Second Floor Computers

Cisco ramps up Intercloud efforts, adds 30 global partners

Cisco announced Monday that it is significantly expanding its Intercloud ecosystem with the addition of 30 global partners and a $1 billion investment from Cisco Capital to accelerate adoption of Cisco-powered clouds.

The Cisco Intercloud is the networking giant's effort to connect disparate cloud platforms with secure private access to essentially bridge the gap between cloud service providers.

British Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DATA and Equinix are among the crop of new partners within the swelling Intercloud ecosystem, which Cisco said will give customers a globally distributed hybrid platform that offers "near infinite" scalability but with local hosting and data sovereignty. Tech Data, Comstor and Ingram Micro will become aggregators of Intercloud services.

Link to Full Article

Still keeping a server in the office? Here's why not everything should be in the cloud

The long hot summer in the UK has been followed by a warm, often humid autumn. And that means that if you have a server tucked into the corner of a small office, it's going to be quite some time before you need to think about turning on the heating.

On the hottest days this summer, the usually silent HP tower in our (un-airconditioned) office sounded like a small turbine and put out enough unwanted heat, as the fan struggled to keep it cool, to make me wonder if we actually needed a local server any more.

But even in these cloud days, a local server can be useful.

Link to Full Article

How Master Data Management Can Help Sales and Build Brand

Master data management (MDM) isn’t what it used to be. It’s so much more, according to Forrester Analyst Michele Goetz, who wrote about it in a 2014 first quarter report, “The Forrester Wave™: Master Data Management Solutions.”

“Prior to 2011, MDM helped enterprises solve challenges pertaining to data quality and data integration that manifested as duplicate records in application systems and data warehouses,” Goetz writes. 

At that time, it was basically a way to purge excess or defective data from customer or product data, depending on its heritage. It couldn’t really handle scale, complex relationships or hierarchies, she added. Then came Big Data, with new challenges related to “hyper-federated data landscapes,” as she calls it. Vendors adapted quickly.

Link to Full Article

What happens to Windows 7 on October 31, 2014?

After October 31, 2014 -- Microsoft will no longer provide its PC partners or systems builders with copies of Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium and/or Ultimate to preinstall on new PCs. This means that OEMs will be able to continue to sell their stock of PCs running these versions of Windows 7, but they won't be allowed to replenish their supply.

Link to Article