For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

TechRadar™ For Infrastructure And Operations Professionals: Infrastructure Virtualization, Q4 2009

I/O Virtualization Enters Its Growth Phase

by Galen Schreck, November 16, 2009

Every major category of IT infrastructure has been endowed with some virtualization capability. Although virtualization can make your IT environment more cost-effective and agile, the underlying technologies have matured at different rates. Furthermore, . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Consolidated Backup Strategies For Remote Sites

by Stephanie Balaouras, October 30, 2009

A remote site can be as small as a branch office location with five employees or as large as a regional sales office with 50 employees. Regardless of a company's size, end users are creating and storing critical data at these sites. In some industries . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Shift In Ownership: Protecting Data Outside Your Four Walls  (1.6 MB PPT)

by Robert Whiteley, October 28, 2009

In September 2009, Forrester hosted a two-day event designed to help security and risk professionals understand the top three shifts impacting their job heading. This document summarizes the key recommendations we made to help master the shift in ownership . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Selecting Data Protection Technologies

Answer Four Key Questions Before Spending Time And Treasure

by Andrew Jaquith, October 28, 2009

Forrester enterprise customers have increasing needs to protect their enterprise data. Not every data protection challenge requires technology to address it. But when effective protection cannot be guaranteed by process compliance alone, technology can . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

How Efficient Is Your Storage Environment?

The KPIs That Matter Most In Enterprise Storage and How To Measure Them

by Andrew Reichman, October 22, 2009

Building an effective storage environment is a balancing act between performance, reliability, and efficiency. For years, improving storage efficiency took a back seat to the other goals. Now, with infrastructure budgets being cut and data growth continuing . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

UK Firms Continue To Look To Green IT For Cost Reduction And Business Benefits

Findings From The UK Green IT 2009 Conference, May 2009

by Onica King, Doug Washburn, October 2, 2009

Findings from Forrester's second joint survey collaboration with Tech:Touchstone Events, organizer of the Green IT 2009 Conference in London, uncovered that after a year of economic turmoil, financial drivers and efficiency gains are still the core motivation . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

TechRadar™ For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals: Cloud Computing, Q3 2009

As Much Diversity Of Maturity Across Categories As Confusion Among Them

by James Staten, October 2, 2009

The No. 1 challenge in cloud computing today is determining what it really is. What categories of services exist within the definition and business model, and how ready are these options for enterprise consumption? Forrester defines cloud computing as . . .

For B2B Market Research Professionals

The State Of SMB IT Budgets: 2009

Business Data Services North America And Europe

by Heidi Lo, Andrew Bartels, August 7, 2009

This document provides SMB highlights of an extensive data set collected via Forrester's Enterprise And SMB Global IT Budgets And Spending Survey, Q2 2009. Overall, the global recession has made CIOs and IT decision-makers cut back their IT budgets, with . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Market Overview: Client Management Suites

Evolving Computing Market Shifts Focus To Security And Virtualization

by Natalie Lambert, July 29, 2009

Desktop operations managers are watching their computing environment change. There are now more types of devices and more varieties of operating systems entering the enterprise than ever before. This is leading to an architectural shift, one that moves . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

EMC Rethinks High-End Storage With V-MAX

Potential Customers Should Look For Efficiency And Favorable Economics

by Andrew Reichman, July 16, 2009

You've probably had the EMC Symmetrix family as a fixture in your data center for high-performance and high-availability storage for years, or at least you've given it strong purchase consideration. But in the past few years, EMC fell behind the technology . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Use Deduplication To Store More With Less

Dedupe Your Backups Today, But Plan For Other Environments

by Stephanie Balaouras, July 10, 2009

While the cost of disk has declined significantly over the past five years, you still can't call it cheap at thousands of dollars per terabyte (TB). IT professionals struggle to keep up with 30% to 40% annual data growth while simultaneously creating . . .

