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StorPool adds NVMe/TCP and NFS and ports to AWS Blocks and Files – Blocks and Files

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

StorPool Storage has added NVMe/TCP access to its eponymous block storage system, file access with NFS, and ported it to AWS.

This v20.0 release also adds more business continuity, management and monitoring upgrades, and extends the softwares compatibility. StorPool was started in Bulgaria in 2011 to provide a virtual SAN using the pooled disk and SSD storage StorPool of clustered servers running KVM. It has been extensively developed and improved steadily over the years since then. For example, v19.3 came along in August last year adding management features and broad NVMe SSD support. v19.4 in February brought faster performance, updated hardware and software compatibility, management and monitoring changes, and improvements in the business continuity area.

A statement from CEO Boyan Ivanov said: With each iteration of StorPool Storage, we build more ways for users to maximize the value and productivity of their data. These upgrades offer substantial advantages to customers dealing with large data volumes and high-performance applications, especially in complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

StorPool says its storage systems are targeted at storing and managing data of primary workloads such as databases, web servers, virtual desktops, real-time analytics solutions, and other mission-critical software. The companys product was classed as a challenger in GigaOms radar report looking at Primary Storage for Midsize Businesses in January this year.

The added NVMe/TCP access, which is becominga block access standard, provides an upgrade for iSCSI access, using the same Ethernet cabling. Customers experience high-performance, low-latency access to standalone NVMe SSD-based StorPool storage systems, using the standard NVMe/TCP initiators available in VMware vSphere, Linux-based hypervisors, container nodes, and bare-metal hosts. The NVMe target nodes are highly available. If one fails, StorPool fails over the targets to a running node in the cluster.

The NFS server software instances on v20 are also highly available. They run in virtual machines backed by StorPool volumes and managed by the StorPool operations team. These NFS servers can have multiple file shares. The cumulative provisioned storage of all shares exposed from each NFS Server can be up to 50TB.

StorPool is careful to say that NFS is for specific use cases, mentioning three. Firstly, this NFS supports moderate-load use cases for access to configuration files, scripts, images, and for email hosting. Secondly, it can support cloud platform operations, such as secondary storage for Apache CloudStack and NFS storage for OpenStack Glance. Thirdly, its good for throughput-intensive file workloads shared among internal and external end users. Think of workloads such as video rendering, video editing, and heavily loaded web applications.

However, NFS file storage on StorPool is not suitable for IOPS-intensive file workloads like virtual disks for virtual machines.

StorPool storage can now be deployed in sets of three or more i3en.metal instances in AWS. The solution delivers more than 1.3 million balanced random read/write IOPS to EC2 r5n and other compatible compute instances (m5n, c6i, r6i, etc.). StorPool on AWS frees users of per-instance storage limitations and can deliver this level of performance on any instance type with sufficient network bandwidth. It achieves these numbers while utilizing less than 17 percent of client CPU resources for storage operations, leaving the remaining 83 percent for the user application(s) and database(s).

A chart shows latency vs IOPS of 4KB mixed read/write storage operations on an r5n client instance. The StorPool storage system, when running on 5x i3en instances, delivers more than 1,200,000 IOPS at very low latency, compared to io2 Block Express, which tops out at about 260,000 of the same type of IOs.

Read the technical details about StorPool on AWS here.

StorPool on AWS is intended for single-node workloads needing extremely low latency and high IOPS, such as large transactional databases, monolithic SaaS applications, and heavily loaded e-commerce websites. Also, workloads that require extreme bandwidth block performance can leverage StorPool to deliver more than 10 GB/sec of large block IO to a single client instance. Several times more throughput can be delivered from a StorPool/AWS storage system when serving multiple clients.

ESG Practice Director Scott Sinclair said: Adding NVMe/TCP support, StorPool on AWS and NFS file storage to an already robust storage platform enables StorPool to better help their customers achieve a high level of productivity with their primary workloads.

With its 20th major release, StorPools storage software is mature, reliable, fast and feature-rich. Think of it as competing with Dell PowerStore, NetApp ONTAP, HPE Alletra, IBM FlashSystem, and Pure Storage in the small and medium business market, where customers may need unified file and block access in a hybrid on-premises and AWS cloud environment. Find out more about StorPool v20 here.

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EFI Fiery Command WorkStation Integration with IQ Cloud Services Increases User Productivity – WhatTheyThink

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

Industry-leading unified job management interface now includes EFI IQ cloud services for a fast, flexible way to roll out tailored job management preferences and resources

FREMONT, Calif. Fiery, the digital front end (DFE) server and print workflow business of graphic arts technology company Electronics For Imaging, Inc., has introduced powerful new cloud capabilities and additional productivity enhancements for print businesses in the new version 6.8 of the EFI Fiery Command WorkStation job management solution.

An EFI IQ cloud integration gives Command WorkStation users the ability to back up and restore their customized user interface settings, local presets, and imposition templates. With a click of button, they can invite other Command WorkStation users in their print shop, or at other company locations, to download and install common settings and resources. A shop can optimize Command WorkStation for all users even in multiple locations for a faster and more flexible way to consistently manage jobs with the confidence that their configurations are saved securely in their companys EFI IQ cloud account.

