As we approach year end many IT departments are hearing the call from their users to pump up the systems to handle the end of year load. In some cases a server hardware upgrade can solve performance issues at a fraction of the price of a new server. Adding CPUs or memory can significantly increase a server’s performance. However, not all systems are upgradable, and upgrades don’t always fix poor-performing hardware. Moreover, new technology often provides new opportunities, allowing administrators to deploy more virtual machines or adopt more demanding workloads. Administrators should weigh these pros and cons and consider the expected return on investment and the impact on business operations before deciding whether to buy a new server or upgrade the existing one.

Would you like to take a test drive?  Here at ISM we rent all servers, storage, and networking hardware.  We have rental programs from 30 days to a year.  This way you can see if the increased performance is something you want to invest in or of it doesn’t meet your needs then simply send it back at the end of the rental period.  If you decide to keep it and you’d like to buy, then we’ll give you a credit for the rental payments and apply that to your purchase price.

Whatever your needs, we’re here to help!  Do you need more memory to speed processing?  Additional disk to handle the data?  More or faster tape drive solutions to handle the increased loads?  Contact us today and talk to us so we can help you with a viable solution that fits your needs!

Are you still running legacy servers and/or storage as you’re fearful of making the change?  Is the provider of your legacy software out of business or have they dropped support for you product?  We’re here to help you overcome those fears and turn a problem into an asset.  Resistance to change and fear of the unknown are part of the human condition; however, as we all come to know, growth rarely occurs without change.

Are you struggling to manage the older technology in your data center?   Maybe you’ve considered a move to something more efficient and less expensive, but the thought of migrating to modern technology is overwhelming or could lead to potential work disruptions.  This is understandable.  But now more than ever, the benefits and relative ease of upgrading to newer technology can have positive results for your team.

Modernizing from older systems to a newer modular and more efficient infrastructure has many benefits, such as:

• TCO reduction results: From lowered acquisition and operations costs.
• Administrative efficiencies:  From reduced hardware requirements, minimized overhead, and efficient and comprehensive tools.
• Modernization: Results in longer protection of your investment, greater flexibility with third party innovations for Linux/Windows platforms, and less exposure to expensive proprietary technologies.

While migrations can be a challenge, we at ISM have streamlined the process with a proven structured approach—backed by our 18 years experience of providing assessment, execution and program management resources to thousands of successful migration customers.  Our skilled team will help you get it done by:

• Up-front planning, risk mitigation and time & cost requirements before you make a decision
• Migration tools, backed by experience, migration services, and best practices
• Migration and infrastructure services that cover applications, servers, storage, virtualization, and networking

Do these services sound like something you need?  Get full details about migrating to updated technology, including technical/business white papers, case studies, and TCO calculators for migrations from your older technology to newer updated technology allowing you to provide your users with the forward progress they need!

Well, you save a lot of money, right?  But of course there’s more to IT than that.  Manufacturers always want you to buy the latest and greatest.  Some IT departments have the budget to do that and their users demand the newest bells and whistles available.  But most of us run our business on a budget and we don’t always need the latest and greatest because last year’s model may suit our needs just fine.

It’s kind of like that car I wanted when I turned 16, it was a brand new red Camaro.  It was slick, shiny, and went fast.  But did I need that?  Nope, I did better buying that Nissan that had 20,000 miles on it, saved me a bunch of money that I put away to save for college.  Short term I met my needs to fit my bigger picture long term goal.

If your IT budget is lean, then our refurbished servers, storage, and networking equipment offer high quality product at a low cost, and they all come with our industry leading lifetime warranty.  For some applications, the latest, greatest technology is a must.  In other cases, a refurbished product is simply a better choice.  For example:

• Some business applications don’t require the latest performance
• If your company’s application must run on a certain platform and “new” production on that platform has been discontinued by the manufacturer
• Refurbished equipment offers a better price/performance value

What should I look for when I buy refurbished?  Here are a few tips:

• Make sure you buy from a pro with the experience and quality control procedures to properly refurbish high end IT equipment
• Check the warranty.  Are you getting it as is, or is the seller backing it with their own extended warranty?
• Ask about return policies.  If you buy it do you own it, or can you return it to the seller with no questions asked?

At the end of the day, refurbished IT may be the soundest business decision you’ve made lately.  Let us help you find out how to save your IT budget!

You may not be as old as me and remember that day in the early 80’s when MTV burst onto the scene.  I was glued to the TV with the rest of my friends as we watched music come to life through video.  Many pundits at the time predicted MTV to be the death of radio music stations.

So pardon me when I raised eyebrows at a different set of pundits proclaiming the death of the data center when cloud burst onto the IT scene.  What have we learned over the past few years?  Did companies lay off their entire IT staffs and close their data centers?

The basic fact is that cloud computing, however you define it, is not revolutionary.  According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

This is simply an evolution of earlier capabilities for enterprises to provide similar services to internal customers through the use of mainframe computers (remember the death knell sounded for them as well?).  Granted, in the earlier days of mainframe computing, the sharing was confined to the walls of the enterprise given the World Wide Web came much later.  However, the concepts for cloud computing were born in these earlier days of computing when price and availability of skilled labor necessitated that computer resources be shared across an organization and paid for by the divisions based on usage.  Okay, maybe there was a revolution in rapid provisioning between the mainframe and today’s definition of cloud, or maybe that was just an uprising of frustrated users who had to wait weeks to even get a green screen terminal placed on their desk.

The first real shot across the bow of the traditional data center came when Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software company Salesforce.com began in a small San Francisco apartment and  “the end of software” revolution begins.  The advent of SaaS really did have the potential to disrupt traditional data centers and sourcing patterns.  Suddenly, companies had an option to use mission-critical enterprise software that didn’t require any additional computers in the data center.  More importantly, business units discovered Salesforce.com and began directly purchasing CRM “seats” without the knowledge or backing of their IT organization.

Guess what?  IT departments didn’t go away.  Instead, they caught on to the “rogue applications” which were appearing throughout the company.  Typically this happened when these users realized that in order for their new whiz-bang application to be truly useful, it need to share information with another system which was managed by IT.  And so began the integration of SaaS into the traditional IT realm of enterprise computing.

Corporate IT departments around the world have also learned to embrace the cloud and  the focus has shifted to private clouds and hybrid clouds.  This is an acknowledgement that the traditional data center is not going away. From the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” book, major cloud infrastructure providers such as Citrix, Microsoft and VMware all tout the use of their virtualization platforms for establishing private clouds in the data center.

So what we’ve learned is that the pundits that called for the death of the data center were about as right as those who predicted that video would kill the radio star (and as I sit here listening to Steppenwolf rocking out Magic Carpet Ride on my local classic rock station, I’m sure glad they were wrong).  Till next time . .