Data Center Virtualization- A cost-effective business proposition

Globalization and technological innovation have led to the growth of IT infrastructures in every business environment. With such apparent infrastrucutre growth, the  corporate houses as well as small and medium business enterprises are faced by the challenges of increased energy and power cost as well  operational overheads. Organization in an attempt to meet these challenges has turned to use data centers. The extensive use of data centers today demands that these organizations reduce their carbon footprints and global warming.

Data centers which came into existence to meet the growing need for information storage and faster retrieval across the  locations, were dense with computer systems, networking and telecommunication equipment. Further, with demands for a customized software and applications in all walks of the product life cycle, critical business data had to be made available to the IT outsourcing teams. This called the need for strong information security methods. Virtualization of the data centers were aimed  towards making  efficient use of available hardware and software resources. However, with the eco-friendly requirement integrated into the business systems,  the IT giants worked on developing datacenter virtualization models which would help in reduction of energy consumption by nearly 80-90%. 

With green computing becoming the buzz word today, organizations tend to use environmentally bio-degradable materials and sustainable resources rather than hazardous materials as components for the data center infrastructure.  Further, data center virtualization allows organizations to reduce the number of hardware installed which brings in cost savings in sizable forms. However, adopting virtualization was easy without the requirement of  any large investments.

The growing demands for datacenter virtualization paved way for leaders in the IT industry  to extend their experience in  IT operations and management to both small and medium business organizations as well as the as large corporate giants.  These IT service providers offer the client organizations virtualization-as-a- service, besides the traditional virtualization methods across applications, networks and systems.

The data center virtualization offered by the leaders in the industry segment  can be enumerated as a 5-phase  lifecycle process. This includes -

*        Assessment and analysis of the performance statistics of the existing infrastructure, applications, its related business requirement.

*        Defining the requirements for environmental changes and bring about architectural changes through  operational design

*        Implementation and integration of virtual infrastructure with application and network

*        Facility Management and

*        Transformation

The client organizations benefits with facilities of virtualization without any upfront investment. Correct implementation of virtualization will establish valuable efficiencies like agility, flexibility, better network capacity besides reducing costs.

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Enjoy Strategic Business Benefits with Advanced Data Center Virtualization

Virtualization technologies are rapidly becoming the foundation of modern data centers as IT managers seek dramatic improvements in resource and operational efficiencies as well as responsiveness to business needs. It is considered a key enabler for consolidation, but it has the potential to play a much larger role in the quest towards Green Information Technology (IT), and has become one of the important data center technologies to emerge in the last decade.

Data center virtualization includes an assortment of virtualization actions intended to create a virtualized computing environment, such as for use in cloud computing, within a data center. The most common implementation of virtualization to date supports business scenarios like consolidation (primary objective), business continuity/disaster recovery, test and development, and security. However, virtualization is much more than simply consolidating physical servers and cutting data-center costs. The technology has far-reaching impacts, from optimum resource utilization at one end to substantial savings in energy, power, and management costs at the other.

Data center virtualization creates more dynamic data centers with frequent configuration changes. Regardless of its specific goals, any organization that employs a Datacenter Server Virtualization Lifecycle Services can achieve dramatic results and benefits like:

Strategic Business Benefits like agility & flexible from

* Automated IT processes

* Available resource pools

* Capacity on-demand

* Datacenter Operational Support

Virtualization encourages efficient power management, thus ensuring a Green Data Center. It also facilitates easy access to data. With data center virtualization, many professionals have extensive mobility in their activity, and they don’t need to travel with many equipments and can access important files without a problem. With data being gathered and available from a central environment, better collaboration between employees, clients and stakeholders is made possible. It also brings about plenty of savings with reduced costs, as it eliminates the licensing for software. With the costs associated with data backups and IT specialists’ expenses, there is a reduction in IT overhead as well.

Due to better use of infrastructure, there is increased operational system efficiency and simplified management. Employees are no longer restricted to work from their desktops, as they can work from any place that has an Internet connection and any web enabled device thereby improving productivity and efficiency levels.

The benefits of virtualization can sound impressive, but lack of adequate planning can present a number of challenges. Partner with a service provider who offer several conventional network consulting services that aid in virtualizing servers, networks, desktops and storage to enjoy optimum benefits.

