The Future of Enterprise IT - ENT207 - Chicago AWS Summit
Server Technology
1. | |November 2015
1CIOReview
CIOReviewNOVEMBER 19 2015 CIOREVIEW.COM
SERVER SPECIAL
Kevin B. Thompson,
President & CEO
Delivering
‘Unexpected
Simplicity’ in
Monitoring
Complex Servers
SolarWinds:
In My Opinion
Kushagra Vaid,
GM, Server Engineering,
Microsoft
CEO Insights
Adam Stern,
President, CEO,
Infinitely Virtual
3. | |November 2015
3CIOReview
ERP Implementation,
Maintenance and
System Support
Integrated Dashboards
for Patient-flow and
Bed Planning
Comprehensive Quality
& Compliance Solutions
for Life Science
4. | |November 2015
4CIOReview
Dominic Wellington,
Chief Evangelist,
Moogsoft
Adam Stern,
President, CEO,
Infinitely Virtual
Ken Shulman,
CIO, CTO,
Broadview Networks
THE EVOLUTION
OF SERVER TECHNOLOGIES
‘ALL YOU CAN EAT’ AN EDICT,
NOT AN OPPORTUNITY
TOP 3 CHALLENGES GROWING
BUSINESSES FACE AND HOW
THE CLOUD CAN HELP
16 Altaro Software
CONTENTS
19 HansaWorld
22 HostDime
24 Pivot3
27 Power Admin
28 RightITnow
30 Software Pursuits
20
17
25
CXO INSIGHTS
CEO INSIGHTS
CIO INSIGHTS
IN MY OPINION
Jerry Irvine,
EVP, CIO,
Prescient Solutions
Scott Strickland,
CIO,
DMH Global
ENCRYPTION –
IS IT ENOUGH?
BEYOND ALIGNMENT –
PARTNERSHIP IS THE PATH TO
DELIVERING BUSINESS VALUE
31
34
08
Kushagra Vaid,
GM,
Server Engineering,
Microsoft
INDUSTRY TRENDS IN
OPEN SOURCED HARDWARE
5. | |November 2015
5CIOReview
COVERSTORY
10
Delivering ‘Unexpected
Simplicity’ in
Monitoring Complex
Servers
Delivering ‘Unexpected
Simplicity’ in
Monitoring Complex
Servers
SolarWinds:SolarWinds:
Kevin B. Thompson,
President and CEO
*All Insights are based on the interviews with respective CIOs and CXOs to our editorial staff
8. | |November 2015
8CIOReview
opinion
in my
loud computing is rapidly
transforming the IT industry,
and has gained significant
momentum over the past few
yearsacrossbothconsumerand
business segments. Enterprises
are accelerating their
investments in migrating application infrastructure
fromdiscreteenvironmentstoservices-baseddelivery
model using IaaS/PaaS/SaaS paradigms. While there
is a lot of focus on the software aspects, what is less
discussed is the equivalent rapid transformation
taking place in IT infrastructure across the hardware
supplier ecosystem, being primarily shaped by the
large hyper-scale public cloud providers and recent
trends in open source hardware.
The Open Compute Project (OCP) was
established in July 2011 to enable the broad
availability of extremely efficient server, storage
and datacenter hardware designs optimized for large
scale computing. The aspired result is to provide end
users with the choice and flexibility for designing
the infrastructure stack using open source hardware
building blocks, without being beholden to any
legacy or vendor defined constraints. This is achieved
by disaggregating the proprietary vendor stack into
independent components to enable a greater degree
of flexibility, scalability and efficiency. Most of
these components are based on commodity hardware
utilized in hyper-scale deployments, ensuring that
IT end-users can leverage industry learnings from
operating at scale, while still being able to take
advantage of lower costs from volume pricing. OCP
Solution Providers (SPs) perform the typical order
fulfilment and service/support functions, by taking
the hardware and software building
blocks and configuring these based
on the IT customer’s solution
requirements.
The OCP community now
has over 150 member companies
across the globe, and is backed
by prominent hyper-scale cloud
providers, OEM/ODM suppliers,
silicon providers and IT end
users. Design and IP contributions
from member companies across the
hardware and solution stack have
enabled OCP to establish itself
By Kushagra Vaid, GM, Server Engineering, Microsoft
Industry Trends in
Open Sourced
C
Hardware
OCP Solution Providers (SPs)
perform the typical order
fulfilment and service/
support functions, by taking
the open source hardware
and software building blocks
and configuring these based
on the IT customer's solution
requirements
Kushagra Vaid
9. | |November 2015
9CIOReview
as the de-facto forum in the industry for all topics related to
open sourced IT and Datacenters. At the same time, OCP has
empowered IT organizations to take more control over their
infrastructure destiny, by providing freedom and choice for
architecting solution stacks using pre-certified commodity
hardware building blocks, which have been battle tested by
hyper-scale cloud service providers. This entire put together has
led to a massive disruption in the hardware industry
ecosystem, reshaping the traditional
relationship between IT end users and
suppliers. IT customers across several
vertical segments (such as hyper-scale
cloud providers, financial services,
telco, e-commerce, public sector,
healthcare) are now taking concrete
steps to deploy OCP designs, taking full
advantage of this open source hardware
paradigm.
For Server and Storage hardware, there are currently two
main standards supported by OCP – OpenRackbased de-
signs, and Open CloudServer (OCS)based designs.
Products built on these open standards enable a
broad set of offerings suitable for various enter-
prise IT scenarios such as dense virtualiza-
tion, big data processing, web/mailbox
hosting and high performance com-
puting. In fact, Open CloudServer
is the base server platform for
all hardware deployments of
Microsoft’s large scale ser-
vices such as Azure (Public
Cloud), Office365 (Office Produc-
tivity), Xbox Live (Gaming) and Bing (Web
Search). This large scale proof point across a diverse
set of application scenarios provides a high degree of credibility
for adopting OCP designs in enterprise environments, giving
IT the assurance that the server hardware has been thoroughly
qualified at scale in production datacenter environments.
On the Networking front, OCP has seen a huge influx of IP
contributions both for switch hardware and software that have
accelerated the trend for dis-aggregating the network switch
ecosystem and simplified the migration to Software Defined
Networking (SDN). In addition to a variety of leaf switches (also
called Top-of-Rack switches) for 10Gbe/40Gbe connectivity,
OCP also hosts a multitude of networking software projects –
namely, Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) for switch
boot time provisioning and configuration, Switch Abstraction
Interface (SAI), which provides a vendor agnostic mechanism
for controlling switching ASICs/NPUs, and Open Network
Linux (ONL), which is an OS distribution for “bare metal”
switches. These open source network software efforts reduce the
risk of vendor lock-in for the networking stack, thus expanding
customer choice. When coupled with open network switches,
this enables end users to fully customize the networking stack
and have a greater degree of control over network configuration
and operation, ensuring deployment agility and improvement in
service availability.
OCP designs have also set a high bar for intro-
duction of new technologies, enabling breakthrough
hardware innovations with improved performance
and power while still ensuring a commodity cost
point. An example of this is the ‘Cloud-
SSD’ design specifica-
tion contributed by
Microsoft, which
targets high-perfor-
mance 24x7 server
scenarios, but utilizes
commodity Flash NAND
modules commonly used in
desktop/tablet segments to meet
these goals. This provides a compel-
ling value proposition for enterprise users,
and this open effort is subsequently reshaping
the Solid State Drive (SSD) supplier ecosystem
to meet this new emerging demand for such hybrid
devices. Another example of such innovation is in the
networking space, where Facebook recently contributed
both the ‘Wedge ’network switch design and the associated
‘6-pack’ modular chassis design. These two designs are the base
components for a high bandwidth non-blocking topology, and
bring the latest networking technologies to the broader industry,
but still at commodity cost points.
With this broad portfolio of proven hardware designs available
across server, storage and networking, IT customers now have the
flexibility to take these open building blocks and configure these
as appropriate for their solution deployment scenarios. In tandem,
customers can leverage the low cost volume economics thus
directly impacting the organizations bottom-line for Total Cost
of Ownership (TCO) metrics. As the open hardware momentum
continues to grow, it is expected to cover an increasingly large
amount of the technology stack, and which would further its
appeal to an even broader set of both suppliers and customers. This
is a significant trend that will continuously reshape the industry
ecosystem, providing new opportunities for agile integration of
new technologies and enable IT departments to derive increased
business value for datacenter infrastructure.
