The SNIA CIFS Technical Reference is included by kind permission of the Storage Network Industry Association (SNIA). The author would like to thank the SNIA, particularly the members of the SNIA CIFS Technical Work Group, for making this document available. Please see page v of the CIFS Technical Reference for SNIA copyright information. Please Note: The SNIA CIFS Technical Reference does not f…
The cover artwork of this book continues the freedom theme of the first edition of “The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide.” We may look back upon the past to question the motives of those who have gone before us. Seldom do we realise that the past owes us no answer, and despite what we may think of the actions of those who have travelled lifes’ road before us, we must feel a sen…
Many organizatons fail to see IT's impact on the bosom line, but imagine if: Your e-‐commerce applicaton lags or worse, becomes unavailable. • Corporate email goes offline and severely hampers productvity across the board. • Business critcal applicatons like Salesforce.com or SAP become unresponsive. The financial loss could be millions of…
The phone service and system is a necessity for any successful organization. Having the right hardware and software is strikingly imperative. Although embedded with many fine details that must be focused closely on, transitioning from a traditional analog phone system to one with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) capabilities does not have to be an intimidating process. With reliable resource…
Configuration management is a critical cornerstone of IT automation, providing tools that allow you to centrally manage the packages, configuration files, process state, firewall rules and other settings that equip servers to do their assigned jobs. Without automated configuration management, you do all these tasks manually, or with handwritten scripts. It's time-consuming, and prone to human e…
Employees use mobile devices and cloud apps in their personal lives because they are easy-to- use, anytime, anywhere. So naturally, they want to use these technologies in the workplace. In fact, enabling mobility offers huge productivity gains for businesses. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2013 Internet & American Life Survey, smartphone adoption in the US crossed 50% of the ad…
Owning and operating a small business is a continuous uphill battle. You’re fighting the big guys to keep your business alive, tackling new obstacles each day, and staying busy trying to make your business successful. Knowing this, many people tend to focus on the percentage of small businesses that close shop each year, but it’s actually more valuable as a business owner to look at the oth…
Regulatory compliance has become an important corporate initiative as the complexity and scope of the regulatory environment continues to increase. Coupled with the rise in cyber attacks and insider threats, organizations are now searching for a more effective, sustainable, and scalable approach that will achieve their compliance objectives while improving the overall security posture of the or…
We are pleased to present the findings of the 2012 Payment Security Practices Survey: United States, sponsored by CyberSource and Trustwave. The study also was conducted in the United Kingdom and the findings from that research are available in a separate report. A secure payment process is essential to maintaining customer confidence and trust when making online purchases and sharing financ…
Many eDiscovery companies announced integration with Microsoft SharePoint last year. Frankly, our usual response was a resounding yawn. These announcements usually meant that the eDiscovery tool contained a data connector for SharePoint document libraries, which acted as repositories for stored files. Most companies were using SharePoint in this way, so this very basic eDiscovery capability see…
This paper provides an overview of the problems and risks associated with increasing amounts of data and the inability to quickly and efficiently identify sensitive data for business and legal reasons and the impact of data privacy requirements. It also provides an overview of challenges associated with Intellectual Property and how an organization can utilize eDiscovery solutions to address t…
No performance management strategy can be completely effective without support from underlying technology. When a company pursues performance management, it must find a single, unified solution that can meet all its requirements and deliver a holistic view of performance across the enterprise by easily accessing any metric from any source – without compromise. The solution should remain compl…
Given its ubiquity, it’s hard to believe that the Apple iPad has only been on the market for 18 months. Consumers love these devices, but they are also sprouting like weeds in the commercial sector as they enable new types of business processes and applications. As tablet computers become more and more pervasive, will their presence increase IT risk? In other words, where does tablet secu…
Technology moves at breakneck speed. Technology upgrades typically do not. While there’s no doubt that having the latest technology increases productivity, remaining competitive requires a significant capital outlay to purchase new hardware and deploy it. For small and medium sized companies that have limited budgets and IT staff, keeping up with technology can be challenging, if not impossib…