EFI IQ cloud capabilities for better business management and controlWith the same EFI IQ account, managers can easily take advantage of cloud applications to extract value from their print shop data to minimize bottlenecks, optimize equipment utilization, and track performance by shift. Features available at no charge for use with an unlimited number of cut-sheet digital printers include:?? EFI IQ Dashboard, an application that provides a personalized view of printer status, consumables and job status right now;

EFI Insight, an application that helps managers transform print production trend data into actionable analytics that drive business improvement;

EFI Notify, an application that delivers alerts for production-blocking events and enables automatic production report distribution; and

EFI Go, a mobile app that delivers EFI IQ dashboard metrics, notifications and more to busy managers to monitor operations even while they are not on site.

This new version of Command WorkStation is a significant milestone in our strategy to improve Fiery capability with EFI IQ cloud services, said John Henze, vice president of sales and marketing, EFI Fiery. Using the familiar Command WorkStation interface, users can now access cloud services to better manage both their print jobs and their business.

New enhancements for more efficient, faster job managementPrint businesses also gain important flexibility and faster job set up by using the new selective preset capability in Command WorkStation 6.8. Now, users can define settings that only apply to specific aspects of a job, leaving all other original settings untouched. Using server presets can reduce the time it takes to prepare incoming files and get jobs ready for production by 80%.

Additional features in version 6.8 are being well received by customers. As Darin Lerbs, Production Print Solutions Architect at Marco, an EFI reseller and technology services company located in Minneapolis, commented: Its great to see several of my, and my customers, suggested features in this new Command WorkStation release. For me, being able to rearrange Fiery servers in the server list and easily see server IP addresses helps a great deal. And my customers are going to love the ability to see how long its going to take for a job to complete printing thats really going to help them plan their workload.

The latest version of EFI Fiery Command WorkStation is available for download at no charge at http://www.efi.com/cws. For more information about advanced digital print production solutions from EFI, visit http://www.efi.com.

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Why app awareness is key to clearing the cloud visibility haze – IT Brief Australia

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

Article by Gigamon's John Gudmundson.

As organisations flock to the cloud, they are initiating new architectures and migrating existing applications to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers and hybrid clouds via 'lift and shift' or refactoring.

They are scaling deployments with more servers and VMs, running high-capacity links, leveraging containers, and routinely adding new observability, security, and monitoring tools. On top of that, they're often running hundreds or even thousands of apps which, unknown to IT, could include rogue software such as crypto mining or BitTorrent.

With ever-increasing volumes of application-oriented data, it's difficult for IT teams and tools to focus on the most actionable activity and avoid wasting resources processing irrelevant traffic.

Often we inundate security, observability, compliance and network monitoring tools with low-risk, low-value traffic, making them less effective and requiring needless scaling.

Additionally, false positives and alerts can overwhelm NetOps, CloudOps and SecOps teams, obscuring the root causes of network and application performance issues and the real threats buried in volumes of undifferentiated traffic.

'Old school' solutions

Traditionally, IT teams have taken laborious steps to identify applications based on network traffic by either hardwiring ports to specific applications or writing regular expressions to inspect traffic patterns and identify apps.

Such manual workarounds bring their own challenges. When change occurs, such as growth in an application's usage or the introduction of new applications, NetOps teams must update network segmentation. And app updates can change traffic patterns and behaviour, meaning IT must constantly test and update their homegrown regex signatures. For the cloud, implementing such stopgap measures is difficult, if not impossible.

Until now, it's been hard to isolate cloud traffic by application type and specify whether or not it gets inspected by tools. Visibility has been siloed, and filtering options often only go up to Layer 4 elements, forcing organisations to pass all traffic through their tools or risk missing potential threats.

However, having each tool (intrusion detection system, data loss prevention, advanced threat detection, network analytics, forensics and so on) inspect packets to filter irrelevant traffic is inefficient and costly, as most tool pricing is based on traffic volume and processing load.

While packet brokering can reduce traffic, it requires programming knowledge to maintain complex rules. And although some systems provide a level of application filtering, it's hard to use, identifies a limited number of applications, and doesn't typically share this insight. Further, the filters require ongoing maintenance to keep up with changing application behaviour.

Visualise and filter cloud apps

Application filtering intelligence (AFI), such as my own company's, brings application awareness to multi-cloud environments. The technology automatically extends Layer 7 visibility to identify more than 3,500 common business and network applications traversing the network and lets users select and deliver only high-value or high-risk data based on application, location and activity.

Applications are classified into categories that are automatically updated as the landscape evolves. This allows a team to take actions on a 'family' of applications versus setting policies on individual apps. Examples of application families include antivirus, audio/video, database, ERP, gaming, messenger, peer-to-peer, telephony, webmail, and dozens more.

Now each tool is more efficient since it no longer needs to store and process large volumes of irrelevant traffic. NetOps can apply existing tools across a larger area by prioritising only core business applications and accelerate the investigation of network and application performance issues with easier data isolation.

SecOps teams can extend current tools to a larger attack surface, securing more of the network and preventing sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII), from being routed to monitoring and recording tools.

While identifying applications is a serious challenge in the cloud, obtaining even basic metadata such as NetFlow is problematic in public IaaS. However, it's possible to derive basic details such as which IP addresses are used and by whom, along with port and protocol details.

But the real need is for summarised information, context-aware information about raw packets, based on Layers 47, that provides insights into user behaviour, security breaches, customer experience and infrastructure health.

