Hyper-convergence. Is it for you?

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1528235143343{background-color: #002e63 !important;}”][vc_column][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]Rapid proliferation of applications and the increasing cost of maintaining legacy infrastructure causes significant IT challenges for many organizations. Complex manual processes and non-integrated infrastructure can’t provide the power, simplicity and speed necessary to meet the demands of the enterprise.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Hyperconvergence offers the availability, performance and capacity needed—while future proofing IT infrastructure and lowering total cost of ownership (TCO). It allows IT operations to be simplified by breaking down traditional silos and allowing storage, compute, networking, and virtualization to be managed with the same hardware, which eliminates inefficiencies and accelerates compute.

Generally, a hyperconverged infrastructure:

  • Enables centralized management of virtual environments via a single interface, which decreases labor-intensive activities
  • Offers streamlined acquisition, deployment, support and management
  • Provides a scalable, building-block approach that is easily expandable

 

Hyperconvergence, like convergence, eliminates traditional IT management issues by packaging data center services such as server, storage and network and allowing them to be managed in a single application. But unlike convergence, hyperconvergence is a software-defined infrastructure that decouples infrastructure operations from the system hardware and converges them at the hypervisor level into a single building block (thus hyper converged).

HPE SimpliVity is a powerful, simple, and efficient hyperconverged platform that joins best-in-class data services with the world’s best-selling server and offers the industry’s most complete guarantee. With HPE SimpliVity, you can streamline and enable IT operations at a fraction of the cost of traditional and public cloud solutions by combining your IT infrastructure and advanced data services into a single, integrated solution.

 

What makes HPE SimpliVity different from other solutions?

  • Powerful – Modern data architecture that powers and protects some of the world’s most efficient and resilient data centers
  • Simple – Intuitive VM-Centric management that streamlines operations and empowers IT generalists.
  • Trusted – Recognized market leadership, long-term viability, and best-selling server platform in the industry
  • Complete – Single building block combining all IT infrastructure and advanced data services for virtualized workloads

 

Contact your Clear Technologies sales rep to learn more today![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”Get in Touch” color=”primary” size=”lg” align=”center” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cleartechnologies.net%2Fabout%2Fcontact%2F|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Managing Unstructured Data

What is unstructured data?

Unstructured data is defined as: information that either does not have a pre-defined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner. Unstructured information comes in many unrelated forms such as documents, text files, spreadsheets, presentation files, video files, audio files, and pictures to name some of the more common formats.  The Computer World magazine states that unstructured information might account for more than 70%–80% of all data in organizations. Typically, this data is stored in individual files without an organizational application organizing and managing the relationships between these files.

Why is this Important?

Simple – most data growth (over 80% ) comes from unstructured data.  In this digital age where cell phones and remote devices of all kinds are capturing and storing information for later analysis, the digital data explosion is exponential.  So, managing this kind of data is critical.

The Main Challenges with Managing Unstructured Data

The three main challenges are:

  • Growth
  • Retrieval/Usage
  • Cost Efficiency

Growth – Having a place to store this data and storing the data efficiently is critical.  This means using data reduction technologies like compression and data deduplication to insure the information is stored using the minimum amount of space – and then being able to track and forecast storage growth for this type of information.  Managing growth means tracking storage utilization and growth trends so you can plan for storage expansion based on these trends.

Retrieval/Usage – It is not only important to track storage usage trends, but also what data(files) are being used/accessed on a regular basis.  Many organizations keep all their data on high performance storage and more than 90% of this information is never accessed – costing organizations millions of dollars in unnecessary IT spend. This unnecessary spend could be avoided If you just know which files are needed for rapid retrieval and which can be stored in very low cost archival storage.

Cost Efficiency – means storing the information in the most cost-effective manner to meet business application requirements while also meeting IT budget requirements.

You can efficiently manage unstructured data with Visual One Intelligence™®

Visual One Intelligence™® (Visual One) simplifies and enables the management process for unstructured data by providing a unified visual analysis and across multi-vendor storage environments. With an automated data collection process, Visual One offers actionable intelligence through consistent reporting on existing arrays from the Host/LUN to the Business Unit levels. The deep insight provided by Visual One Intelligence™® helps organizations save time, reduce costs and improve efficiency.

