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Network

What to Consider in Modernizing Your Network Monitoring Solution
Gus Bekdash, Managing Consultant
Internet Telephony 01.2010
In the beginning, the monitoring infrastructure was the users. Troubleshooting was done by primitive tools and elimination. The network was the usual suspect for any degradation. Mean time to repair was quite long, but it was acceptable. Not anymore. The network is now critical for human as well as machine communication. Problems should really be detected and resolved before users notice them and even before they become problems.

Reaping Value through Unified Communications Cost Optimization
Ward Andersen, Principle Consultant
Internet Telephony 11.01.09
How can a company save money and optimize spending on its unified communications system? One area that doesn’t get enough attention is service and maintenance contracts. If you haven't reviewed your contracts in the last year, pull these out. Compare what you purchased against your organization’s needs. Make your solution provider work for you. Educate them on your needs and then challenge them to craft an optimized support plan. Really understand what you've purchased and how this might change at next renewal.

Overcoming the Human Challenges of Implementing VoIP
David Brandon, Senior Technical Consultant
Internet Telephony 09.01.2009
Implementing VoIP in your call center may be the most difficult part of transitioning your company to VoIP. The reason, surprisingly, is not technology, but people. While the benefits of VoIP in the call center are unmistakable, you must overcome three human challenges in order for VoIP implementation to be a success.

Network Management: Aligning the Toolkit with the Business Requirements
Juan Amaya, Solution Architect
Internet Telephony 07.01.2009
To serve ever-growing business demands and support new devices and technologies, the network continues to expand in size, services and complexity. Thus, IT staffs at companies of all sizes—from multinational corporations to government agencies to service providers—are greatly challenged to provide high-performing, available and dependable multi-service network infrastructures that effectively must support a wide variety of business requirements.

The Best of Both Worlds: Hybrid Hosting for VoIP
Gus Bekdash, Managing Consultant
Internet Telephony 03.13.2009
Having matured and increased in complexity, IP telephony (IPT) is now subject to the same operational scrutiny as other enterprise applications. As a result, many now consider IPT a “non-core” asset and are seeking new ways to operate it cost-effectively without consuming vital IT resources.

Smartphones: Personal or Corporate?
Jose Ferreira, Solution Architect
Internet Telephony 01.01.2009
The advent of smartphone systems which blend corporate and personal functions along with touch screen ease-of-use, has caused issues for enterprises now asked to support these devices. This has strained IT and security departments that were not prepared to handle them.

Getting the Best from a Network Implementation Services Provider: Finding and Choosing the Right Firm

Raymond Nahorniak, Director, Solutions Delivery
Internet Telephony 11.01.2008
Ask the manufacturer for recommendations.The manufacturer typically has a stake in ensuring that their products will be implemented effectively, and thus are careful in qualifying the partners they recommend. Ask members of your user group community: Who has had a similar project delivered? What was their experience? Do the appropriate manufacturer support relationships exist if their assistance is required? Ask for what you want: Narrow the selection to two candidates and begin the quote process with both using a non-mission critical project. How does each provider respond?

The Business Transformation Value of IP Telephony
Anthony Iadisernia, Director, Network Solutions
Internet Telephony 09.01.2008
Increased productivity and customer satisfaction are the top priorities for any business today. To accomplish this, people need the ability to work seamlessly with one another, both within organizations and across networks of partners, suppliers and customers. Organizations attempting business transformation are finding that a key to improving productivity, business responsiveness and innovation is to deliver a variety of collaboration tools while accommodating work style preferences.

Worth the Bandwidth after All: Rethinking Web 2.0 Collaboration Tools
Joel Pogar, Director, Network Solutions and Security Practice
Internet Telephony 07.01.2008
Every business wants a competitive edge. There is always a demand to use technology for faster communication with more data. However, the greatest business tool of tomorrow is not more speed, more storage or faster processing; it’s Web 2.0 applications that leverage the power of collaboration.