10. | |November 2015
10CIOReview
Delivering ‘Unexpected
Simplicity’ in
Monitoring Complex
Servers
Delivering ‘Unexpected
Simplicity’ in
Monitoring Complex
Servers
rom industry’s bigwigs to rising entrepreneurs, everyone wishes to own a smart
server monitoring software to architect an efficient IT infrastructure. With
thousands of physical, virtual and cloud-based servers running alongside each
other, keeping track of each of them and eliminating intricacies as and when
they arise is an intractable task for any organization today. From selecting a
viable server environment to acquiring affordable server software that makes
the perfect fit into IT budget of an enterprise, IT professionals are burgeoned
with a myriad of complexities associated with server management technology.
In an effort to curb these complexities around server management, IT
professionals are on a constant look-out for viable technology partners that
can help them thrive in a highly competitive environment by delivering
easy-to-use server management solutions and enhance the internal and
external communications of an organization. Designed to meet today’s
challenges that are thrown at IT professionals in server management space, SolarWinds
(NYSE: SWI), an Austin, TX-based company, offers purpose-built products. “We offer
powerful and affordable solutions that aim to deliver ‘unexpected simplicity’ and redefine
the expectations IT professionals have for exceptional server management software,” affirms
Kevin B. Thompson, President and CEO, SolarWinds.
F
COVER STORY
SolarWinds:SolarWinds:
By Supriya Kumaraswamy
12. | |November 2015
12CIOReview
Being a towering figure in the IT space, the company
offers a vast range of products that simplify the process
of deploying servers in an organization and enables the
monitoring of servers. By leveraging SolarWinds’ server
management software, enterprises can install increased
number of servers and make applications easily available.
Additionally, the software detects network outages,
protocol failures, unsuccessful processes, servers, and
batch jobs, which in turn foster organizations to be
proactive and resolve problems within minutes.
Pro-actively Monitoring Server Performance
As the agent-based software dwindles in the market, the new
and advanced Agent-less server monitoring software has made
its entry in the IT landscape. It enables the enterprises to
save significant time and money, while reducing the glitches
associated with Agent-based server monitoring software. In
order to thwart the intricacies that come along with Agent-
based server monitoring software, SolarWinds delivers
Agentless server monitoring software—Server & Application
Monitor—that takes care of the overall server management
and supports multi-vendor server monitoring. “Server &
Application Monitor is capable of providing extensive
insights into a number of activities carried out by a server by
monitoring, alerting, and reporting its performance,” notes
Thompson. The Agentless software’s server management
capabilities allow organizations to natively start and stop
services, reboot servers, and kill rogue processes by providing
server monitoring support for multiple hardware vendors. In
addition, it provides built-in support for the enterprises to
manage over 150 applications.
One of SolarWinds’ customers, Carlion Clinic had
compatibility issues with Agent-based server monitoring
system that had many applications in different parts of the
system. The
customer found it difficult to
extract actual information to act
upon from huge amounts of data. After witnessing
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor’s compatibility
with Windows Server, Carlion Clinic decided to leverage it.
After the implementation of this software, the customer was
able to set up server application monitoring software within
minutes, while having thousands of servers listed, monitored,
and managed efficiently. Through effective utilization of the
software, the customer eliminated their compatibility issues.
As a result, Carlion Clinic was able to move from reactive
environment to a proactive environment and had sufficient
time to ensure that the applications were available 24/7.
Preventing Outages and Maximizing Performance
Alongside delivering Agentless server monitoring system,
the Server & Application Monitor brings in a range of
other benefits. The software can proactively monitor the
performance of server environments through preventing
application outages and maximizing efficiency. It keeps
track of up and down statuses, capacity, and performance
monitoring of server hardware. Since performance monitoring
is essential to troubleshoot application issues and optimize
application performance, SolarWinds leverages unique
templates to supervise server and application performance
through Server & Application Monitor. Besides, it also enables
the display of real-time and historical trends through intuitive
and meaningful dashboards.
Furthermore, the server monitoring software enables
organizations to get rid of their disparate vendors systems, while
monitoring their server hardware in a single console. From
Our experts combine
the expertise with deep
connection to the IT
community to create IT
management products that
are effective and accessible
13. | |November 2015
13CIOReview
statuses of hard
drive, array, power supply,
fan to CPU and speed, SolarWinds
enables the customers to leverage unparallel
thresholds for all key server health and performance
metrics.
Simple to Deploy FTP Server
The basic purpose of any technology today is to deliver
easy-to-use solutions for the users. Likewise, as a
technology solution provider, SolarWinds provides FTP
Server—Serv-U—to enable organizations to easily view,
upload, and download files from anywhere. The company
also enables users to transfer files over intuitive web and
mobile device interfaces. Its drag-and-drop capability
makes it easier for the users to transfer multiple files at a time
including large files up to two gigabytes. Serv-U FTP Server
provides a broad range of customization options that make the
administration and management of transferable files simple.
Moreover, the FTP server can be leveraged across Windows
and Linux platforms since it is simple to deploy and extremely
affordable.
Serv-U FTP Server is specially designed for small
businesses, as it is an affordable and secure file transfer that
supports organizations to fulfill their internal and external
file transfer requirements. To highlight the efficiency of Serv-U
FTP server, one of SolarWinds customers, KSPS, a Washington
TV Station, required an FTP server that is easy to deploy and
maintain so that everyone in the organization can upload and
download files. Additionally, the customer also needed the
solution to be affordable enough to acquire and support to fit
the budget of public television. SolarWinds Serv-U FTP server
enabled the users who do not have technical expertise to upload
and download files with a few clicks. Besides, KSPS was able
to benefit from the completely new transformation in the way
regional Washington public television station KSPS exchanges
advertisements and video with its sponsors and content partners
through SolarWinds Serve-U FTP server. “Serv-U has also
become a valuable component in their annual pledge drives and
other fundraising activities that require a reliable secure file
transfer method,” says Thompson.
Stepping ahead of Status Quo
Unlike other enterprise software vendors who have established
“Status quo” for themselves, SolarWinds firmly believes in
moving ahead and delivering products that are not difficult
to use, expensive, and addresses the realities of today’s IT
management challenges. Having more than a decade of expertise
in serving IT field, Thomson says, “We do not think enterprise
software has to be as complicated as it’s made out to be.” In this
light, the company strives to offer impactful functionality that is
easy to use and promises exceptional ROI in the market.
SolarWinds was founded in 1999 and ever since its
inception, it has been working with one strong motive to support
IT professionals get rid of the complexity that is associated
with traditional enterprise software by offering the products
that are easier to find, buy, deploy and maintain. Besides, the
company workforce’s innate ability to manage today’s dynamic
IT environments, sets it apart from the rest of the enterprise
software vendors in the industry. “Our experts combine the
expertise with deep connection to the IT community to create IT
management products that are effective and accessible,” affirms
Thompson.
Positive Strides towards the Future
Having established its strong foothold in IT landscape by serving
industry’s big names such as Microsoft, Nestle, Hewlett-Packard,
Lockheed Martin, Yahoo and many other firms, SolarWinds
promises to continue to interact with large, global user
community to guide product development and strategy to invent
better products. SolarWinds also assures to constantly evolve
its products and ensure that its server management software is
well prepared to fulfill the ever-increasing requirements of IT
space. “We continue to deliver increasing value over the lifetime
of ownership,” concludes Thompson.
We offer powerful and
affordable solutions that
aim to deliver ‘unexpected
simplicity’ and redefine the
expectations IT professionals
have for exceptional server
management software
14. | |November 2015
14CIOReview
B
usinesses, organizations and governments are wading
through an increasing number of IT solutions that are
shaping the modern digital world ecosystem. Servers
thataretheunderpinningforalmosttheentireITsystem
are understandably witnessing wide range of enhancements
for better throughput and greater efficiency. As a result, terms
such as hyperscale computing, converged infrastructure, flash
storage, flexibility and mobility are now a common on the table
for the IT decision makers.
Customers today demand maximum performance on giant
workloads at minimal cost. Driven by the zeal to cater to these
demands, server solution providers are exploring the open
source technologies alongside virtualization and the nascent
containerization concepts. The effort is on to pack the most
power in the least form factor.
Server technology today is being integrated with open
source networking such Software Defined Networking (SDN)
and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to bring more
transparency and agility into computing and networking
domains. Further, network controllers, load balancers, and
policy management are being trimmed to perfection to yield
the best results for both the customers and the server vendor.
