What you need to know about IT infrastructure library
Bringing information technology into line with the needs of the business is frequently a problem. ITIL -- originally known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library -- is aimed at resolving this by establishing a set of rules for IT service management (ITSM).
The ITIL framework is geared to standardizing the choosing, planning, delivery and support of business IT services. The intention is to deliver greater efficiency and predictable service levels.
What you need to know about IT service management
In the early days of business computing, the technology was seen as a supporting tool to help speed up processes like preparing accounts or controlling stock. But as information technology has found its way into more and more areas of business, it’s become increasingly important that IT should be aligned with the needs of the business and be able to deliver added value.
For this to be effective businesses need to have policies and procedures in place to plan, deliver, control and operate the IT services they offer either internally or to outside customers. All of these activities can be drawn together under the umbrella title of IT service management.
What you need to know about CRM
For the vast majority of organizations, customers should be the number one priority. Without their support, revenue streams dry up and businesses quickly fail. For small businesses that have a face-to-face relationship with their clients keeping them happy is straightforward, but in larger organizations ensuring that the relationship between business and customer is as positive as it can be is not always easy.
Imagine being in charge of a global, multi-national company with thousands of customers in disparate locations. Each of these customers has their own specific needs and businesses can’t afford to treat them all as a single homogeneous entity. At the other end of the scale, even growing businesses can struggle to manage their customer relationships because of limited resources. Fortunately, customer relationship management software is on hand to help businesses of all sizes and across a wide range of industries.
What you need to know about product lifecycle management
In any kind of production process, whether the end product is a washing machine or a piece of software, there are a number of stages to go through. From the initial idea, through design to manufacturing, service and support, and end of life and disposal, all products go through a similar lifecycle.
Product lifecycle management is about integrating the staff, data, processes and business systems that go to produce a product. This in turn provides a fund of information surrounding the creation of the product which can be used to streamline the development of future products. PLM software allows this to be done cost effectively across the entire lifecycle of a product.
What you need to know about software-defined networking
As more and more systems move to the cloud, so we’re becoming increasingly used to accessing all systems on an as-a-service model. Networking is no exception to this and by using software-defined networking businesses can break away from the restrictions imposed by old, inflexible static network architecture.
SDN allows companies to master the complex nature of their networks and have a single point of control. At the same time it opens up the possibility of automating network management to allow it to cope with fluctuations in traffic and demand.
IT pros struggle with AI and intelligent systems
Almost nine in ten (88 percent) IT professionals say that their organization invested in some form of intelligent solutions, be it smart business apps, whole systems or bots. The information was presented in a new research report from Ipswitch.
The report also says that more than three quarters (78 percent) can’t fully grasp the challenges and threats of deploying such systems themselves. For more than two thirds (78 percent), it is challenging (58 percent say it is a challenge, and 19 percent say it is "extremely hard" to do). However, businesses aren’t giving up, as more than a third (35 percent) see it as crucial to stay ahead of the competition.
Open source IT pros are in high-demand in Europe
Open source employees in Europe have it good, especially when we compare that market to the rest of the world. This is according to a new report by Dice and The Linux Foundation. The report says that out of 1,000 European respondents 60 percent believe it would be fairly easy to find a new job this year. Globally, the figure stands at about 50 percent.
"Demand for open source talent is growing and companies struggle to find experienced professionals to fill open roles", says Bob Melk, president of Dice. "Rising salaries for open source professionals indicate companies recognize the need to attract, recruit and retain qualified open source professionals on a global scale. Regardless of where they reside around the world, these professionals are motivated by the opportunity to work on interesting projects".
Everything you need to know about scaling MySQL
One of the key features that every database must have is scalability. This is particularly true for eCommerce websites where thousands of transactions take place every day. As such, for eCommerce websites to run smoothly you need to increase the storage as well as memory as your customer base expands. Which is why you need to know about scaling your MySQL databases. Scaling is important for merchants that are looking to add commodity servers as well as improve their read and write performance without migrating databases to bigger servers.
Generally, businesses can scale MySQL databases on cloud effectively, increasing their capacity to handle growth without having to invest in hardware. Even then, MySQL presents limitations, hence it is not surprising for your database to exhibit latency and performance issues that translate to missed revenue. To counter this, you may opt for a database that has the capability of scaling out horizontally, effectively being able to handle an unlimited number of users.
UK IT contractor rates up nearly 10 percent
In the last 12 months, the average IT contractor day rates have jumped 9.11 percent, and have hit £431, according to a new report by Experis. The Tech Cities Job Watch Survey says the UK’s Gig economy is picking up pace, with an almost double year-on-year growth in permanent salaries, up by 4.61 percent.
The "freelance dream", which includes higher pay and flexible hours is becoming a reality for a larger number of people, as now 15 percent of the UK workforce works solo. There is now more demand for solo workers, than there is for permanent workers -- 2.23 percent against 1.95 percent.
Most employees don't want to share passwords
For many people, both business owners and employees, remote working is the future of business. It’s at the very heart of business transformation, together with cloud computing, automation and artificial intelligence. However, a new poll by OneLogin seems to suggest that certain workers aren’t really fond of the idea of remote working.
Half of full-time workers believe employees below mid-manager level shouldn’t be allowed remote access to the corporate network. This remote access refers to both work-owned devices (47 percent) and private devices (54 percent).
Education will shift away from classrooms in the future
Classrooms could be a thing of the past by 2025, according to new research by Polycom. Its Education in 2025 -- Technology Innovation survey takes a closer look at education and technology and has some interesting takeaways. While almost two thirds (64 percent) of respondents believe students engage with content primarily in the classroom, just a quarter (25 percent) believe that will still be the case in ten years' time.
More than half (53 percent) of education professionals believe real-time video collaboration and mobile devices will be the number one way students will engage with content in 2025. At the moment, however, things should be much, much better than they are.
How to plan for and recover from IT emergencies
Bugs in the software, mistakes in configuration files, even the infamous "fat finger" -- all are responsible for service outages at cloud-based services, data centers, enterprise networks, and any other IT installation, large or small.
There are just too many things that can go wrong. Even if an organization takes care of everything humanly possible, there are still the monkeys. That's a lesson the folks at KenGen, Kenya's electric company, have learned the hard way.
Security, disaster recovery are top IT priorities for UK businesses
UK businesses’ number one technology priority is security, according to a new survey by EACS. The IT solutions and managed services provider polled CIOs, IT directors and IT managers, and released the results in a whitepaper entitled Business & Technology Priorities 2016 survey.
Among the top priorities for them are better efficiency, operating results, increased productivity and cutting costs. The study also found one interesting thing -- all IT decision makers agree that no company can be 100 percent safe. That is why disaster recovery is in second place on the list of tech priorities.
Most enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2018
More than four out of ten (41 percent) of all enterprise workloads all over the world are either on a private or public cloud. By the time we reach 2018, the number will have risen to 60 percent, according to a new report by 451 Research. The cloud-first approach is already common, the report says.
More than a third (38 per ent) of all enterprises polled for the report say they already have such a policy. Europe is leading the way, with 42 percent of organizations having such a policy. On-premise private clouds as well as software-as-a-service models are most common among enterprises, each accounting for 14 percent of all apps, 451 Research says.
IT pros don't use all their annual leave due to work pressure
IT professionals are most likely, out of all working people, not to use their entire annual leave, according to a new Robert Walters Career Lifestyle Survey. This is mostly because they are under pressure to deliver new projects on tight deadlines, and to keep their projects safe from cyber-attacks.
Almost half (44 percent) of IT pros polled during research said they had not used their entire annual leave, compared to the average of 36 percent.
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