EMA Blog: Business Intelligence and IT Management

What does Big Data mean to traditional enterprise IT? Organizations of any size and industry are becoming more and more aware of the incredible importance of capturing, managing and analyzing the data available to them. The more comprehensively companies are able to tap structured and unstructured data sources, the quicker they can refresh this data and the more successfully they make this body of data available to all business units, the better they can develop advantages in the market place. Today’s business units are demanding the rapid implementation of these big data use cases, as well as optimal resiliency, cost efficiency, security and performance.

As promised in my previous post on "Software Defined Storage - Why Customers Should Care", I want to follow-up with a brief overview of the competitive landscape.

What does Big Data mean to traditional enterprise IT? Organizations of any size and industry are becoming more and more aware of the incredible importance of capturing, managing and analyzing the data available to them. The more comprehensively companies are able to tap structured and unstructured data sources, the quicker they can refresh this data and the more successfully they make this body of data available to all business units, the better they can develop advantages in the market place. Today’s business units are demanding the rapid implementation of these big data use cases, as well as optimal resiliency, cost efficiency, security and performance.

Much marketing hype and heated discussions should be seen as excellent indicators for the fact that Software Defined Storage (SDS) is one of the hottest topics in today’s data center. Naturally, every vendor defines SDS based on their own product range, sometimes leaving customer out of the equation.

Of course, I always encourage practitioners to carefully study the full EMA research report on the “Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the Software-Defined Data Center” or at least read the research study summary or at the very least join the EMA SDDC Research webinar on February 18, but I still want to briefly summarize the key findings here.

Of course, I always encourage practitioners to carefully study the full EMA research report on the “Obstacles and Priorities on the Journey to the Software-Defined Data Center” or at least read the research study summary or at the very least join the EMA SDDC Research webinar on February 18, but I still want to briefly summarize the key findings here.

I just got off the phone with a reporter from a major industry trade magazine (no names please!) who is preparing an article on enterprise mobile device adoption. Wanting to help ensure accuracy in the reporting, I provided him with statistical details from our recent research into the use of mobile devices in the enterprise and stepped him through the findings. He was fascinated by the results and asked lots of follow-up questions. In the end, however, he admitted he would likely not be able to use any of the information in his article (say what?!). Apparently, his editor had specifically tasked him with writing an article showcasing how tablets are rapidly replacing PCs in the workplace, even though this is completely contradictory to reality.

As every year, IBM invited the analyst community to Stamford, CT, for a deep dialogue on today’s most important topics in enterprise IT. Here is a short overview for everyone interested in IBM’s current world view.

As every year, IBM invited the analyst community to Stamford, CT, for a deep dialogue on today's most important topics in enterprise IT. Here is a short overview for everyone interested in IBM's current world view.

The Havana release of OpenStack was launched on October 17, about three weeks prior to the OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong.  As always, there are many new features -high availability, load balancing, easier upgrades, plugins for development tools, improved SDN support, fiber channel SAN support, improved bare metal capabilities- and even two new core components, Ceilometer -metering and monitoring- and Heat -orchestration of the creation of entire application environments- to admire. Without any doubt, OpenStack is becoming more enterprise ready with each new release .