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President-elect silent on federal cybersecurity policies
This week, bloggers look ahead to the new administration's cybersecurity policies, how to close gaps in app delivery management and the best way to optimize data centers.
In the lead-up to the election, Jon Oltsik, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group Inc., in Milford, Mass., reflected on the candidates' views on cybersecurity policies. At the time of writing, Oltsik noted Hillary Clinton's cybersecurity policies mirrored President Barack Obama's Cybersecurity National Action Plan. With the election now decided in favor of Donald Trump, Oltsik said his strategy can be best described as a collection of "pedestrian cybersecurity policy objectives."
ESG surveys indicated 49% of cybersecurity professionals believe cybersecurity policies are a crucial national security issue for the new president. "Cybersecurity is a geeky topic that only a small subset of U.S. citizens -- including the candidates themselves -- have a clue about," Oltsik said. "The next president must be a leader on this crucial issue of national security and actually get things done," he added.
Read more of Oltsik's thoughts on the 2016 election and cybersecurity.
Sealing visibility gaps in application delivery management
Julie Craig, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates Inc., in Boulder, Colo., explored the subject of user experience monitoring (UEM) systems for application delivery management. According to Craig, technologies like virtualization, systems integration, microservices and containers are increasing application complexity. "Despite the growing adoption of sophisticated application-focused tool sets, too many IT organizations still first hear about application-related issues primarily from the users themselves," Craig said.
EMA focused its research on UEM. Results indicated one-third of IT professionals find troubleshooting takes too long, and 80% said current tools lack visibility. Additionally, 80% of respondents said UEM capabilities were critical to their business. "In short, the proliferation of modern applications has created a level of complexity that makes enterprise-grade, application-focused solutions essential to day-to-day application support," she added.
Look more into Craig's thoughts on UEM.
Exploring data center optimization
Ivan Pepelnjak, writing in IPSpace, looked back on a recently completed data center optimization project, wherein workloads were virtualized and server uplinks were reduced in number. Storage arrays were displaced by distributed file systems, and virtual appliances filled in for physical firewalls and load balancers.
Pepelnjak wondered what was left to be done at the end of the project. If users adopt virtualized appliances, they only need two hardware components, and with a distributed file system, no extra storage components. Bottom line: Pepelnjak said at the end, only two switches were required to support the optimized data center of the future.
Explore more of Pepelnjak's idea on optimizing data centers.
