There are a lot of differing opinions floating around these days about “Storage Tiering” and the different methods of achieving it. Before we get into some of the popular approaches you’ll read about, let’s talk about why tiering is important.

The “need” for storage tiering stems from the fact that different types of drives have different performance metrics associated with them. When we talk about random IOPS, the following table indicates some rough sizing guidelines that architects can use to ballpark a solution.

While there are other factors like read/write ratio, raid types, block sizes and random/sequential workloads, this post isn’t about how to size a storage solution, it’s about why storage tiering is relevant to you.

When you compare these tables, one thing is obvious – SSD drives perform the best but are cost-prohibitive. This is why we don’t use SSD for everything. In the past, the only way to balance cost and performance was to have a “fast” pool of storage made up of 10,000rpm or 15,000rpm drives, and a “slow” pool of storage made up of 7,2000rpm drives which were far less expensive per terabyte.

That meant whenever we deployed a new application or service, we’d need to manually determine if that application would reside on the “fast’ or the “slow” pool of storage.

You may notice I keep putting fast and slow in quotes – this is because even though a 7,200rpm drive may provide fewer IOPS per spindle than a 15,000rpm drive, it’s not necessarily slower. If we have a pool of storage made up of qty 20 – 7,200rpm drives vs a pool of qty 6 – 15,000rpm disks, which is faster?

The 20-drive 7,2000rpm pool would have a ballpark IOPS rating of 1600 IOPS, whereas the 15,000rpm disk drive pool would only have 1080 IOPS for the “fast” pool.

The purpose of these tiering technologies really allows us to take different drive types and blend them into a single pool of storage – and then have the array manage which types of data reside on which type of disk. This forgoes the need of worrying about “fast” and “slow” disk types, since they’re all just different buckets of IOPS that we have created a single pool out of. This approach drastically reduces our storage management since we no longer need to decide if an application should go on “fast” or “slow” disk.

Storage tiering is great from a technical perspective. It’s also less management for better performance. So how how does it save you money? If money were no object, we’d simply build arrays completely out of SSD and tiering technology wouldn’t be relevant at all. Unfortunately, we all live in the real world where building all-SSD arrays for general workloads isn’t often the most fiscally responsible thing to do.

What tiering allows us to do is look at your data center requirements and build to what you need. If we were to define our requirements as “30TB at 10,000 IOPS” – we could then use ALL of the different drive types to meet those requirements in a manner that has the least cost, but still meets those requirements. We’re no longer stuck at deciding what drive type we want to use at the onset of the architecture.

Expansion is the other great use case for storage tiering. Once upon a time if we ran out of capacity in our “fast” pool, we’d need to add “fast” disk even though the performance was adequate. Applying storage tiering, we can add expensive high performance SSD drives when we’re out of performance, or cost-effective 7,200rpm drives when we’re out of capacity. Being able to balance cost and performance as we scale is huge!

While trying to predict what your storage performance requirements will be years in the future is impossible – maintaining the flexibility to grow in the most cost-effective manner results in huge savings.

In my next post, I’ll discuss the different types of tiering available in the market.

BYOD embodies many requirements that stretch outside the traditional realm of IT including change management, policy development and program delivery. We recognize there’s a disconnect between business and IT as it relates to BYOD – and this is what we’re doing to help our clients navigate with the launch of the Softchoice Innovation Office.

The Business Is Seeking Outcomes

BYOD has landed in the corporate backyard. It might have been launched by a request at the executive boardroom, or a new mobile workforce enablement strategy. It may be the influence of Gen-Y’ers entering the workforce brandishing their favorite mobile device, and insisting on keeping it.

Attract the best talent. Increase sales and marketing productivity. Improve the end-user computing experience. These are the demands that are impacting your business. And they’re all core to a solid BYOD strategy.

Why IT struggles with BYOD

After a quick look at your existing arsenal of IT tools, and weaponry and you may find gaps between technology and business strategy. Point technology may exist for certain BYOD circumstances, but how will the solutions align to the current and future organizational goals?

Now is the opportunity for IT leadership to take a progressive stance towards adopting BYOD and delivering a technical foundation that can support new strategies.

In many cases, hundreds of complex decisions paralyze IT leaders from taking a proactive stance on BYOD – some streaching far beyond the realm of traditional IT service porfolios. Most react to the immediate demands of the business related to BYOD, due in part to IT’s lack of bandwidth, staff or capacity to collect the right data, define and implement a well-rounded BYOD strategy.

