Category: Uncategorized

Turn Your Business Challenges into New Opportunities

Posted on by Admin Clear

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In the current marketplace, companies need to use every available tool at their disposal to create an advantage. With the growth of data and cognitive solutions, Clear Intelligence aims to help businesses harness the power of their data to make a positive impact on the business.  “…Companies are creating massive amounts of data and they are having a problem knowing how to use that data to positively affect their business. Our goal is simply to do that,” said Phil Godwin, President of Clear Technologies. With a business-first approach, we take the time to understand the key challenges and/or potential opportunities within the business and deliver unprecedented solutions following our 5 step DIDIT process, always keeping the clients P&L at the forefront of our thinking.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”6554″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Clear Intelligence is headed up by Chief Innovation Officer, Brian Murphy, who joined the Clear Technologies team in April 2018. Prior to joining Clear, 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.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Technology is no longer just a support function, but is a benchmark for success. By leveraging innovation technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Internet of Things and Blockchain, we can create unique solutions designed to enable opportunities and solve complex business problems. Implementation of the solution is just the beginning. We remain engaged with your team in a collaborative effort to drive adoption and scale to extract the full value of the solution. With continuous improvement frameworks in place, we will ensure the solution continually evolves and drives increased value as the business changes.  This is where the full ROI and competitive disruption is realized and, more importantly, maintained.[/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=”VISIT CLEARINTELLIGENCE.COM TO LEARN MORE” shape=”round” color=”danger” align=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.clearintelligence.com|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Cloud-enable your IBM Power Environment

Posted on by Admin Clear

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Today, there are two basic schools of thought for architecting the infrastructure of the future: on-premise hardware or Cloud.  While both options can take many different forms (and have wildly different pros and cons), they are the basic decision one must make when modernizing their environment.  On-prem hardware can lead to lower long-term costs with better performance and more control, while Cloud offerings can offer lower upfront costs, faster speed to market and less management overhead.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]What if you could have an environment with the benefits of Cloud in on-premise architecture?

This is exactly what IBM Cloud Private offers: the speed of the public cloud with the control of owning your own hardware.  IBM Cloud Private is a Kubernetes-based container platform that embraces modern workloads and dynamic provisioning all within your own datacenter – minimizing risk, complexity and cost.  IBM Cloud Private offers Rapid Innovation, Hybrid Integration, and Compliance & Management all while leveraging your current investments.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”6544″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]IBM Cloud Private also enables cloud benefits in IBM Power environments.  IBM Cloud Private for Power strengthens its industry-leading reliability and performance capabilities while adding the automation and flexibility of Cloud.  Clients run on IBM Power for its ability to handle mission-critical applications – IBM Cloud Private enhances that ability while also providing an easy avenue to add new technologies such as AI, Blockchain and IoT.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Here are three of the reasons you should consider IBM Cloud Private for IBM Power today:

  1. Leverage your current investments in IBM AIX and i while modernizing those environments for the future.
  2. Add the ability to use containers to quickly deploy new solutions such as AI and Blockchain.
  3. Increase the agility of your environment for a Cloud-like approach to infrastructure for new AI and Machine Learning applications.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]All of these features and more can be added to your environment for very little investment. In fact, adding this to a IBM POWER9 proposal is as simple as adding a part number. Clear Technologies has IBM Power Systems  subject matter experts ready to show you how this would work at your organization.  To learn more about how to modernize your environment and add the best of Cloud to your environment, contact your Clear Technologies rep today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”GET IN TOUCH” color=”primary” align=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cleartechnologies.net%2Fabout%2Fcontact%2F|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Blockchain TSS

Posted on by Admin Clear

When you hear the term Blockchain, it likely brings to mind cryptocurrency.  Although cryptocurrency is its most publicized use, Blockchain is not simply a technology for financial institutions.  Manufacturers are also utilizing Blockchain themselves in a number of ways. One of its more innovative applications is in the realm of technology service and support. Digital ledger technology is now delivering a new level of assurance that service providers are meeting their responsibilities outlined in service-level agreements (SLAs).

IBM recently launched a new Support as a Service capability powered by IBM Blockchain and aimed at businesses engaging in digital transformation. By embedding blockchain into their Multivendor Support Services “smart contracts,” IBM can provide transparent, audit-ready transaction data while monitoring SLA metrics and accountability. This process streamlines and automates the billing processes to more closely match the speed and dynamism of the digital business model.

Blockchain – Built in Trust?

The promise of blockchain is that a shared distributed ledger creates a tamper-resistant record of transactions enabling trusted and audit-ready products and services. When using blockchain, trust is delegated to people and even objects such as sensors and monitors that occupy a shared network. If one of these data sources isn’t trusted to perform well, it can be automatically rejected by the other objects on the network, as well as the transaction record itself. In this way, the ledger and its “smart contract” become the foundation of trust.

This ability to preserve trust becomes increasingly important as contracts grow in both size and complexity and transaction data is shared continuously, in near-real time. By time-stamping contract-related events and adding them to a tamper-resistant record, support providers can effectively embed trust into the digital ledger.

