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As people continue to embrace working from home, the demand for working internet, higher bandwidth, and reliable data center and edge facilities has never been greater. Simply put, companies can’t afford for their infrastructure to fail, which is why uptime should be a top concern when selecting your data center colocation provider.
IT managers faced unprecedented challenges as a result of the pandemic. As dispersed workforces continued to grow, employees needed to have access to data and applications from anywhere. As we kick off the New Year, it’s apparent the need for efficient workload transport speed and reliability isn’t going anywhere. Our clients needed an enterprise-grade solution that enabled fault tolerant workloads and delivered direct connectivity across redundant and diverse paths to support the shifting work paradigm. Our solution? Markley Network Fabric.
Eight months into the pandemic, organizations are still establishing best practices for collaboration and connectivity with their increasingly dispersed workforce. Prior to transitioning fully remote, companies were comfortable tunneling all of their traffic from remote workers back through the VPN.
Over the past decade of cloud migration, organizations have learned that the “one cloud fits all” mentality rarely suits the operational and budget requirements of the modern enterprise. While we’ve seen many companies accelerate their cloud adoption to support remote work initiatives, it’s important to keep in mind that many companies still choose to operate applications in the data center as well.
Over the past few years, it’s easy to see how much cloud computing has expanded and evolved. Every time we think we’ve reached peak adoption, new research comes out that shows us all there are still more companies just starting or planning to start their cloud computing journey.
Organizations are increasingly digital. Not only do they have data stored on on-premise infrastructure, but more often than not, they’re operating across public and private cloud and working with multiple service providers. While this complexity is advancing how organizations do business, it also makes networks that much more susceptible to downtime – whether that’s because of human error or security issues.
If you read the 2020 technology predictions from Markley, you may have seen the one related to Zero Trust. In the year ahead, we predict that Zero Trust will pervade the internal network – meaning, data privacy and security concerns will impel the hardening of internal infrastructure, for example, to include data encryption both in-flight and at-rest. Further, hybrid architectures will force IT organizations to re-evaluate their concept of the 'internal network' and consider Internet-independent private network alternatives.
Building a next generation data center isn’t within reach for every company -- from cooling to maintenance to employing staff around the clock, sometimes the juice is simply not worth the squeeze. That’s where colocation comes in. Colocation can match and exceed your IT and business requirements without the significant upfront capital costs and long-term operating expenses.
Organizations have no shortage of data storage and compute options -- from pure public and private cloud strategies to multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud and on-premise. As more organizations migrate workloads to various forms of cloud deployments and make choices for the sake of speed in innovation, understanding threats to data security in the cloud has never been more important.
A regular topic of discussion on this blog has been the growing trend of repatriation from public cloud workloads and organizations moving toward hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. By allowing workloads to move between environments as computing needs and costs change, organizations enjoy greater data deployment options, a higher level of flexibility and more ROI-friendly computing environments.
Among all the tasks vying for an IT managers’ time, reviewing current network infrastructure, evaluating networking spend and anticipating future needs are often neglected. Nonetheless, it is a good practice to periodically perform an internal audit to ensure your network is up to the task and will not be your next big crisis.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most widely used public cloud services but many organizations aren’t getting as much out of their AWS environments as they could be. By accessing AWS through broadband Internet links, some customers and applications can experience poor bandwidth throughput, higher-than-expected costs, and more.
For multi-cloud to be more effective, IT and vendors both need to dedicate themselves to centralized authentication and security policies, and comprehensive solutions across all externally facing infrastructure to web application firewalls and distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection.
Winter is coming. Wouldn’t it be nice to escape to a tropical paradise as the temperatures drop and days shorten? We think so. This is one reason we are excited to announce our participation at the Boston CIO Executive Summit.
Enterprise data backup is a necessity for organizations across industries.
Carrier neutrality is an important criterion for facility selection, but organizations should dig a bit deeper into the true diversity of the network capabilities of the facility they choose.
We’re excited to once again be sponsoring the annual SIM Boston Technology Leadership Summit to be held at Gillette Stadium next week. The Summit delivers a great day of networking, collaboration, and education for the region’s IT executives and professionals.
As we’ve discussed in two of our latest blogs, more organizations are moving away from an all public cloud strategy in favor of a combination of public and private cloud solutions that can better meet agility, control and security requirements.
In our most recent blog, we explored the growing trend of workload repatriation from the public cloud. Over the past decade of the cloud-first movement, organizations are learning that the “one cloud fits all” mentality rarely suits the operational and budget requirements of the modern enterprise. As the market matures and cloud services advance to meet evolving demands, hybrid models are emerging as an enterprise strategy of choice.
If you are familiar with IT or you’ve been searching for the best ways to keep your data safe you may have stumbled across the term “ISO 27001 certified.” But what does this certification really mean? How does it improve information security? And why is it so critical for data centers and cloud providers?
We’ve seen a number of enterprises start to take a step back when it comes to the public cloud. They are beginning to pull some of their applications out of the cloud and return them to their brick-and-mortar data center. Enterprises are increasing investments in private cloud solutions that better meet their security and control requirements.
As many organizations know, the cloud is not one-size-fits-all – every enterprise has different workloads operating in different clouds and environments (from public cloud to private data centers). Moreover, today’s organizations must be able to operate 365/24/7, and require maximum uptime and data access.
Meet Markley's newest member and learn about how his experience has prepared him to build up Markley's connectivity and cloud infrastructure.
If you regularly follow our blog, you know that Markley is a big supporter of the local Boston tech community. From our support of the Boston CIO Leadership Association, to the SIM Boston’s annual golf outing to MassTLC’s Boston TechJam, we are active supporters of the innovation, inventiveness, and entrepreneurship found throughout our community, and we can’t wait for what the future has in store!
As we enter into the “dog days of summer,” it's great to know that every day is a dog day at One Summer Street. You know Markley as a data center and carrier hotel facility offering colocation, connectivity and cloud services, but the Markley story isn't complete without our three furry friends.
