Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Windows XP is 10 years old, yet a substantial number of businesses are still using it.

They’re not really at fault. Upgrading to Windows Vista was considered too much work for too little payoff, and for many businesses upgrading to Windows 7 has for a long time seemed unnecessary.

That’s changing, however. With the rise of Ultrabooks and tablets, businesses using XP have found that it falls short. Decreasing support from manufacturers and software vendors means that XP can no longer drive the technologies they want to use.

Many in this position tell me that their plan is to wait for Windows 8. It shouldn’t be. Not only will migrating from XP to Windows 8 be a more difficult and complex task than moving right now to Windows 7, but Windows 8 remains a long way off.

Time to upgrade, but to what?

The Macmillian Dictionary defines the term “fit for purpose”, as something being “good enough to do the job it was designed to do”. With the lack of disaster recovery (DR) standards, how can we measure if an IT DR programme is good enough to do the job it was designed to do? How can we draw some conclusions from business continuity standards?

Today’s news of the death of Apple icon Steve Jobs comes as a shock not just to the technology industry but to the whole world. We here at Thomas Duryea would like to pay our respects to Steve as a great visionary, leader and entrepeneur – who took the Apple company and indeed the world to new places with his creative genius.

Our thoughts are with his family and friends as we remember the life and achievements of an inspirational man whose legacy will live on.

Apple’s tribute to Steve Jobs can be visited at http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

Most CIOs realise that the push from employees to bring their own devices to the enterprise table is a trend that’s here to stay.

With wave upon wave of new, consumer devices coming into the enterprise in the hands of employees, the question ‘How can I put this on the network?’ is ringing loudly in the ears of CIOs. Concerns over security and support costs have led many to reply, ‘You can’t,’ while others have made concessions where they can.

Like it or not, most realise that the push from employees to bring their own devices to the enterprise table — what’s been labelled BYO Computing (BYOC) — is a trend that’s here to stay.

Thomas Duryea’s CEO, Andrew Thomas has this week landed in WA to participate in The Australasian Safari – seven tough days and 2000km of motorsport endurance, the ultimate off-road adventure where competitors tackle the remote, rugged and stunning terrain of Western Australia.

Starting from Perth these adventure tour riders tear through the remote northern goldfields to historic Kalgoorlie, following the tracks of the professional motorsport competitors in the Australasian Safari (the likes of Craig Lowndes and Ben Grabham!). Andrew will be riding up to 400km on his dirt-bike each day and sleeping overnight in bivouac camps in outback WA.

For many businesses, the benefits of cloud computing have made it a no-brainer. The cost savings of its ‘pay-per-use’ model, the elimination of capital investment and the ability to scale on-demand make it the most economically desirable computing infrastructure on the market.

But a significant number of businesses, however, have been put off by two important concerns. The first is security. Businesses haven’t liked the fact that, despite promised precautions, their data will reside on shared infrastructures and will be internet-exposed.

The second is prior investment. In switching to the cloud, many businesses have been asked to write-off thousands of dollars worth of on-site spending on hardware infrastructure and software licenses, something that just hasn’t made good business sense.

The result has been what I call the ‘cloud chasm’: a stark gap between the early adopters who’ve brushed aside these concerns, and the majority of businesses who’ve been held back. The good news is that new types of cloud computing have recently emerged that deliver economic savings and scalability on-demand without compromising security and making prior investments redundant.
To understand how, we have to look at how the cloud has been implemented to date.

I’ve just returned from the fabulous Las Vegas where this year’s EMC World conference was held. All I can think of to summarise this entire experience is WOW!

EMC World 2011 was the biggest EMC World ever, with over 10,000 attendees and more than 100 exhibitors and sponsors. Keynote sessions and technical breakouts were jam packed as was the exhibitor hall, as EMC’s partners and suppliers vied for the attention of the storage industry’s largest customer base.

Here are some of the biggest talking points of the event…

There has been much talk recently concerning the concepts of the “consumerisation” of IT and the increasingly popular BYOC (Bring your own computer). My recent trip to San Francisco for Citrix Synergy has certainly brought clarity in my mind as to the validity and reality of these concepts and has helped me to draw the conclusion that now is the time to act – before the inmates start to take over Alcatraz!

As IT departments are moving faster towards cloud thinking and delivering elastic scale to their organisations there is new pressure from users to be more agile and flexible when it comes to working arrangements and the devices they want to use.

Australian and New Zealand businesses have recently been plagued by a number of high-profile security attacks. But it’s not just happening in Australia and New Zealand. You only need to pick up a newspaper to realise that data breaches are making big headlines worldwide while damaging the brands and reputations of everyone involved.

Thomas Duryea Consulting today announced that it has achieved Symantec Specialisation membership in the areas of Archiving & eDiscovery; Data Loss Prevention; Endpoint Management; and Data Protection.