VoiceNations 2010 Survey Reveals the Demand for Business Continuity Planning

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) February 25, 2010

VoiceNation, the countrys leading provider of voicemail, virtual PBX and disaster recovery solutions, informs the business world of recent survey results conducted on thousands of small to medium sized companies regarding their business continuity plan for voice communication. Their results confirmed a dramatic absence in disaster recovery preparation.

VoiceNation conducted a survey on over 10,000 companies across the US, in industries including manufacturing, shipping, electronics, general contracting, real estate and more. The survey found that while 100% of companies agreed that there was a critical need for some sort of emergency plan if they lost their voice communication platform; only 38% of these businesses actually had some sort of plan in place.

Key findings of the survey included:

VoiceNations 2010 Survey Reveals the Demand for Business Continuity Planning

Study Reveals Californians Must Increase Earthquake Preparedness; Less Than 20 Percent Have Prepared Their Homes; Only 40 Percent Have Sufficient Water

Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) March 5, 2010

A majority of Californians have taken initial steps toward earthquake preparedness but more than 60 percent of Californians have not done enough to make their homes safer and guard their personal finances in preparation for an inevitable, large-scale earthquake, according to a recent California Earthquake Preparedness Survey.

Although state and local public safety and emergency management agencies are better prepared than ever before, California residents have focused on easy preparedness activities such as collecting supplies and making back-up copies of important documents but they have not done more difficult and expensive activities such as securing the contents of their home or purchasing earthquake insurance, according to the survey.

Key findings of the survey were:

Study Reveals Californians Must Increase Earthquake Preparedness; Less Than 20 Percent Have Prepared Their Homes; Only 40 Percent Have Sufficient Water

Beyond the Data Center: Emerson Network Power Survey Reveals Top IT Concerns Inside Hospitals in North America

Columbus, OH (PRWEB) November 3, 2010

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson and the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity, today announced results of its 2010 survey on IT and facility issues inside the hospital. The survey results, which include responses from North America-based professionals in IT management/IT operations, data center management and facilities management, reported budget, power requirements and availability as top concerns.

Other notable results from the survey included:

More than half of respondents upgraded their healthcare facility’s power and cooling infrastructure when implementing new technologies like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)/network communications and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), showing a correlation between the importance of power and cooling infrastructure and the reliance on IT systems.
More than one-half of patient rooms are not supported by any uninterruptible power source, and just 28 percent of operating rooms have emergency power receptacles serviced through an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). This lack of protection makes critical patient data vulnerable to downtime as there is no ride-through until the hospital’s emergency generators can assume the critical load.
Thirty-two percent of those surveyed had experienced unplanned downtime of their IT systems while 29 percent responded that their data centers did not deploy redundant power systems or didn’t know what type of distribution strategy was being used. This suggests that, despite an increased reliance on IT, there is a need for increasing awareness of infrastructure technologies and strategies.
Despite the recession, 60 percent indicated they plan to add more server and storage capacity in their hospital data centers in the next 24 months, while more than half are planning to update or expand IT infrastructure within an existing hospital. Twenty-seven percent plan to expand the existing hospital, while 15 percent plan to build a new facility.
Regarding cloud computing in the healthcare setting, web servers and web-based applications have the second highest cloud adoption rate at 49 percent (13 percent is specified as internal cloud), among respondents, and 50 percent of respondents plan to implement disaster recovery/backup-as-a-service on an internal or external cloud. Forty-nine percent of respondents mentioned a concern with security and cloud computing.

Quotes attributable to Jeff Sturgeon, vice president of marketing and solutions, Emerson Network Power’s Liebert products business in North America:

“With shrinking IT budgets and rising demand for computing capacity, it’s not surprising that healthcare IT and facilities professionals cited budget, power requirements and availability as top concerns inside the hospital.”
“Although it is a relief to know that those in the healthcare industry recognize the relationship between power and cooling infrastructure and IT system availability, the lack of hospital-wide power protection in the OR and patient rooms is concerning.”
“Patient records in the data center may remain available and protected during a utility outage, but without extending protection into the hospital, medical personnel will not have access to vital data while hospital-based IT devices are temporarily down.”

