Besides the dawn of tablets and other Internet-related sensations, what else is poised to grow exponentially in the short term? The answer, says Gartner, is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), expected to grow more than 40 percent in the next four years, reaching more than $72 billion in revenue (from less than $10 billion in 2012).

IaaS is one of three general pillars making up cloud computing services. The other two include Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service. Says Techtarget, IaaS is a “provision model in which an organization outsources the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components. The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible for housing, running and maintaining it.”  More...

Do they teach that spelling rule anymore in school? You know, the old "I before E except after C" rule. The one that explains why you spell words like relief and grief and believe one way, but receipt and conceit a different way.

Well, spelling rules notwithstanding, the I before E rule is a good way to help remember the key point of an April 24 Sprint-sponsored webinar. More...

As networks and new technology transform how business is done, the reach of what can be managed (infrastructure, applications, CPE, mobile devices, etc.) has grown, as well as what management really means (outsourcing, hosting, cloud, as-a-service, etc.). Depending on the source, anywhere between 60 and 90 percent of businesses already have a managed solution, with plans to integrate more. And the market continues to expand with a compound annual growth rate of almost 18 percent over the next four years. Why are managed solutions so popular? More...

A concerted drive to grow our global MPLS, Ethernet, and SIP Trunking coverage for both business and wholesale customers has been recognized by Gartner in its latest "Magic Quadrant" assessments of the service provider landscape.

For anyone not familiar with the Magic Quadrant, it's a Gartner specialty to analyze a technology and develop rankings that position, for example, the vendors of that technology into one of four boxes in a square, based on parameters that vary with the particular analysis. The technique has now been enshrinedofficially as the Magic Quadrant. The rankings are watched closely by some of  us in what is probably as close as we get in the technology world to the excitement of an American Idol or DWTS. More...

There was an interesting mini-debate in the March 25 Network World about whether the cloud is ready for mission-critical applications.

This side-by-side argumentation featured the "yes" position being argued by the CIO of IEEE, with the "no" position argued by the CTO of a financial trading company. You can take a look at the points each person made here.

After looking it over, we'd have to say that in many ways they are both right (do we have a future in politics, or what?). But we're not trying to just straddle the fence. For the vast majority of companies, with the right communications network in place, the answer is going to be yes. But specifically, for a financial trading company, we can understand why that type of organization would hold out for no at this time. More...

Recently, Sprint asked an outside research and consulting firm to take a close look at Compass, Sprint's online portal for IP/MPLS VPN service. The idea was to get a "second opinion," and we now have it.

The outside firm happens to be named Compass Intelligence (no relation to Compass the Portal), and the paper they generated after looking at the portal can be found here. It's worth taking a close look at, but we'll hit a few highlights for you.

First, if you're not familiar with Sprint Compass, it lets you view, understand, and manage your network configuration and performance. We enhanced it in mid-2012 (see the summary we wrote at the time) with a number of self-service features that support both Sprint Managed Solutions customers and network-only customers.More...

Recently the President issued an Executive Order on cybersecurity, and it’s drawing a lot of attention. This order presents a framework for reducing cyber risks to critical infrastructure in the United States and encourages collaboration between the public and private sector. Some believe the order overreaches; others think it is not enough. Regardless of where one stands on the issue, at least it is getting people and organizations talking and problem-solving.More...

Yes, BYOD is the universally recognized acronym among techies, for Bring Your Own Device to work. But what does that mean? We can all agree that at its simplest, BYOD is the employee initiative of leveraging their own personal devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops, for work. After that, it gets fuzzy. More...

If you ask IT and enterprise security teams what is top-of-mind for them, chances are you’ll hear something related to mobility. 

The good news is that a new year brought forth an increase in budgets for most organizations. Yet the big change is that decision making for mobile is moving outside IT and into the business units. Even so, mobility challenges seem to land in the lap of IT, whether they are related to security, integration issues, compliance, or device management.  Consider these statistics and trends: More...

When it comes to picking a hotel for your business trip, if all your choices are similar in pricing and quality, but one has attentive concierge service, wouldn't it make sense to choose that one?

Maybe you'll need help picking the best nearby restaurant, or want to score tickets to a basketball game in town at the last minute. That's when you really appreciate the value of a concierge. More...