must change their thinking and embrace end point management, ensuring IT availability, data security, and business continuity. See how MSPs with the right tools and services are well positioned to strengthen customer relationships and grow market share.
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This whitepaper provides an overview of challenges associated with monitoring and management of heterogeneous database environments. Relational database systems (RDBMS) are at the very heart of virtually every enterprise: they power CRM, ERP, e-commerce, billing and other systems. Efficient monitoring, troubleshooting and database performance analysis are essential for the business to stay up 24/7. On the other hand, automated DB diagnostics and management tasks can keep the IT costs under control.
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End user experience (EUE) measurements determine how a person feels about using various IT systems. EUE solutions can be useful for both businesses, to ensure that client satisfaction and usability are high, and IT management, to determine correct operation of applications. This paper reviews key elements of EUE measurement software and aspects of EUE monitoring by Verax NMS, an EUE management and monitoring solution.
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One area of cloud computing that presents significant opportunity is data protection as a service. However, not every business model for data protection services has an equal potential for success. This paper is intended for managed service providers (MSPs), value-added resellers (VARs), IT solution providers, and system integrators who are offering, or are interested in offering backup and recovery as a service.
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By surveying two hundred IT professionals direct, IntaPeople has been fortunate enough to gain an insight into some of the measures bosses can take to keep their IT staff happy. This white paper aims to explore some of these expectations so that companies can curb what is often a merry-go-round of IT staff, and concentrate on shaping the future of their business instead.
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This publication provides an overview of challenges associated with management and monitoring of complex, enterprise IT environments. IT has become a vital part of virtually any modern business and applications are at the very heart of it. When they fail, revenues and reputation are lost. Find out more.
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ATEN developed patented technology to correct a particular cable-induced distortion, described as skew, in order to cut video distortion automatically with one-way signal detection. Find out more.
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This white paper looks at the value of email availability and how it can be improved. It examines the key characteristics and capabilities of each type of solution. And it looks in detail at an option that meets key requirements whenever an email availability strategy has to be planned, implemented and managed to time and to budget. IT professionals looking to improve their existing IT security should read this paper.
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This systems’ monitoring and management vendor evaluation checklist from Uptime Software is designed to help IT managers and administrators as they search for the right solution. It is intended to be a generic list that can be updated, expanded, and customized depending on your exact requirements. You are welcome to edit and modify each of the items as you see fit.
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IT managers have to protect the business against malware, keep Internet bandwidth available for legitimate business needs, and enforce acceptable use policies for the human resource department. Managers must also find a balance between allowing reasonable personal Internet use at work and maintaining productivity and concentration in the office. Learn how to deal with the top 10 threats facing these managers.
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IT managers need to establish policies for Web use in the workplace. This paper discusses how Internet bandwidth is a finite and expensive resource that needs protection from spammers, criminals, hackers, time-wasters, and employee misuse. Not only is it expensive and limited but it is a vital business tool. Discover the true cost of Web use and misuse, and learn the steps you can take to reclaim your company’s Internet.
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Monitoring servers, environments (physical and virtual), platforms (AIX, Solaris, Windows, VMware, HP/UX, Linux, Novell), applications (e-mail, Web, CRM, ERP, e-commerce), and services (service level agreements) is critical for IT departments. But it can be a daunting task to find the right monitoring solution. This paper examines the differences between agent and agentless monitoring, to help you make the right decision.
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In September 2009, IBM Tivoli commissioned Forrester Consulting to examine the total economic impact and potential return on investment (ROI) of deploying monitoring solutions from IBM Tivoli—the IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) and IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager (ITCAM) family of products. This paper provides a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of those products on your organization.
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Your company needs an approach to server-side application distribution and provisioning that is architected for the cloud and designed for IT, if it’s going to deliver on the business promise of virtualization. Learn about one solution for solution for provisioning and deploying server-side applications in the cloud—or anywhere else.
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The printing environment is now an integral part of the IT infrastructure. Organizations that use managed print services (MPSs) are seeing reduced cost and increased efficiencies. Using MPSs optimizes the way in which networked printers, copiers, and multifunction peripherals (MFPs) are managed to minimize the wastage of paper and toner. Find out how effective MPSs offer cost transparency and reliable service levels.
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With the boom in sales of smart mobile handsets, the opportunity for developing and selling mobile applications is ever more appealing. But the market is changing and evolving rapidly, with new concepts and technologies vying for attention. Discover why, in order to gain momentum, mobile applications need to have both appealing value for customers and the most appropriate, rapid, and wide-reaching routes to market.
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Managed print services (MPSs) offer organizations the opportunity to control costs, reduce the complexity of managing a heterogeneous infrastructure, and improve business processes. With many organizations striving to do more with less, MPS can cut expenses by passing control of complex printing infrastructure to the experts, and leaving the organization to focus on its core business competencies. Find out more.
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This paper focuses on identifying the similarities and differences between Oracle Financial Analyzer (OFA) and Hyperion Planning (HP). For users who are migrating, or thinking of migrating, to Hyperion Planning, strategies will be discussed to ensure their existing functionality can be replicated in HP. The paper is aimed at users who are familiar with OFA or similar multidimensional database applications.
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Every day, companies around the world use instant messaging (IM) and document collaboration systems to solve problems quickly, and maintain real-time connectivity between employees. This kind of instant communication and collaboration can be crucial to a company’s success. Learn about enterprise-level IM systems, and find out which features and functions are most important for corporate and business users.
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The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) has published a PCI DSS Wireless Guideline which acknowledges that wireless is a clear and present danger to network security and those who collect, store or transmit card holder data must take steps to assure that it is secure, whether or not wireless is deployed in the cardholder data environment. Organizations that handle payment card data must take steps to secure the CDE against wireless threats including unmanaged and unknown wireless devices in the environment and must scan all locations. This white paper helps organizations understand how the PCI DSS 1.2 wireless requirements apply to them, how to meet those requirements in a cost effective way, and how to secure your network and cardholder data from wireless threats.
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Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) has become a mainstream technology offering great benefits and efficiencies but carrying with it unique security challenges. Unsecured WiFi provides an easy target for hit-and-run style attacks allowing hackers to cause severe damage while remaining invisible and undetected. Ignoring the specific requirements for securing their enterprise network and users against WiFi vulnerabilities, businesses risk loss of confidential data, legal fines and penalties, and brand erosion. By following WiFi security best practices and using the right tools, enterprises can reap the benefits of WiFi while protecting their IT infrastructure from WiFi threats.
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For managed services providers (MSPs) aiming to serve small and medium-sized businesses, the ability to capture and retain lasting customer relationships is a determining factor for long-term profitability. Only by clearly and consistently communicating your value to your customer can you hope to attain the role of trusted advisor—a position that will help protect you from losing business to lower-priced competitors. Learn how an integrated, offline reporting solution can help ensure that your customers perceive your value in the ways that matter most to all managers within the customer organization.
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A business' success delivering managed services depends on its ability to improve the delivery of effective and efficient services to its customer base. Learn about ways that managed services providers (MSPs) can develop a higher-value business by improving their ability to attract and retain high-quality customers and provide IT services in an effective manner.
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Service companies that want to thrive need to find a better way to deliver services and run their business. Automating IT services is the answer, and it should be the immediate goal of any company that aims to stay in business as market pressures increase. Looking beyond basic automation, becoming a managed services provider (MSP) should be the long-term goal. Discover ways to ensure your service company's survival in today’s competitive IT services market.
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Margins on profitable products and services erode as they become commoditized. And now, the same process is starting to happen to the IT services market. To avoid the commoditization trap and distinguish their services from their competitors, managed services providers (MSPs) need to develop a two-pronged strategy that involves delivering higher-value services that yield greater profit margins, and driving down service delivery costs so they can effectively deliver responsive, tools-based services to compete efficiently in a commoditized market. Find out how.
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Most IT service providers have always and continue to operate in a break/fix service environment. When a customer calls with an issue, the service provider drops everything to fix it. Under these circumstances, service providers have a difficult time forecasting monthly revenues and staffing needs, which has a huge impact on profitability. Add to this the intense competition, excessive customer turnover, low technician utilization rates, and shrinking margins that characterize today‟s market, and the result is IT service providers anxious to find a new way of delivering their services. Learn about innovative IT-as-a-Service initiatives that are defining the new IT value chain of the future.
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Enterprise internet protocol (IP) telephony has proved to be a great communication tool to unite distant employees in a solid team, to reduce costs for international calls, and to improve productivity. Moreover, there are many ways to make enterprise IP telephony network usage even more attractive.
Learn five effective ways to reduce expenses for paid calls; four valid tips to decrease costs for IP telephony network ownership and administration;
and a unique solution that combines call-accounting and IP telephony network administration features to cover all the ways of telecom costs reduction.
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Most enterprises waste millions of dollars annually by not managing their telecom spend in a standardized, centralized, more accurate way. Having ballooned up to being in the top four overall expenses of the entire company, telecom expense management (TEM) is something you should put on your radar—sooner than later. Find out why your telecom expenses are rising, and how you can work globally to reduce them.
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Why install an Internet content filter? Schools can use one to set limits on students’ Internet access. Businesses might want to use a content filter to ensure employees better focus on the task at hand. But unlimited Web surfing also increases the risk of infecting your system with malware. Learn about five factors can help you better understand why you need a content filter, and how to select a content filter solution.
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Today’s mobile software companies face a daunting challenge: How can they achieve quality while getting to market swiftly? After all, speed is king in the mobile market. The trade-off between speed and quality in mobile software development is an illusion—or should be. Get a closer look at the situation with a framework that presents a way to use quality assurance (QA) processes to accelerate development.
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Does Google keep an eye on Microsoft? Does Microsoft keep an eye on Apple? The answer, of course, is “yes.” Why does it matter what the other guy is up to? Because in business, you’re not operating in a vacuum—the turf is competitive and ever changing. Not only do you need to know what your competitor is doing, but also what it’s using when it comes to online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). Learn more.
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Consultant Paul Mitnick chose the Training Partner learning management system (LMS) to help a real estate firm consolidate its learning management program. In addition to a breakdown of the steps involved in his LMS software selection process, you’ll also discover how the LMS implementation went—including the testing and timing involved in ensuring that all data was in the new LMS before it was accessed by users.
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Standards can play an important part in enterprise learning, from the development of learning content to how it interacts with database management applications—specifically learning management systems (LMSs) and learning content management systems (LCMs). This document provides an overview of the standards that affect learning technologies and advice on how to work with vendors of standards-affected technologies.
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Is a total ban on workplace social networking a good idea? Companies should take more calculating points of view and look at how to turn the negative effects of social networking into positive effects. Employers can manage employee social networking to maximize the positives. The strategy combines employee education, well-thought-out acceptable use policies (AUPs), and—critically—effective Web filtering technology.
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Acts of cyber aggression could lead to a cyber war or worse. Capitol Hill is giving attention to this security issue, and vendors are creating new offerings and expanding existing programs—creating new opportunities in the defense industry and opening doors for new players. Learn more about the blurring between information security vendors servicing the private sector and those in the defense and intelligence industry.
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Most document security companies concern themselves solely with the prevention of unauthorized access to content. Online publishers, on the other hand, struggle to find a balance between document security and a satisfactory reader experience. A new approach to document security can give online content publishers the ability to protect their content without adding unnecessary complexity to document access. Learn more.
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The increasing use of virtualization allowed managed hosting providers to reduce costs by sharing infrastructure between customers, creating the earliest versions of what is now known as cloud computing. Platforms managed by specialists provide higher service levels, greater ease of secure access, and more manageable costs than many companies can achieve internally. Discover more about Europe’s managed hosting market.
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IT departments rarely have the luxury of spare capacity or sufficient knowledge of all the products and technologies that the rest of the organization expects. However, IT is an integral part of most companies, and supporting diverse or specialized technologies and understanding their impact on the business is necessary. Organizations not only need third parties—they need them to be focused and cost-effective. Learn more.
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Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs are just a few Internet services that make up the new growing digital world called social media. Many companies have seen the influence these new sites can have on their organizations for both good and bad. All companies should ask themselves, "How can we tap into the power of this new method of communication to improve our business and the experiences we provide our customers?"
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Sadly, a division exists between business analysts and IT—they often perform separate data-related duties. There are benefits for companies that unite business analytics with business intelligence. But the adaptive information cycle—a model linking the center-out approach of traditional data warehousing to the emergent prototyping typifying today’s analytic environment—is not as complex as it may sound. Learn more.
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Backing up your critical data on compact disc (CD) or digital versatile disc (DVD) is risky business. Disks can be easily damaged by routine use or natural disaster, lost, or stolen. CD and DVD backups are rarely taken offsite, and are not secure, automated, or full featured. Discover 10 reasons why you need to find a better data backup solution for your business, and avoid the endless expense of backing up on CD and DVD.
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IT has long been seen as one of the best ways to address the challenges of the business environment. Yet the complexity and rigidity of IT infrastructure keep IT from fully serving the business. IT could better help serve your customers and reduce business costs if it were provided as a service. Find out more about IT service management standards and best practices, with a focus on SAP’s approach to IT optimization.
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IT managers realize that service-oriented architecture (SOA) projects are no longer an “if”—they’re a “when.” SOA can help achieve your number-one goal: aligning IT with business. If you’re in the consideration and planning stage, you’ll need some practical strategies for a business-driven SOA deployment. Find out how packaged solutions can accelerate SOA deployments, ease the burden of SOA management, and more.
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Databases serve a lot of different business applications, all of which must work in perfect harmony to provide a good customer experience. Therefore it is important that the databases offer the best availability and performance. What does performance mean to you? Before you begin looking for a database 2 (DB2) monitoring solution, you should answer this and other questions about your business processes and your needs.
