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Server Technology

The article discusses SolarWinds' server monitoring software called Server & Application Monitor. Some key points: - Server & Application Monitor is an agentless monitoring solution that provides visibility into server performance and applications without needing to install agents. - It allows organizations to proactively monitor servers, detect issues, and resolve problems quickly. This helps move organizations from a reactive to a proactive environment. - The software can monitor over 150 applications and servers from multiple vendors from a single console. It provides performance monitoring and alerts to prevent outages and optimize systems. - A customer, Carlion Clinic, was able to replace their incompatible agent-based monitoring system with Server & Application Monitor and gain better insights into

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| |November 2015 1CIOReview CIOReviewNOVEMBER 19 2015 CIOREVIEW.COM SERVER SPECIAL Kevin B. Thompson, President & CEO Delivering ‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers SolarWinds: In My Opinion Kushagra Vaid, GM, Server Engineering, Microsoft CEO Insights Adam Stern, President, CEO, Infinitely Virtual
| |November 2015 2CIOReview
| |November 2015 3CIOReview ERP Implementation, Maintenance and System Support Integrated Dashboards for Patient-flow and Bed Planning Comprehensive Quality & Compliance Solutions for Life Science
| |November 2015 4CIOReview Dominic Wellington, Chief Evangelist, Moogsoft Adam Stern, President, CEO, Infinitely Virtual Ken Shulman, CIO, CTO, Broadview Networks THE EVOLUTION OF SERVER TECHNOLOGIES ‘ALL YOU CAN EAT’ AN EDICT, NOT AN OPPORTUNITY TOP 3 CHALLENGES GROWING BUSINESSES FACE AND HOW THE CLOUD CAN HELP 16 Altaro Software CONTENTS 19 HansaWorld 22 HostDime 24 Pivot3 27 Power Admin 28 RightITnow 30 Software Pursuits 20 17 25 CXO INSIGHTS CEO INSIGHTS CIO INSIGHTS IN MY OPINION Jerry Irvine, EVP, CIO, Prescient Solutions Scott Strickland, CIO, DMH Global ENCRYPTION – IS IT ENOUGH? BEYOND ALIGNMENT – PARTNERSHIP IS THE PATH TO DELIVERING BUSINESS VALUE 31 34 08 Kushagra Vaid, GM, Server Engineering, Microsoft INDUSTRY TRENDS IN OPEN SOURCED HARDWARE
| |November 2015 5CIOReview COVERSTORY 10 Delivering ‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers Delivering ‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers SolarWinds:SolarWinds: Kevin B. Thompson, President and CEO *All Insights are based on the interviews with respective CIOs and CXOs to our editorial staff
| |November 2015 6CIOReview Copyright © 2015 CIOReview. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without written permission from the publisher is prohibited.The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher thereof. CIOReview NOVEMBER 19 - 2015 Mailing Address CIOReview 44790 S. Grimmer Blvd Suite 202, Fremont, CA 94538 T:510.402.1463, F:510-894-8405 November 19 - 2015, Vol 04 SE 101 Published by CIOReview To subscribe to CIOReview Visit www.cioreview.com Server Special CIOReview Editorial Staff Sales T:510. 565. 7627 Alex D'Souza Brian Jackson Joe Philip Derek James George. N george.n@cioreview.com George Thomas george@cioreview.com Visualizers Stephen ThomasSukirti Agnihotri Managing Editor Jeevan George C IOs today are wading through an increasing number of IT solutions that are shaping the modern digital world ecosystem. One of the main constituents of this ecosystem is servers that are under- pinning almost the entire IT system. Meanwhile, as the CIOs have a tricky task of delivering the IT services their organizations require within the allocated budget, over time it involves having to de-liver more with less. That is one of the reasons why server virtualization has been so successful—it allows more virtual servers to be produced from a single physical one, and it ensures that the physical resources are uti-lized more effectively and efficiently. This also satisfies the need of customers who demand maxi-mum performance on giant workloads at minimal cost. But what about the physical servers themselves? Can organizations get more bang for their buck there as well? The good news is that yes, and the solution is already in use in very large organiza-tions like cloud providers. Driven by the zeal to cater to increasing demands, these organizations are exploring the open source technologies alongside virtualization and the nascent containerization concepts. Server technology today is being integrated with open source technologies such Software Defined Networking and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to bring more transparency and agility into computing and networking domains. Further, network controllers, load balancers, and policy management are being trimmed to perfection to yield the best results for both the customers and the server vendors. The introduction of these new server infrastructures and platforms means that traditional tasks, such as virtualization and high-performance computing, along with business applications will be more and more accessible on the cloud, giving companies enhanced freedom. In the months ahead, businesses can expect to be given more flexibility from server suppliers, while new workloads are set to be addressed for the first time. On that note, we present to you a special edition on server technology. In this edition, we are featur-ing insights from thought leaders in this space along with a list of selected vendors who are success-fully overriding the challenges in this ecosystem with their innovative solutions. Jeevan George Managing Editor editor@cioreview.com Editorial Exploiting the True Potential of Servers Satyakam
| |November 2015 7CIOReview
| |November 2015 8CIOReview opinion in my loud computing is rapidly transforming the IT industry, and has gained significant momentum over the past few yearsacrossbothconsumerand business segments. Enterprises are accelerating their investments in migrating application infrastructure fromdiscreteenvironmentstoservices-baseddelivery model using IaaS/PaaS/SaaS paradigms. While there is a lot of focus on the software aspects, what is less discussed is the equivalent rapid transformation taking place in IT infrastructure across the hardware supplier ecosystem, being primarily shaped by the large hyper-scale public cloud providers and recent trends in open source hardware. The Open Compute Project (OCP) was established in July 2011 to enable the broad availability of extremely efficient server, storage and datacenter hardware designs optimized for large scale computing. The aspired result is to provide end users with the choice and flexibility for designing the infrastructure stack using open source hardware building blocks, without being beholden to any legacy or vendor defined constraints. This is achieved by disaggregating the proprietary vendor stack into independent components to enable a greater degree of flexibility, scalability and efficiency. Most of these components are based on commodity hardware utilized in hyper-scale deployments, ensuring that IT end-users can leverage industry learnings from operating at scale, while still being able to take advantage of lower costs from volume pricing. OCP Solution Providers (SPs) perform the typical order fulfilment and service/support functions, by taking the hardware and software building blocks and configuring these based on the IT customer’s solution requirements. The OCP community now has over 150 member companies across the globe, and is backed by prominent hyper-scale cloud providers, OEM/ODM suppliers, silicon providers and IT end users. Design and IP contributions from member companies across the hardware and solution stack have enabled OCP to establish itself By Kushagra Vaid, GM, Server Engineering, Microsoft Industry Trends in Open Sourced C Hardware OCP Solution Providers (SPs) perform the typical order fulfilment and service/ support functions, by taking the open source hardware and software building blocks and configuring these based on the IT customer's solution requirements Kushagra Vaid
| |November 2015 9CIOReview as the de-facto forum in the industry for all topics related to open sourced IT and Datacenters. At the same time, OCP has empowered IT organizations to take more control over their infrastructure destiny, by providing freedom and choice for architecting solution stacks using pre-certified commodity hardware building blocks, which have been battle tested by hyper-scale cloud service providers. This entire put together has led to a massive disruption in the hardware industry ecosystem, reshaping the traditional relationship between IT end users and suppliers. IT customers across several vertical segments (such as hyper-scale cloud providers, financial services, telco, e-commerce, public sector, healthcare) are now taking concrete steps to deploy OCP designs, taking full advantage of this open source hardware paradigm. For Server and Storage hardware, there are currently two main standards supported by OCP – OpenRackbased de- signs, and Open CloudServer (OCS)based designs. Products built on these open standards enable a broad set of offerings suitable for various enter- prise IT scenarios such as dense virtualiza- tion, big data processing, web/mailbox hosting and high performance com- puting. In fact, Open CloudServer is the base server platform for all hardware deployments of Microsoft’s large scale ser- vices such as Azure (Public Cloud), Office365 (Office Produc- tivity), Xbox Live (Gaming) and Bing (Web Search). This large scale proof point across a diverse set of application scenarios provides a high degree of credibility for adopting OCP designs in enterprise environments, giving IT the assurance that the server hardware has been thoroughly qualified at scale in production datacenter environments. On the Networking front, OCP has seen a huge influx of IP contributions both for switch hardware and software that have accelerated the trend for dis-aggregating the network switch ecosystem and simplified the migration to Software Defined Networking (SDN). In addition to a variety of leaf switches (also called Top-of-Rack switches) for 10Gbe/40Gbe connectivity, OCP also hosts a multitude of networking software projects – namely, Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) for switch boot time provisioning and configuration, Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), which provides a vendor agnostic mechanism for controlling switching ASICs/NPUs, and Open Network Linux (ONL), which is an OS distribution for “bare metal” switches. These open source network software efforts reduce the risk of vendor lock-in for the networking stack, thus expanding customer choice. When coupled with open network switches, this enables end users to fully customize the networking stack and have a greater degree of control over network configuration and operation, ensuring deployment agility and improvement in service availability. OCP designs have also set a high bar for intro- duction of new technologies, enabling breakthrough hardware innovations with improved performance and power while still ensuring a commodity cost point. An example of this is the ‘Cloud- SSD’ design specifica- tion contributed by Microsoft, which targets high-perfor- mance 24x7 server scenarios, but utilizes commodity Flash NAND modules commonly used in desktop/tablet segments to meet these goals. This provides a compel- ling value proposition for enterprise users, and this open effort is subsequently reshaping the Solid State Drive (SSD) supplier ecosystem to meet this new emerging demand for such hybrid devices. Another example of such innovation is in the networking space, where Facebook recently contributed both the ‘Wedge ’network switch design and the associated ‘6-pack’ modular chassis design. These two designs are the base components for a high bandwidth non-blocking topology, and bring the latest networking technologies to the broader industry, but still at commodity cost points. With this broad portfolio of proven hardware designs available across server, storage and networking, IT customers now have the flexibility to take these open building blocks and configure these as appropriate for their solution deployment scenarios. In tandem, customers can leverage the low cost volume economics thus directly impacting the organizations bottom-line for Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) metrics. As the open hardware momentum continues to grow, it is expected to cover an increasingly large amount of the technology stack, and which would further its appeal to an even broader set of both suppliers and customers. This is a significant trend that will continuously reshape the industry ecosystem, providing new opportunities for agile integration of new technologies and enable IT departments to derive increased business value for datacenter infrastructure.
| |November 2015 10CIOReview Delivering ‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers Delivering ‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers rom industry’s bigwigs to rising entrepreneurs, everyone wishes to own a smart server monitoring software to architect an efficient IT infrastructure. With thousands of physical, virtual and cloud-based servers running alongside each other, keeping track of each of them and eliminating intricacies as and when they arise is an intractable task for any organization today. From selecting a viable server environment to acquiring affordable server software that makes the perfect fit into IT budget of an enterprise, IT professionals are burgeoned with a myriad of complexities associated with server management technology. In an effort to curb these complexities around server management, IT professionals are on a constant look-out for viable technology partners that can help them thrive in a highly competitive environment by delivering easy-to-use server management solutions and enhance the internal and external communications of an organization. Designed to meet today’s challenges that are thrown at IT professionals in server management space, SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI), an Austin, TX-based company, offers purpose-built products. “We offer powerful and affordable solutions that aim to deliver ‘unexpected simplicity’ and redefine the expectations IT professionals have for exceptional server management software,” affirms Kevin B. Thompson, President and CEO, SolarWinds. F COVER STORY SolarWinds:SolarWinds: By Supriya Kumaraswamy
| |November 2015 11CIOReview Kevin B. Thompson, President and CEO
| |November 2015 12CIOReview Being a towering figure in the IT space, the company offers a vast range of products that simplify the process of deploying servers in an organization and enables the monitoring of servers. By leveraging SolarWinds’ server management software, enterprises can install increased number of servers and make applications easily available. Additionally, the software detects network outages, protocol failures, unsuccessful processes, servers, and batch jobs, which in turn foster organizations to be proactive and resolve problems within minutes. Pro-actively Monitoring Server Performance As the agent-based software dwindles in the market, the new and advanced Agent-less server monitoring software has made its entry in the IT landscape. It enables the enterprises to save significant time and money, while reducing the glitches associated with Agent-based server monitoring software. In order to thwart the intricacies that come along with Agent- based server monitoring software, SolarWinds delivers Agentless server monitoring software—Server & Application Monitor—that takes care of the overall server management and supports multi-vendor server monitoring. “Server & Application Monitor is capable of providing extensive insights into a number of activities carried out by a server by monitoring, alerting, and reporting its performance,” notes Thompson. The Agentless software’s server management capabilities allow organizations to natively start and stop services, reboot servers, and kill rogue processes by providing server monitoring support for multiple hardware vendors. In addition, it provides built-in support for the enterprises to manage over 150 applications. One of SolarWinds’ customers, Carlion Clinic had compatibility issues with Agent-based server monitoring system that had many applications in different parts of the system. The customer found it difficult to extract actual information to act upon from huge amounts of data. After witnessing SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor’s compatibility with Windows Server, Carlion Clinic decided to leverage it. After the implementation of this software, the customer was able to set up server application monitoring software within minutes, while having thousands of servers listed, monitored, and managed efficiently. Through effective utilization of the software, the customer eliminated their compatibility issues. As a result, Carlion Clinic was able to move from reactive environment to a proactive environment and had sufficient time to ensure that the applications were available 24/7. Preventing Outages and Maximizing Performance Alongside delivering Agentless server monitoring system, the Server & Application Monitor brings in a range of other benefits. The software can proactively monitor the performance of server environments through preventing application outages and maximizing efficiency. It keeps track of up and down statuses, capacity, and performance monitoring of server hardware. Since performance monitoring is essential to troubleshoot application issues and optimize application performance, SolarWinds leverages unique templates to supervise server and application performance through Server & Application Monitor. Besides, it also enables the display of real-time and historical trends through intuitive and meaningful dashboards. Furthermore, the server monitoring software enables organizations to get rid of their disparate vendors systems, while monitoring their server hardware in a single console. From Our experts combine the expertise with deep connection to the IT community to create IT management products that are effective and accessible
| |November 2015 13CIOReview statuses of hard drive, array, power supply, fan to CPU and speed, SolarWinds enables the customers to leverage unparallel thresholds for all key server health and performance metrics. Simple to Deploy FTP Server The basic purpose of any technology today is to deliver easy-to-use solutions for the users. Likewise, as a technology solution provider, SolarWinds provides FTP Server—Serv-U—to enable organizations to easily view, upload, and download files from anywhere. The company also enables users to transfer files over intuitive web and mobile device interfaces. Its drag-and-drop capability makes it easier for the users to transfer multiple files at a time including large files up to two gigabytes. Serv-U FTP Server provides a broad range of customization options that make the administration and management of transferable files simple. Moreover, the FTP server can be leveraged across Windows and Linux platforms since it is simple to deploy and extremely affordable. Serv-U FTP Server is specially designed for small businesses, as it is an affordable and secure file transfer that supports organizations to fulfill their internal and external file transfer requirements. To highlight the efficiency of Serv-U FTP server, one of SolarWinds customers, KSPS, a Washington TV Station, required an FTP server that is easy to deploy and maintain so that everyone in the organization can upload and download files. Additionally, the customer also needed the solution to be affordable enough to acquire and support to fit the budget of public television. SolarWinds Serv-U FTP server enabled the users who do not have technical expertise to upload and download files with a few clicks. Besides, KSPS was able to benefit from the completely new transformation in the way regional Washington public television station KSPS exchanges advertisements and video with its sponsors and content partners through SolarWinds Serve-U FTP server. “Serv-U has also become a valuable component in their annual pledge drives and other fundraising activities that require a reliable secure file transfer method,” says Thompson. Stepping ahead of Status Quo Unlike other enterprise software vendors who have established “Status quo” for themselves, SolarWinds firmly believes in moving ahead and delivering products that are not difficult to use, expensive, and addresses the realities of today’s IT management challenges. Having more than a decade of expertise in serving IT field, Thomson says, “We do not think enterprise software has to be as complicated as it’s made out to be.” In this light, the company strives to offer impactful functionality that is easy to use and promises exceptional ROI in the market. SolarWinds was founded in 1999 and ever since its inception, it has been working with one strong motive to support IT professionals get rid of the complexity that is associated with traditional enterprise software by offering the products that are easier to find, buy, deploy and maintain. Besides, the company workforce’s innate ability to manage today’s dynamic IT environments, sets it apart from the rest of the enterprise software vendors in the industry. “Our experts combine the expertise with deep connection to the IT community to create IT management products that are effective and accessible,” affirms Thompson. Positive Strides towards the Future Having established its strong foothold in IT landscape by serving industry’s big names such as Microsoft, Nestle, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, Yahoo and many other firms, SolarWinds promises to continue to interact with large, global user community to guide product development and strategy to invent better products. SolarWinds also assures to constantly evolve its products and ensure that its server management software is well prepared to fulfill the ever-increasing requirements of IT space. “We continue to deliver increasing value over the lifetime of ownership,” concludes Thompson. We offer powerful and affordable solutions that aim to deliver ‘unexpected simplicity’ and redefine the expectations IT professionals have for exceptional server management software