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Green Datacenters, a Healthy Bottom Line for Enterprises

As years pass by, data centers are getting more common and essential. Data centers are indispensable for the smooth functioning of business processes, information management, and communications functions.

As years pass by, data centers are getting more common and essential. Data centers are indispensable for the smooth functioning of business processes, information management, and communications functions. Hence, today every sector of the economy use and operate data centers. Several factors are responsible for the rapid increase in the use of data centers. Let's look at some of these factors.

* Accelerated growth in the use of the Internet

* Increased use of electronic transactions

* Shift from paper-based information to digital based

* Government regulations requiring digital records retention

* High performance scientific computing

The growth in the number of data centers led to increased use of energy. The result of which is

* Increase in the emission of greenhouse gases especially from electricity generation

* Increase in the demand for electricity which the existing power grids are finding difficult to meet

* Increase in the energy costs for both business and government

* Increase in capital costs as a result of expansion of data center capacity and building of new data centers

This led to increased interest in developing solutions for energy efficiency in the data center sector. As part of it, Congress passed public law 109-431 in 2006 entrusting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out a study through its Energy Star program to "analyze the rapid growth and energy consumption of computer data centers by the Federal Government and private enterprise." The result was startling and predicted a bleak future in this sector. This accelerated the concept of green datacenters.

A green datacenter is "a repository for the storage, management, and dissemination of data in which the mechanical, lighting, electrical and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact." Building a green data center is quite expensive, as it requires low-emission building materials, carpets and paints, installation of catalytic converters on backup generators, alternative energy technologies such as photovoltaics, heat pumps, and evaporative cooling, and so on. However, cost savings do come in the form of energy savings, reduced carbon footprint, datacenter virtualization, lower operating and maintenance costs, and reduced environmental impact.

With several service providers offering effective green datacenter solutions, enterprises can now easily realize their objective of a healthy bottom line and a healthy environment. These service providers follow different methodologies to provide companies with solutions that are cost effective and sustainable.

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Making Data Center Virtualization Work for Your Business

Virtualization technology is rapidly becoming the foundation of modern data centers. Not long ago, virtualization was all about server consolidation. Virtualization today is enabling businesses with greater agility. Before considering a virtualization project for your data center, it is important to first confirm if your facility can even handle the transition.

With data center virtualization, there is a direct impact is on the expenses and on wasted processing power and leans towards creating a green datacenter. There is no need to create a huge datacenter, just install powerful virtualized servers or running a huge number of servers can make a difference. Virtualization is an ideal tool for data center improvement. But if not designed and built correctly, newly virtualized systems can cost the company time and resources, creating confusion among departments. That is why it is important to take the time during the planning stage to look critically at your IT environment.

When implemented correctly, data center virtualization establishes valuable efficiencies and that can help contain costs. In a virtual IT environment, it helps businesses to increase utilization of their existing hardware by running virtual servers on fewer, highly scalable enterprise-class servers. Use of a virtualized datacenter tackles major space constraint in many organizations. Control costs, increase utilization, more responsive IT green initiatives. While the benefits of virtualization can sound impressive, getting there may present challenges without adequate planning. Many datacenter virtualization solutions ensure competency in hardware requirements, by enabling an organization to utilize lesser hardware to perform the same jobs.

To ensure that datacenter virtualization in your business is a success, ensuring security is critical. As with any implementation, the virtualized environment should follow the same stringent security controls as a physical one.  A good virtualization plan is tied to a good storage plan. Backup is highly essential.  Virtualization is growing because it can provide business continuity capabilities. Any Virtualization solution should provide a flexible architecture and the tools needed to help you manage capacity and include load balancing to ensure performance and fast response times and redundancy.  With datacenter virtualization, it is possible for enterprises to centralize IT management, outsource IT management and reduce the size of IT departments.

Datacenter virtualization empowers the IT department with tools for resource scheduling, data protection, and disaster recovery. It can help enhance your infrastructure performance. Team up with the best service provider with a service desk support who can combine security and reliability to accomplish an enabled enterprise.

