As the end of 2013 draws near, many businesses have budgets on their minds. Most companies will run year-end numbers to determine the full scope of their investments, and analyze what sort of changes can be made to cut costs and increase profit margins. As the number crunching begins, it’s time to consider numerous variables, including those that fall under the IT department. Decisions made within...

Data security has been a prominent feature in recent technology headlines as the costs associated with data breaches continue to escalate. Business and IT leaders alike have become all too aware of the need to protect valuable information, but questions of how - and to what extent protection is needed- are common sticking points. The rule of least privilege has been a long-held strategy that...

You don’t need a reminder of the strain big data will place on your IBM i storage environments in the coming months and years, but server workloads won’t be the only thing expanding. As CIOs navigate the transition from megabytes and gigabytes to terabytes and petabytes, their colleagues' business intelligence plans continue to grow more complex and ambitious as well. In the age of data-driven...

Organizations today face an ever-expanding volume of information that must be analyzed and delivered to the right people. While the resulting business intelligence offers us insight into processes and customers, many companies still rely on practices and technology that aren’t suited for managing data on a large scale. As a December 2012 Financial Director article highlighted, 60 percent of those...