InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

Cisco has an iron grip on the data center network. One reason is its reputation for quality: The company scores a 4.3 out of 5 for reliability, a rating no other vendor matched. That said, technology and market changes are loosening Cisco’s hold. Will the shift to virtual infrastructure, next-gen Ethernet and commodity switching components change the vendor pecking order? More than 500 IT pros weighed in to evaluate 7 vendors.

IT’s spending as much as ever on DR, despite advances in virtualization and cloud techniques. Time to break free.

Apple's latest is more manageable and secure.

Separate data and storage networks might have been necessary when Fast Ethernet was pitted against speedy, special-purpose Fibre Channel, but Ethernet’s breakneck evolutionary path has obviated most of the performance differences. We'll examine the trends behind network convergence, the issues early convergence pioneers face and three deployment scenarios for those considering the switch.

Maybe we're in the post-PC era, maybe we're not. But a few things are certain: The age of Windows hegemony is over, and the "no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft" mindset has to go. If you're resistant to alternative platforms, we have two messages: First, the popularity of smartphones and tablets has opened the floodgates, leading employees to embrace Mac and even Linux desktops. Second, client diversity needn't lead to chaos. Agnosticism is possible.

Golden images won’t cut it, but the alternatives are still limited.

These days, automatically replicating and archiving data to an offsite provider is as simple as plugging in a network storage appliance and filling out a few Web screens—and recovery is about as easy and transparent. Backing up applications isn’t quite so straightforward, though pairing internal virtualized apps with cloud-based VMs allows even small enterprises to achieve seamless recovery to world-class facilities with nearinstantaneous failover, without breaking the bank.

Physical servers now host dozens of applications. Talk about too big to fail.

While Apple’s iPhone 4S may not live up to its preannouncement hyperbole, it does offer significant improvements in both performance and functionality over its predecessors. And with preorders alone totaling over 1 million devices in 24 hours, the 4S is undoubtedly showing up on enterprise networks. Here’s a rundown of new hardware and software features and the implications for IT teams charged with supporting mobility.

Disk images are a convenient way to quickly deploy new VMs, but what happens when you need to distribute complete application stacks to multiple, private and public, virtualized environments? For that, we need reusable meta-configuration that can transform application and infrastructure requirements into cloud-specific configurations. A host of vendors across the virtualization ecosystem are striving to deliver just that. It’s still bleeding-edge technology, but well worth paying attention to.