Posts by hmas

City council audit trail is an audit fail after disastrous Oracle ERP rollout

Occam's Razor

The simplest explanation is that it was turned off during implementation and someone forgot to re-enable before production go live.

Inside Denmark’s hell week as critical infrastructure orgs faced cyberattacks

Where do you start?

You have infrastructure with a service lifecycle far in excess of Enterprise IT equipment. Some of this kit makes mainframes and mid range systems look positively spritely and youthful.

Most of these environments have evolved over time and more and more complexity has been bolted on. Some of the underlying infrastructure still uses serial and closed protocols to communicate. As for secure communications - forget it.

So, against that backdrop, deploying lots of smaller edge firewalls to protect such networks seems logical

Re: Zyxel firewalls

A bad workman blames their tools. Whether it's Cisco, Checkpoint, Sonicwall or ZyXel gear vulnerabilities are a fact of life. The unforgiveable part is either assuming that your supplier is applying updates or opting out of the update program altogether due to cost.

Unfortunately, it's a common oversight, especially in heavy industry and CNI where they apply the same patch and vulnerability policies to IT infrastructure as they do to OT/ICS/SCADA; in other words not actually having patch and vulnerability policy.

If you have a fan, and want this company to stay in business, bring it to IT now

Brings back bad memories

One of my worst jobs was a stint as regional IT Manager for a group of recruitment agencies. If the recruiters themselves weren't enough of a challenge, the 'server room' made up for it. A long thin cupboard with 3 full racks of kit and two wall mounted Aircon units blowing cold air over the top of the racks from a 90 degree angle. Useless. We had to lease 2 portable units to keep things working over Summer. I'd have to rush into work each morning hoping they'd lasted the night and the Infra hadn't toasted overnight.

I lasted 5 months before I decided I'd had enough of the place and was lucky enough to get head hunted. Ironically just around the time the server room was moved to a colo DC.

A few months after I left I heard that they had experienced a raft of major outages caused by SAN failures. I wonder what could have led to those?

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes's arguments for new trial deemed spurious – just like her tech

Re: Good

I'd second this. There were enough dissenting/sceptical voices that if an investor listened hard enough they'd have known it was too good to be true. It was the medical equivalent of the mechanical turk.

UK's Newport Wafer Fab now under Chinese ownership

Usual vacuous bluster from BloJo

Utility companies, ARM, transport operators, the list is endless. This case really beggars belief though. This should have been blocked on national security grounds.

VMware on AWS: Low-risk option or security blanket for those who don't like change?

Re: History may not repeat, but it does rhyme

VMWare have an excellent revenue stream, autonomy and deep pockets and have made some canny acquisitions over the past few years to ensure this isn't the case.

SDWAN and SDN - Velocloud and NSX

EDR/Antivirus - Carbon Black

MDM/MAM - Airwatch

There have also been other developments such as ESX on ARM that whilst it was a bit of a giggle at last year's VMWorld has serious real world potential in IoT scenarios (small Linux distros on wind turbines, Mobile Communication Gateways)

Whilst I would question the business case behind running significant sized workloads in this manner rather than transformation, thereare plenty of organisations running legacy applications on Windows 2000/2003, XP, etc... that would be interested in divesting themselves of the hassle of maintaining data centres fror this purpose.

Oracle trying hard to make sure Pentagon knows Amazon ain't the only cloud around

Fixed that for you

***

It received 218 questions to that RFP, which included one about whether a request for an online commercial marketplace for third-party products and services was "intended to limit the competition to NOT ORACLE".

Microsoft celebrates a bumper financial year ... by making stuff pricier

Get used to it

With the departure of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft has significantly changed its attitude towards what it deems old fashioned products such as Windows Enterprise and Office. It's less effort and more profitable to push customers towards Microsoft 365 F1 or E3.

Alibaba's lights are on in Australia, but hardly anyone is home

History repeating itself.

Huawei's launch into Enterprise IT was no different. Lots of shiny and, admittedly impressive, new kit and an even shinier new office, but a small team of, inevitably Chinese consultants that were expected to install, commission, configure, train partners and make the inevitable calls back to China to sort out technical issues.

It''ll be interesting to what, if any appetite there is or what Alibaba's value proposition is.

Antivirus tools are a useless box-ticking exercise says Google security chap

Box ticking exercise

Exactly as the man says. So, choose a product that involves the least administration effort, has the smallest overhead and pay as little as possible and focus your efforts on proper security, like, behavioural analytics.

Microsoft: We're hiking UK cloud prices 22%. Stop whining – it's the Brexit

We're always told IT is no difference to gas or electricity

So it was only a matter of time before Cloud providers cottoned on and started using currency fluctuations and Base rate changes as an opportunity to hike prices. It's OK though because the prices will drop back down if and when sterling stabilises because that'she exactly what utility companies do.

*This* is the biggest risk with the cloud. Your provider can impose a 22% unbudgeted increase.

Oracle plans Exadata-as-a-service, in cloud or on-prem

Not sure why you've posted anonymously, but anyway your assumption is wrong.

