In my latest screencast video review of McAfee’s Firewall Profiler, I show you how you can use some of its impressive features to analyze your network traffic and troubleshoot common networking problems with a very intuitive graphical interface. 
IT professionals often perceive the cloud as insecure as or less secure than having their applications and data residing inside their own data centers. But perceptions don’t necessarily match reality. In this story for Tom’s Hardware, I talk about the difference and some questions to ask your provider.
In a word, yes.
Virtualization has become the new computing cluster. Clustering–the ability to have two or more computers operate in lockstep for highly available systems–has been around since almost the earliest PC and mainframe days. But a new take on clustering is emerging that leverages virtualization tools and is becoming more appealing, particularly for enterprise IT shops.
You can read the full article posted today on Tom’s Hardware here.
In conjunction with the good folks over at MSPtv and Redmond Channel Partner magazine, I am hosting this event at noon ET on 1/18:
Are You Ready for the Cloud? How MSPs Can Dominate New Management Models.
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) need to assess how ready they are to provide complete managed cloud services for their clients. While Microsoft and other larger vendors offer a mixed message in terms of hosted vs. on-premises solutions, MSPs through the right partner such as Zenith Infotech can provide a complete range of cloud computing services. But you need to take the right steps and in this webinar, we will show you how. Register here.
Outsourcing isn’t new, but, by now, many IT shops have accumulated enough experience to use this service more effectively. We spoke with several managers who have used outsourcers to build and augment their systems, and we came away with eight suggestions to help ensure that your next outsourcing contact—and contract—will be successful.
You can read my article that was published in this month’s Baseline magazine here.
The notion of a hybrid cloud is gaining traction. These are virtual services that run in various locations to deliver applications that can make use of a combination of public clouds and private hosted servers, as well as machines inside the data center. While the concept isn’t all that new, many vendors are looking for ways to help IT managers more effectively migrate and manage these mixed environments.
You can read the entire article published this week at Tom’s Hardware here.
Verizon’s computing in the cloud services, which uses the Terremark/VMware hosted services, allows you to create a variety of Windows and Linux servers in the cloud. Unlike Amazon and some other CaaS providers, you pay for provisioned machines whether they are running or not. You can see my three minute screencast tour at Tom’s Hardware here.
I know, ’tis the season. But you might not yet have enough of the top 10 pieces, so here is my own quirky take on things for Search Enterprise Desktop over at Techtarget.
Verizon has myriad small, medium and enterprise business-related cloud services, everything from the mundane process of making backups to more sophisticated collections of virtual and even physical servers. In this introduction, we’ll show you what the landscape offers and provide some guidance on where to get started using some of these services.
Online backup is a booming industry, with dozens of vendors providing storage in the cloud. The idea is a compelling one: for a few dollars a year, you have immediate and automatic offsite storage of your most critical files. No messing with tapes, making DVDs, or worrying if you have the most current files backed up.
These products all work in similar fashion and to help you evaluate backup vendors, we have put together a short checklist (see sidebar).Verizon is one of the key players in this space, and sells its Online Backup and Sharing service as one of a series of SMB-oriented offerings. You can read the rest of the article, which was posted on Tom’s Hardware this week, here.
