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    <title>Quest Communities : Blog List - IT Simplified - Quest's Executive Blog</title>
    <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog?view=blog</link>
    <description>Latest Blog Posts in IT Simplified - Quest's Executive Blog</description>
    <language>en</language>
    <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 15:17:26 GMT</pubDate>
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    <dc:date>2012-05-21T15:17:26Z</dc:date>
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    <item>
      <title>Don't Just Respond—Prevent Public Sector Security Breaches</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/05/21/preventing-not-responding-to-security-breaches-in-public-sector</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:3ae2cab0-9521-4eab-82af-68a909b2d61c] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last week, &lt;em&gt;The Arizona Republic&lt;/em&gt; reported that the &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/05/15/20120515arizona-legislature-hacking-security-breach.html" target="_blank"&gt;Arizona state legislature&amp;rsquo;s computer systems had been infiltrated&lt;/a&gt;. Hundreds of state documents were stolen and posted on a hacker website. The perpetrators were self-proclaimed &amp;ldquo;hack-tivists&amp;#8221; and the act was largely symbolic, since most of the stolen documents were already in the public domain.&amp;#160; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Recently, &lt;em&gt;Government Technology&lt;/em&gt; magazine reported that the &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.govtech.com/security/Utah-Health-Data-Breach-Blamed-on-Configuration-Error.html" target="_blank"&gt;Utah Department of Health had been breached last month&lt;/a&gt;. Initial investigation estimates that as many as half a million records were copied from Department of Health servers. This breach was not a demonstration of hacker ability, it was a focused effort launched from somewhere in Eastern Europe to gather sensitive personal records for criminal purposes. If the Arizona Legislature event was misdemeanor graffiti, the Utah Department of Health incident was felony breaking and entering. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;State of Utah CIO Steven Fletcher, a tenured, respected and competent public servant, was forced to resign because of the breach. In his final interview with reporters, Fletcher said that attacks on the state&amp;rsquo;s computer infrastructure have increased 600 percent in just the past four months. The governor&amp;rsquo;s office confirmed that over a million attempts a day are made to infiltrate the state&amp;rsquo;s networks. The entry point for the Department of Health breach appears to have been a &amp;ldquo;weak password&amp;#8221; that was &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.govtech.com/policy-management/Utah-CIO-Steve-Fletcher-Resigns-State-Promises-Security-Reforms.html" target="_blank"&gt;discovered and exploited by hackers&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remedies for this security defect are technically possible and could have been implemented.&amp;#160; We can implement stronger identity and access controls.&amp;#160; Identities can be managed centrally through federated directories.&amp;#160; Common configurations can be pushed across diverse networks.&amp;#160; Password complexity policies can be applied to applications and servers.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Accounts with elevated privileges can be placed under a higher level of control and ongoing scrutiny than accounts of standard users. Putting these solutions into practice requires two important commodities that seem to be in short supply: money and the will to take preemptive action.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The money required to prevent breaches is small compared to the cost of response and remediation.&amp;#160; As the old saying goes, &amp;ldquo;an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.&amp;#8221;&amp;#160; Utah Governor Gary Herbert said, "The compromise of even one person's private information is a completely unacceptable breach of trust."&amp;#160; The threats are serious and on the rise.&amp;#160; My call to political and technology leaders across the country is to spend the political effort and money to improve the security of our critical information infrastructure.&amp;#160; Without the funding and the political will to implement policies consistently across agencies, we will continue to see expensive remediation after more and larger privacy breaches.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:3ae2cab0-9521-4eab-82af-68a909b2d61c] --&gt;</description>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">case_study</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">public_sector</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">authentication_services</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">technology_trends</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">federation</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">government</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">security_breach</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">identity_administration</category>
      <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 15:17:26 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/05/21/preventing-not-responding-to-security-breaches-in-public-sector</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-05-21T15:17:26Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>2 days, 1 hour ago</clearspace:dateToText>
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      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/preventing-not-responding-to-security-breaches-in-public-sector</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4362</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Is it Time to Shatter the Single “Pain” of Glass?</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/05/17/is-it-time-to-shatter-the-single-pain-of-glass</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:bcf80ab3-129f-490d-ae90-5c737111de99] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;Ever since I joined the workforce (which was longer ago than I care to admit!), the corporate mantra has always been the same: &lt;strong&gt;&amp;ldquo;We need to do more with less.&amp;#8221;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;The more, of course, refers to &lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;work&lt;/span&gt;, while the less, naturally, refers to &lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;money&lt;/span&gt;. Frankly, we&amp;rsquo;ve gotten to point where the need to do more with less pretty much goes without saying. I mean, seriously, when was the last time your boss came into a meeting and said, &amp;ldquo;&lt;strong&gt;Good news! Our budget was just dramatically increased &lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;and&lt;/span&gt; the company is not expecting nearly as much productivity from us this year!&amp;#8221; &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;Fair or not, doing more with less has simply become an expected and accepted part of the job description for most workers, especially those who ply their trade in IT. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;Now, scientists will tell you that there is no such thing as perpetual motion; that forward progress cannot go on indefinitely.&amp;#160; Unfortunately, chances are none of those scientists rank among the executive decision makers at your company. The fact is, when it comes to productivity in the corporate world, perpetual motion &lt;em&gt;is &lt;/em&gt;expected, and in some cases, demanded. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;So how do we do it? How do we constantly keep advancing levels of productivity, even in the face of decreased budgets? The answer, of course, is innovation. Finding bigger, better, faster, and perhaps most importantly, more cost-effective ways of doing things. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;In the world of backup, the need to feed the ever-hungry monsters that are cost savings and performance efficiency led us to an innovation known as the &amp;ldquo;single pane of glass.&amp;#8221; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;And for a time, this new approach served its purpose, greatly improving work flow and reducing the effort involved in protecting and managing complex environments. Those vendors that were quick to embrace the single pane of glass concept reaped rewards in the form of new customers and increased market share. Some still tout the single pane of glass today as their major competitive differentiator. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;But the need for constant innovation and advancement in the name of increased productivity and cost savings --- the need for perpetual motion --- can quickly turn yesterday&amp;rsquo;s marvelous innovation into today&amp;rsquo;s outdated approach. Eventually, innovations of the past run out of steam, and the need for perpetual motion once again becomes front and center. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;Such is the case with the single pane of glass approach to backup and recovery. The once-static nature of IT infrastructure has given way to a level of fluidity most never have imagined. Virtualization and cloud have forever changed the data center. Mission-critical applications and databases have become exponentially more critical. And the need to protect IT services has replaced the need to protect IT infrastructure. In other words, IT has become a world that the single pane of glass was not designed to protect. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;The problem with the single-pane approach is that, as its name suggests, it delivers a flat, single-dimensional view of data protection; a limited approach that supports just a single IT admin role and inherently focuses on infrastructure rather than services. In a world where infrastructure is fluid and assets are constantly moving between physical and virtual, and on-prem and off, the single pane can quickly become, pun intended, quite a pain, not only for the single admin asked to shoulder a tremendous workload, but for the business-line owners with no visibility into (or control over) whether or not their critical assets are protected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;At Quest, we believe the time to innovate has again come. It&amp;rsquo;s time to shatter the &amp;ldquo;single pain&amp;#8221; approach to data protection, and instead enable specialized, role-based workflows that map specifically to the service or services a given admin is responsible for protecting. It&amp;rsquo;s time to enable business line owners to play a bigger role in the protection of their data and services.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;Next month, we&amp;rsquo;ll be formally unveiling a new technology that does just that; one that shatters the single pane of glass, better enables IT to align backup and recovery with &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.storage-switzerland.com/Articles/Entries/2012/5/10_Enterprise_Backup_is_Broken.html" target="_blank"&gt;the changing needs of today&amp;rsquo;s business&lt;/a&gt;, and helps organizations meet the never-ending need to do more with less. Perpetual motion is, after all, perpetual.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;Stay tuned! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:bcf80ab3-129f-490d-ae90-5c737111de99] --&gt;</description>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">backup</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">sla</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">service_level_agreements</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">vranger</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">data_protection</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">backup_and_recovery</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">netvault</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">innovation</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">backup_and_restore</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">netvault_family</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">quest_netvault_backup</category>
      <pubDate>Thu, 17 May 2012 15:06:26 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/05/17/is-it-time-to-shatter-the-single-pain-of-glass</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-05-17T15:06:26Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>6 days, 1 hour ago</clearspace:dateToText>
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      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/is-it-time-to-shatter-the-single-pain-of-glass</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4337</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Is SaaS for the MaaS'es?</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/05/08/is-saas-for-the-maases</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:9320ada3-c9f3-43c9-82d8-ae34bdbdad15] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p&gt;The misspelling in the title is intentional.&amp;#160; I am referring to monitoring-as-a-service (MaaS).&amp;#160; Bernd Harzog of &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/" target="_blank"&gt;The Virtualization Practice&lt;/a&gt; wrote an informative piece &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://http//www.virtualizationpractice.com/on-premise-vs-monitoring-as-a-service-considerations-and-tradeoffs-15864/" target="_blank"&gt;comparing on-premise monitoring to SaaS-based monitoring&lt;/a&gt; where it chronicles the technology requirements of a monitoring solution and points out some of the current, new solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to Gartner, $2B was to be spent world-wide in 2011 on application performance monitoring (APM).&amp;#160; This is a 15% increase over 2010.&amp;#160; Keep in mind these numbers do no incorporate money spent on MaaS solutions.&amp;#160; This is a huge market.&amp;#160; A mature market with a lot of on-premise deployed software with a ton of customizations that need to be accounted for when moving to MaaS.&amp;#160; Bernd didn't really highlight that APM has historically been a political hot bed in accounts as there is no single buyer or user of the solution.&amp;#160; APM affects many groups -- network, storage, database, application and the lines-of-business.&amp;#160; It's a complex sale.&amp;#160; Can this ever be solved?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Going to a website, downloading an agent and voila -- an instant dashboard and perfect reports definitely sounds magical.&amp;#160; Keep in mind deploying an agent is the easy part of an on-premise solution deployment.&amp;#160; Monitoring is not a one-size-fits all approach.&amp;#160; I agree there is some percentage of the functionality that can be deemed good enough, but the good enough needs to be valuable enough to make a purchasing decision.&amp;#160; The hard part is that different user and executive groups have different needs and requirements thus often requiring the "monitoring group" to customize whatever solution is chosen.&amp;#160; This is where things get difficult and political which adds complexity to both the technology deployment and the buying cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The point Bernd makes on security is crucial.