To help the CIOs and CEOs find the right server solution
providers for their enterprises, CIO Review presents a special
edition on server technology. A distinguished panel comprising
of CEOs, CIOs, VCs, and analysts including CIO Review editorial
board has evaluated hundreds of solution providers in the
server space to arrive at the final 20.
We present to you the “20 Most Promising Server Solution
Providers 2015.”
Company Management Description
Altaro Software
Malta (Europe)
altaro.com
App Dynamics
San Fransisco, CA
appdynamics.com
AppZero
Andover, MA
appzero.com
Datadog
New York, NY
datadoghq.com
HansaWorld
Stockholm, Sweden
hansaworld.com
HostDime
Orlando, FL
hostdime.com
David Vella
CEO
David Wadhwani
CEO
Greg O' Connor
President & CEO
Olivier Pomel
CEO & Co-Founder
Karl Bohlin
CEO
Manny Vivar
VP
Provides data security for virtual environments running on
Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi/vSphere/vCenter
Provides Application Intelligence Platform to monitor,
manage and optimize complex business environments
AppZero brings one-click appstore simplicity to Windows
server applications
Provides SaaS-based data analytics platform that enables
multiple teams to work collaboratively on infrastructure
issues
Provides full suite of ERP, financials, and CRM as well as a
wide selection of industry-specific solutions on tablets and
smartphones
Offers managed cloud-hosting services to colocation
globally with fully supported amenities and tools
15. | |November 2015
15CIOReview
20 Most Promising Server Solution Providers 2015
Company Management Description
Ipswitch
lexington, MA
ipswitch.com
LogicMonitor
Santa Barbara, CA
logicmonitor.com
ManageEngine
Pleasanton, CA
manageengine.com
Nagios Enterprises
Saint paul, MN
nagios.com
Nutanix
San Jose, CA
nutanix.com
Opsview
Berkshire, UK
opsview.com
Pivot3
Austin, TX
pivot3.com
Power Admin
Olathe, KS
poweradmin.com
RightITnow
San Ramon, CA
London, UK
rightitnow.com
ScienceLogic
Reston, VA
sciencelogic.com
Software Pursuits
San Mateo, CA
softwarepursuits.com
SolarWinds
Austin, TX
solarwinds.com
Spiceworks
Austin, TX
spiceworks.com
Zenoss
Austin, TX
zenoss.com
Joe Krivickas
CEO
Kevin McGibben
CEO
Manikandan Vembu
COO
Eric Loyd
Founder & CEO
Dheeraj Pandey
CEO
Mike Walton
Founder & CEO
Ron Nash
Chairman & CEO
Doug Nebeker
CEO
Marc Ferrie
CEO
David Link
CEO
Larry Salveson
President
Kevin B. Thompson
President & CEO
Jay Hallberg
Founder & CEO
Greg Stock
Chairman & CEO
Provides simple powerfull tools for IT teams
Provides hosted monitoring for the entire technology stack in
a single unified solution
Provides IT teams to manage networks, applications, help
desk with easy to use products
Delivers official products, services, and solutions for and
around Nagios®
Enables easy deployment of any virtual workload, including
large-scale virtual desktop initiatives (VDI), development/test
apps, private clouds, big data (Hadoop) projects
Enables sysadmins to easily monitor the complex enterprise
IT environments that support critical business services, with
native support
Pivot3’s HCI is based on a true cross-cluster virtual SAN
with extremely high storage efficiency while providing
exceptional levels of fault tolerance
Building professional grade system monitoring products
for various industries around the world
RightITnow's ECM software aggregates, filters and
correlates infrastructure and application events into
actionable alerts
Delivers the next generation IT monitoring platform for the
Internet of Everything
Designs and delivers software solutions for enterprise
information systems
Provides powerful and affordable IT management software
to customers worldwide from Fortune 500 enterprises to
small businesses
Provides IT professionals products and a community to do
their jobs in a radically new way
Provides unified monitoring and analytics software for
physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT infrastructures
16. | |November 2015
16CIOReview
C
oupled with ‘do more for less’, the complete strategy
today for server configuration is to not only commute
speed, but to also gain quick access to data. While
coming under increasing pressure to deliver services
quicker and more efficiently, the demands on IT infrastructures
continues to grow universally in terms of complexity. In addi-
tion, simplifying backup processes and adding flexibility in the
data stored and retrieved, as well as their backup destinations
are more important than ever. “We’ve made big steps in creat-
ing a backup platform for Hyper-V and VMware that discards
the complexity of backing up Virtual Machines, yet offering
systems administrators more power and functionality to get
backup and restore jobs reliably and efficiently,” affirms David
Vella, CEO, Altaro Software.
The Malta based company is focused on backing up
virtual server technology with Altaro VM Backup, enabling
administrators to backup and restore Hyper-V and VMware
VMs without hassle. The product is developed to serve SMB-
level organizations with flexible, reliable and affordable backup
software for virtual environments. Altaro developed their
backup solution after realizing that backing up and restoring
Hyper-V VMs and clusters were a needlessly complicated
process without the use of a third party tool. Existing products
were overpriced, complicated to configure and use which took
ages to complete a job. “We want to simplify while building in
powerful and flexible features, and
the result is Altaro VM Backup,”
stresses Vella. The company
provides data security for
virtual environments,
specifically for virtual
environments running on
Microsoft Hyper-V and
VMware ESXi/vSphere/
vCenter. Altaro VM Backup
has the ability to majorly
simplify all that it takes to
take reliable backups and
recover quickly and granularly
when needed.
Exemplifying a
certain case of an
engineering solution
provider based in Canada. The company’s old backup solution
worked reasonably well for traditional server technology, but
showed major shortcomings while trying to back up VMs.
Altaro VM Backup solution enabled them to protect all of
their data, and flawlessly restored and converted the backup
VMs to a different host. Altaro aims to delight its customers
with full-featured, affordable backup software backed by an
outstanding, personal support team. Hence, it invests heavily
to serve its customers and partners quickly, effectively and
indiscriminately. “Further, we have released support for the
VMWare hypervisor platform, and now support the two major
hypervisors. Our increasing focus on engineering will make
our products SMB friendly which will gain MSPs to use our
products and service their customers,” says Vella.
Apart from continuous development on functionality
within the product, Altaro address the practical side of things.
The company arms users with tools required for a rock solid
backup strategy which allows users to use the software without
any manual.
The determinant factors that drive Altaro VM Backup’s
successes are its flexibility, and its ability to provide hassle free
technical support. Apart from providing fast, personal support,
Altaro doesn’t shy away from helping a user resolve an issue that
originates within their environment. “No matter how well built
a software product is, issues will always crop up, and often it’s a
user’s environment rather than the product. The users’ are often
bound by their licensing agreement, so their issues are treated
with low priority,” says Vella. The company’s philosophy is to
make support as an integral part of their product, ensuring that
they deliver the value customers paid for.
Altaro Software
Intuitive and Feature-Rich Machine Backup
We want to simplify while
building in powerful and
flexible features, and the
result is Altaro VM Backup
David Vella
17. | |November 2015
17CIOReview
usiness may be brisk for cloud
service providers across the
spectrum, but that doesn’t
mean users are going home
happy. According to a recent
Forrester Consulting study,
theirs is not a warm and fuzzy
lot. The Forrester report cited seven deadly sins users
commonly ascribe to their cloud providers, ranging
from a glaring lack of transparency to feeling
ignored, from stinginess with essential metadata to
troubles with compliance and on-boarding.
To that litany, we’d like to add ‘bait and switch.’
And perhaps “being disingenuous.” The concept of
an ‘all you can eat plan’ from managed services or
Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) providers – specifying
a supposedly full menu of services – is undeniably
attractive to users, especially emerging businesses
who regard IT infrastructure services as growth
serum. And users, quite understandably, have been
signing up to these plans in droves. Thing is, the
providers – who can be of just about any size, from
the biggest players to the freshest boutique – don’t
quite make the asterisk next to ‘All You Can Eat’ big
enough. Put another way, it’s all you can eat, unless
you want to eat more. If your performance suffers, if
your data requirements increase, if your needs grow,
well, you’re on your own.
Make no mistake: the typical DaaS or managed
services provider – the vendor who won the business
by promising to meet user needs at fire sale prices –
By Adam Stern, President, CEO, Infinitely Virtual
An Edict, Not
an Opportunity
B
CEO-Insights
‘All You
Can Eat’
In the cloud, it’s
not space that’s
finite – the scarce/
pricey commodity is
performance
18. | |November 2015
18CIOReview
will invariably recoup their costs and then some by throttling
down bandwidth. In the cloud, it’s not space that’s finite – the
scarce/pricey commodity is performance.