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Identity Access Management Critical in Today’s Unstable Business Environment

Today’s business environment is highly competitive, complex, and volatile. This has put tremendous pressure on organizations to increase their accessibility to customers, partners, vendors, suppliers, and employees. Hence, enterprises are deploying an ever-increasing number of applications with multiple, often mutually incompatible, proprietary identity systems, or security models, inconsistent management of identities and different auditing mechanisms. However, in their haste to enhance their accessibility they forget to look at the security aspects, which leads to inefficiencies, increased risk of identity theft and unauthorized access, and failure to meet regulatory compliance.

In today's work environment, passwords and password resets are one of the most widely used measures to ensure information security. A recent research showed that on an average each employee accesses around 16 applications and systems. And as part of the security measure, each employee has to remember five or more passwords, which the employee has to change five or more times per year. It results in multiple repositories of identity information, multiple user IDs and multiple passwords. 

However, the fact of the matter is most employees finding it impossible to manage multiple identities. This is proved by the number of password related calls that help desk receives. Moreover, juggling multiple identities lead to chaos and confusion, which is put to good use by the criminals. This calls for a comprehensive and focused approach that would enhance efficiency, achieve compliance, and improve the security of the organizations. That is what identity and access management offers to do.

Identity and access management helps organizations to manage access to scattered information and applications within the organization without compromising security or exposing sensitive information. Hence, identity and access management can be defined as a set of policies, processes, and technologies for the creation, management, and use of digital identities. The objective of identity access management is to provide right access to the right people at the right time. It comprises of four important aspects namely

●        Authentication

It is the process of verifying and proving the claims of an identity for gaining access to an application system or resource.

●        Authorization

It is the determination whether to allow an identity to perform an action or access a system or resource.

●        User Management

It refers to the process of creating, propagating, and maintaining user identity and privileges. An important component of user management is user lifecycle management, which refers to the lifecycle of a digital identity from creation to termination.

●        Enterprise Directory

It is the repository for securely storing and organizing the digital identities and its credentials and attributes.

In today’s unstable business environment, identity access management is important to secure the organization and to protect confidential and personal data and thereby achieve compliance, business growth, operational efficiency, and cost savings.

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Information Security Solutions for The Digital World

Information being the essential ingredient in the success of  any business, organization today has made technology  an indispensable part of the  business environment.  Storage of information as well as exchange of  data between employees, supplies and customers has become easy with technological involvement. However, the exponential rate of data growth takes the IT professionals through a challenging task of providing efficient data security solutions.

Information security thus is a major concern in an environment where the entire process of storing, distribution, accessing of every single sensitive and confidential data is done digitally. All organizational data ranging from personal details, to client lists, bank details, marketing strategies, sales information, and any other organizational details need to be well protected from both external and internal threats.

Over the years a number of software applications have been developed to provide firewall protection to ward away threats and virus scanners to protect against data damage. However, today's dynamic business environment with involvement of a number of IT outsourcing companies, large amount of digital data transfer and storage requires a competent information security system that would involve the elements of risk analysis and risk management.

The globally networked world has made data and information accessible from any location and any device irrespective of the distance. Further, with the every single detail pertaining to the organization and the global workforce stored on computers, organizations need to have a continuous process of identifying, assessing and managing security risks while responding to the ever changing customer demands, legal and industry requirements. 

Though there are number of service providers in the arena, organizations look forward to partner with service providers who can establish a business aligned information security framework along with an enhanced Return on Security Investment. The wide range of security solutions offered by these service providers include:-

·         Ability to establish a Security Framework for business verticals.

·         Call for lesser investments on new technology

·         Ability to manage intricate multi-vendor and heterogeneous client environments

·         minimizes operation expense with hassle free handling of domain experts

·          increased profitability and efficiency

 Further to cater to the ever increasing demands for accessibility across various horizontal and vertical layers, the leading service providers offer a wide spectrum of services that includes Identity &  Access management, Information security consulting and  Managed Security Service. All these cuts through the diversified information security products, technology and compliance requirement of the organizations at large.