Advanced metadata attributes expand on app layer visibility and support a comprehensive approach to obtaining application behaviour. Especially when deploying workloads in the cloud, users can acquire critical flow details, reduce false positives by separating signal from noise, identify nefarious data extraction, and accelerate threat detection through proactive, real-time traffic monitoring as well as troubleshooting forensics.

Observability and SIEM solutions use this information to correlate and analyse log data from servers and security appliances. Network security and monitoring tools leverage this metadata to deliver the insight and analytics needed to manage the opportunities and risks associated with cloud deployments.

And administrators can automate anomaly detection, stop cyber threats that overcome perimeter or end-point protection, identify bottlenecks, and understand latency issues.

Based on Layers 47, application metadata intelligence (AMI) supplies network and security tools with more than 5,000 metadata characteristics that shed light on the application's performance, customer experience, and security. Advanced tech extracts and appends these elements to NetFlow and IPFIX. Records include:

Advanced L7 metadata can be applied in a variety of use cases. AMI's principal deployment is in providing metadata to SIEM and observability tools for security analysis. This can help to:

While IaaS and private cloud orchestration and management platforms are remarkably resilient, dynamic, and infinitely scalable, they don't offer next-generation network packet brokers (NGNPB) with a deep observability pipeline. Such brokers aggregate, filter and distribute all traffic to the proper security and networking tools. They also provide the compute power behind AFI and AMI.

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Cloud Performance Management Market Worth $3.9 Billion By 2027 – Exclusive Report by MarketsandMarkets – PR Newswire

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

CHICAGO, Aug. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Cloud Performance Management Marketto grow from USD 1.5 billion in 2022 to USD 3.9 billion by 2027, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.6% during the forecast period, according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets. The major factors driving the growth of the Cloud Performance Management market include increasing demand of AL, Big data, cloud solutions.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Cloud Performance Management Market"233 Tables47 Figures225 Pages

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Large Enterprises segment to hold the highest market size during the forecast period

Organizations with more than 1,000 employees are categorized as large enterprises. The traction of cloud performance management in large enterprises is said to be higher than SMEs, as they are adopting cloud performance management solutions to improve business operational efficiency across regions.

The increasing deployment of SaaS offerings such as customer relationship management, human capital management, enterprise resource management, and other financial applications creates an advantageous environment for cloud monitoring adoption, particularly in large organisations, improve the overall cloud system, improve the cloud monitoring, and sustain themselves in intense competition. Large enterprises introspect and retrospect on implementing best practices to ensure effective performance management. CMaaS (Cloud-Monitoring-as-a-Service) is a popular software solution for large businesses seeking a fully managed cloud monitoring service for cloud and virtualized environments. These solutions are provided by third-party providers and are monitored 24 hours a day by IT experts with access to the most recent APM technologies and services.

Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance to record the fastest market size during the forecast period

The BFSI vertical is crucial as it deals with financial data. Economic changes significantly affect this vertical. Regulatory compliances and the demand for new services have created an environment where financial institutions are finding cloud computing more important than ever to stay competitive. A recent worldwide survey on public cloud computing adoption in BFSI states that 80% of the financial institutions are considering hybrid & multi-cloud strategies to avoid vendor lock-in. It provides these critical financial institutions the much-needed flexibility to switch to alternate public cloud operators in case of an outage to avoid any interruptions in the services.

New competitors, new technologies, and new consumer expectations are impacting the BFSI sector. Digital transformation provides organizations access to new customer bases and offers enhanced visibility into consumer behaviour through advanced analytics, which helps organizations in creating targeted products for their customers. Most banks are adopting cloud performance management solutions owing to their benefits, such as configuration management and infrastructure automation to increase stability, security, and efficiency. The BFSI business is expected to hold a significant share of the cloud performance management market due to different advantages offered by cloud-based technologies, such as improved performance, reduced total cost of ownership, improved visibility, and standard industry practices. Cloud performance management is adopted for mission-critical industry verticals, such as BFSI, extensively to improve revenue generation, increase customer insights, contain costs, deliver market-relevant products quickly and efficiently, and help monetize enterprise data assets.

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Asia Pacific is projected to be the highest CAGR during the forecast period

The Asia Pacific region comprises emerging economies, such as China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and the rest of Asia Pacific. The demand for managed cloud and professional services is growing, particularly in countries with a mature cloud landscape, such as Japan. This is due to the increasing migration of complex Big Data and workloads such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) to cloud platforms. The expansion of open source technologies, as well as advancements in API-accessible single-tenant cloud servers, also helps to promote acceptance of managed private cloud providers. Furthermore, with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), the cloud is becoming increasingly important in enabling the development and delivery of IoT applications. To deal with the data explosion, more businesses in Asia-Pacific are redesigning their networks and deploying cloud services.

The huge amount of data lead to the complexity of managing workloads and applications manually, which would act as the major factor in the adoption of cloud performance management solutions among enterprises in this region. Also, the affordability and ease of deployment of cloud performance management solutions would act as the driving factors for the adoption of cloud technologies among enterprises. The increasing trend toward cloud-based solutions is expected to trigger the growth of the cloud performance management market in this region. Integration of latest technologies, such as AI, analytics, ML, drives the demand for cloud performance management solutions in the region. The availability of advanced and reliable cloud infrastructure presents attractive opportunities for cloud-based technologies. Increase in investments in Asia Pacific by giant cloud providers such as Google is the driver for the growth of CPM market in this region. Strong technological advancements and government initiatives have driven the cloud performance management market. Increase in urbanization, technological innovation, and government support for the digital economy with suitable policies and compliance (regulations) have driven the cloud performance management market.