Indeed, as Debra Shinder recently observed in Cloud
Computing Administration (Desktop in the Cloud: Will
Cloud-based VDI ever get out of the Gate? (Part 2), “If
DaaS is looking attractive, it’s important to remember that
no solution is ever perfect, and cloud-based virtual desktops
also have their down side. One of the most frequent user
complaints, whether it’s hosted on premises or in the cloud
– is performance.”
“When you implement DaaS, users are at the whim of
your provider and the connection between them,” concurs
Ryan McLaughlin, Search Virtual Desktop (The downsides
of cloud desktops). “There are no guarantees that your cloud
desktop provider will not suffer a disaster or outage at some
point, leaving your data inaccessible and your users unable to
do their work. Even excluding the worst-case scenarios,
latency is still a regular problem for many,
and it can affect work performance with
little recourse for customers. Add to
that the costs of potential bandwidth
increases to handle the extra
traffic that comes with a cloud
desktop.”
It’s not that users haven’t
noticed. Last July, Enterprise
Management Associates
(EMA) published a survey of
156 IT pros involved with virtual
desktop operations. The report,
“Desktop Virtualization: Emerging Requirements and
Optimal Configurations,” highlights some festering issues in
the DaaS environment – issues, like network performance,
that TechTarget’s Bridget Botelho suggests really should be
addressed in service-level agreements (SLAs). (SLAs should
get specific on issues with DaaS providers)
“In EMA's survey, the biggest issue by far was that DaaS
providers lacked the time and personnel to address customer
issues,” Botelho notes. “The other component of DaaS that’s
troublesome is application performance management – 45
percent of EMA's survey respondents said it is a problem,”
to which EMA’s Steve Brasen adds, “In your SLA you
want to ensure application performance, and you may even
want to name specific applications that must meet a certain
performance level.”
This, then, is the dicey underside of ‘all you can eat.’ Or
to evoke another gas-
tronomic metaphor:
‘there’s no such thing
as a free lunch.’ Users
can escape this trap
by being discerning
IT consumers. That
doesn’t mean control-
ling appetites (there’s
nothing unreasonable
or gluttonous about
wanting or expect-
ing superior perfor-
mance); it does mean
taking a hard look at the entire cloud environment.
Increasingly, the logical alternative to DaaS – minus
the unforeseen performance limitations – is
the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
model. Unlike DaaS, IaaS is holistic,
accommodating growth (and attendant
needs for higher performance) while
providing users with more than
adequate headroom.
IaaS rejects the notion that
the cloud is strictly about
hardware. Instead, the IaaS
model is increasingly focused
on application delivery. No
matter what application an
organization is using, a savvy
IaaS provider should know how to
deliver that app. Every hosting plan should be designed to
provide what users need, and it should never be necessary to
build from scratch.
A well-oiled IaaS machine – where servers and prefab
packages effectively take the place of IT professionals
– should deliver 100 percent uptime. Basic SLAs should
provide, at minimum, “semi-managed services.” That is, the
IaaS provider should manage everything from the hosting
environment up to the operating system. Customers can be
as involved in the application install and management as they
choose to be, or request concierge- level service. The better
providers are as comfortable working with customers who
have IT departments as with those who don’t.
For disgruntled cloud users – those on the short end of the
“all you can eat” cafeteria line – IaaS is more than capable of
turning frowns upside down.
Adam Stern
19. | |November 2015
19CIOReview
A
successful sailing experience
is all about making tough and
right decisions—a skill that
helped Bohlin to sail through
his entrepreneur journey4 with unlikely
victories. “It is often about commitment
and belief as much as skill. I have learned
some of the biggest leadership lessons
in sailing which played a key role in
laying the success map of HansaWorld,”
explains Bohlin, CEO at HansaWorld.
The company serves the midsize and
large enterprises through integrated
business software.
“Our standard application solution,
with almost identical software, facilitates
tons of customer data in our databases.”
HansaWorld’s core product, Standard
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
offers modules of accounts, order
processing, stock manufacturing, and
job costing. The programs are designed
to make administration and accounting
as easy and fast as possible. They also
deliver a unique level of interaction
between its component elements through
a range of CRM (Customer Relationship
Management) modules.
With its integrated approach—
information stored in one database—
all parts of the system are connected
by default and there is no need to
interface different applications. “We do
accounting software and ERP in an ultra
modern style through our integrated
platform, enabling workflow and
electronic conferencing and document
management. Our multi-platform can be
accessed on any device,” states Bohlin.
HansaWorld has also managed to move a
full ERP system with all codes compiling
it and making the availability of database
on Android, iOS, and Windows 8.
With CIOs often looking for a host
of software, Bohlin points out, the
allocation of server space often takes
a toll on the services cost, which he
describes as a “dramatic challenge” in
the industry. To overcome the hurdle,
HansaWorld Standard ERP offers an
application level load balancing. It
provides an excellent service to the
customer, so that they don’t have to wait
for responses. “Additionally, another
concept that we adopt is the automatic
allocation of more server instances or
migration of existing installation to these
instances to share the load,” he states.
A large part of the world is not
cloud-ready. “Stepping ahead, our team
makes the local server spot of the cloud,
so that enterprises can remotely operate
the services, update or install software
automatically,” Bohlin adds. Facilitating
a robust remote backup process, the
company also provides additional
security by ensuring an extra copy of
each daily back-up file that’s stored off-
site on a remote server.
“We have customers around the
globe using the system and to get
maximum response time they shift the
main storage of data to SEV centers for
the correct time zone and better internet
speed. When the application can move
itself to another machine without
disruption, the process becomes simple.”
A leading Norway-based ice cream
chain, with large number of distributors,
was looking for low-cost integration
functionality. “Standard ERP was the
right choice for them because we have
one of the few programming tools which
provides full scale programming on a
mobile device and connects at a very
less license cost to a standard ERP
backend system,” explains Bohlin.
As for its futuristic journey, the
Bohlin’s team is now looking forward for
deeper integration features to enhance
personal productivity with workflow and
ERP. “We are also looking at integration
of personal productivity management
with ERP as the acronym and integrated
telephony, which will have a huge scope
in the market,” concludes Bohlin, who
rightly believes that for staying relevant
in the market, a leader should be able to
analyze the developing technology.
HansaWorld
Offering an Integrated, End-to-End Business
Management Application
Karl Bohlin
Stepping ahead, our team
makes the local server
spot of the cloud, so that
enterprises can remotely
operate the services,
update or install software
automatically
20. | |November 2015
20CIOReview
By Dominic Wellington, Chief Evangelist, Moogsoft
C
hange has always been a constant in it.
We used to know at least the direction
that change was going in, but not
anymore. How many servers do you
have? What do they do? Previously,
questions like these were easy to
answer. You gave the junior member of
the system admin team running shoes and a clipboard, and
turned them loose in the datacenter to “count noses.” While
servers were occasionally forgotten eventually somebody
would stumble over the dust-covered box, follow the cables
and bring the prodigal back into the fold.
Technology was equally predictable. Moore’s Law meant
that every 18 months CPU speeds doubled. OS upgrades came
at a predictable pace. RAM and storage technologies also
evolved along their own trajectories, but major discontinuities
were rare. Today, however, it is quite a bit more complex. As
Moore’s Law starts to show its limitations, evolution has
continued, but in different directions. Today a server is no
longer twice as fast in clock speed as what it replaces, and
looks far more different from its predecessor than used to be
the case.
How Servers Have Evolved
The initial change was the move
to server virtualization, so one
physical server could host any
number of virtual servers. Yet
many IT organizations were
unpleasantly surprised to realize
that while virtual servers were
very easy to create, nobody
was taking care of retiring them when they were no longer
needed. This explosion of virtual servers quickly led to a
major capacity crunch, resulting in the requirement for better
management and planning.
Then came the various flavours of cloud computing.
Public cloud meant servers running outside the datacenter,
which meant outside the fire wall – outside the perimeter. This
of course resulted in all sorts of new security and compliance
headaches. However, procurement was out of IT’s control,
requiring only that users – often developers – enter a credit
card, and adoption happened while IT was still debating about
what to do.
