Gartner is making some dire warnings including one of another recession. Gene Hall, Gartner’s CEO says IT managers are facing a period of “unprecedented uncertainty.” While Alvaka Networks is having a robust year with surging revenues, I have to agree. The cautious footing, one of being prepared for a new recession is a smart posture to take right now.
Another analyst writes about social media and marketing shifting IT budgets. In the future she says, “Your CMO may have a bigger IT budget than you do.” The Gartner creative thinking on new concepts continues as another analyst introduced the concept of “Creative Destruction.” You can read more about it here.
http://www.cio-asia.com/resource/leadership-and-mgmt/expecting-a-recessi…
Smoke testing is a term used to describe the testing process for servers after patches are applied. 
Estimating an average time for patching servers and PCs can be a bit tricky. It can vary from one month to the next, depending upon the number and complexity of the patches released by your software vendors. You must consider all versions of operating systems and have a complete inventory of all your application software to do this job correctly. Our experience has shown that manual patching of systems takes on average of about 1.5 hours each.
This is a basic cost calculator for you to compute your typical monthly cost for patching your servers, PCs, laptops, tablets and associated application software. It also forms the basis for you to begin calculating your Return on Investment for software patching, or for comparison with alternatives to the manual process of patching operating systems and application software—such as Patch Management as a Service, also known as Vulnerability Management as a Service.