Case Studies/Best Practices


Cloud Computing, Big Iron-Style

Mainframe pros have joined with IBM to tout the virtues of Big Iron-based cloud computing.

Securing Your Enterprise with a Many-to-Many Software Deployment Model

How deploying hardware in the data center that runs a centralized security suite that handles multiple security configurations can protect a diverse set of end users.

Open Source Survey Highlights IT Usage, Perceptions, Pitfalls

A surprising number of open source adopters don't have official OSS policies, exposing them to IP infringement or other violations

Will IT Spending Weather the Storm?

No matter how strange it sounds, many businesses could actually ramp up their IT spending during the current downturn

Trusted Storage for Enterprise-class Hard Disk Drives, Part 1 of 2

Encryption directly on the storage device provides the simplest and most effective means to obtain a trusted storage system.

Dashboards: The Key to IT Management Transparency

Dashboards can shape (or reshape) perceptions of IT and enhance its organizational relationship with business users. Dashboards deliver transparency -- a world of growing, if not lasting, influence in the technology-requirements lexicon.

Five Steps to Performance Intelligence

Performance intelligence represents a new practice for database and application performance management



Toward a More Manageable Mainframe

Big Iron ISVs maintain the mainframe is hot. In the current economic climate, they suggest, it could really sizzle.

How Recovery-Oriented Databases Help Retailers Handle Black Friday

How to keep IT systems running during the post-Thanksgiving shopping rush

Leasing IT's Mainframe Future -- With an Option to Buy

Many mainframe customers -- perhaps as many as 80 percent -- lease their Big Iron hardware. How will economic uncertainty affect them?

Q&A: Automating Your Application Infrastructure

A new survey reveals how IT is trying to automate the application infrastructure.

IT's Security Dilemma: To Patch or Not to Patch

An out-of-band security fix from Microsoft put administrators in a familiar but tough spot: potentially damned if they patched and damned if they didn't.

Q&A: Moving to Proactive Network Management

Networks are vital to your organization. We offer suggestions for moving from reactive to proactive network management.

Can Going Green Slow Data Center Expansion?

Proponents say “going green” can help companies save money, but a secondary benefit may be just as important: delaying data center expansion.

Most Enterprises Unprotected Against E-mail Security Risks, Study Finds

Only 10 percent of organizations are actually using effective anti-spam technologies

Q&A: Securing Your Endpoints

Endpoints pose security risks to an enterprise, but identifying those endpoints can be IT's biggest challenge.

In Praise of Data Center Vivification

"Going Green" is about transforming the static, reactive, and largely inert data centers of today into what proponents call a "living organism."

Q&A: Virtualization and Rigorous Testing

We examine how virtualization can benefit developers, the drawbacks of the technology when it comes to testing, and best practices developers can use to exploit the capabilities of virtualization.

Q&A: Managing Active Directory

Best practices for managing groups in Active Directory.

Cutting IT Costs: The Need for a Flexible Procurement Model

With as much as two-thirds of the average IT budget devoted to fixed costs, trimming expenses is difficult.