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Network

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

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