A Winning Recipe for Successful VoWiFi Deployment and Operation
Darrell L. Epps, Director, Network Solutions
Internet Telephony 05.01.2008
After a rather slow start, voice over wireless LAN services (VoWLAN or VoWiFi) are finally starting to become more mainstream, particularly in industries like healthcare and retail sales where much of the workforce is mobile within a building or campus throughout the work day, but still needs to be able to communicate at any time. However, horror stories of VoWiFi implementations fraught with problems still abound. So how do VoWiFi adopters avoid the pitfalls and maximize their potential for success? Here are some ingredients that will help.

Extreme Makeover Data Center Edition - Part 2
Mark Bolsoni, Product Director, Advanced Network Technologies
Internet Telephony 02.01.2008
Just as IP telephony virtualized the need for PBXs to be situated in every physical office location, the next generation network components are enabling companies to view their data center equipment as true virtualized resources. Last month we considered three network-related elements of the virtualized data center to think about when looking to optimize cost. Here we consider three others.

Extreme Makeover Data Center Edition Part 1
Mark Bolsoni, Product Director, Advanced Network Technologies
Internet Telephony 11.30.2007
Many companies are looking at ways to cut IT costs while maintaining or improving service levels to their end-users. One not-so-obvious area to look is data center network technologies. Centralized data centers are en vogue again, with many of the technologies migrating back to a single environment. File servers, print servers, and mission-critical applications are all being evaluated as potential consolidation efforts.

Mind Your "P's" and "Cues" When Securing Your Converged Network
Darrell Epps, Director, Network Solutions
Internet Telephony 10.01.2007
So how do you filter through all the information and recommendations to determine what makes the most sense for your network environment? If these choices and the associated challenges seem overwhelming to you as well, my rule of thumb is to “mind your P’s and Cues”.

Keep Communications in Crisis
Joel Pogar, Director, Network Solutions and Security Practice
Security Management 06.01.2007
Reliable communications are important to business operations at any time, but keeping them up and running is especially challenging and crucial when a disaster disrupts normal operations.

Adapt or Die. It's All About the Network
Anthony Iadisernia, Director, Network Solutions
Internet Telephony 04.01.2007
The Millennials are our next generation workforce, born between 1980 and 2000. Unlike the Gen-Xers and the Boomers, they are already connected all over the world by cell phone, text messaging, PDA, email, instant messaging, and the Internet. They won’t just ask for the tools they are accustomed to, they will demand them. Organizations need to start thinking about how they will evolve, adapt, and introduce these new applications into the workplace.

IP WAN Optimization: Caveat Emptor (Let the Buyer Beware)

Darrell L. Epps, Director, Network Solutions
Internet Telephony 02.15.2007
Read through just about any trade magazine dealing with information technology these days and you are likely to find articles, product evaluations, and advertisements for an emerging class of products that perform WAN optimization functions. What is helping to drive the need for such technology?

Are the Cost Benefits of VolP Fading Away?
Joel A. Pogar, Director, Network Solutions and Security Practice
TMCnet.com 10.01.2006
How will the FCC, the USF, and CALEA affect the future of VolP? The question sounds more like alphabet soup than a business concern, but if you’re using VolP, or considering a new VolP deployment, these are acronyms you should know about. They are the regulatory agency and laws that will have the biggest impact on VolP in 2006.

IP Communications is Transforming Business Continuity Planning
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
Richard Zimmermann, Vice President, Network and Security Solutions
ContinuityInsights.com 04.01.2006
Michael Croy, director of business continuity and Richard Zimmermann, director of network solutions marketing at Forsythe Solutions discuss how IP communications can enable improvements in an organization’s day-to-day business processes and operations.

The Value of Integrated Conferencing
Richard Zimmermann, Vice President, Network and Security Solutions
Internet Telephony 07.01.2005
Many enterprises that proactively deployed IP telephony (IPT) systems are finding that, several months after the implementation, they have not realized the anticipated expense reduction that fueled the ROI analysis that initially justified the deployment of an IPT system. Other companies are looking to aggressively reduce operating expenses to achieve target profitability levels in an increasingly competitive economy. The answer for both camps may lie in integrated conferencing.