Blockchain is expected to become an essential resource for the enterprise to evaluate contract performance, reduce the complexity of billing processes and eliminate unrealizable billing costs due to lack of evidence or an over-delivery of services.

With blockchain now an integral part of IBM’s Support as a Service portfolio, companies can gain the ability to independently verify the activities driving their digital business processes, providing new-found confidence that they are both delivering and receiving exactly what is expected.

 

Learn More about IBM Multivendor Support Services in the video below:

To learn more about IBM Multivendor Support Services and how they’re using blockchain to ensure delivery of technology support services, please contact Steven Hargis, shargis@cleartechnologies.net.

 

 

 

Reduce IT Complexity with IBM IMS

Posted on by Admin Clear

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Integrated Multivendor Support (IMS) for your Data Center is a service designed to expand the life of your non-IBM server, storage and networking equipment.  Functioning as a single source for your multivendor data center environment, we can offer technical support solutions to fit your needs while helping to optimize system availability, reduce costs and reduce IT complexity.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_raw_js]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[/vc_raw_js][/vc_column][/vc_row]

An Infrastructure for Big Data and AI

Posted on by Admin Clear

]IBM® Hyperconverged Systems powered by Nutanix is a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solution that combines Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform software with IBM Power® Systems. The integrated solution targets demanding transactional and cognitive analytics workloads with an infrastructure that is easy to manage and simple to scale. ]Web-scale architecture

IBM Hyperconverged Systems powered by Nutanix bridge the efficiency and performance gaps between enterprise datacenters and public clouds. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud software enables simple management, nimbleness and cost efficiency for open system environments, allowing IT experts to spend more time optimizing performance and extracting insight from applications and data.

 

Acropolis OS

Nutanix Acropolis delivers software-defined enterprise-class storage, compute and native virtualization services to run nearly any application. It provides feature-rich data services in a turnkey hyperconverged infrastructure solution that can be deployed out of the box in 60 minutes or less. Its distributed file services eliminate the need for standalone SAN or NAS-based storage separate from compute servers – reducing the complexity of infrastructure management.

Prism management

Prism simplifies infrastructure management with one-click operations. Prism provides an end-to-end management solution for virtualized datacenter environments. It streamlines and automates common workflows therefore eliminating the need for multiple management solutions across datacenter operations. With its advanced machine learning technology, Prism analyzes system data to generate actionable insights – optimizing virtualization and infrastructure management.

IBM POWER Architecture

Systems built with the POWER architecture are different by design – engineered at every level to be more powerful and open than competing server designs. POWER8 processors enable 4X more memory bandwidth, cache and threads per core versus x86. IBM Power Systems deliver superior VM density in cloud environments providing a clear price-performance advantage versus x86-based systems for workloads such as MongoDB, IBM Websphere Application Server and EDB Postgres, among others.

Seamlessly scale data across distributed nodes

Individual servers (called nodes) are clustered together in a scale-out topology managed by the Nutanix software stack. Internal physical storage resources from each node are pooled into one large, virtualized distributed file system. Additional servers can easily be added to increase compute or storage capacity dynamically with single-click simplicity.

Contact your Clear Technologies rep today to learn more!

Are you ready to continue the Cloud journey?

Posted on by Admin Clear

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]For the always on, always available world, a Cloud or Hybrid Cloud strategy is key to maintain a positive client experience, meet service level agreements and combat competitive pressures from other businesses.  However, beyond using applications that are “born in the cloud,” many businesses do not know where to start or have a way of measuring where they are to begin planning for the future.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”6498″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It’s all about knowing for sure what you have so you can begin architecting for the future.  Clear Technologies’ Application & Software Assessment will enable your organization to take those steps so the to start or even continue your journey to the cloud.  In addition to cloud and hybrid-cloud enablement, the assessment also aids in critical projects such as data center moves, yearly budgeting, and employee turnover.

Our offering is platform agnostic. Once the discovery process is complete, we will provide you with a table showing all of your applications along with relevant data points for hardware/software capacity & lifecycle planning.

In order to scale, the approach we use consists of both manual and automated discovery. The full meaning of “platform agnostic” is understood. For us it means clients may have platforms we have never seen before. No problem. We’ll get the data points manually the first time and then automate for scalability in the future.

Building your unique baseline dataset is step one. Clear can provide substantial added value through analysis of the raw data:

  • Per-application Software Lifecycle Planning
  • Server, Storage, & Network Infrastructure Lifecycle Planning
  • Consolidation Planning for Virtualization, Containerization, & Cloud
  • Granular Policy, Process, Facilities, and Compliance Validation

To begin your journey with a Clear Technologies’ Application & Software Assessment, Get In Touch with us today!

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Author: 

Charles McCane

cmccane@cleartechnologies.net[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Hyper-convergence. Is it for you?

Posted on by Admin Clear

[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

Posted on by Admin Clear

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

Posted on by Admin Clear

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1528234199294{background-color: #002e63 !important;}”][vc_column][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]shu mookerjee[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_empty_space][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]

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

Posted on by Admin Clear

[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]