IT Trends & Technology

Instant Data with Fog and Edge Computing Complements Cloud Storage
From: Fog and Edge Computing Complement Cloud Storage, Building Operating Management

The rise of IoT devices is challenging IT networks and cloud providers to provide enough data storage. As a result, there’s an increased need to compute data closer to where it originates to provide real-time insights and create efficiencies in the workplace.

As digital transformation strategies drive more customer initiatives, banks and credit unions are changing their views of cloud usage.  Financial institutions are becoming more pragmatic in their approach to gaining operational efficiencies, improving the customer experience, and move beyond their traditional core banking platforms.  Off to a slow, fragmented start, expect to see cloud adoption accelerate.  Gartner expects the cloud computing services market to grow 17.3 percent in 2019 alone, topping $200 billion worldwide.

Small and medium-sized businesses often have laser-like focus on aggressive growth targets and maximizing customers’ positive experiences with their brand. With these pressures and the push to do more with limited budgets and less staff than their larger competitors, these organizations often have little time left over to focus on the IT services that make their business hum. 

On August 24, 2005, when the storm that would become Hurricane Katrina was several days out from landfall along the Gulf Coast, Walmart’s director of business continuity activated the company’s emergency operations center, recalled key staff, and set years’ worth of plans into motion. In the days that followed the devastation of Katrina, Walmart was able to deliver 100,000 free meals and 1,900 truckloads of supplies to survivors and to provide emergency workers with supplies and protective gear. 

It’s easy for an organization to find itself struggling to understand what cloud computing is and how it can translate the technology into tangible operational improvements. Without this foundation, it can be difficult for an organization to ensure that it is taking full advantage of the cloud’s potential. Nowhere, though, is this challenge more prevalent than in the healthcare industry—in addition to transforming their operating models with the rise of digitization, these organizations must also juggle stringent compliance requirements and ongoing concerns about security and data privacy.

From June 2014 to May 2017—a period of just three years—almost 250 million financial records were breached, including JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Experian, and Equifax. Although sophisticated hackers were involved, each breach actually was initiated by known security vulnerabilities in computer programs or networking hardware that could have been overcome with strong internal controls and routine security reviews.

Does your company still run legacy software on your computers? Maybe Windows 7—or how about Microsoft Office or Exchange Server 2010? If so, you are not alone; as many as 39 percent of Windows users are in the same boat. 

When your organization makes the decision to migrate your legacy systems to the cloud, completing the move in itself isn’t the goal. Instead, the end goal is for your organization to reach a more reliable, responsive, and flexible state through the IT backbone that enables your business.

T professionals are continually challenged to find new and more efficient ways to implement and manage heavily used applications to enable their business. Because one single server cannot possibly handle all of the incoming requests or the performance requirements complex applications require, the idea of deploying multiple server instances has taken hold.

It’s a phrase that you can’t help but hear in technology circles: cloud computing. From virtualizing computing resources to managing applications to storing data to hosting web services, cloud computing seems to have something to offer every organization. In fact, Gartner expects the cloud computing services market to grow 17.3 percent in 2019 alone, topping $200 billion worldwide.

Implementing a disaster recovery plan and preparing for unexpected disruptions is becoming imperative for utilities in the event of natural disasters, cyber attacks, human errors and other issues or security threats that could result in a critical outage of power, water, gas and other resources. According to a recent Information Security survey by PwC, only about half of utilities have an IT disaster response plan because of concerns about price, time or changes to operations. The reality is, a true event can end up being far more disruptive. Gartner estimates the average cost of downtime caused by an IT failure is $5,600 per minute or $300,000 per hour, on average. This doesn’t even account for lost customers, delayed services or damage to a company’s brand. In today’s digital, fully-connected community, utility companies can’t risk not having an alternate solution to get back online in the event of an outage.

Keeping pace with digital change can be a huge undertaking for utility companies, both big and small, especially in today’s rapidly evolving digital age. Continuous technology advancements mean even the newest technology will someday be obsolete, and investing in upgrading equipment can be costly, unexpected and hard to prioritize.

Security vulnerabilities in your technology infrastructure are no longer something just for your IT department to worry about; the impact of a cyberattack can quickly send ripples throughout your entire organization, from its balance sheet to its stockholders. And with more than 53,000 security incidents reported in 2018 alone, the question has seemingly flipped from not if, but when your network could be in the crosshairs.

What started as an average Monday at Yahoo headquarters in 2000 turned out to be one of the first widely reported distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. After an attacker took over and redirected a university’s computers to flood Yahoo’s internet portal traffic, the media company fell victim to a three-hour blackout that left many scratching their heads, wondering what had just happened.

It is easy to think of outsourcing as just a way to reduce costs and overhead. Organizations contract with an outside vendor to perform an IT function or to provide an IT service that they can’t, either because their own internal costs to deliver it have become prohibitive or because it no longer fits their core capabilities.