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IT has long been one of the best ways to address business challenges. Yet significant obstacles at the level of IT infrastructure stand in the way. Siloed IT operations and rigid IT management processes can impede business agility. When IT partners with the business to act less as a technology provider and more as a service provider, business objectives can be achieved more efficiently and cost-effectively. Find out how.
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During a downturn economy, the IT department is often among the first to be hit with senior executives’ cost-cutting initiatives. Yet in some instances, IT investments deliver more value to a company’s top and bottom lines—by creating new efficiencies and increasing revenues—than any savings gained from traditional IT cost-cutting. Discover the other reasons why your IT spending can actually save money in the long run.
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For business everywhere, the growth in the Internet has resulted in an enormous challenge to effectively and affordably manage, store, and archive digital files. In small to medium businesses (SMBs), solutions to store and manage digital files are often on a PC server or external hard drive—which can limit growth. SMBs should look for a storage and file management solution that allows for incremental growth. Find out why.
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Web-borne malware is now more common than malware entering a company through e-mail. The number of Web sites carrying malware increased by 400 percent in 2008. This can cause serious issues for your business. You need to proactively protect your networks both by instituting acceptable usage policies for employee Web usage and by implementing a solution that can effectively combat these malware intrusions. Find out how.
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Small and medium businesses (SMBs) face many time-consuming tasks when looking for a Web presence, especially if they don’t maintain in-house resources to manage their Web servers. Managed hosting services provide a coordinated, comprehensive solution for SMBs. Discover how managed hosting services can help SMBs tackle these tasks and reduce costs while maintaining reliability, uptime, and security.
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The IT landscape has grown into a complex system of servers, networks, locations, products, and processes. Making all these systems work efficiently and securely has become an enormous task. This four-chapter e-book can help you identify the issues surrounding the design, control, and management of jobs, and give you insight into best practices for an efficient, maintainable job scheduling and workload automation system.
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Today’s Web applications exist in an environment vastly different from when businesses first entered the Internet. Few companies have a comprehensive Web application security program to prevent Internet-borne security breaches. Learn how security concerns for Web applications are different than for traditional applications, and how to build a Web security program that curbs costs and provides effective security.
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IT spending is often an issue for companies, but in difficult economic times it’s even more important to see what benefit IT can bring to the business. But IT investments are most effective when they improve business performance. Find out the degree to which organizations in the United Kingdom (UK) understand what IT is doing for their businesses, and in particular how some companies measure this and benefit from it.
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While network complexity and bandwidth demands continue to increase, applications such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) increase performance requirements. Today’s network administrators need versatile monitoring and analysis tools to quickly troubleshoot and monitor security and compliance. Retrospective network analysis (RNA) tools let you go “back in time” to reconstruct failure or attack. Discover the benefits.
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Integrative software as a service (SaaS) business systems are a way of transforming your finance operations. SaaS can position finance as the nexus of standardized, real-time information. Finance executives should investigate SaaS solutions and providers, so that finance and IT can work together to enable a cost-effective transformation of finance to a stronger leadership role and improve finance’s value to your company.
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Regulations regarding digital information use, storage, and protection are meant to help maintain the integrity and security of public and private networks. Compliance measures such as the payment card industry (PCI), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and others focus on the long-term retention and integrity of all data. Achieving secure, long-term data retention is easier with log management and incident response tools.
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Companies using traditional means cannot cost-effectively respond to daily threats. Analyzing such threats is cumbersome and time-consuming, involving multiple applications for code analysis, as well as a network of computers. Emerging threats cannot be addressed by the same human resources as in the past. Learn how those expert skills and knowledge have been transferred to a data security system with artificial intelligence.
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Unmanaged employee use of e-mail and the Web can subject your organization to costly risks including litigation, regulatory investigations, and public embarrassment. Responsible organizations should deploy clearly written acceptable usage policies (AUPs) for e-mail and Web usage, supported by employee training and enforced by technology solutions. Find out how to develop and enforce e-mail and Web AUPs in your workplace.
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The Internet creates new opportunities for mischief—and new challenges for managers. How do you balance individual access with the overall good of the business? What’s the right balance between monitoring and blocking? Learn about a Web security solution that can allow you to monitor and enforce your Internet usage policies, bringing site monitoring and filtering together with anti-virus and anti-spyware protection.
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Server-based computing has been seen at best as a way to provide those within highly task-based environments with a controlled desktop environment. However, changes in software, hardware, security, and management systems are driving the shift toward server-based computing being suitable for a larger proportion of a company’s user base. Learn how client-side computing can be more tightly controlled yet provide flexibility.
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Network-centric operations (NCO) provide the ability to leverage information networks to generate a more dynamic and agile decision-making space. A fundamental enabler is service-orientated architecture (SOA). The use of industry-standard IT architectures helps ensure that systems can be provisioned rapidly, shared as appropriate, and give the flexibility and response times needed within such challenging environments.
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Networked printers and multifunction peripherals often require a high level of support and manual intervention. Secure remote monitoring platforms reduce device downtime by automating service alerts and meter reading, and providing proactive toner replenishment. Users benefit from improved device uptime, and manufacturers and their service partners can build proactive service relationships that can drive customer loyalty.
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Given today’s economic climate, companies are looking to create more value by reducing risk and saving costs. As companies increasingly rely on data networks encompassing an ever-growing range and number of internet protocol (IP)-enabled devices and applications, they need to more effectively administer and manage these assets—they can no longer take the management of their IP networks for granted.
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Common methods for monitoring the data center environment date from the days of centralized mainframes, and include such practices as walking around with thermometers. But as data centers continue to evolve with distributed processing and server technologies that drive up power and cooling demands, you must examine the environment more closely. Monitoring equipment isn’t enough—learn how to better manage your data center.
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The new web-borne threats attacking business networks are more intense and sophisticated than ever. Methods using rich media, web 2.0 collaboration tools, and a host of other technologies expose networks to a new breed of web security threats. Find out what the latest web security threats are, including the risks and business impact these threats represent, and understand the advantages of hosted security solutions.
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With the increase in global IT outsourcing agreements, many companies are looking at outsourcing quality assurance (QA) and testing to ensure high-quality deliverables and gain competitive advantages. These companies need to select an outsourcing partner that has local and offshore test centers—and a strong on-site consultancy presence. Find out about these and other issues that will help you in the short and long term.
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Virtualization of system resources aboard x86 servers has become a de facto component of modern computing. So hardware and software vendors have begun to consider its impact on the architectural design of their products and the go-to-market models they use. Find out how virtualization can offer companies cost-savings for existing infrastructure, and new deployments that can be architected to leverage virtualization.
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If you’re not up to speed on the key benefits of software asset management (SAM) solutions, this overview can help. Additionally, you’ll learn about the areas where an SAM solution can deliver the most tangible, quantifiable cost savings to your company. You’ll also learn how to calculate the potential return on investment (ROI) on an SAM solution in order to present senior management with a compelling business case.
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The average power consumed by an enclosure in a data center is about 1.7 kilowatts (kWs), but the maximum power that can be obtained by filling a rack with available high density servers, such as blade servers, is over 20 kW. Find out about the power density values of current and new data centers, and learn practical approaches to creating strategies for deploying high-density computing, with limitations and benefits.
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Monitoring servers, environments, platforms, applications, and services have become key ingredients for building successful IT departments. However, it can be a daunting task to find the right solution to accomplish these critical needs with a limited budget and tight timelines. Learn about the differences between agent-based and agentless monitoring, so you can make the right decision based on your company’s needs.
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The high availability and performance of mission-critical applications is no longer a luxury for companies; it’s a matter of business survival. If applications fail—or deliver low performance levels—revenues and customers are lost. Learn about the benefits of adopting both server monitoring and capacity planning solutions that can quickly be deployed, automate processes, and adapt to change—without breaking IT budgets.
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IT management is faced with the daunting task of turning complex data into actionable information that supports an organization’s business strategy. IT management is also responsible for ensuring the availability and performance of mission-critical applications. Discover how to manage the IT environment from a dashboard that can deliver valuable and easy-to-use information from both physical and virtual environments.
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As virtualized servers move to production environments, the threat of process and infrastructure breakdown is mounting, exposing IT departments to a number of virtualization risks. IT managers are looking for solutions that provide better control and a more comprehensive view of their virtual and physical IT environments. Follow these simple guidelines to choose the best-fit vendor for your virtualization solution.
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Many large, sophisticated enterprise IT environments still suffer from preventable critical failures. To keep the infrastructure up and running, IT departments must constantly monitor servers, applications, and services—task that have become essential over the past 10 years. Learn about the most common infrastructure problems, and discover simple and proactive measures you can take to cut downtime by over 50 percent.
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Well-informed accounting treatment of network-critical physical infrastructure (NCPI) assets can improve a company’s financial performance. Design and manufacturing improvements in modular and scalable uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), power distribution units (PDUs), and computer room air conditioners provide entirely new NCPI asset management opportunities with direct and measurable financial benefits. Learn how.
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Contact center managers are expected to provide high levels of customer satisfaction while increasing revenues and controlling costs. How can you reconcile these seemingly opposing goals? One solution is to implement a performance management process using a technology-enabled closed-loop coaching framework. Find out how they can result in a powerful return on investment for your company and improve agent productivity.
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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are facing new challenges and opportunities. By linking people, processes, and workflows from inside and outside your company, business management software can help you drive success. Learn about key drivers in the “extended enterprise vision” strategy and how to integrate newer concepts, such as service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 capabilities, with existing applications.
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Providing single sign-on (SSO) to web applications and portals is more critical than ever. IT must manage identity and access to web applications and demonstrate compliance. This once required expensive infrastructure software and much time to deploy. With cloud-delivered identity services, companies can realize immediate benefit from an investment without installing and maintaining more software. Learn more.
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Your online business relationships change constantly. Managing the web identities used in these relationships—for employees, consultants, partners, customers, and vendors—is critical to secure growth. But there’s a way to remove the cost and complexity from securing online identities. Learn about a solution that can deliver identity infrastructure on demand, removing the complexity and costs of legacy identity solutions.
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Unsurprisingly, research shows that the majority of companies see their future predicated on how well they can innovate. However, just throwing IT technology at issues in the hope that innovation will happen is not viable. Ideas are ephemeral and easily crushed within the wrong environment. Creating a suitable culture, allied with a well implemented idea management approach combined with strong leadership, is required.
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Crowley Maritime, offering a range of services such as shipping and barge towing, needs rapid customer billing and invoicing. The company’s electronic data interchange (EDI) volume increased by 500 percent over five years, and management wanted to sustain this growth without harming service delivery. Find out how an integration solution enabled Crowley to support new growth without adding new staff, while reducing costs.
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Today’s data transmission departments are battling for budget and relevance. Moving files and ensuring delivery is getting tougher every day. To successfully deliver data to an increasing number of target platforms and meet rising customer expectations, leading companies are adopting service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and upgrading their file transfer departments into data transmission services. Find out more.
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Companies implement unified communications (UC) to boost employee productivity. An approach for successful UC implementation includes an often overlooked component: the need for visibility and control of network flows due to the increased demands of UC. Learn about a network appliance that can provide visibility of network traffic, so you can prioritize and control that traffic to realize the benefits of UC.
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The differences between on-demand applications (also known as software as a service, or SaaS) and on-premise solutions mean that stronger benefits can be achieved with a SaaS-based system. On-demand solutions are far more cost-effective than their on-premise counterparts—statistics show that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for an on-premise solution over the first three years is 60 to 200 percent higher. Find out more.
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The payment card industry (PCI) Data Security Standard establishes common processes and precautions for handling credit card data. Although achieving PCI compliance can seem daunting, the requirements represent security best practices that should be observed by any organization with IT systems and data to protect. Learn about network scanning and security assessment solutions that can help you manage PCI compliance.
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The Internet has grown from mainly academic and military use into a global, integrated, and sophisticated commercial utility. Not just an “information superhighway,” it now offers voice telephony, video, and mobile communications in a converged network. Connection services have expanded, and Internet service providers (ISPs) are adding value. Explore the challenges and opportunities—and find out what lies ahead.
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The network of devices used for information, security, and daily transactions is now ubiquitous, and everyone now relies on it even if they don’t acknowledge it. But network failure can cause widespread disruption, unhappy customers, unproductive employees, and lost business. Ensuring network availability, security, and efficiency is a job for experts who need powerful tools to carry out these tasks. Learn more.
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Recruiting IT talent to insurance companies has never been easy—but today, demographic pressures make the task of IT staffing even harder, as IT professionals retire and fewer new graduates become available to fill the positions. IT outsourcing may not offer the help you seek. To make sure your company can survive and prosper, learn how to find ways to hire qualified IT staff, and keep the IT staff you already have.
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As Expedia’s early rapid growth stabilized, the online travel company’s IT department sought ways to help employees become more productive and collaborate more effectively across long distances. Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 was deployed and integrated with Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services. Discover how Expedia benefits by enabling remote users to access network documents, and more.
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Until recently, St. Vincent Heart Center used an HTML-based intranet to disseminate various types of information to its 470 employees and 200 contract workers. But information on that system wasn’t easy to find. Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 offers the organization easy access to information—and it enhances productivity and supports increased security for confidential information. Read more about the benefits.
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Recent EquaTerra market research finds a consensus among western business leaders that increased globalization is inevitable—and that it will generally be beneficial. Quickly and efficiently leveraging opportunities created by globalization is the best way to avoid being overwhelmed by its challenges. Learn how to compare buyer and service provider data and get insight into developing a responsive global strategy.
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Many large companies don’t realize the pains network administrators take to maximize real estate in the data center. The keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) switch can help by enabling IT pros to effectively manage the continual expansion of data centers. Learn how organizations of all sizes can optimize their data centers using KVM and remote technology to set new standards of excellence in reclaiming precious rack space.