| |November 2015 14CIOReview B usinesses, organizations and governments are wading through an increasing number of IT solutions that are shaping the modern digital world ecosystem. Servers thataretheunderpinningforalmosttheentireITsystem are understandably witnessing wide range of enhancements for better throughput and greater efficiency. As a result, terms such as hyperscale computing, converged infrastructure, flash storage, flexibility and mobility are now a common on the table for the IT decision makers. Customers today demand maximum performance on giant workloads at minimal cost. Driven by the zeal to cater to these demands, server solution providers are exploring the open source technologies alongside virtualization and the nascent containerization concepts. The effort is on to pack the most power in the least form factor. Server technology today is being integrated with open source networking such Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to bring more transparency and agility into computing and networking domains. Further, network controllers, load balancers, and policy management are being trimmed to perfection to yield the best results for both the customers and the server vendor. To help the CIOs and CEOs find the right server solution providers for their enterprises, CIO Review presents a special edition on server technology. A distinguished panel comprising of CEOs, CIOs, VCs, and analysts including CIO Review editorial board has evaluated hundreds of solution providers in the server space to arrive at the final 20. We present to you the “20 Most Promising Server Solution Providers 2015.” Company Management Description Altaro Software Malta (Europe) altaro.com App Dynamics San Fransisco, CA appdynamics.com AppZero Andover, MA appzero.com Datadog New York, NY datadoghq.com HansaWorld Stockholm, Sweden hansaworld.com HostDime Orlando, FL hostdime.com David Vella CEO David Wadhwani CEO Greg O' Connor President & CEO Olivier Pomel CEO & Co-Founder Karl Bohlin CEO Manny Vivar VP Provides data security for virtual environments running on Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi/vSphere/vCenter Provides Application Intelligence Platform to monitor, manage and optimize complex business environments AppZero brings one-click appstore simplicity to Windows server applications Provides SaaS-based data analytics platform that enables multiple teams to work collaboratively on infrastructure issues Provides full suite of ERP, financials, and CRM as well as a wide selection of industry-specific solutions on tablets and smartphones Offers managed cloud-hosting services to colocation globally with fully supported amenities and tools
| |November 2015 15CIOReview 20 Most Promising Server Solution Providers 2015 Company Management Description Ipswitch lexington, MA ipswitch.com LogicMonitor Santa Barbara, CA logicmonitor.com ManageEngine Pleasanton, CA manageengine.com Nagios Enterprises Saint paul, MN nagios.com Nutanix San Jose, CA nutanix.com Opsview Berkshire, UK opsview.com Pivot3 Austin, TX pivot3.com Power Admin Olathe, KS poweradmin.com RightITnow San Ramon, CA London, UK rightitnow.com ScienceLogic Reston, VA sciencelogic.com Software Pursuits San Mateo, CA softwarepursuits.com SolarWinds Austin, TX solarwinds.com Spiceworks Austin, TX spiceworks.com Zenoss Austin, TX zenoss.com Joe Krivickas CEO Kevin McGibben CEO Manikandan Vembu COO Eric Loyd Founder & CEO Dheeraj Pandey CEO Mike Walton Founder & CEO Ron Nash Chairman & CEO Doug Nebeker CEO Marc Ferrie CEO David Link CEO Larry Salveson President Kevin B. Thompson President & CEO Jay Hallberg Founder & CEO Greg Stock Chairman & CEO Provides simple powerfull tools for IT teams Provides hosted monitoring for the entire technology stack in a single unified solution Provides IT teams to manage networks, applications, help desk with easy to use products Delivers official products, services, and solutions for and around Nagios® Enables easy deployment of any virtual workload, including large-scale virtual desktop initiatives (VDI), development/test apps, private clouds, big data (Hadoop) projects Enables sysadmins to easily monitor the complex enterprise IT environments that support critical business services, with native support Pivot3’s HCI is based on a true cross-cluster virtual SAN with extremely high storage efficiency while providing exceptional levels of fault tolerance Building professional grade system monitoring products for various industries around the world RightITnow's ECM software aggregates, filters and correlates infrastructure and application events into actionable alerts Delivers the next generation IT monitoring platform for the Internet of Everything Designs and delivers software solutions for enterprise information systems Provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses Provides IT professionals products and a community to do their jobs in a radically new way Provides unified monitoring and analytics software for physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT infrastructures
| |November 2015 16CIOReview C oupled with ‘do more for less’, the complete strategy today for server configuration is to not only commute speed, but to also gain quick access to data. While coming under increasing pressure to deliver services quicker and more efficiently, the demands on IT infrastructures continues to grow universally in terms of complexity. In addi- tion, simplifying backup processes and adding flexibility in the data stored and retrieved, as well as their backup destinations are more important than ever. “We’ve made big steps in creat- ing a backup platform for Hyper-V and VMware that discards the complexity of backing up Virtual Machines, yet offering systems administrators more power and functionality to get backup and restore jobs reliably and efficiently,” affirms David Vella, CEO, Altaro Software. The Malta based company is focused on backing up virtual server technology with Altaro VM Backup, enabling administrators to backup and restore Hyper-V and VMware VMs without hassle. The product is developed to serve SMB- level organizations with flexible, reliable and affordable backup software for virtual environments. Altaro developed their backup solution after realizing that backing up and restoring Hyper-V VMs and clusters were a needlessly complicated process without the use of a third party tool. Existing products were overpriced, complicated to configure and use which took ages to complete a job. “We want to simplify while building in powerful and flexible features, and the result is Altaro VM Backup,” stresses Vella. The company provides data security for virtual environments, specifically for virtual environments running on Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi/vSphere/ vCenter. Altaro VM Backup has the ability to majorly simplify all that it takes to take reliable backups and recover quickly and granularly when needed. Exemplifying a certain case of an engineering solution provider based in Canada. The company’s old backup solution worked reasonably well for traditional server technology, but showed major shortcomings while trying to back up VMs. Altaro VM Backup solution enabled them to protect all of their data, and flawlessly restored and converted the backup VMs to a different host. Altaro aims to delight its customers with full-featured, affordable backup software backed by an outstanding, personal support team. Hence, it invests heavily to serve its customers and partners quickly, effectively and indiscriminately. “Further, we have released support for the VMWare hypervisor platform, and now support the two major hypervisors. Our increasing focus on engineering will make our products SMB friendly which will gain MSPs to use our products and service their customers,” says Vella. Apart from continuous development on functionality within the product, Altaro address the practical side of things. The company arms users with tools required for a rock solid backup strategy which allows users to use the software without any manual. The determinant factors that drive Altaro VM Backup’s successes are its flexibility, and its ability to provide hassle free technical support. Apart from providing fast, personal support, Altaro doesn’t shy away from helping a user resolve an issue that originates within their environment. “No matter how well built a software product is, issues will always crop up, and often it’s a user’s environment rather than the product. The users’ are often bound by their licensing agreement, so their issues are treated with low priority,” says Vella. The company’s philosophy is to make support as an integral part of their product, ensuring that they deliver the value customers paid for. Altaro Software Intuitive and Feature-Rich Machine Backup We want to simplify while building in powerful and flexible features, and the result is Altaro VM Backup David Vella
| |November 2015 17CIOReview usiness may be brisk for cloud service providers across the spectrum, but that doesn’t mean users are going home happy. According to a recent Forrester Consulting study, theirs is not a warm and fuzzy lot. The Forrester report cited seven deadly sins users commonly ascribe to their cloud providers, ranging from a glaring lack of transparency to feeling ignored, from stinginess with essential metadata to troubles with compliance and on-boarding. To that litany, we’d like to add ‘bait and switch.’ And perhaps “being disingenuous.” The concept of an ‘all you can eat plan’ from managed services or Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) providers – specifying a supposedly full menu of services – is undeniably attractive to users, especially emerging businesses who regard IT infrastructure services as growth serum. And users, quite understandably, have been signing up to these plans in droves. Thing is, the providers – who can be of just about any size, from the biggest players to the freshest boutique – don’t quite make the asterisk next to ‘All You Can Eat’ big enough. Put another way, it’s all you can eat, unless you want to eat more. If your performance suffers, if your data requirements increase, if your needs grow, well, you’re on your own. Make no mistake: the typical DaaS or managed services provider – the vendor who won the business by promising to meet user needs at fire sale prices – By Adam Stern, President, CEO, Infinitely Virtual An Edict, Not an Opportunity B CEO-Insights ‘All You Can Eat’ In the cloud, it’s not space that’s finite – the scarce/ pricey commodity is performance
| |November 2015 18CIOReview will invariably recoup their costs and then some by throttling down bandwidth. In the cloud, it’s not space that’s finite – the scarce/pricey commodity is performance. Indeed, as Debra Shinder recently observed in Cloud Computing Administration (Desktop in the Cloud: Will Cloud-based VDI ever get out of the Gate? (Part 2), “If DaaS is looking attractive, it’s important to remember that no solution is ever perfect, and cloud-based virtual desktops also have their down side. One of the most frequent user complaints, whether it’s hosted on premises or in the cloud – is performance.” “When you implement DaaS, users are at the whim of your provider and the connection between them,” concurs Ryan McLaughlin, Search Virtual Desktop (The downsides of cloud desktops). “There are no guarantees that your cloud desktop provider will not suffer a disaster or outage at some point, leaving your data inaccessible and your users unable to do their work. Even excluding the worst-case scenarios, latency is still a regular problem for many, and it can affect work performance with little recourse for customers. Add to that the costs of potential bandwidth increases to handle the extra traffic that comes with a cloud desktop.” It’s not that users haven’t noticed. Last July, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) published a survey of 156 IT pros involved with virtual desktop operations. The report, “Desktop Virtualization: Emerging Requirements and Optimal Configurations,” highlights some festering issues in the DaaS environment – issues, like network performance, that TechTarget’s Bridget Botelho suggests really should be addressed in service-level agreements (SLAs). (SLAs should get specific on issues with DaaS providers) “In EMA's survey, the biggest issue by far was that DaaS providers lacked the time and personnel to address customer issues,” Botelho notes. “The other component of DaaS that’s troublesome is application performance management – 45 percent of EMA's survey respondents said it is a problem,” to which EMA’s Steve Brasen adds, “In your SLA you want to ensure application performance, and you may even want to name specific applications that must meet a certain performance level.” This, then, is the dicey underside of ‘all you can eat.’ Or to evoke another gas- tronomic metaphor: ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ Users can escape this trap by being discerning IT consumers. That doesn’t mean control- ling appetites (there’s nothing unreasonable or gluttonous about wanting or expect- ing superior perfor- mance); it does mean taking a hard look at the entire cloud environment. Increasingly, the logical alternative to DaaS – minus the unforeseen performance limitations – is the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model. Unlike DaaS, IaaS is holistic, accommodating growth (and attendant needs for higher performance) while providing users with more than adequate headroom. IaaS rejects the notion that the cloud is strictly about hardware. Instead, the IaaS model is increasingly focused on application delivery. No matter what application an organization is using, a savvy IaaS provider should know how to deliver that app. Every hosting plan should be designed to provide what users need, and it should never be necessary to build from scratch. A well-oiled IaaS machine – where servers and prefab packages effectively take the place of IT professionals – should deliver 100 percent uptime. Basic SLAs should provide, at minimum, “semi-managed services.” That is, the IaaS provider should manage everything from the hosting environment up to the operating system. Customers can be as involved in the application install and management as they choose to be, or request concierge- level service. The better providers are as comfortable working with customers who have IT departments as with those who don’t. For disgruntled cloud users – those on the short end of the “all you can eat” cafeteria line – IaaS is more than capable of turning frowns upside down. Adam Stern
| |November 2015 19CIOReview A successful sailing experience is all about making tough and right decisions—a skill that helped Bohlin to sail through his entrepreneur journey4 with unlikely victories. “It is often about commitment and belief as much as skill. I have learned some of the biggest leadership lessons in sailing which played a key role in laying the success map of HansaWorld,” explains Bohlin, CEO at HansaWorld. The company serves the midsize and large enterprises through integrated business software. “Our standard application solution, with almost identical software, facilitates tons of customer data in our databases.” HansaWorld’s core product, Standard ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) offers modules of accounts, order processing, stock manufacturing, and job costing. The programs are designed to make administration and accounting as easy and fast as possible. They also deliver a unique level of interaction between its component elements through a range of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) modules. With its integrated approach— information stored in one database— all parts of the system are connected by default and there is no need to interface different applications. “We do accounting software and ERP in an ultra modern style through our integrated platform, enabling workflow and electronic conferencing and document management. Our multi-platform can be accessed on any device,” states Bohlin. HansaWorld has also managed to move a full ERP system with all codes compiling it and making the availability of database on Android, iOS, and Windows 8. With CIOs often looking for a host of software, Bohlin points out, the allocation of server space often takes a toll on the services cost, which he describes as a “dramatic challenge” in the industry. To overcome the hurdle, HansaWorld Standard ERP offers an application level load balancing. It provides an excellent service to the customer, so that they don’t have to wait for responses. “Additionally, another concept that we adopt is the automatic allocation of more server instances or migration of existing installation to these instances to share the load,” he states. A large part of the world is not cloud-ready. “Stepping ahead, our team makes the local server spot of the cloud, so that enterprises can remotely operate the services, update or install software automatically,” Bohlin adds. Facilitating a robust remote backup process, the company also provides additional security by ensuring an extra copy of each daily back-up file that’s stored off- site on a remote server. “We have customers around the globe using the system and to get maximum response time they shift the main storage of data to SEV centers for the correct time zone and better internet speed. When the application can move itself to another machine without disruption, the process becomes simple.” A leading Norway-based ice cream chain, with large number of distributors, was looking for low-cost integration functionality. “Standard ERP was the right choice for them because we have one of the few programming tools which provides full scale programming on a mobile device and connects at a very less license cost to a standard ERP backend system,” explains Bohlin. As for its futuristic journey, the Bohlin’s team is now looking forward for deeper integration features to enhance personal productivity with workflow and ERP. “We are also looking at integration of personal productivity management with ERP as the acronym and integrated telephony, which will have a huge scope in the market,” concludes Bohlin, who rightly believes that for staying relevant in the market, a leader should be able to analyze the developing technology. HansaWorld Offering an Integrated, End-to-End Business Management Application Karl Bohlin Stepping ahead, our team makes the local server spot of the cloud, so that enterprises can remotely operate the services, update or install software automatically
| |November 2015 20CIOReview By Dominic Wellington, Chief Evangelist, Moogsoft C hange has always been a constant in it. We used to know at least the direction that change was going in, but not anymore. How many servers do you have? What do they do? Previously, questions like these were easy to answer. You gave the junior member of the system admin team running shoes and a clipboard, and turned them loose in the datacenter to “count noses.” While servers were occasionally forgotten eventually somebody would stumble over the dust-covered box, follow the cables and bring the prodigal back into the fold. Technology was equally predictable. Moore’s Law meant that every 18 months CPU speeds doubled. OS upgrades came at a predictable pace. RAM and storage technologies also evolved along their own trajectories, but major discontinuities were rare. Today, however, it is quite a bit more complex. As Moore’s Law starts to show its limitations, evolution has continued, but in different directions. Today a server is no longer twice as fast in clock speed as what it replaces, and looks far more different from its predecessor than used to be the case. How Servers Have Evolved The initial change was the move to server virtualization, so one physical server could host any number of virtual servers. Yet many IT organizations were unpleasantly surprised to realize that while virtual servers were very easy to create, nobody was taking care of retiring them when they were no longer needed. This explosion of virtual servers quickly led to a major capacity crunch, resulting in the requirement for better management and planning. Then came the various flavours of cloud computing. Public cloud meant servers running outside the datacenter, which meant outside the fire wall – outside the perimeter. This of course resulted in all sorts of new security and compliance headaches. However, procurement was out of IT’s control, requiring only that users – often developers – enter a credit card, and adoption happened while IT was still debating about what to do. CXO-Insights THE EVOLUTION OF SERVER TECHNOLOGIES How many servers do you have? What do they do? The problem is that knowing the answer is the prerequisite to most processes and management solutions that exist today Dominic Wellington
| |November 2015 21CIOReview Private cloud seemed like a better option, but when fully implemented as a self-service option, it often exacerbated the capacity problems that virtualization had first introduced. Finally, we are now dealing with containers, which despite some at- tempts to treat them as just another sort of virtual server, represent something rather different, with multiple con- tainers sharing a single underlying operating system. Old-time main- frame and Unixhands tend to scoff at the idea of this sort of partitioning as innovation, but it is the scale of adop- tion that is making the difference. Why Embrace Evolution? All of this change has left IT teams sometimes scrambling to keep up with users, especially developers, who want to adopt all the newest technologies right away. Users are also able to access those technologies much more easily than in the past. Previously, the IT department owned the physical data center, and had time to enroll servers in its management processes while space was found in the racks, power and network cables were placed, operating system disks were swapped out to install the system and all the many tasks required a server to start, well, serving were completed. The strength of the new model of IT is that there is no such bottleneck – but IT management techniques and tools have not kept up. All too often, IT professionals struggle to answer the question at the beginning of this article: “How many servers do you have? What do they do?” The problem is that knowing the answer is the prerequisite to most processes and management solutions that exist today. Without this up-to-date list of systems and dependencies, however, many things no longer work. Monitoring is generally used to be assumed to require knowledge of what was to be monitored. Not having this data, though, leads to silent failures, where some piece of infrastructure that is not monitored goes down, turning out to have been critical to some service or functionality. Troubleshooting these situations is a nightmare, because all of the indicators were green – right up until everything burned down, fell over and sank into a swamp. Processes do exist to monitor such things – that is not the issue. However, they tend to assume that it takes six to eight weeks to provision a server, so there is plenty of time to register it and enrol it in all the various monitoring and tracking systems. That comfort- ing assumption no longer holds true in the age of VMs, containers, and all kinds of clouds. As the famous adage goes, “servers should be cattle, not pets.” Pets have individual names and are coddled and cosseted, healed when they are sick and documented – perhaps ob- sessively – by their own- ers. Cattle, on the other hand, get numbers, not names, and are con- sidered as entirely inter-changea- ble. If one gets sick, you just get a new one and keep right on going. This means that you also have to change your thinking from being the loving, dedicated caretaker of a small number of individual pets, to being a farmer in charge of a large herd. Evolution is Inevitable The evolution of IT tools and processes is happening, but the bottleneck is in changing the thinking of the IT organi- zations themselves. Trying to treat a container in a shared service accessed over the Internet in the same way as the 1U server in the rack in the data center downstairs is a recipe for disaster. IT departments now need to accept the new definitions of what a server is if they are to avoid that disaster. The good news is that the rewards are also signifi- cant. Thanks to this evolution in what a server can be, IT has the opportunity to be much faster and more efficient than ever before, delighting users and ena- bling new business success.
| |November 2015 22CIOReview W ith the growth of internet, there is a change in the way one works, socializes, creates, and shares information. As the global user internet penetration continues to grow, there is a rising need for servers all over the world. “We have to keep up with emerging markets who are noticing the need to have their data accessible faster,” says Manny Vivar, VP of Global Op- erations of HostDime. “We are addressing these issues by continuing a very strong global footprint of owned facili- ties where we provide server ‘bare-metal’ hardware products which power the cloud.” Founded in 2001, HostDime is a privately owned and operated global data center provider. HostDime offers managed cloud-hosting services with fully supported amenities and web tools that empower global us- ers to do more on the cloud at an affordable cost. According to Vivar, Global localization will continue to impact the server technology space so the company continues to ensure all their global locations can service the latest hardware. “We are seeing a big demand for country fail over sites. Since we operate facilities globally this allows this product to evolve naturally for us,” says Vivar. HostDime’s humble beginnings with only one server molded the company’s principles: To service its clients at the highest level possible and accept nothing less. “HostDime delivers a large array of managed cloud hosting products above industry standards and we help every step of the way,” adds Vivar. The company caters to the various clients’ needs that range from simple website hosting which can be serviced by VPS servers housed on bare-metal hardware to high availability cloud elastic product to company/ client provided hardware colocation product. “Our array of services allows the client to work with us as a data center infrastructure provider and use the product they fit best into,” asserts Vivar. In 2003, HostDime opened its first data center in Orlando, Florida after growing from one server to over 200. The passion and vision for excellence prompted the founding HostDime engineers to design a facility, which provides the highest levels of uptime and service to clients. Once the facility was completed, HostDime succeeded in transferring all servers from a prior third party data center to its very own facility in Florida. Managed Dedicated Servers, Managed VPS hosting, and Colocation services were added to the product line. “The company’s main advantage is their high level of managed services and their global data center footprint,” adds Vivar. An example illustrating the company’s solutions is a client in Russia that runs a game app was facing issues servicing their users in Mexico and Brazil. The client approached the company to provide bare-metal servers in order to deploy his application locally that resulted in the clients latency issues becoming obsolete after activating the application. Through various partnerships and alliances with leading enterprises dealing in the world of software, hardware, and bandwidth networks, HostDime has evolved into an excellent data center operator. Trend in technology is always what is newer and faster. “With the price of SSD’s continuing to drop we are taking advantage of this by defaulting most servers; we deploy now with SSD’s and the newest and latest Xeon processors,” says Vivar. “For the days ahead we will continue to expand our global foot print. We are going to be building our second facility in Brazil in Sao Paulo and then build our own facility in India in 2017,” concludes Vivar. HostDime Managed Hosting Servers to Global Colocation Services for the Enterprise We have to keep up with emerging markets who are noticing the need to have their data accessible faster and locally Manny Vivar
| |November 2015 23CIOReview
| |November 2015 24CIOReview S erver technology has become progressively more powerful following Moore's law. Despite Moore’s more recent speculation, the number of servers has exploded as enterprises support an ever increasing number of applications and business initiatives, resulting in an exponential growth in the volume of data. It is a challenge for storage and also provides new possibilities for CIOs to de- vise effective ways to make sense of the data and drive better business outcomes. “Pivot3 Hyper Convergence Infrastruc- ture (HCI) is an efficient way to capture and process data because of its inherently high storage efficiency and compute performance,” assures Ron Nash, Chairman and CEO, Piv- ot3—a company which delivers Global Hyper-Converged In- frastructure for high performance Enterprise IT workloads. Enterprises initially purchased hyper-converged appliances for a single purpose such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) or storing massive amounts of video data. But it is when users take advantage of the convergence of storage and compute that the real value of HCI emerges. “Customers who started with a big data storage solution have discovered that they can easily and inexpensively also run a disaster recovery capability on the same HCI. Our technology is a clear differentiator as the HCI is based on a true cross- cluster virtual SAN with extremely high storage efficiency while providing exceptional levels of fault tolerance,” Nash points out. In the process, the Pivot3 architecture preserves compute power through a multitude of optimizations that leave most of the processing capacity for running the user's applications. The proliferation of networked devices opens the door to many opportunities for useful services that can constitute the core of new business models. The efficiency of the IT infrastructure plays a crucial role to make these services possible. “In the case of the Internet of Things, Pivot3 Global HCI can store, monitor, and process data streams from myriad sensors and devices in an economically viable way which drives down complexity and higher costs,” observes Nash. In addition to improving the performance and availability of high-demand applications, HCI reduces risks associated with multiple vendors, data loss and data security, and provides a centralized management platform, which is designed for simplicity and can be used by any IT generalist. One of Pivot3's customers in the healthcare landscape, the National Health Service, leveraged Hyper-convergence to tackle productivity issues arising due to under-performance of devices used to access patient data and bedside information. In partnership with specialized healthcare integrator, Pivot3 installed HCI to support high-performance VDI in the form of mobile medical workstations and thus, delivered a high-end user experience with instant-on availability on any portable device, high end-point security with stateless clients, all at low cost per virtual desktop. Pivot3 not only improved the quality of patient care with improved clinician productivity, key features like secure mobile access meets regulatory compliance and patient privacy laws. Around the turn of the millennium, the founders of Pivot3 came to the conclusion that the next step in storage technology was to take control of the hardware through software, resulting in the path-breaking vSTAC platform. The trend continues on today at Pivot3’s headquarters in Austin and their innovation lab in Houston, Texas which refines and optimizes the hyper converged software with unique approaches like the close-to-the-metal design, Scalar Erasure Coding, and Virtual Global Sparing, which have led to twenty-two patents filed and awarded to-date. “Having recently announced a joint go-to-market partnership with Lenovo and Arrow ECS in Europe and the Middle East, Pivot3 is expanding their footprint in all geographic areas including Asia-Pacific and Latin America,” concludes Nash. Pivot3 Global HCI Delivering High Performance Enterprise IT Workloads Pivot3 HCI is an efficient way to capture and process data because of its inherently high storage efficiency and compute performance Ron Nash
| |November 2015 25CIOReview By Ken Shulman, CIO, CTO, Broadview Networks W hether a small-or-medium sized business or a large enterprise, growth presents a host of challenges that necessitate proac- tive planning. While companies experi- ence growth in various capacities, CIOs and CTOs must take the scaling ability of their business-enabling technology into consideration when catering to expanding company needs. Servicing an increasing headcount, ensuring IT resiliency while adding back-office and network capacity, and avoiding a ballooning IT budget, are key factors to consider when reevaluating technology structure to accommodate growth. What are seemingly simple and mundane challenges to address are actually interconnected and must be examined holistically when developing a comprehensive, functional solution to business growth. Handling Growth in Headcount Managing physical growth and employee headcount can be challenging without the right technological support. When applying traditional approaches to IT, hiring new employees can trigger a substantial increase in direct infrastructure complexity and investment, whereas an effective use of new cloud technology alternatives can make scaling quick, easy, and cost efficient. In a traditional IT envi- ronment, adding workers can trigger multiple di- rect investment require- ments, such as: 1) Private Branch Exchange (PBX) expansion to add more phones to a capacity limited phone system which can result in the need for full scale “fork-lift” upgrades (i.e., PBX replacement) costing several thousands of dollars if the ultimate capacity of the existing PBX is reached 2) Additional office or cubicle space to accommodate the new employees which can result in the need to rent more space 3) Purchase of additional desktop equipment, including phones, PCs, software, switching, routing and wiring, which can easily cost thousands of dollars per new employee On the other hand, cloud technology alternatives can offer significant opportunity to avoid many, if not all, of these challenges to employee growth. In particular: 1) Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solutions, which are cloud-based alternatives to the traditional premise- based PBX, offer virtually unlimited phone system scalability, supporting both expansion and contraction as needed generally with no limits on the number of employees served and limited or no up-front capital investment by the business 2) UCaaS solutions, with remote worker and shared “hot- desking” technologies, provide companies with the option of sharing office space among employees or flexible work locations while providing all the functionality and benefits of in-office phone systems, thus avoiding the need and cost of adding new office space CIO-Insights Growing Businesses Face and How the Cloud Can Help Top 3 Challenges
| |November 2015 26CIOReview Cloud computing and UCaaS solutions particularly shine in addressing the needs for resiliency and business continuity 3) By leveraging cloud-based virtual desktop technology, PC softphones, shared “hot-desked” office space and optional desk phone equipment rental, companies can reduce or avoid the high cost of desktop equipment purchases to enable new employees. Cloud computing and UCaaS technologies can also enable Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), allowing new employees to use their own smart phones and/or laptops to work with company technology, a particularly powerful approach to hiring millennials. Maintaining Resiliency while Adding Back-Office and Network Capacity Beyond additional staff, growing businesses must also manage customer growth and may need to reevaluate the approach to customer service. Beyond adding storage capacity, growth- oriented businesses may also need to add processing power and compute power to ensure employees, both existing and new, are experiencing adequate back office systems performance, while customers are receiving the products and customer service they need to run their own businesses. Among other things, CIOs may need to expand server hardware, including storage, CPU capacity, and network ports, to serve the additional back-office load, as well as expand the company datacenters to house the additional server and storage hardware while also maintaining proper cooling and power requirements. Furthermore, they need to add PBX trunk capacity to handle the growth in voice traffic, as well as add inter-location data network capacity to handle more traffic and expand internet access bandwidth. Alternatively, cloud computing and UCaaS solutions can substantially reduce these needs and simplify the CIO’s challenges by: 1) Eliminating the need for company-purchased server, storage or CPU capacity. 2) Eliminating the need for company owned datacenter expansion. 3) Eliminating the need for PBX trunking by eliminating the PBX and its support contracts. 4) Simplifying the data networking requirements. 5) Providing a pathway to eliminating existing company datacenters entirely. Once core resource requirements have been addressed, businesses must invest in disaster recovery, resiliency, back-up storage and overall network support to ensure business continuity during a time of disaster or disruption. Investing in a resilient technology infrastructure ultimately allows businesses minimal downtime through continued access to the network, communication among staff, and a back- up strategy for potentially lost or corrupted files. Cloud computing and UCaaS solutions particularly shine in addressing the needs for resiliency and business continuity. Budget Management Beyond managing headcount and network capabilities, growth oriented businesses must also consider the financial investment needed to ensure continued growth from a point of fiscal responsibility. Cloud technology is exceptionally easy and cost-effective to install considering it only requires internet connectivity and installation which is a one-time expense. Once the cloud- based infrastructure is put in place, IT support is minimally required and is often provided at no or low additional cost by the provider, allowing the budget that would be dedicated to hiring an IT director to be invested elsewhere. In addition, company leadership and management generally have access to a user-friendly and intuitive central dashboard where changes can easily be made. Growth is a shared objective of all businesses. But with growth comes many challenges, particularly for the CIO, or those sitting in the shoes of the CIO whether by choice or necessity. In today’s technology-heavy business world, the platform choices made can have a disproportionate impact on the costs, complexity, flexibility and sustainability of business growth, both now and in the future. Cloud computing and UCaaS offer substantial benefits over traditional IT solutions, dramatically improving the scalability and cost efficiency of a business, whether for phone services, desktop equipment, space requirements, back-office systems, or business continuity. Ken Shulman
| |November 2015 27CIOReview M onitoring servers, networks, and applications often detects performance issues early. Besides cloud-based, local, and virtual servers, today’s CIOs also have to deal with external systems such as SaaS and PaaS. “Our software monitors remote servers as easily as it keeps track of local servers,” begins Doug Nebeker, CEO, Power Admin LLC. Founded in 2002, Power Admin has many years of experience building professional grade system monitoring products. The company has a unique capability of monitoring systems in a remote data center without any monitoring agents, and without needing a Virtual Private Network connection because of its Satellite Monitoring Engine and usage of an outgoing HTTPS connection. The company’s flagship product, PA Server Monitor helps enterprises monitor the standard ping, CPU, memory, and disk usage. It can also verify that specific events, such as backup completed or anti-virus file updates, show up in the Windows Event Log. Event Log entries can be specified by source, ID or event text. This same filtering is available for incoming SNMP Traps and Syslog events from Linux devices. When a problem is detected, PA Server Monitor can trigger various alerts including: • Outgoing emails • Push notifications to the iPhone (and soon Android and Windows Phone) application • Making HTTP calls for creating tickets in a helpdesk system or Slack channel • Writing to the Windows Event Log • Sending an SNMP Trap • Writing to a text file Other checks can be performed by watching an email account for incoming messages, keeping tabs on web server SSL certificate expiration, web page content and load time, and file and directory changes, including for CIFS shares as are often used in manufacturing facilities. “Customers tell us PA Server Monitor is easy to configure, yet still flexible as you can get down to individual thresholds, alert recipients, and even poll-cycles,” says Nebeker. Additionally, PA File Sight, PowerAdmin’s file access auditing solution, determines who is accessing files on the server. Using PA File Sight, it becomes easy to find out who deleted files or folders, or accidentally dragged one public folder to another. “IT pros appreciate that it does not rely on Windows auditing, which can cause performance problems when you’re watching all file access on a server,” reports Nebeker. “Instead, it watches files at the system level using the same approved techniques that anti-virus vendors use. This means it can report on not only who is accessing files, but also where they are accessing them from. No other product on the market can report the IP address of who is accessing the files, and if the access is local, which process is doing the access.” Power Admin has been creating robust monitoring solutions for its clients since its inception. For instance, a pharmaceutical software company was facing issues in monitoring remote servers at hundreds of customer sites. Before PA Server Monitor, the client had to manually check and configure ad-hoc alerts to manage the servers. Now with the help of the Satellite Monitoring Engine, the client has been able to deploy monitoring functionality on one server at each remote location which then monitors everything else at that location. The monitors were configured with email alerting. Instead of having to manually manage those servers every day, the client now receives an email when there’s a problem at a particular server, reducing the effort that was previously invested in manual monitoring. Power Admin continues to grow and innovate. Their passion for simplifying IT shows up in features like ‘Bulk Config’ which allows for easily making configuration changes in bulk. The company’s new version six will feature monitoring via server groups and monitor templates, and updated mobile applications. “We stay up to date with the technology industry, while listening closely to customer needs,” concludes Nebeker. Power Admin Agentless Server Monitoring for Remote Locations
| |November 2015 28CIOReview M odern day CIOs need to embrace cloud technology as well as leverage the existing tools, already imple- mented in the data centers of organizations while streamlining the resources required for achieving these goals. Headquartered in San Ramon, CA, RightITnow is providing the Event Correlation Manager (ECM) platform, al- lowing organizations to explore and utilize cloud solutions while leveraging the existing monitoring solutions. “We deploy native connectors to various platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware, Solarwinds, Nagios and present them in a uni- fied display,” begins Marc Ferrie, Founder and CEO, RightITnow. ECM consists of features such as workflow and people manage- ment facilities, allowing IT organizations to manage their Net- work Operations Center (NOC) resources and assess their recruit- ing requirements based on actual workload data. RightITnow’s mission is to simplify the way IT operations are being managed today. The company has established certain key practices in the IT arena. These features include—streamlining the design of the product to make it simple to use along with providing cost-effective solutions to automate alert management and resource optimization. RightITnow monitors various technological trends, integrating cloud solutions and combining them with organizations’ existing resolutions, which are present in the corporations’ data centers. “We are at the core of server technology innovations that includes public, private, and hybrid cloud initiatives in a seamless and economical way,” mentions Ferrie. “All of these are managed through our ECM product that deploys native connectors to capture, aggregate and process the events from multiple sources.” In addition, RightITnow assists organizations’ in utilizing big data technology which is critical to surface hidden trends within the millions of alerts processed on a daily basis. ECM incorporates technology to display historical trends within the NOC operational dashboards as well as provides mechanisms to feed IT data warehouses. Being a Web 2.0 Manager of Managers (MoM) solution, ECM provides multi- source event correlation software, optimizing IT operations and supporting predictable SLA-based services. The platform displays operational and historical dashboards with a comprehensive view of organizations’ data center and staff workload. “We also provide extensive workflow options and bridge the gap between IT operations and service helpdesk offering tight integration with ServiceNow, Zendesk, BMC Remedy, Salesforce Service Cloud, and ManageEngine,” notes Ferrie. RightITnow holds a track record of empowering clients to successfully manage their business operations and is well- equipped to change the way IT processes are being administered across industry verticals with their ECM platform. In one such instance, a large system integrator’s initial deployment of monitoring tools did not allow for true scalability as each element manager reported via email to their ServiceDesk. Furthermore, introduction of a new element manager required additional staff to manage the increase in alert triage and manual incident creation. It also required the organization to re-train the Servicedesk for understanding the new alert format. The organization approached RightITnow who provided them with ECM solution that allowed the client to abstract the Servicedesk from the element managers andensureallalertsweredeliveredtotheminastandardform.The integration with the Incident Management tool via the connector delivered with ECM allowed the organization to automate the creation of incidents reducing the load on the Servicedesk, thereby allowing them to deliver cost effective improvements. The company’s proactive 24x7 support and integration of customer feedback has proven to be of much value for customers. Surgingahead,RightITnowplansonprovidingahighlydistributed solution against an even larger number of monitoring solutions while exploring actionable big data applications and expanding their mobile presence beyond the iPhone ECM application. RightITnow A New Paradigm in IT Management Operations We are at the core of server technology innovations that includes public, private and hybrid cloud initiatives in an seamless and economical way Marc Ferrie
| |November 2015 29CIOReview
| |November 2015 30CIOReview S ince public cloud first stepped its foot in the business world, the IT landscape has clung to promises of in- stant access to data and reduced IT overhead. Howev- er, today several privacy and performance concerns are surrounding the public cloud, which cannot be left unheard. Abating the risks around data distribution, sharing, and avail- ability—Software Pursuits has been designing and delivering innovative software solutions for enterprise information sys- tems since 1975. The company’s flagship offering SureSync is a file synchronization platform that provides secure, reliable, and efficient sharing of files across an organization. “With SureSync you can replicate files to a remote disaster recovery center or synchronize the data between branch offices, while storing the files in a company's own servers which leads to added security,” remarks Larry Salveson, President, Software Pursuits. While file replication and sharing is beneficial for all organizations, many have still not recognized the need or have neglected its implementation. “Only when a firm experiences a communication loss, do they realize the imperativeness for replication and synchronization technologies,” opines Salveson. In case a disaster strikes, companies should have an immediate access to their data, and while it can be accomplished with virtual cloud server, it is always feasible to have local copies of data in other office locations for uninterrupted business operations. In addition, while the task of copying files sounds like a plain- sailing task, it involves complexities like multi-directional synchronizations, compression, encryption, network utilization and throttling. This is where SureSync steps in helping clients navigate effectively through their data management issues. Although SureSync started out as a solution to fulfill an in-house need—today it is enjoyed by thousands of customers. From facilitating data protection, multi-site file collaboration, and synchronization services for corporate networks; SureSync provides a suite of products, each focused on different customer needs. The newest offering from the suite, SureSync Endpoint, enables IT teams to establish replication services for mobile notebooks and remote connected machines, creating an internal private cloud. Following a design philosophy which can be modified according to the task at hand Salveson says that, “Our ultimate goal is to automate and enhance file availability as much as possible, increasing productivity throughout an organization.” According to Salveson, it is Software Pursuits’ drive for excellence and desire to help customers which has worked as a strong formula for the company’s growth for forty years. Often large multinationals like UPS and Verizon Wireless that share files across national or global networks, face difficulties with network latency, bandwidth consumption, and file transfer performance. Software Pursuits addresses these challenges through a software agent placed in each location, giving SureSync multiple opportunities to outperform standard methods of transferring files. “Our ability to transfer only portions of files dramatically reduces the amount of data transferred; however this is only one method where SureSync enhances performance. SureSync also leverages the operating system and hardware to optimize synchronization performance,” explains Salveson. Going forward, Software Pursuits plans on further refining their products, as Salveson believes that there is always room for advancements and improvement. “Responding to our customers’ development needs in the near future, we will be enriching our portfolio by adding products and features that will enhance auditing, performance, and operational control,” ends Salveson. Software Pursuits Private Clouds for Efficient, Secure File Sharing Our ultimate goal is to automate and enhance file availability as much as possible, increasing productivity throughout an organization Larry Salveson
| |November 2015 31CIOReview C IOs and their corporations are looking for the magic bullet to protect their intellectual property and the personally identifiable information of their clients, partners and employees. Legacy security measures such as firewalls and antivirus provide little protection from hackers and malicious users breaching the enterprise environment and the implementation of more strict access controls.Data loss prevention (DLP) solutions are cumbersome and limit the productivity of end users. With these technical and business constraints in place, CIOs are turning to encryption of data across the entire data life cycle to mitigate the risks of lost or stolen information. But does today’s encryption technology really provide the levels of confidentiality required in this totally Internet connected world? There are three primary phases in which data can be encrypted: in transit, at rest, and in use. The highest level of data protection currently exists in the data transmission phase. In this phase, encryption occurs between specific communicating devices. Protection provided by encryption in transit includes confidentiality from eavesdropping and sniffing, or man- in-the-middle attacks. Applications such as VPN clients and browser based HTTPS provide strong encryption processes which protect the confidentiality of data making it very difficult for unauthorized users to intercept. It is common practice for organizations to encrypt of data transmitted from remote devices; however, data that is being transmitted on internal networks typically goes unencrypted. There is a perception that data transmitting the internal network, or even that being transmitted to remote facilities, is secure and therefore does not require encryption. Nevertheless, an organization’s internal network can be easily breached making data vulnerable to the same risks of eavesdropping, sniffing and man-in-the-middle attacks. Consultants, vendors and individuals off the street not only have access to wireless networks but often have access to network jacks in conference rooms, cafeterias and other common areas. Also, devices that do not require direct authentication (i.e. printers, scanners, industrial controls, etc.) can be infected with malware that can eavesdrop, sniff, or capture traffic and send out information to the Internet. Past concerns of implementing encryption to internal data transit included increased overhead on servers, network devices and end user workstations. This overhead could cause systems delays, loss of connectivity and loss or corruption of data. Many of today’s server and network technologies have data encryption capabilities built in to allow for CIO-Insights The highest level of data protection currently exists in the data transmission phase with the ‘at rest’ and ‘in use’ phases close behind Encryption – Is it enough?By Jerry Irvine, EVP, CIO, Prescient Solutions
| |November 2015 32CIOReview easier configuration and implementation and minimize the impact on utilizations. Implementing encryption of data in transit from endpoint to endpoint, both remotely and internally is mandatory in today’s cyber risk environment. Anotherphaseofdataencryptionisthe encryption of data at rest. Implementing encryption of data at rest is the easiest of all phases and, in fact, is built in on many devices such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. There are really no reasons not to encrypt all data on smartphones, tablets, PCs; however, there are some major limitations of encrypting data at rest. Users and applications must be able read data in order to use it, consequently, when a user or application logs into the system the data must appear decrypted. This is both necessary and a major vulnerability because when a user or application logs in all data, even that data at rest that they have access to, becomes readable. So, if a user’s device or application is infected with a virus, malware, etc. and they log in all data on their system or systems they can access becomes available to the hacker. The last phase of data encryption is encryption of data in use, this is the weakest link. As defined in the previous encryption of data at rest section,inordertomakeuseofdata, it must be readable or decrypted. Many applications, database companies and cloud service providers are claiming different levels and characteristics of encrypted data in use; but, current technology does not make this completely possible. Encryption of data in use relies heavily on encryption of data at rest and in combination with strong authorization and access controls. By allowing only authorized users, limiting their access to the principles of least privilege and performing on the fly decryption of data upon access, companies are providing a minimal level of encryption of data in use. Based on the functionality of encryption within the different phases, it must be obvious that encryption is not a silver bullet for the protection of data. Encrypting data in transit can be compromised even if it is being performed across both internal and remote networks via the placement of malware on authorized devices that can eavesdrop or sniff data as it traverses the enterprise. Encrypting data at rest can also be overcome via the placement of malware on an authenticated device and it can also be bypassed by un-authorized users who illegally obtain valid user ids and password which have rights to view the data. The encryption of data in use with existing technologies uses the same but stricter rules as defined within the encryption of data at rest phase and therefore can be compromised in the same ways. Encryption is designed to provide an additional layer of data protection but complex authorization policies and strict access controls providing only the least amount of privileges necessary for a user toperformtheirfunctionsarestillrequired in the protection of data. If hackers get into a network but are unable to gain authorized access with valid credentials, encryption will protect data from being read, copied or manipulated. However, cyber incidents facilitated by gaining un- authorized access to systems using valid user credentials, such as phishing scams or social engineering, can allow hackers complete access to decrypted data. Jerry Irvine
| |November 2015 33CIOReview
| |November 2015 34CIOReview By Scott Strickland, CIO, DMH Global A nalysts, experts, and observers often encourage CIOs to be aligned with the business. I disagree. Alignment is just the first step to a partnership relationship that allows real change. Let’s look at what it means to be aligned versus what a business partnership is to help clarify this. Alignment means IS has a cordial relationship with each department, strives towards the same goals, and has an operating model to support day to day exceptions. Building a basic relationship with other department heads is critical but often overlooked and can serve as the foundation. Relationships can be fostered by travelling together, attending other departments’ social events, and simply by going to that new sushi place together. Agreeing on the yearly priorities–often by writing them together or jointly interpreting the CEO mandates,–represents the second step. Unfortunately many IS organizations have not done this and this causes cross-functional prioritization, resource, and funding issues later in the year. The last major step in alignment is establishing an operating model to drive normal activities and address issues. Creating a business partnership requires much more personal effort by the CIO. Providing the “art of the possible”, cancelling under-performing or shadow projects, and saying “yes, if” to push back and guide ideas are all part of being in a partnership. The “art of the possible” can be a set of sessions explaining or even demonstrating the latest in technology and tying it back to real business problems. This can serve to help guide the project portfolio as well as identify organizational deficiencies (such as knowledge or new roles) in time for the next budget cycle. Ultimately, both teams should start to look forward to the yearly sessions. A less popular, highly visible, and counter-intuitive method for building a partnership is cancelling or deferring a project. An aligned CIO will often push out delivery dates or commit more resources to help the business look good but a partnered CIO could (and should) cancel the project entirely. Obviously this is heavily dependent on the reason for the original project delay: cancelling a project due to a project manager issue is extreme whereas cancelling it for significant change management issues or business buy-in concerns is prudent. Shadow projects should generally be cancelled as they are the gift that keeps on giving, typically built on a non-standard platform or with an insecure architecture. Cancelling projects is often the cheapest financial approach but requires a different type of capital: political credit and the willpower to spend it. Finally, learning to say no in a different manner by saying “yes, if” is another great partnership tool. Often IS is viewed as the department of no–no budget, no time, no way–and using “yes, if” allows the department to consider a proposal if the business provides meets their end of the deal. For example, when the business wants to re-prioritize a backlogged project (Project B), the CIO could respond “yes we can do it… if you help us complete Project A first and we jointly take the business case for Project B to the CFO this Friday during lunch.” This draws the business in, makes them part of the solution, and engages them in quantifying the benefits while also ensuring it is a real priority. During a recent dinner with about twenty other CIOs across multiple industries, the facilitator asked “How many projects that come across your desk have real business value?” The maximum number that anyone admitted to was 50percent, whereas 30percent seemed to be the average. Thus 50percent of projects do not have real value and the aligned CIO proceeds while the partnered CIO works with the business to find other solutions. CIO-Insights Beyond Alignment – Partnership is the Path to Delivering Business Value Scott Strickland Alignment is just the first step to a partnership relationship that allows real change Scott Strickland
| |November 2015 35CIOReview About Logistics Solutions Inc. Logistic Solutions Inc, founded in 1993, is an established IT services and solutions provider, offering domain rich execution capability and executive commitment to client engagement. Leveraging a global delivery model, our diversified technology services and solutions are built to align with our clients business & technology vision. Logistic Solutions, Inc. (A certified MBE company) 216, Stelton road, #C2 Piscataway, New Jersey - 08854. Telephone: 732-743-2300 Fax: 732-457-0016 E-mail:  info@logistic-solutions.com Our Partners: Differentiators:
| |November 2015 36CIOReview

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Server Technology

  • 1.
    | |November 2015 1CIOReview CIOReviewNOVEMBER19 2015 CIOREVIEW.COM SERVER SPECIAL Kevin B. Thompson, President & CEO Delivering ‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers SolarWinds: In My Opinion Kushagra Vaid, GM, Server Engineering, Microsoft CEO Insights Adam Stern, President, CEO, Infinitely Virtual
  • 2.
