Five Ways to Make your IT Cloud-Ready

Cloud Computing is increasingly the deployment model of choice for enterprise workloads, causing public cloud spend to grow at a double-digit rate with no sign of slowing down. The issue is that most companies realize they can't transition everything at once - even if they wanted to - leaving IDC to predict that 58.7 percent infrastructure spend in 2017 will stay in the data center.

Regardless, the pressure is on and companies can’t afford to sit back and wait. The rising incidence of cyberattacks is making many companies re-evaluate their position on cloud; a recent Oracle survey showed that companies with a higher level of cloud maturity and exposure have higher levels of confidence in their cyber security capabilities and ability to detect cyber threats, than those early in their cloud journey.

In addition, organizations are striving to deliver innovation in unprecedented ways and, to support this, are looking for new ways of handling the increasing amount of data they are having to deal with every day. It is therefore very important that organizations take into consideration ways to handle the increasing amount of data being transferred into their systems every day. Having said this, finding the right application on platforms suitable to your company’s needs is essential. With business leaders pushing hard for cloud migration, how should IT leaders respond?


Plan for Tomorrow

There are a myriad of reasons for keeping applications in-house, such as regulatory compliance issues, security, data sovereignty requirements, the need for low latency, and use of custom legacy applications that won't run on public cloud platforms.

In many cases, what is needed is a cloud-ready architecture - including hardware operating systems, databases, and applications - that is consistent across on-premises and cloud environments. This will make it easier to transition when the time is right.

Mapping your cloud-ready journey: While the route will vary, depending on where an individual IT organization is starting, there are five typical use cases that describe the different requirements of each leg - and thus, the likely best path forward.

1. Streamline and modernize IT infrastructure

For a business without immediate plans to move to the cloud, but wants to streamline its infrastructure, pre-built converged infrastructure.

These modern systems that are architecturally compatible with those powering private cloud and public cloud services can deliver dramatic improvements in performance, availability, security, and efficiency while lowering operating costs, by replacing older, multi-vendor server, storage, and backup.

2. Accelerate time to value with appliances

Many IT organizations have to do more with less, and faster, to respond to competitive threats. In such situations, an appliance strategy can provide great benefit. Purpose built 'appliances' that are preconfigured to serve different purposes, such as to support databases, a private cloud environments, or big data workloads. They are easy to deploy and operate, requiring less time and fewer specialized IT skills.

3. Optimize and extend private cloud

For generic, noncritical workloads, many organizations first implement private cloud environments with the aim of lowering costs and achieving greater agility.

But most self-assembled, generic private clouds take months to build - decreasing agility - and require expensive personnel to build, tune, and manage.

Private cloud environments also often use virtualization software that may require expensive licenses and support contracts to run. Another challenge is that generic private clouds often treat all applications equally, they are not always appropriate for demanding and/or business-critical databases and applications.

One way to address these issues is to adopt purpose-built, cloud appliances that are consistent across environments, enabling organizations to implement a private cloud that is cost-optimized for generic applications and performance optimized for more critical applications. This provides an easy path to public or hybrid cloud, with unified management across environments.

4. Optimize and secure critical applications

For business-critical applications, in many cases, the infrastructure supporting them has been built over time, lags in modernization, and is an inconsistent mix of platforms.

The result is an overly complex environment that doesn't always deliver the required performance or security. A common solution is to employ high-end servers to optimize and ensure peak performance while improving efficiency with the highest security, whether implemented on-premises or in the cloud. Moving to a single platform will also bring cost savings and unified management.

5. Consolidate and protect data with advanced storage solutions

Finally, companies are facing data storage and protection challenges. With the explosion of data volumes, simply adding to an existing storage infrastructure is, in many cases, no longer affordable or cost-effective.

An alternative approach is to implement modern storage solutions engineered to address the risks of data loss and cut recovery times. These cloud-ready systems enable you to consolidate existing storage while ensuring the security of your data and dramatically improving performance.


Future 

For each of these use cases, having cloud-ready systems that have equivalents in the public cloud can allow the public cloud to appear as a compatible extension of what already runs in your data center, making it easier to move when you're ready.