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The need for secure remote management tops network administrators’ “to do” lists. Until now, this was cost-prohibitive for all but the largest data centers. However, Internet protocol (IP) remote management devices are now affordable, enabling all organizations to benefit from secure IP access throughout an office in a distributed computing environment or around the globe—all via an Internet connection and browser.
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Como puede ver, NTRsupport pone a su alcance el uso de una pantalla compartida remota en segundos. Lo que esto significa es que con unos cuantos clics en su ratón, usted puede tomar el control de computadoras (PCs, Macs o Linux), proporcionando diagnósticos rápidamente y solucionar los problemas si tener que abandonar su escritorio.
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Server-gated cryptography (SGC) as part of your secure socket layer (SSL) certificate can protect you from the dangers waiting in cyberspace. But first you should know how SGC-enabled SSL certificates work and why they are different from other certificates. Find out how SGC-enabled SSL can help you assure your customers that you have stronger encryption, greater privacy, and reduced risks of fraud and identity theft.
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Secure socket layer (SSL) secures data transmissions across the Internet, and is an integral part of most Web browsers and Web servers. To make an SSL connection, SSL protocol requires that a server have a digital certificate installed—which is typically signed by an independent and trusted third party to ensure its validity. Find out more about SSL and how to know if you need to deploy an SSL certificate.
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Many consumers don’t trust Web site safety enough to complete an e-commerce transaction—and consequently, billions of dollars in sales are lost. How can you combat this trend and ensure your customers trust you enough to share their sensitive data in online transactions? Learn how an extended validation SSL certificate increases the visibility of authentication status—to help assure your visitors find your site is safe.
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For many companies, a network analyzer with application analysis capabilities is the essential tool in the IT administrator’s toolbox. No other tool can provide you with the level of individual transaction detail that is often necessary for solving problems. Learn the concepts and technologies behind effectively managing application performance, so you can identify and correct issues before they affect your business.
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The sensitivity of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) to delay and packet loss, compared with other network applications such as e-mail services, presents a big challenge. But if you have a basic understanding of VoIP traffic and of the quality metrics that VoIP monitoring tools can provide, you increase your ability to run your network smoothly. Learn about the statistics and metrics you need to maximize your VoIP use.
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Nearly 60 percent of Australian businesses with more than 100 employees do not respond to web-generated sales enquiries (such as e-mail or web forms) within seven days. But the bad news doesn’t stop there. Find out why your customers may still be waiting for you to respond—and what you can do about it.
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The Internet is a huge information resource and plays an increasingly important role in business and education. However, without adequate controls, organizations may be faced with a broad range of issues, from excessive personal use of the Internet during work hours, to legal risks if users access inappropriate content. But with web filtering technology, you can enable proactive management of Internet access. Learn more.
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The majority of IT organizations are under great pressure to evolve to a next-generation network operations center (NOC). A survey of 176 IT professionals has revealed that over a quarter of NOCs don’t meet their organization’s current needs for application performance management. Learn how to migrate away from the current stove-piped NOC to an integrated operations center that effectively supports all components of IT.
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The recently standardized NETCONF configuration management protocol, with the NETCONF-oriented data modeling language called YANG, can simplify network configuration management. Learn how the two technologies work, and how they can be used to support transactional capabilities and rollback management—so next-generation configuration management systems are simpler and more understandable than current systems.
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Virtualization is changing the way system hardware is used, and the way desktop environments are delivered and how users interact with applications. Virtualization can improve system use and reduce downtime—but there are significant inhibitors to a successful virtualization deployment. Find out why common virtual machine (VM) software is not enough to meet your business goals, and how a VMware solution can help you.
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The challenges of doing business in today’s economic climate are the same for mid-market companies as they are for larger corporations. The mid-market, however, has typically addressed those challenges differently and has not employed alternative service delivery models. But more and more mid-market firms are discovering that information technology outsourcing (ITO) can have a positive impact on growth. Find out why.
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Archiving and logging standards place a great burden on network security professionals and IT administrators. When your routers, firewalls, and other devices are added to multiple servers, the volume of data that must be kept accessible can be tremendous. Learn more about event log standards and challenges, and how to implement a tool that can improve troubleshooting and diagnosis of incoming—and in-house—security issues.
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Genius Project4Domino and Microsoft Project are both project management tools, and though their range of features is different, they are also complementary. Using the solutions together can bring a well-rounded project management solution to companies of all sizes. Learn how they can be used to ensure consistency and eliminate downtime, so your long-term strategic project plans are a success.
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A non-profit hospital needed to protect its critical clinical systems without either interrupting system availability or overloading the small IT security team. The hospital had to overcome several vulnerabilities, such as the fact that some clinical systems could not be patched due to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations. Find out how a server security solution helped the hospital address these challenges.
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Quantros, an application service provider (ASP), required a secure network and maximal uptime, but with a small IT department and a small budget. The challenges were to implement and enforce sound security policies and to keep up with the stream of vendor patches. A server solution that fixes vulnerabilities at the root cause and eliminates the need to hastily install patches increased server protection. Find out how.
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Electronic health records can provide many benefits for patients and health care providers and insurers. Health care technology managers should have a strategic technical background to make informed decisions about integrating, partnering, or supporting personal health care record (PHR) solutions. Learn best practices on implementation, and how to leverage your existing health care technologies with new PHR platforms.
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Server virtualization isn’t a new concept. But the benefits of extending server virtualization to the desktop may not be common knowledge. A virtual desktop solution can allow companies to run virtualized PCs and computer desktops on servers located inside the data center. Besides allowing centralized management, this setup can improve security and deliver new capabilities to the user. Learn about other benefits.
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Whatever your reasons for needing to capture a complete audit trail for all database activity, you want to make sure your system allows you to support three accepted approaches. This three-way auditing ability can provide auditing for all activity in your database, including monitoring, reporting, and alerting on all critical data activity across your company. Learn more about these approaches, and their many benefits.
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Integrating UNIX, Linux, Mac, Web, and database platforms includes securing all systems with the same authentication, authorization, and group policy services you use for Windows. How can this be done, without intrusive reconfiguration of your existing systems, while still providing the necessary granular administrative control? Learn how to leverage a centralized identity management tool leveraged with Active Directory.
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Data leakage and data breach are two disparate problems requiring different solutions. Data leakage prevention (DLP) monitors and prevents content from leaving a company via e-mail or Web applications. Database activity monitoring (DAM) is a data center technology that monitors how stored data is accessed. Learn why DAM complements DPL, and how you can benefit by making it part of your overall data security strategy.
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Threats to data content posed by insiders. Compliance regulations entailing stringent data controls. It’s hardly surprising companies need to find more secure methods for keeping confidential data under lock and key. Learn about managing security challenges across three important layers of your IT infrastructure, and how database activity monitoring (DAM) and database auditing and protection (DAP) can help you.
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Every decision you make factors some kind of risk. When making the decision to implement a content management system (CMS), it’s important to be aware of all possible potential risks—and how to prepare for them. How high is your risk of data loss? What can you do to mitigate the risk of security breach? And which is riskier for your company, a hosted or an installed CMS? Learn more about these and other risks.
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With today’s varied communication technologies, there are more ways than ever to stay in touch—and more pressure to respond immediately. This and the need to prioritize multiple messages prove that companies must provide employees with tools suited to managing an increased flow of messages. Learn more about second-generation enterprise communication solutions and how your company can deploy them for maximum benefit.
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A common misconception when considering a Web content management solution (CMS) is that open source software will save you time and money. Just because you don’t have to pay subscription fees or shell out for licensing doesn’t mean there aren’t hidden costs with open source implementation. Find out the questions you should ask before choosing open source—and how to best evaluate and compare your CMS options.
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It seems that these days you need a password for everything. And with so many to remember, it’s no wonder helpdesks are bombarded with calls that tie up the IT department’s resources. Password inflation and the resulting fatigue increasingly frustrate not only end users, but the support teams that deal with the fallout of strict password polices as well. Find out how some businesses are putting an end to this madness.
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Is your information security system staying on top of the 400 new threats that appear monthly? Securing your Web applications is not a one-time event, but a continuous process of testing and re-testing for new vulnerabilities, especially when vital data is in development or production. Learn how a Web application security optimization process can help you perform effective continuous assessments of your system.
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You think you're staying on top of security by monitoring your IT systems for changes and user activity. But current approaches to network security, such as native auditing, often fail to perform as well as they should. Before you hit the panic button, find out why your system may be letting you down, and letting unauthorized users in—and how with real-time insight into your servers, you can boost security and compliance.
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Some managers have concluded that strategic planning is nothing more than an exercise in futility, to be taken out and dusted off at annual meetings. However, strategic planning can still help direct your company and improve earnings. The trick is strategizing well—which means having all the information you need, when you need it. Find out how to hone your competitive edge with integrated business planning capabilities.
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For Dillard’s Inc., copying thousands of documents a day was just part of the routine. It soon came to realize, however, that this practice was not only wasteful, but costly too. To manage its documents more efficiently, the company turned to Xerox’s Document Centre multifunction system and DocuShare software. Since installing the new system, Dillard’s has reduced its copying costs from $1.54 (USD) per print to 28 cents.
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High-speed Internet access (HSIA) has become a key technology asset for many hospitality providers around the world. But as a widely regarded bottom-line impacting resource, HSIA must be properly managed in order to prevent negative impacts on a facility’s revenue. Learn how to create a strong, winning HSIA strategy that will increase your guest satisfaction and secure recurring revenue well into the future.
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Although information technology service management (ITSM) is not a new discipline, many organizations have yet to adopt it as a part of their IT service improvement strategy. To be successful, businesses must start by building a custom road map. Read about how focusing on long-term, strategic objectives—including a realized return on investment (ROI)—can greatly improve your IT service delivery and support.
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In the public sector, where it’s often more about process than the business case, recompeting a current outsourcing relationship doesn’t always make the most sense for ensuring continued value. Due to the cost and time investment in the recompete process, it can often cause more problems than solutions. In many cases, outsourcing agreements simply need to be updated to meet changing business requirements. Find out how.
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In the past 10 years, business process and IT outsourcing markets have become globalized, raising some key issues for outsourcing buyers. How can you develop a service delivery model for your business that fully exploits global sourcing opportunities while supporting overall corporate strategies, goals, and principles? By developing a set of integrated capabilities and processes as part of your core competency.
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Empirical evidence demonstrates that the benefits of a distributed IT services model are considerable—yet many companies still resist the change. If IT professionals took the time to fully understand the positive impact of distributed services models on both cost and value, they’d be better equipped to fight organizational resistance and develop a road map for successful change. Find out how you can build yours today.
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A contact center is a mission-critical component of any organization’s operations—regardless of who they service. Yet stakeholders often remain dissatisfied with its performance. In the past, contact centers benefited from advances in information and technologies, yet many companies struggled to determine how they could take advantage of these benefits. Find out how embracing both old and new technologies today can work.
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For many organizations, undertaking IT and business process outsourcing involves everything from finding and assessing providers, to selecting locations, to determining which services are required. But the hardest part of outsourcing occurs after the deal is done. To help businesses ensure consistency in outsourcing governance, there are nine critical factors to keep in mind that can help guarantee its success.
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In recent years, the BlackBerry smartphone has transitioned from being a small-scale productivity tool to a widely used mission-critical platform. This shift has prompted IT organizations to explore what key technical capabilities and internal process standards are needed to ensure superior performance and availability. Discover why traditional monitoring technologies have failed, and what new approaches have emerged.
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Like telephony, radio, and television, the Internet has become the ultimate disruptive technology—dramatically changing many aspects of daily life. With each technological revolution, sales professionals have had to learn how to use disruptive technology effectively. Find out why some software firms are now launching their products under the Sales 2.0 banner, and how you can use it to leverage Web 2.0 technology.
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It’s almost a certainty that every company will, at some time or other, face a significant incident. As such, many experts are turning to enterprise incident management. It empowers professionals from a variety of fields to work together to solve problems in a coordinated, disciplined manner so that budgets can be justified and progress can be made quickly. Learn how incident management can benefit your business.
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Once a revolutionary concept, data warehouses are now the status quo—enabling IT professionals to manage and report on data originating from diverse sources. But where does log data fit in? Historically, log data was reported on through slow legacy applications. But with today’s log data warehouse solutions, data is centralized, allowing users to analyze and report on it with unparalleled speed and efficiency.
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Is your business tangled in a maze of voice data networking equipment that burdens your staff and is cumbersome to support? If the answer is yes, then you may want to think about network convergence over Internet protocol (IP)—the foundation for IP telephony, unified messaging, and multimedia customer contact centers. Find out more about how your business can benefit from data and voice convergence solutions today.
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Managing growth is a monumental undertaking—and one that Valero Energy Corporation has mastered. But as one of the largest oil refinery companies in North America, with revenues exceeding $90 billion (USD), the company needed to find a way to fit new applications into its existing infrastructure in a quick and cost-effective manner. By switching to SAP’s NetWeaver platform, Valero saved $480,000 (USD) in the first month.
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A recent study by Jupiter Research found that e-mail marketers using Web analytics click-stream data to generate targeted e-mail campaigns produce an impressive average click-through rate of 14 percent, and a conversion rate of 3.9 percent. Can your business claim numbers this high? If not, find out how you can with Web analytics tools that will help you gain insight on your subscribers’ behaviors while increasing sales.
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The reasons most enterprises upgrade to an IP PBX system range from wanting to replace outdated equipment, to saving money, to adding needed functionality, to keeping up with growth. To evaluate competing offers from both established and new vendors, you need to learn about the market, background information, technology, standards, and the features and services that are critical and important to enterprises. Learn more.