How Does Visual One Help you Manage Your Unstructured Data?

Visual One Intelligence™ collects information from all your storage and organizes this information in a unified, simple series of reports to help you understand:

  • What and How Storage is Currently Being Used
  • Trends Over Time
  • Forecasted Future Requirements
  • Usage Patterns

 

Growth Trends

Tracking growth in an automated/unattended fashion is one of the key use cases for Visual One.  Many organizations track their storage growth using manual spreadsheets maintained by someone in the IT department.  This process is slow, error prone, and usually lacks the level of granularity required to make decisions in a rapidly growing environment.  The chart to the right shows all the key growth trends over time, including overall capacity, allocation and used growth.  This chart allows any person to see the trends for any of their pool or file shares over a period of time in order to predict when or if additional storage is needed.Visual One device trends report[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Visual One forecasting reportThe chart to the left shows the forecast for the resource display above and when this resource will be greater than 80% used, which is the point additional storage is recommended.

Having this type of information without requiring any effort by IT personnel to collect data enables decision-making to be performed at any time.  You are also able to predict when additional storage will be needed so you can proactively plan for these events.

File Usage Patterns

While unstructured data requires a lot of storage space, most of these files are accessed infrequently if at all.  Knowing what data needs to be available for rapid retrieval vs archived for less historical purposes can save organizations millions of dollars.  The trick is to know what data needs to go where.  Visual One provides deep analytics specifically designed to provide this information so you know down to the file what should go where and, if it is currently storage on Tier 1 storage, what the potential costs savings would be for moving this information to cloud or other storage media to save cost.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]The graph to the right is from a 1.6 PB file share showing 64% of the data stored in this file share has not been access in over 3 years.  The cost savings for migrating this data into a lower cost cloud storage solution would result in a savings of over a million dollars in a 3 year period.Visual One GraphProviding you with the data to manage your infrastructure efficiently is what Visual One is dedicated to doing, and being able to see what and how unstructured data is growing and what needs to be online put you back in control of managing this dynamic growth in the most cost effective manner possible.

Please visit www.visualstorageintelligence.com to learn more.

 

Employee Spotlight: Shu Mookerjee

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Shu Mookerjee

Hyperconverged Specialist

Clear Technologies

214-755-2070

smookerjee@cleartechnologies.net[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Shu Mookerjee is the Hyperconverged Specialist at Clear Technologies and has been in the role since March 2018. In his role, Shu will be focused on driving new business within the domains of the converged and hyperconverged infrastructure as well as high performance compute and storage. Shu brings a technologist’s approach to clients, understanding and articulating how the latest technology will impact the key performance metrics and mapping I/T innovations directly to the customer’s business goals.

Prior to joining Clear Technologies, Shu was the Director of Technical Sales at StorONE, where he was responsible for developing technical collateral, delivering education to customers and developing the client base. Before that, Shu spent nearly two decades at IBM in various sales, technical and management roles where he worked with such customers as NTTData, Essilor and Oncor Electric.

Shu was born in Mumbai, raised in New Jersey and educated in New York. He received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology. He is a purple belt in kung fu, a semi-pro guitarist and an avid video gamer. He currently resides in Dallas, TX with his wife, who wishes he would get a hobby.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

IBM Power Managed Services

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1528233492364{background-color: #002e63 !important;}”][vc_column][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]Clear Technologies has partnered with IBM on their Power Systems line of systems since Clear’s founding in 1993.  With over 25 years of experience, Clear Technologies brings the technical support resources that enable the right systems solution for your environment.  Whether you are looking for basic “how-to” support for a single server or a full IBM Platform as a Service Solution, Clear Technologies has the capabilities and know-how to design, implement, troubleshoot and manage all sizes of IBM Power environments running IBM AIX, i (OS/400) and Linux.

