1. CIO

    Backup and Recovery in the Cloud: Simplification is Actually Really Hard

    Still doing all of your backup and recovery locally?  “To the cloud” will be the rallying cry that you hear from, well, pretty much everyone these days.  After all, it’s super easy to retarget your backups at the cloud and drink all of that sweet, sweet unlimited storage capacity and never h… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  2. CIO

    Ransomware Liability and the Future of Security

    If you’ve visited any tech related web site in the past week, you’re painfully aware of the WannaCry ransomware outbreak.  This one has been really bad as it exploits a vulnerability in Windows that Microsoft patch in mid-March of this year.  For those that patched their systems, things may no… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  3. CIO

    Rethink HCI with Pivot3 Acuity Software and X5 Hardware Nodes

    If you haven’t heard of Pivot3, you need to fire up Google and take a look at them.  For some, Pivot3 was one of the progenitors of hyperconverged infrastructure and, even before the phrase hyperconverged was invented, had an appliance series with traits eerily similar to what we now call hyperco… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  4. CIO

    2017 Enterprise IT Secrets Revealed!

    First off, 2017 will see an increase in the quantity of clickbait article titles... Each year about this time, analysts, bloggers, and random people on the street start to prognosticate about the coming year, seeking to predict the trend that will define the year, the hype that will get blown out… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  5. CIO

    Analyst-Induced Hype and Managing Real-World IT

    Recently, I received an article in my inbox entitled “If you’re not planning for IoT, you’re already behind” and, frankly, it just frustrated me. Although the article author was listed as simply “CIO Staff” the featured picture was that of Vernon Turner, SVP Enterprise Systems & Fellow f… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  6. CIO

    Your Data Is Useless

    You may have heard the phrase “A person is smart, but people overall are stupid.” This phrase is intended to demonstrate that, as individuals, people can provide brilliant insight, but as the number of opinions grows and insight ultimately becomes lost to rhetoric and groupthink, stupidity event… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  7. CIO

    Solution Spotlight: Cloud Migration And Mobility In Minutes With Velostrata

    Fast. Simple. Easy. These are not the things that come to mind when you think of cloud migration and cloud mobility, but one startup is shaking things up to make it a reality, albeit with some limitations. There’s no denying the intrinsic benefits of a hybrid cloud model. Flexibility, agility, sc… Read More

    By Kasia Lorenc
  8. CIO

    7 Hybrid Cloud Lessons From 7 Leading Cloud Computing Vendors

    Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses operate. It has transformed infrastructure, networking, storage, backup and recovery, performance analysis, troubleshooting, development and testing, and so much more. And today, there’s much more to cloud than what AWS and Azure have to offer… Read More

    By Kasia Lorenc
  9. CIO

    The Continuing Evolution of Hyperconverged Infrastructure

    It doesn’t seem all that long ago that the market was introduced to what we now consider “original” hyperconverged infrastructure technology.  In that initial wave of technology, we saw appliances combining servers and storage hit the shelves, firing a shot over the bow of storage providers t… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  10. CIO

    The Cloud Is A Journey, Not a Destination

    You’ve all heard the mantra that enterprise IT workloads are marching slowly (or quickly, in some cases) but surely to the cloud.  In this context, the assumption is that workloads are exiting the local data center and making their way to public cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.  Whi… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  11. CIO

    Get Your Data Under Control in 5 Steps

    Across every industry vertical and without regard for organization size, there is one fact that remains true: the data deluge is upon us.  The much-ballyhooed “Big Data” phenomenon that prognosticators have warned about is here.  Whether or not you’re a believer in the transformational power… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  12. CIO

    Exploring 10-year Trends

    Storage is the cornerstone of data center. Without it, the world as we know it today wouldn’t exist. The data that we store is extremely important to our businesses and even to our families. As such, the storage industry - and storage administrators in particular – are notorious for moving very… Read More

    By James D. Green
  13. CIO

    Bridging the Cloud Gap: Hybrid Cloud is the Technical and Financial Choice

    For years, we’ve heard the mantra of “to the cloud” in which pundits have said, with absolute certainty, that a journey to the public cloud is inevitable and will be the platform of choice for every business in the not-too-distant future. Nope.  Not gonna happen. Here’s what will happ… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  14. CIO

    Make IT Relevant By Managing Technical Debt

    [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='36' color='#ffffff' background_color='#777575' border_color='']I[/dropcaps]T departments are wallowing in debt… technical debt. Just like those that have racked up massive credit card bills, technical debt can be debilitating and results in an IT function that st… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  15. CIO

    CIOs Need to Prepare Staff for Cloud Services

    [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='36' color='#ffffff' background_color='#777575' border_color='']I[/dropcaps]f your organization is just dipping its toes into the cloud paradigm, the impact on your staff will be relatively minimal, but they will still be affected. Your staff will need to learn the… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  16. CIO

    The Cloud, Hosted, or On-premises: The Many Options for the SMB CIO

    [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='36' color='#ffffff' background_color='#777575' border_color='']W[/dropcaps]hether it’s considered a blessing or a curse, CIOs today have a multitude of options at their disposal when it comes to running workloads.  In general, there are four options: On-prem… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  17. CIO

    The CIO and the Cloud: Embrace, Extend, Innovate

    [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='36' color='#ffffff' background_color='#777575' border_color='']T[/dropcaps]he word “cloud” became a hot addition to the popular lexicon a few years ago and quickly took on eye-rolling status as vendors tripped over themselves to include the new term in all of t… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  18. CIO

    The 80/20 Rule Is Dead; Long Live the 80/20 Rule

    [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='36' color='#ffffff' background_color='#777575' border_color='']I[/dropcaps]f you’ve worked in IT for any length of time at all, you’ve probably heard of the 80/20 rule.  Also known as the Pareto Principle, this rule states that 80% of the IT budget an IT’s e… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe
  19. CIO

    Four Activities Every CIO Should Embrace

    [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='36' color='#ffffff' background_color='#777575' border_color='']G[/dropcaps]ood CIOs are far more than just good technical people or good business people. Good CIOs also need to be good leaders. In this article, I describe four activities that CIOs should embrace.… Read More

    By Scott D. Lowe