Once the dreams of science-fiction, self-driving cars will soon allow passengers to specify a destination and let the car pick the best route based on factors such as time, traffic, freeways and fuel consumption. This kind of automation for an enterprise’s most precious commodity – data – is also soon coming to a data center near you.

Intelligent data mobility delivered through data virtualization will allow IT professionals to specify service-level objects (SLO) such as performance, reliability, high availability, archiving and cost, and then let software automatically move data to the right storage in real time. Let’s examine the problem of data immobility and how data placement through data virtualization will finally solve common mismatch of compute and storage, resource sprawl and the cost of overprovisioning.

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This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

After careful consideration you’ve decided it’s time to migrate a major on-premise software solution to the cloud. But how do you create and execute a plan to make sure your migration stays on time, on budget, and delivers on your expectations? Effective planning is critical, and it should start with a thorough assessment of your infrastructure by an experienced vendor who understands your specific objectives.

Usually available as a service engagement from a hosting vendor or, better yet, from the software vendor whose solution is being migrated to the cloud, this cloud readiness assessment is part checklist and part roadmap. It audits the entire environment so you can plan and execute an efficient and effective migration.

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As cloud computing, big data and the deployment of mega-scale data centers accelerates, organizations need to continually recalibrate and evolve the network. This challenge has led to the development of new technologies and standards designed to increase and optimize network capacity, security and flexibility, all while keeping a lid on cost. Here are the top five trends as we see them:

* Rapid Adoption of 802.11ac. Tablets and smartphones are becoming ubiquitous in the workplace. As the number of mobile devices and the deployment of cloud-based enterprise services continues to scale at a dramatic rate, the keepers of the network must reconsider how they provision, secure and control enterprise computing resources and information access.

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This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Thousands of customer support agents will go to work today and do the exact same thing they did yesterday: pick up the phone, answer a common question, hang up the phone, pick up the phone, answer the same question, and hang up the phone again. And tomorrow get up and do it all again. It’s no wonder the average company loses 27% of its agents each year to attrition.

If you run a customer support center at your company, consider your ultimate goals: faster time-to-resolution, increased customer satisfaction, better employee retention, and higher rates of employee satisfaction and happiness. These are the Holy Grail of our industry—and while daunting, they are attainable. Here are five key steps to becoming a higher-performing support organization:

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This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Organizations have poured billions of dollars into cyber security detection solutions, and while they are exceptional at uncovering potential anomalies and threats, none of these products can guarantee against a breach. Consequently, the next logical step is to pair robust detection and prevention technology with equally efficient and effective operations solutions, including incident response.

Detection solutions are now generating an average of 10,000 alerts per day, according to a recent survey Damballa—far too many for companies to inspect and manage. Yet, security professionals are still attempting to manually separate false alarms from real threats; decide what action, if any, to take; and then perform repetitive actions like gathering data, conducting basic analysis, and generating notifications and tickets.

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This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Video is everywhere, and growing exponentially. According to a recent report, 35 billion video ads were viewed in December, representing year-over-year growth of more than 100%. And every industry is seeing video growth, which creates a problem for data managers because video challenges storage management in four ways:

1. Performance requirements are not served well by traditional storage architecture.
2. Rapid video growth can overwhelm storage environments while resource utilization is masked by virtualization
3. Use of traditional backup tools make data protection expensive and challenging
4. Long-term data value means this is not a temporary problem

If, however, you move video to specialty storage, you’ll achieve five amazing benefits:

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This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Organizations are excited about the business value of the data that will be generated by the Internet of Things (IoT). But there’s less discussion about how to manage the devices that will make up the network, secure the data they generate and analyze it quickly enough to deliver the insights businesses need.

Software defined networking (SDN) can help meet these needs. By virtualizing network components and services, they can rapidly and automatically reconfigure network devices, reroute traffic and apply authentication and access rules. All this can help speed and secure data delivery, and improve network management, for even the most remote devices.

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This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

f you’ve been clinging to Windows Server 2003 trying to ignore the fact that Microsoft will officially end support July 14, 2015, you’re playing with fire. One the updates stop, you’ll be exposed to troubling security and compliance risks. Take note that in 2013 alone, 37 updates were issued by Microsoft for Windows Server 2003/R2.

Yet upgrading servers is a resource challenge as well as a mindset issue. The top barrier for migration, according to a survey, is the belief that existing systems are working just fine, and many users worry about software incompatibility.

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IT Security today is not about defending a (non-existent) perimeter, but about protecting the organization’s attack surface, which has changed dramatically due to the cloud, mobility, BYOD, and other advances in corporate computing that have caused fundamental shifts in network architecture and operations.

Practically speaking, it means you need to monitor what is occurring inside the firewall just as much (if not more) than what is outside trying to make its way in. Think of it as a post breach mindset based on a “1,000 points of light” model as opposed to a “moat and castle” model of defense.

In theory its evolutionary, but given the accelerated pace in which security organizations have matured, it is not necessarily an easy transition to make. Not only has the threat landscape changed, but there has been constant flux in the leadership, skills, tools and budget required.

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Outsourcing should be a strategic partnership, not a simple hand-off of duties to a third-party. Getting that right requires smart preparation.

Implemented correctly, strategic partnerships are a happy collaboration where expectations of delivery and results are clear from the start. By bringing in outside minds, it’s possible to innovate and drive your product to levels beyond what your internal team might have accomplished. New ideas can come from anywhere.

