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What Price Innovation? 05/11/2007 13:44:31
CIOs say they want more than the traditional “your mess for less” relationship with their outsourcing providers. And the providers want to market themselves as partners in innovation. So why isn’t it happening?CIOs say they want more than the traditional "your mess for less" relationship with their outsourcing providers. And the providers want to market themselves as partners in innovation. So why isn't it happening? - +
Order Takers to Innovators 02/10/2007 15:20:08
How four CIOs energized their staffs to take risks with new technology and generate fresh value for their businessesWhen David Behen became IT director for Washtenaw County, Michigan, the department was little more than an order-taker. And not a very good one. It was kind of like the waiter who makes you wait, then brings the entree with the mains and brings you a bottle of Grange when you asked for a carafe of the house red - +
Strategies for Dealing With IT Complexity 24/12/2007 10:30:47
Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business. - +
How to Get Real About Strategic Planning 04/02/2008 12:50:59
Everyone agrees that having a strategic plan for IT is a good thing but most CIOs approach the process with fear and loathing. In fact, the majority of CIOs (and the enterprises they work for) are faking it when it comes to strategic planning. Isn't it time we all got real?Oh, it must be nice to be the CIO of a FedEx or a GE or a Credit Suisse. Places where IT and the business are so tightly aligned you can barely tell the two apart. Where corporate leaders understand that IT is a strategic asset and support it as such
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. Email Archiving Implementation: Five Costly Mistakes to Avoid
Market Trends: Multienterprise/B2B Infrastructure Market | Worldwide | 2008
Still Sneaking In: The Threats Your Security Tools Aren't Telling You About
Why Security SaaS Makes Sense Today
Enterprise Wireless WLAN Security
Optimized Back-up and Recovery for VMWare for VMWare Infrastructure with EMC Avamar
Mimosa™ NearPoint™ for Microsoft® Exchange Server: Email Archiving 101
Understanding Email Marketing: A Guide for SMBs
Zones provide focussed content from Computerworld and leading technology partners.Newsletter Subscription
In an effort to make fault tolerant servers more appealing to a broader range of customers, NEC this week unveiled a new single processor server that promises 99.999 percent uptime at a cost of just under US$12,000.
The Express5800/320Ma is about 40 percent cheaper than NEC's previous low-end systems, which are priced around US$25,000. The computer maker was able to reduce the price by stripping out some of the features available in the more expensive servers, says Michael Mitsch, general manager of alliance and strategy for NEC's solutions platform group.
For example, customers buying the 320MA have to pay extra for Active Upgrade, a feature that enables users to make software changes without taking the system down. Active Upgrade comes standard with NEC's more expensive servers. In addition, the 320MA is available with only one socket, which today supports a single-core processor. NEC plans to support dual-core and multi-core processors in the future, Mitsch says.
The 320MA uses the same architecture as NEC's more expensive fault-tolerant boxes to provide a highly available platform. The servers include multiple system components that operate in lockstep so that if one component fails -- a hard disk, for example -- the second component picks up and the system keeps running.
NEC partnered with Stratus to bring the fault tolerant design to lower-priced, Intel-based servers. Previously, fault tolerant servers were based on proprietary processors from NEC, Stratus and HP and, for the most part, were restricted to telecom and financial industries where it made sense to spend millions of dollars to ensure high availability.
"We're bringing the price point of this technology down to the mainstream Intel server market," Mitsch says.
NEC hopes to attract customers that want to avoid the complexity of clusters, but still want the kind of highly available environment that clusters provide. Virtualized environments also are becoming prime candidates for fault tolerant platforms, Mitsch says.
"The fault tolerant system is the only architecture that allows you to guarantee [the uptime] of a [virtualized] container," Mitsch says.
The 320Ma supports Microsoft Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition and Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS4.
NEC's 320Ma comes nearly a year after Stratus introduced its low-cost fault tolerant system, the ftServer 2400.
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Prioritizing Services with IT Service Management (ITSM)
Computerworld Live Webinar
Wednesday 20th, August 2008
11:00am EST (Sydney, Australia)
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Thursday 4th, September 2008
11:00am EST (Sydney Australia)
Sign up and receive a free copy of The Forrester WaveTM Service Desk Management Tools, Q2 2008 at the conclusion of the Webinar.
Attend and discover:
- How to deliver value to your business through ITSM
- Best practice ITSM implementation
- Why emphasis is changing from optimizing IT management processes to better servicing customers and demonstrating real dollar value
- If service-oriented ITSM is best for your business
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Computerworld Live Podcast #97: The Future of Enterprise Networking 25/07/2008 09:45:36
This week CW Live chats with Mark Thompson, global sales and marketing manager for HP ProCurve, on the future of the enterprise networking. Mark discusses the trends we can expect to see in the near future and how the right infrastructure can ensure your enterprise network is secure. - +
Computerworld Live Podcast #96: Security at the Edge 11/06/2008 09:22:22
CW Live speaks with Amol Mitra, HP ProCurve Director of Marketing for Asia Pacific and Japan. Today's topic: how enterprises are starting to shift away from simply controlling security via server logins, firewalls and moving to more adaptive security frameworks. - +
Data Management Edition #10: Multi-Petascale Systems 02/05/2008 09:12:33
This week we look at sustainability and the development of multicore technologies to build multi-petascale systems. - +
IT Security Edition #11: How to poison the Storm botnet 01/05/2008 08:51:55
This week CW Live presents a case study on how to poison the notorious Storm botnet . Plus we take a look at Cisco's plans for Ironport. - +
IT Security Edition #10: Cyber-battles fought and won 24/04/2008 11:09:47
Vendors bow to end user pressure to improve product security, and we take a look at the latest concepts shaping the cyber-battlefield of the future.
Viva la Verticals! Key to Vendor Growth is Through Vertical Market Opportunities, Says IDC 2008-09-05 11:05:00+10
F-Secure delivers fastest protection in the online world 2008-09-04 16:50:00+10
NETGEAR expands ProSafe team as business-class products take off in SME market 2008-09-04 16:27:00+10
Rogue security apps dominate Fortinet's Aug 2008 IT threat report 2008-09-04 16:00:00+10
Adaptec Intelligent Power Management Reduces Storage Power Consumption Up to 70 Percent 2008-09-04 11:28:00+10
Web Security SaaS: The Next Generation of Web Security
Discover the latest web security SaaS solutions. Learn how to increase overall security effectiveness and reduce the burden on your IT department. Uncover the security challenges facing SMB environments today and identify the critical elements that can provide you with lower-cost and easier-to-manage web security solutions.
