Investments in Information Security is already on the list of priorities of CIOs of large corporations. This concern is already being reality in small and medium enterprises.

Arrange to grow in a sustainable manner is a common goal of organizations, small and medium businesses. However to take the first step, it is clear that such distance companies still need to go, since the creation of formal business plan, to prepare for any uncertainties, developing a governance model consistent with the future plans, identify and manage the risks associated with the business, the assessment of potential risks, will not go unnoticed themes linked to: actions of hackers and viruses, loss of information of customer, operational availability, and ethical conduct of partners and employees, intellectual property, spying on information leaks and even fraud.

Align to pursuit growth, it is increasingly important that the technology is embedded in organizational life and the quest for preservation is directly proportional to its investment capacity, maintenance and protection of the technology, processes, people and also the physical environment.

Currently companies, especially the SMEs can no longer enjoy a comfort zone for too long. The technology, globalized world, the economy and government policies allow the entry of competitive firms in the market every day. In small businesses, the working capital is limited, the credit lines are not as available as in larger companies.

Even in solid midsize companies, with over 20 years of existence, however they kept their family run, should start worrying about competing with new market segments in certain international investments of large multinational companies that want to leverage demand of domestic market that is already a reality.

This competition makes use of Information Technology, robust and totally secure, which as we have seen, are not available on our SMEs. Competitive advantage is what every company hopes. However, not all know the means to achieve this goal. IT, armed with strategic tools, can provide this environment. However it cannot be more detached from the Governance Information Technology, risk increases every day in this scenario as competition is globalized.

The concept of Trade Marketing and CRM Should be used widely and broadly for business survival, that today translates into investments in applications, integrated systems throughout the production chain, big data, cloud hosting solutions, etc.. The dynamics of everyday life of large companies should also start becoming part of the reality of SMEs, much more accessible than in the past in every way, enables smaller companies to become more competitive in the domestic market.

The integrated view of information security to these new technologies that become part of competition, can have the same tools, however guarantee, reliability, availability, and integrity of information that this vision will be distributed and managed across the supply chain, from the industry to the point of sale. And yet to receive feedback from shoppers and consumers feeding the data analysis process in reverse. Then yes, definitely will be competitive and can be obtained through the Governance of Information Security.

In various methodologies, best practice models, frameworks and standards of ICT, find a topic that is very common, administration tool based on the PDCA quality.

This tool aims to ensure the achievement of goals required for the survival of the business and though simple, is a step forward without limit to effective planning.

This cycle is required for all experiments that are constantly revised, so the adjustments are performed and the learning with errors is possible. This way, you can always identify needs for improvement, particularly in SMEs where resources in all senses are more scarce, and should thus achieve the best possible productivity processes deployed.

Several factors influence the implementation of an Governance Information Security, beginning by naming a nasty somewhat strange reality of Small and Medium enterprises. The profile of the IT professional is another factor which is decisive for the success of a project of this level. In addition to technical skills, you need other features like profile negotiator and leadership regardless of who occupies hierarchy.

We use the basic models, standards and practices, without forgetting to use only what fit the reality of the company concerned, riding without any shame, its management model.

The competitive advantage that will be created following implementation of the model will not only meet the market but will also foster growth, visibility and credibility of IT internally in all their relationships, helping achieve the level of respect where IT is constantly sought to guide and assist in strategic settings.

A variable common to all areas of knowledge that is to be a leader, negotiator and good coach, you need to like what you do. Thus the challenges can be achieved.

We are experiencing the beginning of a profound transformation in the computational model and the role of IT. But it often is not clear to us. The reason is simple: we are in a period that we call the transition from pre-cloud to post-cloud.

But if we look at the signs of change, we find that now is a time when we begin to see the cloud computing model spreading and IT beginning to assume new roles within the organization.

Every change is surprising at first, especially when the paradigm is broken. Compares the changes to the models that are used and often do not realize that in the transition period, as experience today, the paradigm is not yet fully defined. The transition, as the name says, is transient, ie, it is not the model that will endure in the future. It is fleeting.

For clarity of the differences between the pre-and post-cloud models, let’s look at the current moment. This time we will call it as pre-cloud and is basically based on client-server architecture, with very limited use (almost embryonic) of cloud computing. It is a moment of evangelization market. In most companies, the IT department is responsible for costs and control of computing resources. It is a cost center. Its primary function is to support business operations, standardizing technologies and determining which ones may or may not get into the business. It is a model that both suppliers and buyers of technology have become accustomed and based on it, created a whole ecosystem. The companies plan to develop new applications or hire, acquire technology (hardware and software) and wait for a certain period of time (sometimes weeks and months) until physical machines are installed and the software is available for use.