Technology alone won’t plug the holes. To accelerate BYOD Outcomes, IT must implement a holistic, Architectural, Policy & Change Management Program. That’s why Softchoice’s newly formed Innovation Office is engaging customers throughout North America in a new way.

An Innovation-Centered Approach to BYOD

Softchoice has launched an North American Innovation Office focused on co-creating services that address BYOD and other major IT trends hand-in-hand with our clients. We’re bringing together forward-thinking leaders to learn, debate and exchange ideas on how to capitalize and realize returns on upcoming trends related to business strategies like BYOD.

Want to get involved?

We’re looking for progressive leaders in a variety of industries to participate with us in the development of our next generation Alpha and Beta programs related to trends impacting their business. Client participation is limited to 10 Alpha Customers per new service. By participating, you’ll receive exclusive access to our unique Innovation Executive Forums and introductory co-development pricing.

If you’d like to learn more about how your organization could partner with Softchoice, please contact us at innovationoffice@softchoice.com.

It’s funny how things evolve so quickly. Just a few years ago, the thought of employees using their own phones or laptops for work at work was unthinkable.

But as the consumerization of IT trend grows from a trickle to a flood, many organizations have no choice but consider how to implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program. And the experience at Softchoice was no different.

Francis Li, Softchoice’s VP of Information Technology, faced this dilemma a couple of years ago and says “Initially we were resistant to the idea of BYOD, primarily because of security concerns around our corporate data. How could we control access to our valuable corporate assets with all kinds of devices accessing our networks?”

But then a couple of surprising things happened. First, some users who were eligible to receive corporate mobile devices were choosing not to do so. If they didn’t want a corporate device, what were they using?

Then, as part of a regular network review with one of our own TechChecks, IT discovered that over 150 non-standard corporate devices were connected to the network – which meant a lot of personal devices were already being used to access company data.

Subtle changes lead to fundamental change

Because an “underground” BYOD program was already underway, Li and other Softchoice leaders decided the time had come to re-evaluate their philosophy around personal device usage.

Additionally, the company also was noticing that costs for corporate owned mobile devices were growing as staff increasingly used them not only for work, but for personal emails, web surfing, on vacations and through loss and replacement of devices.

Li says “ We realized that what we were seeing was a fundamental change in how the company’s users were using their corporate mobile and laptop technologies, and it was having a direct impact on our costs, the ability of IT to support and control the environment and potentially impacting our data security. “

Not just a technology project

Li and his team recognized BYOD was something that would impact the whole company – it would require wholesale changes to our IT infrastructure, our usage and people management policies. It also required a shift in thinking in how to balance the security needs of the organization, with the demands of employees using devices of their own choosing where and when they wanted to use them.

First Steps

The IT Team analyzed employees’ mobile device usage, categorizing users by departments, studying use patterns and determining where possible, what amount of usage was corporate and what was personal. To the team’s surprise, the analysis showed that in some cases personal usage was 25% or even higher.

A thorough review was also conducted on corporate laptops and PCs to determine the number and type of Service Desk tickets received over the past year, the type of repairs, loss and replacements required and if there were password and authentication issues.

After a thorough analysis, the IT team shared their findings with the company’s department heads to source their thoughts on how to manage the increasing costs and employees expectations.

A cross-departmental BYOD committee was created to review the issues, and with the participation of HR, IT and Legal departments, a strategy was formulated laying out two plans for employees.

Mobile Plan: All employees select their own mobile device. A monthly stipend is allotted to cover acquisition and data usage costs and anything above the set limit is the employees’ responsibility, including all support and maintenance costs.

Laptop Plan: Employees who prefer to select their own laptops receive a stipend to cover acquisition and support; costs in excess of the stipend are the employee’s responsibility. The allowance, provided every fourth year, assumes a 3 year lifespan per laptop and requires employees to also purchase a 3 year warranty agreement to ensure support and maintenance.

Security Solutions
Security concerns, initially a huge drawback to implementing a BYOD laptop program, were resolved when the IT team developed a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment, ensuring centralized access control and security. Mobile device security was managed by a mandatory 4-digit password for users accessing MS Active Sync (for Exchange). The IT team is also currently evaluating options for MDM solutions, to implement in the next phase.

Enabling BYOD
Now with a solid plan and infrastructure in hand, the BYOD committee gauged employee interest by distributing an employee survey. The results showed that everyone was excited about BYOD and viewed the transition as a progressive, proactive strategy that would enhance their employee experience. About 20% of employees chose to go with their own laptop, and Li expects that number to grow as employees become more familiar with the program.