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When it comes to US Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance, safe change actions are critical. But what’s the best approach for file integrity monitoring and change detection? While there are many solutions on the market, continuous file integrity monitoring (CFIM) is winning over the competition worldwide. Find out how CFIM can handle your operational control monitoring requirements.
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The University of Maryland School of Medicine had already experienced VMware technology as a way to consolidate its servers; what it didn’t realize was that the company’s solution could also address its disaster recovery needs. By combining two storage technologies—creating a common storage area network (SAN)—the school has reduced unexpected downtime from hours to seconds and has saved thousands of dollars in hardware costs.
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As the global marketplace continues to become more competitive, enterprises are struggling with how to retain their competitive edge. While many have transferred their databases to internet protocol (IP) to replace outdated systems, some have yet to upgrade their phone systems as part their strategy. Discover how migrating to voice over IP (VoIP) as part of an overall telecommunications strategy can help your business.
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While today’s regulatory environment poses significant challenges to businesses, it should be looked at as an opportunity—one that turns compliance efforts into capital gains. You can accomplish this with an internal audit of your change management policies. This checklist will help your business prepare for a high-level process audit while providing tools your IT managers can use for maximum results.
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Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) is a popular tool for the Windows platform that offers essential version control features and helps promote team collaboration. However, while it performs certain functions well, it’s not optimized for remote access, lacks many critical security features, and suffers from stability problems. Find out why many developers are now switching from VSS to SourceAnywhere Standalone.
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A business phone system is only as effective as its implementation. Despite its streamlined architecture, installing a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone system can present some challenges. The key to a successful rollout is a well-planned, phased approach. Following these 10 steps can help you lay the foundation for a system overhaul as well as streamline your business communications for many years to come.
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According to Web services provider IronPort, over 92 billion spam messages are sent around the world daily. While it may seem like an uphill battle, several strategies are available that can help. To combat these threats, many organizations are implementing new technologies to secure their inboxes by blocking unsolicited messages. Discover what other tactics your business can adopt to help e-mail deliverability.
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It’s an inescapable, undisputable fact that most organizations have conflict between IT security and IT operations. Having been given two distinctive—yet potentially contradictory—goals, in a sense they were destined to be at odds with one another. What does it take to bridge the gap between these two teams to achieve compliance? Can standardized processes and software tools help (or hinder) this effort? Find out here.
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Managing a newly deployed voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) integration project is not as easy as some IT managers believe it to be. Delivering voice traffic over the IP network is time-consuming, and requires the right tools and a proper budget. To fully understand the costs associated with IP telephony implementation, businesses must first conduct a thorough evaluation of their management options—prior to deployment.
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Why choose on-demand when there are so many integrated software solutions on the market? Because on-demand packages provide a number of benefits that can help IT focus on innovation and creating true business value, rather than dealing with network headaches. But along with the benefits there are a number of challenges. Read more about these challenges and how you can manage your on-demand implementation project.
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Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 is frequently deployed in small or midsize applications. And while many customers view it as an excellent small network-attached storage (NAS) solution, they often move to larger, proprietary file server appliances when their needs expand beyond its capacity. This approach, however, adds more expense and complexity. But with Sanbolic’s Melio Cluster, capacity can be added as needed.
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Microsoft System Management Server 2003 and Operations Manager 2005 storage monitoring solutions provide the necessary tools to centrally manage and monitor Windows client and server infrastructure. Now, Sanbolic’s LaScala clustered volume manager and related products offer a complementary toolkit which enables administrators to centrally configure and assign storage assets in a storage area network (SAN) environment.
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Administrative errors can and do happen, but native tools do little to aid administrators in this area. While Microsoft’s Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) is a great tool for managing group policy, it has its limitations. Discover how to implement best-practice approaches to help successfully extend the deployment of group policy to your server security settings, while reducing costs and minimizing errors.
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Effective IT disaster recovery (DR) and planning is essential for every business. However, IT environments have become so complex that safeguarding the business against disasters can present some major challenges. One way to improve your business disaster recovery planning is by pre-testing DR scenarios using network simulation. Find out how a simulation testing solution can help you better protect your business.
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Are you on top of data security compliance? Is your source code secure? Are you looking for a new approach that can help ensure these things are taken care of? With SourceAnyware Hosted solution—which provides 128-bit SSL encryption—your data is protected and your source code is secured from attacks. Find out how SourceAnywhere can help you lower total cost of ownership and improve your development team productivity.
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As businesses become increasingly dependent on the effective delivery of IT services over global networks, technologies that optimize application performance over wide area networks (WANs) become more competitive. But how do you know which WAN to choose when there are so many solutions on the market? By learning about WAN best practices and principles, and by making comparative evaluations of competing vendors’ offerings.
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The threats faced by small to medium businesses (SMBs) are multidimensional and must be handled differently from big enterprises, given the smaller number of personnel dedicated to look after them. The ideal security software for SMBs looking to protect their information systems would be the combination of antivirus, antispam, and content security solutions, combined with a powerful network firewall. Find out why it works.
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When you connect to the Internet, you do so through the Windows Socket (Winsock) layer. While this layer is an integral part of the Windows operating system and acts as an interface between your computer and the Net, it cannot distinguish the difference between good traffic and bad. MicroWorld Winsock Layer (MWL) technology helps by sitting on the Winsock layer and analyzing the traffic—before it gets to your computer.
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Today’s business processes place high demands on IT infrastructure, and the answer often is integration of software and hardware resources. Now you can integrate by separating: divide logical processing and storage resources from the physical hardware on which they run, and help make virtualization a powerful tool for improving your data center’s flexibility, reliability, and use—while reducing cost of management.
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In a 2006 SAP survey, 93 percent of respondents experienced data management issues during their most recent projects. The problem: many organizations believe that they are using master data, when in fact what they are relying on is data that is dispersed throughout the enterprise. Discover the importance of master data and how the ideal master data management (MDM) solution can help your business get it under control.
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For advocacy firms, safeguarding client information is of paramount importance. One key concern for these law firms is the presence of vulnerabilities in their networks due to the general lack of user awareness in information security issues. While there are a number of solutions on the market to combat threats, MicroWorld’s suite of security solutions provide highly advanced protection that businesses can rely on.
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Businesses today are increasingly committed to Web-enabled applications as a cost-effective way of delivering critical business solutions. But as more and more businesses follow suit, it becomes increasingly apparent that better performance and availability across the Internet must be realized by the early movers in order to maintain their lead. With the deployment of advanced products and services, this can be achieved.
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Blade computing is a new computing architecture that provides a highly dense, scalable, and powerful flexible platform to support businesses’ software needs. Blade architecture was once used for simple server consolidation, but it has now become a way of managing IT assets, which provides significant business benefits. Find out how a blade system can benefit your company while optimizing your existing infrastructure.
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A clear customer focus is an essential part of improving business effectiveness and efficiency. But how can businesses achieve global customer visibility in today's competitive market? With the implementation of a master data management (MDM) solution, businesses can gain multidimensional, real-time visibility of their customers, resulting in improved competitiveness, higher profit margins, and reduced business risk.
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The capacity of today’s storage systems is increasing at an astonishing rate. But the truth is: the more storage you have, the more you use. So, how do you create an efficient data storage system? And how much space can it really save you? Advanced single instance storage (A-SIS) deduplication can reduce storage consumption up to 95 percent—helping you conserve disk space, while keeping your system overhead low.
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Storage system administrators are constantly battling with growing volumes of data. But can you create more space-efficient storage? You can. With a data virtualization solution like NetApp Snapshot, administrators can create point-in-time copies of data volumes—consuming only a fraction of the space normally required. Find out how using data virtualization tools can help reduce your ongoing data storage management costs.
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When it comes to business-to-business (B2B) communications, two of the basic requirements for regulatory compliance are having a reliable network and a high quality dial tone. So why would you want to settle for anything less? To ensure that both are obtained, many companies are entrusting their data—and their compliance responsibilities—to the Inovis Multienterprise Expert Services Hub (MESH) platform. Find out why.
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E-mail archiving systems are no longer simply tools that focus on regulatory compliance, but instead are multifaceted systems that can help companies satisfy legal discovery requirements, improve messaging-related storage management, and assist in disaster recovery efforts. While there are several solutions available, a hosted solution can offer a number of important benefits you should consider.
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Implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system—even for small to medium businesses (SMBs)—is a smart move. But depending on the type of business, there can be many different processes to integrate—making it difficult to know what type of system to choose. For growing project-based companies faced with the challenge of managing many complex projects, the ideal ERP system should be customizable yet scalable.
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Even when business revenues decline, the demand for IT services often continues to increase. To meet those challenges, both businesses and IT partners must come to terms with the demand and delivery needs of each group. Strong communication between the user and the IT provider is essential. Strategize your initiatives and transform your business: find out key recommendations to manage IT supply and demand relationships.
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For consumers, fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) means a world where integrated voice and data services are available anywhere through a single mobile handset. For carriers, FMC represents a lucrative opportunity to leverage inexpensive technology. This technology, however, has its technical challenges, making performance hard to predict. To be successful, carriers need to understand the factors that influence this behavior.
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Today, dozens of independent operating companies and international carriers offer Internet protocol TV (IPTV) services to homes around the world. But IPTV for in-home distribution has been a weak link in the IPTV delivery chain—until now. Ruckus Wireless multimedia systems can help overcome current Wi-Fi limitations and enhance subscriber experience by uniquely enabling a whole-home network for video, voice, and data.
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It is widely acknowledged that unauthorized changes made to an IT infrastructure cause up to 80 percent of a system’s unavailability. So what key ingredient is needed to reduce that percentage? By adding change control to an existing or planned change management infrastructure, businesses can improve IT service availability, lower compliance costs, and accelerate their IT infrastructure library (ITIL) implementations.
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Deploying and migrating JaveEE applications is hard work, the kind that is error-prone, repetitive, and time-consuming, resulting in lost man-hours, soaring costs, and potential configuration issues that are bound to pop up later. In response to this complex environment, Phurnace Software has created a software application that accelerates the deployment of JavaEE applications and helps to minimize errors.
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Before an organization can truly realize the cost and agility benefits of enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA), there are a few concepts it should know about. By understanding the various stages of SOA adoption and by knowing what technologies are available, an organization will stand a better chance of succeeding in its SOA initiatives. With these seven steps, effective SOA can be realized.
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Corporate IT departments and independent software vendors (ISV) alike are faced with a number of similar business challenges. One such challenge is the problem of how to derive additional value from their existing Windows and UNIX software applications and create advantage with Web-enabled solutions. Discover the pros and cons of Web-based and Web-enabled applications—and learn about the solutions that lead the pack.
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Linux operating systems are taking the world by storm, and have seen double-digit growth rates for seven consecutive quarters. With its promise of higher performance and better stability and security, Linux has become the alternative to traditional Windows-based servers. By deploying Linux in key strategic areas and taking advantage of application publishing solutions, you can lower your costs and speed time-to-market.
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Nearly half of all US companies have serious data quality issues. The problem is that most are not thinking about their business data as being valuable. But in reality data has become—in some cases—just as valuable as inventory. The solution to most organizational data challenges today is to combine a strong data quality program with a master data management (MDM) program, helping businesses leverage data as an asset.
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The security provisions of the US Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) are complex and process-intensive, and non-compliant financial institutions and their officers have suffered penalties as a result. With QualysGuard’s vulnerability management and policy compliance solution—including on-demand auditing capabilities—financial institutions can easily meet the key security guidelines that are detailed in the GLBA.
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While most information vulnerabilities stem from external intrusion and theft of data, there remains a greater potential for information to be lost, stolen, or accidentally erased by internal sources—the employees. Don’t let this be the case with your business! Information vulnerability management (IVM) is a corporate issue—one that needs addressing. To learn how you can reduce your exposure, download this white paper.
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As a provider of employee benefits, CIGNA must observe a bevy of regulatory compliance mandates. Because much of its efforts are compliance-focused, it continually embraces technology, searching for new products to better manage its benefit offerings and track its security risks. With QualysGuard’s vulnerability management solution, CIGNA has mitigated vulnerabilities and remained up-to-date with compliance regulations.
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With a vast global network that supports over 60,000 employees, vulnerability and risk management programs are crucial for Oracle GIT. To further enhance its IT system risk management capabilities, Oracle deployed QualysGuard’s on-demand software vulnerability and compliance management solution. Since its deployment, Oracle has optimized its scanning capabilities and automated its demand security auditing processes.
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As one of the largest Internet marketplaces, eBay proclaims that the trust it enables between buyers and sellers has been the key to its success. To ensure continued success, eBay wanted to standardize its network security auditing and remediation processes, and turned to QualysGuard’s vulnerability management solution. With Qualys’ automated solution, eBay can now quickly and easily remediate any network vulnerabilities.
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To keep your growing business competitive, your data center must be secure, protected against disaster, and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But if managing IT is not your core competence, what are your options? A managed service provider (MSP) can help. Learn about the benefits of outsourcing data center management, and make sure your crucial business applications are always available when you need them.
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With the increasing complexity of the data center and its dependent systems, data center automation (DCA) is becoming a necessity. To replace the costly and inefficient human aspect of managing the data center, IT departments must adopt DCA solutions. Combined with utility-based computing architectures, these solutions can provide greater dynamics in the environment and facilitate speed of response to market demands.
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Web analytics has never been an exact science—which can make the process extremely frustrating. How can you be 100 percent certain that the data you’re working with is always accurate? To deal with this and many other questions that will arise, businesses must gain a better understanding of how well their analytics tools work with their existing data integration solutions, and how using testing platforms will help.
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TESTCo was accustomed to managing its issue tracking for software testing using Microsoft Excel or one of its customers’ homegrown solutions. But as operations expanded, the company realized it needed a better system to manage this process—one that could monitor issues and ensure they were resolved and documented. Using ProjectLockers Issue Manager, TESTCo has benefited by saving on maintenance hours and costs.