The transition period already shows some changes. We started to see cloud computing becoming more widespread, but due to the questions and interests of the two sides (sellers and buyers), we seek a model that does not make radical changes. We note clearly the adoption of what is called hybrid clouds, with part of the computational requirements of the companies being met by cloud model (SaaS to IaaS) and even in on-premise model. That is, we see some solutions going to cloud computing while in parallel we see new hardware purchases and software licenses. But the IT field begins to stray from the paradigm of controlling the computing resources, moving many of them to external cloud providers. The consumerization of IT is a driving force to accelerate the shift shaft technology adoption in the enterprise IT users. We begin to see IT to focus more on standardization of services technologies. That is, instead of concern for defining technology standards, IT begins to look for patterns of cloud services. It’s a challenging period, because the major cloud providers try to impose their own standards as the factors in the market. IT should seek to concentrate efforts in adopting providers that are based on open standards, because the present is transitional and strategic vision will have to look at the long term.

Probably at the end of this decade or early next, we will be experiencing the post-cloud ie, the time will have no more sense to talk about cloud computing, but only because this will be the dominant computing paradigm. Of course when we talk about dominant model we are not talking 100% of that will be in cloud computing scenario. There will always be such specific demands and requiring the preservation of the current model in certain situations.

But when we are in this model, what is the role of IT? Most services will be in public clouds and larger companies will opt for private cloud services. One difference is that, the technological apparatus such as servers and middleware will be commodities. IT will create difference that is no longer supported by the business to be part of the business. It is the time to speak about the acronym CIO as Chief Information Officer will be so revealing of obsolescence as the title of manager CPD. We should speak in office as Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Digital Officer.

The post-cloud model is the “IT as the Business”, ie no longer have meaning debating whether or not IT is aligned with the business. IT is the business. The discussions will include corporate decisions and technologies since the beginning, since this will be increasingly invisible and ubiquitous. Technology is so integrated with the discussions as money for investment. Virtually any product or service, whether to clients or internal use, have built IT. Remember that we’re not just talking about IT as we see it today, basically responsible for the ERP and databases, but should include all new IT technology embedded in the organization, including operational, which is embedded in objects, cameras, sensors, etc..

IT will be seen as a revenue generator and not as a cost center. For this to happen, some levels of maturity should occur. First, it is undisputed that this new IT has operational excellence. And to achieve this, cloud computing is critical. The automation process that embeds cloud computing is essential to achieving this operational excellence. There will be no sense to IT spending hours or days of human resources to software upgrades or perform tasks that do not add value to the business. And in business areas, wait for weeks for a new computational resource such as a server …

Another level of maturity is the change in the profile of professional managers and IT professionals. The greater use of cloud providers, the less need for system administrators in-house. These will be concentrated on providers. The greater use of lower demand for PaaS developers indoors, since much of this task can be done externally. But knowing in depth about the business and leverage new products and services with innovative technologies and processes will make all the difference. This should be the posture and profile professional: to know and implement pro-active and innovative technologies that will make a difference to the business.

The language of IT must also change. Reduce costs and manage IT assets are being function providers. There will be a noble task for the new profile of IT. But to understand the business and discuss how to reduce fraud in banking and insurance systems, reduce the churn rate of a telecommunications company, reducing instances of “out-of-stock” retail and so on, is to be the IT hallway conversations and not about the operating system whether it is Linux or any other.

This is not a process that will happen one day to another. We will go and moreover, we are going through the transition period and the companies and CIOs should have a strategy to transform their IT center in results. Stand still and wait for the change is meaningless. They happen, like it or not.

Green IT is a term widely used today. It is the reduction of energy consumption, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, recycling of equipment and products, the proper disposal of waste, including e-waste, the adoption of sustainable architecture techniques, the use of processes that increase the useful life of the equipment and infrastructure of technology and especially the increased environmental awareness of people.

This article will be pointed attitudes practices for your corporation to join the Green IT:

1) Save energy. We suggest to this:

• Shutdown of equipment in times of non-use;
• use of fluorescent lamps;
• optimization of air temperature conditioning of the rooms;
• use of alternative energy sources like solar.

2) Prioritize air conditioning system with:

• Environmentally friendly gas, which does not damage the ozone layer;
• blowers and compressors with frequency inverters, generating a significant energy savings;
• water-free system, which saves water and uses anti-corrosion products to combat noxious agents present in the pipes.

3) As for equipment:

• Give preference to UPS batteries using dielectrics with low-polluting, require suppliers necessary certifications and a serious process of recycling batteries;
• If possible make use of server virtualization, ie, run two or more virtual servers on a single physical server – to increase the rate of resource utilization with reduced physical space and energy consumption;
• Making use of cloud computing servers, preferably choose the ones with dynamic balancing, automated and continuous optimization of available resources intelligently reducing energy consumption (for e.g. eNlight Cloud Computing Solutions);
• The optimal use of the hardware permits use of only the space that is required and the energy corresponding to its cooling;
• The maintenance and periodic updates provide greater durability of the equipment, extending the life span and causes for delaying new acquisitions;
• Before buying a product, make sure the sustainability actions undertaken by the manufacturer are listed and explained in the product manual or on their website. Find out more about electricity consumption and how to adjust the equipment to make more efficient use of electricity;
• In case of replacement by new equipment, try donating used equipment if it is in good condition, otherwise recycle. Some manufacturers receive equipment for recycling.

