eSP - IT Solution Providers in Europe

Micron Technologies announces the purchase of Virtensys, a Manchester-based PCIe-sharing virtualisation solutions provider. 

The 2 companies do not provide additional details of the agreement. 

The purchase will result in the folding of Virtensys virtualisation software with Micron storage, resulting in the more efficient virtualisation of NAND flash storage in enterprise systems. 

PCIe card units contain large amounts of NAND flash and replace spinning disk drives in systems demanding a high number of transactions per minute (or second), such as big data analytics workloads. It bypasses traditional storage overhead by reducing latencies, increasing throughput and enabling more efficient data processing. 

Micron currently offers a PCIe solution-- the RealSSD P320h, in 350 or 700GB capacities. 

Go Micron Announces Agreement to Acquire Virtensys

As social, big data and the consumerisation of IT continue leaving their footprint on the industry, IDC estimates European software will experience "moderate" 3.1% Y-o-Y growth during 2012.

The analyst says CRM will lead in enterprise software, as updates on salesforce automation and customer service applications start featuring social capabilities including discussion forums, activity streams, follow/subscribe options and external feeds. 

Social in enterprise leads directly to the consumerisation of IT, where employees demand to bring their devices to enterprise networks-- opening new opportunity within security. As a result, IT managers will need to invest in mobile device and application management tools, including cloud-based options. 

IDC also predicts 2012 will be the year for "the big data road map," as organisations will start creating architecture connecting big data and data warehouses in order to analyse new data while speeding up processing. It also expects a good year for the security industry, where it will outgrow its niche due to increasing cyberthreat risks. 

Go IDC Predictions 2012: European Software

The 3-way partnership between Dell, Microsoft and VMware (announced back in April 2011) brings results-- vStart, a preconfigured cloud system server coming in a single rack. 

vStart runs on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (with unlimited virtualisation rights), and is supplied assembled, wired and ready for deployment. The three companies claim the system can handle up to 200 virtual machines at a time using either vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V (or both). 

Three configurations are currently available-- 50m, 100m and 200m. As well as VMware vSphere and Microsoft System Centre, Dell also offers its own Advanced Infrastructure Management (AIM) software integrated with Microsoft System Centre.

Each system is also all-inclusive, with Dell hardware, storage (EqualLogic or Compellent), networking (PowerConnect) and backup power system. 

Go Dell vStart

According to a survey by the Ponemon Institute (commissioned by credit-checking company Experian), 60% of IT professionals whose company lost data following a security breach did not encrypt customer information. 

The types of lost data include email (70%), credit card or bank payment information (45%) and social security numbers (33%). 

The survey involves over 500 IT professionals, who were asked to focus on one data breach they believed had the greatest financial and reputational impact to their organizations. It shows how a large number of companies are storing sensitive data in readable, unencrypted form-- unless required to encrypt by regulations or contracts. 

Encryption does involve some pain, especially when involving older databases. 

When it comes to the causes of data breach, most survey respondents say it was due to either a negligent insider (34%), the outsourcing of data to 3rd parties (19%) or a malicious insider (16%). 

Once a breach happens, a lesson is usually learnt-- over 60% of respondents say their companies increased security budgets following a breach. 

Go Study Examines the Aftermath of Data Breaches