&amp;#160; I have no doubt each of the companies he listed are growing, and rapidly at that; however, very few customers are going to do a 180 degree turn and move from a currently deployed on-premise solution to a MaaS offering.&amp;#160; They've simply invested too much in on-premise APM solutions and they aren't completely ready to transition when a lot of their applications are still on-premise.&amp;#160; It's too risky.&amp;#160; Please understand I am not saying that customers won't push vendors like Quest and other to do both and ultimately things will move by and large to MaaS.&amp;#160; In fact, I think they will and we must adapt and lead them to the future.&amp;#160; But that future is a progression.&amp;#160; An evolution, not a revolution, of sorts.&amp;#160; This is why you have seen us evolve by creating easy to use, downloadable products in specific domains like network, database and virtualization monitoring.&amp;#160; Each domain install gives you the base Foglight platform.&amp;#160; When you decide you need end user, applications or storage monitoring you can easily move to richer feature set of Foglight.&amp;#160; We also give you the ability to monitoring virtualized infrastructure through the &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.foglight-on-demand.com" target="_blank"&gt;Beta of our Foglight OnDemand MaaS solution&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the SaaS delivery model will be more efficient and productive than on-premise APM solutions, but moving from all on-premise APM to MaaS isn't a no-brainer yet.&amp;#160; You need to partner with a vendor that knows this market and is continually evolving to meet customer needs.&amp;#160; I believe Quest is that vendor as evidenced by our continued product innovation, growth, customer satisfaction and being in the "Leaders" quadrant of the Gartner 2011 Magic Quadrant for APM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are you considering a move to a MaaS?&amp;#160; Tell me about what's pushing you in that direction.&amp;#160; I would love to hear from you.&amp;#160; Feel free to email me privately at &lt;a class="jive-link-email-small" href="mailto:Shayne.Higdon@quest.com"&gt;Shayne.Higdon@quest.com&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:9320ada3-c9f3-43c9-82d8-ae34bdbdad15] --&gt;</description>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">foglight_community</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">new</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">monitoring</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">cloud</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">vfoglight</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">innovation</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">technology_trends</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">foglight_analytics</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">executive_blog</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">total_cost_of_ownership</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">vkernel</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">foglight_on_demand</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">vkernel_vops</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">boundary</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">appdynamics</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">appfirst</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">copperegg</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">logicmonitor</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">monitoring_as_a_service</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">relic</category>
      <pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2012 17:50:49 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/05/08/is-saas-for-the-maases</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-05-08T17:50:49Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>2 weeks, 1 hour ago</clearspace:dateToText>
      <clearspace:objectType>0</clearspace:objectType>
      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/is-saas-for-the-maases</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4299</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Hotel TOAD — It's a Great Place to Stay</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/05/08/hotel-toad-it-s-a-great-place-to-stay</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:ee0fb8f4-1c7f-48ad-968b-ac2f99ce8898] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p&gt;My high school and university years, as well as a few years after that, included full-time work in the hotel industry. I did everything from carry luggage and wait tables in the restaurant, to run the overall operations when the big boss was away. Fun times!&amp;#160; When I helped build our first online reservation system, my love for the IT game began.&amp;#160; A couple decades later, I still spend plenty of time in hotels &amp;ndash; but only as a guest.&amp;#160; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One thing that has really stuck with me from that time is a focus on exceptional customer service. It seems like a no brainer to say, &amp;ldquo;Taking care of your customers is important,&amp;#8221; but walking the talk is often a lot harder when revenue, costs and other &amp;#8216;business&amp;rsquo; issues compete for focus. At Quest, we believe that by building great products and by taking care of both customers and employees, the revenues follow and the required investments become a lot more obvious.&amp;#160; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our Toad family of products is an excellent example. Since the early days of Toad and still today as the &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.datanami.com/datanami/2012-01-04/quest_software_tops_idc_charts_for_database_tools.html" target="_blank"&gt;industry leader&lt;/a&gt;, we&amp;rsquo;ve been able to build great products by listening to our customers and literally building what they ask for. In the case of our flagship product, &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.quest.com/toad-for-oracle/" target="_blank"&gt;Toad for Oracle&lt;/a&gt;, the development team has always incorporated user feedback in a rapid-delivery beta cycle. We still have a continuous beta program in place today, and deliver at least two updates per week. But, with the creation of a web portal called Toad Idea Pond, we took it a step further.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://toadfororacle.ideascale.com/" target="_blank"&gt;Toad Idea Pond&lt;/a&gt; is an online, interactive method of collecting user input that&amp;rsquo;s accessible through &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.toadworld.com/" target="_blank"&gt;Toad World&lt;/a&gt;, our online community for education and collaboration. Any one of our 2 million Toad users can submit product ideas and best practices for using Toad, the community votes them up or down and the best ideas bubble to the surface. It&amp;rsquo;s been awesome to see the community interactivity around the ideas. More than 600 ideas have been submitted since we formed Idea Pond and 60 have been implemented in the two most recent releases. This week&amp;rsquo;s release of &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="https://support.quest.com/Search/ProductInformation.aspx?dsNav=Ns:P_ProductVersion|101|-1|,N:268435520-4294952766&amp;amp;Dt=Toad%20for%20Oracle" target="_blank"&gt;Toad for Oracle 11.5&lt;/a&gt; also included new enhancements, like workspace management and code completion, that were suggested by users.&amp;#160; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Toad user community, without question, has helped make the product the popular tool that it is today.&amp;#160; So, on behalf of Quest and Team Toad, thank you Toad Community! Please keep submitting your fantastic ideas on the Toad Idea Pond. Keep interacting with each other. Keep pushing your use of Toad to the limits. In return, you have our commitment to provide the excellent service Hotel Toad has come to be known for.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:ee0fb8f4-1c7f-48ad-968b-ac2f99ce8898] --&gt;</description>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">toad</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">services</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">customer_feedback</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">idea_pond</category>