4) Awareness:

• Conserve supplies such as paper, ink cartridges and toner. Try to reuse the cartridges and do not print unnecessarily;
• Block spam and do not send junk email or unsolicited email. E-mails unnecessary overload the internet system and make the recipient spend more time and energy in opening messages that are not relevant;
• You need the involvement of the management and all employees so that there is a commitment to this project rational use of resources.

According to UNEP (The United Nations agency responsible for the environment), annually about 50 million different electronics – cell phones and MP3 players to computers and printers – are discarded and turned into electronic waste. In India, about 60% of the waste includes different type of electronic waste and much of this material ends up in landfills without any treatment. By the action of rain, the toxic components that are part of electronic products eventually reach the groundwater. We cannot forget that millions of Indian households that do not have water system. Water contaminated by these substances can cause various diseases that could be avoided if the electronics are recycled.

Information technology revolutionizes communication and access to knowledge, but the responsibility to the Environment and Health should be prioritized over the interests of consumer and market.

These are some tips that can be applied in our homes and businesses: Reduce + Reuse + Recycle

Collaborate posting other suggestions for the practice of Green IT.

Often we discuss technology trends and the changes they cause. We debated the technological complexities involved and estimated its rate of market adoption. But most of the technical articles forget one key factor: the driving force behind the adoption of any technological change is the economic factor.

When looking at the future of IT, we can learn something from the past and how organizations and society invested in these technologies. In the past, a few mainframe companies had access to computers (the computers were too expensive) and the expectation was that IT would enable them to automate their business processes, to make them faster and cheaper. Later we saw the emergence of the distributed model, client-server, which cheapened the cost of acquisition of technology, allowing you to create solutions aimed to generate more speed and functionality demanded by specific Departments. However, the rapid proliferation of different systems has created a demand for integration that culminated in the emergence of the ERPs.

The situation today is very different from years ago. The Internet is already a part of our daily life and is ingrained in the IT business. The companies did not begin to settle more in just reduced costs. This is “business as usual”, the duty of every self-respecting manager. IT has already done much in this sense, “how to create shared-services center and consolidate its data centers?“. IT now has the opportunity to be looked at from the perspective of revenue generation and as a platform for creating new business and support growth strategies and not just an operational area.

To view IT as revenue generator is a different “mind-set“, because IT was always seen as supportive for the business, but now, it generate new revenue. Now IT can be seen even as its source of income. The adoption of IT cloud computing allows you to generate revenue and profits. We can start talking at the end. Cloudnomics.

Cloudnomics can be translated as a new economic model for IT, where metrics like TCO lose enough of its importance and IT begins to be seen through the eyes of a business case. In fact, any business is started to go forward, generate revenue and profitability!

As cloud computing enters this process?

With public cloud. IT will no longer install, configure and upgrade physical servers, and the standardized and automated processes that characterize a cloud environment, the number of technicians dedicated to support greatly decreases. IT can focus on innovation and value creation for the company. The cost models also change with cloud and its concept of elasticity. You pay for the use of resources consumed, which can be directly linked to revenue generation, increased use of IT, more revenue generation. It is an economic model that changes the rules of the game. It costs the same to rent a server for 1000 hours to 1000 servers for one hour.

A practical example of how the current IT model limits the generation of significant revenue: To explore new business opportunities that have a short life. In the current model, it is not economically justifiable to purchase a technology platform and put it into production (with high up-front investment) for it to operate for only a few months, taking advantage of a unique business opportunity. The bill probably will not close. With this cloud, it is perfectly possible. A simplistic example, but it shows the idea: producing an animation, where the defendant is a huge computing power to render final film, much more than the sum of all previous months of production and that after the closure dispensing with all computers. Cloud computers are allocated as they are needed and that there is no turning off computers . The provider, in turn, also enjoys economies of scale, keeping thousands of servers to be shared by hundreds or thousands of customers.

The conceptual shift is much larger than technological change. Comes the entrepreneur CIO, attached directly to the CEO. A profile is much less technical and more focused on business and entrepreneurship. In fact, a suggestion of an MBA could be “Entrepreneurship in IT” .

Among the structural changes to IT, we see the start of an organization aimed at supporting other sectors of the company to a revenue-generating industry and the transformation of an organization focused on building activities and support systems and computing power for an organization aimed at creating a computing platform where new businesses will be generated. The choice of applications and consequent utilization can be moved to their users.

