Data Center

Food for Your Digital Appetite

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Ryan Petersen has worked in publishing for more than two decades, most of it spent creating award-winning content and strategy for CDW’s family of tech magazine brands. As editor-in-chief, he works with his team to develop compelling and useful industry-focused stories to share with the technology world. Outside of work, Ryan enjoys spending time with his children, traveling, online gaming, and following Iowa Hawkeye sports and Cubs baseball.

If you spend a good portion of your day sitting in front of a desktop computer, toting your notebook or netbook to meetings, or checking your handheld device for updated information, you realize how important the digital world is for gathering information and acting upon it.

Our StateTech staff realizes the importance of accessibility, too. In addition to the print and online versions of StateTech, you can now receive content in your inbox in the form of our e-newsletters. These will provide examples of how IT leaders are utilizing technology at their agencies, best practices from experts in the field, white papers and more. To subscribe to the e-newsletters, please visit statetechmag.com.

And if a part of your news gathering and research includes Twitter, make sure to check out @StateTech (twitter.com/statetech) for the latest case studies, product reviews and other online news.

We hope this content provides useful information to help you make important IT decisions within your agency.

In This Issue

As state and local governments generate ever-increasing volumes of data, they need a place to store and archive this traffic. It's no wonder deployment of storage area networks and network-attached storage is booming. Smart IT leaders are looking to boost utilization and use every nook and cranny of available storage space.

For example, after Skokie, Ill., was socked with major storms last year that flooded part of the village, MIS Director Bryan Gilley realized he needed to improve disaster recovery readiness before a future storm knocked out power or swamped the data center. He recently rolled out SAN and virtualized servers, boosting his confidence in Skokie's continuity of operations capabilities. For more about making the most of your available storage, turn to "Conquering Storage Woes."

One application that requires ample storage is video conferencing recordings. In an effort to boost efficiency and save money, courts such as Louisiana's 24th Judicial District Court are conducting arraignments of citizens in custody using video conferencing equipment. To learn how these agencies benefit from video conferencing, turn to "Courting Video Conferencing."