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Market Players

Some prominent players across all service types profiled in the Cloud Performance Management Market study include Microsoft (US), IBM (US), HPE (US), Oracle (US), VMware (US), CA Technologies (US), Riverbed (US), Dynatrace (US), App Dynamics (US), BMC Software (US).

Browse Adjacent Markets: Cloud Computing Market Research Reports & Consulting

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About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledge Store" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

Contact:Mr. Aashish MehraMarketsandMarkets INC.630 Dundee RoadSuite 430Northbrook, IL 60062USA: +1-888-600-6441Email: [emailprotected]Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/cloud-performance-management-market.aspVisit Our Website: https://www.marketsandmarkets.comContent Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/cloud-performance-management.asp

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Google is exiting the IoT services business. Microsoft is doing the opposite – ZDNet

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

Credit: Microsoft

Google will be shuttering its IoT Core service; the company disclosed last week. Its stated reason: Partners can better manage customers' IoT services and devices. (So much for the idea that IoT workloads are key to growing the cloud business....)

While Microsoft also is relying heavily on partners as part of its IoT and edge-computing strategies, it is continuing to build up its stable of IoT services and more tightly integrate them with Azure. CEO Satya Nadella's "intelligent cloud/intelligent edge" pitch is morphing into more of an intelligent end-to-end distributed-computing play.

Following a reorg in April this year, which resulted in the Azure IoT engineering and PM teams moving into the Azure Edge + Platform group, Microsoft has been working to consolidate its IoT and edge-computing teams and merge those offerings more seamlessly with Azure. Microsoft officials said at the time that they wanted to integrate IoT/edge with the company's Azure Arc hybrid-management service; Azure Stack, its family of appliances and hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) products; and Azure Edge Zones, its 5G-connected cloud services available from edge facilities. By doing so, Microsoft can pitch edge devices as being manageable from Azure across the globe.

Among Microsoft's current IoT offerings: Azure IoT Hub, a service for connecting, monitoring and managing IoT assets; Azure Digital Twins, which uses "spatial intelligence" to model physical environments; Azure IoT Edge, which brings analytics to edge-computing devices; Azure IoT Central; Windows for IoT, which enables users to build edge solutions using Microsoft tools. On the IoT OS front, Microsoft has Azure RTOS, its real-time IoT platform; Azure Sphere, its Linux-based microcontroller OS platform and services; Windows 11 IoT Enterprise and Windows 10 IoT Core -- a legacy IoT OS platform which Microsoft still supports but which hasn't been updated substantially since 2018.

(I'm not anywhere near as familiar with what AWS has in the space, but a quick search indicates it has a full suite of IoT servicesfor industrial, commercial and automotive. It also offers FreeRTOS, its IoT Greengrass open-source edge runtime and a dev kit for education-centric IoT devices. Like Microsoft, AI/ML looks to be a key workload here. Unlike Microsoft, AWS also has a substantial home/consumer IoT presence.)

I've been asking Microsoft since April this year for an update on the company's IoT and edge-computing plans and have been told repeatedly that it wasn't a good time for a briefing.

However, at the company's Build developers conference in May, Microsoft officials presented a few sessions about the company's evolving IoT and edge strategies.

A few takeaways:

Microsoft also played up heavily at Build this year the idea of a "hybrid loop." The concept: Hybrid apps will be able to allocate resources locally on PCs and in the cloud dynamically. The cloud becomes an additional computing resource for these kinds of applications, and applications -- especially AI/ML-enabled ones -- can opt to do processing locally on an edge device or in the cloud (or both). This concept definitely relies on IoT and edge devices and services becoming more deeply integrated with Azure.

I'm thinking we'll hear more about Microsoft's updated IoT and edge-computing vision at its upcoming Ignite 2022 IT pro conference in mid-October, if not before.

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Top 20 IT KPIs and Metrics You Must Track Today – Security Boulevard

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

Non-technical executives have long, and unjustly, considered IT as a call center function. However, we (in the IT industry) of course know that IT is in fact a strategic business function. This gap between perceived value and actual value stems from IT historically not setting or tracking many key performance indicators (KPIs).

Sincewe are potentially headed into a recession, its never been more important to define KPIs, set baselines, measure current performance, evaluate trends, report on your successes and take action where needed. This goes for both internal and external IT service providers. Internal IT teams need to protect both their headcount and budgets. On the other hand, MSPs need to make sure their clients understand the value they provide to reduce churn and ensure there are upsell channels.

What are IT KPIs?

A KPI or key performance indicator is a measure of how effectively a particular department in an organization is achieving its key business objectives. As the name suggests, IT KPIs are used to evaluate the performance of internal IT departments and MSPs.

IT KPIs track all critical aspects of quality associated with IT projects and help deliver them most effectively in a timely manner and within allocated budgets. This is achieved by tracking, analyzing and optimizing various critical parameters associated with IT such as IT cost management, problem-solving and ticket management.

Why is it important to track IT KPIs?