For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals

The Convenience Quotient Of Consumer Storage And Backup

by Nathan Safran, July 6, 2009

The consumer backup and storage space has become increasingly crowded — and sophisticated — over the past 24 months. From burning a DVD to using a full-blown home server, there are a wide variety of options today, with varying features and degrees of . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Backup, Q2 2009

by Stephanie Balaouras, June 26, 2009

Backup is one of the most critical day-to-day responsibilities for IT operations. You must have a recent backup of your critical data to recover from accidental deletions, system crashes, disk failures, and data corruption. But backup is complex, error . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Role Overview: Virtual Infrastructure Architect

by Galen Schreck, Rachel A. Dines, June 25, 2009

As the adoption of virtualization across servers, storage, and networks continues to climb and organizations push to larger implementations of virtual infrastructure, a new question arises: Who is going to manage your virtual infrastructure? Sure, you . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Virtual Infrastructure Architect - Job Profile And Description  (32 KB XLS)

by Galen Schreck, Rachel A. Dines, June 23, 2009

Position overview: The virtual infrastructure (VI) architect is responsible for managing all of the virtualized infrastructure across technology domains (this usually does not include the virtual desktop).

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

TechRadar™ For I&O Professionals: Green IT 1.0 Technologies, Q2 2009

Helping IT Ops Professionals Understand And Prioritize Green IT Hardware, Software, And Service Investments

by Doug Washburn, June 12, 2009

Green IT is on the rise. Even in the face of a weak economy, twice as many organizations expect to accelerate their green IT plans as expect to slow them down. Why is this? Green IT initiatives are financially motivated, exposing opportunities for cost . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Protecting Email With The Cloud

How Cloud Services Can Play A Role In Message Continuity And Recovery

by Stephanie Balaouras, Christopher Voce, June 8, 2009

Ensuring that your users can access email and keep business moving in the event of a disaster is critical, but it can be complex and costly. Traditional methods carry heavy facility, hardware, software, and personnel requirements, and the capital and . . .

For Technology Sales Enablement Professionals

Hardware Tech Marketers Bank On The Small Financial Services Market

by Ellen Carney, May 6, 2009

Not too long ago, IT hardware vendors banked on the business they got from financial services industry giants like Morgan Stanley, The Royal Bank of Scotland, and AIG. When the Wall Street bubble burst, hardware tech vendors like Cisco Systems, Dell, . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Align Green Storage With Overall Efficiency

Power Savings Benefits Are Limited, But Improved Efficiency Makes Good Sense

by Andrew Reichman, April 17, 2009

Storage vendors worldwide have jumped on the "green" bandwagon in their marketing campaigns, but it's hard to determine which technologies move beyond hype and rhetoric to have a real positive impact. In a gloomy economy, initiatives that sound good but . . .

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

IT Infrastructure Market And Services Data  (222 KB PPT)

by Paul Roehrig, Ph.D., April 13, 2009

IT Infrastructure Market And Services Data.

For B2B Market Research Professionals

Disaster Recovery Solutions Remain High On Healthcare's Agenda  (406 KB PPT)

by Eric G. Brown, March 27, 2009

Disaster recovery solutions have been a critical agenda item for hospital IT organizations, but years of HIPAA regulatory pressure and post-Katrina lessons have brought the sector into relative maturity. However, the tail remains, and there's urgency . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

IBM's Bid For Sun Is About More Than Just Solaris And Java

Sun's Innovations Can Improve IBM's Prospects Outside Enterprise Markets

by Frank E. Gillett, March 24, 2009

Vendor strategists are calling Forrester asking what we make of the possibility of IBM buying Sun Microsystems. The conventional wisdom is that IBM wants to capture the Solaris/SPARC customer base to boost the AIX/Power business and own Java to protect . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Disaster Recovery, Q1 2009

by Stephanie Balaouras, March 20, 2009

Whether it's a power grid failure, ice storm, or Category Five hurricane, when disaster strikes, IT must have disaster recovery plans in place to ensure the continuity of IT systems that support critical business processes. If IT isn't prepared, it will . . .

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

TechRadar™ For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals: Software-As-A-Service

CRM And Collaboration Are Growing, And Many New Categories Are On The Horizon, Q1 2009

by Liz Herbert, March 12, 2009

As software-as-a-service (SaaS) becomes increasingly important to firms' application strategies, sourcing and vendor management professionals are taking ownership of the research, purchasing, negotiations, and ongoing vendor relationships for these solutions. . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Infrastructure & Operations Organizational Structures, Q1 2009

by Doug Washburn, Rachel A. Dines, March 11, 2009

Infrastructure and operations (I&O) departments are currently in a state of flux. Beyond increasing centralization, I&O departments are reorganizing to become service-oriented or are at least considering such a change. Why? When surveyed, IT executives . . .