      <pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2012 15:20:34 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/05/08/hotel-toad-it-s-a-great-place-to-stay</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-05-08T15:20:34Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>1 week, 5 days ago</clearspace:dateToText>
      <clearspace:objectType>0</clearspace:objectType>
      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/hotel-toad-it-s-a-great-place-to-stay</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4272</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Do you own your backup solution or does your backup solution own you?</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/04/17/do-you-own-your-backup-solution-or-does-your-backup-solution-own-you</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:d32a7abe-88d3-4e08-8313-02b8b7fdee1a] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p&gt;In our personal lives, when we purchase something, it becomes ours. We own it. Or so we think. But as anyone who has purchased a house, car, dog, or anything in between knows, quite often, the things we purchase wind up owning &lt;em&gt;us&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We can all relate in some form or another. Countless weekend hours spent remodeling the kitchen, mowing the lawn, or trimming the shrubs; endless afternoons fixing the latest little something that&amp;rsquo;s gone wrong with that shiny new car; morning after morning of rising before the sun so the dog can be walked. Before we know it, the things we &amp;ldquo;own&amp;#8221; demand so much attention that they wind up taking over our lives. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the same is also often true with our business purchases, especially when it comes to most traditional backup and recovery solutions. These complicated pieces of software are supposed to make life easier for backup admins, but most do just the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Like the oversized backyard or the energetic puppy that demands round-the-clock attention, most legacy backup and recovery solutions wind up taking over the lives of those who &amp;ldquo;own&amp;#8221; them, requiring admins to stay glued to their computers day and night in order to monitor and repair backups, or spend countless hours recovering lost data and servicing restore requests. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, there&amp;rsquo;s good news. Your backup and recovery solution doesn&amp;rsquo;t have to own you. &lt;em&gt;You&lt;/em&gt; can&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;own &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt;. (No such luck with the puppy, unfortunately.) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The key to making that happen is to truly understand the data protection needs of your business &lt;em&gt;before &lt;/em&gt;you purchase a backup and recovery solution. That might seem simple, but you&amp;rsquo;d be amazed how few organizations take this approach, choosing instead to buy a solution simply because they&amp;rsquo;ve heard of it, with no regard for how that solution aligns to the needs of the organization.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not surprisingly, most organizations that take this approach wind up owning a solution that doesn&amp;rsquo;t provide them with the ease-of-use and functionality they really need. They wind up owning a solution with multiple shortcomings that they now have no choice but to work around. In other words, they wind up owning a solution that&amp;rsquo;s destined to own them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What IT should instead do is first take a long hard look at the SLAs they&amp;rsquo;re required to uphold. Better still; talk with company stakeholders to get a true feel for their service level &lt;em&gt;&lt;span style="text-decoration: underline;"&gt;expectations&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/em&gt; (For more on the difference between SLA and SLEs, check out my &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.sdtimes.com/BUILD_YOUR_RECOVERY_STRATEGY_BASED_ON_SLES_NOT_SLAS/By_WALTER_ANGERER/About_BACKUP_and_RECOVERY_and_SLAS_and_SLES/36459" target="_blank"&gt;recent article&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;Software Development Times.&lt;/em&gt;) When you truly understand the service level expectations of the organization and its leadership, you&amp;rsquo;ll know what your true needs are when it comes to things like virtual backup and recovery, application recovery, and remote offices, and you&amp;rsquo;ll know if technologies like snapshots, replication and CDP fit with your business needs. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then and only then will you be properly equipped to do your research and make an educated decision to purchase the right backup solution for your business, one that meets all of your company&amp;rsquo;s specific data protection needs, one that enables you to monitor and meet the service level expectations of the organization, and best of all, one that &lt;em&gt;doesn&amp;rsquo;t &lt;/em&gt;own you. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:d32a7abe-88d3-4e08-8313-02b8b7fdee1a] --&gt;</description>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">backup</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">backup_and_recovery</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">executive_blog</category>
      <pubDate>Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:36:58 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/04/17/do-you-own-your-backup-solution-or-does-your-backup-solution-own-you</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-04-17T15:36:58Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>1 month, 6 days ago</clearspace:dateToText>
      <clearspace:objectType>0</clearspace:objectType>
      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/do-you-own-your-backup-solution-or-does-your-backup-solution-own-you</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4212</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Quest Racing Team Finishes Second at the 12 Hours of Sebring</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/20/quest-racing-team-finishes-second-at-the-12-hours-of-sebring</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:6b928259-db82-495c-9969-30bcd5bb26ac] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last year, we sponsored a race team for the first time, and the results were so good that we decided to do it again in 2012. We are sponsoring the &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.americanlemans.com/" target="_blank"&gt;American Le Mans (ALMS)&lt;/a&gt; series this season and have partnered with the &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://pr1motorsports.com/" target="_blank"&gt;PR1/Mathiasen&lt;/a&gt; race team and driver Ken Dobson to represent us in 10 races this year, from March through October. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over the weekend, the Quest Racing program kicked off the season strong with a second place finish at the 12 Hours of Sebring! It was a hard-fought race, with some technical difficulties including a severe gearbox failure preventing the Quest/PR1 team from winning, but the race team worked hard for their spot on the podium. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;"In terms of pure execution, the crew performed flawlessly all week," said Bobby Oergel, PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Team Principal. "I really couldn't be more proud of them. We're all true racers on this team, so we're obviously not thrilled that we didn't win tonight. But we are eagerly anticipating running for the team championship this year and championships are won when you make a bad race exceptional, and that's exactly what we accomplished tonight. The guys took a car with a busted nose and only two gears and nearly won the 12 Hours of Sebring with it. That's the type of team that can challenge for wins and the championship, and that's why our heads are held up high tonight."&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://communities.quest.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-4140-10136/sebring_second_place.JPG"&gt;&lt;img alt="sebring_second_place.JPG" class="jive-image-thumbnail jive-image" height="308" onclick="" src="http://communities.quest.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/38-4140-10136/620-308/sebring_second_place.JPG" width="620"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read the &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://pr1motorsports.com/?p=2070" target="_blank"&gt;full press release &lt;/a&gt;for more details, or visit the &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.quest.com/racing/" target="_blank"&gt;Quest Racing page &lt;/a&gt;for more information and to see the schedule of races this season.&amp;#160; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Coverage of round two of the 2012 ALMS season, the Tequila Patr&amp;#243;n American Le Mans Series at Long Beach, begins on Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 7:15pm ET on ESPN 3. Look for the Quest car! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[Image courtesy PR1 Motorsports]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:6b928259-db82-495c-9969-30bcd5bb26ac] --&gt;</description>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">racing</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">quest_racing</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">race_sponsorship</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">alms</category>
      <pubDate>Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:33:40 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/20/quest-racing-team-finishes-second-at-the-12-hours-of-sebring</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-03-20T19:33:40Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>2 months, 3 days ago</clearspace:dateToText>
      <clearspace:objectType>0</clearspace:objectType>
      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/quest-racing-team-finishes-second-at-the-12-hours-of-sebring</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4140</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>New Realities for Users &amp; How Best to Support Them</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/16/new-realities-for-users-how-best-to-support-them</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:401ce6ef-2e2e-4452-a149-3d3244ab09f7] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;span style="color: windowtext;"&gt;&lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.dimensiondata.com/Lists/Downloadable%20Content/TheClientVirtualisationImperativeAForresterConsultingThoughtLeadershipPaperCommissioned_129603870467812500.pdf" target="_blank"&gt;Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership paper commissioned by Dimension Data&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, 20 to 22 percent of organizations surveyed said they&amp;rsquo;re already providing support for employee-owned devices (laptops, tablets, smart phones, etc.) with another 16 to 21 percent planning to do so over the next two years. For partners, the shifting device dynamics, like other material consumption changes taking place within our customer base, create meaningful new challenges and opportunities. These shifts also require responsive and thoughtful changes by both vendors and partners, which is why I&amp;rsquo;m excited to share details about a related and important announcement from Quest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In our &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.quest.com/newsroom/news-releases-show.aspx?contentid=16795" target="_blank"&gt;User Workspace Management launch &lt;/a&gt;earlier this week, Quest unveiled its user-centric approach to the market. This announcement bodes well for partners, and if you haven&amp;rsquo;t seen it yet, I encourage you to take a look. We now deliver integrated solutions across the three most critical areas of user workspace management: comprehensive device support, application delivery and one-user identity across all platforms. And, we&amp;rsquo;re well positioned to help our partners gain traction by leveraging Quest solutions in desktop virtualization, application migration and physical desktop management.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Smart partners achieve success by maximizing the opportunities related to industry shifts, and I submit that now is the time to act if you&amp;rsquo;re a partner who wants to do so again. Traditional desktops have given way to dynamic user workspaces that cross both device and platform boundaries. In this dynamic, organizations must respond quickly and efficiently to end-user requests while navigating physical, virtual and cloud-based environments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many partners I meet with are re-engineering their businesses to support a service delivery model, so they can add more value and respond faster to their customers&amp;rsquo; increasingly mobile users, devices and applications. There are logical steps that partners can take to become more relevant to customers, and understanding the impact of these types of changes is the first one. Indeed, having a well-honed user perspective enables partners to build value-added solutions and services that can be delivered quickly and efficiently&amp;mdash;without requiring operational restructuring just to get in the game.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://communities.quest.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-4119-9990/jason1.jpg"&gt;&lt;img alt="jason1.jpg" class="jive-image-thumbnail jive-image" height="191" src="http://communities.quest.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/38-4119-9990/189-191/jason1.jpg" style="float: right;" width="189"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;One example is Quest Partner Circle Elite partner, &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.deertech.com/index.html" target="_blank"&gt;Deerwood Technologies&lt;/a&gt;. Jason Przymus, vice president of business development, told me he sees User Workspace Management as a way to open doors to a much broader customer base, which is a major part of his company&amp;rsquo;s growth strategy. Most important is the ability to cross-sell new and unique solutions while engaging customers and prospects on multiple levels to build new and sustainable revenue streams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a long-standing provider of Quest&amp;rsquo;s Desktop Authority desktop management solution, Deerwood is in a natural position to embrace Quest&amp;rsquo;s vWorkspace desktop virtualization and ChangeBase application readiness solutions within its portfolio. In particular, our User Workspace Management solutions are ideally suited for one of Deerwood&amp;rsquo;s prime targets in the healthcare market. Today, about 90 percent of Deerwood&amp;rsquo;s healthcare