Tracking IT KPIs helps:

20 IT KPIs and metrics to track

We have segregated the various IT KPIs and metrics into four categories based on the various measures of success they track, namely financial metrics, operational metrics, system metrics and security metrics. Lets take a look at all these metrics in detail below:

Financial metrics

Tracking the performance of an IT initiative is imperative to understand the value of the invested resources. Financial metrics help evaluate the financial performance of IT projects and initiatives and help bridge the gap between their perceived value and actual value. Some of the most important financial metrics are:

1. IT spend vs. plan

This financial metric helps keep track of your IT expenses and analyze how effectively you are spending the IT budget allocated to you. Are you spending the entire budget? Are you consistently saving money on your IT initiatives? Is your function well-managed? This metric helps answer these finance-related questions and more.

2. Money saved in negotiations

Through this financial metric, you can find out whether you have been able to save any additional costs on negotiations. It tracks savings from cutting unused seats, consolidating multiple tools into a single solution, swapping to a lower cost solution or swapping to a longer-term contract with a cheaper per-year rate.

This metric helps evaluate the actual return of investment (ROI) for the dollars spent on IT projects and initiatives. Successful organizations usually aim for a 3:1 ROI to make the most of their IT investments. You can calculate your IT ROI by dividing the benefits of your IT program by the cost of investment.

Operational metrics

Operational metrics are used to track the performance of an organization in real time or over a specific time period. When considering the IT department, operational metrics are focused at measuring the performance of IT functions and resources such as services, technologies and workforce used to conduct business operations. Common operational metrics include:

4. Project success rate

This operational metric helps measure the percentage of successfully completed IT projects as well as the percentage of projects that are successfully completed on time.

To calculate the SLA hit rate, internal IT teams and MSPs agree upon the numbers in terms of performance and quality and measure them either monthly or quarterly to see whether the service-level agreements are being delivered upon. You can calculate the percentage of tickets with the previously agreed upon service-level agreement.

6. First contact resolution rate

With this metric, you can calculate the percentage of tickets that are resolved on the first touch point. This is an important measure of how efficiently the IT team is working to resolve incidents.

Most IT departments use this metric to track the number of tickets generated on a daily or weekly basis. The tracking of this operational metric depends entirely on what your executive or clients care to know about.

8. Number of tasks automated

This metric should always record a YoY increase. Common tasks that you can automate to boost efficiency are patching, user onboarding and auto-remediation of common tickets. If your RMM or endpoint management solution isnt helping you with automation of common IT processes, you should upgrade to a best-in-class solution that can help you automate your everyday tasks.

9. Endpoints per technician

This particular metric will vary largely depending on whether youre an internal IT department or an MSP. This metric helps you evaluate the number of endpoints each of your technicians is responsible for. A best-in-class RMM solution can easily support the ratio of 500 endpoints to 1 technician without burning out the technicians due to lack of automation.

10. Retention rate of staff

With this metric, you can measure how long you retain your staff. In case the turnover is high, you might want to track the training costs, time it takes to train a new hire or the time it takes to hire new staff. While measuring the retention rate, you must exclude staff members that have been terminated for poor performance.

System metrics

System metrics are focused on ensuring that all IT systems such as hardware and applications are operating reliably. These metrics help organizations evaluate historical system performance and accordingly predict future performance. System metrics equip IT teams with the information required to scale their business and also pursue new opportunities that are largely reliant on a stable IT infrastructure.

With this KPI, you can track and record the number of IT assets in your IT infrastructure. You can also segment this asset information based on the type of IT asset such as the number of desktops, laptops, phones and servers.

12. System availability (uptime)

Another important system KPI to track is system availability or uptime, which is the percentage of time that end users are able to work on your IT systems. To adequately measure this KPI, you must refer to the rule of 9s. You must aim for a minimum of 99.9% uptime that is about 9 hours per year or 10 minutes per week.

13. Server availability (uptime)

Server availability is measured as the percentage of time that the servers on your network are up and running. You can calculate server uptime by subtracting the total downtime from the total time and dividing the result by the total amount of time over a specific period. Similar to system availability, server uptime of over 99.9% is considered favorable.

14. Server and/or cloud utilization

Server utilization is yet another important metric that helps monitor and track system performance. With this metric, you can track the amount of time a server is busy. Some organizations also track cloud utilization as a way of measuring their system performance.

15. Aggregate workstation utilization

Workstation utilization is another important KPI serving as a measure of system performance. Ittracks the percentage of total workstation memory utilized in an organization.

Security metrics

Security metrics are a critical IT KPI focused on measuring how efficiently your security efforts are working toward keeping your systems and networks protected from security threats. Tracking security metrics is critical to maintaining the integrity of your IT infrastructure and making regular adjustments to ensure you stay on top of your security efforts.

16. Antivirus/antimalware deployment

This metric tracks the deployment status of antivirus/antimalware on your systems. As an important security metric, this KPI ideally should be 100% for your IT infrastructure to be performing most efficiently and securely.

17. Number of open vulnerabilities

With this metric, IT teams and MSPs can track the number of open vulnerabilities for both computers and servers on their network. It helps monitor your IT infrastructures exposure to potential threats and enables you to come up with strategies to bolster your companys IT security posture with quicker incident remediation.

Monitoring the success rate of patch deployment is critical for ensuring that your systems are well-patched and up-to-date. The patch deployment success metric captures the percentage of patches deployed and helps track the progress of the patch deployment process by your IT department.