Despite more than a decade of cloud migration, on-premise data centers still house a vast number of workloads and an enormous amount of data. The reason? Simply put, it's often not realistic to move a large organization's entire infrastructure into the cloud.
As we approach the halfway mark of 2019, colocation providers are gearing up to reel in even more business, as enterprises continue to rethink infrastructure, get rid of as much on-premises data center space as they can, and replace that on-prem data center space with cloud services and modern colocation facilities.
As you may have seen from our recent blog post and on social media, Markley Group will be at this year’s Boston TechJam as an underwriting sponsor, and we couldn’t be more excited to see everyone next Thursday, June 13 at City Hall Plaza!
Next week, the Markley team will be sponsoring SIM Boston’s 18th Annual Michael P. Brooks Memorial Golf Outing on Wednesday, June 12.
It’s that time of year again and Markley is proud to return as an underwriting sponsor of the Boston CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards, alongside Akamai, Intellinet, Dell EMC and Red Hat. The event will take place Friday, June 7th at Westin Copley Place, with the Boston Business Journal as the event’s exclusive media sponsor. The awards will highlight the untold stories of local CIOs and how they are shaping their industries through technological innovation and strategic leadership.
As many in the Boston tech community know, Boston TechJam is coming up in a few weeks on Thursday, June 13 -- and the first event details have been released. Keep reading for more information (which may or may not have already made its way to your inbox)!
CIOs from across the Greater Boston area participated in our hybrid cloud straw poll at the recent BostonCIO Leadership Association meeting here at Markley.
Join Markley and the rest of the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium attendees on Wednesday, May 22, and leave with the tools and knowledge necessary to lead a smarter enterprise.
On Thursday, May 16th, Markley will host BostonCIO’s next meeting at our One Summer Street facility to collaborate and exchange ideas; learn from peers; share best practices and experiences; recognize technology leadership excellence and more.
The old saying “prepare for the worst, hope for the best” has never been more applicable to the state of enterprise IT. Across industries, data breaches have become so persistent that data breach fatigue is part of every IT professional’s vocabulary. Pair that with the complexity of modern networks causing outages and unplanned downtime on a regular basis, and it's safer to assume when, not if, in dealing with disaster.
Hybrid cloud is often viewed as the new normal, and this week, TechTarget featured a great read from ESG sharing the benefits of a hybrid cloud-first strategy.
As a trusted Markley partner, we value the opinion of Veeam’s leadership team. In this week’s blog, we explore what Veeam vice president of product strategy, Danny Allan, has to say about the key challenges for enterprise data on the road ahead.
In a sure sign that Spring is near, the World Champion Red Sox return to Fenway Park today for Opening Day 2019. At Markley, we are naturally fond of the Red Sox, not only as one of our favorite sports teams, but also as one of our many valued clients.
When it comes to core data center infrastructure, at some point every organization faces the same question, “To build or not to build?”
Here at Markley, we’re proud to provide customers with the most advanced, reliable and secure enterprise data center and cloud solutions. Our Markley Cloud Backup, Powered by Veeam Cloud Connect is no exception. It's the most efficient, cost-effective way to get your critical data offsite and out-of-region.
One of our favorite industry publications -- Data Center Knowledge -- featured a great read this week on how specialist data center providers make it hard to justify a dedicated enterprise build, and we couldn’t agree more!
As a proud sponsor of the Boston Ballet, it is Markley’s pleasure to spread the word about the opening of Boston Ballet’s 2018-2019 spring season with Full on Forsythe, running March 7-17 at the Boston Opera House.
Cloud computing has continued to dominate surveys as a top business priority throughout the past year, but most of the focus has been on simply making the transition. Among the many lessons learned in that migration is the need to drive efficiency and cost savings while simultaneously meeting strategic business needs.
Today’s healthcare and life science organizations are managing, creating, storing and analyzing more data than ever before – from electronic health records (EHR) to drug discovery and research.
The other week, Boston was hit with its first snow storm of the season. It included snow, rain, and then more snow, and left the city slick with ice. And it’s probably no surprise that these types of conditions can make equipment maintenance all the more difficult, and power outages all the more likely.
The holidays are over and that warm spring air is seemingly ages away. Instead of hibernating these next few months, get out of the house and join us at this year’s VTUG Winter Warmer on Thursday, January 24th at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough.
It’s that time of year again, where 2019 predictions articles flood the headlines as we look towards the top trends to expect in the coming year. 2018 was an exciting year for the cloud, with the increasing adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud environments, but here at Markley, we think 2019 is where the fun will really begin.
At Markley Group, we understand the strategic IT and business benefits colocation can deliver. We understand the importance of being able to customize your suite and cage designs, the need for uninterruptible power and backup systems, including highly redundant cooling and UPS systems, and the benefit of being able to access vast connectivity resources with minimal or no capital costs.
Here at Markley, we understand the necessity of sound disaster recovery practices and provide unmatched Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) for our customers’ most critical systems. We collaborate with a team of industry-leading partners to guarantee that your data stays safe and has a secure and reliable second home.
I recently had the pleasure of attending and, at Markley’s invitation, the opportunity to speak at the SIM Boston Technology Leadership Summit at Gillette Stadium. It is always a great event and I was flattered by the number of attendees that chose to attend our session on the topic of putting hybrid cloud strategies into practice.
With C-Suite and IT decision makers relying on cloud platforms like never before, we are seeing a tremendous increase in demand for cloud computing talent in today’s job market.
Your organization’s cloud infrastructure does not have to remain unsecured. There are ways to improve cloud security without compromising on the flexibility it brings to employees and business operations.
What good is having a sound plan in place, if it is never tested? Not very, especially in the realm of disaster recovery.
