From all the hype it seems cloud computing is driving everything having to do with IT and business success. But actually it is virtualization that both provides the foundation for cloud computing and drives it forward.

Virtualization refers to the ability to run multiple logical computers within a single physical computer. It is the key to consolidating systems and gaining the benefits of higher utilization and management efficiencies. But virtualization is neither simple nor straightforward.

A recent survey by CA Technologies on the state of IT automation, suggests that virtualization is not delivering the benefits managers were led to expect. The survey of 460 decision-makers from midsize and large enterprises found more than 60% are disappointed in virtualization’s ability to deliver savings. But the survey also pointed to the solution. more

An Oracle announcement in March about dropping support for a particular Intel chip (Itanium) triggered a clash among two IT giants. While it may make for fun viewing from the sidelines, Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) thousands of customers using the Oracle database have reasons to be concerned.

Many thousands of HP customers run Oracle software on Itanium-based servers. These customers rightfully are nervous, fearing the loss of support from Oracle for their critical database servers. As wiredFINANCE wrote previously, moving to a different server is not trivial. HP has tried to calm nerves with a recent FAQ here.

No matter how either of the vendors tries to soothe nerves, many companies will opt for technology migration. Eager to exploit a competitive opportunity, IBM is jumping in with migration deals. In truth, companies have options. more

Disaster recovery (DR) has been challenging from the start, and it certainly isn’t getting any easier. Technology advances like backup-to-disk has simplified some aspects of DR while virtualization helps in some ways and complicates it in others.

Large systems running mission critical workloads present a particularly difficult and costly DR challenge. Companies needing to meet very short (measured in seconds) recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) typically have to invest in pairs of systems set up as synchronized mirrors. It works but is costly, and synchronous replication presents distance constraints.

Gartner, in a report earlier this year, advises managers to think beyond IT-focused DR, shifting instead to business continuity management (BCM). BCM focuses on the survival of the business and the continuation of operations. Without BCM, you could recover your systems and data and still lose the business. more

How many data warehouses and data marts does your organization have? Finance probably has at least one data warehouse and possibly several data marts. And that’s just your department.

Enterprise data warehousing (EDW) has been around for well over a decade. IBM has been long promoting it. So have Oracle and HP and many others. The traditional EDW, however, has been sidelined even now, a time when data is exploding at a tremendous rate and new data types, from sensor data to smartphone and social media data to video data are becoming pervasive. IBM recently projected a 44-fold increase in data and content, reaching 35 zettabytes by 2020 (a zettabyte equals 1000 bytes raised to the seventh power).

In short, the world of data has changed dramatically since organizations began building the conventional EDW. Now the EDW needs to accommodate these new types of data and be flexible enough to handle rapidly changing forms of data and analytics. more

Enterprise 2.0, the annual conference focused on social media, was held in Boston this week with IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft as major sponsors. The conference makes available a wealth of useful information, mainly in the form of white papers and videos of the keynote presentations, for free. Check it out here.

Last year, the conference focused on the search for the social media killer app for business. The growing consensus then was collaboration. wiredFINANCE covered it here.

This year collaboration is a given. Some other interesting themes, however, emerged in conversations with various key players. For example, Cisco’s Murali Sitaram observed that the world appears to be rapidly evolving into a network of networks. What might that imply for your business? more