19. Days since last incident

With this metric, you can calculate the number of days that have passed since the last incident in your IT infrastructure. This helps IT teams and MSPs measure the efficacy of any strategic and technological changes they may have made to reduce the likelihood of incidents. Ideally, the gap between two incidents should keep on steadily increasing to account for security upgrades.

Another great security metric that can help monitor and improve your security health. It helps track the percentage of machines backed up and measures the number of days since last backup. With this metric, you can stay on top of your backup routine and significantly minimize the possibility of losing your critical data to a security incident.

Improve IT performance with Kaseya

If you feel like your current IT stack is getting in the way of you tracking your KPIs and boosting IT performance, lets talk. Kaseya has a wide range of industry-leading IT management solutions that can be yours at 30% less cost than traditional IT solutions. Learn more about how Kaseya VSA can automate your everyday tasks and help improve your IT performance by requesting your free demo today.

The post Top 20 IT KPIs and Metrics You Must Track Today appeared first on Kaseya.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Blog - Kaseya authored by Kaseya. Read the original post at: https://www.kaseya.com/blog/2022/08/23/it-kpis-metrics/

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Top 20 IT KPIs and Metrics You Must Track Today - Security Boulevard

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New quantum physics, solving puzzles of Wheeler’s delayed choice and a particle’s passing N slits simultaneously and quantum oscillator in experiments…

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

In photoelectric effect, light waves cannot knock electrons out; and in a photons passing through many slit experiment, a photon cannot pass through many slits at the same time. Namely, the two physical processes, respectively, reflect one aspect of wave-particle duality of quantum particle. On the other hand, in photoelectric effect, photons can knock electrons out; in the many slit experiment, a photon light wave can pass through many slits at the same time. The two physical processes then are complementarily equivalent in wave-particle duality of quantum particle. That is, in wave-particle duality of quantum particle, the first and the second cases use the particle property and the wave property, respectively. Namely, a photon can show as either particle or wave, but cannot be observed as both at the same time for a physics process.

We now generally show them by exact deduction.

In 4-dimensional momentum representation of quantum theory, when considering wave function (phi (vec{p},E)) of momentum representation, one has25

$$ psi (vec{r},t) = frac{1}{{(2pi hbar )^{2} }}int_{ - infty }^{infty } {} phi (vec{p},E)e^{{i(vec{p} cdot vec{r} - tE)/hbar }} dvec{p}dE = frac{1}{{(2pi hbar )^{3/2} }}int_{ - infty }^{infty } {} varphi (vec{p},t)e^{{ivec{p} cdot vec{r}/hbar }} dvec{p} $$

(1)

Equation(1) is a general Fourier transformation of ( , phi (vec{p},E)) (about the plane wave energy E and momentum (vec{p})) from the four-dimensional momentum representation state vector ( , phi (vec{p},E)) to the projection of the plane wave basic vector (e^{{i(vec{p} cdot vec{r} - tE)/hbar }}) and making integration for getting ( , psi (vec{r},t)), which make ( , psi (vec{r},t)) have not only the characteristics of the probabilistic state vector of the particle but also the characteristics of the plane wave, i.e., make ( , psi (vec{r},t)) have the state vector characteristics of wave-particle duality.

Because the momentum representation state vector ( , phi (vec{p},E)) is nonlocal, it also reflects that the system has the global characteristics of momentum (vec{p}) and energy (E), this global property can be the integrity of the particle, e.g., even including different physics qualities, e.g., spin, since the different qualities are not related to space coordinates.

Therefore, the expression (1) exactly shows wave-particle dualitys origin which displays that the wave property is originating from the plane wave part of the general Fourier expansion, and the particle property is originating from the general Fourier expansion coefficients with the particles global property even including different spins.

Therefore, we discover, for arbitrary particle, on an aspect, it propagates with the plane wave of the four-dimensional momentum ((vec{p},E)) as the propagation amplitude of the plane wave; on another aspect, it moves as a particle with the four-dimensional momentum ((vec{p},E)). Especially, when the expanding coefficients have different spins, it moves as a particle with both the four-dimensional momentum ((vec{p},E)) and the different spins, which are the new true physics and the new physical pictures, and uncover the corresponding expressions contributions of both wave part and particle part of wave-particle duality origin. Namely, Eq.(1) is the function of unified expression of wave-particle duality.

A little bit of philosophical insight on what this work means that the unified expression of wave-particle duality is just the superposition state of wave-particle duality, and the superposition state of wave-particle duality is physically real.

Furthermore, the infinite big momenta and energy show their corresponding to infinite big velocity in Eq.(1), and then the infinite big velocity is included, i.e., the wave function (1) of coordinate representation has the contribution of infinite big momentum or speed, namely, the wave function at any spatial and time points has the contributions from negative to positive infinite big momenta or speeds. Similarly, when we do the inverse Fourier transformation of Eq.(1) about whole spacetime coordinates, we find that the wave function of 4-dimentional momentum representation has the contributions of the whole 4-dimentional spacetime, i.e., the wave function at any 4-dimentialal momentum spatial point has the contributions from the whole spacetime. Thus, the above both cases just the reasons that Feynman path integral can be done in whole 4-dimentional spacetime or momentum space.