CXO-Insights
THE EVOLUTION
OF SERVER
TECHNOLOGIES
How many servers do
you have? What do they
do? The problem is that
knowing the answer
is the prerequisite to
most processes and
management solutions
that exist today
Dominic Wellington
21. | |November 2015
21CIOReview
Private cloud seemed like a better
option, but when fully implemented
as a self-service option, it often
exacerbated the capacity problems that
virtualization had first introduced.
Finally, we are now dealing with
containers, which despite some at-
tempts to treat them as just another sort
of virtual server, represent something
rather different, with multiple con-
tainers sharing a single underlying
operating system. Old-time main-
frame and Unixhands tend to
scoff at the idea of this sort of
partitioning as innovation,
but it is the scale of adop-
tion that is making the
difference.
Why Embrace
Evolution?
All of this change has left
IT teams sometimes scrambling to keep
up with users, especially developers,
who want to adopt all the newest
technologies right away. Users are also
able to access those technologies much
more easily than in the past. Previously,
the IT department owned the physical
data center, and had time to enroll
servers in its management processes
while space was found in the racks,
power and network cables were placed,
operating system disks were swapped
out to install the system and all the
many tasks required a server to start,
well, serving were completed.
The strength of the new model of
IT is that there is no such bottleneck
– but IT management techniques and
tools have not kept up. All too often,
IT professionals struggle to answer the
question at the beginning of this article:
“How many servers do you have?
What do they do?” The problem is that
knowing the answer is the prerequisite
to most processes and management
solutions that exist today. Without
this up-to-date list of systems and
dependencies, however, many things no
longer work.
Monitoring is generally used to be
assumed to require knowledge of what
was to be monitored. Not having this
data, though, leads to silent failures,
where some piece of infrastructure that
is not monitored goes down, turning out
to have been critical to some service
or functionality. Troubleshooting these
situations is a nightmare, because all
of the indicators were green – right up
until everything burned down, fell over
and sank into a swamp.
Processes do exist to monitor such
things – that is not the issue. However,
they tend to assume that it takes six to
eight weeks to provision a server, so
there is plenty of time to register it and
enrol it in all the various monitoring
and tracking systems. That comfort-
ing assumption no longer holds true
in the age of VMs, containers, and all
kinds of clouds. As the famous adage
goes, “servers should be cattle, not
pets.” Pets have individual names
and are coddled and cosseted,
healed when they are sick and
documented – perhaps ob-
sessively – by their own-
ers. Cattle, on the other
hand, get numbers, not
names, and are con-
sidered as entirely
inter-changea-
ble. If one gets
sick, you just get
a new one and keep
right on going.
This means that you also have to
change your thinking from being the
loving, dedicated caretaker of a small
number of individual pets, to being a
farmer in charge of a large herd.
Evolution is Inevitable
The evolution of IT tools and processes
is happening, but the bottleneck is in
changing the thinking of the IT organi-
zations themselves. Trying to treat a
container in a shared service accessed
over the Internet in the same way as the
1U server in the rack in the data center
downstairs is a recipe for disaster. IT
departments now need to accept the
new definitions of what a server is if
they are to avoid that disaster. The good
news is that the rewards are also signifi-
cant. Thanks to this evolution in what a
server can be, IT has the opportunity to
be much faster and more efficient than
ever before, delighting users and ena-
bling new business success.
22. | |November 2015
22CIOReview
W
ith the growth of internet, there is a change
in the way one works, socializes, creates, and
shares information. As the global user internet
penetration continues to grow, there is a rising
need for servers all over the world. “We have to keep up with
emerging markets who are noticing the need to have their
data accessible faster,” says Manny Vivar, VP of Global Op-
erations of HostDime. “We are addressing these issues by
continuing a very strong global footprint of owned facili-
ties where we provide server ‘bare-metal’ hardware products
which power the cloud.” Founded in 2001, HostDime is a
privately owned and operated global data center provider.
HostDime offers managed cloud-hosting services with fully
supported amenities and web tools that empower global us-
ers to do more on the cloud at an affordable cost.
According to Vivar, Global localization will continue
to impact the server technology space so the company
continues to ensure all their global locations can service the
latest hardware. “We are seeing a big demand for country
fail over sites. Since we operate facilities globally this
allows this product to evolve naturally for us,” says Vivar.
HostDime’s humble beginnings with only one server molded
the company’s principles: To service its clients at
the highest level possible and accept nothing
less. “HostDime delivers a large array of
managed cloud hosting products above
industry standards and we help every step of
the way,” adds Vivar.
The company caters to the various
clients’ needs that range from simple
website hosting which can be
serviced by VPS servers housed
on bare-metal hardware
to high availability cloud
elastic product to company/
client provided hardware
colocation product. “Our
array of services allows the
client to work with us as a
data center infrastructure
provider and use the product
they fit best into,” asserts
Vivar.
In 2003, HostDime opened its first data center in Orlando,
Florida after growing from one server to over 200. The passion
and vision for excellence prompted the founding HostDime
engineers to design a facility, which provides the highest
levels of uptime and service to clients. Once the facility was
completed, HostDime succeeded in transferring all servers
from a prior third party data center to its very own facility in
Florida. Managed Dedicated Servers, Managed VPS hosting,
and Colocation services were added to the product line. “The
company’s main advantage is their high level of managed
services and their global data center footprint,” adds Vivar.
An example illustrating the company’s solutions is a client
in Russia that runs a game app was facing issues servicing
their users in Mexico and Brazil. The client approached the
company to provide bare-metal servers in order to deploy his
application locally that resulted in the clients latency issues
becoming obsolete after activating the application.
Through various partnerships and alliances with leading
enterprises dealing in the world of software, hardware, and
bandwidth networks, HostDime has evolved into an excellent
data center operator.
Trend in technology is always what is newer and faster.
“With the price of SSD’s continuing to drop we are taking
advantage of this by defaulting most servers; we deploy now
with SSD’s and the newest and latest Xeon processors,” says
Vivar. “For the days ahead we will continue to expand our
global foot print. We are going to be building our second
facility in Brazil in Sao Paulo and then build our own facility
in India in 2017,” concludes Vivar.
HostDime
Managed Hosting Servers to Global Colocation
Services for the Enterprise
We have to keep up with
emerging markets who are
noticing the need to have
their data accessible faster
and locally
Manny Vivar
24. | |November 2015
24CIOReview
S
erver technology has become progressively more
powerful following Moore's law. Despite Moore’s
more recent speculation, the number of servers has
exploded as enterprises support an ever increasing
number of applications and business initiatives, resulting in
an exponential growth in the volume of data. It is a challenge
for storage and also provides new possibilities for CIOs to de-
vise effective ways to make sense of the data and drive better
business outcomes. “Pivot3 Hyper Convergence Infrastruc-
ture (HCI) is an efficient way to capture and process data
because of its inherently high storage efficiency and compute
performance,” assures Ron Nash, Chairman and CEO, Piv-
ot3—a company which delivers Global Hyper-Converged In-
frastructure for high performance Enterprise IT workloads.
Enterprises initially purchased hyper-converged
appliances for a single purpose such as Virtual Desktop
Infrastructure (VDI) or storing massive amounts of video
data. But it is when users take advantage of the convergence
of storage and compute that the real value of HCI emerges.
“Customers who started with a big data storage solution have
discovered that they can easily and inexpensively also run a
disaster recovery capability on the same HCI. Our technology
is a clear differentiator as the HCI is based on a true cross-
cluster virtual SAN with extremely high storage efficiency
while providing exceptional levels of fault tolerance,” Nash
points out. In the process, the Pivot3 architecture preserves
compute power through a multitude of optimizations that
leave most of the processing capacity for running the user's
applications.
The proliferation of networked devices opens the door to
many opportunities for useful services that can constitute the
core of new business models. The efficiency
of the IT infrastructure plays a crucial role to
make these services possible. “In the case of
the Internet of Things, Pivot3 Global HCI can
store, monitor, and process data streams
from myriad sensors and devices in
an economically viable way which
drives down complexity and higher
costs,” observes Nash. In addition
to improving the performance
and availability of high-demand
applications, HCI reduces risks
associated with multiple vendors,
data loss and data security, and provides a centralized
management platform, which is designed for simplicity and
can be used by any IT generalist.
One of Pivot3's customers in the healthcare landscape,
the National Health Service, leveraged Hyper-convergence to
tackle productivity issues arising due to under-performance
of devices used to access patient data and bedside information.
