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Posts Tagged ‘Managed IT Services’
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
 Gartner on Thursday upgraded its forecast for worldwide IT spending, saying it will grow 7.1 percent this year to US$3.7 trillion as companies migrate to the cloud and spend more on software and IT services.
The research firm previously forecast a growth of 5.6 percent in worldwide IT spending compared to last year, in which spending totaled $3.4 trillion and increased 5.9 percent from 2009. Growth in IT spending will continue through 2012, said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement.
The revised projections reflect the minimal impact on tech spending of the Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 11, which affected supply chains and caused extensive damage to buildings and factories along the country’s eastern coast. The earthquake may have caused problems in supply of components, but it hasn’t affected overall IT spending, Gordon said.
The hardware segment is poised for the fastest growth, but the greatest amount of spending will take place on telecom, according to Gartner’s forecast. Spending on telecommunications will increase to $2.1 trillion, growing year-over-year by 6.9 percent, but slower than the 7.3 percent growth last year. Hardware spending is expected to grow faster that other sectors, at a rate of 11.7 percent to $419 billion, albeit slower than last year’s growth rate of 12.1 percent.
Spending will grow in the software and IT services segments, partly driven by the growing adoption of public cloud services and software-as-a-service. On a percentage basis, spending on IT services will more than double, growing by 6.6 percent to reach $846 billion. Last year, spending on IT services totaled $793 billion, growing only by 3.1 percent. Software spending is expected to grow by 9.5 percent year-over-year to $268 billion, Gartner said.
Though a marginal part of overall IT spending, cloud computing services are emerging as a driver for IT spending in some markets, growing by more than four times than overall IT spending, Gordon said. The effect of migration to public cloud services spending likely will spill over to the software sector as companies spend more on software-as-a-service.
“At about $10 billion, software as a service … already accounts for 10 percent of enterprise applications software spending, and by 2015 this share is expected to increase to close to 15 percent and to exceed $20 billion in annual spending,” Gordon said.
But the overall spending on the cloud is still nominal, Gartner said. Spending on public cloud services will be roughly $89 billion this year, compared to $74 billion last year. The market will continue to grow and reach $177 billion by 2015, but at the time be only 5 percent of the total IT spending.
Source
Managed IT Support Services – Percento Technologies
Tags: it outsourcing, it spending, Managed IT Services
Posted in Industry Stories, Information Technology Consulting, Information Technology Security, IT Consulting Services, IT Outsourcing Services | No Comments »
Friday, April 1st, 2011
To be sustainably successful, enterprises have to manage the technologies of now, the technologies of next and the technologies of later. Of those, “now” and “later” get a lot of attention. Every organization understands the current period budget (though perhaps they aren’t delighted with it). And most organizations have a vision of how they want the enterprise to look in the distant future, 60 months out or more.
But very few enterprises are masters of the technologies needed for the critically important middle period, the meso-future. The meso-future occupies a no-man’s land that’s outside both the current period budget and the imagined future end state. This time horizon, lying three to five years out from now, is where IT heroes are created and competitive advantage is born, which means it shouldn’t be so frequently ignored by management teams.
Geoffrey A. Moore, author of Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future From the Pull of the Past, likens IT’s three-pronged management task to agriculture. Farmers must “simultaneously harvest the current crop, till the ground for next season, and investigate new crops for the future.” But not enough organizations invest in tilling the ground for the next crop of high-value technologies. >more
Managed IT Services
Tags: it consulting, it experts, it outsourcing, Managed IT Services, managed it support
Posted in Industry Stories | No Comments »
Thursday, January 13th, 2011
 Services Outsourcing Contracts have witnessed an increasing trend in Application Development and Support, Business Process Outsourcing and IT Consulting Services. During the calendar year 2010, the IT contracts awarded globally were up by almost 15% in H2 2010 as compared to H1 2010.
However, all the Indian vendors together have captured less than 20% of the global IT outsourcing market, leaving great scope for entering new markets and capturing new IT Services contracts.
Source
IT Consulting and IT Outsourcing Services – Percento Technologies
Tags: it consulting, it management, it outsourcing, Managed IT Services
Posted in Industry Stories, IT Consulting Services, IT Outsourcing Services | 1 Comment »
Thursday, December 30th, 2010
 For as long as I can remember, whenever I’ve needed to reboot my computer, I’ve always shut it down, counted off 15 seconds, and then started it back up.Why? Because at some point in the distant past, someone somewhere told me that to avoid damaging them, computers need a minimum of 15 seconds of downtime whenever they’re rebooted. Whether or not that was true, I’ve followed the advice ever since, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve powered down, counted off “one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand…” for 15 seconds and then powered back up.
