Martin Courtney
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Articles by Martin Courtney
Early Office 365 adopters: what drove them and what have they learned?
IT leaders who have migrated to the Microsoft suite talk about the challenges they faced
Steps to a successful Office 365 migration
Issues to address when moving to Microsoft's cloud-based productivity suite
Essential guide to social media and consumerisation in the enterprise
Martin Courtney reveals how both users and CIOs are shaping social business and bring-your-own-device strategies
Essential guide to datacentre convergence
Datacentre convergence may take a great leap forward with FCoE, but few organisations will need this sort of data capacity right now
Interview: Rob Joyce, head of LTE, O2
O2's 4G guru talks to Computing about the future of mobile wireless in the UK, high bandwidth applications, and where 4G fits in alongside 3G and Wi-Fi coverage
Interview: James Thomas, IT director, University College London Hospital
With UCLH implementing one of the first large-scale fixed mobile convergence projects in the UK, James Thomas talks Computing through the process
Analysis: HP pushes further into hybrid cloud
The company faces stiff competition from EMC, IBM and OpenStack-based services
Morrisons taps SAN for application performance
Retailer monitors traffic at a port level to identify storage bandwidth hogs and prevent arguments between application administrators
Analysis: EU data-sharing projects show early promise
Cross-border e-government initiatives designed to boost trade within the EU show slow but steady progress
Analysis: How beneficial will 4G be to the UK?
How will mobile broadband speeds of 30-50Mbit/s in UK cities benefit the average smartphone user?
Rentokil Initial kills off on-premise HR systems
Pest control company gets round lack of centralised IT infrastructure by nesting apps in the cloud
Analysis: Spark of hope for Solaris 11
Oracle faces uphill battle to regain lost Unix ground
Energy giants give users more control over their consumption
British Gas and E.ON talk about the technology behind their respective smart meter rollouts
Smart meter rollout presents numerous technical challenges
The task facing the UK's energy suppliers is daunting given the technical complexity involved and the consequences of getting it wrong
The 26 million meter dash
The race to implement smart metering is on, but are utility suppliers aided or hampered by the absence of precise technology requirements?
ARM to elbow its way into desktop and server markets
UK firm's ARMv8 64-bit design to challenge Intel and AMD
Interview: Simon Hill, IT director, Viridor
Delivering optimised IT services to a large number of small sites stuck in the middle of nowhere is a constant challenge for a growing waste management and recycling company
BlackBerry outage highlights cloud frailties
A stark reminder of how failed routers, servers or datacentres underpinning hosted services can bring a business to its knees
Guide to managed print services pt3 - case studies
Rationalising the volume and type of equipment can yield significant savings
Guide to managed print services pt2 - technology
It pays to check the specifications of the device and applications of an MPS deal
Intel ramps up environmental efforts
But involvement in sustainable energy projects hard to balance against increasing data centre server and supercomputer power consumption
Why Cisco's 2012 Olympics network won't fall down…
… and why we can't tell you who told us
Warwickshire County Council insources PSN-ready carrier grade network
MPLS backbone has the capacity and reach to connect 450 sites under shared network initiative
IT departments sidelined as finance and marketing harness big data
Enterprise vendors say interest in their big data systems is increasingly coming from finance and marketing chiefs
IT in healthcare pt3: Liverpool trusts aim to pull plug on paper records
The use of electronic patient records is delivering significant efficiency gains to trusts in and around the city
IT in healthcare pt2: High-tech remedies promise lasting results
New technology is being harnessed to improve medical knowledge, increase health awareness and boost patient safety
IT in healthcare pt1: Can innovation thrive under the knife?
Pressure on NHS budgets is forcing IT chiefs to explore shared front- and back-office systems, new procurement frameworks and cloud computing
Made-to-measure private cloud enables Savile Row tailor to grow
A few internet-connected laptops replaced by co-location servers and storage infrastructure to support retailer's planned expansion
Analysis: Capgemini supplements consultancy with more cloud services
Global IT services giant about to launch 'storage-as-a-service' offering
Data consolidation case study: British Transport Police
How 40TB of data from 148 sites has been consolidated into a single storage area network at the British Transport Police's primary datacentre in Camden
Nasa goes boldly into the cloud
Nasa CTO Tom Soderstrom and senior software development architect Khawaja Shams explain how public cloud services are helping mankind unlock the mysteries of Mars
A boon for virtual machine security
New anti-virus solutions designed to make it easier and cheaper to protect large-scale virtual environments are hitting the market
Big data part 3: case studies
How three very different organisations are harnessing big data
Big data part 2: technology
As the requirement for extracting information from huge databases of structured and unstructured data has grown, so technology has evolved to meet the demand
Has Dell got what it takes for cloud success?
As Dell prepares to launch a public cloud service, Martin Courtney asks whether it can offer anything to tempt IT buyers away from the more established players
Select few see IT salary boost
Two-tier jobs market sees significant rewards for experienced and talented staff, but lack of job security for others
The NEC and CERN give their LANs a boost
How the National Exhibition Centre and the European Organisation for Nuclear Research are future-proofing their network infrastructures
Technology trends that can necessitate a LAN upgrade
The biggest headache for IT teams is identifying the trouble spots and knowing how and when to upgrade the underlying infrastructure
Moving on up: Essential guide to LAN upgrades
Martin Courtney examines the system performance and commercial issues that can trigger network upgrades, and talks to IT leaders at two major organisation about what drove their recent infrastructure refreshes
Suppliers thrive as corporate IT spending stalls
While many CIOs across all industry sectors struggle to get funding for technology upgrades, some vendors have never had it so good
Opinion: Technology is the servant, not the master
Never use ICT for its own sake - it causes more problems than it is worth, some of them quite nasty
2011 worst year for retail IT investment since records began
First signs e-commerce sales have started to dip and overdue system upgrade requirements cannot be postponed forever
Will email audit trails lead to more dirt on News International?
How email audit trails could help police investigating the News of the World phone-hacking scandal
Will buyers gain or lose from Oracle's acquisition of Pillar?
IT giants are busy carving up the lucrative data storage market for themselves, leaving IT managers with fewer purchasing options
ParcelForce recoups £1m a year from UK Customs costs using PCI-compliant payment system
Hosted telephony software means courier no longer has to write off uncollectible duty payments
What are power companies doing to protect their networks from cyber attacks?
Last year's Stuxnet attack on an Iranian nuclear power facility has alerted electricity suppliers to the security vulnerabilities in their networks
Will the ODCA help drive cloud uptake?
Is the Open Data Center Alliance an elaborate marketing exercise on the part of Intel and its partners, or a genuine attempt to bring standardisation and interoperability to cloud services?
Lufthansa CIO says most CEOs still do not appreciate IT
... and advises fellow IT chiefs not to bother with in-house development