Server

Good Tools Practices for VM Change Management
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
SearchServerVirtualization.com 04.07.2008
We've started using virtual machines in an effort to reduce the number of servers in our data center. Because virtual machines (VMs) are easy to move, we are running into change management issues. Are there automated change management tools we can use? What are good practices for documenting or limiting permissions for changes?

Four Rules for Virtual Machine Migration
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
SearchServerVirtualization.com 04.07.2008
What are some of the risks of moving from client/server computing to virtual machines (VMs) and virtual servers? What do you recommend as a best practice to minimize the risks of a physical-to-virtual migration?

Is iSCSI Ready for Virtualizaton Deployments?
James E. Geis, Director Integrated Solutions Development
SearchServerVirtualization.com 06.18.2007
Currently, VMware and other technologies support the iSCSI protocol for storage attachment (to the ESX server) for data and boot devices. The real question is whether your IP network can sustain the increased traffic that an iSCSI implementation will require.

The Dollars and Sense of Virtual Data Centers
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Steven Harris, Director, Data Center Planning & Design
Information Week 07.19.2007
To manage server sprawl, exponential data growth, power consumption, and nearly unmanageable infrastructures, many IT organizations are turning to data-center virtualization and blade-server technologies. But careful consideration is needed.

How to Back Up WMware 3.0.1: File-Level and Raw Virtual Machine File Backup Alternatives
James Davidge, Solutions Architect
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
SearchServerVirtualization.com 05.13.2007
With virtualization technologies taking a real hold in the IT world, many areas of management and maintenance that were previously straightforward and well-understood are now overshadowed with questions about best practices and alternatives. James Davidge, solutions architect, and James E. Geis, director of integrated solutions, address the key area of backing up and restoring virtual machine instances.

Can I Use Backup Disk From One VM to Another VM?
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
SearchServerVirtualization.com 04.23.2007
Answer: Yes, if you backup a virtual disk with standard backup software, you can use the disk in another VM. To eliminate the file…

Virtualization: A Growing Reality in the Data Center
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Forsythe Focus, Winter 2007 01.01.2007
Ongoing improvements in server virtualization technology are leading toward a major shift in enterprise server strategy.
Storage

Guidelines for Implementing Cloud Storage
Steven Pon, Storage Solution Architect
InfoStor 02.26.2010
In today's challenging business environment, it's critical for IT professionals to take a larger view of their data centers than in the past. IT functions such as network and storage that were traditionally siloed within the organization, must now be more closely aligned due to convergence. This encourages increased collaboration between functions, which provides tremendous benefits to IT organizations when performance enhancement and cost cutting are the goal. Many companies are now finding that the solution is in reaching for the cloud.

How to Control the Storage Impact of Virtual Servers
Brian Peterson, Storage Architect
InfoStor 01.04.2010
Server virtualization allows one physical server to many guest virtual machines (VMs); each with its own 20GB operating system requiring its own storage space, backup demands, and storage I/O. Virtual server sprawl ensues when more VMs serve up more applications called by more users for more I/O-intensive processes.

How Can I Use Thin Provisioning Safely?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteandSwitch.com 10.19.2007
Thin provisioning is a great new technology that promises to increase storage utilization and lower both capital and operational costs. However, there are some dangers inherent to thin provisioning that storage and server administrators should be aware of.

How Are RAID Level Choices Made?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 10.19.2007
RAID levels not only apply the appropriate level of protection for data, they also have a tremendous effect on the performance of most applications. There are some effective practices guidelines, but each application in each organization must be analyzed to ensure adherence to business impact and performance metrics developed by the business and technical groups.

How Can I Get Backup Data Under Control?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 08.22.2007
As most storage administrators are painfully aware, business units and application owners typically dictate retention periods for their data. We are all also very much aware of the headaches and additional expense that accompany long-term retention of backup data -- the capacity and logistical costs associated with this process can be staggering.

What to Consider When Creating Storage to Support Exchange?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 08.22.2007
Microsoft Exchange (2003 especially) is a very unique application from an enterprise storage perspective. Exchange can be I/O intensive, but it is definitely a response-time sensitive application.