There’s no doubt about it – more and more companies are adopting public, private and hybrid cloud solutions, as well as embarking on digital transformation initiatives. In fact, according to Gartner, IT services will grow at 4.7 percent in 2019 thanks to digital transformation. But as many organizations have come to find out, selecting the right service provider is much spookier than anticipated. As we approach Halloween, here are the top three things to consider when selecting a cloud provider that won’t leave you wondering whether you’ll get a trick or a treat.
On Tuesday, October 23, SIM Boston will host its Technology Leadership Summit at Gillette Stadium, and we’re excited to share that Markley is a silver sponsor and will be speaking at the event! The SIM Boston Technology Leadership Summit is the region’s premier single-day event designed for the IT executive community.
Today’s enterprises understand that their IT infrastructure is an integral part of being able to stay competitive – data, applications and operations need to be as flexible, agile and secure as possible if organizations are going to deliver on the demands of employees, customers and shareholders.
On Wednesday, October 17, the VMware User Group (VMUG) will host their annual Boston VMUG UserCon at Boston’s Westin Waterfront Hotel. As a VMware Cloud Provider partner, we’re excited to share that Markley will be at this year’s event as an exhibitor and sponsor! As an independent, customer-led organization, VMUG is a key resource for the VMware community and ecosystem, helping to maximize the use of VMware and partner solutions through knowledge sharing, training, collaboration, and events.
Markley offers a variety of in-house cloud-based services.
As everyone in the data center or colocation business knows, downtime can be costly – in terms of both money and customer loyalty. And as computing infrastructure becomes more interconnected, whether it is because of edge computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) or other factors, the cost of downtime is only going to rise.
Colocation is a strategy many companies are turning to due to its reliability, performance, security, scalability and reduced maintenance, not to mention the significant cost and space savings it provides.
An unfortunate truth of life is that disasters are bound to happen; preventing them all together is simply impossible. The same can be said in business, especially in the current landscape where organizations are reinventing themselves through ongoing digital transformation, frequently automating pre-existing processes and implementing unfamiliar tools in their IT environment.
The AI in Healthcare Executive Forum was an overwhelming success with a great range of attendees from students to C-Level executives networking and contributing to the discussions. People wanted to hear and learn from what others are doing in the field along with scientific examples.
I had the pleasure of presenting at the VTUG Summer Slam this year. This event is always great, if for no other reason than the “pull out all the stops” Lobster Bake at Gritty’s following conference sessions. This year, I even had the great fortune of sitting down and eating lobster with Hans Bernhardt from VMware, a perennial presenter and long term supporter of this event and user group.
It is no secret that Marvel’s Avengers movies do well in the box office; in fact, the latest movie, Avengers: Infinity War, just broke two billion in the global box office. However, Avengers: Infinity War is not the most recent Marvel movie to hit the big screen. Deadpool 2 will likely do just as well as the first Deadpool movie, which hit $783.1 million in the box office. Ant Man and the Wasp just hit theatres in the month of July. Much like everybody else, here at Markley, we can not get enough of these heroes, and the new mural at One Summer Street proves it.
On July 19th, 2018, the Virtualization Technology User Group (VTUG) will host their annual event in Westbrook, Maine: the Summer Slam (Summah Slam, depending on who you ask). VTUG is a community of over 12,000 IT end-users, vendors, VARs and industry experts dedicated to creating and disseminating quality content, insights and innovations within the IT world.
While the single public cloud approach may work for a few specific organizations, is it the right strategy for the countless other organizations that are somewhere in their cloud and digital transformation journeys?
Join Markley and NVIDIA on July 25, alongside local healthcare organizations and experts, to discuss how to apply deep learning in clinical settings, share ways to use your data to build intelligent tools that aid physicians and review best practices for getting started on new AI projects.
Markey customer George Marootian, EVP, head of technology for US Distribution at Natixis Investment Managers was named a winner in the Global CIO of the Year category for the 2018 Boston CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards.
The phrase “data is the new oil” is not new at all, but with continued advancements in digital transformation impacting the way businesses and consumers interact with one another, organizations are using more oil than ever to reach optimal engine performance.
Over the past year, we’ve discussed multi-cloud and hybrid cloud deployments, and how organizations have been drawn to these models for more flexible cloud deployments that directly meet their needs. And according to a survey from Scalr earlier this year, that’s still the case.
Here at Markley, we are proud to be an underwriter of the Boston CIO Leadership Association. The association strives to deliver a forum for local CIOs that encourages the sharing of ideas, best practices and experiences—and as such, honors Boston CIOs that are making huge impacts to their business, Boston’s technology community, and the economy in general.
In today’s business climate it is imperative that companies understand their data. If networks or systems go down and data is lost, businesses risk revenue loss, fines for non-compliance and more. Establishing a proper data storage, backup and recovery procedure has never been more important.
We are excited to share that Markley will once again be highly involved in the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, taking place May 15-17, at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston. Markley will be alongside Cray, Inc. at booth #540, promoting our supercomputing-as-a-service offering, which combines the power of Cray supercomputers with the premier hosting capabilities of Markley.
There’s a reason why Markley has been a Gold Sponsor at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium for so many years in a row – it continues to be one of the industry’s leading conferences, bringing together the who’s who of CIOs, senior IT executives and MIT academic thought leaders. And this year’s event, themed “Up Your Digital Game from Vision to Execution,” should be no different.
It’s no secret that businesses are migrating from on-site data centers to the cloud, but determining the specific cloud strategy most beneficial to the enterprise is still very much a work in progress for many organizations.
We often talk about disaster recovery in terms of weather events, like hurricane season or a severe blizzard. Yet, that’s not the only time companies may find themselves in need of a disaster recovery plan – including during a cyberattack or a fluke accident that leaves equipment without power.
It’s no surprise, cloud and IT outages can stop businesses in their tracks - that’s exactly what a new report from Lloyd and risk modeller AIR Worldwide demonstrates.