customers use Desktop Authority, which is a strong lead-in for other solutions that ease the management of user environments. Further, regulatory and compliance drivers, coupled with strong mobile IT requirements common among healthcare customers, make this a value-based conversation for Deerwood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are you doing to help solve your customers&amp;rsquo; workspace, device and mobility challenges? How are you organizing to attack this market and how can Quest play a role? I will continue to share examples of how top partners are meeting their customers&amp;rsquo; challenges head-on and creating new business opportunities in the process. I know I can learn a ton from you in this area so drop me a line at &lt;a class="jive-link-email-small" href="mailto:Michael.Sotnick@Quest.com"&gt;Michael.Sotnick@Quest.com&lt;/a&gt; &lt;span style="color: windowtext;"&gt;and update me&lt;/span&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:401ce6ef-2e2e-4452-a149-3d3244ab09f7] --&gt;</description>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">desktop_virtualization</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">partners</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">desktop</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">cloud</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">desktop_management</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">user_workspace_management</category>
      <pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:04:14 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/16/new-realities-for-users-how-best-to-support-them</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-03-16T17:04:14Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>2 months, 1 week ago</clearspace:dateToText>
      <clearspace:objectType>0</clearspace:objectType>
      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/new-realities-for-users-how-best-to-support-them</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4119</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Quest's Vision of the New User Workspace</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/13/quests-vision-of-the-new-user-workspace</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:15992b89-4d36-4441-b849-2707904d8a57] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: black;"&gt;We are living in one of the most unprecedented and exciting times in technology.&amp;#160; A time when we will look back, much like we look back on the creation and impact that BASIC, DOS, the Intel processor, the Apple II/IIe, Windows, the Internet, iPhone / iPad, Amazon, Google and Facebook, and we will be in awe at what new business models, technologies, applications and services have been created and which ones no longer exist.&amp;#160; &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/10/3-predictions-future-of-enterprise-software/" target="_blank"&gt;Change, change, and more change, it has marked a technological era.&lt;/a&gt;&amp;#160; No, I'm not talking about money, but rather the act of making something different.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: black;"&gt;You've heard the saying 'change is the only constant.'&amp;#160; Change is a fact of life in all respects, and it is definitely true in technology where everything is in a constant state of change, discovery, invention, and reinvention. There are significant changes happening right before our eyes as companies and organizations struggle to get their arms around the changes occurring in the traditional desktop market.&amp;#160; The traditional, physical desktop is now being delivered and managed virtually, on a mobile device, on a tablet, on a laptop and all of these form factors are getting smaller and more powerful.&amp;#160; This change has been spurred by advancements in and adoption of cloud computing, virtualization, mobile and social technologies.&amp;#160; Is it a desktop?&amp;#160; Is it a laptop?&amp;#160; Is it a tablet?&amp;#160; Is it a mobile device?&amp;#160; Does it have installed applications or hosted applications?&amp;#160; Yes, it can be all of them and accessed from anywhere and at anytime.&amp;#160; At Quest we are calling this new virtual office the "user workspace."&amp;#160; We are so excited about the opportunity to help our customers wade through and simplify the vast number of issues surrounding the user workspace that we've created a new business unit dedicated to managing it.&amp;#160; Pretty cool, huh?&amp;#160; Check out this video where I discuss our &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.quest.com/workspace" target="_blank"&gt;User Workspace Management &lt;/a&gt;vision.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;embed allowfullscreen="true" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashvars="videoId=1496733762001&amp;amp;playerID=921711326001&amp;amp;playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAuIVrAck~,krN9qiM0opYKYoALdOyviwVlUVll0IOF&amp;amp;domain=embed&amp;amp;dynamicStreaming=true" height="360" name="flashObj" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&amp;amp;isUI=1" swliveconnect="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: black;"&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="color: #000000; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"&gt;Do you think the user workspace is real?&amp;#160; I wasn't sure it was until I conducted an experiment about 6 months ago where I was trying to determine the market opportunity and whether the user workspace concept would resonate with me much less our internal users and customers.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; So, I went to China for 2 weeks and all I took was my iPad.&amp;#160; I know &amp;#8230; crazy, right?&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Now, I have &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/14/the-number-of-mobile-devices-will-exceed-worlds-population-by-2012-other-shocking-figures/" target="_blank"&gt;3 devices --&amp;#160; a laptop, a iPhone and an iPad&lt;/a&gt;, but I elected to only go with only 1 device.&amp;#160; I went on a hope and prayer that I could be productive both personally and professionally.&amp;#160; Could I access my corporate applications securely through my virtual desktop delivered to my iPad?&amp;#160; Could I FaceTime with my family?&amp;#160; Could I present my Powerpoint presentation easily?&amp;#160; Could I access my cloud-based applications despite Chinese censorship and the Great Firewall?&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Could I send and receive email without reconfiguration of my email client?&amp;#160; The short answer &amp;mdash; yes.&amp;#160; I was able to do anything I could do with my laptop.&amp;#160; I went from customer to customer, hotel to hotel, Beijing to Shanghai to Hong Kong to Taiwan and was able to connect to WiFi and access my corporate virtual desktop and be completely productive.&amp;#160; On this trip I personally validated the market and knew I wasn&amp;rsquo;t the only one who travels internationally and has the need to be productive while on the road.&amp;#160; It was awesome!&amp;#160; I knew right then that this was a massive market opportunity that only Quest was poised to capitalize on.&amp;#160; I came back and immediately began to execute on my vision.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="color: #000000; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"&gt;Why Quest you say?&amp;#160; With over 100,000 global customers, we have a long history of delivering market-leading products and solutions.&amp;#160; In this case, we have the markets only unique and comprehensive combination of assets from desktop virtualization to VDI assessment to application readiness to mobile device management to identity and access management.