Should I Set Benchmarks for My Storage Envionment?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 06.07.2007
Infrastructure benchmarks are an important metric to develop, understand, and maintain in an enterprise environment. Benchmarking for storage can be complex, since the data path for large enterprise applications is typically comprised of multiple systems, each with its own contributions to performance, bandwidth, and latency. Having a repeatable process to create storage environment benchmarks enables you to maintain a successful tiered-storage environment.

How Can I Best Measure Performance in My Storage Environment?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 06.07.2007
IOPS (input/output operations per second) is an industry-standard way of measuring disk performance. Every storage administrator should have a documented process in place to monitor and track IOPS metrics.

How to Develop a Practical Storage Model
Alan Grantham, Solutions Architect
InfoStor Magazine 05.01.2007
Is your storage growth out of control, and are your storage purchases unpredictable? Do your vendors just tell you to “buy more storage” to fix storage capacity issues? If the answer to any of these is yes – which is not uncommon – your storage is on the way to becoming a business beast. Alan Grantham, solutions architect, provides valuable guidance on how to control and develop a practical storage model.

How Do I Boost Response Time?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteandSwitch.com 04.17.2007
Simply adding storage capacity is rarely a successful solution for disk response time issues. Most often, response time problems are caused by volume configuration issues and lack of bandwidth. However, in some cases, adding additional disks can improve response time due to the additional spindle count.

What is the Best Way to Implement File Virtualization?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 04.17.2007
Virtualization has been quite the buzzword in the storage industry recently. There are several virtualization mechanisms available to the storage consumer today. These options span not only operational platforms but also storage platforms and storage types. Are you prepared to implement? There are several concerns that should be addressed.

Archiving: When & How?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 03.16.2007
The question facing the storage manager today is not “Should I archive data?” but “How do I archive data?” There are a range of options, but as with every strategic infrastructure decision, the true solution is a combination of policy, process, and infrastructure.

Which Data Protection is Best?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 03.16.2007
There are certainly a plethora of data protection options available, running the gamut from tape backup to intra-array cloning and snapshotting. The cost and complexity of these technologies varies widely.

Managing Your Organization’s (Information) Assets
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Computer Technology Review 03.08.2007
Effective information storage management boils down to a company’s definitively understanding and paying attention to the four phases of its information’s metamorphosis: Creation, Access, Retention and Deletion (“CARD”). James e. Geis, director of integrated solutions development for Forsythe Technology Inc., explains how to ensure that critical information assets are treated in a way that storage is secure and recoverable.

Are Certifications Valuable for Storage Administrators?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant
ByteAndSwitch.com 02.07.2007
Certifications have been a controversial subject for IT professionals. Are they badges of honor won through hard work and expert knowledge? Or are they meaningless pieces of paper used to bolster resumes in the eyes of recruiters?

What’s the Buzz I’m Hearing About RAID 6?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant
ByteAndSwitch.com 02.07.2007
Raid 6 is a relatively new data protection architecture becoming more readily available from mainstream storage vendors. Raid 6 is another implementation of the long-standing method of configuring disks in redundant “arrays”.

Is the Time Right for Virturalization?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 01.03.2007
From servers to networking to storage, development and introduction of virtual environments is spreading like wildfire. Storage virtualization can be tempting, but be sure to execute a detailed cost-benefit analysis to fully understand how much your current environment and data management policies can leverage storage virtualization.

Does De-Duplication Have Drawbacks?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 12.05.2006
Tim Arland, principal consultant for Forsythe Solutions discusses data de-duplication technology.

What’s the Key to Excellent Encryption?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 12.05.2006
Tim Arland, principal consultant for Forsythe Solutions provides tips for efficient encryption.

What’s the Best Way to Set Up Tiered Storage?

Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 11.10.2006
Tim Arland, principal consultant for Forsythe Solutions defines the requirements that drive storage infrastructure development.

The Convergence of VolP and Storage
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Storage Networking World Online 05.15.2006
“You’ve got mail” can mean many things now. Is it e-mail? Is there voicemail in your e-mail box? The postman is often ringing twice as consumer demand for message accessibility has increased over the last several years. The technical requirements for convergence have led to an increased dependence on storage delivery over the IP network.