This week, Data Center Journal featured a great read outlining some of these in-house drawbacks, and making the case for the utilization of a colocation strategy.
There is no denying the importance cloud computing has played in the digitalization of organizations over the years. And as we enter 2018, the question is no longer when will the cloud take hold, but how big is the market going to get?
In the face of extreme weather – such as blizzards, hurricanes, floods and more – picking the right data center and storage solution is imperative.
Thank you to our staff, partners and customers who have made 2017 a year worth celebrating.
Before we close the book on another year, it’s important to take a look back at the big trends that influenced the industry and use it to inform our strategy for how we approach the year ahead.
2017 may be coming to an end, but one of its biggest trends is definitely not. Cloud computing has continued to dominate as a top business priority throughout the past year, and according to new research, cloud computing’s momentum isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.
Markley has participated in numerous Boston CIO events over the years. We hosted an exclusive member gathering focused on big data and analytics.
The need for supercomputers has never been greater, but accessibility has long been a challenge. Through Markley and Cray’s partnership, which brings the power of the Cray Urika-GX to the cloud, more organizations now have the ability to utilize supercomputing capabilities when and how it’s needed.
Multi-cloud strategies allow organizations to build a custom cloud computing strategy that best aligns with the organization’s needs.
When thinking of cloud-first industries with strict compliance and security regulations – healthcare is be top of mind.
We’ve all heard the modern refrain: “Every company is a technology company.” And IT outages that stop businesses are one of the strongest proof points to that argument. Take the latest airline IT outage – this time impacting Canada-based airline WestJet – when network downtime delayed dozens of flights and stranded travelers for hours. Airlines are just one example of how companies that have never been considered “technology” companies need to operate as if they are, working to achieve the necessary always-on and always-available mindset.
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and securing customer data and critical information has never been more important.
The benefits of colocation are well known – and organizations are continually drawn to this model for an easier, cost effective data storage solution. As such, colocation has been seeing tremendous growth in the market, and will continue to do so, according to a new report from Vertiv.
If you’ve been following the devastating weather this hurricane season in Florida, Texas and the Caribbean, you know the immense strain it can put on infrastructure, services and resources.
We have some exciting news to share - Markley is pleased to announce that we've been selected by Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide AWS Direct Connect!
Cloud continues to proliferate across many industries, and over the past couple years, healthcare and life science organizations have been leading the charge.
When it comes to IT trends, not many have made a greater splash than the rise of cloud computing.
Recent research backs up the idea that companies are turning to the hybrid cloud to save money and improve reliability/uptime – and to do so quickly and easily.
For most organizations, moving to the cloud is no small task. Reaping a significant ROI is critical. Markley shares three tips for optimizing cloud investments.
How would your business remain up-and-running if your critical applications and information were stuck in a battle between giant robots and undead pirates?
Do you accept downtime at your data center as a “normal” cost of doing business? What about an outage, or, even worse, a fire?
Last week we launched our first-of-its kind supercomputing-as-a-service solution with the world’s leading supercomputer company, Cray. As we were working with them to develop the offering we knew we were on to something that could be a game-changer for lots of companies – and the media agreed!
As you may have seen, on Tuesday morning we here at Markley made a major announcement: we launched our new supercomputing-as-a-service solution in partnership with the world’s leading supercomputing company, Cray.
While the cloud started off as a vision, it is now an accepted part of everyday business life, being turned to for an enterprise’s most critical, high-value operations. The cloud has certainly had a major impact across organizations, most notably influencing and evolving the role of today’s CIO.
Every year when Spring arrives, the team here at Markley Group looks forward to the good weather, brushing off the winter chill with some IT spring cleaning, and starting anew. But Spring also means something else, especially to a proud sports town like Boston – the start of baseball season!
In the past, the phrase “Shadow IT” has been used by IT experts and industry pundits to describe the practice where rogue groups of employees have decided to set up their own Wi-Fi networks in the office, or to purchase some cloud computing for their specific team or project, doing so outside of the company-approved technologies and processes. The dangers of this type of action were obvious – Shadow IT created massive possibilities for security issues and data breaches, not to mention simply creating the potential for network conflicts and bandwidth strains.
Despite the late winter storm that rolled through Boston and much of the East Coast this month, Spring has sprung. For organizations, this is an opportune time to take stock of existing data assets, examine cloud and physical storage solutions, and establish or refresh your disaster recovery plan. By regularly re-evaluating your data storage plan, you can ensure your business and employees are operating as effectively as possible.
Over the past year, we’ve talked a lot about the hybrid cloud and how organizations have been drawn to this model for easier and more manageable cloud deployment. So, it’s no surprise that hybrid cloud has been seeing tremendous growth in the market.
The technology skills gap – it’s a topic being discussed by almost every technology company and leader today, and a challenge that many are finding very difficult to overcome. And with the advancements in data storage, cloud computing, IoT, mobility and more, IT has emerged as one of the top technology areas struggling to tackle its talent challenges.
With the Big Game on the horizon, it got us to thinking about what business lessons could be learned from what it took for both New England and Atlanta to rise above the rest of the competition this season. The common thread? Preparation.
It’s that time of year again, when the cold, winter season is upon us. During the winter months, many employees step away from work obligations to escape to warmer weather or ski-getaways with family and friends. With winter in full-swing, it’s important for organizations to prepare for when staff will be out of the office or working remotely – as you never know when something will occur at the office – such as a power outage – leaving the remaining skeleton crew to scramble and ensure problems can get resolved.
For IT departments and CTOs across a wide range of organizations and industries, implementing a comprehensive disaster recovery plan remains at the top of priority lists – whether it’s taking the step to create one from the ground up or update an existing plan to meet today’s data demands.
Are you ready for the next wave of cloud computing? One of the 2017 predictions we’ve seen centers on the idea that cloud computing will take a step forward for enterprises next year, allowing companies to become more efficient and scale their operations better – all to provide better services for customers.
