OpinionWire

Staffing the Service Desk to Meet DemandOnce you have a service desk made up of the right people, ensuring that appropriate levels of service desk staff are in place to meet demand should be a regular and ongoing consideration for service desk managers. Relevant reporting should be in place that ... read more..

First-Mover Advantage in Big Data Awaits Asia-Pacific BanksBig data in banking continues to raise more strategy questions than there are technology answers, but it is emerging as a critical cog in the machinery that banks need to put in place in order to compete in the digital economy. First-mover competitive ... read more..

InfoSec Needs Greater Business RelevanceInfoSec must change. Vendors currently spend three days selling themselves at the show, but the needs of business organisations and their users must become the top priority. Rather than delivering a sprawl of disconnected technologies, the show needs to have more of a business and industry ... read more..

EMC Opens a New Channel for Private CloudsAccording to the definition, a private cloud can range from a small group of virtualised servers to a large, highly automated infrastructure that gives application owners self-service access to resources, with charge-back billing to business departments. Either way, private clouds offer multiple benefits ... read more..

Big Data Creates Demand for Analytics SkillsThe emergence of big data promises to create IT jobs, with business intelligence (BI) and analytics expertise the key drivers. As big data increasingly becomes part of corporate IT strategies and infrastructure, organisations will be on the lookout for specialist analytics skills to unlock ... read more..

Bring Your Own SoftwareMuch has been written about the BYOD (bring your own device) problem. Ovum believes the software equivalent of the same challenge is as big a problem and as big an opportunity for corporate IT. The freemium model and the bottom-up entry strategy have produced a few well-publicised ... read more..

IT Really Does MatterBig changes are brewing on the CIO horizon, as the days of internal IT cost-cutting appear to be numbered. There is only so much an enterprise can save through infrastructure efficiency and commodity panel contracts. The next big wave will centre on productivity, innovation and a renewed ... read more..

Adoption Trends in Sustainability SoftwareSustainability is moving up corporate priority lists, driven by regulation, supply chain risk, customer pressure and investor pressure, among other factors. Managing for sustainability is too complex for manual methods; it requires IT-based automation to be effective. But the market for sustainability management solutions is highly ... read more..

CIO, Tear Down This Wall!A quarter of a century after Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, one of the most famous symbols of division in modern history, the self-imposed wall between business and IT one of the IT industrys most hotly debated problems ... read more..

Iceland to Become a Low-Cost Data Centre DestinationIceland's new and unique multi-tenant data centre will be an attractive low-cost destination for many IT workloads eventually. UK co-location provider Verne Global built the facility on a former Nato base near Keflavik airport, with modular IT infrastructure from Colt Technology. Verne ... read more..

The Increasing Complexity of Application Integration Calls for New ApproachesOrgansations are deploying a wider range of applications in different deployment models, and often finding that seamless integration is the key for realisation of the true business value of these investments. The traditional approaches to application integration have failed to deliver ... read more..

Cloud Services Business Trends Survey: Summary ResultsThis presentation summarises results from our recent Cloud Services Business Trends Survey of 200 CIOs/IT decision makers across the US, the UK, France and Germany. Download PDF articleEnterprises Refine their Tablet Adoption StrategiesEnterprises are moving from reactive, fashion-led deployment of tablets to mature, role-based, ... read more..

Information SecurityInformation security is now a challenge throughout the enterprise, and not just at gateways on the edge of networks. In particular the use of a large number of diverse types of endpoint devices is making the endpoint one of the most vulnerable pieces of the entire enterprise IT infrastructure. ... read more..

Revisiting the NIST Definition of Cloud ComputingWhen Ovum first looked at cloud computing in early 2010, the debate was still raging as to what exactly cloud computing was supposed to be. There were so many definitions that we decided not to add yet another one. Instead, our Cloud Computing Will ... read more..

CSC strengthens its testing portfolio In September 2011, global IT services provider CSC acquired AppLabs, a provider of software testing and validation services. CSC can now offer a complete portfolio of testing services from custom application and ERP testing to cloud-based application testing, as well as capabilities in SOA, security, ... read more..

