Business Technology Roundtable

If you thought that cyber security threats were troubling in 2013, then you should brace yourself for the onslaught that's very likely in 2014. A new generation of security threats stemming from progressive business technology trends -- such as BYOD, mobility and cloud services adoption -- will expose organizations to a multitude of new risks. According to the findings of a global security survey sponsored by Dell, the majority of IT leaders around the world say they don’t view these threats as top security concerns and they're not prioritizing how to find and address them across the many points of origin. Apparently, what you don't know can be very harmful. When respondents were asked to look at long term priorities, only 37 percent ranked "unknown threats" as a top security concern in the next five years. Epidemic threats come from all perimeters, and are often hidden in poorly configured IT account settings or permissions, and ineffective data governance...

My colleague, Joe Panettieri, reports that Dell has won its largest managed services agreement ever with the state of Georgia. This contract illustrates how Dell, and other technology vendors, are shifting their go-to-market strategies to respond to customers' changing IT management needs. Anyone who follows the technology industry knows that Dell has been struggling to keep pace with HP when it comes to computer sales. What few casual observers have recognized is how Dell has amassed a new set of remote management capabilities via a series of acquistions over the past year and a half. Why Managed Services Matter During that time, Dell has acquired SilverBack Technologies, Everdream, EqualLogic and MessageOne to serve as the foundation for a new portfolio of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and managed service capabilities . Dell understands that it will have a difficult time outpacing HP and other technology vendors on the strength of its products alone as laptops, desktops and serve...