The hype surrounding IoT – or Internet of Things – is similar to the buzz surrounding the “cloud revolution” five years ago. While we’ve seen how IoT can make our individual lives more efficient – from keeping an eye on your house to keeping track of how many steps you take each day – it’s important to also consider how this emerging trend will affect your organization.
There was plenty of news to come out of the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo last week, but what the team here at Markley Group was most interested in was David Cappuccio’s predictions for the top ten trends that will shape IT over the next five years.
Enterprises have come a long way in terms of their thinking about the cloud – even in just the past few years. The cloud started off as a vision but is now an accepted part of everyday business life, being turned to for an enterprise’s most critical, high-value operations.
For anyone located on the East Coast, you are without a doubt familiar with hurricane season – from the unpredictability to the potential and catastrophic damage. And while the season officially runs through the end of November, we’re currently in the thick of often the busiest part.
In today’s world, a company’s data and information needs to be always-on and always-available. But this requires more than just careful planning and monitoring. This “always-on” business imperative adds additional pressure on cloud providers and data centers to provide the service and reliability needed to support a world that runs 24/7, 365 days a year.
As the world settles in to watch the Summer Games in Rio, it got us to thinking about one thing that all of the athletes have in common: preparation.
New research from Gartner is just another proof point for what many of us in the IT industry have known for years – the cloud is one of the fastest-growing and most disruptive technologies to ever hit the market. And its popularity doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon, with $111 billion worth of IT spending predicted to shift to cloud this year, and $216 billion by 2020.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock these past two weeks then you’ve heard of Pokémon Go – the mobile augmented reality app that has captured the imagination and free time of the nation. Between stories of weird places that Pokémon have been found, to enterprising Uber drivers offering rides to players looking to collect Pokémon, the game has been everywhere.
The benefits of colocation are well known – and organizations are continually drawn to this model for an easier, cost effective data center solution. As such, colocation has been seeing tremendous growth in the market, which has been supported by numerous research reports.
With Memorial Day now behind us and the temperatures starting to warm up, it’s really beginning to look like summer here in New England. The days last longer, people are out and about and vacation season begins.
It’s Hurricane Preparedness Week, and while Boston-based Markley Group may not face the threat of hurricanes like other areas of the country do, it’s always a good reminder for organizations to revisit their disaster recovery plans so they can be prepared for the unpredictability of Mother Nature.
Over the weekend something terrific happened to a former intern of ours: he was hired full-time by a local organization with a huge following and household-name recognition.
As you may have seen, World Backup Day was celebrated on March 31st. It’s a worldwide awareness campaign meant to remind people – from the single user who just has lots of photos on his computer, to the IT manager who has his company’s critical information and applications stored digitally – that they need to take steps to regularly back up said data and information.
We’ve talked a lot in the past year about the hybrid cloud, and how organizations have been drawn to this model for an easier and more manageable cloud deployment. Hybrid cloud has been seeing tremendous growth in the market, which has been supported by numerous research reports.
While you wouldn’t have known it from Boston’s snow storm on Monday, Spring is officially upon us. And spring cleaning isn’t just for homes and closets – businesses and IT professionals can benefit from taking stock of their information, enterprise applications and data storage plans as well. By evaluating the tools you’re using to run your business, how you’re storing your data and more, you can create a clean slate to work from moving forward.
We’ve discussed in this space the need for companies to understand what their vendor offers in terms of uptime – and why this is so critical to being successful with your data center partner. Organizations today simply rely on their data and information being available 24/7/365 to operate. Without a guarantee of continued availability, it becomes impossible to be successful.
We’ve mentioned how 2016 is predicted to once again be “the year of the cloud.” But when you think about it, all we’ve heard about the past few years is the growth of the cloud, and how businesses and organizations are adopting it. It was just a few years ago that the idea of the cloud seemed novel, but that was quickly followed by acceptance of the cloud as a legitimate way of doing business, and then today’s belief that the cloud is necessary for businesses to operate.
The Internet of Things – or IoT. Everyone working in technology has heard this phrase one way or another over the past couple of years. You’ve probably also heard about how it’s going to affect your industry, company, personal life and more. As such, Markley Group has had plenty of conversations internally and with our customers about how this trend will impact the way they operate – from the amount of data they consume to how they secure these additional, connected devices.
It’s always amazing to see how far enterprises have come along in their thinking about the cloud – even in just the past few years.
As 2016 begins, many IT teams are tasked with allocating specific budget for data center investments throughout the year. While trying to get a suitable data center investment plan approved can be frustrating, many IT teams often overlook a simple solution to help cut the costs – colocation.
As individuals and businesses alike get back into the swing of things after the holidays, many will be inundated with thoughts of how to make 2016 bigger and better than ever before – busy setting New Year resolutions. And while goal setting and rock-solid business strategies are critically important, it’s also important to take the time to reflect on everything that went right in the past year and understand best practices for incorporating those successes into the plan for the next 12 months.
With winter vacation only mere hours away, we here at the Markley Group want to wish you all a happy and safe holiday season and the brightest of new years.
Last week, we discussed how 2016 is yet again predicted to be “the year of the cloud,” with most organizations expected to finish moving the remainder of their business to the cloud.
As the number of business days left in the year keeps getting smaller and smaller, publications left and right are starting to come out with their predictions for 2016. Without even looking at what their success rates were in predicting this past year, one thing stood out in some recent articles: 2016 being yet again named “the year of the cloud.”
2015 has been a momentous year for Markley Group – we added new customers, expanded our cloud offerings and opened Phase One of a highly-secure 350,000 square foot facility in Lowell, Mass., which has already proven to be a successful addition to our world-class, mission-critical facility at One Summer Street. In that light, and with Thanksgiving only a few days away, we wanted to share a few of the things we are most thankful for this year.
If you’ve been anywhere around the technology industry the past couple of years you’ve heard of the Internet of Things, or IoT for short.
