This week’s Smart IT roundup features a new program to keep employees in the loop, a virtual machine that reduces automated deployment time, and the state of software-defined data centers.

Klick Health’s Genome

Klick Health (Klick Inc.), a Canadian company providing digital marketing services for the health care industry, is following in the footsteps of hyperscale leaders like Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc., improving connection points amongst their workers.

Genome is an enterprise operating system that is built on a ticketing software that allows for a smoother workflow and open communication between its employees.  Every project generates a ticket and every task an employee performs is tied to a ticket as well as all communications.  This allows employees to pitch in ideas or track the progress of a project as easily as an email thread.

Genome also utilizes Big Data and social technologies to customize the employee experience, increase engagement and speed-up training.  It is able to anticipate when an employee is about to perform a task and make appropriate recommendations such as tutorial videos, other employees who can help them with the task, and even alert them if said knowledgeable employee is nearby, as Klick Health uses a card-based security system that is able to track the whereabouts of employees while inside the building.

LinMin’s Server Provisioning Virtual Appliance

LinMin Corp., provider of IT automation software LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning, announced the immediate availability of its Server Provisioning Virtual Appliance. The goal is to accelerate  the automated deployment of systems running Linux, Windows Server, VMware ESXi and other hypervisors in fast-growing or frequently-repurposed data centers.

The Server Provisioning Virtual Appliance is packaged as an Open Virtualization Format (OVF) virtual machine with Linux and LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning 6.5 pre-installed, and significantly reduces the time to implement the automated deployment of servers, blades and VMs running Windows Server, Linux and hypervisors , and can also capture, restore and clone entire systems.

“LinMin is vendor-neutral, offering customers the ultimate flexibility when selecting system manufacturers, OS providers and data center topologies, with the assurance that our Virtual Appliance will meet their data center system deployment requirements,” said Laurent Gharda ( @LinMin ), CEO and founder of LinMin. “The Server Provisioning Virtual Appliance sets new standards for ease of installation, configuration and usability in an arena where traditional data center solutions have been costly and difficult to implement.”

Cirba to lead SDIC revolution

Cirba Inc., a provider of software-defined infrastructure control solutions, has shared its perspective regarding the importance of intelligent control and management of the software-defined data center (SDDC).

According to the statement, SDDC is not achieved by “simply bolting together virtualization, software-defined networking, and other cutting-edge and software-defined technologies,” but by “eliminating current silos of compute, storage, network and software and adopting a new way of managing and controlling all the moving parts within the infrastructure.”

Cirba is hoping to pioneer a movement which it believes that the key to align the capabilities of the infrastructure with the requirements of supply that are true to the goals of SDDC.  Dubbed as the Software-Defined Infrastructure Control (SDIC), it comprises several aspects such as demand management, capacity control, policy, and automation to enable this type of control.

“The ability to make unified, automated decisions that span compute, storage, network and software resources, that are based on the true demands and requirements of the applications, and that are accurate enough to drive automation without fear, is the foundation of the next generation of control of IT infrastructure. SDIC bridges the gap that has opened up in the data center management ecosystem and in many ways is the heart of the SDDC,” Cirba said in its press release.

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