Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: HP.

IT must do whatever it takes to make businesses lean, agile, and intelligent. Modern support services then too need to be able to empower the workers and IT personnel alike to maintain peak control of systems, and to keep the applications, data and processes performing reliably at lowest cost.

Not only are data centers supporting many types of converged infrastructure, and now increasingly virtualized technical workloads, too. They're supporting big data requirements -- as data continues to explode -- but they must do this all efficiently, with increased automation as a key component of that efficiency.

To accomplish this high efficiency and to exploit the best in performance management and operational governance, enterprises must move now toward proactive types of support -- to continue the ongoing improvement and to maintain systems with high expectations met.

In a special sponsored HP Expert Chat discussion on new approaches to data center support, remote support, and support automation, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, recently moderated an in-depth session with Tommaso Esmanech, Director of Automation Strategies at HP Technology Services.

Esmanech, with more than 16 years of HP IT support design experience, explained the latest on how HP is revolutionizing support to offer new innovations in support automation and efficiency. HP is redefining modern data-center support, enabling far more insights into performance and operation by placing a proactive edge on service and support capabilities.

The discussion was filled out by contributions from two other HP support experts, Andy Claiborne, Usability Lead for HP Insight Remote Support, and Paddy Medley, Director of Enterprise Business IT for HP Technology Services.

Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: HP.


Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: The Open Group.

This BriefingsDirect thought leadership interview comes in conjunction with The Open Group Conference in Washington, D.C., beginning July 16. The conference will focus on how enterprise architecture (EA), enterprise transformation, and securing global supply chains.

We're joined by one of the main speakers at the July 16 conference, Chris Armstrong, President of Armstrong Process Group, to examine how governments in particular are using various frameworks to improve their architectural planning and IT implementations.

Armstrong is an internationally recognized thought leader in EA, formal modeling, process improvement, systems and software engineering, requirements management, and iterative and agile development.

He represents the Armstrong Process Group at the Open Group, the Object Management Group (OMG), and Eclipse Foundation. Armstrong also co-chairs The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF), and Model Driven Architecture (MDA) process modeling efforts, and also the TOGAF 9 Tool Certification program, all at The Open Group.

At the conference, Armstrong will examine the use of TOGAF 9 to deliver Department of Defense (DoD) Architecture Framework or DoDAF 2 capabilities. And in doing so, we'll discuss how to use TOGAF architecture development methods to drive the development and use of DoDAF 2 architectures for delivering new mission and program capabilities. His presentation will also be live-streamed free from The Open Group Conference. The discussion now is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: The Open Group.


Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: VMware.

The latest BriefingsDirect end-user case study hones in on how higher education technology innovator Le Moyne College in upstate New York successfully embraced several levels of virtualization as a springboard to broad client-tier virtualization benefits.

Le Moyne worked with technology solutions provider Systems Management Planning Inc. to make the journey in a structured, predictive fashion to deep server virtualization -- and then on to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

The combined path to smooth VDI implementations at the server and desktop levels for Le Moyne came from teaming with a seasoned technology partner so the college community could quickly gain IT productivity payoffs via VDI, even amid the demanding environment and high expectations of an active higher education campus.

To learn more, BriefingsDirect assembled Shaun Black, IT Director at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, and Dean Miller, Account Manager at Systems Management Planning, or SMP, also based in Rochester. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: VMware.


Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: VMware.

The latest BriefingsDirect cloud computing discussion centers on how small-to-medium sized business (SMB) Seven Corners, a travel insurance provider in Indiana, created and implemented an agile and revenue-generating approach to cloud services.

Seven Corners went beyond the typical efficiency and cost conservation benefits of cloud to build innovative business services that generate whole new revenue streams. A VMware-enabled cloud infrastructure allowed Seven Corners to rapidly reengineer its IT capabilities and spawn a new vision for its agility and future growth.

Here to share their story on an SMB's journey to cloud-based business development is George Reed, CIO of Seven Corners Inc., based in Carmel, Indiana. The interview is conducted by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: VMware.


Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Quest Software.

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Businesses clearly need a better approach to their data recovery capabilities -- across both their physical and virtualized environments. The current landscape for data management, backup, and disaster recovery (DR), too often ignores the transition from physical to virtualized environments, and sidesteps the heightened real-time role that data now plays in enterprise.

What's more, major trends like virtualization, big data, and calls for comprehensive and automated data management are also driving this call for change.

What's needed are next-generation, integrated, and simplified approaches, the fast backup and recovery that spans all essential corporate data. The solution therefore means bridging legacy and new data, scaling to handle big data, implementing automation and governance, and integrating the functions of backup protection and DR.

To share insights into why data recovery needs a new approach and how that can be accomplished, the next BriefingsDirect discussion joins two experts, John Maxwell, Vice President of Product Management for Data Protection at Quest Software, and Jerome Wendt, President and Lead Analyst of DCIG, an independent storage analyst and consulting firm. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Quest Software.


Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: The Open Group.

This BriefingsDirect thought leadership interview comes in conjunction with The Open Group Conference in Washington, D.C., beginning July 16. The conference will focus on how security impacts the enterprise architecture, enterprise transformation, and global supply chain activities in organizations, both large and small.

We're now joined on the security front with one of the main speakers at the conference, Joel Brenner, the author of "America the Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime, and Warfare."

Joel is a former Senior Counsel at the National Security Agency (NSA), where he advised on legal and policy issues relating to network security. Mr. Brenner currently practices law in Washington at Cooley LLP, specializing in cyber security. Registration remains open for The Open Group Conference in Washington, DC beginning July 16.

Previously, he served as the National Counterintelligence Executive in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and as the NSA’s Inspector General. He is a graduate of University of Wisconsin–Madison, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Find the podcast on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: The Open Group.