In partnership with specialized healthcare integrator, Pivot3
installed HCI to support high-performance VDI in the
form of mobile medical workstations and thus, delivered
a high-end user experience with instant-on availability on
any portable device, high end-point security with stateless
clients, all at low cost per virtual desktop. Pivot3 not only
improved the quality of patient care with improved clinician
productivity, key features like secure mobile access meets
regulatory compliance and patient privacy laws.
Around the turn of the millennium, the founders of
Pivot3 came to the conclusion that the next step in storage
technology was to take control of the hardware through
software, resulting in the path-breaking vSTAC platform.
The trend continues on today at Pivot3’s headquarters in
Austin and their innovation lab in Houston, Texas which
refines and optimizes the hyper converged software with
unique approaches like the close-to-the-metal design, Scalar
Erasure Coding, and Virtual Global Sparing, which have led
to twenty-two patents filed and awarded to-date. “Having
recently announced a joint go-to-market partnership with
Lenovo and Arrow ECS in Europe and the Middle East, Pivot3
is expanding their footprint in all geographic areas including
Asia-Pacific and Latin America,” concludes Nash.
Pivot3
Global HCI Delivering High Performance
Enterprise IT Workloads
Pivot3 HCI is an efficient way
to capture and process data
because of its inherently high
storage efficiency and compute
performance
Ron Nash
25. | |November 2015
25CIOReview
By Ken Shulman, CIO, CTO, Broadview Networks
W
hether a small-or-medium sized business
or a large enterprise, growth presents a
host of challenges that necessitate proac-
tive planning. While companies experi-
ence growth in various capacities, CIOs
and CTOs must take the scaling ability of
their business-enabling technology into
consideration when catering to expanding company needs.
Servicing an increasing headcount, ensuring IT resiliency
while adding back-office and network capacity, and avoiding
a ballooning IT budget, are key factors to consider when
reevaluating technology structure to accommodate growth.
What are seemingly simple and mundane challenges to address
are actually interconnected and must be examined holistically
when developing a comprehensive, functional solution to
business growth.
Handling Growth in Headcount
Managing physical growth and employee headcount can be
challenging without the right technological support. When
applying traditional approaches to IT, hiring new employees can
trigger a substantial increase in direct infrastructure complexity
and investment, whereas an effective use of new
cloud technology alternatives can
make scaling quick, easy, and cost
efficient.
In a traditional IT envi-
ronment, adding workers
can trigger multiple di-
rect investment require-
ments, such as:
1) Private Branch Exchange (PBX) expansion to add more
phones to a capacity limited phone system which can result in the
need for full scale “fork-lift” upgrades (i.e., PBX replacement)
costing several thousands of dollars if the ultimate capacity of
the existing PBX is reached
2) Additional office or cubicle space to accommodate the new
employees which can result in the need to rent more space
3) Purchase of additional desktop equipment, including phones,
PCs, software, switching, routing and wiring, which can easily
cost thousands of dollars per new employee
On the other hand, cloud technology alternatives can
offer significant opportunity to avoid many, if not all, of these
challenges to employee growth. In particular:
1) Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solutions,
which are cloud-based alternatives to the traditional premise-
based PBX, offer virtually unlimited phone system scalability,
supporting both expansion and contraction as needed generally
with no limits on the number of employees served and limited or
no up-front capital investment by the business
2) UCaaS solutions, with remote worker and shared “hot-
desking” technologies, provide companies with the
option of sharing office space among employees
or flexible work locations
while providing all the
functionality and benefits
of in-office phone
systems, thus avoiding the
need and cost of adding
new office space
CIO-Insights
Growing Businesses
Face and How the Cloud
Can Help
Top 3 Challenges
26. | |November 2015
26CIOReview
Cloud computing and UCaaS
solutions particularly shine
in addressing the needs
for resiliency and business
continuity
3) By leveraging cloud-based virtual desktop technology, PC
softphones, shared “hot-desked” office space and optional desk
phone equipment rental, companies can reduce or avoid the high
cost of desktop equipment purchases to enable new employees.
Cloud computing and UCaaS technologies can also enable
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), allowing new employees
to use their own smart phones and/or laptops to work with
company technology, a particularly powerful approach to hiring
millennials.
Maintaining Resiliency while Adding Back-Office
and Network Capacity
Beyond additional staff, growing businesses must also manage
customer growth and may need to reevaluate the approach to
customer service. Beyond adding storage capacity, growth-
oriented businesses may also need to add processing power and
compute power to ensure employees, both existing and new, are
experiencing adequate back office systems performance, while
customers are receiving the products and customer service they
need to run their own businesses.
Among other things, CIOs may need to expand server
hardware, including storage, CPU capacity, and network ports,
to serve the additional back-office load, as well as expand the
company datacenters to house the additional server and storage
hardware while also maintaining proper cooling and power
requirements. Furthermore, they need to add PBX trunk capacity
to handle the growth in voice traffic, as well as add inter-location
data network capacity to handle more traffic and expand internet
access bandwidth.
Alternatively, cloud computing and UCaaS solutions
can substantially reduce these needs and simplify the CIO’s
challenges by:
1) Eliminating the need for company-purchased server, storage
or CPU capacity.
2) Eliminating the need for company owned datacenter
expansion.
3) Eliminating the need for PBX trunking
by eliminating the PBX and its support
contracts.
4) Simplifying the data networking
requirements.
5) Providing a pathway to eliminating
existing company datacenters entirely.
Once core resource requirements have
been addressed, businesses must invest
in disaster recovery, resiliency, back-up
storage and overall network support to ensure
business continuity during a time of disaster or
disruption. Investing in a resilient technology
infrastructure ultimately allows
businesses minimal downtime
through continued access to
the network, communication
among staff, and a back-
up strategy for potentially
lost or corrupted files.
Cloud computing and
UCaaS solutions particularly shine in addressing the needs for
resiliency and business continuity.
Budget Management
Beyond managing headcount and network capabilities,
growth oriented businesses must also consider the financial
investment needed to ensure continued growth from a point of
fiscal responsibility.
Cloud technology is exceptionally easy and cost-effective
to install considering it only requires internet connectivity
and installation which is a one-time expense. Once the cloud-
based infrastructure is put in place, IT support is minimally
required and is often provided at no or low additional cost by
the provider, allowing the budget that would be dedicated to
hiring an IT director to be invested elsewhere. In addition,
company leadership and management generally have access to
a user-friendly and intuitive central dashboard where changes
can easily be made.
Growth is a shared objective of all businesses. But with
growth comes many challenges, particularly for the CIO, or
those sitting in the shoes of the CIO whether by choice or
necessity. In today’s technology-heavy business world, the
platform choices made can have a disproportionate impact on
the costs, complexity, flexibility and sustainability of business
growth, both now and in the future. Cloud computing and
UCaaS offer substantial benefits over traditional IT solutions,
dramatically improving the scalability and cost efficiency of a
business, whether for phone services, desktop equipment, space
requirements, back-office systems, or business continuity.
Ken Shulman
27. | |November 2015
27CIOReview
M
onitoring servers, networks, and applications
often detects performance issues early. Besides
cloud-based, local, and virtual servers, today’s
CIOs also have to deal with external systems such
as SaaS and PaaS. “Our software monitors remote servers as
easily as it keeps track of local servers,” begins Doug Nebeker,
CEO, Power Admin LLC. Founded in 2002, Power Admin has
many years of experience building professional grade system
monitoring products. The company has a unique capability
of monitoring systems in a remote data center without any
monitoring agents, and without needing a Virtual Private
Network connection because of its Satellite Monitoring Engine
and usage of an outgoing HTTPS connection.
The company’s flagship product, PA Server Monitor helps
enterprises monitor the standard ping, CPU, memory, and disk
usage. It can also verify that specific events, such as backup
completed or anti-virus file updates, show up in the Windows
Event Log. Event Log entries can be specified by source, ID
or event text. This same filtering is available for incoming
SNMP Traps and Syslog events from Linux devices. When
a problem is detected, PA Server Monitor can trigger various
alerts including:
• Outgoing emails
• Push notifications to the iPhone (and soon Android and
Windows Phone) application
• Making HTTP calls for creating tickets in a helpdesk system
or Slack channel
• Writing to the Windows Event Log
• Sending an SNMP Trap
• Writing to a text file
Other checks can be
performed by watching an
email account for incoming
messages, keeping tabs on
web server SSL certificate
expiration, web page content
and load time, and file and
directory changes, including
for CIFS shares as are often
used in manufacturing
facilities. “Customers tell us
PA Server Monitor is easy to
configure, yet still flexible as
you can get down to individual thresholds, alert recipients, and
even poll-cycles,” says Nebeker.
