New Books

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What Defines a Green, Next-Generation, Virtual Data Center?
Many approaches and technologies, addressing different issues and requirements, can be used to enable a green and virtual data center. Virtualization is a popular approach to consolidating underutilized IT resources, including servers, storage, and I/O networks to free up floor-space, lower energy consumption, and reduce cooling demand, all of which can result in cost savings. However, virtualization-and particularly consolidation-applies to only a small percentage of all IT resources. The importance of this chapter from The Green and Virtual Data Center is that there are many facets of virtualization you can use to enable IT infrastructure resource management to improve service delivery in a more cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner.

Why SaaS Plays Nicer than Enterprise Software
This article looks at the benefits of SAAS software in comparison to enterprise software. It argues that with enterprise software, what you thinks you are buying, what was demonstrated and what is actually delivered, are frequently different things. On the contrary, with SaaS, it's "What You See Is What You Get." Further, with SaaS, rather like Open Source, you have not one, but many voices of criticism pointing out the numerous ways the software can be improved. Of course, you will hear both good and bad ideas, but since we're in a market of ideas, the good ones win out. So over time, a SaaS solution begins to represent a consolidated set of best practices.

Predicting the ROI of Change
Process Simulation Modeling (PSIM) can provide real business value to organizations that are trying to change processes. When companies use the appropriate software simulation, designed for their industry to evaluate process performance, these organizations can improve their operations and achieve higher levels of process maturity with the integration of CMMI. Discover how Process Simulation Modeling (PSIM) can help you zero-in on the changes that will deliver a positive ROI.

Managing the IT Procurement Process
This chapter from IS Management Handbook, Eighth Edition presents a model of the IT procurement process that was developed by the SIM Working Group to provide a framework for studying IT procurement.

Why Tomorrow Is Too Late to Think about Business Continuity
Business owners and executives juggle a number of projects each day that draw on their time and resources. As a result, they tend to defer business continuity into the "solve tomorrow" column until right before (or right after) an incident. This is a critical, sometimes disastrous mistake. Like all business-essential IT programs, designing and implementing a functional continuity plan is a multi-month process. The link between business continuity and disaster survivability is significant. If you are inclined to agree, you can get started today by following steps in this article.

Optimizing Exchange and Active Directory Backup and Recovery
To optimize backup and recovery of Exchange and Active Directory environments, organizations can leverage a growing number of advanced tools that overcome the challenges of traditional approaches. As this article explains, these new tools give businesses a more simplified and streamlined process that reduces their backup windows, provides continuous protection and delivers efficient granular recovery of the critical business information.

Using Scrum for Project Management
Scrum is an agile software approach to getting project tasks done. This approach hyper focuses upon software development and testing task execution. This same approach can be easily adapted to general project management. The scrum approach is an evolutionary approach to project management with few down-sides and a substantial payoff.

Project Management Tools
Here's an overview of some of the quantitative tools you can use to manage your projects better.

ERP for IT
In trying to align IT with business goals, organizations often find that IT landscapes consisting of processes, information, technology and people have taken on a life of their own and are not easily managed. Because of this, CIOs find it nearly impossible to answer important questions. This article introduces IT planning, which supports effective and consistent decision-making about how IT should be deployed and managed. The reason for IT planning is to facilitate decision-making. In particular, it provides support for effective decisions and ensures that decision-making is performed in a consistent way suggesting a framework, methodology or process.

Complex Adaptive Systems Engineering
This paper brings together distinct but related systems engineering activities to form a methodology suitable for complex environments. The CASE methodology acknowledges the human factor and encourages exerting influence rather than control. CASE is offered for consideration and application, in limited ways at first, to gain confidence in its viability before being applied more broadly.

Pandemic Influenza: Emergency Planning and Community Preparedness
This book outlines the containment and response capabilities needed to effectively plan and prepare for a wide-spread outbreak. Addressing clinical factors and public health challenges, the authors examine critical issues such as the types of influenza and related health implications, outbreak prevention and mass prophylactic measures, medical supply and fatality management, response actions for various emergency service disciplines, and the potential economic effects of a pandemic outbreak. Mirroring the goals of the U.S. National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, the text underscores the importance of expanding the health care systems capacity to provide adequate triage and medical care.

Malware Writers Jump on Swine Flu Bandwagon
Symantec Security Response has observed malware writers joining spammers in leveraging the Swine Flu to reach unsuspecting computer users. While samples are extremely limited, this appears to be yet another attempt by hackers to leverage current events as lures to distribute their malware.

Scale-out iSCSI SANs as a Force Multiplier for Virtualization
With the remarkable growth of storage in data centers and remote offices, efficient block storage management and economic access to enterprise information has become both more important and more difficult to achieve. Enterprise storage is often doubling each year as the volume of business critical information continues to increase. Server virtualization further complicates storage requirements, leading to headaches for IT departments trying to manage and stay on top of their storage needs. This article details how scale-out iSCSI SANs offer one of the most cost-effective ways of coping with these rapidly growing storage requirements.

Insider Threats Remain Low Priority
Despite recent headlines announcing major corporate data breaches, concerns about insider security threats remain a low priority for enterprise organizations. According to a survey of IT industry professionals conducted by Lieberman Software Corporation, insider security threats and corporate data breaches are lesser security concerns than more traditional security risks, such as viruses, Trojans and worms.