Oracle announces its public cloud As expected, at this year's OpenWorld, Oracle announced Oracle Public Cloud (OPC). While the company is not as late to the public cloud party as you might think, considering that it had more time to prepare than most of its competitors, OPC could have been ... read more..

VMware announces new developments in management space VMworld 2011 Copenhagen saw 7,200 attendees, demonstrating the power of virtualization and highlighting that the journey to the cloud remains a topic of increasing interest to organizations. VMware used the event to announce some new offerings based on the management layer, which Ovum ... read more..

Microsoft developers face uncertainty following WinRT revelations Microsoft's Build conference saw early announcements on Windows 8 and the technology stack behind it, named Windows Runtime Library (WinRT). Windows 8 is a major shift for Microsoft as it aims to support a new age of touchscreen devices while retaining backwards compatibility ... read more..

OpenStack: gaining strength slowly but surely On September 29, 2011, the OpenStack open source community released the fourth iteration of its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform. Codenamed Diablo, this latest version improves the platform in a number of key areas. However, OpenStack still has some way to go to establish itself in ... read more..

People-centric IT: Adapting to a shift in powerAt its recent global analyst event in Boston, AppSense introduced the concept of people-centric IT. For many years vendors have used the term user-centric IT to define the shift in power that is being witnessed at the desktop through the increased use of ... read more..

Amazon Web Services introduces identity federation In August 2011, AWS announced that its identity and access management (IAM) service now supports identity federation. IAM has not attracted the attention it deserves, mostly because of AWS's lack of communication. It nonetheless plays a significant role (along with another of AWS's nicely maturing ... read more..

Nimbus broadens Tibco's BPM stable to appeal to business users Tibco, an integration middleware vendor that traditionally had a software engineering focus, has been striving in recent years to add tooling that appeals to the business. The latest move is the acquisition of UK-based Nimbus Partners, a specialist provider of ... read more..

HDS buys BlueArc Hitachi's storage subsidiary Hitachi Data Systems has bought network-attached storage (NAS) specialist BlueArc for an undisclosed cash price. BlueArc is a well-respected supplier of very high-end NAS systems, demand for which has been growing steadily for several years, and is the latest in a string of similar ... read more..

HP takes a bold step into enterprise software A key part of HP's proposed turnaround is the recent announcement of its intent to acquire Autonomy. Ovum believes this is a strong indication of yet another strategic shift for HP this time from commodity hardware to software and related services. ... read more..

i2 buy deepens IBM's Big Data war chest IBM's Big Data arsenal got a bit bigger in September 2011 after it acquired Cambridge, UK-based i2 for its analysis and fraud prevention software. i2 brings advanced analytics technology to the table that is consistent with IBM's strategy to strengthen and expand ... read more..

Middleware holds the key to the future of IT Until now there has been no reason for middleware to be fascinating to business executives. However, this has to change. With the cloud commoditizing physical infrastructure and applications following suit, organizations will have to look elsewhere to differentiate themselves. Composite applications ... read more..

HP's credibility as a predictable strategic IT supplier: strengthened or shaken? HP had a bombshell day on Thursday, August 18, 2011, announcing quarterly earnings, a major software acquisition, transformation in the huge Enterprise Services division, the killing of its just-released WebOS-based iPad competitor, and the potential divestiture of its largest ... read more..

On the Radar: Nebula aims to make private clouds cheap Disruptive and innovative are two favorite words used by new vendors to describe themselves, often without having any new ideas, products, or business models to back up their claims. However, Nebula, a Silicon Valley-based start-up, aims to radically reduce the ... read more..

Data centers consume less power than predicted but the problem persists Jonathan Koomey, a Stanford University professor and scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, forecast in 2008 that the amount of power consumed by the world's data centers would double from 2005 to 2010. It would be an encore performance ... read more..

Enterprise architecture and software lifecycle management integration One of the key goals of IT management is improvement of the engagement and integration of IT with the business, and from a software lifecycle management (SLM) perspective, the requirements gathering and management activities are key to ... read more..