Not long ago, I started thinking about that habit. Why did I do that? Even if it had once been a necessity, was it still? Or was that 15-second “rule” nothing more than a myth. And that, in turn, got me thinking about what other great myths about technology are floating around our geared-up world?
So, in no particular order, what follows is an anthology of sorts of some of the best myths about tech that my friends, my Twitter followers, my co-workers, and I could come up with.
You must wait 15 seconds before rebooting your computer
Since this is the myth that got me started on this, it’s the first one I’ll address.
I decided that since this was a hardware question, the best place to turn was to the Geek Squad, those hearty IT folks in the black and white VW Beetles. Last week, I spoke with Ismael Matos, a Geek Squad deputy field marshal, and asked him about the 15 seconds myth, as well as several others having to do with hardware.
Matos said that the question of how long to wait before rebooting a computer has to do with the health of the plates of the hard drive. Since the plates are spinning at speeds of up to 10,000 rpm, and need to come to a stop before rebooting, “it’s definitely good that you wait just a little while” before restarting the machine.
But 15 seconds? That might be overkill, Matos suggested, though it certainly couldn’t hurt.
“I’d say 5 seconds is [OK],” Matos said, “but 15 seconds to be on the safe side. If you want peace of mind, then 15 seconds is OK, but it’s not a rule that’s set in stone.”
Size matters (in megapixels)
If you’ve listened to any camera marketing, you’ve probably had it pounded into your head that with megapixels, more is better. And of course, the more megapixels you want, the more you have to spend. What a coincidence.
But the reality may not back the camera companies’ marketing.
As photographer and self-described photography expert Ken Rockwell puts it, “sharpness depends more on your photographic skill than the number of megapixels, because most people’s sloppy technique or subject motion blurs the image more than the width of a microscopic pixel.
“Even when megapixels mattered, there was little visible difference between cameras with seemingly different ratings. For instance, a 3-megapixel [photo] pretty much looks the same as a 6-megapixel [photo], even when blown up to” 12 inches by 18 inches.
The Geek Squad’s Matos would seem to agree. While he says that megapixels might matter if you’re trying to put together a mural–or its cousin, a billboard–the average camera user would almost never see the difference between photos taken with most lower-megapixel and higher-megapixel cameras.
“You really start noticing the differences when you blow the picture up,” Matos said. But “it really depends on the size of the image, and how much you plan on blowing it up…If you blow it up to 16 by 20 [inches], you’ll still maintain the quality, and you won’t notice any difference in quality” with fewer megapixels.
You have to run your nickel-cadmium battery all the way down before you charge it
This is one I’ve heard for a long time, especially when you’re talking about what to do when you first get a new battery-operated gadget.
And while it’s not that hard to imagine running the juice on a new device all the way down before charging it the very first time, that’s not at all an easy thing to do on an ongoing basis given that we often find ourselves fearing being away from a power source and, therefore, charging up as a precautionary measure.
But Matos said that the best possible thing you can do for your device’s battery is, in fact, to run it down to zero before re-charging, each and every time.
“If you start plugging an AC adapter in while it’s half-charged,” Matos said, “components in the battery start to settle, and so it doesn’t maintain its ability to re-charge, and so you end up weakening the battery a lot quicker.”
Matos said that, ideally, we’d all run our batteries down all the way every time, but he acknowledged that’s not realistic for most people. So he nods to reality: “It’s recommended, so whenever possible…just let the battery drain completely before you charge it up.”
You can put a keyboard you’ve spilled coffee on in the dishwasher
Though this might be a myth that would get you to shake your head in pity at anyone who believes it–let alone practices it–Matos said that, in fact, it’s true.
It only applies to wired keyboards, though; Nothing with a battery, or wireless components in it will keep operating after being run through your dishwasher.
But Matos said that as long as you don’t use soap or warm or hot water, a cycle through the Kenmore will wash away the coffee and get you pounding away at the QWERTY before you know it.
