BYOD, or "Bring Your Own Device," is a perq many employees enjoy; however, most studies and statistics say that companies should carefully evaluate security risks before allowing BYOD. In the final part of the three-part mobile blog series on the SHARE President's Corner, Erika Morphy investigates mobile security issues.

Maintec Technologies has launched a service that offers corporations a capability to outsource their Linux environment to Maintec Data Center. The service, zLinux-in-a-Box, enables users to take advantage of Linux on System z, which offers combined core strength of mainframe along with the openness and stability of Linux platform.

Our friends at Sepaton just shared the results of their latest annual survey of large enterprises with us, and the results are disturbing. First, data growth continues unabated with 50% of respondents reporting their data was growing from 20% to 70% annually and an additional 20% reported even higher annual growth rates. In addition, they find, data centers now face a growing challenge of "sprawl" as they add more and more systems to handle data growth. Fifty percent characterize their environments as having "moderate" or "severe" sprawl requiring them to routinely add data protection systems to scale performance or capacity.

The rise of heterogeneous systems in addition to mainframes makes a cross-platform solution essential, George Faucher, president and CEO of CorreLog, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "First, with more and more organizations deploying security information and event management systems, data for IT security is becoming more centralized. So the question isn't so much 'should we focus on mainframe security less because it is more secure?' It's a matter of collecting all log data from all sources and centralizing it within the systems."

CA Technologies has extended its recently launched CA Global Partner Program to include mainframe management solutions. Available now to partners in North America, the mainframe offerings are expected to be rolled out globally to all partners by the fall. The mainframe plays an important role for companies seeking to deliver reliable, high-quality services at low cost through a complex mix of computing platforms and cloud technology, notes David Bradley, senior vice president, Global Channel Sales, CA Technologies. With the addition of mainframe solutions, the CA Global Partner Program enables partners to deliver CA Technologies' mainframe management software to their customers to help reduce costs, sustain critical skills, and increase IT agility in the hybrid data center and the cloud.

Compuware Corporation has launched a free online cloud service enabling organizations to compare the speed of their website's performance against leading competitor sites. SpeedoftheWeb.org provides a series of industry-relevant indexes with categorized collections of 1,000 of the world's most trafficked websites - as ranked by Alexa and Compuware Gomez benchmarks. As end-user expectations become greater, the cost of poor website performance also grows, both in terms of lost revenues and brand loyalty. In addition, end users are showing less patience for slow-performing websites, according to Compuware. In response to these heightening requirements, organizations need to ensure performance along every spot in the web application delivery chain, Alois Reitbauer, Compuware APM's Web 2.0 and Mobile Performance Expert and author of Java Enterprise Performance, tells DBTA.

IBM stepped up its smarter computing initiative with a broad range of performance and efficiency enhancements to its storage and technical computing systems - the engines of big data. As part of its ongoing smarter computing effort, IBM has announced a new strategic approach to designing and managing storage infrastructures with greater automation and intelligence, as well as performance enhancements to several key storage systems and the Tivoli Storage Productivity Center suite. IBM also announced its first offerings that incorporate software from IBM's acquisition of Platform Computing earlier this year. "Enterprises are dealing with data that is increasing exponentially in both size and complexity," said Rod Adkins, senior vice president of IBM Systems & Technology Group. The enhanced systems and storage solutions have the performance, efficiency, and intelligence to handle this big data, he added.

SanDisk Corporation, a provider of flash memory storage solutions, has announced the acquisition of Schooner Information Technology, Inc., an enterprise software company located in Silicon Valley that develops flash-optimized database and data store solutions. SanDisk says that Schooner's products complement its growing portfolio of enterprise solid state disk (SSD) and flash-optimized software offerings.

SAP marked the 1-year anniversary of the SAP HANA platform becoming generally available. To celebrate the occasion, SAP AG announced the launch of the SAP HANA Distinguished Engineer program. The new program is focused on promoting SAP HANA expertise in the market and is intended to support a new group of community-driven, hands-on HANA technical professionals.

