data_center

I didn’t quite appreciate it, however over the years, I’ve become a data center geek!  My job doesn’t involved working daily in a data center, but when I do get to visit one, I find the facilities and energy design principles and practices employed absolutely fascinating! I jumped, then, when I had…

Enterprise software licensing is complex, costly and easy to lose track of, especially in these days of servers on demand via infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and rapid setup and movement of virtual machines.  Many organizations are finding that vendor software audits uncover under-licensing resul…

Over the past few years, I’ve attended Gartner’s Data Center Conference in London (see 2013, 2014, and 2015 !). As always, it was a very informative couple of days with some surprises, and one or two “I knew that would happen” moments – we’ll I like to think that…

Two weeks ago, in my previous blog, I invited you to consider ways in which you could initiate a “Save to Invest” program for your data center. That is, how can you save money from your current data center spend, in order to re-invest it into currently un- or -under-funded areas of your…

As a Scot, I have a natural predisposition – almost a gene – for money saving initiatives!  As I’ve been researching new initiatives in my work for Cisco Services over the past few months, I’ve become aware of – for the first time I am ashamed to say in some cases – some huge sinks of your cash in t…

Earlier this month, I blogged about the challenges of Cloud Sprawl.  Let’s now turn to the challenges of “Application Sprawl”!If you are planning migration of applications inside or between data centers, or if you are planning a migration to Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure…

If you are involved in designing, supporting or managing a data center, you will undoubtedly rely on technical support services from one or more vendors.  Running your data center, there is always the risk of a hardware failure or being impacted by a software defect.  While relatively rare, hardware…

Cloud computing is more mainstream today than ever before, but it’s important to note that there are still significant opportunities for IT leaders to innovate and leverage cloud delivery options to capture new business opportunities and implement new IT models. The Evolution of ITaaS: The Convergen…

The road in my picture below – the A82 that winds through Glencoe in Scotland – was used in the James Bond “Skyfall” movie in one of the amazing car chase scenes.  This road winds through sparsely inhabited territory, has lots of ups, downs, bumps and turns and if you’re not careful it can be a dang…