Is your company considering using video conferencing? Take a fresh look at video conferencing ROI. It’s not just about sunk costs, but the ability to measure existing capacity and future savings potential for your organization. How are employees adopting video conferencing today? What’s working and what’s not? And what’s the roadmap for the future? In this Interop webcast, sponsored by Sabre Virtual Meetings, hear from analyst, Zeus Kerravala and moderator, Jennifer Jessup of Interop as well as from one leading company who is bringing a new approach to delivering on the promise of cost savings via virtual collaboration.

We’ll talk about whether investments in video conferencing really add up to bottom line results and where your company’s travel budget might play a role. As well, we’ll consider how video and collaboration owners in your organization can demonstrate savings and returns to upper management — before your video conference plug is pulled.

You’re doing everything you can to ensure your company stays at the forefront of technology and communications trends. Your video conference investment is part of the equation. See what others are doing to make it work – increasing video utilization and decreasing travel expenses without additional investment.

Come to this session armed with your questions. You’ll be able to submit questions directly to our panelists for a live Q&A session during the hour.

** Register Today **

Date: Thursday, June 20, 2013
Time: 11:00 AM PST/2:00 PM EST
Duration: 60 minutes

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Sponsored by:

Sabre Virtual Meeting

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Presenter:

• Jeremy Stubbs, General Manager, Sabre Virtual Meetings
• Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst, ZK Research

Moderator:

• Jennifer Jessup, General Manager, Interop

Tags: collaboration, Communications, Interop, interop new york, mobile business, skype, Unified Commu, unified communications, video, WiFi

The big data movement is all about embracing new data types, such as social media, click-streams and log files, low latency data, sensor information and other real-time feeds. So it should be no surprise that the demand for big data and analytics experts outstrips supply now, and will continue for at least the next five years.

Our InformationWeek 2012 State of IT Staffing Survey finds that 40% of respondents cited big data and analytics as a top area of staffing growth expect personnel increases of 11% or more in the next two years. A recent study published by McKinsey & Co. also shows demand for analytics experts and big data professionals in the U.S. alone will exceed the available supply by 140,000 to 190,000 positions by 2018, if current trends continue.

So what do current IT professionals need to break into big data analytics? For starters, they need more than the standard suite of BI toolkit skills that have been in use forever. Start your development with a mix of the following:

• Get experience running Hadoop clusters, designing high-scale search technologies and analyzing big data clickstreams.
• Ask for training on systems like SAS High-Performance Analytics or EMC’s Greenplum Data Computing Appliance.

This is also an opportunity for people expert in research and development, finance, statistics or process optimization to break into IT, with help from employers. If you’re able to seek formal education, many events like Interop are launching tracks and workshops dedicated Big Data topics and tool kits. Take the first step in becoming a Big Data Analyst for your organization and attend some of Interop New York’s training programs. Learn more here.

Tags: Analytics, Big Data, cloud, cloud computing, InformationWeek, Interop

It’s been a month since we were all together under the large Mandalay Bay roof in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. I want to take this opportunity to look back at what was a great and inspiring week for the IT community. Interop week was a week filled with new acronyms, movements in networking, cocktails and of course passionate IT rock stars revealing their true selves. Here is what stood out for me:

• The Keynote of the Century – A pickup game between Cisco’s Rod Soderbery and Cleveland Cavalier Kyrie Irving. I think we all know who won that game.
• Software Defined Networking (SDN) – This year’s winner of most talked about topic at Interop . What is it? What can it do for me? How do I get it?
• The Internet of Everything and how it will affect your ability to create fool proof passwords. (Note to self, change all passwords from 1234 to password1)
• CIO Summit – 5 Contrarian Tips On Innovation
• The network is constantly evolving due to BYOD and the cloud.
• It takes a great team to build and run the Interop NOC.
• The Interop community is a social bunch.

Of course what would a retrospective look be without audio or visual treats.  Check out photos and video of keynotes, exhibitors, speakers and attendees.

Where you inspired by what you heard or saw at Interop? Is your IT organization filled with promise and hope that everything will be ok? We’d love to hear what you’re working on right now. Leave a comment below.

Oh yeah… save the date for Interop New York – September 30 – October 4, 2013. No rest for the weary. Make sure to follow Interop on Twitter or like our Facebook page for information about upcoming Interop events!

Cheers,

Jason

Feel free to follow me on Twitter for more inside Interop updates.

Tags: byod, CIO, cisco, Conference, Expo, Interop, interop las vegas, networking, sdn, social media

We’ve had time to collect all of the evaluation data and now have a conclusive top 10 ranked speakers from Interop Las Vegas 2013.

We had excellent feedback and want to say thanks again to all you who presented and contributed to a great event.

Please join us in congratulating these speakers by giving them a tweet or a comment below—don’t forget to include #interop!