The major IT initiatives of today – data center consolidation, cloud computing, unified communications, virtualization, and disaster recovery – share a common theme: they all presume a well performing Wide Area Network (WAN). The reality though is that most WANs are unable to compensate for the increased packet loss, latency, and bandwidth problems endemic to publicly shared infrastr…
Discovery is the process of identifying, preserving, collecting, reviewing, analyzing and producing information during civil legal actions. The goal of discovery is to obtain information that will be useful in developing relevant information for pre-trial motions and for the trial itself. Information sought during discovery can include documents, testimony and other information deemed necessa…
The expression “better, faster, cheaper” is commonly associated with supply chain initiatives, where companies have developed an edge by getting products to market faster and more efficiently than their competitors. However, in the new world of cloud computing, more companies are looking at their IT department as a competitive differentiator by enabling them to quickly deploy hosted appli…
Small and midsized businesses experience business issues and challenges that are inherently different from those of larger enterprises. They generally have smaller workforces, lower budgets, and less complex IT environments than enterprise organizations. And yet, small and midsized businesses must meet the same types of demands as enterprise organizations, and optimize service levels to sup…
IT organizations are under increasing pressure to meet the business goals of their companies. This challenge can be particularly daunting because it involves complying with regulations, such as the Sarbanes- Oxley Act (Sarbox) and Basel II. Compliance requires strong corporate governance capabilities that are demonstrable to outside auditors. Because IT plays such a major role in business proce…
Software is of tremendous importance to today’s IT-intensive organizations. In fact, the appetite of organizations for software is growing at a faster pace than software budgets—especially in light of current economic conditions. It is therefore more critical than ever for software buyers to get maximum value out of every dollar they spend on software.
The AS/400 and RS/6000 platforms have evolved greatly over 20 years, and now IBM has brought them together to create the Power Systems server line. The technologies and methods for data protection and system optimization for both platforms have seen great changes as well. Even as transaction and data storage volumes have increased, ensuring that the right data protection and management practice…
System i is at the heart of the IT infrastructure for many organizations. Companies around the globe depend on the platform to provide reliable performance for their sales, operations, human resources, accounting, shipping and other critical applications. While it is true that System i is one of the easiest to manage business systems in the world, it is still far from entirely self-managing or …
For today’s small and mid-sized businesses, the risk and effects from any unplanned outage (downtime) grow with each additional critical application, network enhancement or system upgrade. We don’t have to look back very far to see the consequences of sudden or unexpected disasters affecting the IT infrastructure of major cities and businesses of every description. Consequently, IT man…
Organizations need to protect their data and restrict access to enterprise resources to authorized users. Many companies attempt to address their security concerns by simply implementing stronger password policies, requiring employees to remember more and stronger passwords for all applications. However, most employees can not remember more than one or two strong passwords, so they won’t f…
For most companies, changing accounting software is a daunting challenge. Not only is transitioning the accounting function to a new software package tricky in itself, but it is usually catalyzed by one or more business challenges that are (hopefully) solved by the new system. As a result, most companies wait until problems have become (or are obviously becoming) insurmountable before initiatin…
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX”) puts a new emphasis on timeliness and transparency in financial reporting, and the importance of internal controls in managing a public company. As of November 2004, SOX became a requirement for larger companies traded on a U.S. stock exchange; smaller public companies have until July 2007 to comply. This whitepaper provides an overview of, and s…
Over the last few years, corporations have been under incre- ased pressure to optimize resource utilization while at the same time adapting more quickly to changes required by the business. This pressure has direct impact on IT organizati- ons faced with more complex installations that need to be implemented, enhanced and managed with fewer allocated resources. Most organizations have invested…
IT budgets are shrinking even as the reliance on data availability grows. Now more than ever, IT managers must spend carefully to keep from negatively impacting the bottom line. One area where IT departments can realize significant savings is in storage. This document provides a simple breakdown of the actual costs paid for storage when real-world utilization and performance numbers, in additi…
Remote support technology is one of the most popular service and support automation tools for high-tech companies, with a well understood and easily documented return on investment story. Though basic remote control is available from many sources, including some freeware and shareware options, companies interested in improving both the economics of support and the customer experience should und…