Watching The Enterprise Hybrid Clouds Go By

May 16, 2013
Ed Lucente

Hybrid clouds enable the flow of information between private and public cloud networks. Private clouds talk to public clouds, and vice versa, and the hybrid cloud is born. On the heels of the OpenStack Summit in Portland, Oregon, and recent announcements from Microsoft, now is a good time to address the “state-of-the-state” of enterprise hybrid clouds. Due in large part to burgeoning industry alliances...

2 Strategies For Competing In The Cloud

May 14, 2013
Brian Lee

As your business races to execute on its cloud strategy and drive adoption, you may think its time to unbuckle the seatbelt as you reach cruising altitude.  Not so fast. Turbulence may be just ahead if you’re not incorporating a strategy that includes transformative innovation as an integral part of your ascension...

Have Your Cake And Eat It Too With UC

May 9, 2013
Sander Biehn

The dizzying pace of today's business world holds the promise of propelling ideas into concrete reality in shorter cycles than ever. Real-time communications is the mother of lightning fast innovation, and innovation is heavily prized by geographically dispersed enterprise businesses.  Allow me to illustrate....

SMB Leading In Technology Adoption? Believe It…

May 7, 2013
Abhi Ingle

We read about it all the time in the business and political press: small business is the engine that drives the economy.  But when we look at the innovation that’s occurred over the past decade, the consumer and enterprise segments seem to get all of the...

New Ways Of “Thinking Out Cloud”

May 2, 2013
ATT

There’s no denying that cloud services are going mainstream, providing scalable IT on demand for a variety of organizational needs. What isn’t entirely clear is how this self-service IT approach affects purchasing decisions, implementation...

Where’s The Value In Private Clouds?

April 29, 2013
Jeff Kaplan

One of the most confusing aspects of the rapidly evolving cloud marketplace is the definition and value of private clouds. The term has more than one connotation. As a consequence, measuring the business benefits of this method of deploying the cloud can be challenging. The confusion arises from the fact that private clouds can be deployed either by an enterprise behind their firewall or by...

Fog Ahead: Getting To Clarity With Cloud

April 26, 2013
Jeff Morgan

In a recent Infoworld article, Matt Prigge brought up a host of valid points about the way we market the cloud. Is it a disservice to the small business owner without an IT staff to overly simplify the concepts behind our wares? Surely it sells an account, but at what cost? I’m forever walking the line between too much detail and not enough, but what if the vendor doesn’t actually provide the service as promised? What if, in spite of...

3 Best Cloud Apps For Business

April 24, 2013
Mario Armstrong

Last week I discussed the best cloud apps for managing your contacts and business cards, but what about everything else you do while on the go? Can you use the cloud to be more productive in other areas? Of course you can! There are apps that leverage the cloud to do almost everything you do online...

Like Building a Home: Get the Right Partner for Managed Hosting

April 22, 2013
Steve Caniano

I’m delighted to report that Gartner Inc. has again, for the seventh report in a row, named AT&T as a ‘Leader’ in its latest Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting, North America. As I considered the best way to explain what this means to our current and potential customers, this analogy came to mind:...

Network Enabled Cloud: The Next Phase Of Cloud Evolution?

April 17, 2013
ATT

Today, when people discuss cloud, it’s mainly centered around the compute and storage aspects of cloud architecture. "The network" is typically mentioned and will play a key part as cloud evolves into the next phase of development. Which means, as businesses expand their cloud infrastructure, enterprise networking will play a larger role. You’ll...

3 Ways Mobile Cloud Computing Is Enabling BYOD

April 10, 2013
Sander Biehn

Predicting the future of technology is difficult, let alone identifying the micro-trends driving bigger changes. However, I think Dave Amerland is definitely on to something. In his blog recently posted on Forbes, he deftly reasons that Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is...

10 Great Public Cloud Use Cases

April 5, 2013
Dave Johnson

Everyone continues to predict that cloud computing will keep growing at astounding rates. In fact, Gartner published a report in February that stated “The public cloud services market is forecast to grow 18.5% in 2013 to $131 billion worldwide,” a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.7% through 2016....

3 Technology Trends To Improve Your Memory

April 4, 2013
Catherine Scaramuzzi

Birthdays are a big deal in our house.  The birthday person gets all kinds of privileges: waking up to a surprise balloon, picking a restaurant for dinner, selecting a special present.  My youngest recently turned five years old.  It’s moments like these when I want to pause time – I want to soak in the moment a little...

So, I Use COS 1 for My Voice Services Over My MPLS VPN

April 2, 2013
Lon Hickman

The coming decade will see enterprises employ a wide range of commercial software, cloud, and mobile IP-based applications. This deployment will raise the importance of having robust WAN IP-connectivity solutions that include the use of more on-demand network resources....

4 Ways To Avoid Being Foolish About Cloud

April 1, 2013
Jeff Morgan

April Fool’s Day comes but once a year, but you might think it comes once or twice a week if you’re struggling over the promise and disappointment of SaaS apps and the cloud in general. As far back as the days of Chaucer, we’ve celebrated the day where no news topic is sacred, no personal space is private, and no...

Top 10 Security Challenges For 2013

March 29, 2013
Steve Hurst

For security professionals 2012 was a very exciting year. We saw some major changes in information security attack strategies, known as vectors, and an increase in their public visibility. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) became more common and mobile and wireless security came into the forefront of our...

Seize The Day—And The Cloud

Allyson Fralish

When you think about businesses using the cloud, chances are your neighborhood bookstore or clothing store isn’t among the first to come to mind. A recent survey on cloud usage supports my theory, showing only 16% of small and midsize retailers currently use the cloud. However, as an avid cloud watcher, I believe this statistic is...

Taking VPN To The Cloud

March 28, 2013
ATT

For enterprise IT leaders, keeping pace with ever-increasing demands for new applications and greater data bandwidth is an ongoing struggle. Adding a layer of complexity to their task is the fact that many are forced to make the necessary moves with fewer resources in place to deploy new applications and networks. Many enterprises are finding their solution in MPLS-enabled VPNs that are robust and flexible enough to adapt to new...

2 Ways To Leverage Cloud For The Perfect Follow-Up

March 27, 2013
Mario Armstrong

Last week I broke down my step-by-step tips for how to network and pitch while at conferences, events, and talks. No matter what line of business you're in, there's always people to pitch who can help your business or with whom you can create mutually beneficial partnerships. But let's say you're...

The Patient’s Perspective

March 26, 2013
Barb White

The debate rages on about the viability of the cloud for the healthcare industry, mainly weighing security risks against the benefits of lower costs and improved outcomes. Private, closed systems can be Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant and...

Can Your VPN Perform These 3 Tricks?

March 19, 2013
Sander Biehn

Yahoo sure has been in the headlines lately. The interesting part of the story for me has been the spotlight on extracting worker productivity from the VPN logs. For a great synopsis and commentary, check out InfoWorld's blog by Ted Samson. Ted makes some great points about the dangers of using a single set of analytics to derive employee value. For example, not all work functions require constant VPN consumption. On the other end of the...