The return on investment (ROI) for any given technology can be justified any
number of ways, but in hard times the bottom line rules. Point to
productivity improvements from better collaboration, and you'll get a polite
hearing. Show hard dollar savings, and you are more likely to seal the deal.
WAN optimization technology is often sold on the basis of productivity
improvements. Figure out a way to deliver higher performance over the limited
bandwidth of a wide area network (WAN), and branch office employees will
spend less time watching the hourglass spin on their computer screens while
waiting for a report to download. That's nice, and all other things being
equal, we'd like to eliminate some of those frustrations and help workers be
more productive. But translate that into money saved or earned, and you've
got a better business case.
Turns out there is a strong b... (more)
Cloud computing is either a revolutionary trend sweeping through the
information technology world, or an evolutionary development growing out of
longtime trends. Or maybe it's both. In terms of buzzwords, cloud computing
carries echoes of many previous technology and marketing phenomena, including
network computing, utility computing, distributed computing, and
virtualization.
With cloud computing, software and more basic computing services like storage
or backup are provided "as a service," meaning that they are available on
demand, as needed, drawing on a pool of computing res... (more)