With the recent data breaches at CVS Pharmacy, Experian, Sony and many others, it is no surprise cybersecurity remains top-of-mind. C-level executives and boards of directors are becoming more and more involved with the security decisions of their companies, and understand what’s on the line when it comes to securing customer data and critical, internal information.
The cloud has changed everything – from the way companies access their critical documents and information, to the way consumers access and store media. There aren’t many aspects of daily life that haven’t been changed for the better by the easy availability of cloud computing.
We’ve talked a lot in the recent weeks about why cloud computing – and hybrid cloud specifically – will help your organization grow and succeed. From cost-savings to efficiency and scalability, cloud solutions, whether it’s private, public or hybrid, offer companies a wide range of benefits that can deliver on productivity goals and improve every day processes.
This past week we had a very special visitor to Markley Group’s One Summer Street Boston facilities – Congresswoman Niki Tsongas. The Congresswoman represents Massachusetts’ Third District, which includes Lowell, MA, where Markley Group just purchased a new facility.
The last few weeks have seen a good deal of media coverage calling out the hybrid cloud model as the method of choice by IT departments looking to cloud-enable their businesses. Here at the Markley Group we’ve believed this to be the case for a while, but it is great to see businesses of all varieties fully understanding that – and making the decision to move to a hybrid model.
Last week, we discussed a recent article by Data Center Knowledge, quoting a survey finding that “…70 percent of respondents were using or evaluating a hybrid cloud solution.”
We’ve spoken a lot here about the advantages of the hybrid cloud and how the companies that have adopted it so far have seen some tremendous benefits in everything from cost to efficiency.
Gartner recently released its forecast for worldwide technology spending, estimating that it will reach $3.5 trillion in 2015, which is a 5.5 percent drop from spending in 2014. Many people see this figure and immediately think the market is constricting, and businesses are investing less in their IT infrastructures. But this isn’t necessarily the case.
An alternative to setting up your own disaster recovery (DR) site in a remote location or outsourcing DR planning to a service is to choose a colocation data center where you can set up your own network, servers and storage.
After a long, drawn-out winter here in New England that some thought would never end, we can finally (and thankfully) say that summer is here. Time for the beach, family vacations and simply enjoying the warm weather.
In the past, we’ve discussed the reasons why cloud computing – and hybrid cloud specifically – will help your organization grow and succeed because of the efficiency and cost-savings it enables.
At the enterprise level, cloud adoption continues to grow thanks to the benefits experienced by organizations, such as elastic capacity and utility pricing. However, those benefits, in some cases, are nothing more than tactical.
If you’re an IT manager, you have probably spent countless hours considering how your organization could (and should) be using the cloud to store data and information. But in today’s digital world, it’s impossible to make those decisions without also considering the security ramifications of any solution you implement.
We’ve talked here in the past about the growth of cloud adoption among enterprises and how it is enabling new and exciting work to be done by companies across the globe. At the same time, one of the other major technology trends of the past few years is the rise of capturing and analyzing big data as a way to better understand and improve your business operations.
Unless you are living under a rock, the term “cloud” means a lot to you – and if it doesn’t mean a lot to your infrastructure yet – you are at least considering how it should.
While cloud adoption in the workplace has grown over the past five or so years, it has usually been the same reasons given again and again by companies about why they’ve turned to the cloud: the need to improve accessibility by employees, the need to cut costs by eliminating costly infrastructure and services – and the need to become a more efficient organization where information can easily be shared.
For anyone who reads the Markley Group blog with any regularity knows that we are advocates for the benefits that the cloud – particularly hybrid cloud – can bring to organizations of all sizes that are looking for a reliable, flexible, cost effective data storage solution.
If you’ve been following the weather forecast in the Northeast or live in a region currently being slammed with snow, ice and wind – our Boston-based Markley Group team has faced three snow storms in just over two weeks – you know the immense strain it can put on infrastructure, services and resources.
As an IT professional, you are likely evaluating all of your cloud options and hoping you can make something work within your organization’s IT environment, as well as within budget and scope.
Even as we close out the first month of 2015, industry pundits are still talking about their expectations for 2015. One of the trends that has been inescapable has been that of security and the need to be prepared and protected.
As we kick off the New Year, it’s not surprising that IT managers, CIOs and business executives are making good on their plans to update data storage systems and cloud infrastructure to support and advance business success in the year ahead.
After reading this title, you’re either agreeing with me – as you remember downtime issues you had to deal with in 2014; or you’re one of the lucky ones shaking your head in disbelief that this is still a huge problem in this day and age.
2014 has been a great year for the cloud – hybrid cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployments have become more readily adopted as solutions that cater to a wide range of companies; organizations are getting better at placing controls and restrictions on employee cloud use, limiting the harmful implications of shadow IT; and technology advancements are continually making data storage more efficient, effective and affordable.
As the end of 2014 approaches rapidly, I keep thinking about an article I read recently which highlighted findings from a survey on hybrid cloud knowledge and what it means for the industry – and for my clients embarking on cloud strategies this year and next. 2014 has certainly been marked as the year where the hybrid cloud became “real.” Our industry has gone beyond reading about it and talking about it in theory as now many companies have put it into place, analyzed the results and formed best practices.
When you’re operating a data center, you know that the biggest threat to your bottom line is unexpected downtime. Quite simply, if you can’t access your information, you can’t function. That’s why finding a reliable facility that offers diverse connectivity should be the top priority for your enterprise.
Someone suggested to me the other day that large cloud providers are going to "eat the lunch" of data centers within the next few years, limiting data center growth. While large cloud providers such as AWS and Google are certainly doing very well, I see these being more valuable for individual consumers– and in fact, they have actually contributed to the "Shadow IT" issue enterprises are currently facing.
There have been a lot of numbers about internet traffic and information growth shared recently, but they all point to the same thing – internet traffic and the resulting data processed and stored will continue to grow, almost exponentially.
