Posted on Tue, Dec 06, 2011 @ 01:41 PM
Each month we read hundreds of IT industry articles, then choose the highlights to share with our readers. November’s articles focus on: virtualization’s lessons learned, mobility in the workplace, security against advanced persistent threats (APTs), IT project management, and other recent industry headlines of note.
Lessons Learned in Virtualization
Charles Babcock’s (@babcockcw) Information Week article, 4 Lessons Learned from Virtualization Masters, examines organizations that are well virtualized (70–98%) and shares their lessons learned along the way. Insights to remember on your path toward a more virtualized IT environment include:
- Well-managed virtualized environments mean integration among multiple complex, moving parts.
- Expect a change in datacenter relationships, and enforce monitored chargeback systems for efficiency.
- Use transaction databases or virtual servers to isolate troubleshooting, operations, data loss and functionality.
- Pair a high-speed environment with a broad-range environment to spread workload capacity across servers.
Tech Target’s Calculating Virtualization ROI Using Unconventional Factors, by Brien Posey, reminds readers that reduced cost isn’t the only reason to virtualize. Other considerations when calculating return include high-availability metrics, reduced licensing costs and quicker provisioning times.
Mobility in the Workplace
The 2011 Cisco Connect World Survey found flexibility with mobile devices to be more important than salary for 40-45% of college students and young professionals.
But the trend isn’t just for millennials … See the blog series about our “iPad-only executive,” Darin Haines (@DarinHaines), a seasoned professional with nearly twenty years of IT industry experience. The series covers a day in the life of an iPad-only exec, winning applications that make the iPad Darin’s preferred computing device, and the software and tools we use to manage iPad-dependent employees.
IT Security Battles APTs
In Network World’s The Network Is the Security, Jon Oltsik (@joltsik) outlines how detailed network monitoring, data and analytics—including that of network behaviors, payload analysis, performance and more—can help organizations ramp up security against APTs.
In the follow-up article, Data Security and APTs, Oltsik examines ESG research on the data security tools that organizations are investing in to protect against APTs. He finds that data encryption, complete database security, mobile security and access management are the data security controls organizations will continue to look to for defense.
Project Management
Have you found The Secret to IT Project Success? In Bob Lewis’ (@ITCatalysts) Infoworld article, he discusses how completing a project is only the beginning for IT. While IT is used to ensuring that regular operations run smoothly and efficiently, the real success is when IT can bring successful business change and impact to the forefront.
What does successful business change look like? Following are Lewis’ four steps to determine the impact for your organization:
- Define success.
- Take responsibility—or make sure you clearly define who will—for both the project completion and business change.
- Incorporate business change management into each project.
- Make project implementation a milestone, and let your operational manager lead this project.
For more on bringing a business focus to IT, check out Nigel Fenwick’s (@NigelFenwick) Forrester blog post, How to Get Beyond Alignment, or the MCPc blog post, The Evolving Role of the CIO.
In the News …
Your Top Picks
What articles stuck out from your November reading? Please share your additional articles, topics of interest or questions in the comments below.
This post is an MCPc blogging team collaboration.
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