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COVID-19 is stress-testing applications and global data centers

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By Mehdi Paryavi, DCA®, CLA®, DEA®.  Mr Paryavi is the Chairman of IDCA Putting to test the underutilized facilities, overutilized resources, and unmanned infrastructure… It has been a long time I haven’t had the chance to write a blog, now writing this in a time that the global pandemic, COVID-19, is testing humanity’s patience, as well as our applications and data center capabilities globally and more radically than we are used to… “Numerous applications out there may have never been tested to such degree of an unexpected surge in application peak time and prolonged use.” Numerous applications out there may have never been tested to such degree of an unexpected surge in application peak time and prolonged use. In parallel to this surge, a steep rise in cybersecurity threats and application vulnerabilities can naturally be expected. Are we prepared for what has already arrived at our door-steps? What are we doing to prepare for the post-corona-era?  “Global data c
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Disaster Recovery: Data Presence beyond cyberattacks

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By Mário Rachid  Mr. Rachid is Embratel's Chief Digital Solutions Officer Data is one of the most valuable assets of an organization. The analysis and cross-referencing of thousands of pieces of information make it possible to elect the most suitable decisions for the company's growth. The dizzying increase in business-generated-data makes data central to the development of companies. Therefore, protecting data is of utmost importance and imperative. Although cyberattacks have received a great deal of attention from organizations in recent years, due to the mega-events that have taken place that has destabilized companies around the world, these attacks are just one of the concerns that companies should have in relation to IT infrastructure. Natural disasters, such as flood, earthquake, structure integrity issues, power failures, and outages, fires, and human error can have devastating consequences in terms of loss of data and paralyzing business operations. La
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Cloudy Skies: The digital enterprise is getting smarter!

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By Denis Nwanshi, IDCA  Mr. Nwanshi is the Technology Delivery & Partner Manager  at TD Back in 2016, I published a short article on LinkedIn that highlighted some of the merits of adopting cloud and virtualization strategies. The pace of cloud technology innovation since then has been simply astounding, with the emergence of data lakes, mobile apps, AI, machine learning and other data-driven capabilities pushing the boundaries of cloud technology across every major sector. Add to this the ever-increasing release of disruptive digital-first applications and open source software under-pinned by infrastructure-level capabilities such as software defined networks, storage, backup, application monitoring, disaster recovery etc. and it is clear that cloud technologies have come a long way. Cloudy Skies Ahead But we are all too aware that the rapid pace of innovation is creating seismic gaps in our deployment and scaling of large application stacks as business demands
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Reconnecting leaders with their employees

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By Dr. Brian J. Haw.  Dr. Haw is Associate Director of Technology at AT&T Mobility Services LLC We are all very aware of the speed in which IT moves and its impact on our lives, our application ecosystems, and specifically our data centers. To keep up, we make adjustments… choosing cheaper suppliers, shortening deadlines, and right sizing the workforce. The life’s blood of our industry is adapt or fail and necessary calculations are made to keep the machine running. In essence we are re-prioritizing what is important for the current environment. But, perhaps, it is time for us to pause and rest our intentions and align them with what our core values should be. The question then comes to pass, what of the workforce? Are the people that work for us agents geared toward meeting metrics or can they be something more? Do they still have a seat at the table for value creation? Our solution is to adapt by fielding a human-centric approach to leadership. We believe the
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How Do Data Centers Drive the Tourism Industry

By Christopher Neil Christopher is the Senior Program Manager at Microsoft.  "I am Groot!" shouts the big tree looking dude. Guardians of the Galaxy is a semi-recent instant cult classic that I was fortunate enough to watch for free on a recent flight from Phoenix to San Francisco (don't call it frisco). Watching movies on a flight is taken for granted these days just like getting a “taxi” to your hotel using an app or sliding your hotel card “key”, technology is enabling the world to travel seamlessly while away from home. Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways data centers truly impact the tourism industry. Before leaving on a trip, even a last minute one, there’s a fair bit of planning that goes into it. Outside of the normal “what clothes am I going to bring” or “do I have the right size toothpaste to get through security” questions, are things like “what should we see when we get there” and “where’s the best places to eat”. Now, you might say that all
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A Standards Framework for the Applications Ecosystem – The Infinity Paradigm

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The Infinity Paradigm Standards Framework from the International Data Center Authority (IDC-A.org) is the latest and I believe most complete standards set for IT. Many of us have participated in efforts to create a method to measure the value, effectiveness and efficiency of our IT infrastructure but I believe this to be the most complete by far. Early efforts to improve infrastructure efficiency came from The Green Grid with PUE, followed by WUE, the Data Center Sustainability Metric and the Data Center Maturity Model. There have been other efforts to improve communication and resiliency like the Data Center Pulse “Data Center Stack” and most recently Infrastructure Masons released their data center rating system . The aforementioned efforts helped to put focus on and provide measures and metrics needed for improved management and ownership of critical and costly IT infrastructure. In the case of the Infinity Paradigm perhaps the most important factor is the notion of treating yo
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Building an Industry

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We are in an exciting time. It is not every day that you get to be on the forefront of a fledgling industry as it is being built brick-by-brick into what will most likely become the industry that dominates the 21st century. As was the case a century ago with the automotive industry, which dominated the landscape of economic growth and development for many countries worldwide, the data center industry was born of major advancements in technology and is poised to rule the economic landscape for the foreseeable future. Data Centers as an industry are in their infancy, and it has largely been up to the vendors and manufacturers to dictate what is “best” for the industry up to this point, however historically that usually only means what is best for their bottom line. We live in a “wild-west” of patchwork standards and best-practice documents that pertain to only small segments of our industry. There has yet to be a codified means of end-to-end design of a data center to be inclusive of
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