The government's data center consolidation initiative, which should ramp up in January, could have an interesting ripple effect: A spike in the use of open-source systems.
Newly arriving services must be able to interchange data with existing systems during a transition to cloud computing. And none of it can happen unless agencies have a SOA that can support much more than just Web-facing applications.
Letting vendors handle the disk imaging for new PCs can save agencies from a time-consuming task while still complying with core configuration requirements.
Federal agencies have more than enough security issues to worry about these days. But unfortunately, they may find three new concerns this month, and they should be branded "urgent."
There is some overlap among search, information discovery and e-discovery tools. But the way those tools conduct searches and present information differentiates the three concepts, Internaut columnist Shawn McCarthy says.
It's important to correctly estimate the strain virtualization will put on your servers. Is your data center more like a sporadically utilized home workshop? Or more like an occasionally very busy kitchen?
By 2020, you'll have one device for all uses, proximity networking will take hold, and spam just might be brought under control, says IDC senior analyst Shawn McCarthy.
As data is shared, multiple copies of that data can emerge. A Tagged Data Authority Server could help solve the question of who has authority over the data by maintaining the master copy.