As part of its continued focus on working with startup companies, SAP AG is holding its second SAP Startup Forum. A gathering of select startups, the forum is a full day of collaboration, learning and competition around mobile technologies leveraging the SAP HANA platform to tackle "big data" challenges. This event follows the SAPPHIRE NOW conference where several startups took center stage in Orlando. The next SAP Startup Forum will be held at SAP Labs in Waterloo, Canada, on July 11, 2012.

Atlantis Computing, a provider of storage optimization software for virtual servers and desktops, announced it will soon release a new software product intended to help enterprises to change the performance and economics of storage-intensive virtualized server and cloud applications such as databases, big data and custom enterprise applications. Atlantis ILIO FlexCloud 1.0, scheduled for availability this summer, is application-aware storage optimization software designed to complement virtualization solutions from Citrix, Microsoft and VMware.

Red Hat, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source solutions, announced the availability of two new platforms for data center optimization and application deployment - JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6, and Red Hat JBoss Data Grid 6, an in-memory data grid solution.

Terma Software Labs Inc., a provider of workload automation and job scheduling technologies, says it is now shipping a mainframe-enabled version of its Workload Automation engine, which works alongside CA Workload Automation AE, Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler and Stonebranch Opswise Automation Center. The new release, JAWS for CA 7, is intended to assist mainframe sites address system size and data complexity that is overwhelming most traditional job-scheduling systems.

Adaptive Computing announced it is upgrading its data center and cloud management system intended to automate the decisions and process of provisioning diverse resources, against diverse incoming workloads and changing conditions based on business policies and service level goals. The new solution, Moab Cloud Suite 7.1, provides on-demand user self-service resource requests for cloud environments with usage chargeback and an administrative dashboard.

Quest Software unveiled NetVault Extended Architecture (XA), a platform unifying its data protection technologies, and enabling organizations to align backup and recovery directly to their service continuity needs. "The changing requirements of the modern business are forcing IT to shift from an infrastructure-centric view of backup and recovery to a services-centric view," says Walter Angerer, senior vice president and general manager of data protection for Quest Software.

Adam Jollans, program director, Linux and Open Virtualization Strategy, IBM, provides answers to frequently asked questions about KVM. "In the early days of Linux, it was often the technical people in organizations who knew about it and were already implementing, while management had little awareness of Linux. We are seeing that same trend occurring now with KVM," writes Jollans. "To help further the overall understanding and awareness of KVM and fill in the information gap, here is a list of the most frequently asked questions that we at IBM have encountered in recent panel discussions, conversations, and interviews."

Adam Jollans, program director, Linux and Open Virtualization Strategy, IBM, provides answers to frequently asked questions about KVM. "In the early days of Linux, it was often the technical people in organizations who knew about it and were already implementing, while management had little awareness of Linux. We are seeing that same trend occurring now with KVM," writes Jollans. "To help further the overall understanding and awareness of KVM and fill in the information gap, here is a list of the most frequently asked questions that we at IBM have encountered in recent panel discussions, conversations, and interviews."

Jean Staten Healy, director, WW Linux and Open Virtualization, IBM, writes about why KVM merits a closer look: Virtualization is all about sharing resources of IT systems to get better usage out of them — to lower costs and to make it a more productive environment, with a better return on investment. Of course, you need a sufficiently large server with enough power and capacity so it is worth sharing the resources between different workloads. But once you have decided to virtualize, a key issue to consider is how the source code for the virtualization hypervisor is developed. That brings us to the importance of open source hypervisors, and in particular, KVM (the Kernel-based Virtual Machine).

Jean Staten Healy, director, WW Linux and Open Virtualization, IBM, writes about why KVM merits a closer look: Virtualization is all about sharing resources of IT systems to get better usage out of them — to lower costs and to make it a more productive environment, with a better return on investment. Of course, you need a sufficiently large server with enough power and capacity so it is worth sharing the resources between different workloads. But once you have decided to virtualize, a key issue to consider is how the source code for the virtualization hypervisor is developed. That brings us to the importance of open source hypervisors, and in particular, KVM (the Kernel-based Virtual Machine).