  • 3.
    | |November 2015 3CIOReview ERPImplementation, Maintenance and System Support Integrated Dashboards for Patient-flow and Bed Planning Comprehensive Quality & Compliance Solutions for Life Science
  • 4.
    | |November 2015 4CIOReview DominicWellington, Chief Evangelist, Moogsoft Adam Stern, President, CEO, Infinitely Virtual Ken Shulman, CIO, CTO, Broadview Networks THE EVOLUTION OF SERVER TECHNOLOGIES ‘ALL YOU CAN EAT’ AN EDICT, NOT AN OPPORTUNITY TOP 3 CHALLENGES GROWING BUSINESSES FACE AND HOW THE CLOUD CAN HELP 16 Altaro Software CONTENTS 19 HansaWorld 22 HostDime 24 Pivot3 27 Power Admin 28 RightITnow 30 Software Pursuits 20 17 25 CXO INSIGHTS CEO INSIGHTS CIO INSIGHTS IN MY OPINION Jerry Irvine, EVP, CIO, Prescient Solutions Scott Strickland, CIO, DMH Global ENCRYPTION – IS IT ENOUGH? BEYOND ALIGNMENT – PARTNERSHIP IS THE PATH TO DELIVERING BUSINESS VALUE 31 34 08 Kushagra Vaid, GM, Server Engineering, Microsoft INDUSTRY TRENDS IN OPEN SOURCED HARDWARE
  • 5.
    | |November 2015 5CIOReview COVERSTORY 10 Delivering‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers Delivering ‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers SolarWinds:SolarWinds: Kevin B. Thompson, President and CEO *All Insights are based on the interviews with respective CIOs and CXOs to our editorial staff
  • 6.
    | |November 2015 6CIOReview Copyright© 2015 CIOReview. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without written permission from the publisher is prohibited.The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher thereof. CIOReview NOVEMBER 19 - 2015 Mailing Address CIOReview 44790 S. Grimmer Blvd Suite 202, Fremont, CA 94538 T:510.402.1463, F:510-894-8405 November 19 - 2015, Vol 04 SE 101 Published by CIOReview To subscribe to CIOReview Visit www.cioreview.com Server Special CIOReview Editorial Staff Sales T:510. 565. 7627 Alex D'Souza Brian Jackson Joe Philip Derek James George. N [email protected] George Thomas [email protected] Visualizers Stephen ThomasSukirti Agnihotri Managing Editor Jeevan George C IOs today are wading through an increasing number of IT solutions that are shaping the modern digital world ecosystem. One of the main constituents of this ecosystem is servers that are under- pinning almost the entire IT system. Meanwhile, as the CIOs have a tricky task of delivering the IT services their organizations require within the allocated budget, over time it involves having to de-liver more with less. That is one of the reasons why server virtualization has been so successful—it allows more virtual servers to be produced from a single physical one, and it ensures that the physical resources are uti-lized more effectively and efficiently. This also satisfies the need of customers who demand maxi-mum performance on giant workloads at minimal cost. But what about the physical servers themselves? Can organizations get more bang for their buck there as well? The good news is that yes, and the solution is already in use in very large organiza-tions like cloud providers. Driven by the zeal to cater to increasing demands, these organizations are exploring the open source technologies alongside virtualization and the nascent containerization concepts. Server technology today is being integrated with open source technologies such Software Defined Networking and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to bring more transparency and agility into computing and networking domains. Further, network controllers, load balancers, and policy management are being trimmed to perfection to yield the best results for both the customers and the server vendors. The introduction of these new server infrastructures and platforms means that traditional tasks, such as virtualization and high-performance computing, along with business applications will be more and more accessible on the cloud, giving companies enhanced freedom. In the months ahead, businesses can expect to be given more flexibility from server suppliers, while new workloads are set to be addressed for the first time. On that note, we present to you a special edition on server technology. In this edition, we are featur-ing insights from thought leaders in this space along with a list of selected vendors who are success-fully overriding the challenges in this ecosystem with their innovative solutions. Jeevan George Managing Editor [email protected] Editorial Exploiting the True Potential of Servers Satyakam
  • 7.
  • 8.
    | |November 2015 8CIOReview opinion inmy loud computing is rapidly transforming the IT industry, and has gained significant momentum over the past few yearsacrossbothconsumerand business segments. Enterprises are accelerating their investments in migrating application infrastructure fromdiscreteenvironmentstoservices-baseddelivery model using IaaS/PaaS/SaaS paradigms. While there is a lot of focus on the software aspects, what is less discussed is the equivalent rapid transformation taking place in IT infrastructure across the hardware supplier ecosystem, being primarily shaped by the large hyper-scale public cloud providers and recent trends in open source hardware. The Open Compute Project (OCP) was established in July 2011 to enable the broad availability of extremely efficient server, storage and datacenter hardware designs optimized for large scale computing. The aspired result is to provide end users with the choice and flexibility for designing the infrastructure stack using open source hardware building blocks, without being beholden to any legacy or vendor defined constraints. This is achieved by disaggregating the proprietary vendor stack into independent components to enable a greater degree of flexibility, scalability and efficiency. Most of these components are based on commodity hardware utilized in hyper-scale deployments, ensuring that IT end-users can leverage industry learnings from operating at scale, while still being able to take advantage of lower costs from volume pricing. OCP Solution Providers (SPs) perform the typical order fulfilment and service/support functions, by taking the hardware and software building blocks and configuring these based on the IT customer’s solution requirements. The OCP community now has over 150 member companies across the globe, and is backed by prominent hyper-scale cloud providers, OEM/ODM suppliers, silicon providers and IT end users. Design and IP contributions from member companies across the hardware and solution stack have enabled OCP to establish itself By Kushagra Vaid, GM, Server Engineering, Microsoft Industry Trends in Open Sourced C Hardware OCP Solution Providers (SPs) perform the typical order fulfilment and service/ support functions, by taking the open source hardware and software building blocks and configuring these based on the IT customer's solution requirements Kushagra Vaid
  • 9.
    | |November 2015 9CIOReview asthe de-facto forum in the industry for all topics related to open sourced IT and Datacenters. At the same time, OCP has empowered IT organizations to take more control over their infrastructure destiny, by providing freedom and choice for architecting solution stacks using pre-certified commodity hardware building blocks, which have been battle tested by hyper-scale cloud service providers. This entire put together has led to a massive disruption in the hardware industry ecosystem, reshaping the traditional relationship between IT end users and suppliers. IT customers across several vertical segments (such as hyper-scale cloud providers, financial services, telco, e-commerce, public sector, healthcare) are now taking concrete steps to deploy OCP designs, taking full advantage of this open source hardware paradigm. For Server and Storage hardware, there are currently two main standards supported by OCP – OpenRackbased de- signs, and Open CloudServer (OCS)based designs. Products built on these open standards enable a broad set of offerings suitable for various enter- prise IT scenarios such as dense virtualiza- tion, big data processing, web/mailbox hosting and high performance com- puting. In fact, Open CloudServer is the base server platform for all hardware deployments of Microsoft’s large scale ser- vices such as Azure (Public Cloud), Office365 (Office Produc- tivity), Xbox Live (Gaming) and Bing (Web Search). This large scale proof point across a diverse set of application scenarios provides a high degree of credibility for adopting OCP designs in enterprise environments, giving IT the assurance that the server hardware has been thoroughly qualified at scale in production datacenter environments. On the Networking front, OCP has seen a huge influx of IP contributions both for switch hardware and software that have accelerated the trend for dis-aggregating the network switch ecosystem and simplified the migration to Software Defined Networking (SDN). In addition to a variety of leaf switches (also called Top-of-Rack switches) for 10Gbe/40Gbe connectivity, OCP also hosts a multitude of networking software projects – namely, Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) for switch boot time provisioning and configuration, Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), which provides a vendor agnostic mechanism for controlling switching ASICs/NPUs, and Open Network Linux (ONL), which is an OS distribution for “bare metal” switches. These open source network software efforts reduce the risk of vendor lock-in for the networking stack, thus expanding customer choice. When coupled with open network switches, this enables end users to fully customize the networking stack and have a greater degree of control over network configuration and operation, ensuring deployment agility and improvement in service availability. OCP designs have also set a high bar for intro- duction of new technologies, enabling breakthrough hardware innovations with improved performance and power while still ensuring a commodity cost point. An example of this is the ‘Cloud- SSD’ design specifica- tion contributed by Microsoft, which targets high-perfor- mance 24x7 server scenarios, but utilizes commodity Flash NAND modules commonly used in desktop/tablet segments to meet these goals. This provides a compel- ling value proposition for enterprise users, and this open effort is subsequently reshaping the Solid State Drive (SSD) supplier ecosystem to meet this new emerging demand for such hybrid devices. Another example of such innovation is in the networking space, where Facebook recently contributed both the ‘Wedge ’network switch design and the associated ‘6-pack’ modular chassis design. These two designs are the base components for a high bandwidth non-blocking topology, and bring the latest networking technologies to the broader industry, but still at commodity cost points. With this broad portfolio of proven hardware designs available across server, storage and networking, IT customers now have the flexibility to take these open building blocks and configure these as appropriate for their solution deployment scenarios. In tandem, customers can leverage the low cost volume economics thus directly impacting the organizations bottom-line for Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) metrics. As the open hardware momentum continues to grow, it is expected to cover an increasingly large amount of the technology stack, and which would further its appeal to an even broader set of both suppliers and customers. This is a significant trend that will continuously reshape the industry ecosystem, providing new opportunities for agile integration of new technologies and enable IT departments to derive increased business value for datacenter infrastructure.
  • 10.
    | |November 2015 10CIOReview Delivering‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers Delivering ‘Unexpected Simplicity’ in Monitoring Complex Servers rom industry’s bigwigs to rising entrepreneurs, everyone wishes to own a smart server monitoring software to architect an efficient IT infrastructure. With thousands of physical, virtual and cloud-based servers running alongside each other, keeping track of each of them and eliminating intricacies as and when they arise is an intractable task for any organization today. From selecting a viable server environment to acquiring affordable server software that makes the perfect fit into IT budget of an enterprise, IT professionals are burgeoned with a myriad of complexities associated with server management technology. In an effort to curb these complexities around server management, IT professionals are on a constant look-out for viable technology partners that can help them thrive in a highly competitive environment by delivering easy-to-use server management solutions and enhance the internal and external communications of an organization. Designed to meet today’s challenges that are thrown at IT professionals in server management space, SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI), an Austin, TX-based company, offers purpose-built products. “We offer powerful and affordable solutions that aim to deliver ‘unexpected simplicity’ and redefine the expectations IT professionals have for exceptional server management software,” affirms Kevin B. Thompson, President and CEO, SolarWinds. F COVER STORY SolarWinds:SolarWinds: By Supriya Kumaraswamy
  • 11.
    | |November 2015 11CIOReview KevinB. Thompson, President and CEO
  • 12.
    | |November 2015 12CIOReview Beinga towering figure in the IT space, the company offers a vast range of products that simplify the process of deploying servers in an organization and enables the monitoring of servers. By leveraging SolarWinds’ server management software, enterprises can install increased number of servers and make applications easily available. Additionally, the software detects network outages, protocol failures, unsuccessful processes, servers, and batch jobs, which in turn foster organizations to be proactive and resolve problems within minutes. Pro-actively Monitoring Server Performance As the agent-based software dwindles in the market, the new and advanced Agent-less server monitoring software has made its entry in the IT landscape. It enables the enterprises to save significant time and money, while reducing the glitches associated with Agent-based server monitoring software. In order to thwart the intricacies that come along with Agent- based server monitoring software, SolarWinds delivers Agentless server monitoring software—Server & Application Monitor—that takes care of the overall server management and supports multi-vendor server monitoring. “Server & Application Monitor is capable of providing extensive insights into a number of activities carried out by a server by monitoring, alerting, and reporting its performance,” notes Thompson. The Agentless software’s server management capabilities allow organizations to natively start and stop services, reboot servers, and kill rogue processes by providing server monitoring support for multiple hardware vendors. In addition, it provides built-in support for the enterprises to manage over 150 applications. One of SolarWinds’ customers, Carlion Clinic had compatibility issues with Agent-based server monitoring system that had many applications in different parts of the system. The customer found it difficult to extract actual information to act upon from huge amounts of data. After witnessing SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor’s compatibility with Windows Server, Carlion Clinic decided to leverage it. After the implementation of this software, the customer was able to set up server application monitoring software within minutes, while having thousands of servers listed, monitored, and managed efficiently. Through effective utilization of the software, the customer eliminated their compatibility issues. As a result, Carlion Clinic was able to move from reactive environment to a proactive environment and had sufficient time to ensure that the applications were available 24/7. Preventing Outages and Maximizing Performance Alongside delivering Agentless server monitoring system, the Server & Application Monitor brings in a range of other benefits. The software can proactively monitor the performance of server environments through preventing application outages and maximizing efficiency. It keeps track of up and down statuses, capacity, and performance monitoring of server hardware. Since performance monitoring is essential to troubleshoot application issues and optimize application performance, SolarWinds leverages unique templates to supervise server and application performance through Server & Application Monitor. Besides, it also enables the display of real-time and historical trends through intuitive and meaningful dashboards. Furthermore, the server monitoring software enables organizations to get rid of their disparate vendors systems, while monitoring their server hardware in a single console. From Our experts combine the expertise with deep connection to the IT community to create IT management products that are effective and accessible
  • 13.
    | |November 2015 13CIOReview statusesof hard drive, array, power supply, fan to CPU and speed, SolarWinds enables the customers to leverage unparallel thresholds for all key server health and performance metrics. Simple to Deploy FTP Server The basic purpose of any technology today is to deliver easy-to-use solutions for the users. Likewise, as a technology solution provider, SolarWinds provides FTP Server—Serv-U—to enable organizations to easily view, upload, and download files from anywhere. The company also enables users to transfer files over intuitive web and mobile device interfaces. Its drag-and-drop capability makes it easier for the users to transfer multiple files at a time including large files up to two gigabytes. Serv-U FTP Server provides a broad range of customization options that make the administration and management of transferable files simple. Moreover, the FTP server can be leveraged across Windows and Linux platforms since it is simple to deploy and extremely affordable. Serv-U FTP Server is specially designed for small businesses, as it is an affordable and secure file transfer that supports organizations to fulfill their internal and external file transfer requirements. To highlight the efficiency of Serv-U FTP server, one of SolarWinds customers, KSPS, a Washington TV Station, required an FTP server that is easy to deploy and maintain so that everyone in the organization can upload and download files. Additionally, the customer also needed the solution to be affordable enough to acquire and support to fit the budget of public television. SolarWinds Serv-U FTP server enabled the users who do not have technical expertise to upload and download files with a few clicks. Besides, KSPS was able to benefit from the completely new transformation in the way regional Washington public television station KSPS exchanges advertisements and video with its sponsors and content partners through SolarWinds Serve-U FTP server. “Serv-U has also become a valuable component in their annual pledge drives and other fundraising activities that require a reliable secure file transfer method,” says Thompson. Stepping ahead of Status Quo Unlike other enterprise software vendors who have established “Status quo” for themselves, SolarWinds firmly believes in moving ahead and delivering products that are not difficult to use, expensive, and addresses the realities of today’s IT management challenges. Having more than a decade of expertise in serving IT field, Thomson says, “We do not think enterprise software has to be as complicated as it’s made out to be.” In this light, the company strives to offer impactful functionality that is easy to use and promises exceptional ROI in the market. SolarWinds was founded in 1999 and ever since its inception, it has been working with one strong motive to support IT professionals get rid of the complexity that is associated with traditional enterprise software by offering the products that are easier to find, buy, deploy and maintain. Besides, the company workforce’s innate ability to manage today’s dynamic IT environments, sets it apart from the rest of the enterprise software vendors in the industry. “Our experts combine the expertise with deep connection to the IT community to create IT management products that are effective and accessible,” affirms Thompson. Positive Strides towards the Future Having established its strong foothold in IT landscape by serving industry’s big names such as Microsoft, Nestle, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, Yahoo and many other firms, SolarWinds promises to continue to interact with large, global user community to guide product development and strategy to invent better products. SolarWinds also assures to constantly evolve its products and ensure that its server management software is well prepared to fulfill the ever-increasing requirements of IT space. “We continue to deliver increasing value over the lifetime of ownership,” concludes Thompson. We offer powerful and affordable solutions that aim to deliver ‘unexpected simplicity’ and redefine the expectations IT professionals have for exceptional server management software
  • 14.