 

Remote Administration

Clear Technologies has a dedicated support team devoted to remotely managing client environments.  Clear’s team of certified-Power subject matter experts can do full environment management or facilitate your current team by adding industry-leading skills to your staff.  We can offer full 24x7x365 support or ad-hoc systems assistance depending on your needs.  Clear’s team of resources have decades of experience with not only the IBM Power hardware but also the suite of products that support that hardware such as IBM BRMS, PowerHA, and more.

 

Production Hosting

In addition to providing administration of systems, Clear Technologies can also offer IBM Power hosting for IBM i and AIX.  Both large and small environments can take advantage of the scalability, cost savings, availability and security of moving to a hosted environment or cloud.  Clear can offer capacity and utilization based pricing so you are only paying for the pieces of the system you use.  The hosted Power environments we provide are located in leading edge datacenters with redundant networking and connectivity using IBM Power systems on IBM maintenance so you have the peace of mind your production environment is being taken care of as well or better than your company would.

 

High Availability & Disaster Recovery as a Service

If you would like to keep your production system on-premises due to requirements or regulations, Clear can still offer high availability and disaster recovery target partitions to facilitate your current business continuity plan or for a brand new DR strategy.  Clear has experts on staff in the field of High Availability with leading skills for IBM’s PowerHA and Syncsort’s MIMIX product, as well as skills from other leading High Availability vendors.  High Availability offers the lower RTO and best RPO and we can offer dedicated system resources to give your organization confidence that your data is fully protected.

 

Restoration Services/Restore Verification

Finally, Clear Technologies’ IBM Power Managed Services offers a thorough but cost-effecitive restore verification services.  Is your DR-strategy fully dependent on tape backups?  Let us test those tapes and restore them to our systems.  We offer restoration services for IBM Power environments to give even our smallest clients reassurance that they can get their business back to work in the event of a downed system.

 

Clear Technologies suite of Managed Services for IBM’s Power portfolio is flexible to your needs and ready to assist you.  Contact Clear Technologies today to speak to one of our IBM Power specialists and help architect the services you need for the future of your company.[/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=”Get in Touch ” color=”primary” size=”lg” align=”center” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cleartechnologies.net%2Fabout%2Fcontact%2F|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Clear Technologies Wins West Horizon Award for Outstanding Partner Performance

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Clear Technologies, a leading IT solution provider, has been selected as the winner of the Horizon Award for Outstanding Partner Performance presented on April 11, 2018. Clear was selected for this award based on its exceptional performance during 2017.

West and Clear Technologies partner to provide clients with Unified Communications Services such as Cloud Contact Center, Conference & Collaboration, Hosted Voice, and more. Clear began its partnership with West in 2017 and had an enormous amount of success in its first year.


“Communication is one of, if not, the most important piece of any organization. Our partnership with West allows Clear to deliver best of breed products and services, such as those from Cisco, to our clients as a consolidated, fast and competitively priced solution. We are extremely proud to have won the Horizon Award with West and look forward to even more success together in 2018,” said Phil Godwin, Clear Technologies President & COO.

Clear Technologies is a Value-Added Reseller, Managed & Professional Services Provider, and Software Publisher. For 25 years, Clear has worked with clients nationwide to deliver business value through technology.

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What is Managing Up and Why Should it Matter?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Managing up, or building smooth, productive relationships with higher-ups, requires understanding and adapting to your boss’s communication and decision-making style. The goal of managing up is to develop a pattern of interaction between your boss and you that delivers the best possible results for your organization (and by extension, for each of you).

The first step in effectively managing up is accepting that every decision in your company is made by the person who has the power to make that decision, even if he or she is not necessarily the right person or the best person to make that decision. If you can influence the key decision makers in your organization, you can make a positive difference.

When presenting ideas to upper management, remember that it’s your responsibility to sell, not their responsibility to buy. A good salesperson takes responsibility for achieving results. While the importance of taking responsibility may seem obvious in external sales, an amazing number of people in large corporations spend countless hours blaming management for not buying their ideas. We can become disempowered when we focus on what others have done to make things wrong and not what we can do to make things right. Focus on contributing to the larger good, not just achieving your objectives. Effective salespeople relate, to the buyers’ needs, not to their own needs, in the same way effective upward influencers relate to the larger needs of the organization, not just to the needs of their unit or team.