The Key Success Factors in Aligning IT with Business
Because business needs help set IT's priorities, how IT departments align their solutions with business objectives hinge on a number of success factors. At the end of the day, most of the work rest on the shoulders of CIOs, being the key figures that understand the business side of things and have the ability to translate business needs into technology solutions.

For North American Businesses, the Benefits of Onshore Outsouring Are Off the Charts
The discussion about outsourcing continues to be an on-again, off-again affair--onshore and offshore, that is. Certainly, the basic value of outsourcing has been well-documented. What is still up for debate, however, is whether to adopt an onshore or offshore approach. For purposes of this discussion, "onshore" outsourcing refers to the use of an outsourcer located on the same continent as the customer company; "offshore," logically, would be anywhere else. Each approach has distinct merits. This article examines specific outsourcing scenarios to determine which line of attack is optimal.

Which Kind of System? The Make, Buy, or Rent Decision
This article illustrates the three main system options for organizations seeking to upgrade their systems and the pros and cons of each. Having made the decision to upgrade its systems, the next step that an organization needs to take involves the classic "make or buy" question: Is the organization going to build its own system from scratch or purchase a "mature" system that tens, hundreds, or even thousands of organizations currently use? Note that the traditional make or buy decision has been complicated somewhat in recent years by the advent of SaaS (Software as a Service). Vendors like Workday and salesforce.com provide a third option for organizations that want to "rent" software.

The Open Source Data Warehouse Revolution
Data warehousing is changing quickly to meet the demands of companies with large volumes of data that require fast answers to complex, unpredictable questions. What's providing the answers today--in a more affordable, simpler way--is the two-word IT revolution called open source, which is providing the building blocks required to create a whole new data warehouse. Discover the many benefits to an open source data warehouse.

Coalescing a New Team: Creating Ties That Bind
Maybe you've inherited new team members from another group within your company as a result of recent reorganization. Or perhaps your company has merged with another, giving you a whole new group to manage. Whatever the reason, you need to pull a new team together, including people who have been working together all along and those who are just coming on board. What actions can you, as a team leader, take to create an environment of collaboration and trust in the short-term and in the long-run? What can team members do to get connected as quickly as possible to other team members? This article provides some practical tips for finding the right "glue" to bring a new team together, even when working from afar.

CMMI and Agile: Opposites Attract
The myths surrounding the compatibility of CMMI and Agile have recently been debunked by SEI. Despite the perception that CMMI best practices and Agile development methods are at odds with each other, new research suggests just the opposite train of thought. In fact, CMMI and Agile champions can benefit from using both methods within organizations - with the potential to dramatically improve business performance. This article explains how these seemingly opposing strategies can be paired to foster dramatic improvements in business performance.

Ranking Risks: Rare to Certain, Negligible to Catastrophic
Risks your project or business are exposed to may be worth reviewing now more than ever to see which ones need more attention than others. This article presents a risk matrix, which is a risk assessment tool that exposes aspects of risks that could be subjected to some form of ranking. A risk matrix shows you and other decision makers a clearer view of what the risk is, what is involved, and what amount of time can be afforded given the severity and probability of the risk event. It can help you visualize, in an organized manner, the risks you face in quantitative and qualitative terms and plan and make a more informed decision when the situation arises.

Traditional or Milestone Consulting: Which Is Best?
Many organizations may recognize the need for consultants but remain unsure about how to use them. This article compares two of the different consulting alternatives--traditional and milestone--and the pros and cons of each.

How BPM Can Benefit Quality Programs
In Business Process Management Systems: Strategy and Implementation, James Chang discusses business management practices and the technology that enables them, with a focus on strategy and implementation. He analyzes the history of process management practices and demonstrates that BPM practices are a synthesis of radical change and continuous change practices. It provides an integrated view on how various management practices merge into BPM and describes the many technologies that converge to form a Business Process Management System (BPMS), illustrating its standards and service-oriented architecture. The excerpt looks at how BPM can benefit quality programs.

The State of Today's Data Center: Challenges and Opportunities
Data center managers are caught between a rock and a hard place. They are expected to do more than ever, and they are expected to do it with less than ever. Yet, a growing number of creative data center managers are using a variety of cost-containment strategies that capitalize on heterogeneity to increase IT efficiency and maximize existing resources while keeping costs under control. By leveraging various technologies and processes across this infrastructure, you can better protect information and applications, enhance data center service levels, improve storage and server utilization, manage physical and virtual environments, and drive down capital and operational costs.

Stimulating Your Organization with Green Technology
This article discusses President Obama's plan to stimulate the economy using green virtualization technology. It's a great story about how America can again become an economic leader and reduce our carbon footprint at the same time.

Granular Application and System Recovery for Virtual and Physical Environments
There are many small but impactful ways to increase a business's bottom line, including reducing recovery time and decreasing the amount of storage resources needed. Granular recovery is an advanced technology that allows IT organizations to recover specific files in seconds from a single backup allowing recovery time to be reduced and decreasing the amount of storage space used. This article discusses how granular recovery provides an innovative approach to a recovery solution that allows IT administrators to save time and money, while reducing complexity.