This paper provides an overview of the problems and risks associated with increasing amounts of data and the inability to quickly and efficiently identify sensitive data for business and legal reasons and the impact of data privacy requirements. It also provides an overview of challenges associated with Intellectual Property and how an organization can utilize eDiscovery solutions to address t…
No performance management strategy can be completely effective without support from underlying technology. When a company pursues performance management, it must find a single, unified solution that can meet all its requirements and deliver a holistic view of performance across the enterprise by easily accessing any metric from any source – without compromise. The solution should remain compl…
I’ve been focused on Business Intelligence for nearly a quarter of a century and I’ve never been more excited about the industry than today. However, opportunities come with new challenges and this research is designed to help navigate those challenges. Back in 1993, I first used the term information Democracy to envision a time when every user would have access to timely, relevant and ac…
Given its ubiquity, it’s hard to believe that the Apple iPad has only been on the market for 18 months. Consumers love these devices, but they are also sprouting like weeds in the commercial sector as they enable new types of business processes and applications. As tablet computers become more and more pervasive, will their presence increase IT risk? In other words, where does tablet secu…
Technology moves at breakneck speed. Technology upgrades typically do not. While there’s no doubt that having the latest technology increases productivity, remaining competitive requires a significant capital outlay to purchase new hardware and deploy it. For small and medium sized companies that have limited budgets and IT staff, keeping up with technology can be challenging, if not impossib…
The rise of the social consumer creates tremendous opportunities for organizations to develop deeper relationships with their customers in support of their business objectives. Whether your goals are to acquire new users, increase on-site engagement, or collect and leverage customer insights (or all of • What are your business objectives? • What are you trying to achieve on your site? • …
This is the first part in a series designed to help organizations develop their “BYOD” (bring-your-own-device) strategies for personally-owned smartphones and tablets. This chapter provides an overview of eight components that our customers have found to be the foundation of a secure and scalable BYOD program. Many organizations are considering personally-owned mobile devices for busin…
When you think about protecting virtual machines, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? For many IT professionals, that first thought probably centers around high-availability, or HA, technologies. Each of the major virtual platform vendors has its own representation of HA, and although each vendor’s tactics in accomplishing the task might be very different, the result is effectively t…
The major IT initiatives of today – data center consolidation, cloud computing, unified communications, virtualization, and disaster recovery – share a common theme: they all presume a well performing Wide Area Network (WAN). The reality though is that most WANs are unable to compensate for the increased packet loss, latency, and bandwidth problems endemic to publicly shared infrastr…
Discovery is the process of identifying, preserving, collecting, reviewing, analyzing and producing information during civil legal actions. The goal of discovery is to obtain information that will be useful in developing relevant information for pre-trial motions and for the trial itself. Information sought during discovery can include documents, testimony and other information deemed necessa…
Business documents are vital strategic, financial, operational and intellectual assets that are essential to daily business processes. They constitute the lifeblood of an organization. Yet half of organizations rate their document management practices as less than effective. This is why document process management is becoming an outsourcing strategy that enables organizations to reduce cost…
IT organizations face an infinite number of existing and new projects to manage with finite resources. Against a backdrop of shrinking budgets, IT must ensure that every project receiving IT resources is of strategic value to the company and is being responsibly managed to successful completion. To better manage their portfolio of project investments, IT organizations are turning to Project Por…
The expression “better, faster, cheaper” is commonly associated with supply chain initiatives, where companies have developed an edge by getting products to market faster and more efficiently than their competitors. However, in the new world of cloud computing, more companies are looking at their IT department as a competitive differentiator by enabling them to quickly deploy hosted appli…
What if you could save money while developing high- quality training, technical documentation and even online help, all at the same time? You can! It’s called single sourcing and it’s all about eliminating duplication of work and ensuring consistency across your entire product suite. Simply by writing all the documentation for your product in one file, you can deliver a user manual and a…
As regulations grow in number and complexity, budgets get constrained, and the need for holistic view of risks increases, organizations are adopting GRC strategies to stay on top of their risk and compliance needs. But a GRC strategy is only as good as the tools used to implement it. If your approach is reactive, adhoc, and compartmentalized in different departments, you need to move to an auto…