Present a realistic Cost-Benefit Analysis of Your Ideas – don’t just sell the benefits. Every organization has limited resources, time, and energy. Be prepared to have a realistic discussion of the costs of your idea. Acknowledge the fact that something else may have to be sacrificed to have your idea implemented. By getting ready for a realistic discussion of costs, you can prepare for objections to your idea before they occur. By making a small investment in learning to influence up, you can make a large and positive difference for the future of your organization.

The accommodations you make help you gain better insight into your boss’s context: his peers, and the combination of organizational and personal objectives he’s trying to meet. The goal of managing up is not currying favor, it’s becoming more effective. Basically, your boss can fire you, but you can’t fire him.

As the subordinate, you may find it difficult to see the ways in which your boss “can be severely hurt” if they don’t receive the “cooperation, dependability, and honesty” they require in order to do their own job. In fact, the relationship is one of mutual dependence. The more thoroughly you understand the goals, constraints, and pressures under which your boss operates, the better you’ll be able to help them succeed. Begin with a discussion of goals and expectations. Most people are not aware of their boss’s needs. Ask them to clarify their top five responsibilities with their boss so that both understand and agree on what those priorities are. That’s a conversation everyone needs to have.

Don’t make assumptions about areas in which you lack information. Regularly seek clarification and updates about your boss’s objectives – concerns and priorities have a way of changing over time. In addition, don’t focus only on organizational goals. Your boss’s personal objectives can have just as much effect on how satisfied he is with your performance.

Pay attention to clues in your boss’s behavior. Observing your boss – paying special attention to their preferences about such things as meetings and modes of communication – offers many clues about how best to interact with them. Learning to adapt to the boss’s preferred way of doing things actually helps you “maintain control of your career. Once you have that skill, you need never feel apprehensive about working for anyone.

Managing the boss is a constant like being in a good marriage. You don’t go around saying you’ve done enough modifying your behavior for your spouse. We’re all in the business of modifying our behavior on a daily basis in relationships that are important to us. But once you and your boss have established a trusting relationship, the time you have to spend managing your boss should decrease dramatically.

 

Take the survey below to see how well you are doing at managing up:

https://smu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0kR35EbmpGQtjcphttps://smu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0kR35EbmpGQtjcp

Please enter your name and email at the end. You will receive your results within 24 hours!

All information will be confidential.

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Brian Murphy Joins Clear as Chief Innovation Officer

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/6″][vc_single_image image=”6307″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/6″][vc_column_text]Brian Murphy

Chief Innovation Officer

972-302-8295

bmurphy@cleartechnologies.net[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Brian Murphy joined Clear Technologies in April 2018 as Chief Innovation Officer and Cognitive Practice Leader. In this role, Brian is focused on driving new business within the domains of artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT and analytics. Brian brings a business-first approach with conversations focused on solving business problems to drive both top and bottom lines of the clients P&L.

Prior to joining Clear Technologies, Brian led client success for global strategic accounts at SAP, served as SVP and CIO for Dean Foods, led IT integration for merger and acquisitions and large ERP implementations for several companies, and held various positions in IT and line of business at companies such as Whirlpool, T-Mobile, Colgate, Palmolive and PPG Industries. Brian has also served on the board of both profit and non-profit organizations.

Brian originates from the United Kingdom, but has been in the United States for the last 14 years; 10 of those years in Dallas. He received his BSc from Loughborough University in the UK.  Brian is a passionate cook, retro arcade game player, animal foster, and traveler. He enjoys spending time with his family and his 2 dogs, 2 cats and snake he rescued.

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Top Tweets: April-May 2018

Don’t have a twitter profile? That’s okay! Now you can keep up with Clear Technologies activity on twitter through our monthly newsletter.
Below are our top tweets for April – May 2018.

https://twitter.com/Visual OneStorage/status/990796710275375104

Clear Technologies Celebrates 25th Anniversary

DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Clear Technologies, a Dallas-area based Information Technology Services and Solutions Provider, celebrates its 25th Anniversary.

