D Thomson's blog

Over the years, I've seen a fair few maturity models applied to systems managementand IT service delivery, a while back “organic IT”, then “utility computing” and more recently to private cloud computing. In general they allaspire to reach “level 4” within the following model:

With many organisations giving cloud computing serious consideration, a question we are often asked is, "Should we be putting our data in the cloud?" Organisations should be concerned about their data, wherever it is - it's a strategic business asset, after all. Indeed, this concern should extend to wherever the data is, depending on what it is and how it is being used. 

The term 'sprawl' seems to be gaining momentum in IT circles. The culprit, we are told, is virtualisation: while creating, duplicating and even cloning new virtual machines may be much simpler than procuring their physical equivalents, organisations can end up with so many of the things that they start causing management problems.

I'm talking to a lot of customers about cloud computing. Really, I am - and, in general, CIOs aren't nearly as negative about the cloud as some of the media might think. Yes, cloud is a re-branding of some internet-based processing, storage and security services, but it brings new services and new opportunities that are being fed into IT strategy as well.

I'm going to be controversial for a minute. Will cloud actually make IT cheaper? Public cloud service providers often state that their costs are lower, using criteria such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) to show how they can run services more cost-effectively than the in-house equivalents.

Last week, I hosted several Virtualization events for customers in various regions around Europe. The events were partly an opportunity for Symantec to showcase its very latest offerings in the virtualization space. More importantly, though, they gave us the opportunity to speak with our most important customers about the own virtualization journeys.

Since last month’s cyber attacks on defence company Lockheed Martin, there has been a flurry of announcements from both UK and US governments about how they intend to deal with the growing threat.

As I meet Symantec customers and partners to talk about some of the impacts that virtualization, mobile and cloud computing are having on their businesses, I hear time and time again about the importance of information and about the fact that the governance and securiy policy that surrounds information will be key to ensuring successful transitions to new computing and service de