Related Links:

E-book: Healthcare e-book

White Paper: Network closets in healthcare setting

Video: Critical care for your healthcare IT infrastructure

Video: Norton Healthcare Case Study

About Emerson Network Power

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson, is the global leader in enabling Business-Critical Continuity from grid to chip for telecommunication networks, data centers, health care and industrial facilities. Emerson Network Power provides innovative solutions and expertise in areas including AC and DC power and precision cooling systems, embedded computing and power, integrated racks and enclosures, power switching and controls, infrastructure management, and connectivity. All solutions are supported globally by local Emerson Network Power service technicians. Learn more about Emerson Network Power products and services at http://www.EmersonNetworkPower.com.

About Emerson

Emerson, based in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions for customers in industrial, commercial, and consumer markets through its network power, process management, industrial automation, climate technologies, and appliance and tools businesses. Sales in fiscal 2009 were $ 20.9 billion. For more information, visit http://www.Emerson.com.

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Beyond the Data Center: Emerson Network Power Survey Reveals Top IT Concerns Inside Hospitals in North America

Report Reveals Reasons to Carefully Evaluate LSPs before Outsourcing

RALEIGH, NC (PRWEB) August 16, 2012

Not all Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) do the same thing, and not all do the same things well, a new report from Tompkins Supply Chain Consortium affirms.

LSPs tend to take on the characteristics of the industries they serve, says Chris Ferrell, Director, Tompkins Supply Chain Consortium. And in turn, this impacts the way they run their business and how they serve their customers.

The report, Selecting a Logistics Service Provider: Its Not One Size Fits All, analyzes responses from more than 100 retailers, consumer products companies and warehousing/distribution companies on how LSPs are functioning in areas such as automation, distribution centers (DC), and transportation.

Many supply chain and procurement professionals are identifying and partnering with the best logistics vendors, as well as determining if those vendors can execute at an acceptably high level. Understanding each prospective vendors specialties can be the difference between success and failure, adds Ferrell.

According to the survey findings, lower costs and increased flexibility continue to top the list of reasons to outsource. Additional results include:

Report Reveals Reasons to Carefully Evaluate LSPs before Outsourcing

Latest 2012 Enterprise IT Survey Reveals Less Than 30 Percent of Organizations Believe Existing Tools Can Successfully Manage Cloud Performance Storms

Cupertino, CA (PRWEB) August 22, 2012

Xangati, the recognized leader in tracking performance storms for virtualization and cloud environments, and ZK Research, an IT consulting and research firm, today released findings from a joint survey covering the state of existing enterprise virtualization and cloud deployments, future plans, and the biggest challenges facing organizations in the implementation of these infrastructures. Conducted in July 2012 among more than 300 virtualization and IT admins and managers, the survey reveals alarming concerns about obstacles in assuring cloud performance, with a majority of respondents saying that increased virtualization density is dramatically impacting their ability to manage these evolving data centers.

In a related announcement, Xangati today also introduced new storm-tracking capabilities integrated in its Xangati Management Dashboard (XMD) suite to address these market changes. (See release here.)

As organizations migrate to cloud-based models, performance storms create new challenges for successful deployment, added Alan Robin, CEO of Xangati. The clouds constantly fluctuating environment makes it difficult to identify the instantaneous performance shifts occurring across the infrastructure. As revealed in our survey, organizations are now recognizing the need for advanced tools that can deliver second-by-second cross-silo insights, so that they can move quickly and decisively to capture and resolve the source of the problem.