&amp;#160; If your users want the flexibility to choose their devices thus increasing productivity and IT has the need to contain costs while delivering user applications in a secure fashion across any device, for any user and accessed from any location &amp;mdash; Quest's User Workspace Management portfolio (soon to be branded Quest Workspace&amp;#174;) will address the growing needs of your organization regardless of size.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="color: #000000; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"&gt;What's your user workspace story?&amp;#160; Let me hear from you.&amp;#160; Please respond to this blog post or privately at &lt;a class="jive-link-email-small" href="mailto:Shayne.Higdon@quest.com"&gt;Shayne.Higdon@quest.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="color: #000000; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"&gt;Happy Workspacing!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="color: #000000; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"&gt;-Shayne&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:15992b89-4d36-4441-b849-2707904d8a57] --&gt;</description>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">vworkspace</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">desktop_virtualization</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">vdi</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">identity_access_management</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">authentication_services</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">android</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">desktop_management</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">vdi_assessment</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">user_profile_management</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">desktop_authority</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">windows_7_migration</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">terminal_services</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">sccm</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">changebase</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">user_workspace_management</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">terminal_server</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">application_remediation</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">qmx_for_apple</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">mobile_management</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">application_readiness</category>
      <pubDate>Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:00:59 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/13/quests-vision-of-the-new-user-workspace</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-03-13T15:00:59Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>2 months, 1 week ago</clearspace:dateToText>
      <clearspace:objectType>0</clearspace:objectType>
      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/quests-vision-of-the-new-user-workspace</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4113</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Quest Software Enters Agreement with Insight Venture Partners to Become Private Company in Transaction Valued at $2.0 Billion</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/09/quest-software-enters-agreement-with-insight-venture-partners-to-become-private-company-in-transaction-valued-at-20-billion</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:96b7b6a7-5f6f-4c9c-a5a4-f2633022471a] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p class="p1"&gt;You may have heard that Quest recently entered into an agreement with Insight Venture Partners to become a privately held company. Read the &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.quest.com/company/pdfs/private/Press-Release.pdf" target="_blank"&gt;press release &lt;/a&gt;for further details.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="p1" style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="p2"&gt;For media inquiries, please contact:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="p2" style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="p3"&gt;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Abernathy MacGregor Group&lt;br/&gt;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Tom Johnson / (212) 371-5999 / &lt;a class="jive-link-email-small" href="mailto:TBJ@abmac.com"&gt;&lt;span class="s2"&gt;TBJ@abmac.com&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; James Lucas / (213) 630-6550 / &lt;a class="jive-link-email-small" href="mailto:JBL@abmac.com"&gt;&lt;span class="s2"&gt;JBL@abmac.com&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="p2" style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="p2"&gt;For financial or investor inquiries, please contact:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="p3" style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="p3"&gt;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Thomas Patterson / 949-754-8336 / &lt;a class="jive-link-email-small" href="mailto:thomas.patterson@quest.com"&gt;&lt;span class="s2"&gt;thomas.patterson@quest.com&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Stephen Wideman / 949-754-8142 / &lt;a class="jive-link-email-small" href="mailto:stephen.wideman@quest.com"&gt;&lt;span class="s2"&gt;stephen.wideman@quest.com&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:96b7b6a7-5f6f-4c9c-a5a4-f2633022471a] --&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:08:57 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/09/quest-software-enters-agreement-with-insight-venture-partners-to-become-private-company-in-transaction-valued-at-20-billion</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-03-09T18:08:57Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>2 months, 2 weeks ago</clearspace:dateToText>
      <clearspace:objectType>0</clearspace:objectType>
      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/quest-software-enters-agreement-with-insight-venture-partners-to-become-private-company-in-transaction-valued-at-20-billion</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4109</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Desktop Virtualization – How are You Taking Advantage?</title>
      <link>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/07/desktop-virtualization-how-are-you-taking-advantage</link>
      <description>&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyStart:821fbb8d-8120-435d-b5b6-33cf18763293] --&gt;&lt;div class="jive-rendered-content"&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a community, we are being inundated with information on why VDI is the answer to so many of our issues. We have all seen the article headings: Have physical desktop security issues? Not anymore with VDI!&amp;#160; Want to save money?&amp;#160; Implement VDI!&amp;#160; Need a cure for the common cold?&amp;#160; No, not VDI, but if you go to the doctor&amp;rsquo;s office, there it is! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But here&amp;rsquo;s the thing: desktop virtualization is like any other technology. It's really cool and very useful&amp;mdash;but only when used for the right reasons. Sound familiar? The need must come before the technology if we are to provide a winning, cost-effective solution to our customers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;With this in mind, the Quest IT team pulled together a few examples of how we are using VDI to give you some real-world scenarios of where we have found success. Maybe you can pick one out that applies to your environment to jump start or expand your use of VDI.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://communities.quest.