The most powerful, unified cloud solutions available that best match your licensed environment and will help you modernize, innovate, and be one step ahead in a digital world. Complete and integrated cloud services can now deliver unprecedented availability, performance, and security — potentially at a significantly lower cost.

Even if you have no immediate plans to move to the cloud, it's a nice option to have. In the meantime, you're able to bring many benefits of the public cloud into your on-premises infrastructure. Wouldn't you like to be prepared for a cloud future?

All the above information was provided by Mr. Chung Heng Han, Vice President, Systems, Oracle Asia Pacific Cloud

Spark Global’s Toppan AR marker makes its mark

Let’s go into the tenets of why the Spark Global’s AR Marker Technology sets the standard in Augmented Reality in the Philippines and learn how to properly benchmark this tech field.

Presently, there are two types of AR in the market: marker and picture-based. Between these two technologies, the marker type is the better option compared to the picture-based when using AR.

Why? Marker-based AR’s are readable on a global scale and readily usable based on a wide selection of content whether movies or sound, 3D-based computer graphics, or links to web pages. While the picture-based marker or the locally-produced AR’s, content is just limited to plain 3D and videos.

In terms of recognition capabilities, marker-based ARs can be more easily identified than picture-based. While many applications use picture recognition, they are actually recognizing hidden points in the picture. Sometimes, however, the dots’ positions are re-used resulting into a longer waiting time needed to verify the positions of these hidden dots thus, causing the problem of users not knowing where to point the camera. Also, some applications compel users to double tap on the screen, and that usually entails a considerable amount of processing before downloading of content can begin.

While the qualities of marker-based AR technologies far outweigh those of picture-based, a lot is still to be desired for when it comes to efficiency, compatibility, accuracy and of course, ease of use.

This is where Spark Global Tech System Inc.’s Toppan AR technologies come in.

The Toppan Marker Recognition technology is generally deemed as the fastest in the market with regard to recognition and lauded for its user-friendliness. Every Toppan AR marker is thought to be unique since it points to a single content in the server so there is no room for confusion as the dots are clearly defined.

Plus the fact that the Toppan AR marker works on a wide variety of mediums, whether printed or non-printed materials, projected screens, LCD or LED monitors or even T-shirts, that are used for interactive campaigns, food packaging, promotional videos, 3D animation or flyers, guide books with video documentaries, makes this marker an even more hardworking option.

Recognition-wise, the Toppan AR marker has the distinct advantage over other marker-based technologies. Even low-end smartphones with their not-so-high-resolution cameras will not encounter any difficulty in distinguishing because it emits an aiming point with which to scan the markers. It’s so convenient, it’s as if the user already knows the specific area where to scan just like a point and shoot.

“What separates us from other AR companies is our seamless technology that is substantially of the best quality in the category, in so many ways. In the end, customers will distinguish our difference by benefitting from various globally-competitive advantages for their businesses and markets,” explains Rowi Bautista, Managing Director of Spark Global Tech Systems, Incorporated.

Spark Global Tech Systems, Inc. is the exclusive distributor of AR technology in the Philippines. The company offers business management software like HR, Payroll, Accounting, Sales and Inventory systems, Access Control Systems, Smart Cards and some of the best global technologies and business solutions based on Clients’ needs and business objectives.

Spark Global Tech Systems, Inc. is headquartered at 1805A East Tower, Philippine Stock Exchange Center, Exchange Road, Ortigas Center, Pasig City. For more information, contact (+632) 532-8579 or email info@sparkglobaltech.com or visit www.sparkglobaltech.com.

Home tech to warm up during these cold weather months

Water from the tap gets colder as the cold weather of the “ber-months” start to close in. While most people are used to hitting the showers with cold water raining on them— some of them want it that way because it finishes the job of waking them up from drowsiness— there are some who just cannot handle the sharp chill on their skin. One of them are kids who need to wake up early for school. It seems to take forever to pull them out from their slumber in these cold months and they dread the cold water from the shower, making their mornings far less enjoyable— adversely affecting their mood.