Using Eq.(1), we have wave function of momentum representation at time t

$$ varphi (vec{p},t) = frac{1}{{(2pi hbar )^{1/2} }}int_{ - infty }^{infty } {} phi (vec{p},E)e^{ - itE/hbar } dE $$

(2)

On the other hand, using Huygens' Principle, one has the basic wave analysis:

Every point of a wave front may be considered the source of secondary wavelets that spread out in all directions with a speed equal to the speed of propagation of the waves. What this means is that when one has a wave, he can view the "edge" of the wave as actually creating a series of circular waves. These waves combine together in most cases to just continue the propagation, and in some cases there are significant observable effects. The wave front can be viewed as the line tangent to all of these circular waves26.

Further using Eq.(1) and Huygens principle above, we have N subwave functions through N slits

$$ psi (vec{r}_{j} ,t) = frac{1}{{(2pi hbar )^{2} }}int_{ - infty }^{infty } {} phi (vec{p},E)e^{{i(vec{p} cdot vec{r}_{j} - tE)/hbar }} dvec{p}dE = frac{1}{{(2pi hbar )^{3/2} }}int_{ - infty }^{infty } {} varphi (vec{p},t)e^{{ivec{p} cdot vec{r}_{j} /hbar }} dvec{p} $$

(3)

where j=1,2,,N. No losing generality and for simplicity, taking N=2 just shows the up slit and down slit, respectively, in Young's Double Slits in Fig.2.

Interference of a particle plane wave in Young's double slit experiment.

Therefore, Eqs.(1)(3) can also be seen as a kind of expressions of Huygens principle. Consequently, these Fourier expansions physically imply new physics, and are not only just the mathematical tools.

The superposition density function of two subwaves is just Eq.(5) in Section Solutions to Wheelers delayed choice puzzle and puzzle of a particles passing double slits simultaneously by the physics processes of the exact quantum physics expressions, the interference terms of the two subwaves in Fig.2 are just the third term and fourth term in Eq.(5).

These properties are exactly conforming to the plane wave properties of the single particle, thus a particle plane wave can simultaneously pass through N slits, for simplicity, Young's Double Slits in Fig.2, Eq.(3) just generally give the both subwave functions that simultaneously pass through N slits, for simplicity, two slits s1 and s2 in Young's Double Slits, respectively.

The N subwave functions have the same amplitude (phi (vec{p},E)) for some certain (vec{p},E), (e^{{i(vec{p} cdot vec{r}_{j} - tE)/hbar }}) (j=1, 2,, N) are just N plane subwave functions in Eq.(3), and the N probabilistic wave functions in Eq.(3) integrate for ((vec{p},E)) from negative infinite to positive infinite, i.e., having considered all possibility, which make the N expressions (3) exact.

The global property of a particle does not allow the single particle to simultaneously pass through N slits, for simplicity, Young's double slits, in reality, the interference of a particle wave is observed, which just show a particle wave simultaneously does pass the N slits, for simplicity, the double slits, but all theories up to now cannot solve the hard puzzle of a particles passing the N slits, e.g., Youngs double slits simultaneously.

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Meet New ODBC Drivers for Cloud Data Warehouses and Services – openPR

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

Prague, Czech Republic, August 24, 2022 --(PR.com)--Devart, a recognized vendor of world-class data connectivity solutions for various data connection technologies and frameworks, released 14 new ODBC drivers for Cloud Data Warehouses and Services. These drivers allow easy access to the below data sources from various ETL, BI, reporting, and database management tools and programming languages. Data access is possible on x32-bit and x64-bit Windows, as well as Linux and macOS.

Also, the drivers fully support standard ODBC API functions and data types and enable fast access to live data from anywhere.

Here is the detailed list of the sources:1. Cloud Data Warehouses: Azure Synapse Analytics, QuestDB, Snowflake;2. Cloud CRM: PipeDrive;3. Communication: Slack;4. E-commerce: WooCommerce;5. Help Desk: Zendesk;6. Marketing: Active Campaign, EmailOctopus, Klaviyo, Marketo;7. Payment Processing: Square;8. Project Management: Asana;9. Other Applications: WordPress.

To learn more about the recent release, visit:https://blog.devart.com/14-new-odbc-drivers-for-cloud-data-warehouses-and-services-released.html

ODBC Drivers are high-performance connectivity solutions with enterprise-level features for accessing the most popular database management systems and cloud services from ODBC-compliant reporting, analytics, BI, and ETL tools on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, macOS, and Linux.

About Devart

Devart is one of the leading developers of database tools and administration software, ALM solutions, data providers for various database servers, data integration, and backup solutions. The company also implements Web and Mobile development projects.

For additional information about Devart, visit https://www.devart.com/.

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Best ZenMate Alternative in 2022 [5 VPNs Similar to ZenMate] – Cloudwards

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

ZenMate is a VPN service that offers decent speeds and various security protocols. However, the feature set isnt impressive, especially when compared with major VPN services like ExpressVPN. In this guide, we help you select the best ZenMate alternative.

The downfalls of ZenMate VPN is not just the lack of features, though. The website has some conflicting information. All pages, including the checkout page, tout a 30-day money-back guarantee. However, the refund policy states that subscribers only have a 14-day window to claim a refund.

If youre looking for a better alternative, we have you covered. Below, we provide an overview of five of the best VPN services as potential ZenMate VPN alternatives.

ZenMate VPN has a free browser extension that allows you to use a VPN connection only for the browser. It also comes with several restrictions, like access to a maximum of four server locations for IP addresses and a top speed of 2 Mbps. However, the extension is only available on the paid version.

