General IT

As a product manager of an integrated solution suite, it’s interesting to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between traditional systems management (OS deployment, inventory, software delivery, patching, monitoring) and its major trends (security, virtualization, cloud, efficient data centers) with network management (deployment and configuration, backup/restore, monitoring, traffic analysis, Quality of Service) and networking trends (mobile devices, cloud, virtualization, larger networking demands). There are many similarities between these two IT focus areas and I will “blog” about several aspects as I tie-in and compare systems management with network management over the next year. One similarity that is particularly easy to spot and “leaps off the page” for me relates to discovery. In fact, it ALL starts with discovery.

I'm sure many of you opened your browser to Google this morning to see the capitol of Kansas replace the search giant's name.

The Basics of WMI and Why You Need to Monitor It

There has been a lot of buzz around WAN optimization over the past few months, with numerous mentions of what WAN optimization is and what it brings to the table. On the surface, it is certainly a cool technology, but it is a technology that requires some additional thought before implementing. It is certainly another great tool in the network managers arsenal.