Although storage technologies are most often associated with hardware, the future of storage is in software. For the better part of two years, most people in IT have been hearing the term storage virtualisation thrown about. But like most new ideas, this concept is little understood and a little ahead of its time.
The three hardware elements of any data centre strategy are networks, servers and storage. And while the first two elements tend to be well understood, the crucial role storage plays in the enterprise is frequently overlooked.
All network diagrams are variations on the same theme. In the middle is a representation of an enterprise network that is in turn connected to a cloud that represents the telecommunications infrastructure that connects various companies together.
The percentage of people who actually struck gold and got rich during the California gold rush of 1849 was relatively small compared to the number of people that actually set off to strike it rich.
Given that on-demand computing resources are an attractive concept, a lot of noise is being generated by the phrase "utility computing". In essence, utility computing means that network and server are paid for on a usage basis and that additional resources are always available at a moment's notice.
More often than not, conventional wisdom is wrong because it's born of conventional thinking. One such example of that is the assumption that the rise of the chief technology officer was a phenomenon of the great dot-com era.
Throwing money at a problem is the wrong thing to do and CRM software is no exception to the rule. By now, most major IT organizations have experimented with CRM software with mixed results. The typical scenario by which the CRM project came about usually involved an overpriced consultant convincing senior managers that adopting CRM software would result in increased profits through better customer service.
Regardless of the current state of the world economy, a senior-level job in IT is still one of the more rewarding jobs a person can have.
If you listen very carefully, you can hear the sound of large application software vendors damning Web services with faint praise. Just about every software vendor has announced support for Web services on some level, but most of that support comes in two distinct flavours.
The edge of the enterprise became a blur ever since people starting taking work from the office to do on their home systems.
Everyone has a dream. For most IT managers that dream involves automating the routine tasks associated with their jobs, namely the configuring and provisioning of servers.
Given half a chance these days, it seems that every major software vendor is willing to give any prospective customer a portal for free. The first thing the vendor thinks is "What can I appear to be giving away in order to get the account?" The first and most obvious answer they come up with is the portal.
Vendors like to create the illusion that they all work together to move the industry forward by cooperating to develop industry standards. But the truth is almost the exact opposite. The standards process has always been tainted with vendor politics, and in recent weeks the situation has only gotten worse. And as usual, IT organisations will be paying the price for vendor chicanery.
Technology chiefs personify the best -- and sometimes the worst -- attributes of people who choose to make their living building and deploying new technology.
The year 2001 witnessed horrific events and called a halt to 10 years of unprecedented economic growth, but it also spawned a number of technological innovations that are only just now beginning to take root.