1.Thomas Randall, Operations Vice President, BT Americas

2. Nolan Goldberg, Senior Counsel, Proskauer LLP

3. John Pironti, President, IP Architects, LLC

Congratulate John @jpironti

4. Mrs. Y, Healthy Paranoia Podcast, Packetpushers

Congratulate Mrs. Y @MrsYisWhy

5. Howard Marks, Contributing Editor, Network Computing

Congratulate Howard @DeepStorageNet

6. Tony Bourke, Networking Instructor, Networking Instructor

Congratulate Tony @tbourke

7. Ivan Pepelnjak, Chief Technology Advisor, NIL Data Communications

Congratulate Ivan @ioshints

8. Jim Vaughn, Managing Director, iDiscovery Solutions

9. David Linthicum, SVP, Cloud Technology Partners

Congratulate David @DavidLinthicum

10. Mike Pennacchi, Owner, Network Protocol Specialists

Congratulate Mike @mpennac

A guest post by Mike Tighe, Executive Director of Data Services at Comcast Business.

There’s no doubt that cloud computing is here to stay. The benefits – efficiency, lower CapEx, improved productivity, etc. – are well-documented, but to effectively reap the benefits of the cloud, you must also consider the increased role network infrastructure plays in enabling your company to operate efficiently using cloud-based systems. In fact, cloud-based services are only as good as the connection to the cloud itself.

Sure you have Internet access…

Traditional Internet access can offer a simple and cost-effective method to access cloud-based resources. But if your business is dependent on the cloud for mission-critical functions such as synching data between two offsite data centers, or backing up credit card information for your customers, the lack of consistent performance and security risks inherent with using the Internet can introduce uncertainty into your cloud model. Not to mention, if something goes wrong, your Internet service provider is not on the hook to deliver remuneration.

…but for mission-critical business applications, Ethernet is the best choice

A high-performance dedicated Ethernet connection is an attractive alternative to Internet-based connectivity for organizations that need reliable, scalable and secure connectivity to the cloud. Ethernet service is separate from, yet can integrate with an Internet connection, and can link offices, public or private data centers, production sites, and other points of operation within the same metro area to each other, and to the cloud. This ensures users experience the same performance, security and service wherever their application is housed.

Ethernet is ideal for enterprise cloud access for three key reasons:

1. Reliability. Mission critical apps cannot tolerate loss of connectivity, for which the Internet is notorious. With Ethernet, not only do you benefit from service on a dedicated facility, that facility is typically fiber, which can switch to a redundant path in the event of a cut or node failure – in less than 50 milliseconds.

1. Security. One of the top jobs of any IT manager is protecting the network from intrusions, and that risk is inherent with the public Internet. When using the Internet to access your cloud assets, your packets can potentially be passed from company to company –and your service provider cannot take responsibility for what happens on another service provider’s route.  You can bypass the public Internet and transfer data safely and securely over a private Ethernet network where your traffic is managed by one company from end-to-end.
2. Performance. The Internet may give you the throughput required to access certain cloud-based applications, but it may not. For essential, cloud-based applications that require high availability and low latency, more and more companies are using Ethernet services to access them.  Public Internet access to the cloud cannot guarantee the level of performance, consistency, and availability that many enterprises require. With Ethernet, those offsite applications perform and feel like they’re an extension of your Local Area Network (LAN).

Want to learn more about the optimized cloud-enabled network? Craig Waldrop of Equinix will be giving a short presentation on “High Performance Enterprise IT” at Interop in the Comcast Business booth (#1859) Wednesday at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. To stay on top of Ethernet news, trends, and case studies, follow Comcast Business on social media.

Tags: cloud, cloud computing, clouds, Comcast Business, Ethernet, Interop, interop las vegas

A post by Josh Conroy, Support Engineer at Thycotic Software.

When setting up security policies to protect your privileged accounts, administrators have to walk the fine line of providing security while still being convenient for the user.

Both security measures that are inconvenient for the user and those that present lack of security may pose a liability. These are also two reasons security precautions are dismissed by management. Here are four steps you can take to help properly secure your privileged accounts.

Changing Passwords Regularly and Using Strong Passwords. Passwords on privileged accounts should be updated system-wide on a regular basis. Rotating passwords regularly reduces the odds of passwords being cracked and helps mitigate the damage should an account be compromised.

Passwords for privileged accounts should be complex, difficult to guess and not repeated among accounts. The biggest hurdle when using complex passwords is they are difficult to remember and that difficulty encourages bad security practices, such as writing passwords down on paper, reusing passwords and choosing weak passwords.

Central Access to Privileged Accounts. Keeping one centralized, protected source of credential data is more secure than keeping logins written on paper or saved in Excel files in multiple areas across your network. A centralized location will assist in tracking your accounts. It helps to limit access to this information while still providing easy access for administrators.

Auditing Access. It is important to know who has access to privileged accounts and how often these accounts are being used. This helps to clarify which accounts need special attention so their security settings are adjusted. For example, some accounts may require stricter access control, stronger passwords or a more aggressive password change schedule.

Restricting Access. Being that privileged accounts have access to sensitive data and are used to run company critical applications, you will want to limit who accesses these accounts. Only users that work directly with an account should have access to the password. This creates accountability when using accounts that are not directly tied to a user. Additionally, having a mechanism in place to restrict privileged account access   greatly improves the level of security a company has over its accounts. For example, employee account usage can be monitored, which is often important when employees leave an organization.

Following these steps will help with the protection of your privileged accounts, but implementation is always an important. Using a credential storage system specifically focused on corporate use, such as Secret Server, can help accomplish these security points as well as make the transition from the current policy to a more secure policy as painless as possible.

Tags: Conference, Interop, interop las vegas, passwords, security