The Results
Softchoice launched the program in Fall 2012 and a few months into it, Li thinks it has been a resounding success.

“Feedback from employees has been very positive. Whether a user is managed by Softchoice or they’ve selected the self-service option, the user experience is the same. Users find themselves to be more productive working on devices of their choice, and they are more conscientious about maintaining their own devices.“ says Li.

“In addition BYOD has let the IT team become more strategic as we move away from delivering IT support. We can focus more on business outcomes and leveraging technology to accomplish the results the company wants. Best of all, our costs are now completely predictable which is a huge advantage to the business.”

The Future of BYOD

Li thinks the future may be a totally internet-enabled workforce. Eventually organizations will no longer procure and manage any devices, and everyone will use the device of their own choosing.

Software as a Service ( SaaS) applications have made it easier for people to choose what applications they want to use, when they want to use them. It just seems logical to allow users to access their favourite applications on the device of their choice as well.

For organizations thinking about starting their own program, Li has this advice, “Be sure to get a baseline read on your BYOD landscape first, to find out what’s already in place. Every organization probably has some element of BYOD now and it will only grow. Assessing your current environment and ensuring that you have a thorough set of policies to clearly identify the roles and responsibilities are key to BYOD success.”

So whether you call it Bring Your Own Device, (BYOD), Bring Your Own Computer ( BYOC) or Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT), device diversity is here to stay. Mastering your own BYOD balancing act might be that great opportunity to provide employees with the technology they want, while increasing productivity, reducing costs and positioning your organization as progressive and cutting edge – a great home for innovation and new young talent.

Like it or not, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) isn’t going away. While everyone agrees it’s a good idea to plan for the inevitable, few know what to expect.

To give you an idea, we put together a list, compiled in part from first-hand experience of doing it ourselves, of the impacts you can expect when implementing a BYOD strategy.

Increases in worker productivity

One of the most important benefits of adopting a BYOD strategy is that workers are happier, and therefore more productive, when using customized devices of their choosing.

In a July 2012 study commissioned by Trend Micro, researchers surveyed 202 companies in the U.S., U.K. and Europe, all of which had adopted some form of BYOD.  Seventy per cent of them reported their goal had been to achieve higher worker productivity, while another 70 per cent of those reported actual increases in their bottom line revenues as a result.

Attracting and retaining new talent

Attracting fresh new talent is core to any businesses success. And BYOD is often seen as a great tactic to do just that. Talented young employees will go wherever they feel most comfortable – a­nd their comfort level may be highest when they’re allowed to whip out their Macbook instead of plonking away on the company machine.

The costs balance out – for the most part

It may be tempting to think of BYOD as a way to save money and reduce help desk tickets. But in the same Trend Micro study, help desk costs actually increased. Which really underlines the need for your BYOD strategy to draw the line and clearly communicate the responsibility the user has to maintain his/her own device.

With employees on the hook for their own hardware, IT desks get the added bonus of not dealing with “mysterious” epidemics of hardware malfunctions, which just so happened to coincide whenever the latest, greatest Blackberry came to market. Never again receive an email with the subject line: “I swear the phone totally just landed in the toilet.”

Still, in our experience, most companies offer a subsidy for employees to put toward their own device. And the cost savings of not buying and managing the hardware seem to break even.

Make it a team effort…or else

Most IT leaders don’t have the time to navigate through the HR policies, legal and tax ramifications, and budgeting necessary in developing a BYOD strategy.

Which is why BYOD is not an IT project – it’s a project for the entire company. In order to be effective, multiple departments need to be involved. Consider organizing a committee of people from all tiers of the company to ensure no aspect is overlooked. Otherwise, you could have a few costly gotchas, such as having to tax those subsidies as income, or determining which budgets to pull from.

Over the years, data centers became fragmented, with numerous types of proprietary software living in silos inside specialized hardware components – making them complex and frustrating to manage. Today, virtualization helps absorb and minimize this challenge, but creates another: Server and application sprawl from explosive data growth.

Server and application sprawl will cost you

A sprawl of uncontrolled and poorly managed application deployments leads to ‘application unavailability’ that endangers an organization’s profitability. Numerous examples of this continue to sprout up all around us. For example, do you remember the Amazon datacenter failure? I always like to remember an article I read that states:

“As business becomes increasingly dependent on technology and information, availability is a universal concern for every business, in every industry…And  globalization means there are no more periods of  ‘acceptable’ downtime. At any time of the day or night, somewhere in the world, customers and vendors need access to your corporate information. If they can’t get it, they’ll go elsewhere – creating an opportunity for your  competition.”