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For many years, S&C Electric, a global provider of electric power system equipment, used internally built tracking and Subversion data to manage source code and documents and to track viruses. But as it grew, its needs became more complex, and more maintenance time was required. A managed source control solution now manages and protects S&C Electric’s intellectual property, and saves the company a lot in man-hours.
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Any geographically distributed business with three or more remote sites has likely dealt with tape-based backup systems. If this sounds like your business, then you certainly understand the complexities involved with managing growing data—not to mention the risks. The good new is that an agentless, multisite backup and recovery software solution is available that can offer a high-speed alternative to tape-based systems.
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Would spending millions of dollars and countless hours securing your data center be enough for it to pass a compliance audit? While many businesses work hard at securing their data centers, they often forget to secure remote office data. With the consequences of non-compliance ranging from financial penalties to job loss and worse, it could mean the end of your business. Don’t let compliance become your Achilles heel.
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IT managers today face plenty of problems when it comes to protecting remote office data—problems that agentless architecture could eliminate. Many organizations outsource their data protection, which can be costly. But an agentless architecture disk-to-disk (D2D) software solution can offer your business bottom-line benefits that range from lower administrative costs to pay-as-you-grow scalability and increased security.
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Today’s IT professionals are often challenged by unrelenting changes in the enterprise, increased data growth and compliance regulations, and geographic distribution of assets, to name a few. Keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) over Internet protocol (IP) can help by providing an effective tool that can remotely manage servers—regardless of their physical location. When looking for a KVM over IP solution, you should consider some basic requirements first.
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An estimated 55 percent of users of business critical applications work in remote locations. With so many users working remotely, networks become congested and user productivity suffers. Until now, wide area network (WAN) monitoring and shaping has required special appliances, but there’s a new alternative software-based solution available that leverages the power of the user’s PC—providing unprecedented traffic control.
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Is it possible to easily migrate from legacy tape devices to encrypting tape drives and still keep costs to a minimum? The answer is yes. With a comprehensive key management storage security system, a manageable and affordable migration process is achievable with a simple 3-step process. This process includes many benefits, such as a complete feature set that enhances system auditability and minimizes operational costs.
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What can a managed Subversion solution do to help .NET businesses solve their integration problems? Subversion meets the challenge of software development by allowing teams to use branching and tagging methods that help them work better with their QA organizations. It also saves .NET businesses a lot of money over setting up and maintaining a development infrastructure in house, which keeps the cost of ownership manageable.
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What does Visibility’s .NET enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution have that others don’t? .NET technology. And because it contains no legacy code, it provides a system that’s accessible using a web-browser and has a user interface equal in functionality to a client-server application. In fact, any client PC with Internet Explorer 5.5 or later can operate it—without compromising the quality of the user experience.
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In their efforts to accelerate time to market and improve business process efficiency, many marketing organizations adopt customer relationship management (CRM). But CRM often falls short in exploiting the exponential growth of content associated with product and brand marketing. By using a digital asset management (DAM) solution, however, you can increase productivity and achieve a favorable return on investment (ROI).
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In today’s business world, heightened privacy concerns and tightened regulations such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act have forced organizations to improve their workflow and archival and records management processes. That's why many results-oriented organizations are now using workflow software—bringing together people, processes, and documents to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and meet compliance requirements.
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Today’s complex enterprise networks present unique challenges to those whose task it is to manage and secure them. Existing security measures that worked yesterday may not be sufficient tomorrow. But by combining Configuresoft’s Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM) with Microsoft’s System Center 2007, businesses can secure their data, protect their bottom lines from costly downtime, and meet regulatory standards.
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IT is often characterized as distinct groups pursuing individual agendas and launching disconnected initiatives to increase operational efficiencies. To overcome this, organizations need a set of capabilities that can help improve coordination between IT and the rest of the business while facilitating effective service management. Adopting foundational technologies and a best-practice benchmark is a good place to start.
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Most businesses today depend on their own IT departments to satisfy corporate governance objectives and meet increasing customer demand. Unfortunately, many have failed to clearly demonstrate to themselves—and to their customers—that they are truly managing their business. Only when the IT department understands what the business wants can it benchmark itself and build continual improvement plans that can meet these demands.
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How can you get the most out of a customer relationship management (CRM) solution while reducing operating costs and increasing overall profitability? By purchasing a hosted CRM solution that’ll provide the benefits of an on-premise CRM solution without the need for a complex implementation or the assistance of an in-house IT team. Hosted CRM is a cost-effective solution that promises a quick return on investment (ROI).
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Developing a good disaster recovery plan (DRP) in today’s business world is a must. In fact, downplaying the importance of a DRP can be costly—especially if you’re a small to medium business (SMB) that is slow in adopting DRP. Recent studies have shown that 40 percent of businesses that have encountered a disaster close their doors within the following five years. To stay afloat, here are ten steps that should be taken.
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In order for a business to stay on top of compliance requirements required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)—and avoid financial penalties or possible jail time—it must take a good look at its IT environment and financial reporting processes. The collection, management, and analysis of log data are integral to meeting SOX requirements and as such, require a system that automates these processes across the IT infrastructure.
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Organizations of all sizes face similar challenges when managing storage—not enough capacity or protection. Help has arrived with Internet small computer system interface storage area networks (iSCSI SANs)—and they're steadily gaining momentum. With iSCSI SANs, businesses can effectively manage their storage needs, while lowering costs and increasing security. Find out why many industry leaders are choosing iSCSI today.
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Today’s extensive use of data collection tools coupled with the easy access to communication networks has woven more devices and systems into the fabric of our daily lives. As the scale of integration and complexity grows, so does the need for the appropriate paradigm to address it. In order to scale, system software architecture must be organized around a common-shared information model that can span multiple systems.
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Information lifecycle management (ILM) is rapidly gaining acceptance as a process crucial to the success of many IT initiatives. The reason for this is the importance of managing data. With the growing demand for ILM comes a variety of solutions that follow a disjointed, point product approach. By choosing an ILM software designed to scale to its needs, a business can benefit from software built on a unified platform.
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Every day, sensitive business information finds its way into the wrong hands—through external breaches or internal theft. Such data is highly regulated, and any risks of exposure can result in stiff penalties and legal liabilities. Many of these security risks lie in the test/dev environments, and as such require a solution that protects data application clones from unauthorized access without jeopardizing its integrity.
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The growth of application data has placed an enormous burden on IT organizations to maintain acceptable application performance and availability. The weight of managing and navigating through vast amounts of inactive data has caused outages and raised budgets, among other problems. Active archiving software, however, addresses complex data management issues and delivers lasting benefits to organizations and its users.
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Data breach is a very real problem in business today. Every day, organizations store massive amounts of data inside database tables—data ranging from credit card transactions to product inventories. This valuable information is what runs the business. In order to protect this data and stay on top of compliance, an enterprise data management solution that respects information privacy regulations should be considered.
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Fax hardware plays a crucial role in the sending and receiving of business documents. With high-volume use over time, instabilities in performance can occur. Therefore, how well fax boards and fax software applications perform together becomes an important consideration. With IQ Express intelligent fax board series, fax servers send and receive corporate documents electronically—reducing costs and improving productivity.
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Three strikes—your out; that’s what lockout management does. But employees often forget the many passwords needed to access information. What ensues is a flood of calls to the help desk that, over time, can become a huge administrative burden. Adopting a strong password policy is critical. By implementing a lockout management strategy via automated management solutions, businesses enhance security and improve workflow.
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When Naghi Group’s annual revenue began to soar, it realized that running core business operations on multiple systems was no longer feasible; its current solution lacked the integration capabilities necessary to communicate with its distribution and manufacturing departments. After only a few months since integrating VAI’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Naghi has already realized its many benefits.
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Financial service institutions spend thousands of dollars every year on securing their networks from external breaches, but often fail to think about possible internal threats. Employee fraud has become a growing problem in the financial sector—one that many institutions are not fully prepared to handle. Implementing automated detection technologies, however, can be their first line of defense to eradicating this problem.
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Technology products always seem to come out strong, and then wither under intense scrutiny. This was the case with single sign-on (SSO). However, any product driven by strong need will reinvent itself to address the problems it contains. With SSO, a number of myths have now been exploded. Find out why it may be time for you to evaluate SSO for your company. Myth #1: You can’t get true SSO.
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Many of today’s regulations require that organizations retain, archive, and protect log data from systems, applications, and network devices, and that the log data be reviewed periodically. However, given the size and complexity of most enterprise environments, collecting and managing the sheer deluge of information is beyond the capabilities of human-based resources. Discover how NetIQ Security Manager can help.
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NetIQ Secure Configuration Manager can help you protect your IT infrastructure and meet compliance requirements in the IT controls areas of entitlement reporting and segregation of duties. This holds across many different platforms, none more important than Unix and Linux. Learn how to make it work for you.
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Manual IT management can create significant problems with service and control for small- to medium-sized businesses, and add worrisome operational and resource costs. However, automated IT systems can significantly reduce and even eliminate many of these problems. Automate your IT systems now to increase security, provide users with better service, and lower your total cost of ownership (TCO).
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While virtualization technology can simplify server management and reduce operating costs, in production environments it presents a disaster-recovery challenge. The problem: simply backing up a host server doesn’t always ensure that data within virtual machines is recoverable. With Acronis’s True Image, IT managers can rest assured their data, settings, applications, and operating systems are protected against disaster.
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Aerospace and defense (A&D) has unique security needs. Avoiding the unauthorized sharing of technical information and intellectual property is essential. Product development systems (PDSs) provide the secure, real-time collaboration A&D needs, including extended and secure collaboration of distributed product development processes. PDSs control access to intellectual property, mitigating information sharing risks.
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To boot or pre-boot, that is the question. There’s no doubt that operating systems (OSs) are complicated given the sheer amount of code that must be flawlessly interfaced and the potential vulnerabilities that can ensue. While full disk encryption (FDE) is one step closer to a more secure OS, encryption without strong authentication isn’t enough. For security-conscious users, pre-boot authentication is the only way to go.
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Many manufacturers want to increase production efficiency and improve quality—but how can they ensure their efforts are successful? A process-oriented enterprise resource planning (ERP) system may be the answer. This white paper includes case studies on a variety of process manufacturing industries and provides valuable insights into the ERP capabilities required to successfully manage a process-oriented implementation.
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On top of the many challenges faced by IT managers today comes yet another challenge: ensuring efficient and secure user access to SAP. Because of the unencrypted communication between users’ workstations and the backend servers, the SAP environment—and the confidential data it stores—become vulnerable. With a secure single sign-on solution to SAP, however, you can significantly improve the security of this environment.
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Protecting your company’s data is not only wise, but often legally necessary. In order to beef up their data security programs, more companies are implementing full disk encryption (FDE). In the past, FDE was software based, which left it open to greater security risks. With the advent of new technology, however, it is now possible to migrate from software- to hardware-based FDE while still protecting your existing systems.
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Fax servers are essential for the financial services industry. Their reliability and security help transmit financial information quickly and safely. Financial institutions, however, also have workflow and document needs due to lots of back-office paperwork. Luckily, there are fax servers on the market that help financial institutions optimize workflow and business processes—organizing and reducing paperwork backlog.
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When you decide to implement a new fax software solution, you should review how the solution will be implemented and managed, as well as its ability to grow with your network. Within a Windows network, critical architectural, administrative, and usage concerns should be thoroughly considered. Review your options with this fax server overview outlining the benefits of different fax servers and e-mail integration.
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Secure transmission of health care information is critical to your medical organization and your clients. Volumes of critical medical data are sent to you every day, making it imperative that the information be sent quickly and safely. Fax servers are easy-to-use point-to-point systems that provide secure transmission of confidential information—saving you time and money while protecting all your sensitive data.
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What would you do if a critical error occurred during production—all because the wrong data was input into your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system? You’d probably be asking “how could this happen?” The ability to communicate information between teams can mean the difference between production success and failure. Avoid these snafus with a system that can integrate the data of both the design and ERP systems.
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Why is Vyatta’s open source networking approach so successful? Because it is in touch with today’s users needs. By eliminating the reliance on specialized hardware, Vyatta’s open source, Linux-based approach to networking is changing the way networks are being purchased and deployed. With its strong community of users, Vyatta is challenging even proprietary networking vendors like Cisco. We challenge you to find out more.
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How can you get the most out of your virtualization project and avoid the common mistakes made by many businesses? By adopting a strategy that’ll allow you to be free of risk and save on your pocketbook. Don’t let your virtualization project become another implementation failure; make it a success. Sensitizing yourself to the five mistakes common to many enterprise virtualization implementations is a good place to start.
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Microsoft Dynamics is a business management solution designed to allow your employees to customize and automate their Microsoft Office system user interface according to their preferences and work styles. Microsoft Dynamics helps your employees and your business work more efficiently—giving you a faster return on investment and an effective and profitable business.
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Microsoft development tools will help developers and independent Microsoft software vendors integrate Microsoft Dynamics GP with existing applications. This accounting and business management system includes many features and benefits, as well as guidelines to help developers choose the right tools for various development tasks and create custom applications that integrate with Microsoft Dynamics GP.
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The role of finance departments needs to shift from cost center and scorekeeper to that of key advisor to the business. That’s why you need to change processes to help employees work more efficiently on high-value analytical tasks. Implementing next-generation enterprise financial systems will help balance control, transaction processing, and decision support—as well as lower your total cost of ownership.
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Storage area networks (SAN) continue to grow in size and complexity. Often, the ongoing cost of maintenance and upgrades exceeds the initial acquisition and implementation cost. The ideal solution is to find an architecture that provides a simple migration path without disrupting the existing infrastructure. A stackable fibre channel switch can deliver—without diminishing your ability to upgrade and expand in the future.