IBM is working with Syracuse University to help college students build computing skills to manage traditional and new systems in large global enterprises. As business value creation increasingly shifts to software, the skills needed to tackle disruptive technologies like cloud and mobile computing, particularly for enterprise-class, large industrial systems, have become critical. Lack of employee skills in software technologies is cited as the top barrier that prevents organizations from leveraging software for a competitive advantage, according to initial findings in IBM's Institute for Business Value 2012 Global Study on Software Delivery.

IBM is working with Syracuse University to help college students build computing skills to manage traditional and new systems in large global enterprises. As business value creation increasingly shifts to software, the skills needed to tackle disruptive technologies like cloud and mobile computing, particularly for enterprise-class, large industrial systems, have become critical. Lack of employee skills in software technologies is cited as the top barrier that prevents organizations from leveraging software for a competitive advantage, according to initial findings in IBM's Institute for Business Value 2012 Global Study on Software Delivery.

Quest Software, Inc. says it has entered into an amendment to a previously announced merger agreement with affiliates of Insight Venture Partners to add Vector Capital as a member of the buyout group, and for an increase in the offer from $23 per share in cash to $25.75 per share in cash. According to Quest, the increased purchase price represents a 33% premium to Quest's closing stock price on the day prior to the announcement of the Insight merger agreement on March 8, 2012.

Virtualization is relatively new - but not for the IBM mainframe. In a new blog post, Gregory Lotko, vice president & business line executive, System z IBM Systems & Technology Group, reflects on the heritage and features of the IBM mainframe, including a refrigerator-size, energy-efficient footprint and ability to consolidate large numbers of servers into one: Here at IBM, we often smile when we hear some new buzzword around virtualization. The IBM mainframe has a long history of virtualization. We were doing it before there was a name for it.

Virtualization is relatively new - but not for the IBM mainframe. In a new blog post, Gregory Lotko, vice president & business line executive, System z IBM Systems & Technology Group, reflects on the heritage and features of the IBM mainframe, including a refrigerator-size, energy-efficient footprint and ability to consolidate large numbers of servers into one: Here at IBM, we often smile when we hear some new buzzword around virtualization. The IBM mainframe has a long history of virtualization. We were doing it before there was a name for it.

What is PowerLinux? In his latest blog post, Scott Handy, vice president, PowerLinux Strategy and Business Development, IBM, writes about the benefits of combining Linux and Power - including strong support for virtualization, performance, scalability, flexibility, support for clouds, efficiency, reliability, security and availability: When we talk about PowerLinux, what we mean is industry-standard Linux available on IBM Power Systems servers.

What is PowerLinux? In his latest blog post, Scott Handy, vice president, PowerLinux Strategy and Business Development, IBM, writes about the benefits of combining Linux and Power - including strong support for virtualization, performance, scalability, flexibility, support for clouds, efficiency, reliability, security and availability: When we talk about PowerLinux, what we mean is industry-standard Linux available on IBM Power Systems servers.

Companies are scrambling to learn all the various ways they can slice, dice, and mine big data coming in from across the enterprise and across the web. But with the rise of big data — hundreds of terabytes or petabytes of data — comes the challenge of where and how all of this information will be stored. For many organizations, current storage systems — disks, tapes, virtual tapes, clouds, inmemory systems — are not ready for the onslaught, industry experts say. There are new methodologies and technologies coming on the scene that may help address this challenge. But one thing is certain: Whether organizations manage their data in their internal data centers, or in the cloud, a lot more storage is going to be needed. As Jared Rosoff, director of customer engagement with 10gen, puts it: "Big data means we need ‘big storage.'"

Ravi Pendekanti heads Systems Product Marketing for Oracle on a global basis. He has been in the Systems industry for more than two decades, working in the areas of servers, storage, software and networking. In this article, Exabriefing talks with Pendekanti about the Oracle engineered systems approach - what's been learned and why it works.