- David M. Fishman, Sun MicroSystems, Application Availability: An Approach to Measurement

I was young, and I have to admit that it touched me and created a sense of urgency. Maybe this is why I am so passionate about what I do today. Considering the problem of server and application sprawl, automation and ease of management are no longer a ‘nice to have’ they are a MUST. With this in mind, where do you start?

Today’s Data Center: a collection of bad IT decisions

All-too-often, when I walk into a customer’s data center, it reflects a collection of bad IT decisions. Too many static apps, too many servers and multiple data siloes endanger the profitability of an organization that is asking for overall thin management capabilities. This is certainly NOT the conversation we wish to have with a C-Level – at least I don’t!

Do you dream that your data, applications, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan (BCDR) and data management are all part of a unique single-minded strategy? So much so, that the strategy makes up your ‘normal’ day to day datacenter operations – allowing you to focus on the core applications you need to esnure the growth of your organization?

For some, it seems too good to be true.

Sustaining growth in a siloed environment

Even with the issues mentioned above, we are all magicians somehow. Somehow IT folks sustain organizational growth with cost control year over year. Today, I believe that all of the pieces are available out there, and it is up to us to define where the information lives! Now, there are many different approaches to solve this, but we must agree on this: With or without a single-minded data management strategy, organizations must build or buy mission critical applications that streamline business processes.

The pressure of big data

Big data, also known as ‘information explosion,’ is the effect of a rapid increase in data that hits medium and large organizations hard. While the amount of available data grows it presses on data siloes, and the problem of sorting, storing and handling all of this information becomes increasingly difficult. Bottom line: this is why data management solutions should be a core component of your BCDR strategy.

Do we hope this pressure will stop? Yes. But will it stop? Get ready friends, the world is expecting a data explosion of 130 Exabytes. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2011 to 2016, worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month – or an annual run rate of 130 exabytes by 2016.

Hold on a minute…2016? That’s in 3 years.

For example, Softchoice recently released a data management engagement for a large Canadian customer. They experienced rapid data growth and felt unable to maintain control of how their IT environment was handling the data. Why did this happen? Well, the consumerization of IT creates unstructured data, and unstructured data represents an average of 80% of the entire data center, leaving 20% for structured data.

In this case, since the available storage capacity per disk had increased, IT simply added more disks to solve for data growth and save money. However, the added capacity was a retroactive approach to solve their data growth problems. IT must maintain control of what, where, when and how incoming data is stored in the data center – at all times. With this in mind, IT must proactively search for holistic data center solutions to control and manage the growth of unstructured data.

How much do we fear data will grow in each organization alone? Gartner Director, April Adams, reported in 2012 that data capacity on average, in enterprises, grows at 40 percent to 60 percent year over year. This is much more than the 30% year over year we’re used to, don’t you think?

Unstructured and structured data is the lifeblood of all organizations, and I have seen more and more customers turning to Softchoice struggling with an increasing amount of data stored in their datacenter and asking us how to manage the exponential growth of data and the consumerization of IT (link).

The bottom line: data management is critical

While the ability to store increasing amounts of data empowers organizations, it also presents them with the challenge of managing all of that information.

I like to call this activity “balancing the data center” and I believe achieving this successfully is made of a precise combination of top-notch technologies with a strong roadmap that integrates well with your unique business processes. Bottom line: we want a solution that and is capable of automatically adapting to a changing environment and this solution must be easy to manage through policies while relying on equipment from top manufacturers in the industry.

Want to know more? Are you interested in understanding what Softchoice does differently and how we do it? What issues are you facing? Reach out, ask the question, leave a comment! Get prepared with the people that see it every day and are continuously looking at it. We surely don’t want to get caught in the wave of data.

Let’s start with the obvious.

There is no silver bullet, one-size-fits-all checklist for creating the perfect Bring Your Own Device strategy. Every organization is completely different.

But it’s not as bad as it sounds. Many of the technologies necessary to support a strategy are probably already in your ecosystem. It’s just a matter of knowing what’s missing, and how to leverage what you’ve already got.

To give you a hand, we’ve assembled seven tools and technologies that make planning and executing your BYOD strategy a reality.

1. Application Virtualization or Presentation

There are two approaches to delivering business apps to a device you are not in control of – for example, personal smartphones or tablets: Application Virtualization and Presentation.