    | |November 2015 14CIOReview B usinesses,organizations and governments are wading through an increasing number of IT solutions that are shaping the modern digital world ecosystem. Servers thataretheunderpinningforalmosttheentireITsystem are understandably witnessing wide range of enhancements for better throughput and greater efficiency. As a result, terms such as hyperscale computing, converged infrastructure, flash storage, flexibility and mobility are now a common on the table for the IT decision makers. Customers today demand maximum performance on giant workloads at minimal cost. Driven by the zeal to cater to these demands, server solution providers are exploring the open source technologies alongside virtualization and the nascent containerization concepts. The effort is on to pack the most power in the least form factor. Server technology today is being integrated with open source networking such Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to bring more transparency and agility into computing and networking domains. Further, network controllers, load balancers, and policy management are being trimmed to perfection to yield the best results for both the customers and the server vendor. To help the CIOs and CEOs find the right server solution providers for their enterprises, CIO Review presents a special edition on server technology. A distinguished panel comprising of CEOs, CIOs, VCs, and analysts including CIO Review editorial board has evaluated hundreds of solution providers in the server space to arrive at the final 20. We present to you the “20 Most Promising Server Solution Providers 2015.” Company Management Description Altaro Software Malta (Europe) altaro.com App Dynamics San Fransisco, CA appdynamics.com AppZero Andover, MA appzero.com Datadog New York, NY datadoghq.com HansaWorld Stockholm, Sweden hansaworld.com HostDime Orlando, FL hostdime.com David Vella CEO David Wadhwani CEO Greg O' Connor President & CEO Olivier Pomel CEO & Co-Founder Karl Bohlin CEO Manny Vivar VP Provides data security for virtual environments running on Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi/vSphere/vCenter Provides Application Intelligence Platform to monitor, manage and optimize complex business environments AppZero brings one-click appstore simplicity to Windows server applications Provides SaaS-based data analytics platform that enables multiple teams to work collaboratively on infrastructure issues Provides full suite of ERP, financials, and CRM as well as a wide selection of industry-specific solutions on tablets and smartphones Offers managed cloud-hosting services to colocation globally with fully supported amenities and tools
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    | |November 2015 15CIOReview 20Most Promising Server Solution Providers 2015 Company Management Description Ipswitch lexington, MA ipswitch.com LogicMonitor Santa Barbara, CA logicmonitor.com ManageEngine Pleasanton, CA manageengine.com Nagios Enterprises Saint paul, MN nagios.com Nutanix San Jose, CA nutanix.com Opsview Berkshire, UK opsview.com Pivot3 Austin, TX pivot3.com Power Admin Olathe, KS poweradmin.com RightITnow San Ramon, CA London, UK rightitnow.com ScienceLogic Reston, VA sciencelogic.com Software Pursuits San Mateo, CA softwarepursuits.com SolarWinds Austin, TX solarwinds.com Spiceworks Austin, TX spiceworks.com Zenoss Austin, TX zenoss.com Joe Krivickas CEO Kevin McGibben CEO Manikandan Vembu COO Eric Loyd Founder & CEO Dheeraj Pandey CEO Mike Walton Founder & CEO Ron Nash Chairman & CEO Doug Nebeker CEO Marc Ferrie CEO David Link CEO Larry Salveson President Kevin B. Thompson President & CEO Jay Hallberg Founder & CEO Greg Stock Chairman & CEO Provides simple powerfull tools for IT teams Provides hosted monitoring for the entire technology stack in a single unified solution Provides IT teams to manage networks, applications, help desk with easy to use products Delivers official products, services, and solutions for and around Nagios® Enables easy deployment of any virtual workload, including large-scale virtual desktop initiatives (VDI), development/test apps, private clouds, big data (Hadoop) projects Enables sysadmins to easily monitor the complex enterprise IT environments that support critical business services, with native support Pivot3’s HCI is based on a true cross-cluster virtual SAN with extremely high storage efficiency while providing exceptional levels of fault tolerance Building professional grade system monitoring products for various industries around the world RightITnow's ECM software aggregates, filters and correlates infrastructure and application events into actionable alerts Delivers the next generation IT monitoring platform for the Internet of Everything Designs and delivers software solutions for enterprise information systems Provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses Provides IT professionals products and a community to do their jobs in a radically new way Provides unified monitoring and analytics software for physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT infrastructures
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    | |November 2015 16CIOReview C oupledwith ‘do more for less’, the complete strategy today for server configuration is to not only commute speed, but to also gain quick access to data. While coming under increasing pressure to deliver services quicker and more efficiently, the demands on IT infrastructures continues to grow universally in terms of complexity. In addi- tion, simplifying backup processes and adding flexibility in the data stored and retrieved, as well as their backup destinations are more important than ever. “We’ve made big steps in creat- ing a backup platform for Hyper-V and VMware that discards the complexity of backing up Virtual Machines, yet offering systems administrators more power and functionality to get backup and restore jobs reliably and efficiently,” affirms David Vella, CEO, Altaro Software. The Malta based company is focused on backing up virtual server technology with Altaro VM Backup, enabling administrators to backup and restore Hyper-V and VMware VMs without hassle. The product is developed to serve SMB- level organizations with flexible, reliable and affordable backup software for virtual environments. Altaro developed their backup solution after realizing that backing up and restoring Hyper-V VMs and clusters were a needlessly complicated process without the use of a third party tool. Existing products were overpriced, complicated to configure and use which took ages to complete a job. “We want to simplify while building in powerful and flexible features, and the result is Altaro VM Backup,” stresses Vella. The company provides data security for virtual environments, specifically for virtual environments running on Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi/vSphere/ vCenter. Altaro VM Backup has the ability to majorly simplify all that it takes to take reliable backups and recover quickly and granularly when needed. Exemplifying a certain case of an engineering solution provider based in Canada. The company’s old backup solution worked reasonably well for traditional server technology, but showed major shortcomings while trying to back up VMs. Altaro VM Backup solution enabled them to protect all of their data, and flawlessly restored and converted the backup VMs to a different host. Altaro aims to delight its customers with full-featured, affordable backup software backed by an outstanding, personal support team. Hence, it invests heavily to serve its customers and partners quickly, effectively and indiscriminately. “Further, we have released support for the VMWare hypervisor platform, and now support the two major hypervisors. Our increasing focus on engineering will make our products SMB friendly which will gain MSPs to use our products and service their customers,” says Vella. Apart from continuous development on functionality within the product, Altaro address the practical side of things. The company arms users with tools required for a rock solid backup strategy which allows users to use the software without any manual. The determinant factors that drive Altaro VM Backup’s successes are its flexibility, and its ability to provide hassle free technical support. Apart from providing fast, personal support, Altaro doesn’t shy away from helping a user resolve an issue that originates within their environment. “No matter how well built a software product is, issues will always crop up, and often it’s a user’s environment rather than the product. The users’ are often bound by their licensing agreement, so their issues are treated with low priority,” says Vella. The company’s philosophy is to make support as an integral part of their product, ensuring that they deliver the value customers paid for. Altaro Software Intuitive and Feature-Rich Machine Backup We want to simplify while building in powerful and flexible features, and the result is Altaro VM Backup David Vella
  • 17.
    | |November 2015 17CIOReview usinessmay be brisk for cloud service providers across the spectrum, but that doesn’t mean users are going home happy. According to a recent Forrester Consulting study, theirs is not a warm and fuzzy lot. The Forrester report cited seven deadly sins users commonly ascribe to their cloud providers, ranging from a glaring lack of transparency to feeling ignored, from stinginess with essential metadata to troubles with compliance and on-boarding. To that litany, we’d like to add ‘bait and switch.’ And perhaps “being disingenuous.” The concept of an ‘all you can eat plan’ from managed services or Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) providers – specifying a supposedly full menu of services – is undeniably attractive to users, especially emerging businesses who regard IT infrastructure services as growth serum. And users, quite understandably, have been signing up to these plans in droves. Thing is, the providers – who can be of just about any size, from the biggest players to the freshest boutique – don’t quite make the asterisk next to ‘All You Can Eat’ big enough. Put another way, it’s all you can eat, unless you want to eat more. If your performance suffers, if your data requirements increase, if your needs grow, well, you’re on your own. Make no mistake: the typical DaaS or managed services provider – the vendor who won the business by promising to meet user needs at fire sale prices – By Adam Stern, President, CEO, Infinitely Virtual An Edict, Not an Opportunity B CEO-Insights ‘All You Can Eat’ In the cloud, it’s not space that’s finite – the scarce/ pricey commodity is performance
  • 18.
    | |November 2015 18CIOReview willinvariably recoup their costs and then some by throttling down bandwidth. In the cloud, it’s not space that’s finite – the scarce/pricey commodity is performance. Indeed, as Debra Shinder recently observed in Cloud Computing Administration (Desktop in the Cloud: Will Cloud-based VDI ever get out of the Gate? (Part 2), “If DaaS is looking attractive, it’s important to remember that no solution is ever perfect, and cloud-based virtual desktops also have their down side. One of the most frequent user complaints, whether it’s hosted on premises or in the cloud – is performance.” “When you implement DaaS, users are at the whim of your provider and the connection between them,” concurs Ryan McLaughlin, Search Virtual Desktop (The downsides of cloud desktops). “There are no guarantees that your cloud desktop provider will not suffer a disaster or outage at some point, leaving your data inaccessible and your users unable to do their work. Even excluding the worst-case scenarios, latency is still a regular problem for many, and it can affect work performance with little recourse for customers. Add to that the costs of potential bandwidth increases to handle the extra traffic that comes with a cloud desktop.” It’s not that users haven’t noticed. Last July, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) published a survey of 156 IT pros involved with virtual desktop operations. The report, “Desktop Virtualization: Emerging Requirements and Optimal Configurations,” highlights some festering issues in the DaaS environment – issues, like network performance, that TechTarget’s Bridget Botelho suggests really should be addressed in service-level agreements (SLAs). (SLAs should get specific on issues with DaaS providers) “In EMA's survey, the biggest issue by far was that DaaS providers lacked the time and personnel to address customer issues,” Botelho notes. “The other component of DaaS that’s troublesome is application performance management – 45 percent of EMA's survey respondents said it is a problem,” to which EMA’s Steve Brasen adds, “In your SLA you want to ensure application performance, and you may even want to name specific applications that must meet a certain performance level.” This, then, is the dicey underside of ‘all you can eat.’ Or to evoke another gas- tronomic metaphor: ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ Users can escape this trap by being discerning IT consumers. That doesn’t mean control- ling appetites (there’s nothing unreasonable or gluttonous about wanting or expect- ing superior perfor- mance); it does mean taking a hard look at the entire cloud environment. Increasingly, the logical alternative to DaaS – minus the unforeseen performance limitations – is the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model. Unlike DaaS, IaaS is holistic, accommodating growth (and attendant needs for higher performance) while providing users with more than adequate headroom. IaaS rejects the notion that the cloud is strictly about hardware. Instead, the IaaS model is increasingly focused on application delivery. No matter what application an organization is using, a savvy IaaS provider should know how to deliver that app. Every hosting plan should be designed to provide what users need, and it should never be necessary to build from scratch. A well-oiled IaaS machine – where servers and prefab packages effectively take the place of IT professionals – should deliver 100 percent uptime. Basic SLAs should provide, at minimum, “semi-managed services.” That is, the IaaS provider should manage everything from the hosting environment up to the operating system. Customers can be as involved in the application install and management as they choose to be, or request concierge- level service. The better providers are as comfortable working with customers who have IT departments as with those who don’t. For disgruntled cloud users – those on the short end of the “all you can eat” cafeteria line – IaaS is more than capable of turning frowns upside down. Adam Stern
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    | |November 2015 19CIOReview A successfulsailing experience is all about making tough and right decisions—a skill that helped Bohlin to sail through his entrepreneur journey4 with unlikely victories. “It is often about commitment and belief as much as skill. I have learned some of the biggest leadership lessons in sailing which played a key role in laying the success map of HansaWorld,” explains Bohlin, CEO at HansaWorld. The company serves the midsize and large enterprises through integrated business software. “Our standard application solution, with almost identical software, facilitates tons of customer data in our databases.” HansaWorld’s core product, Standard ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) offers modules of accounts, order processing, stock manufacturing, and job costing. The programs are designed to make administration and accounting as easy and fast as possible. They also deliver a unique level of interaction between its component elements through a range of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) modules. With its integrated approach— information stored in one database— all parts of the system are connected by default and there is no need to interface different applications. “We do accounting software and ERP in an ultra modern style through our integrated platform, enabling workflow and electronic conferencing and document management. Our multi-platform can be accessed on any device,” states Bohlin. HansaWorld has also managed to move a full ERP system with all codes compiling it and making the availability of database on Android, iOS, and Windows 8. With CIOs often looking for a host of software, Bohlin points out, the allocation of server space often takes a toll on the services cost, which he describes as a “dramatic challenge” in the industry. To overcome the hurdle, HansaWorld Standard ERP offers an application level load balancing. It provides an excellent service to the customer, so that they don’t have to wait for responses. “Additionally, another concept that we adopt is the automatic allocation of more server instances or migration of existing installation to these instances to share the load,” he states. A large part of the world is not cloud-ready. “Stepping ahead, our team makes the local server spot of the cloud, so that enterprises can remotely operate the services, update or install software automatically,” Bohlin adds. Facilitating a robust remote backup process, the company also provides additional security by ensuring an extra copy of each daily back-up file that’s stored off- site on a remote server. “We have customers around the globe using the system and to get maximum response time they shift the main storage of data to SEV centers for the correct time zone and better internet speed. When the application can move itself to another machine without disruption, the process becomes simple.” A leading Norway-based ice cream chain, with large number of distributors, was looking for low-cost integration functionality. “Standard ERP was the right choice for them because we have one of the few programming tools which provides full scale programming on a mobile device and connects at a very less license cost to a standard ERP backend system,” explains Bohlin. As for its futuristic journey, the Bohlin’s team is now looking forward for deeper integration features to enhance personal productivity with workflow and ERP. “We are also looking at integration of personal productivity management with ERP as the acronym and integrated telephony, which will have a huge scope in the market,” concludes Bohlin, who rightly believes that for staying relevant in the market, a leader should be able to analyze the developing technology. HansaWorld Offering an Integrated, End-to-End Business Management Application Karl Bohlin Stepping ahead, our team makes the local server spot of the cloud, so that enterprises can remotely operate the services, update or install software automatically
  • 20.
