IT Solutions Blog  filter by date: February 2012

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, has been increasingly used for small and midsize businesses to large enterprise organizations. The VoIP technology features a number of benefits to reduce the cost of phone services while providing a reliable way to contact prospects, customers, and those within the organization.

Just last month, Cisco announced to the world that 10,000 global customers have now deployed Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) in their data centers. Only two years ago, this server platform broke into the industry amongst high competition and despite heavy criticism from the game’s key players and spectators. But against all odds, Cisco UCS started catching on - due in large part to the faith customers bestowed in Cisco along with good old-fashioned word of mouth.

Last year consulting firm Frost & Sullivan conducted a survey of technology decision makers and learned that 41% put cloud computing service investments as a top priority.  Organizations have been cautious of entrusting business critical data to the public cloud – and for good reason. At the same time, a private cloud infrastructure can be more easily controlled and the organization can apply rigorous security to protect its data. We have helped several of our clients deploy FlexPod, a single platform data center solution from NetApp, Cisco, and VMWare. FlexPod, when deployed correctly, accelerates private cloud ROI.

Next week, we’ll be attending VMware Partner Exchange 2012, sponsored in part by NetApp and Cisco. We’ll be reporting back with our findings in a post-event interview with our attending engineers. You can follow event conversations on twitter searching for hashtag #VMWarePEX.

The three ways to create virtual servers include para-virtualization, full virtualization, and OS-level virtualization. Each system uses a different approach when it comes to server virtualization, and it’s important to understand the differences to successfully create a virtualized environment. All three ways share a few common traits, including a physical server called the host and a virtual server called the guest. When deployed correctly, server virtualization can cut the amount of energy needed to run a data center, and reduce the cost of hardware and software needed to keep things up and running.

Cisco holds a number of CiscoLive events around the globe each year, and shares a wealth of knowledge about NetApp and FlexPod both online and at these events in the form of the “Featured Collateral” pages on their community forums.

It’s a new year and new opportunities await!  But wait, hold on -- doesn’t that mean a whole new year of ruthless assaults on your network? (And here you are… hoping to protect irreplaceable data.)