Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 2:00 - 3:00 PM EDT

The 2010 Nemertes PilotHouse Awards recognize enterprise-technology providers in 14 computing and communications categories: Carrier Ethernet Services, Cloud Computing, Data-Center Colocation, IP Contact Centers, IP Telephony, MPLS Services, Security as a Service, Servers for Virtualization, Sustainability, Unified Communications, Virtual Desktops, WAN Optimization, and Wireless LANs.

The annual PilotHouse Awards reflect how vendors and service providers perform in the eyes of their business buyers. What makes the PilotHouse award so unique? The results are based 100% on the views and experiences of actual technology buyers. Nemertes’ determines the methodology, conducts the research and analyzes the findings, however, Nemertes has no influence over vendor performance. The opinions rest with real buyers. In addition, no vendors sponsor this research.

During this Webinar, Nemertes will announce this year's winners and give details of the findings. We will discuss the methodology behind the selections, what stands out among winners, and how the results help IT technology buyers make well-informed purchasing decisions.

Presenter: Irwin Lazar, Vice President for Communications and Collaboration Research
Moderator: Johna Till Johnson, President and Senior Founding Partner

Tuesday, September 21, 2010, 2:00 - 3:00 PM EDT

What are the top three characteristics of highly successful IT organizations? Which technologies are emerging as must-haves for 2010, 2011, and beyond? Where are successful companies turning to managed, hosted, and cloud services—and why?

Nemertes Issue Paper

Overview: Application delivery optimization (ADO) is the design of networks and systems to guarantee appropriate, effective application delivery in the distributed and mobile world. Effective delivery encompasses application availability and performance. Appropriate delivery encompasses aspects of security, especially access control, to ensure that services are delivered only to the correct parties in the increasingly perimeterless world.
Writ large, ADO touches on everything from application architecture to WAN provisioning. Practically, the focus is most often on application delivery controllers, WAN optimization, and associated monitoring and management systems, systems that detect and correct the performance problems created by application architectures, code shortcomings, server and desktop limitations, and WAN problems.

We take a holistic perspective, and note that ADO is at the confluence of many IT architectures. IT staff in server and application management, data center network management, desktop management, security and risk mitigation, and WAN management have to look at their problems as related and approach solving them together. Choices can be made tactically, with respect to a single perspective, or strategically, looking across several. Staff should be preparing to be what IT will need in the future: application delivery architects, application delivery managers.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 2:00 - 3:00 PM EDT

Users don't care about WAN link speeds or server uptime. All they care about is "Can I use my application?" Application delivery optimization (ADO) is the design and deployment of systems aimed at ensuring delivery of enterprise applications to end users, wherever and however connected, with appropriate performance and security. ADO encompasses use of application delivery controllers, WAN optimizers, and other end-point and data center techniques and tools to boost application responsiveness and availability. It crosses WAN, data center, and security architectures, and focuses IT on the most critical aspect of service delivery -- can your users, partners, and customers use what they need to use to get the business of the organization done?

Presenter: John Burke, Principal Research Analyst

Nemertes Issue Paper

Overview: New applications and an evolving organizational environment drive bandwidth growth and a need for predictable, stable, real-time performance. Voice Over IP (VoIP), voice and video conferencing, and collaboration tools are sweeping through organizations, while Software as a Service (SaaS) is shifting the place where optimization (and security) must happen. Desktop virtualization adds “desktop-like” to “LAN-like” as a user-performance expectation. As a result, network traffic must be conditioned to the new applications and controlled according to organizational policies and priorities. As IT shifts to charging business lines back for bandwidth, it will need the visibility and control to meet user expectations and business line SLAs. Now is the time for IT to re-evaluate its WAN optimization requirements and plans.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT

Who should attend: Data center and network managers, directors, and architects

Data center networks are evolving to move more kinds of data at higher speeds and with greater intelligence than ever before. Attend to hear Nemertes explore how the consolidation of storage and data networks, the spread of 10 gigabit Ethernet, and increasing network awareness of applications and users are creating the new data center network and powering the new data center.

Nemertes Issue Paper

Overview: Technology is at a major transition point, similar to the shift from Management Information Systems (MIS) to Information Technology (IT) in the 1990s. In this case, the shift is from IT to Enterprise Technology (ET), driven by the confluence of new technologies and ongoing business imperatives. This transition point means that certain technology functions are commoditizing rapidly, while others are becoming more strategic. The fundamental challenge facing IT professionals is to determine quickly and accurately which functions are which, and react accordingly. This means IT leaders must embrace both strategic and utilitarian roles. Or, to put it another way, today’s IT professionals need a special version of the “serenity prayer”: “God grant me the ability to invest in enterprise technology, the courage to commoditize information technology, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Nemertes Issue Paper

Overview:
Organizational convergence of the various operations teams in IT — network, applications, security, compliance — is logical, given converging infrastructures and similarity of staff tasks. Adopting technology-neutral, multipurpose tools to share across all silos is not enough to bring about convergence in itself, but it can speed and ease the process. IT needs to seek tools that support and enable the elimination of staff team silos and the creation of a converged operations team.

Nemertes’ PilotHouse Awards recognizes how vendors and service providers perform in the eyes of their business customers. What makes Nemertes’ PilotHouse award so unique?

The winners of the Nemertes PilotHouse Awards represent the “movers and shakers” among communications and computing vendors, and their customers, the IT practitioners deploying those technologies.

Vendors:

Tuesday, September 8, 2009 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT

It’s highly likely that in a few years, we’ll be looking back at 2009 as the year when everything changed for IT. The recession literally decimated IT forces, or worse: Sixty-seven percent of organizations are decreasing their IT departments by an average of 17%.

Application performance is where the rubber hits the road in IT - it determines how IT's services are perceived by the rest of the business.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT

Over the past few weeks I’ve discussed agility enablers such as virtualization and unified communications (UC). We find both technologies are also seen as green IT enablers: Virtualization reduces data center power/cooling demands through consolidation and UC facilitates virtual workers (reduced travel) through presence, collaboration, Web conferencing and telepresence. So, what about virtualized security and virtual security engineers?

The Issue: