Chasing processes, workflows, best practices, and new developments to keep your IT operations ahead of today's complexity? Check out these 10 assumptions that need to be eliminated to get things done right in IT operations today.   

According to many, there is a stagnation in IT management salaries. To keep track of what's happening with your career, the IT world, and the people that are involved in IT, we put together a comprehensive list of salary survey and compensation results for IT professionals.

With the downtime risks growing around the complexity of data centers, IT is developing the modern data center to handle increasing pressure and demand. Check out this great selection of data center infographics we've compiled, for some surprising facts and insights about today's data center and how your organization can improve.

How would you describe a reinvented data center? Check out this 1 minute video to get your creative juices running….

Thought that you were alone. Even the biggest in the business suffer downtime and outages. We've compiled a list showing how ongoing failures and performance problems cost companies both in lost revenues and damaged reputations.

Everyone is talking about moving to the cloud today. Yet with the fevered pace of change in today's data centers, how do you overcome the complexity and dynamics to make a smooth migration to the cloud?

More and more companies have discovered the advantages that virtualization can bring to their businesses. Check out the selection of virtualization infographics we've compiled, for some surprising facts and insights about virtualization and how it can effect your organization.

The new reality of today's data center and cloud environments means new information is being created dynamically, and configurations changed at an unprecedented pace. We have consolidated a comprehensive collection of articles and observations showing that the CMDB as a tool and concept is obsolete. Do you agree? Do you swear by your CMDB? Join the debate!

IT is moving to apply an analytics-driven approach to better manage IT operations, significantly improving how configuration information is handled. Check out our list and see how to leverage analytics to get the most out of configuration data for maximizing stability and ensuring dependable performance.

IT today remains stuck with manual and static approaches for confronting large data challenges. To take on today's complex state of operations and dynamics, IT needs to make a paradigm switch, applying automated analytics to the changing, overwhelming amounts of collected data, analyzing it and then presenting it to IT ops in an actionable format.

Demands on IT are growing as today's technology allows greater mobility of employees. Accessibility of mobile devices and lack of clear policies lead to an explosion in the amount of mobile technologies in the workplace. Will IT organisations be up to the challenge?

Microsoft 2008 Server Application administrator? See the configuration top picks we've compiled, chosen from the Microsoft 2008 Server Application experts amongst our customers, that you should definitely worry about, helping you to keep reliable performance.

Enabling social media for IT stands to dramatically enhance the alignment of business and IT. This will mean better engagement to IT's customers (the business and the organization's end users), driving productivity and even lowering costs.

We've identified 25 key IT performance metrics that you can apply to take your IT organization to success.

Businesses will need change management and configuration management resources that can allow them to effectively drive change in their environment while not inhibiting business agility, and remaining in control.

With literally over 500,000+ apps out there, we know you don't have time to review them all. So, we've compiled a list of apps that help IT Operations do their jobs, listed alphabetically, and identified according to their platform (Apple/Android).

In today's complex operations, change and configuration errors are common, very common. Here are some of the most common change and configuration issues that we have seen in our customer's experiences.

As IIS administrators, you need to quickly focus in on the most critical IIS configurations necessary to boost IIS performance. So we've compiled for you below the top picks, chosen by our customers' IIS experts, that you should definitely watch closely.

As complexity and dynamics grow, 2012 will see major changes in IT operations. Evolven CEO, Sasha Gilenson, declares how new influences will impact and influence IT operations this year.

Check out our Power40, a handpicked list of analysts focused on IT Operations. These analysts have a tremendous influence on the IT operations segment and on the top IT in general. With their research and insights they help to shape the industry and identify trends.

Times have changed and so have the requirements for effective configuration and change management. Check out our top 10 challenges that impact change and configuration management today.   

The big question for IT professionals is if your operations are efficient. Now with cloud-based systems, you can look forward to seeing the consolidation of data, allowing vendors to provide proven benchmark information and improve everyone’s business.

LinkedIn groups are one of the prime social media venues for IT professionals from a variety of industries. Here is our handpicked  list of 'IT Operations – focused' groups, based on their relevancy to IT Operations and that they have large amounts of followers.

In the recent EMA report, senior analysts at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) look at why it has never been more challenging to effectively cope with the impact of change and configuration issues, saying that the new Evolven Change Monitoring service is "...a unique and much needed offering."  

A new approach is clearly needed to handle the complexity and dynamics introduced by today's virtualization and cloud entities. This article published by CM Crossroads explores the current state of IT Operations and proposes the new approach to handle the constantly changing, overwhelming amount of configuration data and how to extract and deliver actionable information.

IT still relies on workflows and static processes, supported by rigid Configuration Management tools. Now facing mountains of dynamic information, IT needs to apply an analytics-based approach to their operations, to preserve system stability, and prevent exposing the business to the devastating consequences of risk

Google+ has the potential to be incredibly useful as a business, teamwork, and productivity tool for IT Ops. See four reasons that we think Google+ can be a great productivity tool for you and your team. 

The BSM Review recently interviewed Sasha Gilenson, CEO of Evolven, to gain insights into how best to balance control and agility for today's IT Operations and still meet the ongoing needs of the business. 

Despite the widespread use of deployment  automation software today, change and release validation plays a critical role in maintaining optimum availability and performance, preventing harmful downtime. 

Over  60% of a recently surveyed audience of IT professionals responded that their organization has either launched at least one private cloud project (34%) or is planning to launch a private cloud initiative in 2011.

Struggling with downtime and instability in the management of your modern data center? See how this Evolven customer improved stability and cut unnessary IT configuration changes by 90%. 

Nearly 75% of a recently surveyed audience of IT professionals agreed that virtualization introduces new management challenges for IT operations.

In the recent Forrester Research report, "It's Time to Rediscover BSM", Forrester Analysts identify the new breed of solutions that will prove useful in helping IT operations professionals achieve their IT management goals. Evolven is noted as one of the primary tools "...that offer both real-time and granular discovery to help support a better incident and change management process." 

Hey there's a tiger in the bathroom! Having all kinds of unexpected surprises in your data center? Maybe the quantity and speed of changes are getting out of hand, and you are feeling like you are having an IT Operations hangover. 

Internet Evolution's ThinkerNet editor, Mary Jander, raises the issue of how analytics has led to better business decision-making and applying this approach to the IT landscape to improve the management of the modern datacenter. 

Reliable, accurate and visible configuration data makes a critical difference for keeping business on track, yet today's complexity, agility and constant change make this effort harder than ever. Configuration management needs to be redefined to handle this new reality. 

Nearly 70% of a recently surveyed audience of IT professionals cited that their current configuration management approach is inadequate for meeting the needs of today's ever changing IT operations.

Change happens. Change keeps the world on the move. In a recent webinar with the Enterprise Management Association (EMA) a concept was introduced describing the critical areas where processes typically break down and where critical information is often lost due to lack of visibility. Resolving this, Evolven uses breakthrough analytics to identify those specific changes and differences that are introduced across the environment and actually matter to the user.

Forrester VP and Principle Analyst, Jean-Pierre Garbani, brought in an impressive crowd in withhis impressive insights on how the new realities of today's IT landscape and complexity impact change & configuration management. Learn how a new approach with change and configuration automation will enable organizations to drive change efficiently with minimized business risk.

Agile development today is creating a heavy impact on application lifecycle management. There is a lot of  information  available on agile development practices and tools, however the question remains, how do you handle the entire lifecycle in agile conditions and how do you integrate your process when you start to work in an agile approach?

Recurring outages and major incidents can prove to be a nightmare for IT organizations. With the stakes high, and pressure on every second, you need to not only be able to resolve incidents quickly and but also make sure the root cause was addressed so that the issue doesn't come up again.

Complexity is a recurring theme for today's infrastructure and operations (I&O) executives. In a recent report from Forrester Research on "Assessing Complexity In IT Operations," Evolven was one of the companies interviewed to address the question of how best to address complexity.

Companies today heavily rely on change control processes to manage IT related changes. Many IT organizations have recognized the complex impact that infrastructural changes have on the enterprise. The key here is to manage infrastructure changes and not just control it.

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) Managing Research Director, Steve Brasen, pulled in an impressive crowd in with his amazing insights on change & configuration at our recent webinar now available for you to watch on demand. Learn how  established best practices work hand-in-hand with Change Control Automation, allowing you to drive change efficiently with minimized business risk.

DevOps stands to make a major impact on the hectic implementation of application releases and ongoing change requests, bringing Development and Operations closer together and working in tighter cooperation. Bob Aiello of CM Crossroads video interviews Sasha Gilenson to get a better perspective of how DevOps will close these gaps and make release deployments more effective.

IT operations teams face the strain of constant change requests, further compounded by increasingly complex environments that need to be kept available and operating at high performance continuously. Due to this, the main cause of slowdown in IT infrastructures is from changes.

The growth of virtual environments makes management increasingly complex making it more difficult to optimize and control. Consider these areas of virtualization management to ensure that the benefits promised through virtualization are not lost.

Despite the best efforts of IT organizations to take steps against failure, with numerous safeguards, a major source of today's failures can be attributed to both complexity and simply human error.

One of the main drivers for DevOps is change. Organizations feel the need to increase speed and be able to react instantly to changing business requirements. The emerging DevOps discipline can show its real value to Change Management and Configuration Management, bringing Development and Operations closer together.

Some companies have pushed back at the ideas DevOps has spawned. This is due more from misunderstanding, rather than what the core of term truly represents. DevOps is not an issue essentially about  technology, but at its core it is inextricably linked to the demands of business.

Your Configuration Management System can not and will not present an accurate and detailed view of your environment if the data is inaccurate. Ensure your CMS remains relevant to your IT organization's operations with these 5 areas you should focus on to keep your CMS on the right track, and justify your CMS investment.

Implementing cloud-based services involves a complex integration of software and hardware components from various vendors, and can often  result  in an expensive development. So it is important for all players, from service providers to enterprises (Large, medium and small), to fully understand some key requirements for building their cloud infrastructure.

In 2010, there were a number of both prominent and subtle trends in IT. These developments will continue to influence and define IT progress for organizations in 2011, particularly in the space of change and configuration management and automation.

One of the virtualization myths is that in the virtual world configuration management is just not important. The reality is that Change Management and Configuration management is crucial for virtualized environments. Here are 5 reasons why you should make sure that solid virtualization configuration management is in place to meet the demands of the virtual world.

Despite advances in infrastructure robustness, occasional hardware, software and database downtime still occurs. We know that outages are big, but how big is the cost of unplanned IT outages?

Moving to a cloud environment, requires that you first invest in a full planning process.  Central to this is the process of gathering configuration information, which is huge task, with literally thousands of configuration parameters per technology. Yet, without handling this delicate process of collecting detailed configuration information, moving to a cloud environment could turn into a huge failure.

Every IT incident carries the risk of harming IT's reputation. What can you do to reduce the volume of IT incidents? Here's a 5 point game-plan for ways to do it. How many of them are you doing already?

Virtualization holds a lot of promise, but the benefits are actually being undermined by change and configuration management issues like drift, integrity and sprawl. Granular Configuration Automation can help with virtualization by delivering visibility into the entire application stack, allow you to control sprawl by making powerful end-to-end environment comparisons, and identifying the deviations in virtual machines.

CMDB is still necessary. CMDB platforms and Change Monitoring complement each other. The combination of high level perspective provided by CMDB and the comprehensive granular configuration information collected and analyzed through change monitoring helps to gain complete, effective visibility and control over IT.

Get a feel for how unplanned changes in your organization lead to incidents that have a serious impact on the performance of your IT environment.

The amount of configuration information available in the entire IT environment of the enterprise is staggering. Here we highlight 4 of the major challenges for IT professionals in managing configuration knowledge.

Facebook had almost 3 hours of downtime last week following a small configuration change, in now what is being called the worst outage for the site in four years.

Peter Kretzman explores the price of IT complexity, seeing how IT failures are costing the world incredible amounts of real money.

Managing today's IT environments is made more difficult from the dual challenge of not having enough information about the environment, and sifting through an overwhelming amount of information without knowing the criticality. How do you get the right information to keep your environment stable?

Is wanting to know about unplanned outages ahead of time demanding the impossible? Not at all! There are innovative ways of taking on the unknown and managing unplanned IT outages.

Some major hurdles remain in the area of configuration management before enterprises can fully exploit virtualization's opportunities, limiting the expected savings from moving to virtualization.

Are you working in the IT trenches? Do release transitions and incidents impact your environment? Hear about the real challenges encountered by a Test Environment Manager.

Are you looking for the right IT habits to help you keep your systems meeting the requirements of the business? Here we'll look at 9 areas where a Change Monitoring solution can play a strategic role in enhancing ITIL v3 processes – helping IT managers to achieve less risk, more uptime and greater stability.

Why focus on Granular Configuration and why does it matter?  When it comes to impact and the damage that can be caused to IT environments, size matters in a much different way – small and minute.

"The time has come for players to carve their name in history,"  the caption of the Nike ad tells us, highlighting World Cup players like Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, and Cristiano Ronaldo.  Each fantasizes about what will happen to them about whether or not they score a goal, showing us that one small action can result in unimagined success or horrible failure.

Sander Stevens discovers Evolven Comparison can fill the black hole between environments: "

I discovered a tool for mapping the differences between environments, Evolven Comparison. It compares drives, configurations, settings, versions, etc. web services, databases, applications, operating systems and more."  

What’s the first question you ask when an incident occurs in your IT environment?
Watch this funny video and learn about the Evolven difference 

When considering the challenges of maintaining IT environment stability, I was reminded of spot the difference pictures.
The concept of Granular Configuration Automation is about automatically finding the smallest changes in an environment and alerting the IT team.