Anything stored digitally will last longer than that on analog media
It’s a lovely idea that once you’ve put something on your hard drive, or some other form of digital backup, you can depend on it being there in perpetuity. It certainly seems like it should be true. After all, digital seems impervious to the passage of time, right?
But counting on ever-lasting storage of your crucial 1s and 0s may well be a fool’s game. According to the Associated Press, many important digital recordings are “at risk of being lost much faster than older ones on tape, and many are already gone.”
The problem, the study cited by the AP reported, is that digital files run the risk of being corrupted, and some physical forms of digital media, such as CD-R discs, can begin breaking down in as little as three years.
And the same seems to be true of online recordings. “I think we’re assuming that if it’s on the Web, it’s going to be there forever,” Sam Brylawski, the co-author of a Library of Congress study on sound, told the AP. “That’s one of the biggest challenges.
One part of the dilemma surrounding digital storage of audio and other important records, is that we’ve become trained to use such media given its ubiquity and its ease of use. “But the problem,” Brylawski told the AP, “is they must be constantly maintained and backed up by audio experts as technology changes. That requires active preservation, rather than simply placing files on a shelf.”
Turning a computer on and off regularly is bad for it
Another myth I heard when I canvassed my social networks was that a computer can be damaged over time by being regularly turned on and off.
In fact, said the Geek Squad’s Matos, it’s specifically recommended that you do power your machine off on a daily basis, for example at the end of each work day.
According to Matos, “Every computer needs its rest time,” in part to be sure that if you’re away from it and there are power fluctuations or surges, it isn’t damaged by them.
As well, he said, it’s recommended that if you’re going to be away from your computer for small periods of time, you let it go to sleep while you’re gone. But in any case, he said, a regular on/off pattern is definitely good for the computer, not bad.
Macs are immune to viruses
This myth is one that is pushed relentlessly, both overtly and subtly, by Mac fans, and, of course, by Apple. Everyone knows that Windows machines are constantly being bombarded by malware and that keeping them secure is a never-ending task.
But you rarely hear about such things from Mac users, and the common theory is that it’s because Apple’s computers are simply safe from being attacked.
Not so fast. It does seem, as has been well-reported, that that are far fewer exploits hitting Macs than their Windows-based cousins. But it’s hardly because Macs are immune from attack. Indeed, according to security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani, it has much more to do with market share–there simply aren’t anywhere near as many Macs out there as there are Windows machines.
“If we were to flip the market share, we would see a lot more exploitation in the wild,” Dhanjani told my CNET colleague Elinor Mills earlier this year. “More specifically, browser security is one of the more important items to consider today from a risk perspective. I know Internet Explorer has had a considerable share of vulnerabilities, but the Safari Web browser also has a lousy reputation in the security community–it almost seems a child’s play to locate an exploitable condition in Safari. Apple really needs to get its act together with Safari since OS X is enjoying a healthy market share climb at the moment.”
Other security experts seem to agree that Macs’ relative lack of virus problems has much more to do with the computer’s market share than any kind of actual fortitude against attack. As Halvar Flake, head of research and CEO of Zynamics, told Mills, “Vista/Win7 has more extensive countermeasures against attacks and a codebase with presumably fewer security issues. But it’s the operating system of the majority of users, hence making it profitable to attack. Attackers will therefore spend lots of time bypassing the countermeasures. Mac OS has fewer countermeasures and lots of easily exploitable bugs, but the market share is low, making it a less likely target.”
Then again, the market share dynamic does, in fact, mean that Macs are less likely to get hit, so in that sense, they are safer. “For an everyday consumer that just wants to use a computer and not worry about getting owned with every click of the mouse, I’d go for a Mac,” Joe Grand, president of Grand Idea Studio, told Mills.
Your ISP is tracking everything you do
This may not be something most people are thinking about, but for those constantly worried about digital privacy, it is a signature concern, since, if true, everyone would be subject to tracking because we almost all have to get online through an Internet service provider.
Your ISP “is your local link to the worldwide computer network known as the Internet,” Dave Roos wrote on Get Stuff. Every page request you make and every e-mail you send must travel through your ISP’s routers first. It would seem, therefore, that your ISP has the power to scan and save every piece of data that flows through its system.”