It may only be November, but anyone in IT knows that now is the time to be thinking about and planning for your data growth – and how you’re infrastructure will accommodate it – in 2015.
I’ve written many a piece about how 'hybrid' is the correct approach when it comes to cloud adoption – it is extremely accommodating to many business models and resources.
One of the big IT trends of 2014 has been shadow IT, which is commonly defined as when employees bring their own tech into the workplace to make their jobs more efficient. Shadow IT can take the form of an extra WiFi router in a remote part of the building, mobile devices that are unsupported by the corporate IT department – or even a part of the company that purchased cloud services from an outside vendor, without the approval of the company.
This past week I read an interesting article in Forbes that I thought was worth sharing. The piece looks at optimizing data center performance and why it matters to the c-level. It makes some points about the data center being so important because IT “…is the engine for business intelligence that feeds product development, marketing, sales, and competitive strategy…” which is a good way to sum things up.
The hype around hybrid cloud is at its precipice right now. Everyone is talking about it; conferences (like VMWorld) are focusing on it; and most every company is wondering to themselves – “should I be considering hybrid cloud solutions and strategies as part of my IT infrastructure?” But is it more than hype – are we actually reaching a maturation stage?
Security is on everyone’s mind these days – with the recent reports of data breaches at JP Morgan, Home Depot and even Apple’s iCloud – the significance of securing customer data and your company’s critical information has never seemed more important.
Shadow IT – it’s a growing challenge faced by CIOs, IT departments and organizations alike and presents itself when individuals or workgroups decide to adopt non-approved public cloud services and applications outside of the management (and often knowledge) of IT.
The hybrid cloud and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a beautiful thing and chock full of compromise. Companies have moved away from the idea that they have to choose (and marry their data to) a specific private cloud or public cloud offering. Hybrid systems (colocation/private cloud + public cloud) grant the flexibility needed to take on the cloud on their own terms and mix-and-match to achieve the right fit.
Today I wanted to take a moment to share a fascinating article from Wired Magazine that I read a couple of weeks back. In the article “The Data Centers of Tomorrow Will Use the Same Tech Our Phones Do,” Peter Levine takes a look at how the technology advances seen in the mobile industry will one day change how data centers themselves run.
Big Data: it’s a concept and trend that we’ve all heard about ad nauseam. But for those of us in the data center industry “big data,” conjures an entirely different reaction, primarily because we’re the ones who are tasked with storing, securing, and processing that data on the backend – whether you’re internal IT or you operate an external, colocation data center, like Markley Group.
For companies that haven’t yet dabbled in the cloud, the types and options seem endless and in some cases, intimidating. Where to even start when choosing what’s best for your company?
I was talking with a colleague the other day and he shared some interesting feedback he had received: that in order to be truly successful, your company needed to own and operate its own data center. "Seriously? In this day and age?" I said.
A couple of weeks back, when Microsoft announced its Q2 results, a large part of the focus was on its cloud revenue. In a Wall Street Journal article, Gartner analyst Merv Adrian had an interesting quote describing Microsoft’s strategy of having a foot in the cloud and a foot in traditional IT: “It’s going to be a very long time before people are living in both worlds…”
As with most forms of technology and infrastructure, data centers and data center designs are constantly evolving to meet the ever-changing needs of enterprises, their customers – and most importantly, their data.
PaaS, or platform as a service, is just one pillar of three in the category of cloud computing services that provides the computing platform with a solution stack as a service. An article in InfoWorld from earlier this year brought up a great point, however – what is PaaS’ place in the enterprise, especially when IaaS (infrastructure as a service) is now offering many of its own platforms capabilities, in addition to the baseline infrastructure?
There’s been some chatter in the industry lately about the differences between retail and wholesale colocation – and why one solution vs. another is better for your company. We thought we’d help clear up any confusion by taking a look at how each is defined and what the benefits and drawbacks are of each, so you can make a better decision for your company.
As a hybrid cloud provider, we are very aware of another consideration that many organizations do not consider as they start to experiment and implement full-on cloud solutions: compatibility.
Have you used the Markley Cloud Services Pricing Calculator to see where your goals fit into our model? At Markley Group, we make it as easy as possible to find a cloud package that meets your company’s and end user’s requirements, while ensuring you have the ability to scale as the needs of your organization change.
The cloud has been an integral part of business operations for a few years now, but mostly as a resource that was primarily utilized by startups and organizations demanding low-entry costs. These days, however, its use seems to have shifted towards established companies looking to revitalize and reinvent their current business strategies.
We’ve been talking in this space a bit about archiving, storage and the cloud – and it came to our attention that it might be a good idea to take a look at the reasons why companies should consider cloud storage – and some of the situations where traditional storage solutions might be the correct fit after all.
As all IT managers and CTOs know, technology becomes outdated very quickly. Just consider how often people replace personal mobile devices – whether that’s a smartphone or tablet. You and your employees likely replace those far more frequently than the equipment in your data center. But with the growing number of cloud applications and new mobile devices, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with employee demands without an up-to-date data center as well.
Recently, many of our clients and prospects have inquired about how, when, and why to integrate cloud storage into their existing data storage strategy. It’s no secret that moving data to the cloud can be a daunting and confusing task. As most companies come to find out, understanding and deciding if and where to start can often be the most difficult part.
With the proliferation of software startups, the idea of sharing work space really took hold in the IT community as an easy way to both learn from each other and reduce the cost of rent. But now, companies of all sizes and stages are realizing the benefits of housing many minds under one roof.
Markley’s great friend and renowned American artist, Ray Turner, recently launched a new website showcasing his Population Exhibition. The website is dedicated to his traveling Population exhibition, which has toured several different cities in the United States and is currently on display in Wichita, KS. The exhibition is made up of several portraits of regular citizens, with varied colors, facial features and types of glass helping to make each one look completely unique.