Cross-Silo Storms Impede Cloud Performance Management

The Xangati/ZK Research survey highlights several key obstacles and concerns in managing cloud performance. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed indicate that increasing density has made performance management of the cloud more difficult, yet adding to the problem 60 percent state that their existing solutions are unable to provide live insights in identifying and remediating performance problems and only deliver after-the-fact analysis. Further compounding the problem, an even larger 74 percent say that vSphere/vCenter does not deliver the automated performance remediation they expected.

These survey findings are loud and clear, said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst, ZK Research. A next generation data center needs next generation management tools. IT requires live insight into performance problems to confidently deliver and expand cloud-based data centers.

Other specific findings include:

– A huge 77 percent say theyre concerned about the effect of the clouds self-provisioning model on existing virtualized application performance;

– More than 50 percent of respondents indicate that performance storms in their organizations can take over two hours to identify and last more than a day; and

– One in four of those surveyed state that they have been forced to roll back an application from virtual to physical due to undiagnosed performance storms.

Responding to whats needed and organizations plans for the future, the survey also showed that cloud infrastructures should not be managed as separate islands, with an overwhelming 94 percent of respondents saying that the cloud needs to be managed as a cross-silo endeavor among server, network and storage teams.

Contributing to overall concerns about managing performance storms were respondents perceptions about the unique characteristics of cloud storms as:

– The most difficult problems to track down and resolve (28 percent);

– Transient in nature (20 percent);

– Fly under the radar of existing monitoring solutions (19 percent); and

– Resulting from the moving parts in a virtual environment (12 percent).

Of those surveyed, nearly 75 percent indicate they would budget IT resources toward a solution to resolve cloud performance storms.

Survey Shows Hybrid Models are the Future of the Cloud

The survey also shows that as organizations move to the cloud, hybrid models are being increasingly adopted. Specifically, of the organizations surveyed, 40 percent are either evaluating Microsoft Hyper-V or already have it in production and/or test environments. The survey also revealed the following top three internal drivers for organizations hybrid plans:

– A growing positive perception about Hyper-V being good enough (27 percent);

– VMware licensing/pricing (34 percent); and

– A diversity model approach using different hypervisors for different applications (17 percent).

Methodology

The findings were based on more than 300 online surveys, jointly deployed by Xangati and ZK Research and completed by virtualization and IT admins and managers in July 2012. Respondents were from organizations of varying sizes, with more than 50 percent in companies with one thousand employees or more. Additionally, 75 percent of those surveyed were in organizations with more than 50 percent server virtualization representing a 10 percent increase in server virtualization from Xangatis 2010 server virtualization survey.

To access the complete survey results, go to http://xangati.com/resources/surveys/

About Xangati

Xangati is the recognized leader in tracking performance storms for virtualization and cloud environments. The award-winning Xangati Management Dashboard (XMD) suite of products includes the VI Dashboard for server virtualization, VDI Dashboard for desktop virtualization, and StormTracker. XMDs unparalleled in-memory computing architecture allows for a live and continuous awareness of the entire infrastructure end-to-end providing the ability to instantly identify and anticipate storms before they impact business user productivity.

Founded in 2006, Xangati, Inc. is a privately held company with corporate headquarters based in Cupertino, California. Xangati is a VMware Technology Alliance Partner and certified Citrix Ready Partner and has strategic technology partnerships with numerous other the leading data center infrastructure companies. For more information, visit http://www.xangati.com.

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Xangati and the Xangati logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Xangati, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

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Latest 2012 Enterprise IT Survey Reveals Less Than 30 Percent of Organizations Believe Existing Tools Can Successfully Manage Cloud Performance Storms

London, UK (PRWEB UK) 14 December 2012 Survey snapshot: Half of British businesses would move all IT to the cloud, reveals Databarracks survey (with INFOGRAPHIC)

London, UK (PRWEB UK) 14 December 2012

Survey snapshot:

Half of British businesses would move all IT to the cloud, reveals Databarracks survey (with INFOGRAPHIC)