    | |November 2015 20CIOReview ByDominic Wellington, Chief Evangelist, Moogsoft C hange has always been a constant in it. We used to know at least the direction that change was going in, but not anymore. How many servers do you have? What do they do? Previously, questions like these were easy to answer. You gave the junior member of the system admin team running shoes and a clipboard, and turned them loose in the datacenter to “count noses.” While servers were occasionally forgotten eventually somebody would stumble over the dust-covered box, follow the cables and bring the prodigal back into the fold. Technology was equally predictable. Moore’s Law meant that every 18 months CPU speeds doubled. OS upgrades came at a predictable pace. RAM and storage technologies also evolved along their own trajectories, but major discontinuities were rare. Today, however, it is quite a bit more complex. As Moore’s Law starts to show its limitations, evolution has continued, but in different directions. Today a server is no longer twice as fast in clock speed as what it replaces, and looks far more different from its predecessor than used to be the case. How Servers Have Evolved The initial change was the move to server virtualization, so one physical server could host any number of virtual servers. Yet many IT organizations were unpleasantly surprised to realize that while virtual servers were very easy to create, nobody was taking care of retiring them when they were no longer needed. This explosion of virtual servers quickly led to a major capacity crunch, resulting in the requirement for better management and planning. Then came the various flavours of cloud computing. Public cloud meant servers running outside the datacenter, which meant outside the fire wall – outside the perimeter. This of course resulted in all sorts of new security and compliance headaches. However, procurement was out of IT’s control, requiring only that users – often developers – enter a credit card, and adoption happened while IT was still debating about what to do. CXO-Insights THE EVOLUTION OF SERVER TECHNOLOGIES How many servers do you have? What do they do? The problem is that knowing the answer is the prerequisite to most processes and management solutions that exist today Dominic Wellington
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    | |November 2015 21CIOReview Privatecloud seemed like a better option, but when fully implemented as a self-service option, it often exacerbated the capacity problems that virtualization had first introduced. Finally, we are now dealing with containers, which despite some at- tempts to treat them as just another sort of virtual server, represent something rather different, with multiple con- tainers sharing a single underlying operating system. Old-time main- frame and Unixhands tend to scoff at the idea of this sort of partitioning as innovation, but it is the scale of adop- tion that is making the difference. Why Embrace Evolution? All of this change has left IT teams sometimes scrambling to keep up with users, especially developers, who want to adopt all the newest technologies right away. Users are also able to access those technologies much more easily than in the past. Previously, the IT department owned the physical data center, and had time to enroll servers in its management processes while space was found in the racks, power and network cables were placed, operating system disks were swapped out to install the system and all the many tasks required a server to start, well, serving were completed. The strength of the new model of IT is that there is no such bottleneck – but IT management techniques and tools have not kept up. All too often, IT professionals struggle to answer the question at the beginning of this article: “How many servers do you have? What do they do?” The problem is that knowing the answer is the prerequisite to most processes and management solutions that exist today. Without this up-to-date list of systems and dependencies, however, many things no longer work. Monitoring is generally used to be assumed to require knowledge of what was to be monitored. Not having this data, though, leads to silent failures, where some piece of infrastructure that is not monitored goes down, turning out to have been critical to some service or functionality. Troubleshooting these situations is a nightmare, because all of the indicators were green – right up until everything burned down, fell over and sank into a swamp. Processes do exist to monitor such things – that is not the issue. However, they tend to assume that it takes six to eight weeks to provision a server, so there is plenty of time to register it and enrol it in all the various monitoring and tracking systems. That comfort- ing assumption no longer holds true in the age of VMs, containers, and all kinds of clouds. As the famous adage goes, “servers should be cattle, not pets.” Pets have individual names and are coddled and cosseted, healed when they are sick and documented – perhaps ob- sessively – by their own- ers. Cattle, on the other hand, get numbers, not names, and are con- sidered as entirely inter-changea- ble. If one gets sick, you just get a new one and keep right on going. This means that you also have to change your thinking from being the loving, dedicated caretaker of a small number of individual pets, to being a farmer in charge of a large herd. Evolution is Inevitable The evolution of IT tools and processes is happening, but the bottleneck is in changing the thinking of the IT organi- zations themselves. Trying to treat a container in a shared service accessed over the Internet in the same way as the 1U server in the rack in the data center downstairs is a recipe for disaster. IT departments now need to accept the new definitions of what a server is if they are to avoid that disaster. The good news is that the rewards are also signifi- cant. Thanks to this evolution in what a server can be, IT has the opportunity to be much faster and more efficient than ever before, delighting users and ena- bling new business success.
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    | |November 2015 22CIOReview W iththe growth of internet, there is a change in the way one works, socializes, creates, and shares information. As the global user internet penetration continues to grow, there is a rising need for servers all over the world. “We have to keep up with emerging markets who are noticing the need to have their data accessible faster,” says Manny Vivar, VP of Global Op- erations of HostDime. “We are addressing these issues by continuing a very strong global footprint of owned facili- ties where we provide server ‘bare-metal’ hardware products which power the cloud.” Founded in 2001, HostDime is a privately owned and operated global data center provider. HostDime offers managed cloud-hosting services with fully supported amenities and web tools that empower global us- ers to do more on the cloud at an affordable cost. According to Vivar, Global localization will continue to impact the server technology space so the company continues to ensure all their global locations can service the latest hardware. “We are seeing a big demand for country fail over sites. Since we operate facilities globally this allows this product to evolve naturally for us,” says Vivar. HostDime’s humble beginnings with only one server molded the company’s principles: To service its clients at the highest level possible and accept nothing less. “HostDime delivers a large array of managed cloud hosting products above industry standards and we help every step of the way,” adds Vivar. The company caters to the various clients’ needs that range from simple website hosting which can be serviced by VPS servers housed on bare-metal hardware to high availability cloud elastic product to company/ client provided hardware colocation product. “Our array of services allows the client to work with us as a data center infrastructure provider and use the product they fit best into,” asserts Vivar. In 2003, HostDime opened its first data center in Orlando, Florida after growing from one server to over 200. The passion and vision for excellence prompted the founding HostDime engineers to design a facility, which provides the highest levels of uptime and service to clients. Once the facility was completed, HostDime succeeded in transferring all servers from a prior third party data center to its very own facility in Florida. Managed Dedicated Servers, Managed VPS hosting, and Colocation services were added to the product line. “The company’s main advantage is their high level of managed services and their global data center footprint,” adds Vivar. An example illustrating the company’s solutions is a client in Russia that runs a game app was facing issues servicing their users in Mexico and Brazil. The client approached the company to provide bare-metal servers in order to deploy his application locally that resulted in the clients latency issues becoming obsolete after activating the application. Through various partnerships and alliances with leading enterprises dealing in the world of software, hardware, and bandwidth networks, HostDime has evolved into an excellent data center operator. Trend in technology is always what is newer and faster. “With the price of SSD’s continuing to drop we are taking advantage of this by defaulting most servers; we deploy now with SSD’s and the newest and latest Xeon processors,” says Vivar. “For the days ahead we will continue to expand our global foot print. We are going to be building our second facility in Brazil in Sao Paulo and then build our own facility in India in 2017,” concludes Vivar. HostDime Managed Hosting Servers to Global Colocation Services for the Enterprise We have to keep up with emerging markets who are noticing the need to have their data accessible faster and locally Manny Vivar
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    | |November 2015 24CIOReview S ervertechnology has become progressively more powerful following Moore's law. Despite Moore’s more recent speculation, the number of servers has exploded as enterprises support an ever increasing number of applications and business initiatives, resulting in an exponential growth in the volume of data. It is a challenge for storage and also provides new possibilities for CIOs to de- vise effective ways to make sense of the data and drive better business outcomes. “Pivot3 Hyper Convergence Infrastruc- ture (HCI) is an efficient way to capture and process data because of its inherently high storage efficiency and compute performance,” assures Ron Nash, Chairman and CEO, Piv- ot3—a company which delivers Global Hyper-Converged In- frastructure for high performance Enterprise IT workloads. Enterprises initially purchased hyper-converged appliances for a single purpose such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) or storing massive amounts of video data. But it is when users take advantage of the convergence of storage and compute that the real value of HCI emerges. “Customers who started with a big data storage solution have discovered that they can easily and inexpensively also run a disaster recovery capability on the same HCI. Our technology is a clear differentiator as the HCI is based on a true cross- cluster virtual SAN with extremely high storage efficiency while providing exceptional levels of fault tolerance,” Nash points out. In the process, the Pivot3 architecture preserves compute power through a multitude of optimizations that leave most of the processing capacity for running the user's applications. The proliferation of networked devices opens the door to many opportunities for useful services that can constitute the core of new business models. The efficiency of the IT infrastructure plays a crucial role to make these services possible. “In the case of the Internet of Things, Pivot3 Global HCI can store, monitor, and process data streams from myriad sensors and devices in an economically viable way which drives down complexity and higher costs,” observes Nash. In addition to improving the performance and availability of high-demand applications, HCI reduces risks associated with multiple vendors, data loss and data security, and provides a centralized management platform, which is designed for simplicity and can be used by any IT generalist. One of Pivot3's customers in the healthcare landscape, the National Health Service, leveraged Hyper-convergence to tackle productivity issues arising due to under-performance of devices used to access patient data and bedside information. In partnership with specialized healthcare integrator, Pivot3 installed HCI to support high-performance VDI in the form of mobile medical workstations and thus, delivered a high-end user experience with instant-on availability on any portable device, high end-point security with stateless clients, all at low cost per virtual desktop. Pivot3 not only improved the quality of patient care with improved clinician productivity, key features like secure mobile access meets regulatory compliance and patient privacy laws. Around the turn of the millennium, the founders of Pivot3 came to the conclusion that the next step in storage technology was to take control of the hardware through software, resulting in the path-breaking vSTAC platform. The trend continues on today at Pivot3’s headquarters in Austin and their innovation lab in Houston, Texas which refines and optimizes the hyper converged software with unique approaches like the close-to-the-metal design, Scalar Erasure Coding, and Virtual Global Sparing, which have led to twenty-two patents filed and awarded to-date. “Having recently announced a joint go-to-market partnership with Lenovo and Arrow ECS in Europe and the Middle East, Pivot3 is expanding their footprint in all geographic areas including Asia-Pacific and Latin America,” concludes Nash. Pivot3 Global HCI Delivering High Performance Enterprise IT Workloads Pivot3 HCI is an efficient way to capture and process data because of its inherently high storage efficiency and compute performance Ron Nash
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    | |November 2015 25CIOReview ByKen Shulman, CIO, CTO, Broadview Networks W hether a small-or-medium sized business or a large enterprise, growth presents a host of challenges that necessitate proac- tive planning. While companies experi- ence growth in various capacities, CIOs and CTOs must take the scaling ability of their business-enabling technology into consideration when catering to expanding company needs. Servicing an increasing headcount, ensuring IT resiliency while adding back-office and network capacity, and avoiding a ballooning IT budget, are key factors to consider when reevaluating technology structure to accommodate growth. What are seemingly simple and mundane challenges to address are actually interconnected and must be examined holistically when developing a comprehensive, functional solution to business growth. Handling Growth in Headcount Managing physical growth and employee headcount can be challenging without the right technological support. When applying traditional approaches to IT, hiring new employees can trigger a substantial increase in direct infrastructure complexity and investment, whereas an effective use of new cloud technology alternatives can make scaling quick, easy, and cost efficient. In a traditional IT envi- ronment, adding workers can trigger multiple di- rect investment require- ments, such as: 1) Private Branch Exchange (PBX) expansion to add more phones to a capacity limited phone system which can result in the need for full scale “fork-lift” upgrades (i.e., PBX replacement) costing several thousands of dollars if the ultimate capacity of the existing PBX is reached 2) Additional office or cubicle space to accommodate the new employees which can result in the need to rent more space 3) Purchase of additional desktop equipment, including phones, PCs, software, switching, routing and wiring, which can easily cost thousands of dollars per new employee On the other hand, cloud technology alternatives can offer significant opportunity to avoid many, if not all, of these challenges to employee growth. In particular: 1) Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solutions, which are cloud-based alternatives to the traditional premise- based PBX, offer virtually unlimited phone system scalability, supporting both expansion and contraction as needed generally with no limits on the number of employees served and limited or no up-front capital investment by the business 2) UCaaS solutions, with remote worker and shared “hot- desking” technologies, provide companies with the option of sharing office space among employees or flexible work locations while providing all the functionality and benefits of in-office phone systems, thus avoiding the need and cost of adding new office space CIO-Insights Growing Businesses Face and How the Cloud Can Help Top 3 Challenges
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    | |November 2015 26CIOReview Cloudcomputing and UCaaS solutions particularly shine in addressing the needs for resiliency and business continuity 3) By leveraging cloud-based virtual desktop technology, PC softphones, shared “hot-desked” office space and optional desk phone equipment rental, companies can reduce or avoid the high cost of desktop equipment purchases to enable new employees. Cloud computing and UCaaS technologies can also enable Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), allowing new employees to use their own smart phones and/or laptops to work with company technology, a particularly powerful approach to hiring millennials. Maintaining Resiliency while Adding Back-Office and Network Capacity Beyond additional staff, growing businesses must also manage customer growth and may need to reevaluate the approach to customer service. Beyond adding storage capacity, growth- oriented businesses may also need to add processing power and compute power to ensure employees, both existing and new, are experiencing adequate back office systems performance, while customers are receiving the products and customer service they need to run their own businesses. Among other things, CIOs may need to expand server hardware, including storage, CPU capacity, and network ports, to serve the additional back-office load, as well as expand the company datacenters to house the additional server and storage hardware while also maintaining proper cooling and power requirements. Furthermore, they need to add PBX trunk capacity to handle the growth in voice traffic, as well as add inter-location data network capacity to handle more traffic and expand internet access bandwidth. Alternatively, cloud computing and UCaaS solutions can substantially reduce these needs and simplify the CIO’s challenges by: 1) Eliminating the need for company-purchased server, storage or CPU capacity. 2) Eliminating the need for company owned datacenter expansion. 3) Eliminating the need for PBX trunking by eliminating the PBX and its support contracts. 4) Simplifying the data networking requirements. 5) Providing a pathway to eliminating existing company datacenters entirely. Once core resource requirements have been addressed, businesses must invest in disaster recovery, resiliency, back-up storage and overall network support to ensure business continuity during a time of disaster or disruption. Investing in a resilient technology infrastructure ultimately allows businesses minimal downtime through continued access to the network, communication among staff, and a back- up strategy for potentially lost or corrupted files. Cloud computing and UCaaS solutions particularly shine in addressing the needs for resiliency and business continuity. Budget Management Beyond managing headcount and network capabilities, growth oriented businesses must also consider the financial investment needed to ensure continued growth from a point of fiscal responsibility. Cloud technology is exceptionally easy and cost-effective to install considering it only requires internet connectivity and installation which is a one-time expense. Once the cloud- based infrastructure is put in place, IT support is minimally required and is often provided at no or low additional cost by the provider, allowing the budget that would be dedicated to hiring an IT director to be invested elsewhere. In addition, company leadership and management generally have access to a user-friendly and intuitive central dashboard where changes can easily be made. Growth is a shared objective of all businesses. But with growth comes many challenges, particularly for the CIO, or those sitting in the shoes of the CIO whether by choice or necessity. In today’s technology-heavy business world, the platform choices made can have a disproportionate impact on the costs, complexity, flexibility and sustainability of business growth, both now and in the future. Cloud computing and UCaaS offer substantial benefits over traditional IT solutions, dramatically improving the scalability and cost efficiency of a business, whether for phone services, desktop equipment, space requirements, back-office systems, or business continuity. Ken Shulman