As you may recall, we wrote a blog last year about one of the best aspects of the Markley Group office space at One Summer Street – the amazing oil on glass portraits of every employee that you see as you enter the space. Artist Ray Turner is to thank for these – and he’s been painting our employees since 2010 and it all started from a friendship between Jeff Markley, our CEO, and Ray, who met in California.
It goes without saying that this has been a long winter, but spring is technically here and we couldn't be more ready! With the spring season, we all feel a need to clean and refresh - let us know how we can help to reorganize your data and networking needs at our 920,000 square foot facility in downtown Boston.
Here at Markley, we take great pride in understanding our customers needs and staying on top of (and providing solutions for) the ever-evolving challenges that enterprise IT, data and cloud managers face on a daily basis.
The weather this February has lived up to all of our New England expectations - we hope you have all stayed warm and safe through the various storms. We've stayed busy ensuring our facility is as secure as ever, and of course, ensuring 100% uptime as always. It's been a busy month and it should stay this way into the spring months.
As we continue through our “Meet the Markley Team” blog series, we are pleased to introduce you to one of our longest standing and instrumental team members, John Fleming.
We hope everyone had an excellent holiday season and are gearing up for a successful new year! As we ring in 2014, we would like to take this time to thank you for being a part of our monthly newsletter and staying up to speed with our company developments and news. Please always feel free to reach out and let us know of any feedback – we welcome your thoughts and suggestions!
Dress for Success Boston’s mission is to promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women. The staff and volunteers do this by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life. The Markley Group is proud to continue our support in 2014 by donating to such an important cause.
Happy new year! As everyone recovers from raising a glass and trying to remember the words to “Auld Lang Syne,” we here at Markley Group took a moment to reflect on the past year and quickly realized that it has been an excellent, if not hectic, year for us and out clients.
Paul comes to Markley Group with over 30 years experience in various technology roles, most of them in the Banking and Financial Services sectors.
Today we kick off the first Markley Group How-To Video on our blog. Our hope with these videos is to help IT professionals by covering best industry practices of some data center operational procedures.
We’re back again with the final installment in our series about the cloud research we conducted, which looked at how IT managers felt about the cloud and whether they’ve begun welcoming it into their organizations.
Last week, we took a look at how the feelings of our IT managers have changed when it comes to cloud computing and accepting that public and hybrid solutions are a much better solution than keeping everything in-house and managing it yourself.
Whenever someone new visits our world-class data center space at One Summer Street in Boston, they are of course impressed by the lengths to which we have gone to create one of the nation’s strongest and most secure facilities. However, we often hear back that one of the most striking aspects of our facility is the amazing portraits of each of our employees that you see as you enter the space.
When we were planning for the general availability launch of our Markley Cloud Services solution earlier in the year, we wanted to get a handle on what IT managers felt about cloud computing – what they were using, what they were staying away from and everything in between. We never made the results of this survey public – until now.
When IT decision makers asses their ongoing IT strategy, they often end up reviewing several potential changes – all purported to improve efficiencies, lower costs and make their organization run faster, better and stronger.
I just returned from a conference that was recently held in New Orleans, LA. All in all, it was an excellent show featuring information on the latest advanced networking techniques and applications, but one topic that stood out was the looming transition from the IPv4 Data Center 9protocol to the IPv6 protocol.
We’ve talked a little about the growing trend of colocation in this space and how it provides a way for companies to optimize their IT departments, getting the benefits of the latest equipment, security and always-on environment without having to run or staff their own data center.
Years ago it was standard for companies to own and operate their own data centers. However, in recent years a number of factors have made businesses think twice about whether they need, or even want, their own facility.
In recent years, there have been several initiatives, regulations and requirements undertaken in the healthcare business to move all levels of the industry – from the biggest hospitals to the smallest family care centers – away from paper to a system of digital medical records and online information sharing.
We have another video to quickly share as we start off a new week: an overview of our cloud services.
Today's post is another video from our Markley Data Center Summit 2013 -- this time we bring you the cloud computing panel.
This blog isn’t talking about the kind of peer pressure you warn your 13 year old about. Instead, we want to talk about peer pressure that will optimize network performance and reduce latency and costs.
Today we have another video to share with you -- this one of John Patrick's presentation at our recently completed Markley Data Center Summit 2013.
Michael Hugos was one of our featured speakers at last month's Markley Data Center Summit 2013 event. He discussed how the world has changed, how businesses need to change how they operate in order to keep up, and the role of IT and the cloud in making those changes possible.
For IT managers looking to optimize their IT department without tying up their own resources, colocation can be the best option for their business needs. Many businesses don’t have the time and money to invest in the equipment, technology, security and staff to run a full data center and that’s okay – colocation offers a degree of hand-holding that comes with managed services, which is extremely comforting for those that want high visibility into who is doing what with their data.
This weekend the luckiest day of the year will be upon us: St. Patrick’s Day. A time to dress in lucky green and plaster four-leaf clovers all over in hopes of reserving some of the good luck and fortune of the day for yourself. Unfortunately, this is the same approach many companies take when they choose to enter the cloud.
Valentines Day: a day we show our love for the most important relationships in our lives was just a couple of weeks ago. Cards and flowers for our significant others, cookies for team members at work and that new squeak toy for Max. While we are showing love for the most important relationships, it only makes sense to ask: what did you get for your cloud this Valentines Day?
One of the lasting images of the Super Bowl this year was the San Francisco 49ers having 1 play from inside the 5 yard line to get a touchdown. Score and win the game, miss and lose, it all came down to one play.
As we kick off the blog this week, we wanted to take a look at where the cloud computing industry is now – and where we think it’s headed in 2013.
Markley Group is very pleased to be launching our own blog today as a way to better connect with customers, partners, and anyone and everyone connected with the cloud computing industry. We want this to be a place where topics are posed, questions asked and discussions begin.