Additionally, PA File Sight, PowerAdmin’s file access
auditing solution, determines who is accessing files on the
server. Using PA File Sight, it becomes easy to find out who
deleted files or folders, or accidentally dragged one public
folder to another. “IT pros appreciate that it does not rely on
Windows auditing, which can cause performance problems
when you’re watching all file access on a server,” reports
Nebeker. “Instead, it watches files at the system level using
the same approved techniques that anti-virus vendors use. This
means it can report on not only who is accessing files, but also
where they are accessing them from. No other product on the
market can report the IP address of who is accessing the files,
and if the access is local, which process is doing the access.”
Power Admin has been creating robust monitoring
solutions for its clients since its inception. For instance,
a pharmaceutical software company was facing issues in
monitoring remote servers at hundreds of customer sites.
Before PA Server Monitor, the client had to manually check
and configure ad-hoc alerts to manage the servers. Now with
the help of the Satellite Monitoring Engine, the client has been
able to deploy monitoring functionality on one server at each
remote location which then monitors everything else at that
location. The monitors were configured with email alerting.
Instead of having to manually manage those servers every
day, the client now receives an email when there’s a problem
at a particular server, reducing the effort that was previously
invested in manual monitoring.
Power Admin continues to
grow and innovate. Their passion
for simplifying IT shows up
in features like ‘Bulk Config’
which allows for easily making
configuration changes in bulk.
The company’s new version six
will feature monitoring via server
groups and monitor templates,
and updated mobile applications.
“We stay up to date with the
technology industry, while
listening closely to customer
needs,” concludes Nebeker.
Power Admin
Agentless Server Monitoring for
Remote Locations
28. | |November 2015
28CIOReview
M
odern day CIOs need to embrace cloud technology
as well as leverage the existing tools, already imple-
mented in the data centers of organizations while
streamlining the resources required for achieving
these goals. Headquartered in San Ramon, CA, RightITnow is
providing the Event Correlation Manager (ECM) platform, al-
lowing organizations to explore and utilize cloud solutions while
leveraging the existing monitoring solutions. “We deploy native
connectors to various platforms such as Amazon Web Services
(AWS), VMware, Solarwinds, Nagios and present them in a uni-
fied display,” begins Marc Ferrie, Founder and CEO, RightITnow.
ECM consists of features such as workflow and people manage-
ment facilities, allowing IT organizations to manage their Net-
work Operations Center (NOC) resources and assess their recruit-
ing requirements based on actual workload data.
RightITnow’s mission is to simplify the way IT operations are
being managed today. The company has established certain key
practices in the IT arena. These features include—streamlining
the design of the product to make it simple to use along with
providing cost-effective solutions to automate alert management
and resource optimization. RightITnow monitors various
technological trends, integrating cloud solutions and combining
them with organizations’ existing resolutions, which are present
in the corporations’ data centers. “We are at the core of server
technology innovations that includes public, private, and hybrid
cloud initiatives in a seamless and economical way,” mentions
Ferrie. “All of these are managed through our ECM product
that deploys native connectors to capture, aggregate and process
the events from multiple sources.” In addition, RightITnow
assists organizations’ in utilizing big data technology which
is critical to surface hidden trends within the millions of alerts
processed on a daily basis. ECM incorporates technology to
display historical trends within the NOC
operational dashboards as well as provides
mechanisms to feed IT data warehouses.
Being a Web 2.0 Manager of Managers
(MoM) solution, ECM provides multi-
source event correlation software,
optimizing IT operations and supporting
predictable SLA-based services. The
platform displays operational and historical
dashboards with a comprehensive view of
organizations’ data center and staff workload.
“We also provide extensive workflow
options and bridge the gap between
IT operations and service helpdesk
offering tight integration with
ServiceNow, Zendesk, BMC
Remedy, Salesforce Service
Cloud, and ManageEngine,”
notes Ferrie.
RightITnow holds a track record of empowering clients
to successfully manage their business operations and is well-
equipped to change the way IT processes are being administered
across industry verticals with their ECM platform. In one
such instance, a large system integrator’s initial deployment of
monitoring tools did not allow for true scalability as each element
manager reported via email to their ServiceDesk. Furthermore,
introduction of a new element manager required additional staff to
manage the increase in alert triage and manual incident creation.
It also required the organization to re-train the Servicedesk for
understanding the new alert format. The organization approached
RightITnow who provided them with ECM solution that allowed
the client to abstract the Servicedesk from the element managers
andensureallalertsweredeliveredtotheminastandardform.The
integration with the Incident Management tool via the connector
delivered with ECM allowed the organization to automate the
creation of incidents reducing the load on the Servicedesk, thereby
allowing them to deliver cost effective improvements.
The company’s proactive 24x7 support and integration of
customer feedback has proven to be of much value for customers.
Surgingahead,RightITnowplansonprovidingahighlydistributed
solution against an even larger number of monitoring solutions
while exploring actionable big data applications and expanding
their mobile presence beyond the iPhone ECM application.
RightITnow
A New Paradigm in IT Management Operations
We are at the core of server technology
innovations that includes public, private
and hybrid cloud initiatives in an
seamless and economical way
Marc Ferrie
30. | |November 2015
30CIOReview
S
ince public cloud first stepped its foot in the business
world, the IT landscape has clung to promises of in-
stant access to data and reduced IT overhead. Howev-
er, today several privacy and performance concerns
are surrounding the public cloud, which cannot be left unheard.
Abating the risks around data distribution, sharing, and avail-
ability—Software Pursuits has been designing and delivering
innovative software solutions for enterprise information sys-
tems since 1975. The company’s flagship offering SureSync is
a file synchronization platform that provides secure, reliable,
and efficient sharing of files across an organization. “With
SureSync you can replicate files to a remote disaster recovery
center or synchronize the data between branch offices, while
storing the files in a company's own servers which leads to
added security,” remarks Larry Salveson, President, Software
Pursuits.
While file replication and sharing is beneficial for all
organizations, many have still not recognized the need or have
neglected its implementation. “Only when a firm experiences
a communication loss, do they realize the imperativeness for
replication and synchronization technologies,” opines Salveson.
In case a disaster strikes, companies should have an
immediate access to their data, and while
it can be accomplished with virtual
cloud server, it is always feasible to
have local copies of data in other office
locations for uninterrupted business
operations. In addition, while the task
of copying files sounds like a plain-
sailing task, it involves complexities
like multi-directional synchronizations,
compression, encryption, network
utilization and throttling. This is where
SureSync steps in helping clients
navigate effectively through their
data management issues.
Although SureSync started
out as a solution to fulfill an
in-house need—today it is
enjoyed by thousands of
customers. From facilitating
data protection, multi-site
file collaboration, and
synchronization services for corporate networks; SureSync
provides a suite of products, each focused on different customer
needs. The newest offering from the suite, SureSync Endpoint,
enables IT teams to establish replication services for mobile
notebooks and remote connected machines, creating an internal
private cloud. Following a design philosophy which can be
modified according to the task at hand Salveson says that,
“Our ultimate goal is to automate and enhance file availability
as much as possible, increasing productivity throughout an
organization.”
According to Salveson, it is Software Pursuits’ drive for
excellence and desire to help customers which has worked as
a strong formula for the company’s growth for forty years.
Often large multinationals like UPS and Verizon Wireless
that share files across national or global networks, face
difficulties with network latency, bandwidth consumption,
and file transfer performance. Software Pursuits addresses
these challenges through a software agent placed in each
location, giving SureSync multiple opportunities to outperform
standard methods of transferring files. “Our ability to transfer
only portions of files dramatically reduces the amount of
data transferred; however this is only one method where
SureSync enhances performance. SureSync also leverages the
operating system and hardware to optimize synchronization
performance,” explains Salveson.
Going forward, Software Pursuits plans on further refining
their products, as Salveson believes that there is always room
for advancements and improvement. “Responding to our
customers’ development needs in the near future, we will be
enriching our portfolio by adding products and features that
will enhance auditing, performance, and operational control,”
ends Salveson.
Software Pursuits
Private Clouds for Efficient, Secure File Sharing
Our ultimate goal is to automate and
enhance file availability as much as
possible, increasing productivity
throughout an organization
Larry Salveson
31. | |November 2015
31CIOReview
C
IOs and their corporations are looking
for the magic bullet to protect their
intellectual property and the personally
identifiable information of their clients,
partners and employees. Legacy security
measures such as firewalls and antivirus
provide little protection from hackers
and malicious users breaching the enterprise environment
and the implementation of more strict access controls.Data
loss prevention (DLP) solutions are cumbersome and limit the
productivity of end users.