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    | |November 2015 27CIOReview M onitoringservers, networks, and applications often detects performance issues early. Besides cloud-based, local, and virtual servers, today’s CIOs also have to deal with external systems such as SaaS and PaaS. “Our software monitors remote servers as easily as it keeps track of local servers,” begins Doug Nebeker, CEO, Power Admin LLC. Founded in 2002, Power Admin has many years of experience building professional grade system monitoring products. The company has a unique capability of monitoring systems in a remote data center without any monitoring agents, and without needing a Virtual Private Network connection because of its Satellite Monitoring Engine and usage of an outgoing HTTPS connection. The company’s flagship product, PA Server Monitor helps enterprises monitor the standard ping, CPU, memory, and disk usage. It can also verify that specific events, such as backup completed or anti-virus file updates, show up in the Windows Event Log. Event Log entries can be specified by source, ID or event text. This same filtering is available for incoming SNMP Traps and Syslog events from Linux devices. When a problem is detected, PA Server Monitor can trigger various alerts including: • Outgoing emails • Push notifications to the iPhone (and soon Android and Windows Phone) application • Making HTTP calls for creating tickets in a helpdesk system or Slack channel • Writing to the Windows Event Log • Sending an SNMP Trap • Writing to a text file Other checks can be performed by watching an email account for incoming messages, keeping tabs on web server SSL certificate expiration, web page content and load time, and file and directory changes, including for CIFS shares as are often used in manufacturing facilities. “Customers tell us PA Server Monitor is easy to configure, yet still flexible as you can get down to individual thresholds, alert recipients, and even poll-cycles,” says Nebeker. Additionally, PA File Sight, PowerAdmin’s file access auditing solution, determines who is accessing files on the server. Using PA File Sight, it becomes easy to find out who deleted files or folders, or accidentally dragged one public folder to another. “IT pros appreciate that it does not rely on Windows auditing, which can cause performance problems when you’re watching all file access on a server,” reports Nebeker. “Instead, it watches files at the system level using the same approved techniques that anti-virus vendors use. This means it can report on not only who is accessing files, but also where they are accessing them from. No other product on the market can report the IP address of who is accessing the files, and if the access is local, which process is doing the access.” Power Admin has been creating robust monitoring solutions for its clients since its inception. For instance, a pharmaceutical software company was facing issues in monitoring remote servers at hundreds of customer sites. Before PA Server Monitor, the client had to manually check and configure ad-hoc alerts to manage the servers. Now with the help of the Satellite Monitoring Engine, the client has been able to deploy monitoring functionality on one server at each remote location which then monitors everything else at that location. The monitors were configured with email alerting. Instead of having to manually manage those servers every day, the client now receives an email when there’s a problem at a particular server, reducing the effort that was previously invested in manual monitoring. Power Admin continues to grow and innovate. Their passion for simplifying IT shows up in features like ‘Bulk Config’ which allows for easily making configuration changes in bulk. The company’s new version six will feature monitoring via server groups and monitor templates, and updated mobile applications. “We stay up to date with the technology industry, while listening closely to customer needs,” concludes Nebeker. Power Admin Agentless Server Monitoring for Remote Locations
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    | |November 2015 28CIOReview M odernday CIOs need to embrace cloud technology as well as leverage the existing tools, already imple- mented in the data centers of organizations while streamlining the resources required for achieving these goals. Headquartered in San Ramon, CA, RightITnow is providing the Event Correlation Manager (ECM) platform, al- lowing organizations to explore and utilize cloud solutions while leveraging the existing monitoring solutions. “We deploy native connectors to various platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware, Solarwinds, Nagios and present them in a uni- fied display,” begins Marc Ferrie, Founder and CEO, RightITnow. ECM consists of features such as workflow and people manage- ment facilities, allowing IT organizations to manage their Net- work Operations Center (NOC) resources and assess their recruit- ing requirements based on actual workload data. RightITnow’s mission is to simplify the way IT operations are being managed today. The company has established certain key practices in the IT arena. These features include—streamlining the design of the product to make it simple to use along with providing cost-effective solutions to automate alert management and resource optimization. RightITnow monitors various technological trends, integrating cloud solutions and combining them with organizations’ existing resolutions, which are present in the corporations’ data centers. “We are at the core of server technology innovations that includes public, private, and hybrid cloud initiatives in a seamless and economical way,” mentions Ferrie. “All of these are managed through our ECM product that deploys native connectors to capture, aggregate and process the events from multiple sources.” In addition, RightITnow assists organizations’ in utilizing big data technology which is critical to surface hidden trends within the millions of alerts processed on a daily basis. ECM incorporates technology to display historical trends within the NOC operational dashboards as well as provides mechanisms to feed IT data warehouses. Being a Web 2.0 Manager of Managers (MoM) solution, ECM provides multi- source event correlation software, optimizing IT operations and supporting predictable SLA-based services. The platform displays operational and historical dashboards with a comprehensive view of organizations’ data center and staff workload. “We also provide extensive workflow options and bridge the gap between IT operations and service helpdesk offering tight integration with ServiceNow, Zendesk, BMC Remedy, Salesforce Service Cloud, and ManageEngine,” notes Ferrie. RightITnow holds a track record of empowering clients to successfully manage their business operations and is well- equipped to change the way IT processes are being administered across industry verticals with their ECM platform. In one such instance, a large system integrator’s initial deployment of monitoring tools did not allow for true scalability as each element manager reported via email to their ServiceDesk. Furthermore, introduction of a new element manager required additional staff to manage the increase in alert triage and manual incident creation. It also required the organization to re-train the Servicedesk for understanding the new alert format. The organization approached RightITnow who provided them with ECM solution that allowed the client to abstract the Servicedesk from the element managers andensureallalertsweredeliveredtotheminastandardform.The integration with the Incident Management tool via the connector delivered with ECM allowed the organization to automate the creation of incidents reducing the load on the Servicedesk, thereby allowing them to deliver cost effective improvements. The company’s proactive 24x7 support and integration of customer feedback has proven to be of much value for customers. Surgingahead,RightITnowplansonprovidingahighlydistributed solution against an even larger number of monitoring solutions while exploring actionable big data applications and expanding their mobile presence beyond the iPhone ECM application. RightITnow A New Paradigm in IT Management Operations We are at the core of server technology innovations that includes public, private and hybrid cloud initiatives in an seamless and economical way Marc Ferrie
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    | |November 2015 30CIOReview S incepublic cloud first stepped its foot in the business world, the IT landscape has clung to promises of in- stant access to data and reduced IT overhead. Howev- er, today several privacy and performance concerns are surrounding the public cloud, which cannot be left unheard. Abating the risks around data distribution, sharing, and avail- ability—Software Pursuits has been designing and delivering innovative software solutions for enterprise information sys- tems since 1975. The company’s flagship offering SureSync is a file synchronization platform that provides secure, reliable, and efficient sharing of files across an organization. “With SureSync you can replicate files to a remote disaster recovery center or synchronize the data between branch offices, while storing the files in a company's own servers which leads to added security,” remarks Larry Salveson, President, Software Pursuits. While file replication and sharing is beneficial for all organizations, many have still not recognized the need or have neglected its implementation. “Only when a firm experiences a communication loss, do they realize the imperativeness for replication and synchronization technologies,” opines Salveson. In case a disaster strikes, companies should have an immediate access to their data, and while it can be accomplished with virtual cloud server, it is always feasible to have local copies of data in other office locations for uninterrupted business operations. In addition, while the task of copying files sounds like a plain- sailing task, it involves complexities like multi-directional synchronizations, compression, encryption, network utilization and throttling. This is where SureSync steps in helping clients navigate effectively through their data management issues. Although SureSync started out as a solution to fulfill an in-house need—today it is enjoyed by thousands of customers. From facilitating data protection, multi-site file collaboration, and synchronization services for corporate networks; SureSync provides a suite of products, each focused on different customer needs. The newest offering from the suite, SureSync Endpoint, enables IT teams to establish replication services for mobile notebooks and remote connected machines, creating an internal private cloud. Following a design philosophy which can be modified according to the task at hand Salveson says that, “Our ultimate goal is to automate and enhance file availability as much as possible, increasing productivity throughout an organization.” According to Salveson, it is Software Pursuits’ drive for excellence and desire to help customers which has worked as a strong formula for the company’s growth for forty years. Often large multinationals like UPS and Verizon Wireless that share files across national or global networks, face difficulties with network latency, bandwidth consumption, and file transfer performance. Software Pursuits addresses these challenges through a software agent placed in each location, giving SureSync multiple opportunities to outperform standard methods of transferring files. “Our ability to transfer only portions of files dramatically reduces the amount of data transferred; however this is only one method where SureSync enhances performance. SureSync also leverages the operating system and hardware to optimize synchronization performance,” explains Salveson. Going forward, Software Pursuits plans on further refining their products, as Salveson believes that there is always room for advancements and improvement. “Responding to our customers’ development needs in the near future, we will be enriching our portfolio by adding products and features that will enhance auditing, performance, and operational control,” ends Salveson. Software Pursuits Private Clouds for Efficient, Secure File Sharing Our ultimate goal is to automate and enhance file availability as much as possible, increasing productivity throughout an organization Larry Salveson
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    | |November 2015 31CIOReview C IOsand their corporations are looking for the magic bullet to protect their intellectual property and the personally identifiable information of their clients, partners and employees. Legacy security measures such as firewalls and antivirus provide little protection from hackers and malicious users breaching the enterprise environment and the implementation of more strict access controls.Data loss prevention (DLP) solutions are cumbersome and limit the productivity of end users. With these technical and business constraints in place, CIOs are turning to encryption of data across the entire data life cycle to mitigate the risks of lost or stolen information. But does today’s encryption technology really provide the levels of confidentiality required in this totally Internet connected world? There are three primary phases in which data can be encrypted: in transit, at rest, and in use. The highest level of data protection currently exists in the data transmission phase. In this phase, encryption occurs between specific communicating devices. Protection provided by encryption in transit includes confidentiality from eavesdropping and sniffing, or man- in-the-middle attacks. Applications such as VPN clients and browser based HTTPS provide strong encryption processes which protect the confidentiality of data making it very difficult for unauthorized users to intercept. It is common practice for organizations to encrypt of data transmitted from remote devices; however, data that is being transmitted on internal networks typically goes unencrypted. There is a perception that data transmitting the internal network, or even that being transmitted to remote facilities, is secure and therefore does not require encryption. Nevertheless, an organization’s internal network can be easily breached making data vulnerable to the same risks of eavesdropping, sniffing and man-in-the-middle attacks. Consultants, vendors and individuals off the street not only have access to wireless networks but often have access to network jacks in conference rooms, cafeterias and other common areas. Also, devices that do not require direct authentication (i.e. printers, scanners, industrial controls, etc.) can be infected with malware that can eavesdrop, sniff, or capture traffic and send out information to the Internet. Past concerns of implementing encryption to internal data transit included increased overhead on servers, network devices and end user workstations. This overhead could cause systems delays, loss of connectivity and loss or corruption of data. Many of today’s server and network technologies have data encryption capabilities built in to allow for CIO-Insights The highest level of data protection currently exists in the data transmission phase with the ‘at rest’ and ‘in use’ phases close behind Encryption – Is it enough?By Jerry Irvine, EVP, CIO, Prescient Solutions
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    | |November 2015 32CIOReview easierconfiguration and implementation and minimize the impact on utilizations. Implementing encryption of data in transit from endpoint to endpoint, both remotely and internally is mandatory in today’s cyber risk environment. Anotherphaseofdataencryptionisthe encryption of data at rest. Implementing encryption of data at rest is the easiest of all phases and, in fact, is built in on many devices such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. There are really no reasons not to encrypt all data on smartphones, tablets, PCs; however, there are some major limitations of encrypting data at rest. Users and applications must be able read data in order to use it, consequently, when a user or application logs into the system the data must appear decrypted. This is both necessary and a major vulnerability because when a user or application logs in all data, even that data at rest that they have access to, becomes readable. So, if a user’s device or application is infected with a virus, malware, etc. and they log in all data on their system or systems they can access becomes available to the hacker. The last phase of data encryption is encryption of data in use, this is the weakest link. As defined in the previous encryption of data at rest section,inordertomakeuseofdata, it must be readable or decrypted. Many applications, database companies and cloud service providers are claiming different levels and characteristics of encrypted data in use; but, current technology does not make this completely possible. Encryption of data in use relies heavily on encryption of data at rest and in combination with strong authorization and access controls. By allowing only authorized users, limiting their access to the principles of least privilege and performing on the fly decryption of data upon access, companies are providing a minimal level of encryption of data in use. Based on the functionality of encryption within the different phases, it must be obvious that encryption is not a silver bullet for the protection of data. Encrypting data in transit can be compromised even if it is being performed across both internal and remote networks via the placement of malware on authorized devices that can eavesdrop or sniff data as it traverses the enterprise. Encrypting data at rest can also be overcome via the placement of malware on an authenticated device and it can also be bypassed by un-authorized users who illegally obtain valid user ids and password which have rights to view the data. The encryption of data in use with existing technologies uses the same but stricter rules as defined within the encryption of data at rest phase and therefore can be compromised in the same ways. Encryption is designed to provide an additional layer of data protection but complex authorization policies and strict access controls providing only the least amount of privileges necessary for a user toperformtheirfunctionsarestillrequired in the protection of data. If hackers get into a network but are unable to gain authorized access with valid credentials, encryption will protect data from being read, copied or manipulated. However, cyber incidents facilitated by gaining un- authorized access to systems using valid user credentials, such as phishing scams or social engineering, can allow hackers complete access to decrypted data. Jerry Irvine
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    | |November 2015 34CIOReview ByScott Strickland, CIO, DMH Global A nalysts, experts, and observers often encourage CIOs to be aligned with the business. I disagree. Alignment is just the first step to a partnership relationship that allows real change. Let’s look at what it means to be aligned versus what a business partnership is to help clarify this. Alignment means IS has a cordial relationship with each department, strives towards the same goals, and has an operating model to support day to day exceptions. Building a basic relationship with other department heads is critical but often overlooked and can serve as the foundation. Relationships can be fostered by travelling together, attending other departments’ social events, and simply by going to that new sushi place together. Agreeing on the yearly priorities–often by writing them together or jointly interpreting the CEO mandates,–represents the second step. Unfortunately many IS organizations have not done this and this causes cross-functional prioritization, resource, and funding issues later in the year. The last major step in alignment is establishing an operating model to drive normal activities and address issues. Creating a business partnership requires much more personal effort by the CIO. Providing the “art of the possible”, cancelling under-performing or shadow projects, and saying “yes, if” to push back and guide ideas are all part of being in a partnership. The “art of the possible” can be a set of sessions explaining or even demonstrating the latest in technology and tying it back to real business problems. This can serve to help guide the project portfolio as well as identify organizational deficiencies (such as knowledge or new roles) in time for the next budget cycle. Ultimately, both teams should start to look forward to the yearly sessions. A less popular, highly visible, and counter-intuitive method for building a partnership is cancelling or deferring a project. An aligned CIO will often push out delivery dates or commit more resources to help the business look good but a partnered CIO could (and should) cancel the project entirely. Obviously this is heavily dependent on the reason for the original project delay: cancelling a project due to a project manager issue is extreme whereas cancelling it for significant change management issues or business buy-in concerns is prudent. Shadow projects should generally be cancelled as they are the gift that keeps on giving, typically built on a non-standard platform or with an insecure architecture. Cancelling projects is often the cheapest financial approach but requires a different type of capital: political credit and the willpower to spend it. Finally, learning to say no in a different manner by saying “yes, if” is another great partnership tool. Often IS is viewed as the department of no–no budget, no time, no way–and using “yes, if” allows the department to consider a proposal if the business provides meets their end of the deal. For example, when the business wants to re-prioritize a backlogged project (Project B), the CIO could respond “yes we can do it… if you help us complete Project A first and we jointly take the business case for Project B to the CFO this Friday during lunch.” This draws the business in, makes them part of the solution, and engages them in quantifying the benefits while also ensuring it is a real priority. During a recent dinner with about twenty other CIOs across multiple industries, the facilitator asked “How many projects that come across your desk have real business value?” The maximum number that anyone admitted to was 50percent, whereas 30percent seemed to be the average. Thus 50percent of projects do not have real value and the aligned CIO proceeds while the partnered CIO works with the business to find other solutions. CIO-Insights Beyond Alignment – Partnership is the Path to Delivering Business Value Scott Strickland Alignment is just the first step to a partnership relationship that allows real change Scott Strickland
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    | |November 2015 35CIOReview AboutLogistics Solutions Inc. Logistic Solutions Inc, founded in 1993, is an established IT services and solutions provider, offering domain rich execution capability and executive commitment to client engagement. Leveraging a global delivery model, our diversified technology services and solutions are built to align with our clients business & technology vision. Logistic Solutions, Inc. (A certified MBE company) 216, Stelton road, #C2 Piscataway, New Jersey - 08854. Telephone: 732-743-2300 Fax: 732-457-0016 E-mail:  [email protected] Our Partners: Differentiators:
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