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Corporate e-mail usage is expected to jump 38 percent by 2009. Can our future data centers handle this load? By using QLogic’s fibre channel host bus adapters (HBAs) in the Microsoft Exchange environment, your data centers can handle the load without degrading overall performance—thus providing the bandwidth and throughput you’re going to need.
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The Solaris operating system has become the top choice for hosting data center applications. Sun Solaris platforms consistently exceed the reliability requirements of enterprise data centers while at the same time reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). QLogic fibre channel solutions are a perfect match for Solaris environments and successfully meet the input/output requirements of enterprise applications.
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IT managers know that choosing the Linux host bus adapter (HBA) for their data center infrastructures can impact the reliability of their systems. That is why Linux-based servers are being deployed in many enterprises. You can use the reliability of QLogic storage area networks (SANs) to drive more value from your SAN investments—giving your IT managers increased reliability and scalability in a hardware portfolio.
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Fibre channel storage area networks (SANs) used to be implemented in only high-end enterprise class data centers, but this is no longer the case. SANs have become more affordable and can be widely implemented without sacrificing performance. When you need to expand your frame-based computer network, consider stackable switches as a cost-effective solution for the infrastructure of a fibre channel SAN.
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IT organizations today are faced with the constant pressure of reducing costs at the service desk, while at the same time ensuring optimal customer service. To accelerate their IT infrastructure library (ITIL) initiatives, many are implementing service resolution management (SRM) systems. With the addition of SRM, these organizations can address the core issues required to operate an efficient and strategic service desk.
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As products become more complex and customer expectations continue to rise, service and support become increasingly difficult. So how can service and support managers transcend these problems and use each customer interaction to build customer loyalty and drive service leveraged revenue? By empowering customers with Web 2.0 technology and enabling users to manage their own experiences. Find out how.
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Server and data center consolidation has never been more important. Issues such as server sprawl and increasing costs have made consolidation the number one priority among IT managers. New virtualization technologies, however, are helping data centers combat these problems. Learn about the factors that are driving consolidation initiatives today, and find out what best practices can be used for ensuring its success.
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As your business grows, so too does the complexity of your data center. Along with this complexity, there are problems such as the inflexibility caused by operating systems, applications, and associated data, which are bound to the hardware they are installed on. Discover eight ways to optimize the infrastructure in your data center using virtualization products designed to work with your current technologies.
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Today’s data centers are an increasingly complex mixture of server platforms, hardware, operating systems, data, and applications that have accumulated over time. So how do you take your data center from a tangled mess of suboptimal servers which may be hampering your service levels, to one that can maximize performance? With the use of virtualization technology, data center optimization can become a reality.
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So, you’ve made the switch from a traditional rack server to a blade server. Now, you want to maximize your blade server return on investment (ROI) and reduce your costs further. A variety of input/output (IO) products is out there, specially designed to comply with all original equipment manufacturer (OEM) blade hardware. The next step is to get the facts on how they can benefit you.
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One of the main concerns now facing IT managers is how to keep the interoperability of their service area networks (SANs), without sacrificing functionality. What can you do to make your SAN “share everything and play nice”? In fact, there are many options available for extending SAN fabrics. The result: independent routing, improved interoperability, high performance routing, and universal SAN bridging.
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As management visionary and author Peter Drucker once said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” No statement rings truer—especially when it comes to security risk reduction. By having an accurate depiction of your network, however, you can identify real-world security threats and learn how to evaluate your organization’s ability to respond to them. Find out how, with these seven essential steps.
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With the growing global epidemic of data theft, tougher regulations are being enforced by government bodies worldwide. As such, organizations need to work harder at proactive security. With the right technology, identifying network vulnerabilities and measuring overall security exposure becomes manageable. By using these eight steps as your guide, you can put an end to network security vulnerabilities once and for all.
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The limited distance capabilities of storage area networks (SANs) make it difficult for IT managers to share, protect, and move data over areas greater than ten kilometers. Using routers and switches that link SANs over Internet protocol wide area networks (IP WANs) is one way to approach this difficulty. Go the distance with your SAN—learn what it takes to build and implement SAN-over-WAN solutions.
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Worldwide, various standards have been created to provide some form of structure with respect to delivering products and services. Over time, however, the adoption of industry compliance guidelines has seen many pitfalls, specifically with the advent of technology. Developing a sound compliance strategy requires a unified solution—one that includes all the necessary components, but also keeps the business users in mind.
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Joshen Paper & Packaging needed to update its enterprise resource planning (ERP) distribution system. Joshen partnered with Vormittag Associates Inc. (VAI) and found a solution that consolidates its financial reporting and provides its sales team with real-time inventory information access. The result: faster inventory turnaround and order fulfillment—and to date, about 100 new clients in its customer base.
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“The lower the communications latency, the faster the time-to-solution.” This truism, though logical and truthful, is only useful to IT managers if it is accompanied by suggestions targeting ways to reduce communications latency. But help is here: a single-chip application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), optimized for communications patterns typically found in HPC applications, makes this truism ring truer.
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Whether you’re a manufacturer, vendor, or customer service company, the increasing pressure to make sales and decrease service costs affects you. The key to its success is to look at your customer experiences as repeatable life cycles. Instead of viewing sales and service as independent challenges—solved by using disconnected software packages—an integrated solution that accelerates the total life cycle may be the answer.
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Knowledge management (KM) can mean different things to an organization depending upon the nature of the initiative. KM is not a technology or set of methodologies, but a practice or discipline that involves people, processes, and technology. If implemented correctly, a KM initiative can improve the productivity and efficiency of an entire organization. With these ten basic principles, your organization can learn how.
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Today’s support organizations often face the challenge of providing efficient and effective customer service. Without the right tools, it can become an uphill battle. To gain true scale and effectiveness in service and support, many organizations are now turning to knowledge management initiatives like knowledge-centered support (KCS)—a business process that directly addresses the root causes of support inefficiencies.
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Are you moving to call-center multisourcing to save money? Did you know that many multisourced agents use varied and unreliable systems? This leads to unavailable agents and, consequently, long waits for your customers. Are all call centers like this? No. Call centers using a common hosted platform share tools and unify agent management, resulting in answered calls and positive customer experiences
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An ever-increasing demand on storage area networks (SANs) has meant a necessary evolution of throughput standards. SAN administrators are now burdened with multiple generations of SAN host bus adaptors (HBAs)—and unwieldy management overhead. A scalable HBA architecture might provide just the functions you need to address your cost, performance, backward compatibility, and future scalability concerns.
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Reducing costs and increasing the quantity and availability of data have always been concerns for IT departments. Booting up with a local area network (LAN) has long been one effective way of meeting those needs. However, what you might not know is that storage area network (SAN) booting with iSCSI connections can be even more effective in cutting costs and supplying information—and in providing greater security.
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Supplemental product or technical data is typically delivered separately from the information contained within portable document format (PDF) files. This can make it difficult for users to locate the additional content for download. With the CopyFILE plug-in application, however, companies can integrate supplemental product information by using links within a PDF file—thus allowing content to be easily distributed.
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To build or not to build—that is the question. Is building an enterprise application from scratch better than modifying existing application code? With a .NET framework, the answer is an emphatic yes. Building applications from scratch using only .NET code not only provides cost savings, it also allows software developers to extend applications to users via the Internet—without sacrificing functionality or security.
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Interconnect performance has become a key factor in application and system performance, and this will increasingly be the case as applications become more complex. Indeed, latency and bandwidth are not the only factors defining interconnect performance. Discover the truth behind common interconnect performance misconceptions, and gain a better understanding of how your interconnect solution will perform.
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The ratification of standards is important to any industry. Now, in the realm of storage area networks (SANs), new standards are being put in place to ensure user-friendly and heterogeneous fibre channel switches that allow for multiple vendors and increased interoperability. Before incorporating a multi-switch fabric into your SAN, however, you should know the whys, whats, and hows involved.
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Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes often span multiple systems. However, many organizations operate in department and application silos, with a lack of silo integration inhibiting a process approach. This leaves a significant amount of manual work, resulting in a risk of error, latency, and lack of visibility and reporting. So how can you automate these processes and drive real value?
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In our lifetime, we have witnessed IT evolve from a limited service function into a critical core competency. Stepping out of the shadows and into the limelight has created new challenges for IT, however. Fortunately, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a common framework for all IT activities. But experience shows that ITIL initiatives still tend to stumble for a variety of reasons.
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The cardinal sin of outsourcing governance is to focus entirely on the mechanics and the price. If you do that, you’ll squander the true potential of the relationship. So spend the time and effort required to ensure an effective governance process—and don’t lose sight of the fact that without cultural alignment with your vendor, you’ll only be creating ground rules for debate, not agreement.
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Bridging the gap between an application’s problem domain and its code can be difficult, even for the best software engineers. Bridging these two diverse worlds—each with its own language—requires a finished application that creates an intersection between the two. By building a domain-specific modeling (DSM) language and generator using MetaEdit+, engineers close the gap and pave the way to better productivity.
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There is a high demand for economical and efficient enterprise applications. The Internet and open source software are creating opportunities for software vendors to deliver their software as a service. By transforming your own applications, you give your clients access to your solutions on the Web, on a per-use, per-project, or subscription basis—giving them the inexpensive, accessible service they want.
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Stable revenue and stronger customer relationships are what software companies want, and more are turning to software as a service (SaaS) platforms to reach these goals. Building an SaaS infrastructure is complex, and you need operations and engineering experts to manage your infrastructures. Start by following a step-by-step process—thus helping to increase your revenue and strengthen your customer network.
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In today’s datacenter, management costs have eclipsed all others. Server management puts a huge strain on IT budgets and, as a result, solutions that reduce costs by simplifying IT infrastructures and automating management processes are in high demand. Thankfully, a Linux-hosted management tool delivers automation for key management process—allowing your IT talent to focus on real-time business needs.
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For independent software vendors (ISVs), software delivery creates big operational challenges. Integrating an application with the latest operating system and service pack causes headaches for customers and suppliers. However, pre-built server devices or appliances contain one convenient, ready-to-go system, minimizing configuration glitches and letting customers and suppliers step back while the appliance does the work.
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Businesses and security threats alike are evolving. Strong protection of client data is a necessity for any organization handling credit card information, especially if it’s subject to payment card industry (PCI) compliance. As a result, many businesses are looking for ways to ensure proper security controls. Thankfully, there are solutions adapted to the challenges of meeting PCI compliance—and staying secure.
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For organizations deploying many servers, total cost of ownership (TCO) analyses favor blade over rack-optimized systems. Blade server systems—reducing both capital and operating expenses—exploit economies of scale when deploying servers in volume. Saving power, cooling, and space by more than 25 percent, the blade advantage is particularly relevant for servers working in conjunction with storage area networks (SANs).
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Malware attacks have reached unprecedented levels—to the point where antivirus labs cannot keep up with the sheer volume. What are the current malware dynamics, and how far-reaching is their impact? More importantly, what is the state of technological solutions to address the issue?
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There is no single antivirus engine on the market today that is the fastest and most effective at identifying viruses, spam, or other threats. According to a recent survey, 97 percent of organizations have antivirus software installed, yet 65 percent have been infected at one time or another since. One way to reduce the chance of virus infection is to install multiple antivirus scanners at the mail server level.
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Is it beneficial to use multiple types of virtualization software together? The answer: yes. Combining complementary virtualization technologies provides a stronger, more robust solution that reduces costs, maximizes return on investment (ROI), and minimizes the number of servers to manage. By consolidating these technologies, organizations can get the most out of the application, hardware, and operating system (OS).
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As the digital era evolves, media content companies are faced with a number of new challenges. One such challenge is that they can no longer specialize in one communication format. The advertising market is now a dynamic and complex forum making it difficult to manage multiple channel revenues. A standard, integrated solution, however, can facilitate the management of advertising revenues while increasing customer satisfaction.
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Just when you thought you had all your security measures figured out, along comes the portable storage device to make you question them all over again. With the popularity of portable consumer products—and their ever-increasing storage space—comes a greater risk of losing sensitive corporate data. To secure corporate data, companies must not only focus on perimeter security, but on internal security weaknesses as well.
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In 2004, there were 1.3 billion credit cards in circulation in the US. With fraud incidents on the rise, credit card companies are at constant risk of losing sensitive cardholder data. At the same time, strict payment card industry (PCI) requirements are forcing companies to put better systems in place to ensure clients are adequately protected. By implementing the right software tools, achieving compliance is possible.
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Improving the supply chain is essential for any company that wants to gain or maintain a competitive edge. To do this, companies are adopting sales and operations planning (S&OP) strategies. Years ago—when the pace of market change was slow—S&OP was a nice-to-have; today it’s a business imperative! But it doesn’t have to happen overnight. By taking a five-step approach, companies can implement S&OP at their own pace.
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As with any hot market, point-to-point wireless is bait for the pathologically
opportunistic. In this atmosphere—often termed "anarchy"—trust can t be a matter of faith. To get in on the wireless opportunity without getting shafted, you need to know a few basic and incontrovertible facts concerning the difference between licensed and license-free wireless. In fact, a successful outcome depends on choosing the right one.
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"Wild West" is a metaphor often used to describe the wireless wide area network (WAN) business. But it s worse than that. In the Old West, everyone had a gun. In this business, customers are defenseless. What s going on? Well, for one, vendors are playing fast and loose with terminology that should mean something. Wireless is compelling, but how do you decide what s right for you—and who do you trust?
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Why do some customer relationship management (CRM) implementations fail? The answer: companies’ lack of understanding of their current CRM environments, and of what areas need modification or improvement. Companies with a clear understanding of what they need from a CRM solution—as well as of what CRM means to their business—are more likely to succeed. To clinch that success, some key elements should be assessed first.