The key difference between them is where the processes run. Presentation consumes the resources of a Terminal Server (TS) or Remote Desktop Server (RDS). This is a great approach when you need to deliver native Windows apps to non-Windows devices. Just make sure you’ve looked into server licensing requirements when doing that.

Application Virtualization consumes the resources of the destination device, such as a laptop. A key benefit is software compatibility. IT creates a Virtualized package based off the supported operating system (OS), say Windows XP, and is then able to stream that package to a non-supported OS, like Window 7.

Note that the destination device must support the Application Virtualization agent. So you could not take a Windows application and stream it to a Mac.

2. VDI or Desktop Virtualization

Another approach is presenting an entire Windows desktop to an employee-owned device using VDI or Desktop Virtualization. The value here is that users consume resources in the data center, and not on the local device. Similar to Application Presentation, desktop virtualization uses a display protocol to deliver the entire desktop to personal devices. This solution is good for different reasons. For example, it’s ideal when an application can’t be virtualized, or the application itself needs more access to a virtualized client operating system.

Keep in mind when you choose this delivery model, a Microsoft Virtual Desktop Argent (VDA) license is required.

3. Cloud brokerage solutions

Where and how does cloud fit into your BYOD strategy? SaaS or IaaS offerings are venues to offload internal resources to a cloud provider, and often clients will employ several – which gets complicated.

One approach is becoming an Internal Cloud Broker for your organization, leveraging a holistic solution like Softchoice Cloud. This type of platform lets you find and buy SaaS apps, manage and deploy them to personally-owned devices, federate them securely through Active Directory, and get the 24/7 support you need to make your users happy.

4. Mobile Device Management

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is a powerful tool to securely manage the network access of employee-owned devices.

The main upside of MDM is that it enables IT to handle entire fleets of devices at once, setting the policies and access restrictions, without having to deal with every device individually. All users are required to do is sign-in to an app or web page, and you automatically push the correct configuration to that user, based on his/her profile.

A good MDM solution example would be Airwatch, which offers great compliance control via a SaaS solution.

5. Wifi bandwidth

One common “gotcha” for BYOD is WiFi. When most organizations rolled out the wireless networking technology, the majority of employees connected via Ethernet. In today’s world of instant-on devices, large organizations barely have enough WiFi infrastructure to support a fraction of the total employee base.

What we regularly see in mobility assessments is that our clients frequently underestimate the sheer volume of outside devices connecting to their infrastructure.

6. Data Loss Prevention

Data Loss Prevention is a good idea if you want to make sure certain types of data are simply not allowed to leave the network.

For instance you probably don’t have any reason to allow credit card numbers, or social security numbers to leave the premises via email. By establishing policies and leveraging technologies that stop the most sensitive data from leaking (preventing certain kinds of attachments or types of data), you are insulating yourself from risk. So when an employee loses their personal Android device, the risk to your organization is mitigated – and it hopefully also means one less headache for you.

7. Network Access Control and Authentication for Guests

It’s very common for visiting clients or guests to require access the internet at your office. The risk, of course, is having unmanaged (and non-secure) client devices connecting to your corporate network.

With NAC, you can easily do just that. A good example of a NAC is Cisco ISE, a policy-control platform that is device- and location-aware.

A NAC also allows you to implement security policies in place that dictate what a user can- and can’t – access remotely. For example: users can’t access tier-1 apps from their local Starbucks… but coming from a trusted environment like their home office, they can.

You’ve decided to open up your organization to BYOD — so what’s next? Along with mobile devices comes the need for mobile apps.

One question that constantly arises: Which of our business applications should be made available on a mobile platform? While common apps that employees use every day (like CRM) are solid contenders, not every app will – or should – be available as an app. Think about the practicality of filling out a timesheet spreadsheet on a smartphone.“There are apps that help you with the day-to-day business, like CRM, tracking and ordering — ones that you want to get into the hands of your ever-increasing mobile workforce,” said Doug Sekus, director of business development for servers and virtualization with Softchoice.

There are other apps to consider too – like those that get you closer to customers and employees. “Because of the proliferation of mobile devices, smart companies are leveraging mobility in more creative ways, not just putting apps into a mobile format,” said Sekus.

While there’s often a misperception that apps can simply be extended to a mobile format, it’s not quite that easy. They likely need to be re-written or built from the ground up for a new form factor, potentially across several operating systems (depending on the company’s BYOD strategy).