Recent financial upheavals have resulted in a wave of increased regulations, and organizations are facing increasingly stringent government scrutiny and audit requirements. As a result, companies across the spectrum must implement an effective IT governance, risk and compliance (GRC) framework. Organizations, from small and mid-sized companies to global enterprises, are affected by changing and…
Small and midsized businesses experience business issues and challenges that are inherently different from those of larger enterprises. They generally have smaller workforces, lower budgets, and less complex IT environments than enterprise organizations. And yet, small and midsized businesses must meet the same types of demands as enterprise organizations, and optimize service levels to sup…
IT organizations are under increasing pressure to meet the business goals of their companies. This challenge can be particularly daunting because it involves complying with regulations, such as the Sarbanes- Oxley Act (Sarbox) and Basel II. Compliance requires strong corporate governance capabilities that are demonstrable to outside auditors. Because IT plays such a major role in business proce…
In today’s competitive business environment, small and midsized businesses that want to grow and sustain an edge in the market must continually streamline and improve core business practices. In many instances, technology-based solutions are integral to achieving operational efficiencies and to furthering key business objectives. As businesses progress from small to midsize organizations,…
Software is of tremendous importance to today’s IT-intensive organizations. In fact, the appetite of organizations for software is growing at a faster pace than software budgets—especially in light of current economic conditions. It is therefore more critical than ever for software buyers to get maximum value out of every dollar they spend on software.
Today’s rising overhead expenses drive organizations to find practical ways to reduce costs. Profit-conscious executives face the challenge of either reducing headcount or reducing overhead expenses. Much of the time, either of these strategies can have a negative impact on productivity and morale. Every so often a strategy appears that can provide significant expense control and enhance prod…
The AS/400 and RS/6000 platforms have evolved greatly over 20 years, and now IBM has brought them together to create the Power Systems server line. The technologies and methods for data protection and system optimization for both platforms have seen great changes as well. Even as transaction and data storage volumes have increased, ensuring that the right data protection and management practice…
Over the past five years, some of the most wide-ranging and demanding financial management and disclosure regulations in U.S. history have come into force such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley and Sarbanes-Oxley Acts. Not complying with these regulations may have serious consequences for you and your financial services institution. The goals of this white paper are to explain the impact of specific r…
System i is at the heart of the IT infrastructure for many organizations. Companies around the globe depend on the platform to provide reliable performance for their sales, operations, human resources, accounting, shipping and other critical applications. While it is true that System i is one of the easiest to manage business systems in the world, it is still far from entirely self-managing or …
For today’s small and mid-sized businesses, the risk and effects from any unplanned outage (downtime) grow with each additional critical application, network enhancement or system upgrade. We don’t have to look back very far to see the consequences of sudden or unexpected disasters affecting the IT infrastructure of major cities and businesses of every description. Consequently, IT man…
IT equipment accounts for nine percent of all energy consumed by businesses—the third-largest source of power for the commercial sector. With the right power management policies in place, you’ll have better control over your entire network–not only over how much power is consumed, but also how–and when- computers are powered down. This new control allows you to more successfully exe…
Enterprise software changed the face of business over the last decade. However, afters of aggressive enterprise software buying, corporations are now saddled with a large portfolio of solutions that are expensive to upgrade and have become equally expensive to maintain and support.
The continuing evolution of malware threats combined with the demand for increasingly flexible working practices is a significant challenge to IT departments seeking to reduce help desk support and get better value for money from their investment in security. This paper looks at how organizations can benefit from a more integrated, policy-driven approach to protecting the network at all leve…
Organizations need to protect their data and restrict access to enterprise resources to authorized users. Many companies attempt to address their security concerns by simply implementing stronger password policies, requiring employees to remember more and stronger passwords for all applications. However, most employees can not remember more than one or two strong passwords, so they won’t f…
For most companies, changing accounting software is a daunting challenge. Not only is transitioning the accounting function to a new software package tricky in itself, but it is usually catalyzed by one or more business challenges that are (hopefully) solved by the new system. As a result, most companies wait until problems have become (or are obviously becoming) insurmountable before initiatin…