An enterprise VAR survey is quoted in the July 2009 INFOSTORE magazine issue on the “biggest opportunities” for customer to “reduce IT costs”. By far the biggest option was “Virtualization” with 49% of respondent mentioning it. The second choice was a surprising one – “data deduplication” – with 18% of respondents listing it. The #3 choice – way down at 4% was the not very innovative, “delay purchases”!
Data deduplication if you haven’t heard about it is an innovative way to reduce storage requirements. At a simple level if you store a 15MB email attachment on your network –there may be 10 or many more copies of that attachment in various mail boxes -all taking up storage space. Data deduplication would mean retaining just one copy with a pointer to that copy where the other copies would be. This concept can be carried down to the data block or bit level. An algorithm can assign a hash number to each string of data and store one data copy and the indexed hash numbers. In this way, your data storage requirement can be greatly reduced. So far, the main application for data deduplication has been in backup software. Note that there are risks –as with any data compression method – so care should be taken in selecting tools to do this job. Big firms with huge data storage requirements are obviously the first targets for the technology.
Virtualization – choice number 1 in this survey – is a money saver even for, and perhaps especially for, firms that are quite small. I say especially for small firms because you can get the first step copy of VMware or Microsoft’s HyperV at no cost. Now if you have one or two servers, virtualization is of no real utility, but when a special application, separate Exchange server, etc. comes along beyond that, virtualization can save costs and add powerful disaster recovery options. Of course the savings really grow as you get into more and more servers.
Archive for July, 2009
How to reduce IT costs
Monday, July 27th, 2009Dated Browser Versions
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009An article in the Houston Chronicle (”Dig a hole and shovel IE6 into it”, Dwight Silverman 7/20/09) has highlighted the problem of using dated browsers. While IE6 is 8 years old it is still in wide use – despite the fact that newer, much more secure versions of Internet Explorer have been released. Check your browser version and get updated or nudge your IT responsible person. For security, ease of use and features it is time to make the switch.
You can download IE8 at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/resultsForCategory.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=6
IE8 is per Microsoft, “faster, more secure, more reliable” than older IE versions and has accelerator and web slice features -more to come on those. I have just upgraded to IE 8 myself and I am running it and Google Chrome and comparing. The download/upgrade process is very easy. Note that IE is, at least, a bigger target for malicious attacks – if not a softer target, as discussed earlier. Take the step of upgrading to the most recent version if you use IE.
Internet Explorer and Google Chrome
Friday, July 17th, 2009Thanks to the recent security threats to Internet Exporer we have recommended that our clients move from IE to another browser. For a tech this is easy to say, for most of us users it is harder to do. I have installed Google Chrome as my default browser and I am learning as I go. I was able to import my IE favorites list, which was a relief. Just click on the little wrench icon on the far right (wrench for “Tools”).
Chrome keeps “tabs” along the top of its display area and the “+” tab lets you see thumbnails of pages you have visited lately – I like that feature. It is much easier to select a recent page that you want when you look right at it graphically. If you need help installing a new browser, etc. just let us know – we have the experts.
Technology Bytes – Online
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009Welcome to the new EBS IT Technology blog. We will use this blog to discuss IT technology, security, IT support and services and other related topics. As many blogs do it will surely meander and hopefully find a niche of usefulness to our EBS clients and those seeking IT answers and insights. This will not be a release point for cutting edge technology or research. It will be more of an attempt to be an interface to common concerns and questions about technology and a place to post comments / questions about IT systems and technology.
We have started a blog on our web site in part as a demonstration of Web 2.0 technology. To this extent, the world may not need another technology blog, but it can demonstrate to our clients some of the uses of a blog. We have also started the blog as a promotional tool for our ebsit.com web site. A blog is one of the many many elements in the web site marketing tool bag to build traffic – through it’s own value and also through the keywords and IT services content that makes up the blog. To this extent, this use demonstrates to clients and prospects a web site marketing feature that we can help with on their websites.
Finally, the blog will be an interface between technology and users. Many technology concepts that seem simple to technical folks are not at all simple or clear to those who need to purchase, implement or use the technology. As we go along, I hope this blog can help interpret and clarify some IT functionality, use of technology, etc. Please comment if there are topics you would like to see covered or questions you have.