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-4065-9884/vworkspace+graphic.JPG"&gt;&lt;img alt="vworkspace graphic.JPG" class="jive-image-thumbnail jive-image" height="241" onclick="" src="http://communities.quest.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/38-4065-9884/302-241/vworkspace+graphic.JPG" style="float: right;" width="302"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Take, for example, the challenge of giving outside consultants access to appropriate applications and infrastructure without giving them access to other resources. In addition, let&amp;rsquo;s complicate this a bit further by putting these consultants in their home offices where desk-side or hands-on support is impossible. Finally, let&amp;rsquo;s have them demanding to use their own desktops.&amp;#160; Sound familiar?&amp;#160; It does to us too.&amp;#160; So here is our first use case answered by one of our most flexible products, &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.quest.com/vworkspace/" target="_blank"&gt;vWorkspace&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;#160; Remember our goal is to get our consultants working as quickly as possible while keeping our internal information highway secure.&amp;#160; We start by setting up a virtualized desktop environment which includes all the applications, development tools, and data needed to get the job done.&amp;#160; Once their &amp;ldquo;desktop&amp;#8221; is setup, we then give the consultant access to these resources via our secure vWorkspace web portal. They login through the portal and are now ready to begin work. The code, data, and tools all remain on our servers in our data center so risk is minimized.&amp;#160; When their contract is up, we easily and effectively remove their access with simple automated procedures.&amp;#160; And here&amp;rsquo;s the best part: once access is removed, the allocated resources, space, CPU, power, etc., will automatically be reclaimed back to our virtualization pool.&amp;#160; This helps us contain costs and decrease the dreaded &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/virtualization-sprawl.html" target="_blank"&gt;virtualization sprawl&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;#160; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second use case may sound familiar to you as well. This one deals with our accounting folks, you know, the ones still in love with their Excel spreadsheets even though a sophisticated financial package is at their disposal? Oh yes, and those spreadsheets grow in size every day with some topping hundreds of megabytes and must be used across geographically diverse teams. Now there&amp;rsquo;s a challenge.&amp;#160; Even advanced WAN links can&amp;rsquo;t provide a workable solution to open sheets live over long distances. Once again, vWorkspace comes to our rescue using its seamless window technology.&amp;#160; We publish Excel with its link to the data and provide secured access to this encapsulated environment to a defined set of users.&amp;#160; What this means is when activated, a single window, or in this case a desktop application, Excel, will behave like the application is running locally, when it is actually operating at a remote location.&amp;#160; End result, the data is accessed from region to region at local speed by very happy end users.&amp;#160; I like this example as it uses this technology in a more pointed and specific way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The final use case deals with the mismatch between browser and applications. You know, where the users are insistent on upgrading to the latest and greatest browser, like IE8 or 9, even though their tried and true business applications will not run on it? Try explaining that to your users and they look at you like &amp;ldquo;So, can I still upgrade or what?&amp;#8221;&amp;#160; Much like our last scenario, one way to solve the mismatch issue is via publishing the application through virtualization technology.&amp;#160; Once again, using vWorkspace&amp;rsquo;s seamless window technology, an encapsulated environment including a link to the older browser version and pointer to the application is presented to the end user.&amp;#160; Once activated the end user works inside a window running the less current browser, such as IE7, even though their own system had been updated to &lt;a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&amp;amp;ai=Co4xFaXxWT86iK4G0iAKXgbG7B7W_m4kDtZ793kHuk-mtUAgAEAFQ1Zj81fv_____AWDJ5vCGyKOQGcgBAaoEHU_Qg6ybBCAelQT4JJrkE5VAevZpL2_ZWYDc4-46&amp;amp;sig=AOD64_3wBPwywNy5tkCsnbNPc682IZdBwA&amp;amp;ved=0CA0Q0Qw&amp;amp;adurl=http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/336236240/direct/01/%3Fhref%3Dhttp://view.atdmt.com/action/mrt101_PFXUSMSFTIEUSGenericActionTag_1/v3/soXLARFTb_17572588061_b_8754bh8916/%3Fhref%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fpixel.quantserve.com%252Fr%253Ba%253Dp-5eu58oSpL1cEs%253Blabels%253D_click.publisher.SEARCH%252BGoogle%252C_click.campaign.IE9_RTWDR%252C_click.placement.*http%253A%252F%252Fwindows.microsoft.com%252Fen-US%252Finternet-explorer%252Fproducts%252Fie%252Fhome%253Focid%253Die9_bow_Google%2526WT.srch%253D1%2526mtag%253DSearGoogle" target="_blank"&gt;IE9&lt;/a&gt;. Great example of providing end users access to the applications of yesterday on desktops from today and forward. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whether users are working internally or externally to the environment, dealing with multiple operating systems or browsers, geographically challenged, are looking for an easier way to work from home or any number of other scenarios that affect the use of natively installed applications, virtualized applications and desktops are a great asset to any organization. These tools are relatively simple to plan and install and Quest uses many of its own tools to exploit and further deploy virtualized technology where applicable.&amp;#160; They help us to keep user satisfaction high as well as keep out expenses in check by no having to buy additional equipment.&amp;#160; It is a win for everyone! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="min-height: 8pt; height: 8pt; padding: 0px;"&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;How about your environments?&amp;#160; I&amp;rsquo;m sure if we compared notes we&amp;rsquo;d have an amazing list of ideas and exploitations of this great technology category.&amp;#160; Share some of your challenges and how you have dealt with them so we can all learn from each others&amp;rsquo; experiences.&amp;#160; Just click on comment below and let&amp;rsquo;s start the conversation!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;!-- [DocumentBodyEnd:821fbb8d-8120-435d-b5b6-33cf18763293] --&gt;</description>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">desktop_virtualization</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">desktop</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">vdi</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">vworkpspace</category>
      <category domain="/community/executive-blog?view=tags">browser_compatibility</category>
      <pubDate>Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:17:53 GMT</pubDate>
      <author>communities@questcommunitymail.com</author>
      <guid>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/2012/03/07/desktop-virtualization-how-are-you-taking-advantage</guid>
      <dc:date>2012-03-07T17:17:53Z</dc:date>
      <clearspace:dateToText>2 months, 2 weeks ago</clearspace:dateToText>
      <clearspace:objectType>0</clearspace:objectType>
      <wfw:comment>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/comment/desktop-virtualization-how-are-you-taking-advantage</wfw:comment>
      <wfw:commentRss>http://communities.quest.com/community/executive-blog/blog/feeds/comments?blogPost=4065</wfw:commentRss>
    </item>
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