With these technical and business constraints in place,
CIOs are turning to encryption of data across the entire data
life cycle to mitigate the risks of lost or stolen information. But
does today’s encryption technology really provide the levels of
confidentiality required in this totally Internet connected world?
There are three primary phases in which data can be
encrypted: in transit, at rest, and in use. The highest level of data
protection currently exists in the data transmission phase. In
this phase, encryption occurs between specific communicating
devices. Protection provided by encryption in transit includes
confidentiality from eavesdropping and sniffing, or man-
in-the-middle attacks. Applications such as VPN clients and
browser based HTTPS provide strong encryption processes
which protect the confidentiality of data making it very difficult
for unauthorized users to intercept. It is common practice for
organizations to encrypt of data transmitted from remote
devices; however, data that is being transmitted on internal
networks typically goes unencrypted. There is a perception
that data transmitting the internal network, or even that being
transmitted to remote facilities, is secure and therefore does
not require encryption. Nevertheless, an organization’s internal
network can be easily breached making data vulnerable to the
same risks of eavesdropping, sniffing and man-in-the-middle
attacks. Consultants, vendors and individuals off the street not
only have access to wireless networks but often have access to
network jacks in conference rooms, cafeterias and other common
areas. Also, devices that do not require direct authentication (i.e.
printers, scanners, industrial controls, etc.) can be infected with
malware that can eavesdrop, sniff, or capture traffic and send
out information to the Internet. Past concerns of implementing
encryption to internal data transit included increased overhead
on servers, network devices and end user workstations. This
overhead could cause systems delays, loss of connectivity and
loss or corruption of data. Many of today’s server and network
technologies have data encryption capabilities built in to allow for
CIO-Insights
The highest level of data
protection currently exists in
the data transmission phase
with the ‘at rest’ and ‘in use’
phases close behind
Encryption –
Is it enough?By Jerry Irvine, EVP, CIO, Prescient Solutions
32. | |November 2015
32CIOReview
easier configuration and implementation
and minimize the impact on utilizations.
Implementing encryption of data in
transit from endpoint to endpoint, both
remotely and internally is mandatory in
today’s cyber risk environment.
Anotherphaseofdataencryptionisthe
encryption of data at rest. Implementing
encryption of data at rest is the easiest of
all phases and, in fact, is built in on many
devices such as smartphones, tablets and
PCs. There are really no reasons not to
encrypt all data on smartphones, tablets,
PCs; however, there are some major
limitations of encrypting data at rest.
Users and applications must be able read
data in order to use it, consequently, when
a user or application logs into the system
the data must appear decrypted. This is
both necessary and a major vulnerability
because when a user or application logs
in all data, even that data at rest that they
have access to, becomes readable. So, if
a user’s device or application is infected
with a virus, malware, etc. and they log
in all data on their system or systems they
can access becomes available to the
hacker.
The last phase of data encryption
is encryption of data in use, this is the
weakest link. As defined in the
previous encryption of data at rest
section,inordertomakeuseofdata,
it must be readable or decrypted.
Many applications, database companies
and cloud service providers are claiming
different levels and characteristics
of encrypted data in use; but, current
technology does not make this completely
possible. Encryption of data in use relies
heavily on encryption of data at rest and
in combination with strong authorization
and access controls. By allowing only
authorized users, limiting their access
to the principles of least privilege and
performing on the fly decryption of data
upon access, companies are providing a
minimal level of encryption of data in use.
Based on the functionality of
encryption within the different phases, it
must be obvious that encryption is not a
silver bullet for the protection of data.
Encrypting data in transit can
be compromised even if it is being
performed across both internal and
remote networks via the placement of
malware on authorized devices that can
eavesdrop or sniff data as it traverses the
enterprise. Encrypting data at rest can
also be overcome via the placement of
malware on an authenticated device and
it can also be bypassed by un-authorized
users who illegally obtain valid user
ids and password which have rights to
view the data. The encryption of data in
use with existing technologies uses the
same but stricter rules as defined within
the encryption of data at rest phase and
therefore can be compromised in the same
ways.
Encryption is designed to provide an
additional layer of data protection but
complex authorization policies and strict
access controls providing only the least
amount of privileges necessary for a user
toperformtheirfunctionsarestillrequired
in the protection of data. If hackers get
into a network but are unable to gain
authorized access with valid credentials,
encryption will protect data from being
read, copied or manipulated. However,
cyber incidents facilitated by gaining un-
authorized access to systems using valid
user credentials, such as phishing scams
or social engineering, can allow hackers
complete access to decrypted data.
Jerry Irvine
34. | |November 2015
34CIOReview
By Scott Strickland, CIO, DMH Global
A
nalysts, experts, and observers often
encourage CIOs to be aligned with the
business. I disagree. Alignment is just the
first step to a partnership relationship that
allows real change. Let’s look at what it
means to be aligned versus what a business
partnership is to help clarify this.
Alignment means IS has a cordial relationship with each
department, strives towards the same goals, and has an operating
model to support day to day exceptions. Building a basic
relationship with other department heads is critical but often
overlooked and can serve as the foundation. Relationships can
be fostered by travelling together, attending other departments’
social events, and simply by going to that new sushi place together.
Agreeing on the yearly priorities–often by writing them together or
jointly interpreting the CEO mandates,–represents the second step.
Unfortunately many IS organizations have not done this and this
causes cross-functional prioritization, resource, and funding issues
later in the year. The last major step in alignment is establishing
an operating model to drive normal activities and address issues.
Creating a business partnership requires much more personal
effort by the CIO. Providing the “art of the possible”, cancelling
under-performing or shadow projects, and saying “yes, if” to push
back and guide ideas are all part of being in a partnership. The
“art of the possible” can be a set of sessions explaining or even
demonstrating the latest in technology and tying it back to real
business problems. This can serve to help guide the project portfolio
as well as identify organizational deficiencies (such as knowledge
or new roles) in time for the next budget cycle. Ultimately, both
teams should start to look forward to the
yearly sessions. A less popular, highly visible,
and counter-intuitive method for building a
partnership is cancelling or deferring a project.
An aligned CIO will often push out delivery
dates or commit more resources to help the
business look good but a partnered CIO
could (and should) cancel the project
entirely. Obviously this is heavily
dependent on the reason for the original
project delay: cancelling a project due
to a project manager issue is extreme
whereas cancelling it for significant
change management issues or business
buy-in concerns is prudent. Shadow
projects should generally be cancelled as they are the gift that
keeps on giving, typically built on a non-standard platform or with
an insecure architecture. Cancelling projects is often the cheapest
financial approach but requires a different type of capital: political
credit and the willpower to spend it. Finally, learning to say no in
a different manner by saying “yes, if” is another great partnership
tool. Often IS is viewed as the department of no–no budget, no
time, no way–and using “yes, if” allows the department to consider
a proposal if the business provides meets their end of the deal. For
example, when the business wants to re-prioritize a backlogged
project (Project B), the CIO could respond “yes we can do it…
if you help us complete Project A first and we jointly take the
business case for Project B to the CFO this Friday during lunch.”
This draws the business in, makes them part of the solution, and
engages them in quantifying the benefits while also ensuring it is
a real priority.
During a recent dinner with about twenty other CIOs across
multiple industries, the facilitator asked “How many projects that
come across your desk have real business value?” The maximum
number that anyone admitted to was 50percent, whereas 30percent
seemed to be the average. Thus 50percent of projects do not have
real value and the aligned CIO proceeds while the partnered CIO
works with the business to find other solutions.
CIO-Insights
Beyond Alignment –
Partnership is the Path to
Delivering Business Value
Scott Strickland
Alignment is just the first step
to a partnership relationship
that allows real change
Scott Strickland
35. | |November 2015
35CIOReview
About Logistics Solutions Inc.
Logistic Solutions Inc, founded in 1993, is an established IT services and
solutions provider, offering domain rich execution capability and
executive commitment to client engagement. Leveraging a global
delivery model, our diversified technology services and solutions are
built to align with our clients business & technology vision.
Logistic Solutions, Inc.
(A certified MBE company)
216, Stelton road, #C2
Piscataway,
New Jersey - 08854.
Telephone: 732-743-2300
Fax: 732-457-0016
E-mail:
info@logistic-solutions.com
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