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ITaaS

Network, don't fail me now!

Everything in IT depends on the network.--and not just in an abstract, "need it occasionally" sort of way. The packets must flow for virtually every operation, every job, every transaction. Whenever packets drop, or links go down, we're disconnected and isolated. Information doesn't flow; apps don't work; users don't proceed. We need the network up and running, millisecond by millisecond, every millisecond of every day.

Our utter, urgent dependency won't lessen in the coming years. It will intensify--redoubling and redoubling again. Cisco calls its vision of the future "together." HP … Read more

The public cloud: Friend or foe for storage vendors?

Last year, storage vendors were all about cloud. They saw major-league opportunities in the private, public, hybrid, and federated versions. No cloud was too big or too small. In fact, because clouds were "infinitely scalable," there was no limit to the number of yotta bytes they could sell.

Storage users and data center storage administrators in particular were decidedly more sanguine. You say cloud is a new services delivery model? Hey storage vendors, where have you been lately? We've been all about services delivery for some time now. Tell us something about cloud we don't know. … Read more

'Cloud' means something important

"Cloud computing" is so overused and overhyped that it doesn't really mean anything anymore. It's has become kind of a vague "what comes next in IT" label, with no specific meaning, applied indiscriminately to whatever the latest vendor to stop by wants to sell us today.

I now hear this complaint with great regularity--but I don't entirely agree. Sure, every vendor is eagerly "cloud washing" whatever products or initiatives they have to fit in with the latest buzzhype. And the "cloud" term is thrown around with pretty reckless abandon. … Read more