Protecting Your Information Assets: The Crossroads of Data Storage and Data Security
Pamla Frredericks, Director, Security Advisory Services
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Information Storage and Security Journal 02.28.2006
Ever since the introduction of Open Systems into the data center, a problem has been brewing. Too often, the storage environment isn’t seen as an area with security considerations. Until recently, corporate security policies rarely considered the data center storage environment; sometimes there was no real link between the two. Security was managed at the operating system level or within applications, and a storage location was seen as purely a physical hardware issue with little bearing on user access or security controls.

Building an Information Management Framework
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Department
Storage Management Solutions 01.01.2006
Building the information management framework is an organizational exercise that should encompass all levels of the corporation, including the boardroom, management, end users, customers, system administrators, and application developers. Instead of starting with technology and backing it into what you need to manage information, develop policy that will trickle down and dictate usage.

Electronic Message Archiving and Risk Management
James E. Geis, Director Integrated Solutions Development
Risk Management 09.01.2005
By proactively taking controls of electronic messaging before a problem occurs, your business can reap cost benefits as well as the benefits of more secure information, and, thus, a more secure reputation.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Tiered Storage
James e. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
InfoStor 08.10.2005
Taking the right steps in the right order can make the difference between a tiered storage architecture that truly meets your business needs and a lot of unnecessary frustration. Although the precise order for some of these steps will vary from one organization to another, the following is a good working plan for most businesses. It adheres to the information management hierarchy of addressing policy decisions first, followed by management, operations, and technology.

Guidelines for Effective E-mail Archiving

James E. Geis, Director Integrated Solutions Development
InfoStor 07.01.2005
No matter what is driving your organization’s need for electronic message management (e.g., compliance regulations, cost management, growth, risk management, or controlling information security) you will automatically reap the benefits of addressing all, plus a few more, by integrating e-mail archiving tools.

Acronym Soup: BCP, DR, EBR… What Does It All Mean?
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Disaster Recovery 07.01.2005
With all the terms and abbreviations being used today regarding risk management – BCP, DR, EBR, RPO, RTO, SLA, etc. – a conversation about data protection and risk mitigation sounds like a bowl of acronym soup And this stew of confusion is peppered with an urgent sense that such matters need to be addressed PDQ. In fact, major technology decisions are currently being made in an attempt to respond to pressing issues. But, at the same time, many still ask, “What does this all really mean? Why are people trying to sell me on a business continuity plan when we already have a solid disaster recovery solution in place?”

Recovery: The Only Reason for Backup
James E. Geis, Director Integrated Solutions Development
CIO.com 02.04.2005
While recovery may not be a new reason to backup information, it remains the only reason for backing up information. Unless information can be recovered with pinpoint accuracy within a certain time frame, the whole backup paradigm is useless and an organization could suffer significantly.

How to Build a Tiered Storage Infrastructure
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
InfoStor 01.01.2005
Building a tiered storage infrastructure is not an overwhelming exercise as long as you start with the end goal in mind: Keep important, transactional information on high-end storage and less-important, less frequently accessed information on lower-performing, cheaper storage for the long-term.

Inside ILM
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Storage 01.01.2005
Information lifecycle management (ILM) has become a familiar acronym in storage, but storage professionals aren’t buying into it with much enthusiasm. Despite the hype surrounding ILM, or maybe because of it, storage managers aren’t just in a quandary about their next move – in many cases, they simply don’t know where to start.

The ILM Socialization Experiment
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Storage Management Solutions 09.01.2004
The IT industry has yet another nebulous acronym stirring fear, uncertainty and doubt among C-level executives and IT managers across the globe: Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). There is no clear-cut way to approach ILM from an enterprise-wide standpoint. Companies need to socialize their organizations to understand the importance of their approach to ILM.

Ten Ways to Drive ILM
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Computerworld 06.22.2004
Jim Geis, Forsythe’s director of system solutions and services, outlines effective practices for companies to manage information so it’s protected, deliverable, organized, and usable to ensure compliance – even as industry and government refine the details of information lifecycle management (ILM).