Data Center Management Articles
There's unrelenting pressure on businesses to compete on analytics and to be able to anticipate customer needs and trends ahead of the curve. Enterprises are looking to expand BI and analytics capabilities as far and wide as technologies and budgets will allow them to go. As a result, the continuing advance of analytic capabilities across the enterprise has reached a "tipping point."
Posted October 14, 2015
Informatica has introduced a new data management platform designed to handle data at any speed across today's hybrid IT environments, both cloud and on-premise. The new release, Informatica 10, provides enhancements across three core components - Informatica PowerCenter 10, Informatica Data Quality 10 and Informatica Data Integration Hub 10, and offers specific certified optimizations for Oracle Exadata, Oracle SuperCluster, SAP HANA, and HP Vertica.
Posted October 13, 2015
In what is being hailed as the biggest tech merger ever, Dell Inc. and EMC Corp. today formally announced they have signed a definitive agreement under which Dell will acquire EMC. The total transaction is valued at $67 billion. The deal is expected to close in the second or third quarter of Dell's fiscal year which ends February 3, 2017 (within the months of May to October 2016). The industry is going through a "tremendous transformation," with the old style of IT being "pretty quickly disrupted" yet this rapid change is also presenting "incredibly rich" opportunities, said Joe Tucci, chairman and chief executive officer of EMC, during a conference call with media and industry analysts.
Posted October 12, 2015
IBM has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Cleversafe, Inc., a developer and manufacturer of object-based storage software and appliances. The acquisition will enhance IBM's positions in storage and hybrid cloud.
Posted October 12, 2015
Actiance is teaming up with IBM to integrate the Actiance social communications compliance, archiving and analytics platform into IBM's Information Lifecycle Governance product portfolio. The combined platform enables customers to more effectively address issues related to migrating current technology solutions to the cloud.
Posted October 12, 2015
Phoenix Software International has released a z/OS application profiler that includes a z/Architecture instruction speed tester, which can determine the relative and actual speed of over 900 hardware instructions.
Posted October 12, 2015
Compuware Corporation, a mainframe software company, delivered its fourth major release of Topaz—a solution suite intended to help enterprise customers to tap the potential business value of their IBM z Systems. The latest release features Topaz Runtime Visualizer (Topaz RV), which provides visibility into the often-complex interactions between mainframe programs. This visibility helps developers understand, modify and troubleshoot older or poorly documented mainframe code.
Posted October 12, 2015
Serena Software, a provider of orchestrated application development and release management, announced same-day support for the latest version of IBM's z/OS operating system for all of Serena's z/OS products.
Posted October 12, 2015
The "consumerization" of IT has been progressing for some time now. Some industry-watchers are now talking about "ENsumerization," or the sharing of the same apps between enterprises and consumers. While we don't expect to see consumers running mainframe apps anytime soon, there's no question that they have access to the same resources as enterprise data centers - even supercomputer cycles. Ultimately, this helps business leaders and professionals understand the power of enterprise computin
Posted October 12, 2015
Ever since Linux became a viable server operating system, organizations have been looking to all kinds of open source software (OSS) to save on license and maintenance costs and to enjoy the benefits of an open platform that invites innovation. If you're considering MySQL or another open source DBMS as either your primary database or to, perhaps, operate alongside your existing commercial systems, such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, for one reason or another, here are seven things to keep in mind.
Posted October 07, 2015
The topics of resilience and change have been on my mind a lot lately for a variety of reasons. First, IT is always at the center of technology change, so that's nothing new. We must continually learn and keep abreast of new technology and trends before they even materialize. Second, I am an IT leader in the energy industry, and when one is at the mercy of natural resource supply and demand, there will be peaks and valleys in production and financial performance over the years. With this latest dip in energy prices, I sense a different perspective—one of working smarter and more efficiently, emphasizing innovation, and analyzing decisions with an enterprise perspective of what is right for the company at this time, not just IT.
Posted October 07, 2015
Magnitude Software, a provider of enterprise information management (EIM) software, has released new product versions designed to improve every component of the Noetix operational reporting solution for Oracle E-Business Suite. Now available, NoetixViews 6.5 for Oracle E-Business Suite features incremental regeneration for global views, as well as additional enhancements. Before incremental regeneration, the only option for implementing NoetixViews Workbench customizations was a full regeneration of the views. Incremental regeneration only processes NoetixViews Workbench changes since the last full or incremental regeneration reducing the wait time to minutes so that end users benefit from quicker access to data and faster time to business decisions, requiring fewer resources and less planning from IT.
Posted October 07, 2015
Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of software solutions for application and database development, recently unveiled DB PowerStudio 2016, a suite of database tools that provides database managers and data professionals with comprehensive administration, development, performance and monitoring capabilities across multiple platforms.
Posted October 07, 2015
At Strata + Hadoop World 2015, SAP showcased its portfolio of big data solutions, including the HANA platform that offers real-time integration of big data and information held in Hadoop with business processes and operational systems, Lumira and SAP BI tools that enable data discovery on Hadoop along with data wrangling capabilities, SAP Data Services, and the newest SAP product for the Hadoop world, HANA Vora, which takes advantage of an in-memory query engine for Apache Spark and Hadoop to speed queries. SAP HANA Vora can be used as a stand-alone, or in concert with SAP HANA platform to extend enterprise-grade analytics to Hadoop clusters and provide enriched, interactive analytics on Hadoop and HANA data.
