Ann Bednarz

Author Archives: Ann Bednarz

Video storage leads to hyperconvergence for law enforcement agency

Hyperconvergence wasn’t on Philip Lisk’s mind a decade ago, when the Bergen County Sheriff's Office started using technology from Pivot3 to store data from video surveillance cameras.“We were trying to store video in an IP world. That’s how we got to know Pivot3,” says Lisk, director of IT at the largest law enforcement agency in New Jersey’s Bergen County, which sits across the Hudson River from New York City. A 12-year veteran of the BCSO, Lisk supervises its networks and serves as the technical consultant to the entire county for video and data security.Well before the term "hyperconverged infrastructure" was coined, BCSO chose Pivot3 for its converged server and SAN solutions, engineered specifically for storing petabyte-scale video workloads. Yet as the technology matured over the last several years, and BCSO kept up with upgrades, the deployment evolved from a tactical video-centric project into an enterprise HCI platform that’s set to handle many of the agency’s IT workloads going forward, including its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Video storage leads to hyperconvergence for law enforcement agency

Hyperconvergence wasn’t on Philip Lisk’s mind a decade ago, when the Bergen County Sheriff's Office started using technology from Pivot3 to store data from video surveillance cameras.“We were trying to store video in an IP world. That’s how we got to know Pivot3,” says Lisk, director of IT at the largest law enforcement agency in New Jersey’s Bergen County, which sits across the Hudson River from New York City. A 12-year veteran of the BCSO, Lisk supervises its networks and serves as the technical consultant to the entire county for video and data security.Well before the term "hyperconverged infrastructure" was coined, BCSO chose Pivot3 for its converged server and SAN solutions, engineered specifically for storing petabyte-scale video workloads. Yet as the technology matured over the last several years, and BCSO kept up with upgrades, the deployment evolved from a tactical video-centric project into an enterprise HCI platform that’s set to handle many of the agency’s IT workloads going forward, including its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 must-have network tools

Fave Raves is an annual feature from Network World that invites enterprise IT pros to share hands-on assessments of products they love. Several IT pros raved about their favorite network tools. Here’s what they had to say, in their own words. For more enterprise favorites, check out the full Fave Raves collection.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

7 must-have network tools

Fave Raves is an annual feature from Network World that invites enterprise IT pros to share hands-on assessments of products they love. Several IT pros raved about their favorite network tools. Here’s what they had to say, in their own words. For more enterprise favorites, check out the full Fave Raves collection.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

7 must-have network tools

Fave Raves is an annual feature from Network World that invites enterprise IT pros to share hands-on assessments of products they love. Several IT pros raved about their favorite network tools. Here’s what they had to say, in their own words. For more enterprise favorites, check out the full Fave Raves collection.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Most acute storage pain points, letdowns

Things don’t always go as planned with new technologies. Two new research reports document the struggles, disappointments and false starts that challenge enterprise storage pros as they modernize their infrastructures for digital business.451 Research asked enterprise IT pros to rank their most pressing storage pains. “Data/capacity growth” landed in the top spot, according to the firm’s research brief. “Meeting disaster recovery requirements” and “high cost of storage” ranked second and third, respectively, among survey respondents.“The core challenges in storage are shifting; public cloud is beginning to assume the burden of inexorable data growth, and the emphasis is moving to other areas, such as effectively managing data and storage across both on- and off-premises locations,” according to Simon Robinson, research vice president at 451 Research and author of the report, Top three storage pain points for enterprise customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top storage skills to boost your salary

Demand for skilled storage pros is on the rise as enterprise IT teams wrestle with increased storage capacity requirements and evolving business needs. In particular, companies are looking for people with experience migrating from hardware-based storage to cloud storage – and that’s resulting in higher-than-average pay increases, according to Dice.The tech career hub and job-search site released its annual guide to U.S. tech salaries, which finds that overall average pay in the industry fell slightly last year to $92,081, down from $93,328 in 2015. On the raise front, 61% of tech pros received a salary increase from a year ago, and 9% reported a decrease.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top storage skills to boost your salary

Demand for skilled storage pros is on the rise as enterprise IT teams wrestle with increased storage capacity requirements and evolving business needs. In particular, companies are looking for people with experience migrating from hardware-based storage to cloud storage – and that’s resulting in higher-than-average pay increases, according to Dice.The tech career hub and job-search site released its annual guide to U.S. tech salaries, which finds that overall average pay in the industry fell slightly last year to $92,081, down from $93,328 in 2015. On the raise front, 61% of tech pros received a salary increase from a year ago, and 9% reported a decrease.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

25 geek-inspired gifts for Mother’s Day

To mom, with loveImage by Ultimate Ears, Looking Glass Design, ThinkGeek, Vik Muniz and MoMA StoreIf you're looking for Mother’s Day gift ideas that are less about gadgets and more about stellar product design, this is the collection for you. The tech quotient is low, but the design bar is high. The creators are artists, craftspeople and industrial designers – and their inspiration comes from science, technology, engineering and math.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mobile, security tools among education tech favorites

In the school district of La Crosse, Vicki Lyons depends on mobile device management software from Jamf to manage the Wisconsin district’s fleet of iPads and MacBook Air devices. The Apple device management platform plays a key role in the district’s efforts to provide equitable access to technology to all of its students.“We use Jamf Pro as our device management solution for our 1:1 iPad program district-wide. As a result, we are driving student success with iPads and meeting their individual needs via personalized learning — something we weren’t able to previously do,” says Lyons, technology service director for the School District of La Crosse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mobile, security tools among education tech favorites

In the school district of La Crosse, Vicki Lyons depends on mobile device management software from Jamf to manage the Wisconsin district’s fleet of iPads and MacBook Air devices. The Apple device management platform plays a key role in the district’s efforts to provide equitable access to technology to all of its students.“We use Jamf Pro as our device management solution for our 1:1 iPad program district-wide. As a result, we are driving student success with iPads and meeting their individual needs via personalized learning — something we weren’t able to previously do,” says Lyons, technology service director for the School District of La Crosse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT execs tout benefits of SD-WAN

Enterprises are adopting software-defined WAN to simplify branch office connectivity, improve application performance, and better manage WAN expenses, according to Gartner, which predicts that spending on SD-WAN products will rise from $129 million in 2016 to $1.24 billion in 2020.“While WAN architectures and technologies tend to evolve at a very slow pace — perhaps a new generation every 10 to 15 years — the disruptions caused by the transformation to digital business models are driving adoption of SD-WAN at a pace that is unheard of in wide-area networking,” Gartner writes.Two early adopters of SD-WAN shared some of the gains they’re realizing from the technology. The Bay Club Company and Autodesk are deploying SD-WAN technology from VeloCloud and CloudGenix, respectively, to transform the way they provision and support remote sites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT execs tout benefits of SD-WAN

Enterprises are adopting software-defined WAN to simplify branch office connectivity, improve application performance, and better manage WAN expenses, according to Gartner, which predicts that spending on SD-WAN products will rise from $129 million in 2016 to $1.24 billion in 2020.“While WAN architectures and technologies tend to evolve at a very slow pace — perhaps a new generation every 10 to 15 years — the disruptions caused by the transformation to digital business models are driving adoption of SD-WAN at a pace that is unheard of in wide-area networking,” Gartner writes.Two early adopters of SD-WAN shared some of the gains they’re realizing from the technology. The Bay Club Company and Autodesk are deploying SD-WAN technology from VeloCloud and CloudGenix, respectively, to transform the way they provision and support remote sites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 must-have security tools

New York’s Montgomery County, located at the foot of the Adirondacks, consists of 10 towns, one city and 50,000 residents. To protect the data that pertains to its citizens and operations, Montgomery County added DatAdvantage from Varonis to its arsenal of security wares. The data security platform is designed to show organizations where sensitive data exists, who is accessing it, and how to keep it safe.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

31 tech pros share favorite IT products

What's to like? Image by Vicki Lyons, Prakash Kota, Julie Ulrich and David LeDouxEvery year we ask IT pros to share their favorite enterprise products, and every year we learn what it takes to win them over — including gear that saves time and money, bolsters security, and streamlines digital transformations. Read on to learn what 31 tech pros like best, in their own words.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

31 tech pros share favorite IT products

What's to like? Image by Vicki Lyons, Prakash Kota, Julie Ulrich and David LeDouxEvery year we ask IT pros to share their favorite enterprise products, and every year we learn what it takes to win them over — including gear that saves time and money, bolsters security, and streamlines digital transformations. Read on to learn what 31 tech pros like best, in their own words.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 must-have security tools

New York’s Montgomery County, located at the foot of the Adirondacks, consists of 10 towns, one city and 50,000 residents. To protect the data that pertains to its citizens and operations, Montgomery County added DatAdvantage from Varonis to its arsenal of security wares. The data security platform is designed to show organizations where sensitive data exists, who is accessing it, and how to keep it safe.“This system captures activity from Active Directory and Windows system logs, tracking everything from user sign-on to file manipulation. It then presents this information in an easy-to-use dashboard with advanced reporting options,” says Gregory Oliver, senior network systems administrator for Montgomery County.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

31 tech pros share favorite IT products

What's to like? Image by Vicki Lyons, Prakash Kota, Julie Ulrich and David LeDouxEvery year we ask IT pros to share their favorite enterprise products, and every year we learn what it takes to win them over — including gear that saves time and money, bolsters security, and streamlines digital transformations. Read on to learn what 31 tech pros like best, in their own words.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What makes IT pros happy? One thing ranks higher than pay

Coworkers can make or break a good job. For IT pros, it’s all about their peers, managers, and end users.“I tossed out money as a contributor to happiness a long time ago,” said IT pro Michael Studte. “Although my salary, work hours, and vacation time are important to the equation, I’ve been the happiest in companies where management will listen and take my recommendations seriously, and where I’m able to build a good rapport with my users.”Spiceworks shared Studte’s comments along with results of its latest survey, which polled IT pros from the U.S. and U.K. on the topic of job satisfaction. (Related: 10 reasons to look for a new job)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 reasons to look for a new job

Sometimes it's obvious when it's time to move on from a job. Other times it's not so clear. If you're not sure if the time is right to search for a new job, here are 10 reasons to consider making a change.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

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