This new IT may act as an incubator for business start-ups within the company.

Finally, IT is a business unit which is simple to write, but hard to put into practice. Sure, it’s not going to happen from one day to another, but a process that will happen over the next year. But can get started today.

Cloud Hosting, also called clustering is a hosting service that operates a network of servers that are connected permanently. As a shared hosting is limited to the resources like disk space, bandwidth, memory, processing speed of a single machine, the cloud servers provide access to a virtually infinite infrastructure and do not necessarily need to be in the same data center, in reality it is likely that the servers are spread around the world.

The Cloud Hosting provides an environment that does not limit the request to a specific set of resources.

The Cloud Hosting allows servers hosting sites to have an agility and optimized performance. The servers use redundant networks and large Internet service providers with local and international broadband connection.

How it works

Features of Cloud Hosting is limited to hardware and application handlers. For example, resources may be limited to the amount of: RAM server, processing, energy storage and bandwidth. It can also be limited to the amount of available space, budget and a host of other reasons that hinder the expansion.

Cloud computing allows the customer to buy more computing power according to the need. Energy resources and load balancing are intended to provide seamless connectivity to the end user .

Benefits

With the opportunity to have more resources available, the end user is able to expand business without incurring extra inventory or overhead. For the first time, he’s getting something that is economically efficient, more reliable and better all around.

Companies of Cloud Hosting only charge the amount of computing power that is used by the user. Think of it as a bill similar to the supply of electricity or water – you pay for what you use. The Cloud Hosting provides the ability to meet sudden spikes in traffic without having to pay for extra bandwidth when traffic is slow. All billing is based on use.

The Cloud Hosting offers benefits of reduced costs through consolidation, more security , better performance and flexibility. There is also the benefit of redundancy. Users are now able to reduce its inventory of hardware, which leads to less energy requirements and, of course, benefits the environment.

The Cloud Hosting is a very attractive proposition for anyone involved in commerce of any kind and especially those with budget constraints. Small businesses and entrepreneurs, among others, are able to focus on growing the company without having to learn new skills or spend precious budget resources with additional personnel.

The Cloud Hosting is great for IT professionals who can pre-establish their bandwidth based on different levels of Internet traffic.

The days are gone when it was necessary to maintain contact with the host to request extra bandwidth or lose the habit, because the band was not available.

Ease of Use

What was once done by a large number of IT professionals, can now be accomplished by one person in a matter of minutes. Suppose, for example, we need a server to host our applications. It will now be able to launch a server with its own root password where the user can load its own code.

In many cases, there is no provision of a domain, blog WordPress and other applications.

In conclusion, the Cloud Hosting is stronger, more profitable and more reliable than the issue of self-hosting.

In early 2011, Google reported a change in its leading position in the list of major internet companies. There are many opinions about the causes of the fall ranked by Google in this list, but everyone agrees that there is a tendency to accelerate changes in the sphere of information technologies. Each company is eventually undergoing some administrative changes and has its own economic cycle. But much more important now, as these internal cycles coincide with the rapid development of data centers industry in general, and cloud hosting technologies in particular.

During the first five years of the last decade Google has been queen of the ball. Its name became the basis of the verb (“Google” – to search the web). It has changed the nature of the search, use and attitudes to information. They did not invent the search engine, it was simply meant to improve it, and the world has changed beyond recognition. It is predicted that it will replace the Internet itself! And then came the “Social Internet” and more people began to use the services of Facebook and Twitter, and Google search engine and RSS feeds overshadowed. Information business has changed, as well as many other industries. Nobody noticed this, but in fact the second five-year plan last decade was very different from its first five years. And although Google still means something in the field of Internet search, social networks, no doubt, came to the first position. We cannot say definitely whether it is strategic or administrative problems for the search company, because in reality, it does not matter. What really matters is what people are saying that Google is not so popular.

What implications does all this might have for other companies that are not related to Google or not are the pillars of the Internet? If you produce cars, drugs, or widgets? Maybe you sell bricks or mortar. What if your company is not related to the field of information technology business? Regardless of the scope of your business, we can assume that this shift from 10 to 5 years, probably will affect your business too.

Today, almost every company and every industry is built on information. The sign may be written in “Fashion House“, but in fact almost any business is related information.

Information on financial and capital markets risk management, information affecting the adoption of certain decisions, information that is necessary for cooperation, information to track users and interact with them through various means of communication. And most of this information is at your data center or moved to a “cloud hosting” structure with a common access from anywhere in the world. You cannot assume your business to be information-oriented, as in the case of Google, but in reality it just  is. And companies that are most actively engaged in the information business, according to data center as a key strategic asset. It is used as a weapon in the competition.

This means changing attitudes towards the IT infrastructure, data centers and the potential use of cloud hosting technology.

In other words, what seems easy now, may no longer be so after 5 years.