The hardware is only half of the Exadata 'Value Proposition'. It includes a slew of proprietary software features (compression, database aware storage, etc...) that not only gives Oracle an advantage over comparable solutions, but also pretty much guarantees vendor lock in. The traditional IT costs (HW, SW and support) of exadata are significant and the different price points make the jump in cost from, say half to full rack.

So, Exadata in the cloud makes a lot of sense for Oracle and some sense for some customers. But it is definitely a case of caveat emptor. Once you have gone down the Exadata route the transitional back to even traditional Oracle Enterprise Database is a hard one, let alone porting your app to MS SQL, Postgres, etc...

VMware VSAN: When good enough more than passes muster

Re: Pricing? Way too high

OR

4. HPE Proliant DL380 server + HPE D3600/D3700 + Windows Server 2016 Datacenter + HPE StoreVirtual VSA

5. HPE Proliant DL380 server + HPE D3600/D3700 + VMWare + HPE StoreVirtual VSA

Oracle plays virtual catch-up with new VM release

Oracle's solution to a problem of its own making

This release doesn't catch up to its rivals. It closes some of the gaps and places Oracle VM within reach of where many of its rivals were several years ago.

Microsoft SQL Server for Linux is a brilliant and logical idea

Plenty of reasons why

ISV applications, embedded systems, appliances...

Huawei who? We probe the sleeping storage dragon's brains

I would call it focussed

3rd largest smartphone vendor in terms of worldwide handset shipments. Largest 4G Infrastructure vendor and giving Ericsson and NSN a thorough kicking in all markets other than US and Australia.

I bought Huawei storage 3 years ago. My concerns at the time was that the software and management capabilities wouldn't be up to scratch. Sure enough, it was a little rough round the edges compared to the established competition, but it worked and worked well and in terms of IOPS and capacity for my money, it trounced the competition.

Today's buzz words are virtualization, SDS and SDN. More and more control is being pushed to the software stack and the old guard are losing their hold on customers.

HP storage revenues declining as the dithering continues

Storage simply isn't the cash cow it used to be; vendors are seeing first hand that customers simply don't have the same brand loyalty and are having to discount hard and fast to win deals.

One third of servers, storage and switches are sold to clouds

Hmm

I would be very surprised if storage arrays and ethernet switches weren't purchased for the purpose of use within an enterprise and resources controlled by said enterprise.. Still, far it be for me to get in the way of a good headline.

Microsoft hikes support charges by NINETY TWO PER CENT

Seems reasonable

I'm not a Microsoft apologist, but by giving customers the option of purchasing single or packs of support incidents, Microsoft is being far more generous than plenty of other vendors that, if you phone up without a support contract, will simply direct you to their subscriptions team or account exec to purchase an annual contract.

Microsoft's approach allows customers to choose a support model that balances their budget and appetite for risk. If you don;t want to pay for premier support, either buy a pack of incidents or wait for something to break and whip out the credit card.

Dell planning to blend Compellent and EqualLogic arrays

As a current Equalogic and, at least this time last year, potential Compellent customer, I did not find the existence of both Equalogic and Compellent solutions confusing. What I did find 'confusing', or, more accurately, a significant oversight, was the lack of ability to

1) replicate between Compellent and Equalogic

2) seamlessly migrate between Equalogic and Compellent

Will IBM System x sink without trace before Lenovo can grab the helm?

I'm currently recruiting new staff. The proportion of CV's from current IBM technical sales staff 'looking for new opportunities' is certainly noticeable.

Symantec: Antivirus is 'DEAD' – no longer 'a moneymaker'

He's correct in that it is a race to the bottom. I am forever reading interviews or articles in the IT press about companies that switched from AV Vendor X to Y because it reduced their TCO due to such and such a reason and Vendor Y demonstrated a commitment to your Information Security requirements, etc...

Actually, Vendor Y pretty much bought you out of your final year and tied you into a 3 year deal at such a rock-bottom price that it's a miracle the finance guys approved the P&L on the deal. In fact, you can probably guarantee that, unless they sign up for 5 years next time round, there's no way you'll be able to match the price and mid-way through the second year they'll be planning the move onto Vendor Z or maybe even back onto Vendor X. Unless, of course, your software is such a pain to remove and the customer is lazy that they decide to just stick with the higher price.

That, ladies and gentleman, is not a sustainable business model.

Dell staffers react to news of 1-in-3 axe dangling overhead

It isn't just about PCs

Ralph B

"Back in the day when I bought Dells, back when Dell were successful, I never spoke to a salesman. I just called up the website, configured the PC, paid the money and waited for it to be delivered."

JAAC

"The joy of Dell - as opposed to HP/IBM - you checked out the specs on the website, ordered the machine on the website, it arrived."

Dell doesn't want to be a PC business. Selling Latitudes, Optiplexes and low-end PowerEdge servers and PowerVault Storage is a race to the bottom. Dell's challenge is to convince Enterprises to replace EMC and NetApp with Compellent or to replace Cisco TOR switches with Force10s. For that, they need the right sales teams with a heavier focus on highly technical Sales Engineers and account executives with the clout to create a strong business case to achieve a competitive win.

