Blog
Data rush: Part 1
The Explosion "It's not my fault," said the Oracle Database Administrator (DBA) as he went back to his desk. The users in the New York office were frustrated with the database performance. Scott, a seasoned Oracle DBA walked back to his desk after a heated conference...
OnX races to the IndyCar finish line
The speed and agility of OnX Enterprise Solutions has hit the track, specifically the IndyCar Series, as the Associate Sponsor and Official Information Technology Provider to Rahal Letterman Lanigan (RLL) Racing. Want to join us for the ride? Stay tuned to OnX Thinks...
OnX #5 on CDN’s Top 100 Solution Providers
OnX Enterprise Solutions has come a long way since our founding in 1983, and we're proud to say we are among the best, placing fifth in CDN's Top 100 Solution Provider of the Year awards. View this article and video, which features Marty Blake, V.P. of Business...
Versions of truth in data analytics
In my childhood, I was taught that truth triumphs. My grandfather always used to say that there is only one version of truth. Lies may be told many different ways, but there is no chance of having a second version of true fact. I believed this to be true, until I grew...
OnDemand data access
My sons love new toys. Every Christmas, I have to buy them all the hot, new toys on the market. To prepare for all of these new toys, we have established a ritual at home around the Thanksgiving holiday when I ask them to identify the toys they do not like anymore so...
CRN article on OnX cloud transition
“Data center solutions provider OnX Enterprise Solutions' adoption of the public/private cloud and managed services model has proven profitable for the first half of fiscal year 2014, which began May 1. The Toronto-based VAR, which ranked No. 44 on CRN's 2013 Solution...
SSD is so 2013…
Flash storage and SSDs were all the rage the last couple of years. At all the major conferences this past year we saw a ton of smaller niche players jumping into this space. What I want to discuss in this blog is the next step in low latency storage. My colleague and...
Now where did I put that flash?
For those of us who have been around the IT industry for a while, we have seen a lot of changes and an ever growing set of complexities as we ask our environments to continually do more for us. This has led to ever growing software tools that can manipulate data in...
Critical transitions
Have you ever wondered why mission critical servers and proprietary Unix operating systems have left the data centers? Since I started in this industry many years ago, I have seen changes to what companies classify as mission critical. My first experience was with a...
Closing the gap between investment and implementation of ITSM solutions
IT Service Management (ITSM) initiatives have great potential to improve IT in the eyes of their business partners and even to allow IT to become a strategic weapon for the business. As further proof, many of the business priorities outlined in Gartner’s “Amplifying...
What are YOUR stages of VDI opinion?
A decision to virtualize desktop infrastructure is not made in a day. Many organizations that look into virtualizing their desktop infrastructure go through distinct stages of learning, understanding and accepting VDI. These are the three stages of VDI acceptance I...
What do you want to be when you grow up?
It’s summer time and, like most parents, I have kids around the house a bit more than normal at this time of year. This leads to some interesting question and answer sessions … Where does the water come from that falls as rain and how does it get up in the sky? Why do...
OnX OnDemand Consulting – Innovation in IT resource augmentation
OnX OnDemand Consulting is a time and materials based IT Resource Augmentation consulting model and service that provides clients with flexible and expert resources for all technologies and solutions available from OnX. From infrastructure services to application...
High performance trading hardware stack
I recently participated in the Toronto FIX protocol conference in Toronto to introduce the new OnX offering of an integrated High Performance trading stack (Consortium). It was a learning experience and extremely exhilarating. I learned that many organizations invest...
Flash technology for the enterprise
In today’s modern and fast paced society, it appears to be all about how quickly and efficiently you can get the tasks at hand done. So, this begs the question, how fast are your applications performing? Is it time to look at your application infrastructure or your...
The benefits of deploying a converged infrastructure
It started out as a vendor reference to an integrated blade solution but today converged infrastructure is accepted as an IT industry term across all major manufacturers. It refers to the integration of compute, network, and storage typically integrated within a...
OnX and technology consortium announce new members
OnX and Technology Consortium Announce New Members; Set Sights on Expanded Trading Functions Offering Further Performance Benchmarking and Transparency Across The Trade Lifecycle. ORONTO, Ontario and New York, NY – June 5, 2012 – OnX Enterprise Solutions, a leading...
Capacity planning in the cloud
As has been mentioned in other posts recently, adopting virtualization and cloud computing has a significant impact on a number of IT management processes. I would like to add to this discussion by providing some insight into fundamental changes in the capacity...
Location, location, location…
What are the three most important factors in retail? Location, location, and location. Now this same question about location is creeping into the conversations of CTO’s and IT data center managers alike. Where do we put our next data center? In years past there was an...
Partnering for your HEALTH
At OnX, the dedicated Healthcare Practice understands the business requirements of Healthcare and is determined to respond with world-class technology solutions to help clients achieve better results. Poised to make a difference in Healthcare, Team OnX and its best in...
Enterprise UNIX – How it became the strategic platform of choice
Remember the run-up to Y2K? While some people reading this blog may have been in grade school, and others were already seasoned IT professionals at the time, just about everyone remembers the labours of the time, changing all those 2-digit years to 4-digit...
