Moving on up to IPv6
You don’t have to be especially tech-savvy to know that the internet is switching to a new standard called IPv6. News that the current protocol, IPv4, is coming to an end has been circulating for some time, even occasionally popping up in the mainstream media.
What is more of a mystery is why exactly this is happening and what it all means.
In a nutshell, the U.S. Department of Defense, some 35 years ago, decided to introduce a standard that would allow a little more than 4 billion network addresses to connect to the internet. The standard, known as IPv4, uses 32-bit addresses and is basically a means to identify each device that connects the internet. Web-enabled machines are given identifiers that are most commonly written in dot-decimal notation (127.0.0.1, for example).
Avoiding network strain when moving to the cloud
When it comes to cloud computing, we’re as enthusiastic as the next guy. But, for all the good the cloud brings, the technology is not without its challenges. As more businesses turn to the cloud to take advantage of potential cost savings, improved IT efficiency and greater productivity (the list goes on), there are issues of which a company must be mindful.
One such issue is the cloud’s effect on a company’s infrastructure. It’s understandable that businesses may be inclined to ignore their networks when moving to the cloud. After all, one of the major points about the technology is that it lets a third party deal with the nitty gritty.
IMS, an IT Manager, and a vacation
Sometimes the easiest way to explain a new technology or a new concept is with a story. Not that infrastructure management as a service is all that new anymore, but how Virtela is delivering IMS to its customers is, well, another story.
We put together a short video that follows Bob, an IT Manager for a fast growing company. As the company grows, new branch offices, users, and applications are being added. In other words, Bob has more devices, vendors, networks, and carriers to manage. As a result, Bob spends his time fixing problems instead of proactively avoiding issues – he has no time to work on strategic projects. Needless to say, Bob is stressed out – and could really use a vacation!
Infrastructure Management service reduces downtime, expedites repair time
Despite all new technology aimed at making our lives easier, it seems the majority of our clients are now busier than ever. While new technologies, like cloud computing, IP telephony and virtualized servers, make IT assets more efficient, managing the technology can add a new burden for IT departments.
These things can take a lot of time to manage and keep running. In the past, if your email went down, you could simply pick up the phone. If your phone went down, you could send an email. Now, with the majority of our communication tools running on the network, if the network goes, you’re out of luck.
Why Managed Services Makes Sense and Saves Big Dollars
It’s been one of those days already. Forgot my security badge… couldn’t get in the building, had to reboot my computer twice (it’s been locking up more often), then spilled my darn coffee on my keyboard and mouse. I thought for sure, it’s fried. So I quickly dried it using a bunch of paper just lying around (I hope it wasn’t anything important, probably not) and checked to see to see if it’s still working. Clicked on the first email and viola, it still works and the email I clicked on was an Insight Research report.
It was a report on “Managed Services in an IP World: New Opportunities for Wireless and Wire Networks 2010-2015.” So I thought, let me read on and click/move around this report to make sure everything’s really working versus just a one click fluke. In the report, Insight Research predicted the managed services market will grow from $29 billion in 2010 to $47 billion in 2015 – about two to three times the rate of the telecommunications market. Interestingly, the report cites the recent global economic downturn as a major reason why enterprises are turning to managed service providers. MSPs save them money on internal staffing and also solve the intricacies of managing voice, data, and wireless networks. It’d be interesting to see how the stats change as the economy recovers. I sure know of more people getting jobs and even getting multiple job offers nowadays.
The votes are in! Top 10 IT Priorities for 2011
More than 400 IT professionals at multinational companies responded to Virtela’s recent survey on top IT infrastructure priorities for 2011 and improvement areas for managed service providers (MSPs), and the results provide an exciting glimpse into the year ahead.
Topping the list of priorities are infrastructure management, security, data center consolidation, application acceleration and cloud solutions. Not surprising, really. Having just come back from PTC ’11 where cloud services seemed to be a recurring topic of conversation amongst our global partners, to the customers we speak to on a daily basis, cloud solutions are in high demand given their ability to deliver better, cheaper and faster ways to meet security, application acceleration and other needs. And with today’s IT leaders being tasked with security and compliance initiatives on top of the ongoing management and monitoring of networks, data centers, application speeds and overall business efficiency – it’s no wonder they ranked these as their top priorities for 2011.