But before you get alarmed, Roos also wrote: “The truth is that it does have the power. Fortunately for us, it doesn’t have the money or the desire to archive every bit of information that comes its way. ISPs in the United States don’t routinely save the Web surfing histories and e-mail conversations of their users. It would simply be too expensive to save all of that data and the public outcry from privacy rights and civil liberties organizations would be deafening.”
Girls don’t play video games
The stereotype of gamers is clearly a teenage boy sitting in front of his Xbox, pounding away at one Halo or Call of Duty game or another for hours and hours on end. And while the industry certainly brings in many, many, many millions of dollars because of that pimply-faced teen, he’s by no means the only face of the gaming community.
Indeed, women and girls make up a very large bloc of gamers–they just are a little more quiet about it.
“Girls and young women are a ‘pot of gold’ for the [video game] industry,” George VanHorn, a senior analyst at market research firm IBISWorld, told Reuters. “The gaming industry has market characteristics that many would die for.”
Reuters reported that in an IBISWorld study, “38 percent of U.S. gamers are female, up from 33 percent in just five years. From January through August of 2008, females ages 18 to 45 made up 28 percent of the total industry revenue, ranking second to males ages 18 to 45, who made up 37 percent.”
So while they may not be the largest group of gamers, it’s clear that women and girls are spending their fair share of time playing.
Anything you delete from your hard drive is gone forever
Given that we lay our lives bare on our computers–what with doing personal banking, storing family photos, researching our medical conditions, and so forth–it would be comforting to be able to believe that if we erase something on our computers, we don’t have to worry about that data being available to anyone who might want to access it later.
Sadly, that would be a naive assumption. The truth is, it’s very difficult to permanently get rid of your data. And if you want to do so, you probably need to go get a drill.
That’s the advice of the Geek Squad’s Matos, who said that, “When you delete [data], yes, [its] icon may be gone, but that information is still intact on the hard drive. The only thing the computer does is [mark] that section to be overwritten. It just gives the operating system the OK to write over that area.”
So if the operating system isn’t actually removing the data from your hard drive, how can you get rid of it?
Matos said it’s not so easy, and you may not ever want to just hand an old computer off to someone else if you’re worried about them accessing your private data.
The only way to ensure that no one can ever access it is to bring tools to bear. “Let’s say you’re getting rid of an old computer,” Matos said. “You’re going to want to take the old hard drive, take a drill, and drill 10 to 12 holes through the drive–and not in a straight line. Scatter the holes and make sure they go straight through.”
Source
Tags: computer, Computer Failure, computer network, computer network consulting, Computer-driven, computers, Managed IT Services, managed it support, Technology
Posted in Percento | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010
DUBAI, UAE — Senior business and technology leaders will convene at InterContinental Dubai Festival City from 21-22 February 2011 for CACS in Dubai, an internationally respected event that features governance, security, assurance and risk management experts from around the world.
Hosted by ISACA, a global information technology (IT) association of 95,000 IT professionals, CACS (Computer Audit, Control and Security) will include a keynote presentation by Neeraj Kumar, Senior Vice President of Internal Audit and Chief Audit Executive of Emirates Group. Neeraj Kumar will explain how to use technology to improve proactive risk-focused auditing and continuous monitoring.
CACS in Dubai will also offer educational sessions on key IT security and governance issues facing enterprises today, including:
- Implementing COBIT: A Public-sector Case Study, presented by Naveed Ahmed, CISA, CISM, CGEIT, Dubai Customs, UAE
- IT Governance to Support Corporate Governance: A Case Study, presented by Avinash Totade, CISA, CGEIT, Dubai Aluminium Company, UAE
- E-government Security: Threats and Challenges, presented by Abbas S Kudrati, CISA, CISM, CGEIT, eGovernment Authority, Kingdom of Bahrain
- Metrics and Indicators for a Changing Security Landscape, presented by Ramsés Gallego, CISM, CGEIT, Entel IT Consulting, Spain
- Social Media: Business Security, Governance and Assurance Perspectives, presented by Urs Fischer, CISA, CRISC, IT GRC Consultancy, Switzerland
- Designing Next Generation Security and Audit for Cloud Computing Environments, presented by Eddie Schwartz, CISA, CISM, NetWitness Corp., USA
- The Future of Information: Real Challenges and Opportunities, presented by Norman Marks, SAP, USA
- Automating IT Risk and Compliance to Reduce Costs: A Series of Case Studies, presented by Anil Jogani, CISA, CGEIT, Milan Solutions Limited, UK
ISACA chose Dubai as the location for the conference because it is an important city in the global economy as well as the region’s crossroads, serving as a center of business and technology. ISACA’s United Arab Emirates Chapter was established in 1997 to bring together business and information technology leaders in the region. The ISACA UAE Chapter is a strong network of professionals from all the emirates of the UAE: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah.
