In a recent report, Forrester analyst Tim Sheedy said that IT chiefs who have not embraced the shift to digital business are now under threat from chief data officers or CTOs with digital and customer experience expertise.
The budgeting process is the biggest barrier to digital transformation in government and many agencies fear that if they use shared services or move to integrated environments, they’ll lose control.
Service Level Agreements (SLA) serve as a roadmap and a warranty for cloud services offerings. All cloud providers offer standard, one-size-fits-all SLAs that cover availably, performance, security, disaster recovery, response times, compliance and termination. This may be adequate for pure cloud applications, however standard SLAs fall short when it comes to hybrid cloud deployments.
Big data workloads tend to suck up enormous amounts of compute resources, which can create serious log jams in your data center if the workloads aren't scheduled optimally. Adaptive Computing's Big Workflow is designed to leverage HPC and cloud technologies to help data centers adapt to big data.
Even though the state of IT outsourcing has matured, mistakes in flawed deals are often repeated, and the most disappointing deals share common characteristics. Here are 10 steps that are guaranteed to lead to an outsourcing catastrophe.
To avoid litigation and headaches, in general, it’s imperative that you incorporate an effective arbitration clause into international outsourcing contracts.
As cloud apps become more business-critical, the CIO is emerging as the cloud services broker. In this new IT model, which is expected to expand rapidly in the next 12 months, CIOs can push cloud service providers to deliver detailed SLAs.
The rise of multisourcing has thrust operating level agreements in the IT outsourcing spotlight. But establishing OLAs among service providers can be difficult.
For some organisations the hassle and uncertainty that can arise from multiple vendor relationships is best addressed by putting all of their eggs into the one carefully chosen basket. South Australian transport and logistics company, Northline, recently entered into a five year, $5 million contract with integrator Brennan, which will handle more than 300 portable and desktop computers in addition to servers, enterprise software and LAN communications. Basically, everything except telecommunications, which is provided by Optus.
This is the type of analyst report headline that cloud computing vendors don't want to read: "Empty Promises and Tough Luck: Yankee Group Exposes the Cloud's Fine Print."
You've probably seen a hundred-or even a thousand-articles criticizing cloud computing Service Level Agreements (SLAs). A common example in those articles is the putatively low Amazon Web Services SLA. Typically authors of these kind of articles go on to cite recent outages by cloud providers, implying (or stating directly) that cloud computing falls woefully short of the true SLA requirements of enterprises, often described as "five nines," i.e., 99.999 per cent availability.
A "How To" guide on the most important things you need to know when talking to your phone and internet providers
