Stories by Kevin Fogarty

If you use it, mobile malware will come

IT people who try to secure mobile devices in a big company face three big conceptual problems.

Mac desktop security: The landscape is changing

Only about 20 percent of Americans think Macs are vulnerable to viruses, compared to more than half who describe PCs as "vulnerable" or "very vulnerable" to attack by viruses, according to Alex Stamos, a security analyst at iSec Partners.

VMware licensing change opens doors for competing providers

When VMware announced last week that it would loosen the radical change in price structure it announced only a month ago, it was doing more than mollifying a few disgruntled customers. It was responding to a revolt among customers, analysts say, even at large companies that rarely considered competing virtualization platforms due to VMware's lead in the technology.

How desktop virtualisation can help manage consumer devices

If two technology trends were ever made for each other, at least in vendor marketing materials and generically simple diagrams of IT infrastructure, they are the consumerisation of IT and desktop virtualisation.

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Keep rogue Cloud software from making IT irrelevant

Surveys of senior IT managers consistently show that Cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) are being tested or used for non-critical applications at fewer than half of U.S. corporations.

5 ways you waste money on virtualization

More than three quarters of U.S. companies virtualize at least some of their x86-based servers, but few get their full money's worth out of virtualization efforts -- due to management blunders, analysts say.

Four virtualization security basics to watch

While mobile and smartphone security is the hot topic of the moment among virtualization security gurus, plenty of other virtualization security topics demand IT's attention right now. At the recent RSA Security Conference in San Francisco, the interest in virtualization security ran high - with good reason. Different IT departments are at different points on their virtualization journeys, of course, and some are still thinking about security in the old physical world terms, analysts say.

Microsoft ramps up fight to be Cloud leader

Microsoft has launched a series of partnerships, functional enhancements and product packages in an effort to make its cloud offerings more attractive to enterprise customers and raise the profile of its Hyper-V hypervisor as a potential ingredient for cloud-based systems.

Cloud computing: Small starts can have a big impact

Despite predictions that cloud computing will change the economics and strategic direction of corporate IT, the cloud's greatest impact so far has been in focused, often small projects that owe little to visions of complex, enterprise-class, computing-on-demand services, some users and analysts say.

Desktop Virtualization: Top Vendors Still Miss the Mark

Desktop virtualization has a predicted growth curve that leaves much of the PC and IT services industries smiling: Yet none of the technologies or service providers promising to offer hosted virtual desktops are ready to step into key roles in enterprise IT infrastructures, according the same well-respected analysts who set the server virtualization market on its ear with a similar conclusion last year.

Virtualisation speed traps: ways to drag apps down

What has driven the market for virtual servers more than the potential to squeeze several servers worth of performance out of just one physical server? It's the relative ease with which most applications can move from a physical infrastructure to a virtual one.

VMware, ISVs Square Off on Fault Tolerance

Among the consequences of VMware's battery of vSphere 4 announcements Tuesday about its new virtualization infrastructure and add-on components, third-party software vendors specializing in fault-tolerance and high-availability are feeling new pressure now that VMware has added basic versions of those functions to its core product.

VMware Updates Story on VDC-OS and Private Cloud

VMware is widely expected to announce the next step in its road to its previously announced Virtual Data Center operating system in a webinar on Tuesday, April 21st.

Moving a Data Center Into the Cloud

A year in which the economics of the travel and hotel industries are so bad that business analysts keep making comparisons to the months immediately following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York is not generally the time most IT people would be comfortable putting together a disaster recovery plan for the first time. Most would be in their offices, sweating over spreadsheets, looking for ways to trim spending a bit more, or push a project to drive down operational costs.