Posted October 01, 2015
Pepperdata, a provider of solutions that optimize cluster performance in Hadoop, showed off a new feature of its platform that will help measure and allocate the costs of increasing workloads across distributed systems at Strata + Hadoop World in NYC. With this new chargeback feature IT teams can clearly see how much capacity each user or workload requires and allocate costs back to departments that share a centralized, multi-tenant Hadoop deployment.
Posted October 01, 2015
Objectivity, which recently introduced ThingSpan, a purpose-built information fusion platform intended to simplify and accelerate companies' ability to deploy and derive value from industrial Internet of Things (IoT) applications, has announced plans to support Intel's TAP (Trusted Analytics Platform) at Strata + Hadoop World, in NYC. ThingSpan is aimed at helping companies "that are drowning in data but thirsty for answers in time" said Jay Jarrell, CEO and president of Objectivity, during an interview at the conference.
Posted September 30, 2015
DataTorrent is teaming up with two big companies that will allow it to provide access to better security and make adoption of Hadoop easier. DataTorrent is partnering with Cisco to allow integration between its DataTorrent RTS platform and Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) through the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC), offering a unified management architecture for enterprises to manage their big data applications along with network and security. DataTorrent is also integrating its platform with Microsoft Azure HDInsight via the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
Posted September 29, 2015
Redis Labs is extending its cloud strategy to on-prem, private and hybrid, allowing enterprises to install an enterprise-grade cluster that acts as a container for managing and running multiple Redis databases.
Posted September 29, 2015
IBM introduced a new cloud security technology that helps safeguard the increasing use of "bring-your-own" cloud-based apps at work. Cloud Security Enforcer combines cloud identity management (Identity-as-a-Service) with the ability for companies to discover outside apps being accessed by employees, including those they are using on their mobile devices. These combined capabilities enable companies to equip their workforce with a secure way to access and use the apps that they want.
Posted September 28, 2015
IBM expanded its array of APIs, technologies, and tools for developers who are creating products, services and applications embedded with Watson. Over the past 2 years, the Watson platform has evolved from one API and a limited set of application-specific deep Q&A capabilities to more than 25 APIs powered by over 50 technologies.
Posted September 28, 2015
TeamQuest, a provider of IT capacity planning and management solutions, has introduced a new release of its flagship TeamQuest Performance Software. This latest release is intended to help enable organizations to assess the health and potential areas of risk in their IT infrastructure, by applying automated and accurate predictive algorithms using data sources within their IT enterprise.
Posted September 28, 2015
Traditional data warehousing models and open source alternatives such as Apache Hadoop and Storm have been touted as solutions to a variety of "big data" challenges. However, utilities have found that these approaches cannot handle the scale and complexity of data generated in industrial environments. Additionally, they fail to provide the real-time analysis and situational awareness that utilities need to improve decision making or address critical events in real-time, such as optimizing crews during outages and severe weather events.
Posted September 24, 2015
There are various terms being bandied about that describe the new world data centers are entering—from the "third platform" to the "digital enterprise" to the "always-on" organization. Whatever the terminology, it's clear there is a monumental shift underway. Business and IT leaders alike are rethinking their approaches to technology, rethinking their roles in managing this technology, and, ultimately, rethinking their businesses. The underlying technologies supporting this movement—social, mobile, data analytics, and cloud—are also causing IT leaders to rethink the way in which database systems are being developed and deployed.
Posted September 24, 2015
Ricoh Company, Ltd, the printing and document management company, is using Oracle's SPARC T5 servers with Oracle ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Database to analyze data from RICOH @Remote, its real-time support service for customers in more than 100 countries and regions. To unify the data across the company for accurate views and analysis, Ricoh built a private cloud accessible by the entire remote service group that allows high speed access from internal networks.
Posted September 24, 2015
StreamSets Inc., a company that aims to speed access to enterprise big data, has closed a $12.5 million round of Series A funding. The single biggest barrier to a successful enterprise analytics platform is the effective and efficient ingest of data, the company says.
Posted September 24, 2015
To help companies get more value from big data, SAP has introduced HANA Vora, a new in-memory computing engine that leverages and extends the Apache Spark execution framework to provide enriched, interactive analytics on Hadoop. HANA Vora is a completely new product built from the ground up and is aimed at better processing of data to make business decisions.
Posted September 23, 2015
Datos IO has announced a recovery platform for next-generation scale-out databases. The company, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., was founded by former Data Domain (EMC), Veritas and IBM Research veteran Tarun Thakur, CEO, and Prasenjit Sarkar, CTO, who spent more than 15 years at IBM Research. The company is now offering its Early Access Program (EAP), and the product will is planned to be generally available in 2016.