If a company has its own development team, re-writing those apps or build new ones is one option. If an organization doesn’t have the internal resources or know-how, hiring a company specializing in this area is the best option.

There’s more than one approach to developing mobile apps. One is to develop brand-new apps that are specifically targeted to mobile devices. “If you develop apps that run on an iPhone, the advantage is you have a lot of control — you can develop for the device itself and leverage features such as GPS, Compass and Address Book,” said Sekus.

Sekus does caution that while this allows you to build a richer user experience, it also means you’re developing for a single device, which could lead to higher development costs — and may not fit in with your BYOD policy.

Web technologies like HTML5 have matured to the point where you can create meaningful apps just by pointing the mobile device at a web browser, said Sekus.

For the most part, companies are taking a cross-development approach that includes any mobile platform, whether that’s iOS, Android, Windows or BlackBerry — though this can also drive up development costs.

“One of the most important aspects of mobility is the user experience,” said Sekus. “Mobile users have very little patience — if you don’t offer a good user experience people will abandon the app.” Employees and customers alike will bypass the investment you’ve made in your brand because another app is simply easier to use.

“When developing an app for mobile devices, it has to be simple, it has to be purpose-built and it has to be limited in functionality,” he said. “Most business apps are too complicated.”

Developers should consider what they’re trying to accomplish. “Are you going to offer your users something they actually want and is there real value in delivering that mobile solution?” said Sekus. A CRM app, for example, offers myriad capabilities. On a mobile device, however, an employee might only need it to access customer information while they’re on the road.

“Taking the full functionality of an app to a mobile device is a flawed strategy,” said Sekus. “Consider the pieces of that app you’d like to take out to a mobile device, and then optimize that content from a viewing and performance perspective.” This may require writing new apps based on those pieces, he added.

That doesn’t mean you can’t offer users a rich, meaningful experience — you can keep it simple, but integrate maps, video, GPS, NFC or other tools to build a richer user experience.

The key to success is to solicit feedback from the people who use those mobile apps and to keep evolving them. “Once you’ve figured out why you want to do this, then you can put measurement criteria around it to see if you’re succeeding,” said Sekus. “The outcome is tied to why you’re doing this in the first place.”

The Consumer Electronics Show was in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago, and product announcements were steadily trickling out. It comes as no surprise that an entire slew of new smartphones, tablets, and laptops has been announced, but a growing trend is all the other intelligent, Wi-Fi connected devices being announced, such as Parrott’s Flower Power potted plant sensor or Canon’s PowerShot point-and-shoot camera.

Without a doubt, 2013 is the year of the network connected device, prompting Cisco to coin the term “Internet of Everything.”Some of you may have heard the term “Internet of Things” used sometime in the past 10 years. It was first coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, a pioneer in Radio Frequency Identifier (RFID) technology. Ashton’s vision was to extend the Internet into the world of physical things, through the use of RFID tags, bar codes, and 2D-codes. He wanted to allow objects to provide data dynamically, without human intervention, so the net result would be a more real-time view of the world around us. This evolution of connected devices started with a more passive and less real-time approach. RFID tags require devices called exciters to activate the tags and transfer data. The biggest caveat of this technology has been that the RFID tags have a limited range before an exciter would be able to read the tag’s data. This approach has worked well in the manufacturing industry, keeping track of various parts as they work through the assembly line, but is limited to verticals that don’t require real-time data to be fed back.

According to ABI Research, over 5 billion wireless (which includes Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, and ZigBee) chips will ship in 2013. By 2015, Wi-Fi enabled devices will pass the 10 billion mark. So what are the implications to businesses of all these new types of devices?

While it’s still early days, we’ve come up with 7 areas to start contemplating the future impact to your organization.