Clear Technologies, founded in 1993 as Strategic Solutions Southwest, is a Value-Added Reseller, Managed & Professional Services Provider, and Software Publisher dedicated to driving business value through technology.

“Clear Technologies’ story is one of adaptation and transformation. Without a solid focus of concentrating on our clients, we would not be here to celebrate our 25 years in business and the many great years to come,” said COO & President, Phil Godwin.

Clear Technologies began purely as a hardware reseller of IBM’s Power line of data center infrastructure, such as the AS/400 line of servers. Clear added a multitude of other product lines to its resell portfolio over the next 15 years including Storage and Networking, while also creating a successful professional services practice. In 2010, Clear launched its first homegrown product, Visual One Intelligence™, as part of its first true transformation as a company.

“Visual One Intelligence™ allows us to differentiate ourselves from what has become a sea of sameness amongst partners. We are able to quickly add value to many different types of organizations through Visual One’s many capabilities around planning, analysis and reporting of storage and other datacenter devices from all the major manufacturers,” according to Godwin.

Visual One Intelligence™ is a cloud-based systems reporting and analytics service that provides data-driven analytics addressing performance, capacity, and governance challenges for informed decision making. Visual One Intelligence™ has been awarded numerous accolades over the years including being named “Value Leader” and “Best Capacity Management” in 2017 by EMA Storage Intelligence Radar Report.

As a result of its successful transformation, COO & President, Phil Godwin, was invited to join IBM Senior Vice President of Global Markets, Martin Schroeter, on stage at IBM’s premier conference, THINK 2018, to discuss how Clear has successfully adapted and transformed its business and how other partners could follow suit. Phil also discussed Clear Technologies’ most recent investments around Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and how they can have substantial business impacts.

“It is great to look back and see how far we have come since we started 25 years ago. With our continued investment in Visual One Intelligence™ and our latest investment in our AI and IOT practice, I am confident we will continue to provide our clients with the technology and services that will provide significant value and profit to their business,” said Godwin.

| View 25th Anniversary Celebration Gallery 

Employee Spotlight: Melvin Eugene

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1523316797678{background-image: url(https://www.cleartechnologies.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Screen-Shot-2018-02-09-at-12.06.22-PM.png?id=5540) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][vc_column][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]Melvin Eugene - Clear TechnologiesMelvin Eugene joined Clear Technologies after a successful 28 year career in Sales & Management at IBM .

Melvin is a proven leader with over two decades in Sales/Marketing and Executive Sales Management in the Information Technology Industry.  He departed IBM as the Director of Response Lead Management where he led an organization of over 275 Inside Sales Professionals focused on new business and revenue growth.

As an experienced business professional, his success throughout his career was built on creating long lasting relationships and finding ways to motivate and inspire individuals to excel in both their personal and professional endeavors.

Melvin brings with him to Clear Technologies a diverse set of Cross-Industry skills from Industrial/Automotive and Manufacturing to Distribution having worked with large Fortune 500 organizations in addition to fast-growing midsize companies.  At Clear, he will be responsible for New Business Account growth focusing on helping those new clients solve their most complex business requirements using Clear’s vast experience in the datacenter along with new solutions in IOT and AI.

As a purpose-driven leader, Melvin extended his personal talents beyond the office and into the community.

Melvin is a former Board Member for the West Dallas Community Centers (WDCC) his enthusiasm for the WAR against illiteracy propelled him to assist in getting computers donated and networked across the centers for educational training and skills development for their after-school programs.

Melvin was also Co-Chairman for Youth Empowerment at the Jordan Community Development Corporation, a non-profit where he was involved in initiatives to empower youth through education and skills based training. While serving as Co-Chairman he led fundraising activities for events such as their Annual Benefit Golf Tournament which was designed to raise funds for College Scholarships.

Melvin is an avid golfer and sport fan who received his BA from Austin College in Sherman, TX. He is married with 3 adult children and resides in the DFW area.

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