IT Trends & Technology

Most dictionaries define a broker as an agent who acts as an intermediary in the purchase or sale of a commodity, or a person or entity distributing something tangible.

Cloud service brokers (CSBs) work much the same way in that they work as an intermediary between a customer and a cloud service provider. There are many reasons why a company would choose to work with a CSB, but the main benefit is the management of provider services for customers who lack the time or resources to utilize cloud services to best meet the organization’s business needs.

Whether it is to meet shifting business objectives, pursue revenue growth, or achieve greater operational efficiency, there is a clarion call to enterprises prompting the move of many of their workloads over to multi-cloud providers.

A recent Forrester Consulting report indicated that 86 percent of survey respondents are planning to move or have already moved many of their mission-critical workloads over to multiple cloud providers. Much of the demand is being driven by our reliance on IoT devices and the need for big data analytics, in addition to enterprise revenue goals and demands.

The technology ecosystem is always changing, making it imperative for businesses to embrace new technologies available to them. However, many organizations rely on legacy technology to run their operations making it extremely difficult to make the transition to a more modern and innovative system.

As IBM iSeries celebrates its 30th anniversary, it continues to be a system of record for critical applications and data in sectors such as healthcare and manufacturing. The forward momentum of the digital business often means the server lags behind in the business backup strategy. This poses a myriad of challenges for users when it comes to avoiding downtime with iSeries backup strategies.

In the digital age, a comprehensive multi-cloud strategy is necessary in order to remain agile and innovative as you scale. In fact, IDC research indicates that over 90 percent of enterprise-scale organizations will be using multiple clouds over the next several years.

As the scope and pace of digital adoption continues to evolve and expand, business stakeholders now see it as imperative to survival and growth. Although total cost of ownership (TCO), operating expenditure (OPEX), and capital expenditure (CAPEX) are clear issues influencing digital adoption, it is the people sitting at the center of processes and technology that are the nexus of change.

For every business today, digital transformation is imperative for surviving and thriving in the digital age. However, support for legacy technology will continue to be a factor because transformations are gradual, and become a mix of the old and the new. We see this specifically around the management of multi-cloud strategies. In a recent VMware and MIT Technology Review report that surveyed 1,300 IT leaders, 62 percent of respondents cited the integration of legacy systems as their biggest challenge in multi-cloud.

For the foreseeable future, the mainframe will continue to be a critical part of the business and operational growth of thousands of organizations that rely on mainframes with increasing workloads. That fact is borne out in the BMC Mainframe Research Report, showing that 91 percent of survey respondents predict that their mainframe workloads will continue to grow.

The central role of the iSeries for businesses, as well as the need to optimize its management, is constantly shown by numerous sources. According to the most recent IBM i Strategy and Roadmap, there are more than 150,000 companies worldwide utilizing the iSeries platform.

First National Technology Solutions (FNTS) has welcomed two strategic leaders to its executive team. Ken Marr has joined FNTS as Chief Technology Officer and Arvind Thapar has been named Vice President of Strategy. 

The IBM AS400 through the current IBM iSeries has been prized for performance, stability, and dependability for more than three decades and continues to serve countless businesses today. According to the market intelligence company iDatalabs, 28,148 companies are using the IBM AS400, but other sources peg the number as well over triple that figure.

On Friday, June 15, First National Technology Solutions (FNTS) is hosting a free Women in Tech event for women in the technology field and young women, ages 14 to 21, who are pursuing a tech career. 

As big data in healthcare continues its exponential growth, it represents new challenges of storage, access accuracy, and actionable use. Despite (or because of) the advance of HIT systems, the prevalence of data silos continue. Consequently, addressing these big data challenges requires careful planning for collection and processing while ensuring data integrity, so that it can be accessed and analyzed to reveal actionable outcomes.

All business today use the public cloud in one form or another. As that usage grows and evolves, cloud maintenance becomes a more complex challenge. While the need for many aspects of that maintenance are visible, there are many that can grow and evolve out of sight of the business. To that end, here are five public cloud maintenance requirements you may not have considered.

The Internet of Things (IoT), which applies to the internet-connected devices we use on a daily basis, is evolving. New terms are being coined to keep up with the growth of IoT, from the Internet of Everything (IoE), which extends the definition of IoT to include people, processes, data and things, to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), which includes remote patient care devices. According to Gartner, the number of internet connected devices has outpaced the number of humans on Earth, at 8.4 billion, revolutionizing industries and business practices.