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An Optimized IT Management Process with the Cloud Technology

Cloud computing is the technology that is in high demand right now. With the help of the cloud platform you can easily avail services from anywhere anytime with the help of a mobile device or a thin client. All the processes that are deployed on the cloud are easy to use and manage and this reduces your time and costs. In a world rife with competition you have to act wisely and promptly. The cloud services are quick which gives you an advantage to make critical business decisions accurately based on the real-time updates on the latest changes in the market.

The cloud computing technology has proved to be a boon in managing the IT costs. There is no requirement for any additional infrastructures or facilities. The infrastructure is highly integrated and leverages collaboration amongst the various IT processes and frameworks. Since compatibility between the processes is high the costs are reduced and efficiency is enhanced resulting in increased revenues and profits. The technology provides you with excellent network support services such as consistent and uninterrupted network connectivity and all latency issues are eliminated thus delivering an advanced and highly effective model.

The cloud computing technology deploys best ITIL asset management practices that produce optimum results. It contributes productively towards asset discovery, creation and maintenance of hardware and software libraries, physical asset tracking, configuration management, procurement management, request and approvals, contract management, vendor and supplier management, re-deployment and movement, retire and disposal management. The cloud provides you with standardized and comprehensive IT security consulting services for prevention of data leakage. You are provided with secure SDLC design and coding practices, source code reviews, regular audits and reports that help you in modifying your security strategies for more effective protection.

The cloud technology helps in the enforcement of a streamlined, automated, centralized IT management process that reduces all complexities and risks, and leverages performances. It provides you with consistent server monitoring service and enhances the visibility of the process. The processes that are deployed are energy-efficient and based on the lean management model that eliminates all wasteful procedures and helps in saving costs. You are also provided with superb service desk support that facilitates you to easily create requests, resolve incidents, reports incidents and review the status of your submitted requests.

The cloud help desk helps to restore normal operations without delays to avoid any adverse impacts on your business. With such profound capabilities you can expect high returns on investment in business and minimal damages and losses.

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Features of Security Enterprise Asset Management Solutions

Security enterprise asset management is an organizational method and in most cases is available as a software application. Most companies provide this software utilizing a database structure. This application can work in cooperation with other operating systems as well. It shares data on a mixed platform, such as Linux, Sun Solaris, Windows 98/NT/2000 and many others.

Security enterprise asset management solutions are efficient and can function smoothly without affecting the flow of your daily activities. Under this a company manages its physical assets by evaluating the causes of their possible failures. Using this solution you can review methodically all the failures, their effects and causes and set up security measures and other important maintenance guidelines. Most IT service providers make of this solution as it can conduct automatic inventories of the companies assets and sets up a dynamic audit. Furthermore, it recognizes the actual location of assets, even if they are remotely placed in other organization networks.

Recently, eminent IT brands specializing in managed security services have come up with security enterprise asset management solutions. It involves all the activities linked with end-to-end tracking and management of assets that are:-

· Asset Discovery (Physical and Logical)

· Configuration Management

· Retire & Disposal Management

· Interface with Enterprise Asset Management Systems and Processes

· Enterprise security posture assessment

· Request & Approval Process

· Compliance to Regulatory Laws if applicable

· Procurement Management

· Create & Maintain Definitive Hardware Store

· Supplier/Vendor Management

· Re-Deployment and Movement

· Interface with complimenting, dependant ITSM Processes and Functions

· Physical Asset Tracking

· Assessment on ISO 27001 and PCI controls.

· Software License Management

· Contract Management (Support/Maintenance/ Renewals /Enterprise License Agreement)

· Create & Maintain Definitive Software Library

Service providers of enterprise security and asset management offer their users with accurate and complete data about the condition of their assets by sending regular updates. Users can quickly run and record associated searches and reports concerning their assets. It helps them and their agents to detect problems easily and pace up the remediation process. Furthermore, the solution helps to calculate the rollouts and enhancement costs. It can also manage the daily operation of logistical units, enabling the users to get involved in freight forwarding and transport unit repairs. It helps to come up with custom reports on the usage and sets up estimations on what might possibly occur. This allows the users to anticipate the requirements and expenses and remediate for problems that might arise.

 

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Reduce Costs and Improve Productivity with Managed Print Services

Until recently, copiers, printers, faxes and scanners collectively known as the output equipments fleets or hardcopy device fleets were the most over looked assets in almost all enterprises.

