InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

SDN products are finally hitting the enterprise market. Do you have a strategy? This report, the companion to our online comparison, explains key factors to consider in four areas: software-defined ­networking controllers, applications, physical or virtual switches, and other compatible hardware.

SDN products are finally hitting the enterprise market. Do you have a strategy? This report, the companion to our online comparison, explains key factors to consider in four areas: software-defined ­networking controllers, applications, physical or virtual switches, and other compatible hardware.

The notion of splitting smartphones and tablets into personal and business partitions is gaining strength, for good reason. Here are three paths, but be warned — iOS shops will have a tougher go of it.

Cloud services, thin clients and a lean OS designed to marry the two — plus price and security advantages — mean Google could finally unseat PCs as the workplace client of choice. Here’s how do decide if you can make the move.

* Dog food alert: This report was written exclusively within Chrome. 

IT staff and management in small and midsize businesses take home about 13% less than their ­colleagues in larger companies, but the intangibles of working in a smaller ­organization make it easier to swallow.

How to keep up with reliability, security and the overwhelming performance demands on your wireless network.

With every data center resource -- compute, storage and networks -- now virtualized, the push is on to consolidate operational control.

It’s a mobile world, and Wi-Fi is displacing wired Ethernet: 89% use 802.11 as a client network access method, up from 76% in 2010. Still, IT must meet high expectations for network speed, security and reliability. Perhaps that’s why a surprising 45% have plans to deploy 802.11ac gear in production.

Software is driving storage innovation, but solid-state technology is infiltrating all levels.

With every data center resource — compute, storage and networks — now virtualized, with a software abstraction layer insulating the logical ­resource from physical manifestation, the push is on to consolidate ­operational control and programmatic automation. First came VMMs and cloud software stacks for servers and storage, then SDN for networks; soon, the two will link to form what VMware calls “software-defined data ­centers.” It’s a nexus that’s disrupting strategies at major IT vendors and, ultimately if not imminently, every enterprise data center.