Cloud rumblings from Canada
Cloud initiatives and investment announcements in Canada are starting to heat up with our own recent plug declaring our $20 million investment in data center expansion and deployment of a dual data center, multi-tenant cloud solution, aimed at the mid-large enterprise...
What really is a cloud?
Many articles have been written about what the Cloud is or is not. In the spirit of the college entrance exam season (you remember the ACT and SAT?), I thought I would start out with a “simple” question – What really is a Cloud? Is it: Just another...
Everyone loves to hate – BackUps
Backups are the bane of our existence in the datacenter. They’re the operational process that everyone loves to hate. Even worse, the constant change in the datacenter as new projects come along, data grows, and we retire old hardware cause the stability...
The tall order for data storage
When it comes to the data center one trend that everyone seems to be dealing with is the growth of the data they are keeping and backing up. Adding to the issue of data growth are new government regulations on how this data needs to be maintained; number of copies, on...
Don’t guess your storage – assess!
A few years ago a friend and colleague said that when you’re out of storage your only choice was to buy more. Honestly, 5 or so years ago he was right; today there are more choices and great functionality available. Tiering, thin provisioning, de-duplication and...
In the ball park
I think it’s a fair statement to say that most IT organizations have adopted virtualization in some fashion, most commonly for the server environment. Gartner claims that nearly 50% of all x86 workloads are virtualized. Whether it’s a small tentative step with one...
Who’s your DADI?
Too much aging infrastructure, economic pressure to do more with less, company brass demanding the CIO affect business and not just react to it… It just begs the question: “Who’s your DADI?” Well, most people think they know, but when it comes to “Strategic Platform...
Cloud readiness assessment
OnX recently completed a Cloud Readiness Assessment for clients in both Eastern and Western Canada, and the similarities were striking. Both organizations had made the move several years ago to hosting equipment with a data center provider to save money, and both had...
BYOD
Today just about everyone has a personally owned intelligent device or three that they utilize to access corporate email, applications, and data. These devices have company confidential email, contacts, and data right alongside the user’s personal music, photos, and...
How to keep up with data recovery requirements
My investment in storage assets to handle massive data growth is going through the roof, and worse yet, I can’t keep up with my (DR) data recovery requirements to protect my business. What can I do? With the explosive growth in organizational data and virtual server...
Mike Cardy featured on CRN
The following is a statement from Cardy and others in OnX’s office of the CTO. “Cloud Computing at the CIO and IT Director levels will transform from a “nice idea” to a “how do we deploy” discussion, with most organizations considering pilots of a Private or Federated...
Canadian blood services
Canadian Blood Services relies on OnX Enterprise Solutions and EMC to secure mission-critical information. Challenges Canadian Blood Services is a not-for-profit, charitable organization that manages the blood and blood products supply for Canadians. CBS donors and...
Case Study: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Whether Windy or Wet, New Systems Enable Weather Researchers to Meet Computational Demand and Support Educational Objectives. OnX Partnership Proves To Be More than Just a Fair Weather Solution. The Challenge While there’s no way to prevent hurricanes or bring about...
Case Study: Pediatric hospital needs more data storage
The Challenge A Children’s Pediatric Hospital with a mandate for care, research and teaching is experience explosive data growth and was no longer able to support their current storage capacity. They were in need of new hubs to store their large enterprise clinical...
Application delivery framework
The main purpose of IT organizations today is to deliver applications that support business objectives to the end-users in an Enterprise. These applications are delivered in many different ways. There is a lot of talk in the IT world about these application delivery...
OnX Case Study: Downsizing; Is it right for you?
The Challenge A heavy-hitter that distributes fossil fuels in the Energy industry wanted to determine if cost and efficiency savings could be gained by consolidating their four data centres into two. Many companies in today’s economy are interested in downsizing their...
Crossing roles in the IT environments
Regardless of what you mean by cloud computing and whether you are building a private cloud, public cloud or a hybrid cloud one thing is for sure: the three pillars of the IT infrastructure – servers, storage and network are getting more intertwined and...
Why consider Cisco UCS for hosting your XenDesktop cloud?
I have spent the last couple of weeks working with Microsoft 2008 R2 Hyper-V on the Cisco UCS platform. I am impressed at the capabilities. In fact, at the moment if you are planning to host a XenDesktop infrastructure in the cloud, I would recommend you consider the...
Vendor agnostic or vendor specialist – Which approach makes sense for you?
By: Chris Sator, OnX Enterprise Solutions I’ve come across this question many times through the pleasure of dialogue with many clients, partners and vendors. It’s an interesting conundrum. Where do you turn for unbiased advice and assistance while ensuring it’s in...
Case Study: Large bank in need of deployment of OCS technology
A large financial institution made a significant investment in Office Communication Server (OCS) and was looking for a resource to encourage their end-users to adopt the new technology. They were in need of a custom-designed, architected and deployed Unified...
Case Study: Telecommunications giant seeks call centre support
When a growing telecommunications company is looking to further expand their call centre environments, they rely on expertise of OnX Enterprise solutions. When a company needs more space and to have cost effective deployment, they choose OnX Enterprise Solutions to...
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