1. Since it’s never been easier or more affordable for manufacturers to include 802.11 wireless radios in their products, innovations will happen faster than ever before. This is based on the idea that real-time feedback from a device to its manufacturer over the Internet will improve the manufacturer’s designs of the device. Since most users are used to the idea of providing anonymous usage statistics in the software that we use today, it won’t be a stretch to allow manufacturers to collect data about the devices we use in order to improve them.  There are a myriad of implications to organizations from enabling your own data collection from customers to predicting equipment failures. A case in point is Union Pacific‘s early work in implementing the Internet of Everything
2. This will change our society just as much as the Internet itself did, and likely in ways that we haven’t even begun to fully grasp. Imagine leaving work on a cold January day, and opening the app for your home thermostat to make sure the heat is set to a nice comfortable temperature for when you get home. By the way, you can do this today with the Nest thermostat. We’ve reached a point that science fiction is becoming less fiction, all because these devices are connected to the Internet. How will your organizations offering or processes be impacted by the ability to communicate with devices?
3. There is going to be more data to crunch, and therefore, we will need larger data centers. Well, maybe not physically larger, but at least more horsepower and storage to work through all the new bits and bytes coming from these wireless devices. The data center of the future will be more important than ever before, because there is going to be more data than ever before, so scalability will be of utmost concern. If you are building out a data center today, make sure that you do so with a vision to where your infrastructure will need to be in the future. No decision in the data center is a silo anymore – a scalable infrastructure that can be automated is the direction we see many of our customers going today.
4. Some of you would no doubt have raised a major concern with the idea of all these devices connected to the Internet: what about security? The security of these devices is of paramount concern. Not only at the device level itself, but also at the Internet edge where these devices relay their data back to. If your company is interested in providing Internet connected devices to your customers, don’t forget to nail down your security strategy.
5. IPv6 will become more imperative as more devices are connected. We have all but extinguished the pool of publicly available IPv4 addresses, yet practically everything on the Internet still requires IPv4. Most devices such as laptops, tablets, and phones support IPv6 today, but the challenge is getting the network they are connected to, to support the protocol. Imagine in New York if for every ten people, only one was allowed to own a vehicle. It would be downright difficult to load up ten people in a Chevy for your morning commute, unless you were a rolling clown car style.
6. Regardless of if you agree with the above points, one thing is for sure:  there are more wireless devices connected to your access points than ever before, and that number is increasing. With client density growing, and more real-time traffic like voice and video being utilized, it’s important to make sure your wireless network is up to snuff. This could mean increasing access point density, or even upgrading radios and controllers in order to get newer features.
7. With all these new devices being connected to your wireless infrastructure, you can bet that some will be able to connect to a modern collaboration solution. With standards based protocols such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), intelligent devices could launch an interactive chat session to a desktop chat client, or even place a voice or video call based on a rule-triggered event. When everything is connected to the network, we move from being able to not just collaborate with each other, but with the things around us.

This is not just a fad. Our devices are more connected today than they were even a year ago, and it will change our society for the better, allowing for possibilities that were only the thing of science fiction before.

As one of the 25 CCIE’s at Softchoice, I have been seeing this first hand with our customers and have assisted some customers with the points above. Please post any questions or comments below or continue the conversation with me on Twitter. If you’d like more detailed information on any of the above, would like help with planning around any one of these areas, or would like a demo,  please get in touch with your account manager.

I am assuming you are reading this now because you saw this Security Alert for CVE-2013-4022 Released and:

1. the panic has set in, or
2. Oracle and Java have taken its toll or
3. You are now getting e-mails from your executives asking if you are aware, and what you are doing about this!

Let’s quickly assess what the Internet is yelling at us about, and what the real threats are.First off let’s look at the obvious.

There have always been problems with Java. Research demonstrates that a large number of attacks or breaches from last year were a direct result of threats related to Java. Kaspersky Lab estimated that last year 50 percent of all website exploitations were due to vulnerabilities in Java. Platforms that could be vulnerable include Windows, OSX, Linux and pretty much any system you are using that has a browser and java enabled. The United States Department of Homeland Security and Public Safety Canada advised users to disable java in their browsers.

How and What to Exploit.

The way Java is exploited is through an Exploit kit (available for sale online) putting the ability to attack you in the hands of relatively inexperienced attackers. They are using these kits to steal credit card data, personal information and potentially do other harm. Because these kits are being sold all over the Internet it harm spreads very quickly. McAfee covers this in greater detail here.

How to protect.

The 100% guaranteed fix is turn off Java all together, or disable it in your browser (personally this is what I have done). Here’s how to do it.

Now we all know this is not the solution for all scenarios because of how entrenched Java is in business. There are so many internal applications that rely on Java to operate that turning it off internally may end up hindering business. Fortunately there are other ways to protect yourself and your users.