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As a supplier to Wal-Mart, appliance manufacturer Haier America was required to implement a radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging system. To satisfy this requirement and to keep costs to a minimum, Haier needed a solution that would seamlessly integrate with its current enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. That’s why it turned to a custom-designed modification package. But was it enough for Wal-Mart?
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For most companies, e-mail is an integral part of the business workflow and a primary channel for communication. For these reasons, e-mails can be considered legal business documents and should be retained for a predefined period to satisfy government regulations. With an e-mail archiving system, message contents and attachments are stored in a read-only format, ensuring they are archived in their original state.
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Research shows that between 65 and 95 percent of all e-mail is considered spam. On an individual level, spam is an annoyance more than anything else, but on a company-wide basis, spam causes significant problems—and the cost to manage it is sizeable. Spammers are always one step ahead of antispam vendors, so to combat this persistent problem, companies need a single-source product that can eliminate spam for good.
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Over the past few years, vulnerabilities have exploded across all types of platforms—leaving IT security and operations teams scratching their heads. Today, many companies use the scan-and-patch method for managing vulnerabilities—a reactive security process that should be avoided. By combining assessment and remediation, companies create a vulnerability management program that can rapidly respond to emerging threats.
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Although layer-two networks are a viable, cost-effective alternative to traditional wide area network (WAN) services, they have some major security deficiencies. One of the key drawbacks of layer two is its inability to handle identity authentication—which creates serious theft and vulnerability problems. With a layer-two data protection solution, however, you can mitigate these types of security issues.
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Storage area networks (SANs) are complex structures that contain an infinite number of configuration possibilities—making the process of configuring the devices to be installed into the SAN a lengthy one. To simplify the process, QLogic’s configuration wizard provides users with some basic tools to guide them through common SAN tasks, enabling them to easily build stable and secure SAN fabrics for their storage solutions.
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The days of storage area networks (SANs) built with hubs and based on private, arbitrated loops are gone. Today’s fully public switches—which include a variety of switch features—make managing large SANs a lot easier. The key to a flexible SAN is the switch’s ability to create zones, which allows the SAN to be partitioned into various groupings and enables SAN managers to allocate storage where it makes the most sense.
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The first step to a successful storage area network (SAN) implementation is preplanning. Architecting a SAN not only helps solve issues of storage consolidation, it facilitates day-to-day data center support and maintenance. A SAN investment should save support dollars, not require additional support resources. With a sound implementation strategy, costly upgrades—and many headaches—can be avoided.
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Portable document format (PDF) files are used by businesses worldwide to streamline business processes and secure archives. In order to comply with ever-changing government rules and regulations, many companies have come to rely on the security and ease of use that PDF formats provide. With Print2PDF 7.0 Server Edition, documents are easily converted into secure, industry-standard PDF files that can be viewed by anyone.
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With data theft on the rise, many companies are forced to improve their network security. And although they spend millions of dollars every year on securing these networks, the focus has largely been on securing the access to the network rather than protecting the information itself. Secure information sharing (SIS) solutions integrate additional intelligence into the process—and protect your data without added overhead.
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Research shows that the occurrence of multivendor Internet protocol telephony (IPT) environments is on the rise. As such, an increasing number of companies are faced with the challenges of using multiple tools to manage these environments. With a single, specialized IPT management solution, companies gain a unified view across the entire voice infrastructure—which can significantly impact total cost of ownership (TCO).
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Now that you have planned and assessed your new system, it’s time to explore the next phase of the integration process: design and pre-deployment testing. Part 4 of this 4-part e-book series provides a basis for the exploration of network design. In addition, it includes a report card that will help you select the appropriate design and validation software tools for your Internet protocol telephony (IPT) system.
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When deploying any new system, preparation is key—and Internet protocol telephony (IPT) systems are no exception. Part 3 of this 4-part e-book series provides some basic steps you can take to successfully deploy voice and data network services. A complete capabilities inventory has been included to help you ensure that every feature of your current system will be considered for inclusion in your new system.
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The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a common process framework for driving service quality improvements and cost reductions. That’s why organizations must ensure they clearly understand the objectives of their ITIL implementations, while implementing robust governance processes to measure and report progress—or else risk implementations that fail to live up to stakeholder expectations.
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The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has become an answer for many IT departments trying to solve their business problems. But many organizations find that their investment in ITIL has failed to yield the anticipated return on investment (ROI). So what’s the key to maximizing ITIL ROI? First, understanding that the term “ITIL-compliant” has as many meanings as there are outsourcing service providers.
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Chapter 2 of this 4-part e-book explores the Internet protocol telephony (IPT) life cycle, and discusses how understanding the key phases of this packet-based system can increase implementation success. By harnessing your knowledge about this system's natural rhythms, you will begin to establish key concepts that you can put into action—facilitating the management of the system and reaping its long-term benefits.
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As the era of traditional telephony draws to a close, the doors to the next generation in communications open. Chapter 1 of this 4-part e-book discusses electronic human voice communication and its importance in business today. It documents the underlying beliefs, philosophies, and observations of the future of telephony, and provides the basic concepts readers will need to guide them through the rest of the series.
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Data loss can be damaging to a business—hurting short-term stock prices, impacting customer relationships, and reducing revenues. As more companies conduct business via network communication, the need to protect their customer data and intellectual property becomes greater. With a data protection solution, organizations can secure their data in motion—without introducing unmanageable cost and complexity into the network.
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When it comes to security architecture, choosing a system that’s scalable and applicable to a broad set of security needs is a wise move. New security services for Internet protocol (IP) networks are emerging that enable new levels of scalability and manageability—while remaining completely transparent to the network. By applying this type of system, you build an optimal framework for future security applications.
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Spam considerably lowers user productivity, as it delivers unwanted, irrelevant, or anonymous e-mail messages. The best way to manage the incidence of spam is to measure it. The Spam Index—a tool for measuring improvement in spam control systems and for comparing spam control performance with competitors—is a method used by businesses worldwide to achieve lower spam levels and improve business performance.
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E-mail is a powerful business tool that most enterprises can’t live without. Unfortunately, along with its capability of accelerating commerce, productivity, and social interactions, there are some drawbacks—such as spam! Companies that rely on e-mail to do business simply can’t afford the negative affects of spam. However, new technology is emerging that helps stop spam and allows users to get on with business.
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In this new era of corporate governance, risk avoidance, and responsibility, organizations are more than ever held accountable if their data is not properly protected. As such, many are finding new ways to address security risks, by developing multiple layers of defense to reduce points of weakness. Deploying data encryption technology is a good place to start—but the key is making the right choice.
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Heightened awareness of vulnerabilities in sensitive stored data has resulted in the increased application of encryption technology. To secure data at rest, a well-defined process for handling the keys used to encrypt data—as well as the keys used to safeguard the data encryption keys—is essential. With the proper key management controls in place, companies can ensure that data is effectively secured and recoverable.
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In order to stay competitive, growing organizations need technology that allows them to react quickly to changing industry. According to recent polls, nearly 40 percent of midsized businesses are getting that technology through customer relationship management (CRM). With a rapidly growing market of choices, it’s important to look within your company to assess its needs and goals—before you commit to a CRM solution.
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If you could have a 360-degree view of your business, wouldn’t you want to take a peek? Most companies would say yes, but no business could benefit more from this panoramic view than large enterprises. Today, they’re getting that view—and more, from customer relationship management (CRM) technology. For large enterprises, CRM represents a powerful opportunity for positive change—and you ignore it at your own risk.
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3G Americas presents this collaborative paper on 3GPP activity on Release 7 as it nears its completion in the technology standardization process, and provides a detailed overview of the enhanced features of Release 8.
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You can’t pick up a business or IT magazine today without seeing numerous articles about the growth of mobile and wireless technologies. Why are these technologies so trendy? The answer is simple: developments in mobile computing, wireless communication, bar codes, and other data collection and communications technologies help businesses extend visibility and control over the operations that really matter to them.
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It s hard to go anywhere these days and not see ads for mobile wireless carriers. But the technology is so confusing and the choices so overwhelming, it can be impossible to know which solution to choose. Before making the wrong choice, it’s best to have a basic understanding of mobile wireless communication—how it is currently being used in the industry, and how it can benefit your organization in the future.
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How can you establish a priority-based mobile networking system that provides workers access to company and customer records that they can manipulate from the field? By employing a total solution system that provides various methods of transmitting data. While this type of system may be more costly to implement than a stand-alone pager or cell phone, the benefits it offers can directly impact your bottom line.
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When it comes to two-dimensional (2D) symbologies, less is more. While 2D bar code symbols may be less costly to print, they are considerably more expensive to read, because of the complexity of developing decode algorithms. However, with the integration of public domain 2D symbologies into a range of application standards, solutions employing these codes are beginning to reach their full potential.
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For manufacturers, improving internal processes and supply chain responsiveness can help maintain profitability. That is why many are tuning into radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. With RFID, the benefits are immediate throughout the supply chain, and organizations that take the time to understand its capabilities and limitations can increase their inventory visibility while streamlining their operations.
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Imagine this scenario: an infected laptop within your company has accessed the network and is spreading malicious code to thousands of other devices. This incident could cripple any business, but with network access control (NAC) products, companies can rest a little easier. NAC’s ability to measure, enforce, and report on an array of security issues has gained it attention amongst security conscious organizations.
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As proprietary network hardware appliances become obsolete, unified network platforms (UNPs) are slowly gaining momentum. UNPs are the new paradigm for networking and security—operating on a single system that can be implemented on off-the-shelf hardware. With a UNP, organizations can design, build, manage, and maintain secure networks, without the limitations and expense of vendor proprietary hardware and software.
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Malicious hacking and illegal access are just a few of the reasons companies lose precious corporate data every year. As the number of network security breaches increase, companies must find ways to protect data beyond the perimeter of their businesses. But how do they build a data-defensible architecture that will protect data on an ever-evolving network? The answer: by first developing an in-depth defense strategy.
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The supply of multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) services and service providers has grown exponentially with the demand for Internet protocol (IP) and Ethernet services. But while MPLS enhances packet processing speed and network performance, it lacks in security. As government and industry compliance regulations increase, organizations must invest in tools that can ensure security without affecting network performance.
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Wide area networks (WANs) are essential to the majority of businesses, enabling effective communications within the organization and with customers, partners, and suppliers. As more bandwidth-intensive applications are added to the mix, these networks are expected to handle the extra load—which can decrease its performance. Ensuring WAN usage is well-managed eliminates unwanted traffic and accelerates business activity.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) face the same challenges as large businesses when it comes to IT management—they have increasingly complex systems they rely on to drive their businesses and gain a competitive advantage. Operating and maintaining a complex IT infrastructure requires specific skills, but getting the right staff at an affordable price can be a problem. Outsourcing IT management may help to ease the strain.
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In any organization, people remain one of the largest sources of value when it comes to business processes. But providing them with tools that can be easily accessed and used has its challenges. As we move into the era of service-oriented architecture (SOA), portal and collaboration software now delivers the essential people-focused capabilities businesses need, while adding significant value to the organization.
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In today’s global market, providing quality products and services is essential for any manufacturer’s continued growth—but maintaining a competitive edge is not always easy. For success, quality awareness must begin at the conception of the product and continue throughout the various stages of its development. To improve in this area, many manufacturers are now adopting the total quality management (TQM) approach.
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When considering any software solution, two things come to mind: flexibility and cost. With virtualization technology, multiple applications can now be hosted safely and securely on a single server, eliminating the overhead of running multiple operating systems (OS) per server. This capability can greatly reduce costs and help organizations deliver consistent service levels despite unpredictable workloads.
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Any organization that deploys multiple same-application servers with regularity could benefit from virtual appliances. Virtualization solutions eliminate the need to copy an operating system (OS) and application into each virtual environment, by creating a single, centrally installed master copy instead. It saves time on installation and enables greater levels of efficiency, manageability, flexibility, and resource use.
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Your operations and assets are under multiple points of attack, both inside and outside your network. Organizations face escalating security risks and network availability requirements as they open their networks for communications and transactions with key customers, business partners, and employees. That’s why you need to ensure efficient monitoring and enhancement of your network security posture and operations.
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Malware infections are becoming more and more severe, making detecting infections before they infiltrate your server or desktop a high priority. Perimeter-based security keeps the malware—and the risks—away from your systems. Adding layers of security, particularly outside the network, can help you identify and stop Internet threats before they infect machines, expose sensitive information, and consume valuable resources.
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The computational complexity of problems faced by programmers today is growing exponentially. With accelerated changes brought on by the Internet, companies need to explore new methods of enabling their programmers to focus on these complex problems. When dealing with complex data, an object caching database system can alleviate the task of programming special code for persistent data while writing applications.
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New Star Asset Management was looking to maximize its existing sales channels and drive more information gathering via the Web. In order to achieve its aggressive targets, it needed to find a way to make better use of the Web, while reducing costs. Since integrating a Web content management system, New Star has seen a significant drop in Web-related expenditure—with cost savings of nearly 68 percent in the first year.
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The Web has become a vast potential business asset for many companies today. But while business users have the vision, it’s the IT department that actually creates and deploys the Web application. This often raises the question of Web site ownership. Empowering both parties with the right tools to match their respective skills can help address this question—and many others—for businesses in this confusing situation.
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One person’s freedom to pirate is another person’s loss of royalty revenue. Every day, millions of Internet users are downloading copyrighted materials—music, movies, TV shows, and more. Although this is illegal under most countries’ copyright laws, it doesn’t stop them. What’s worse is they don’t even see themselves as criminals. Piracy isn’t going away, and content owners and governments need to regain control.
