Tag: cloud

IBM Acquisition of Green Hat and the APM Market

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In early 2012, IBM acquired Green Hat to round out its own cloud-based testing offering. The acquisition, which completed January 11, 2012, gives further validation to the growing market of virtual cloud testing. Green Hat’s solution creates a virtual testing environment for developers that can simulate a range of IT infrastructure elements. It becomes a continuous test environment and enables developers to test software earlier and more often throughout the typical software development lifecycle. Read our IT Briefcase column on IBM and the cloud testing market for the complete story.

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IBM Ups Its Cloud Commitment

Posted on by UpsideAdmin

IBM recently upped its commitment to cloud computing, with an announcement of a portfolio of private cloud offerings. The offerings have been designed from the ground up for enterprises, and seek to eliminate some of the concerns that large enterprises have over the security and readiness of the cloud for business-critical computing.

The offering, called the SmartCloud Foundation portfolio, includes a core set of private cloud functions that are based on IBM’s significant volume of client engagements and its management of cloud-based transactions for enterprise customers. It is designed to appeal to the demand by enterprise clients for secure, private cloud resources as they seek to transition from virtualization toward cloud infrastructures.

Read our IT Briefcase column on IBM’s updated cloud offerings.

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BPM for the Cloud? Appian Thinks So

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Things are really happening in the BPM space lately. And some of the real interesting changes are occurring in the cloud and social spaces. In fact, one vendor, Appian is focused heavily in these two areas (along with mobile), and even recently issued a press release trumpeting their leadership in cloud BPM. While this market has more to play out, Upside Research definitely thinks that Appian is taking BPM in the right direction with thoughtful approaches to enterprise BPM requirements. Read our full analysis of Appian and Cloud BPM in our recent IT Briefcase column.

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Consolidation in the Enterprise Social Media Space

Posted on by UpsideAdmin

Specialized enterprise social network technologies are also starting to be widely used on an enterprise scale, for enterprise needs. The challenge for companies is to find the tools that are best suited for particular functions and help propagate them in a manageable, sustainable way throughout a department or across an enterprise.

Beneath the surface of the hype surrounding social networking tools is the more interesting shift in how companies do business, and how the IT environment is shifting from on-premises deployments to cloud. At the same time, we’re seeing an increased interest in enterprise social media capabilities. For example, VMWare is adding a social networking darling to its web productivity lineup. Socialcast, the brainchild of Timothy Young, founder and CEO, is one of the leading social networking tools for enterprise businesses, with customers that range from Avaya, Nokia, and Philips Electronics.

For complete analysis of the impact of this acquisition, consult Upside Research’s IT Briefcase column on consolidation in the enterprise social media space.

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Hybrid Restore for Cloud Backup and Recovery

Posted on by UpsideAdmin

Cloud backup and recovery services have made a strong entrance into the consumer and small to mid-sized business market. Yet potential purchasers of cloud backup and recovery solutions should make sure to consider the amount of time it takes to restore data. While backups can be done incrementally, in the event of the total loss of data, organizations want to restore completely. And a complete restore of gigabytes of data, over an Internet connection, can take days.

That’s why a newer option in this market is a hybrid online/local service that allows organizations to maintain up-to-date local copies of critical business data that are available to speed the recovery process in the event of a data loss. Using a hybrid model can significantly reduce recovery and restore times for small and mid-sized businesses. Reach the full story about hybrid cloud backup and recovery services in the Upside Research column at IT Briefcase.

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The Dirty Little Secret About Online Backup

Posted on by UpsideAdmin

How do you know your business data is protected? If your server fails or a hurricane hits or some other digital disaster strikes, what would you lose? Your email? Your customer database? Your business contacts? Your business?

Perhaps you’re one of the many companies taking advantage of online backup services to protect your data. Online backup is a great way to ensure that critical digital assets, from databases to documents, can be safely restored if there’s ever a problem. But if you’re using online backup, there’s something you need to be aware of. It’s the one consideration that your online backup provider might not have mentioned to you.

It’s the dirty little secret about online backup.

The secret is that it might take a lot longer to restore that data than you expect. What most providers don’t mention is that, after a disaster or server problem, it might take days to restore critical business data. In fact, the time it takes to restore data, even with a high-speed Internet connection, can mean potential downtime that can be detrimental to your business – even to the point of causing business failure. In fact, some industry sources estimate that approximately half of computer users will experience a loss of data at some point, and businesses that experience a major loss of data may not be able to recover and could end up going out of business within two years.

Luckily, online backup solutions have been around long enough that now there are reliable options that address these issues. For example, one popular option is a hybrid online/local service that allows organizations to maintain up to date local copies of critical business data that are available to speed the recovery process in the event of a data loss. Using a hybrid model can significantly reduce recovery and restore times for small and mid-sized businesses.

In this Upside Research White Paper on The Dirty Little Secret About Online Backup, we’ll take a closer look at the dirty little secret of online backup, explore what to look for in online backup solutions, and learn how companies are solving the problem of slow recovery times through hybrid disaster recovery solutions.

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