The “Internet of Things” isn’t exactly a new concept, Kevin Ashton coined the term the Internet of Things as far back as 1999. Now, 15 years later, the Department of Defense (DoD) is eager to exploit it.

What is the Internet of Things?

“Big data” and the rise in demand for database services puts increasing pressure on IT departments. End users demand access to data at higher speeds and management wants that data delivered and managed at a lower operational cost.

Data stores are expanding at an exponential rate, compromising the performance of servers and applications. This growth also adds to the daily challenges and pains that administrators face – maintaining database health while meeting ever-evolving mission requirements.

Proof of performance is a key criterion for any government decision maker when reviewing potential vendors and bidders. One such “proof” is recognition from industry analysts, and perhaps the most sought after of these is to be positioned (and ranked highly) in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant reports.

Essential Network Monitoring Needs for Today’s Complex Federal IT Infrastructure

By Chris LaPoint, SolarWinds

It was all about the network

There’s no getting away from the number one threat to the U.S this year – cybercrime.

So you may want to clear your calendar for the Symantec Government Symposium. This ever popular one-day event takes place on April 15, 2015, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

If you’re situated within the Washington, D.C. metro area or surrounding states, mark your calendar for the 2015 Informatica Government Summit to be held on April 23, 2015 at the Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel.

Last month, Oracle’s Larry Ellison unveiled X5, the fifth generation of Oracle’s engineered systems – an “in-the-box” integrated hardware and software solution that simplifies IT infrastructures, speeds application deployments, and increases data center productivity.

The U.S. government has spent years accumulating data sets – ranging from tax records, satellite imagery, census data, and more (up to 2.63 petabytes in the federal government alone).

Unlocking the potential of that data is a huge priority for many agencies, and gives the opportunity to discover hidden insights and improve mission effectiveness. Whether that means spotting fraud, improving regulatory oversight, optimizing business travel, or providing more effective citizen services.

On February 11, Red Hat announced its newest release – Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.5 (RHEV for short).  This latest upgrade to Red Hat’s open source virtualization platform promises to deliver greater visibility into provisioning, configuring and monitoring of virtualization infrastructures and tighter integration with the OpenStack cloud infrastructure platform.

With all the noise and hubbub around insider threats and data hacks, it’s easy to ignore that other threats persist. Most notably, denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS occur when cyber criminals make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users.