Absolute Performance Inc.

Written By: Krishnan Subramanian
(Original Article)

SaaS is slowly gaining adoption not just in the small and mid market range but also in big enterprises. According to a new Gartner report "Software as a Service 2009-2014", the SaaS revenues within the enterprise software market will grow in 2010 by 14.1 percent from the 2009 revenues. In 2009, the revenues were $7.5 billion and it is growing to $8.5 billion this year.

Written By: Michael Biddick
(Original Article)

This week I was working with a client, we will call him Jim, who was telling me about their mission critical business application. It's primarily a billing system, but also has service catalog and fairly detailed security and reporting modules built into the system. As a web-based application, the backend database is distributed and the application services just under 2,000 users. The CIO is seeking to establish key performance indicators around the application including performance metrics and SLAs. Unfortunately, there is currently no fault or performance monitoring in place. The current performance of the application is judged based on anecdotal calls to the help desk. Obviously, this will not cut it.

The community of APM vendors grows each week. As the industry finally adopts a service-based approach for IT management, the services really end up being applications at the end of the day. The tidal wave of ITIL process initiatives has been a big catalyst for APM projects as organization try and consolidate their legacy application and system management tools from the past 20 years and provide more proactive metrics around the critical business applications.

Written by: Robert Bravery
(Original Article)   

A website or blog’s load time is pivotal to it’s success. Studies have shown that the highest cause of users abandoning a site is because it takes too long to load.

It’s a strange world we live in where patience is not the order of the day. We have faster computers, faster internet, better looking websites, interactive sites. Yet users still want that instant gratification.

It’s a never ending spiral. The more you put into your site to make it more attractive and interactive, the faster users expect it to load.

Google Incorporating page load into rankings

Google has incorporated site speed into their ranking algorithms. Although not a significant part, it is Google’s way of suggesting to us to get our sites to load faster.

Google’s official blog post about site speed encourages users to test their website load times in order to evaluate and improve.

(Original Article)

IT, by nature, is innovative – changing and adapting to remove the constraints of manual business operations and streamline the efficiency of organization. To adopt the mentality of “set it and forget it” with your technology is a sure way to tell your clients “we are resolved to becoming outdated and inferior.” At the same time, the industry has taught us that technology for technology’s sake is not a sound business model either. Keeping up with trends in the technology world becomes an even more overwhelming challenge for with every new, in vogue capability, there are countless iterations already in incubation. So, how do CIO’s and IT executives stay ahead of the curve to ensure systems will grow with an organization and protect valuable capital from being flushed away? Server Virtualization is a prime example of what was once looked upon skeptically as an interesting attempt to change the way IT managed cost and systems until it was proven prudent and lucrative by Fortune 500 firms across the spectrum. Now however, companies are out of license compliance, and have lost control and visibility into the enterprise.

Business is constantly changing, and this trend of change is seen more than ever in recent years with virtualization, cloud computing and IT outsourcing. These changes are difficult to effectively orchestrate but your people, your needs, your clients, and you must be able to adjust and evolve if everyone is to survive as value-players within the organization. Like any other evolution cycle, this one, too, is survival of the fittest.

So are you adapting (driving business innovation) or are you strong (stabilizing the platforms for better business operation)? To begin, you need to take a step back and evaluate your current IT situation and the services IT is providing. Understanding the longevity and sustainability of the services, software, and hardware you are currently managing is imperative to current viability. Whereas adapting to changing business needs is crucial for your future viability.

Where’s the balance?

Here’s how to avoid stagnancy and keep your IT systems evolving, while keeping your company’s long-term goals in mind.

Written by: John (cloudbzz.com)

(Original Article)

Last week I got into a nice discussion on Twitter regarding the role of open source in an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) stack.  With open source cloud stacks from Eucalyptus, Cloud.com, Abiquo and others competing against proprietary source solutions from Enomaly, VMware and others, this can get fairly confusing quickly.

For clarity, here is my position on open source vs. proprietary source in this aspect of the market:  both have a role to play and natively one is not better or more advantaged than the other.  However, when you get into the details there are factors that might favor one model over the other in specific cases. I will look at this from the perspective of the service providers and enterprises who use cloud stacks.  In a future post I may touch on factors that vendors should when choosing between open source and closed source models.