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Is Software as a Service (SaaS) Really for You?
Software as a Service (SaaS) sounds like a terrific deal, because it requires relatively little money up front. You only pay for what you use each month. And then there’s no worry about upgrades, support, or maintenance. All you have to do is pay and play, right? Well, it’s not necessarily that simple. For example, with…
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Suggested Cloud Monitoring Strategies for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS
From the Cloud First policy established in 2010 to last year’s Cloud Smart update, it’s clear the government is driving federal agencies toward cloud computing. The strategy makes sense, but for agencies migrating, however, the decision is less clear cut, because there are several options agencies can choose based on…
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Federal Technology Trends: Hybrid IT is the New Black
By Joe Kim, SolarWinds EVP, Engineering and Global CTO Last year, hybrid IT was the new black, at least according to the SolarWinds 2016 Public Sector IT Trends Report. In surveying 116 public sector IT professionals, we found that agencies are actively moving much of their infrastructure to the cloud, while still keeping…
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Firewall Security Management – An Integral Part of Cyber Security
Cyber-attacks have become very common in today’s technology world. According to Akamai's Q2 2013 State of the Internet Report, the number of cyber-attacks that occurred during the second quarter of 2013 fluctuated across the globe. However, places like Indonesia and China experienced a significant increase in attack…
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Writing Challenge Day 8: My New Hobby: Lessons Learned
This year has thrown us through a loop and being stuck within our four walls eventually catches up with us all. Some of my hobbies are no longer safe and a new one needed to take its place. For me, accentuating the positive meant learning a new hobby. Finding the tools, information, time, and raw materials for making…
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"IT" Portrayed in Hollywood
If you are like me, you watch your fair share of movies and TV. And being a seasoned IT pro, I always watch with a discerning eye when IT plays a critical role in advancing plot. One of my particular not-so-favorite clichés is when the cynical computer whiz (baseball cap worn usually askew) sits down in front of a…
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Does Compliance Start with Software, or with People and Processes?
All too often, federal IT personnel misconstrue software as being able to make their agency compliant with various regulations. It can’t – at least not by itself. Certainly, software can help you achieve compliance, but it should only be viewed as a component of your efforts. True and complete compliance involves defining,…
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It's a Trap! Using SNMP Traps to Get your Network to Talk to You
You have a network, and it's your job to keep it running. How do you know it's doing what it should? You could just wait to hear from your users; surely your CIO will let you know when his "internet is broken", but this approach may not have a positive influence on your continued employment. No, you need some network…
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Reviewing the Business Cases for Network Configuration Management
Four predominant IT use cases any network device configuration management tool must address are: * Configuration change management: scheduling device configuration backups, requiring change approval for configuration changes, scheduling execution of approved changed. * Compliance reporting: defining and enforcing…
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Application Observability, The Next Step in Application Performance Monitoring
Efficiently managing the performance of complex cloud environments requires more than monitoring and alerting Today’s cloud environments rely on microservices, service meshes, containers, and orchestration tools and are too complex for traditional tools to measure and monitor performance metrics effectively. The number of…