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It’s no coincidence that the surge in counterfeiting over the past decade has coincided with a huge increase in Internet access around the world, and the more recent shift toward broadband connections. The Web provides a shop window to the world, yet it is impossible to police. New, intelligent, automated monitoring technologies are beginning to offer powerful solutions to this rampant online problem.
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C# is a modern object-oriented language for application development. In addition to object-oriented constructs, C# supports component-oriented programming with properties, methods, and events. WinA&D is a complete Unified Modeling Language (UML) tool enriched with C#-specific details used to generate source code. This white paper discusses how C# constructs are represented by UML—for forward and reverse engineering.
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Understanding how a system really works is the first step toward using, improving, automating, or explaining it to others. The basic concept of a system is that it is driven by cause and effect—but there is so much more to understanding its full complexity. The best place to start is by learning how causal loop diagrams (CLDs) are used to model dynamic systems by identifying variables and causal effects.
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Interactive web sites are event-driven. With each user click, a menu selection or keyboard action initiates a thread of execution that runs many lines of code. Many Web projects start as small code snippets gathered from open source sites, but as the web site grows, new developers are added to the mix. Without design and documentation tools, the project can become unmanageable, unreliable, insecure, and costly to expand.
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As a business employing IT, you may have encountered situations where the software application you purchased didn’t come with a help file. With no time to write complete documentation yourself and no budget to hire a professional technical writer to do it for you, what do you do? By applying the basic principles of cost-effective documentation, your business can develop impressive documentation quickly—for a minimal cost.
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Information technology (IT) governance is currently a hot topic. But what is “governance” exactly? IT governance includes a number of actions and decision-making structures that encourage desirable behavior in the use of IT, and it’s an important area of focus for any organization that wants to increase its IT business value. We present a step-by-step guide to help you achieve the IT governance you need.
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Predictions of the death of software are overstated. In reality, businesses are becoming more reliant on technology, not less. What’s changing, however, is the number of options available for managing, delivering, and paying for software applications. Many independent software vendors recognize the benefits of offering software as a service--a delivery alternative that can present long-term benefits for all parties.
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When Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) was created, the Internet was still mainly a vehicle for scientific collaboration. Indeed, the need for security has grown out of the increased use of the Internet as a commercial medium. That’s why new DHCP issues have come to the forefront that were simply not explored in the early days of the Internet.
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Increased complexity, coupled with the adoption of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), demands additional management overhead for enterprise- and carrier-class networks. This management need is compounded by requirement for corporations to implement IP version 6 (IPv6)-compatible networks to ensure capacity and service over the next decade. This transition will require careful planning, and naming systems will play a critical role.
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Internet access is now mission-critical for many enterprises. Yet the unpredictable nature of Internet bandwidth can put important applications at risk. For converged networks with voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and data running at the same time, redundancy is a must-have, as IT managers strive to achieve the same levels of reliability phone users have come to expect.
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There’s no universal solution for Web services security. Sometimes, access lists programmed into the Web services themselves are sufficient. Other times, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) may be more than adequate. However, when granular message processing and auditing is essential, dedicated extensible markup language (XML) and Web services security technology will prove necessary. Which options are right for you?
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As the web has evolved from being an information exchange medium to a medium of business transactions, it has become critical for businesses to ensure their web sites are available 24x7. And since the user experience is governed by how well site-associated application components perform, effective and proactive monitoring that drills down to the root cause of problems is imperative.
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The term “triage” refers to the process by which service managers rank the status of IT structures in priority, and sort them based on their need for immediate action. In today’s environment, this process is very cumbersome and time-consuming. Thus, in order to effectively manage IT infrastructures, service manager need tools that allow them to make assessments in real time.
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When it comes to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, most IT organizations do not lack measurement data—in fact, they’re buried in it! What they need are effective ways to put these measurements into the context of critical business services, establish baselines for every layer of every component, and proactively communicate which layer of which component is the root cause of any abnormality.
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Effective correlation and accurate root-cause diagnosis have been key challenges for network and systems management solutions for many years. Indeed, these challenges have increased with the growing complexity of the software applications and services operating on top of the Internet and intranets. But at the same time, customer expectations of service quality and guaranteed performance remain as stringent as ever.
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Today’s n-tier infrastructures make significant demands on the problem management process. Isolation of performance problems in these environments is difficult at best, and traditional monitoring tools are not equipped to deal with the multiple dependencies and complexities they present. Indeed, even effective problem management processes may not be sufficient without improved tools.
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While many monitoring frameworks support commercial applications and application infrastructures, very few offer organizations the capacity to manage the custom application components that are inevitably a part of their infrastructure. But as these applications tend to be the most critical components of the target infrastructure, a framework that cannot provide insight into these ultra-critical components is offering severely limited value.
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Traditionally, IT infrastructure operations teams are organized as domain experts—one expert for network devices, another for the Citrix MetaFrame Server, another for the database, and so on. Most monitoring systems mirror this approach, with separate solutions for monitoring different network elements and applications. This approach is rife with complications, but alternatives do exist which can simplify your day-to-day activities.
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With hundreds of monitoring solutions available, which ones are right for you? Many organizations spend months assessing different products, but find it difficult to distinguish between them, thanks to industry jargon—“proactive monitoring,” “root-cause analysis,” “service-oriented user views”… There are different ways to compare them, but before you even begin, you need to be clear on what your objectives are.
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Monitoring the end-to-end performance of applications and services at all infrastructure tiers is the "holy grail" of IT organizations. But most companies use silo-based monitoring tools incapable of monitoring events and activities occurring elsewhere in the infrastructure. A "collaborative" approach for deploying such tools stands a greater chance of adoption than the typical top-down implementation method commonly used today.
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Internet protocol (IP)—used for transmitting data across networks everywhere—is now used pervasively, transmitting data to and from a multitude of devices. Arguably, IP is the most successful open standard ever, but as network communications converge under a single standard used for an increasing number of applications, we need to understand how effectively these critical assets are being managed.
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A multibillion-dollar crime industry is changing the security landscape. Cyber-theft of intellectual property, customer data, and money is on the rise—directly impact¬ing corporation’s bottom lines. To stay ahead of these targeted attacks, you need a comprehensive view of point secu¬rity solutions and infrastructure monitoring tools—without the cost-prohibitive labor hours involved in manual log analysis or proprietary aggregation tools.
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Information technology (IT) executives are beginning to seriously re-evaluate their highly hyped, service-oriented architectures (SOA) strategies—and consequently, their IT outsourcing, hosting, and enterprise system management strategies. However, creating long-term strategies is complicated by the wide range of available service delivery models. That’s why it’s vital to uncover the important concepts—and decision points—relating to these different delivery models.
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When business uncertainties are frequent and compliance with regulations is mandatory, it can be a challenge to keep information technology (IT) synchronized with strategy for maximum business value—while reducing IT cost. An IT portfolio management framework, coupled with an IT governance framework, can provide visibility into projects and IT assets, keeping them aligned to business objectives at all times.
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A recent report by the European Commission noted that Europe is not investing in productivity-enhancing information technology and communications (ITC) as much as the US. The report also claimed that the situation is still worse for small to medium businesses (SMBs). Comparing the data from two recent Quocirca studies underlines the problem, and shows the price European SMBs are paying.
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Most organizations have already taken steps to extend IT access to employees in remote locations. The questions is, should they continue to extend this process—and how? Mobile technology benefits are often difficult to measure, but the costs of hardware, software, and services are often of such a magnitude that the benefits need to be tangible to justify the cost.
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Although short message service (SMS) messaging is a cheap and efficient communication channel, many enterprises are still reluctant to deploy it as a corporate tool. At issue is its lack of reliability and security while transmitting information. The enterprise SMS market thus has to evolve from the person-to-person infrastructure into a model that supplies businesses with secure and scalable messaging.
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IT today is often caught between a rock and a hard place: its budget has been reduced, while expectations remain undiminished. Moving beyond this paradox requires fresh approaches to IT management and governance. Today’s IT operations must remain aligned with strategic organizational priorities, deliver promised results with control and predictability, and transparently report problems in time to act on them.
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When companies extend their IT operations to mobile employees, valuable data and devices are taken out of the protected perimeter of the office, and placed in the briefcases of users. Business processes may run more efficiently, and there may be more flexibility in working practices, but this is of little benefit if attitudes to IT use are complacent or irresponsible.
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IT management and governance systems have entered the mainstream, joining enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, human resources, and e-mail as part of the standard enterprise applications landscape. This has led to fundamental changes for leading chief information officers: their first consideration is now to make sure their own organization is systemically supported before systemically improving their customers’ organizations.
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Broadband Internet subscribers have a choice between DSL or cable systems. Providers of each system must meet the particular billing challenges raised when offering such services. Each system has areas of potential revenue loss, and billing system strategies must take these into account in order to reduce the risks.
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When IT projects are completed and systems are delivered, they don’t just disappear. Completed projects can be described in various ways: investments, assets, operational applications, and so on. Whatever they’re called, they typically require continuing investments of resource time, effort, and dollars to maintain, fix, and upgrade. In fact, the post-project delivery lifecycle effort is critical to an IT organization.
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The most realistic and attainable approach to IT governance is a "lean" approach via project portfolio management (PPM). The lean approach requires a light footprint life cycle, rapid implementation of proven practices, and centralized data. It is based on simplicity and achievability, building on what works while establishing headroom for continuous improvement.
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A major challenge for IT managers is that much of the data they need in Windows environments is stored in iSeries and Mainframe host systems. Traditionally, unlocking this data and making it available in Windows environments for further processing has involved major reprogram¬ming, and significant resource investments. There are, however, simple solutions that address the jump from host to Windows.
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A survey of existing IT event resolution processes suggests organizations are unsatisfied with current processes, despite the importance of ensuring that severe service outages do not occur. In fact, over 75 percent of participants identified significant gaps in existing processes. However, it is possible to identify the components of an effective interactive event notification platform to mitigate current process gaps.
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E-government webs are among the largest webs in existence. Thus, creating a semantic web infrastructure to organize them is highly desirable. At the same time, the complexity of existing e-government implementations also challenges the feasibility of semantic web creation. This paper explains challenges in semantic web development, identifies Wiki advantages, illustrates a potential solution, and summarizes major directions for research.
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Data centers are complex mixtures of legacy platforms, hardware, operating systems (OS), data, and applications. They are inflexible, costly, and difficult to manage, so instead of optimizing the current OS, users are adding new ones. By using OS Portability and streaming servers across physical or virtual infrastructures over the network, users better utilize their data centers.
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The transition to IP A wireless carrier s national or regional next generation core network will be an all-IP network in the sense that IP will be the network layer (L3) protocol. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) will be the transport protocol for all IP-based services, applications, and control and management traffic in the network. Learn more in this white paper.
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Disintermediation is the process of removing redundant intermediaries from a systems management infrastructure. Once vital to systems monitoring, proprietary agents are now made largely redundant by native management tools, emerging standards and agentless monitoring architectures. Centauri makes disintermediation possible by providing a low-cost event management solution that unifies performance data and event messages under a common umbrella. This paper describes how you can take advantage of the disintermediation opportunity and minimize the risks of migrating from working proprietary data collectors to a new native-agent based solution.
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Industry analysts, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), recently conducted research to understand how widespread the acceptance of Six Sigma is for managing IT service quality. This research, which was targeted primarily at enterprises, showed that 65 percent of those surveyed acknowledge the relevance of Six Sigma for IT-based service management. While many IT organizations have yet to adopt Six Sigma for service management, 80 percent stated that they have plans to do so. This research suggests there is a growing interest in Six Sigma.
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The Internet is having an identity crisis. Long regarded as a powerful tool for cost reduction and service enhancement, the Internet is falling short of its promise because of the real and perceived threat of identity theft. Financial losses and insurance costs are mounting, as organizations struggle to protect their information perimeters and improve the strength of their authentication systems to ensure that the authorized user is present during the sign-in process. The widespread use and misuse of passwords as authentication tokens is generally cited as a cause of the accelerating erosion of user confidence and the increasing incidence of identity theft. It is generally agreed that passwords are not enough. Much has been lost, however, in the race toward person-present authentication systems. While the application of passwords is fraught with risk, the introduction of complex authentication infrastructures and cumbersome end user technology has eroded usability and increased the cost of security dramatically. This paper describes a new authentication approach that retains the simplicity and low cost of passwords, while gracefully introducing as much person-present assurance as is required by the application.
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How many times do you hear network administrators scream at the top of their voice, "I have spent millions of dollars buying expensive and the best antivirus software solutions and yet every two months, when a new virus strikes, I have my entire network go down!" This is a common complaint you will get to hear from one and all network administrators, primarily because most security vendors today concentrate more on a "reactive" approach to stop virus attacks, than a “preventive” approach!
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Spam is unsolicited junk mail sent to you or your mail server. People who indulge in such activities are called spammers. These are sent by commercial advertisers who may offer dubious products, get rich schemes, products that do not suit your life style, promote illegal activities, etc. The intent here is to make you spend money. Almost 60% to 70% of spam is related to porn. There is another type of spammer who sends large number of e-mails that flood your mailbox or mail server. This white paper provides
information about spam, losses caused by spam, how spam works and suggests key features that a good anti-spam software should have.
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The task of managing and maintaining today’s IT infrastructure has become vastly more complicated and complex as IT has become more critical to business success. The response from a technology perspective has been the introduction of services oriented architectures that enable IT to be responsive to the business needs but also live within their economic constraints. But the very technologies fueling this success create significant problems. Even small changes can cause major disruptions in today’s highly interactive and interdependent applications. Unfortunately, the pace of change means traditional testing architectures with lengthy development and testing will not work. But the testing must be done. Worksoft’s Certify is discussed as the test management repository and framework solution to this testing problem for XML-based applications.
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