Posted September 22, 2015
Splunk, a provider of real-time operational intelligence solutions, has announced a new version of the Splunk Enterprise platform and the availability of a new solution that targets the complexity of IT intelligence.
Posted September 22, 2015
SolarWinds, a provider of hybrid IT infrastructure management platforms, is adding support for MySQL databases to SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) 10.0. "DPA allows you to quickly pinpoint what is slowing down your database and applications and you can find problems that are usually very hard to find within your database," said Gerardo Dada, vice president of product marketing at SolarWinds.
Posted September 16, 2015
IBM is acquiring StrongLoop, Inc., a software provider, to help developers connect enterprise applications to mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and web applications in the cloud. StrongLoop is a provider of application development software - known as enterprise Node.js - that enables software developers to build applications using APIs (application programming interfaces). Financial terms and conditions were not released.
Posted September 14, 2015
VMware recently made a slew of announcements spanning cloud deployments, data center, and devices. The company introduced what it calls the first fully automated software suite for delivering the software-defined data center as an integrated system. Serving as a foundation of VMware's Unified Hybrid Cloud platform, the solution, called VMware EVO SDDC, will extend the virtualization principals of abstraction, pooling and automation across all data center resources and services.
Posted September 14, 2015
BMC, a provider of large systems software solutions, announced new versions of its mainframe cost optimization suite that promise greater transparency and lower costs. BMC's Mainframe MLC Cost Management is a cost management and reduction suite for companies leveraging IBM z Systems mainframes. The solutions provide insight, transparent reporting, resource control, and subsystem optimization that can lower mainframe MLC costs by as much as 20 percent or more, the vendor claimed.
Posted September 14, 2015
Curvature, an IT infrastructure and services provider, announced it is teaming up with DataCore, a provider of software-defined storage (SDS) solutions, to provide combined solutions intended to help manage storage costs. Curvature will offer tools intended to take advantage of commoditized hardware to build storage infrastructure and deliver unique ways to extend the life of existing equipment.
Posted September 14, 2015
By now, we all know the value of big data analytics. In the 1990s, data mining and business intelligence (BI) efforts were used mostly for after-the-fact reporting and problem solving. The need for these capabilities will always remain, and high levels of confidence and investment in these disciplines will continue. However, the current focus on big data analytics emphasizes predicting and influencing the future, based on real-time analysis of 100% of enterprise data.
Posted September 14, 2015
MongoDB announced plans to offer support for MongoDB's products on IBM z Systems mainframe. The announcement comes as IBM launches LinuxONE, a new portfolio of hardware, software and services solutions based on the z Systems mainframe that's designed for enterprise-grade Linux applications.
Posted September 09, 2015
Entrinsik has announced a partnership with Ticomix to help companies enhance their customer relationships and improve business results. This partnership will offer Ticomix customers the ability to integrate Informer with SugarCRM to provide organizations with the ability to perform multidimensional reporting and advanced data analysis in order to better track, understand and manage their SugarCRM data with Informer.
Posted September 09, 2015
VMware made a slew of announcements during its annual VMworld conference which was held Aug. 30-Sept. 3 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The theme of this year's conference was "Ready for Any," and, in keeping with that tagline, the company's announcements spanned cloud deployments, data center, and devices.
Posted September 08, 2015
With the release of Oracle Cloud Platform 2015 and new Oracle Cloud Platform Services, things are clouding up across the Oracle landscape—but in a positive way. Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer for Oracle, has made it clear in pronouncements that Oracle is in the cloud to stay.
Posted September 02, 2015
Whatever the reason, database administrators (DBAs) frequently sit in a corner alone, siloed from the rest of IT, with their potential for impact ignored. Organizations in which this happens—which is most companies—are typically characterized by an attitude that the role of the DBA is to simply keep things running. The order from the top is "Just make sure the database doesn't break anything, OK?" This is a missed opportunity and a waste of a very valuable resource that hampers IT organizations everywhere.
Posted September 02, 2015
Syncsort, a provider of specialized solutions for big data, is making a major open source contribution to the IBM z Systems mainframe with a connector for Apache Spark. Syncsort's mainframe connector conforms to Spark's Data Sources API specification, and because of Spark's ability operate on data in memory, the connector will allow queries to access mainframe data without offloading the data first.
Posted September 01, 2015
Just before VMworld, which is going on now, Mathew Lodge, vice president of product marketing, Cloud Services, VMware, discussed the conference whose theme is "Ready for Any," as well as best practices for cloud strategies and the changes taking place today in IT infrastructure.
Posted September 01, 2015
Antea Group, an environment, health and safety (EHS) consulting firm, announced the launch of a suite of programs and related services tailored to meet the needs of data centers of all sizes. RiskRight EHS for Data Centers provides a blueprint for companies to evaluate their data center operations and provides a solution that enables them to more easily integrate environment, health, safety and sustainability programs into their operations
Posted August 31, 2015
HP announced new features in its storage line that help support migrations to hybrid IT and all-flash data centers. The company's HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage solution now includes a new 8000 family, featuring all-flash array (AFA), increased workload performance, and automated performance assurance with flash-optimized quality of service (QoS) controls.
Posted August 31, 2015