Until recently, copiers, printers, faxes and scanners collectively known as the output equipments fleets or hardcopy device fleets were the most over looked assets in almost all enterprises. Though the population of output fleets in the office environment has grown substantially there has been no marked improvement in its management. It continued to be the most over looked under utilized and under managed assets languishing in the poor print rooms of the companies and organizations. This coupled with lack of proper asset management and page volume tracking led to costs spiraling out of control.

Gartner Group in its survey found out that most businesses spend between 1 and 3% of their total annual revenue in generating documents. However, enterprises do not have a proper system in place to find out the total print expenses and their actual print requirements. This negligent attitude of the companies and organizations towards the output fleets started to change with the advent of economic recession. Companies looking for ways to cut costs stumbled upon the opportunity for cost savings from output fleets. A comprehensive and strategic approach was required to turn the office print land scape from being unproductive and costly to productive and cost effective. That is what Managed Print Services (MPS) is all about. It is the process of assessing, designing, optimizing and managing the output fleets in a uniform fashion. It is an outsourcing service where the service provider takes the full responsibility of managing the company's output fleets.
The core features of MPS are

* Proactive maintenance of the output devices fleets
* Information management with consolidated billing
* Ongoing optimization of devices, services and supplies throughout the contract life

The several service providers that engage in Managed Print Services (MPS) comprise of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), systems integrators, managed service providers (IT and copier resellers) and supplies based providers. MPS providers make use of four main software applications when providing MPS namely

·Print Management Software

This software not only manages the nature and volume of print but also authenticate users.

·Discovery and Design Software

This software helps in analyzing and planning the changes that are required for implementing MPS.

·Device Management Software

This software monitors and manages the output fleets in an environment.

·Scan Routing Software

This software helps to route scans to fax servers, network folders, email, workflows and so on.

With Managed Print Services, enterprises can benefit from 30% cost savings, secure printing, proactive monitoring and reduced total cost of ownership.

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Need to develop Green Datacenters

With the growing expenses of power and an increased uncertainty in power accessibility, energy conversion today is a major issue for data centers. With the increase in computing power demand to satisfy crucial mission application as well as the advent of virtualization created drastic impacts on server density, making the requirement for an efficient energy management plan even more essential today.  When there is an in-depth knowledge of energy consumption attained through real-time monitoring within the data center, administrators feel safer of being able to make improved and energy conscious decisions. All these facts, had led to the need for Green Datacenters today.

Several companies hosting digital marketplaces and social networks present at the Green Grid Forum 2012 shared their initiatives for establishing green datacenters. The datacenters today consume more than 2 percent of the total electricity. It has been estimated that almost half of US’s electricity is generated by burning coal. The increasing datacenter energy usage will contribute to an ever increasing percentage of greenhouse has emissions unless we are able to decouple the expansion of data storage and processing from fossil fuel pollution.

Leading information security brands today have come up with a phased methodology to offer Green Datacenter solutions that are cost efficient in nature. This apart, they offer sustainability to business operations and guarantees a healthy bottom-line for an organization. 

The phases that are put to use are:-

·         Assessment Phase

This phase helps in setting up baseline of energy usage and carbon footprint of the present environment using an assessment framework which is also utilized to audit the present environment. This process is followed by Gap analysis and Feasibility study for identifying transformational initiatives, assess expense structure and conduct impact analysis.

·         Planning and Design Phase

This phase assists in setting up a detailed route map for certain Green IT initiatives like DC optimization, procurement, financial, recycling and resource planning.

·         Implementation Phase

This phase works towards selecting and implementing certain technologies data center transformation initiatives such as datacenter consolidation, virtualization, power and cooling management and IT infrastructure management. This phase also helps an organization to attain LEED certificate.

The amount of data the world processes and stores will go on expanding fast. EMC, an esteemed information infrastructure solutions enterprise predicts that the amount of global data will expand to approximately 35 zetta bytes by 2020. If there is no focus given on datacenter efficiency and renewable power usage, then the climatic impact of datacenters will also expand exponentially. To aid this situation, eminent IT solution providers are offering Green Datacenters methods to their clients and end users.

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