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New mobile platforms entering the marketplace

A new generation of mobile devices, ranging from the new Apple and Android smart phones, through a revitalized Symbion that is growing into the business application area, to high-end devices such as new Linux and Windows handhelds and ultra-portables, is appearing on the market. These devices are finding applications among business leaders knowledge workers, and while they have limitations they also offer advantages. The largest of these is their ability to extend business functionality literally into your pocket. Whether it is a network manager checking network performance and initiating actions from his livingroom off hours, a CFO checking corporate financial balances and investments from the golf course, or a team leader managing a project while taking his child to the doctor, these devices can be leveraged in many ways to increase productivity while providing employees with more freedom. IT needs knowledge of a range of devices to be better able to chose those that best fit different corporate needs and support mobile computing. The best way to gain that knowledge is to recruit technical personnel and/or power users internally, equip each with a device and encourage them to make maximum use of them and to research Internet-based resources to help them become experts. They then become a “mobile device task force” to develop the knowledge IT needs to support the devices in the organization.

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Featured Case Study

Financial giant goes green

The corporate IT group of a very large, worldwide financial organization with 100,000 employees, has initiated an ongoing “greening” process. This is focused largely on reducing energy use both to decrease the corporation's carbon footprint while creating a net savings in operational costs over the lifetime of new, more energy-efficient equipment, including new storage systems. This effort is not viewed by the IT administration as a one-time project but rather as a perpetual process of evaluating new technology in part on its energy efficiency and introducing it into the corporate data centers to replace aging systems as appropriate.

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Featured How-To Note

Storage Virtualization Design and Deployment

A main impediment to storage virtualization is the lack of multiple storage vendor (heterogeneous) support within available virtualization technologies. This inhibits deployment across a data center. The only practical approach is either to implement a single vendor solution across the whole of the data center (practical only for small and some medium size data centers) or to implement virtualization in one or more of the largest storage pools within a data center.

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