As an old-school practice, it takes extra effort for those who wake up very early morning just to manually heat up water in the kitchen, or possibly worse, by using submersible water heater heads in their buckets, which puts users at risk of getting accidentally electrocuted. It takes extra time in mixing heated water with tap just to get the right comfortable temperature. Others may have their own water heater installed in their showers, but the risk of getting scalded is still a problem.

Midea, the world’s leading consumer appliances manufacturer, responds to these challenges with an array of water heaters that can suit everybody’s needs and budget. Their line-up of water heaters has the Quick Warm Heating Element that instantly heats water at a preferred temperature that gives instant comfort in seconds. This allows its users not to worry much about time, especially those who are always in a hurry in the morning to beat the rush hour.

All of Midea’s water heaters have Safety Sensors that ensure not only the comfort in taking a shower but also the safety in their use. It guarantees no overheating so that customers may enjoy their warm showers just the way they want them longer.   These sensors also take care of keeping water temperature in check, so that scalding hot water will not come out of the shower. It also has a built-in anti-shock device to keep everyone safe from harm.

While Midea offers different models of water heaters that may cater to people with a tight grip on their budget, they will also definitely enjoy its affordability not just on the price tag but also in its use. It only heats the water needed for a shower and for as low as Php 3.00, everyone can enjoy this tag on the electric bill for 10 minutes of warm soothing water trickling down the skin— more than enough time to soak, soap, and scrub then out to take on the day ahead.

A warm shower from Midea could also be enjoyed after having a tough day at work and coming home from the heavy traffic on the road. A soothing bath could take away a day’s worth of stress by loosening up muscles that are tight from all the work it had. This could also refresh and clear the mind so parents who work hard after a long day could definitely enjoy some quality time with their kids before bed time.

As the cold months come close, Midea offers warmth through its innovative products featuring home solutions that could make home life easier and more harmonious. Midea’s water heaters reflect the kind of warmth it has for the family and that soothing feeling of coming home to the people that matter the most.

For more information on Midea’s products, check out their website at http://midea.com.ph/ and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MideaPhilippines.

Tech Tips: Creating Partitions on Windows 10

If your computer has only one partition now, you need create more partitions on Windows 10 for better management of your data and files. You will need the windows 10 partition manager.

If you want to create new partitions in windows 10, the professional partition management tool can help you.
To partition Windows 10 free with Disk Management

Disk Management is a 100% free partition management tool which is offered by Microsoft. All users can apply this method to partition Windows 10 free. Do remember to backup important data before you do any operation to your Windows 10 partition or hard disk drive:

1.Search “hard disk partitions” at the Start Menu or Search tool. Enter into the windows 10 partition manager free interface.

2.Right click hard disk and select “Shrink Volume”.

Enter the amount of space you want to shrink in MB as shown below then click on the Shrink button.

3.Right click on the unallocated space and select “New Simple Volume”.


4. Enter New Simple Volume Wizard interface by clicking Next and specify volume size.


5.Assign Drive Letter or Path, then format the partition into default file system NTFS. Click Finish to complete creating a new partition in Windows 10.

Here the follow is all what you’ve done:

You can create more partitions by following the above steps and manage those partitions to store and keep your personal files and folders, and organize your Windows 10 laptop or PC smoothly and efficiently.
An Easier & Simpler Method to Partition Windows 10 Free - Partition Management Software

If you are feeling that Disk Management is sort of complex for you, a simpler method - partition management software is exactly what you need. Here we’d like to introduce you an efficient and powerful software - EaseUS Partition Master Free. It enables you to partition Windows 10 free without any technical requirements. No obstacles will be met.

1. Download EaseUS Partition Master Free and launch it on your computer.

2.Select unallocated area on your Windows 10 and right click it by choosing “Create partition”. If you need perform other operation, select relative button on the interface to manage partition.

3.Choose “Apply”. Then your partitions are created successfully on Windows 10 free.


EaseUS Partition Master Free can do more jobs than Disk Management including: merge partition, move partition, copy dynamic volume/copy partition, extend/shrink FAT, hide partition and create WinPE bootable disk etc.