“CACS in Dubai will help attendees add value to their enterprise by providing them with practical guidance on critical IT-related issues facing organizations worldwide,” said Vatsaraman Venkatakrishnan, CISA, CISM, CGEIT, CRISC, Vice President of IS audit at Emirates Airlines and Chair of ISACA’s Conference Development Task Force.
Attendees who register by 12 January 2011 will receive an early-bird discount. Registration forms for the conference and two pre-conference workshops–Using COBIT for Effective IT Assurance and the Risk Management Workshop: Featuring ISACA’s Risk IT Framework and Guidance–are available at www.isaca.org/cacsindubai.
About ISACA
With 95,000 constituents in 160 countries, ISACA® is a leading global provider of knowledge, certifications, community, advocacy and education on information systems assurance and security, enterprise governance and management of IT, and IT-related risk and compliance. Founded in 1969, the nonprofit ISACA develops international IS auditing and control standards, which help its constituents ensure trust in, and value from, information systems. It also advances and attests IT skills and knowledge through the Certified Information Systems Auditor® (CISA®), Certified Information Security Manager® (CISM®), Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT® (CGEIT®) and Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control™ (CRISC™) designations.
ISACA continually updates COBIT®, which helps IT professionals and enterprise leaders fulfill their IT governance responsibilities and deliver value to the business.
Source
Information Technology Professionals: Percento Technologies International
Tags: information technology leaders, it assurance, it compliance, it consulting, it enterprise, it governance, it management, it professionals, it risk and compliance, it risk management, IT Security, Managed IT Services
Posted in Business Network Support, Industry Stories, Information Technology Consulting, Information Technology Security, Percento, Public Service Annoucement | No Comments »
Saturday, August 7th, 2010
 IT consulting companies, first and foremost, enable businesses to focus on their key functions. When non-professionals undertake the task of setting up and maintaining IT systems, it is likely to consume more time, which could have been used on strategizing and improving revenues. Besides, it may even result in a sub-standard information technology setup, prone to frequent breakdowns. According to the US Consumer Report for 2006, an astounding $7.8 billion was spent during 2004-2006 on computer repairs and replacements, due to breakdowns.
Key Services Offered by IT Consulting Companies
IT consulting companies enable businesses to maximize the IT returns on investment by tailoring their IT services to the organization’s needs. Some key managed IT services provided by IT consultants are:
- Server and application support
- Local Area Network (LAN) administration
- Anti-virus solutions
- Wireless solutions
- Web hosting
These services are vital to ensure smooth flow of information within as well as outside the organization, while ensuring confidentiality of key information. In the absence of such managed IT services, the entire organizational communication and administration will surely tumble.
Reviewing IT Consulting Companies: Factors to Consider
The first step in selecting an IT consulting company is to assess the current requirements of the business. This entails establishing the level and range of services required. For instance, some organizations only require basic IT monitoring, while others need a more extensive IT systems audit.
Some other key factors to bear in mind while choosing an IT consultant are:
- The business expansion plan: This is because the IT systems will also need to be upgraded accordingly. Ensure that the IT consulting company is capable of managing a greater work load.
- The supplier experience: This includes reviewing the past work done by the IT consultant. Good IT consulting companies have a strong presence across various industries and a high referral rate.
- Training: Good IT consulting companies train the organizational staff in managing the system themselves after the installation. Additional training of the staff about IT systems is also crucial for accommodating company growth.
The services of an IT consulting company are instrumental for innovation, which is an outcome of shared knowledge through collaborative communication. Besides, an IT consultant helps to maintain the status quo, through IT integration of new technologies and applications.
Visit www.percentotech.com if you seek the services of an established IT consulting company. Percento Technologies provides IT system solutions for numerous industries, from accounting and banking to construction, healthcare and real estate. The company also boasts an 89% plus customer referral rate.
Tags: IT Consulting Companies, IT Integration, IT Monitoring, IT System Audit, Managed IT Services
Posted in Percento | 1 Comment »
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