1. Make sure you are patched and up to date. While several researchers are saying that the time it will really take Oracle to fix all the problems could take very long time. H.D. Moore, Chief Security Officer of Rapid7, said it could take two years for Oracle to fix all the security flaws in the version of Java used to surf the web; that timeframe doesn’t count any additional Java exploits discovered in the future.
2. Make sure your security tools are tuned and have current signatures. Most security vendors have said that their tools are able to block known .jar files that are served up by various exploit kits.
3. If you are using a web gateway product make sure you have turned on the web reputation services. Because the exploit will likely be delivered via the web, a web gateway can be the key to successfully defending against this (Learn more about drive by downloads here) Security vendors find malicious sites (intentionally or otherwise) and update their systems to prevent your users from visiting them.  This will ensure that you have the most updated security intelligence from around the world that your vendor provides.
4. Some firewalls/proxies/web gateways will allow you to flat out block any .jar file all together. This will reduce the likelihood of exploitation but may break essential content on external websites.
5. Create some new content for your Security Information Event Management System (learn more about SIEM) to watch for users downloading new .jar files and then correlate that to users communicating to know blacklisted sites across the internet.
6. As a last effort you can also go into the Java control panel under the security tab and set the security level to very high. Most should already be set to high but moving it to very high will limit some other unknown apps from running.

What we need to know is that we have many layers protecting us to ensure where one layer falls short we may be notified at another. If you wish to talk to someone that can help plan a strategy or design a solution please leave a comment below and someone from our security team will respond as quickly as we can. Or talk to your Softchoice rep about how to implement some of these solutions in your network.

Managing proprietary and public-facing data is key to your core business, growth and reputation and means that it is necessary to manage business and data growth while also handling increased management complexities. Unfortunately, Data Quality is a term that is often misused or ignored,  and even causes alarm in organizations. In this 3-part series, I’ll explore:

• how to measure or understand if you have data quality issues (this post)
• some of the bad habits we typically see that lead to bad data quality
• process errors that lead to data quality issues

I’ll also provide some advice on where you should focus and how we are able to help.

Four ways to measure the quality of your data

1. Completeness: Completeness validates whether mandatory attributes have a value, or optional attributes have a value based on a specific business condition. Conformance on the other hand ensures whether instances of data are stored in a format that is consistent with the business domain values. It also validates if the data value is within the range of acceptability for the given attribute.
2. Duplication: Duplication (uniqueness) validates if a data object exists more than once within the data set. It can validate primary key uniqueness and check other composite field attributes to search for duplicates within the data.
3. Consistency: Consistency verifies if the data values in one field are in sync with other values within the same record set. For instance, one could check if the zip code entered is consistent to the value for the state.
4. Accuracy: Accuracy checks the degree to which data correctly represents the real objects they are intended to model.  When a value cannot be systematically checked for correctness, accuracy is measured by how the values accord with the master source of record.

Don’t get ostrich syndrome: face data quality issues head on

It is often overwhelming for management to address the data quality issue when the proverbial “ostrich syndrome” kicks in. With “heads in sand,” the problem is ignored and dealing with poor data quality becomes an accepted way of operating.

What you can do right now

The first step is admitting there is a problem. Start by using these measures of data quality to assess your current state. This sounds like a lot of work (and it is). But it’s also possible to get help here. At Softchoice, we offer a Data Integrity Healthcheck a service which provides data collection, analysis and reports with recommended actions for remediation.

Some of the things we look at in the Healthcheck are:

• examine solution architectures for data integrity and compliance policies, procedures, incident response and risk management strategies.
• review existing documentation
• look at sample outputs and configurations of existing storage solutions
• determine data integrity gaps, single points of failure and weaknesses
• scalability and performance

Whether you leverage our service, or do this yourself – looking at the items above to get a clear understanding of your current state is a great place to start. Ultimately, your end goal will be to develop a comprehensive data governance program that can address some of the common causes of poor data quality and ensure that you don’t end up back where you started.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the common problems I’ve encountered that lead to poor data quality:

1. Bad Habits: The act of data cleansing is where you recognize data issues and cleanse it or augment it as just part of good data hygiene. Just like brushing your teeth – if your users aren’t adhering to routines that keep your data healthy it can lead to bigger, more expensive, issues down the road. To learn more, read our 2nd blog post in this series on Top 3 Worst Data Quality Habits.
2. Bad Processes: Data is much more stable than any person in your organization. This is why you need a strategy (also known as a meta-data management strategy) to advise the IT and business communities in your organization on how to view and use the data that a company captures and stores. The biggest challenge here is making sure people stick to the new processes.

To learn more, skip to the 3rd post in this series and read Top 3 Process errors and how to fix them. All of this work will lead you down a path to clean reporting and quality business intelligence! If you want to learn more about how Softchoice can help make this complex process easier, check out our Data Integrity Healthcheck or leave your questions below and we will get back to you.