HP clampdown on 'unauthorised' server fixing to start in January

Re: Great, there went my plans for the Xmas Break

You bought an EVA this year? Hahaha.

Unite: HP 'addicted to culture of job cuts' as axe raised again

Funny you should say that

But it's one of the first things our Dell Account Exec said when he visited the other day.

Five reasons why you'll take your storage to the cloud

The author should have just submitted a one line article with the following link

http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/nirvanix-shutdown-some-customers-face-mi/240161514

and let us decide for ourselves

Don't let the SAN go down on me: Is the storage array on its way OUT?

Is the SAN on it's way out?

Not by a long way. There is definitely an issue compounded by the prevalence of lots of different silos of storage infrastructure within a lot of sizeable organizations. They tend to procure storage on a per application or per business unit basis, so you get a sprawl of low to mid range storage.

Moving storage from shared arrays onto local servers and pooling won't solve the issue. It'll require extensive planning and you still haven't address the silo mentality that led to capacity being hoarded on a per department basis.

Maybe what you need is a better SAN and better processes to manage capacity, demand and chargeback.

BlackBerry pie sliced up: Nuke-plant OS, BBM chat app, etc sale mulled

BB made a mistake with their BB10 strategy and are paying the price.

Mobile devices are representative of the typical corporate hierarchy - premium 'lifestyle' devices for the execs and basic functional handsets for the general workforce. BB should have come to market with a range of handsets. The drip feed of the Z10, followed by Q10 followed by Q5 meant that only now are corporates considering the move, only the industry is telling them that BB is dying, so they'll hold off on any upgrades. Nokia played the strategy perfectly - 520 - 720 for the general workforce, 820 and above for the bigknobs.

A lot of mid sized companies probably threw out BES in favour of BES Express a couple of years ago. We certainly did. Seeing as BES10 is now commercially licensed again and Activesynch works perfectly well, there's no compelling case for BES10, so no real differentiator betwen BB and other vendors.

Companies really serious about enforcing multi level security have already looked at containerization and are probably well into a PoC of Good or other solution.

It'll never be a 2 horse race and Android and iOS will never be unseated as the main players, but there's a potentially huge market for the 3rd player and currently that's looking likely to be Nokia/WP8

VMware squeezes customers for stellar quarter

Re: Looks like the layoffs helped too

...and whether you like them or loathe them, that is precisely why Microsoft are successful. For many people, 'good enough' is good enough.

Wait, what's that noise? It's HP's UK steamroller coming to a halt at last

Here's another idea

Stop your sales team up in Prestwick, or wherever it is they're based, cosying up to whichever partner has happened to take them out to Pizza Express that week and handing over my details so that they can contact me and try and pinch the business.

It shows a total disdain for partners that have spent years developing a solid working relationship with your customers.

If BlackBerry were a bunch of startups, would you invest?

Blackberry's big mistake isn't that they misjudged the market. It's that they misjudged their own market.

The majority of BB users love their physical keyboard. Whether the future is touchscreen or not is irrelevant, BB should have pandered to the majority and released the Q10 first.

BB are strongest in the enterprise market. Probably the kind of corporate environment that doesn't have a BYOD policy, doesn't offer activesynch and is far from being an early adopter. Requiring those customers to upgrade to BES10 to support new devices was a bad idea.

Fund-a-mental: The real problem with clouds and managed services

The MSP, SaaS provider has the option of turning off or turning down the tap as a way of solving an impasse or, at least, helping it reach a conclusion. Nothing like the threat of halving the number of concurrent users to help nudge that overdue invoice along.

Compare that to a traditional software/hardware business that has to resort to with-holding support or court action to retrieve equipment or monies owed.

About to outsource your IT? Read this first

Re: Don't do it for the money

The challenge is that cost can be interpreted in a number of ways. If you simply base your calculations on the cost of providing a service, role or entire function then it is pretty easy to make a sound financial case for outsourcing. Cost needs to be calculated based on cost of providing service, reliability of service and cost to business of reduced productivity due to any drop in service availability or quality or increase in resolution time.

I guess the point here is that if you are going to outsource, make sure you have the right processes and, if required, the right tools in place to ensure you can measure the performance of your supplier and have a sound contract in place to get things put right or allow you to exit if and when service levels drop.

Revealed: The gift that keeps on giving to Oracle ... is dying

My thoughts.

For Oracle, the ELA creates a couple of challenges. For some companies, they've managed to negotiate a site or campus wide license that makes Oracle quite a cost effective in the long term. However, those ELAs possibly exclude certain lucrative options, like Real Application Clusters. So, it creates a barrier to entry for the Oracle salesperson as the customer has, for once, got the vendor over a barrel. So, you now have a customer that probably hasn't implemented the best, or most strategically appropriate solution, partly because they do not want to effect any change to their ELA. Not a great situation.

It also makes life difficult for Oracle when it comes to selling their current flavour of the month - the engineered system (pretty much Exadata).

However, the SaaS alternative isn't much better. Salesforce are no better than the traditional enterprise vendors in many respects - minimum contract commitment, annual billing, lots of hidden costs.