+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD IT outsourcing deal values hit 10-year low +

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Humans are clearly incapable of monitoring and identifying every threat on today’s vast and complex networks using traditional security tools. We need to enhance human capabilities by augmenting them with machine intelligence. Mixing man and machine – in some ways, similar to what OmniCorp did with RoboCop – can heighten our ability to identify and stop a threat before it’s too late.

The “dumb” tools that organizations rely on today are simply ineffective. There are two consistent, yet still surprising things that make this ineptitude fairly apparent. The first is the amount of time hackers have free reign within a system before being detected: eight months at Premera and P.F. Chang’s, six months at Nieman Marcus, five months at Home Depot, and the list goes on.

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Managing modern networked systems and applications is daunting because infrastructure is complex and things can go wrong in so many parts of the technology stack -- servers, storage, network devices, applications, hypervisors, APIs, DNS, etc. How can you address the challenge?

A good place to start: problems that can solve themselves, should.

This is called “self-healing” in the systems management space. As our systems are increasingly virtualized, the opportunity to have our systems work around and self-correct issues has grown greatly in recent years.

The simplest example of self-healing is automatically restarting a service or process that stops or otherwise becomes unresponsive. It is important to keep in mind that this is a workaround and that automated activity of all sorts needs to be logged and monitored, in turn. If an application leaks memory such that it needs to be automatically restarted several times a day, that restart is not the fix, it’s a Band-Aid that is mitigating the impact while the developers responsible fix the application.

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The spate of high profile cyberattacks have raised the awareness of cybersecurity to the board level and encouraged venture capitalists to pour money into this sector. In 2013 the industry received $1.7 billion of VC money across 240 deals, hitting a five-year high in both funding and number of deals, according to CB Insights. Today the cybersecurity landscape is comprised of nearly 500 companies, CB Insights says.

But many of these security tools are fragmented, and as a result it is often difficult to describe, categorize and compare various security tools given the numerous subcategories and new startups tackling one small part of the problem. In order to better understand this complex market and put into perspective the various solutions constantly coming to market, I would like to propose a framework we use at XSeed Capital to parse the market.

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Everyone wants their home to be safe and secure, yet only 17% of homeowners own a home security system. Why? Because traditional systems cost hundreds of dollars to install, require long-term contracts and mean a lifetime of monthly fees.  

Today, however, wireless technology has blown the DIY home security space wide open. Homeowners and renters can now build and maintain their own custom-designed home security system easily and inexpensively.

In this guide, we’ll discuss the options for DIY home security systems that offer similar -- and in some cases, better -- functionality to traditional systems, at substantially less cost. From connected cameras to smart sensors and whole home systems (with no monthly fees), to simple all-in-one gadgets, read on to find peace of mind for the right price.

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As cyber security threats have become increasingly sophisticated and pervasive, it’s become impossible to identify and defend against every probable attack with traditional security budgets. That’s where threat intelligence comes in. Effective use of threat intelligence is a way for businesses to pool their resources and overcome internal technical or resource limitations. Theoretically, it allows companies to “crowd source” security and stay one step ahead of malicious entities.

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Wikipedia defines workflow as “an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of business activity enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes” - processesthat make things or just generally get work done. Manufacturers can thank workflows for revolutionizing the production of everything from cars to chocolate bars. Management wonks have built careers on applying workflow theories like Lean and TQM to their business processes.

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Many companies face the dilemma of how to get the most out of legacy IT equipment and applications while taking advantage of the latest cloud advances to keep their company competitive and nimble.

A hybrid approach to IT infrastructure enables internal IT groups to support legacy systems with the flexibility to optimize service delivery and performance thru third-party providers. Reconciling resources leads to improved business agility, more rapid delivery of services, exposure to innovative technologies, and increased network availability and business uptime, without having to make the budget case for CAPEX investment.

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Every April millions upon millions of taxpayers rush to file state and federal taxes before the 15^th, and as with every other aspect of day-to-day life, filing taxes has become digital. The IRS website alone receives three to four times as much traffic in early spring as it does in the off-season, and this gigantic spike is indicative of what most tax-related websites experience at this time of year.

+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Yikes: 10,000 IRS impersonation scam calls are placed every week  +

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The Internet of Everything’s (IoE) promise to create a more connected and transformed world comes closer to reality on a daily basis. Cisco predicts that 50 billion devices will be connected by the year 2020. But as devices bridge the physical and digital worlds, security challenges arise.

The ultimate goal of IoE is to increase operational efficiency, power new business models and improve quality of life. As IoE becomes a reality, organizations will bring more and more devices from disparate suppliers into their network. Cybersecurity models need to radically change to provide the right level of protection for this new, connected world.

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This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Disasters that affect data aren’t necessarily the type that Hollywood glorifies in blockbusters. The scenarios that could bring your business to a standstill might be caused by cyberattack, human error, blizzard or hurricane, or any number of other common occurrences. When these events happen – and they will happen to every business at least once – they are far more destructive when there is no plan in place for maintaining uptime and productivity.

In many cases today, comprehensive plans rely on hybrid cloud backup. What was once a costly, time-consuming process to back up data to tape has morphed into a reliable practice that can both safeguard your data and restore your business in minutes instead of taking days or weeks. And today’s proliferation of specialized business continuity approaches empowers organizations to save their entire systems soup-to-nuts, down to individual device settings and snapshots. Here’s how hybrid cloud backup can save your data, your reputation and your money:

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