ZenMate is an average VPN, and better options exist. For only a few extra cents per month, you can get a ton of extra features and much better performance.

You can get the ZenMate VPN for free by using its free browser extension. The extension comes with limited functionality and offers a maximum speed of 2 Mbps and access to four server locations.

We did some legwork to find the best ZenMate VPN alternatives, and here are the five services we found:

ZenMate offers OpenVPN and IKv2 combined with AES-256 encryption. Thats an excellent combination for online security, but other VPNs also offer newer protocols like WireGuard. ZenMate fails to offer more options outside of OpenVPN and IKEv2.

With ZenMate, you also dont get split tunneling, an increasingly common feature. While the VPN will help you access major streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, you might need to switch between servers to find one that works.

ZenMates pricing isnt all that great given its feature set. For only a few cents more, you can get much better performance from other low-cost VPNs like Surfshark or CyberGhost. We talk in greater detail about ZenMate in our ZenMate review.

We looked at ZenMates shortcomings and picked the best alternatives. We give you an overview of the top picks below.

ExpressVPN is the best VPN for streaming.

More details about ExpressVPN:

Pros:

ExpressVPN is hands down the best VPN service currently available in the market. It performs well across the board in terms of streaming, connection speeds, torrenting and security.

You get several security protocols to choose from, including OpenVPN, IKEv2, IPsec, PPTP, L2TP and Lightway ExpressVPNs proprietary protocol that optimizes performance. With ExpressVPN, you also get split tunneling, a feature thats not available on ZenMate. ExpressVPN also offers all the essentials like a kill switch and DNS leak protection.

If you want to view geoblocked content on your gaming console or a Chrome OS device, ExpressVPN has an app for those devices and many more, while ZenMate doesnt. You can still view geoblocked content on those devices as a ZenMate user, but youll need to take the tedious route of first installing the VPN on a router.

ExpressVPN is the best VPN for streaming. It gets into most streaming platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and Hulu. In addition to easily getting past geoblocks, ExpressVPN also offers excellent download speeds. You wont experience any buffering, even when youre streaming in 4K.

You also get a feature called MediaStreamer that spoofs your location without additional encryption. Your VPN connection may become less secure and you wont have an option to choose an IP that belongs to a specific country. However, youll enjoy faster connection speeds and better streaming performance. Learn more about ExpressVPN in our ExpressVPN review.

You can try ExpressVPN risk-free using the 30-day money-back guarantee.

ExpressVPN is the best among major VPN providers and is priced as such. The one-year plan is its best value. If you dont mind spending a little extra to get the best VPN service, ExpressVPN is the perfect choice. If youre not entirely confident, try it out risk-free using the 30-day money-back guarantee, and if you dont like it, you can claim a full refund.

NordVPN is the fastest VPN service out there.

More details about NordVPN:

Pros:

NordVPN is a very popular VPN service and one of the best alternatives to ZenMate. With over 5,500 VPN servers across 59 countries, NordVPN lets you acquire IP addresses for all popular locations, so you can access other countries content libraries on streaming platforms.

Speaking of streaming, NordVPN gets into all major platforms. More importantly, NordVPN is the fastest VPN as per our speed tests. Fast speeds translate to a pleasant, buffer-free streaming experience.

NordVPN fills in all the gaps in ZenMates feature set. For example, you get split tunneling with NordVPN, and it offers three security protocols: OpenVPN, IKEv2 and NordLynx (NordVPNs proprietary protocol inspired by WireGuard). You also get to choose between two ciphers AES-256 and ChaCha20 (when you use NordLynx).

The NordVPN app comes with a kill switch, offers DNS leak protection and has excellent security protection. More importantly, NordVPN provides several types of VPN servers to increase your online security.

NordVPN offers four types of specialty servers: double VPN, P2P, Onion over VPN and obfuscated servers. Connecting to a specialty VPN server translates to an even more secure network.

Double VPN is the most commonly used type of the four, in which your internet traffic goes through two secure servers, adding an extra layer of security. Learn more about NordVPN in our comprehensive NordVPN review.

NordVPN offers great value for the money given the feature set and performance.

Considering how NordVPNs feature set and performance are similar to ExpressVPN, the two-year plan is its best value. You can still try it out before committing for the long term, using its 30-day money-back guarantee to see if it fits your needs.

Surfshark offers unlimited simultaneous connections like ZenMate.

More details about Surfshark:

Pros:

Surfshark is a feature-rich VPN that also allows unlimited simultaneous device connections, just like ZenMate. As with most major VPN services, Surfshark has all the essentials including a kill switch, split tunneling, unlimited devices and a large network of servers of over 3,200 servers across 95 countries.

Even though Surfshark arrived to the market after most VPNs on the list, it has managed to build a strong feature set. You get an ad blocker called CleanWeb that blocks ads on the browser and other apps, and a feature called NoBorders mode that enables users to bypass restrictions in censorship-heavy countries like China.

With Surfshark, you can also access geoblocked platforms more easily than you can with ZenMate. You wont need to switch between servers to find one that works for a particular streaming platform.

Unlike ZenMate, Surfshark offers several security features such as double VPN (called Multihop on Surfshark) and IP address rotation. You can use double VPN by selecting one of the 12 predefined pairs of server locations to make your connection more secure.

Surfshark offers a range of additional features like CleanWeb and NoBorders mode.

The IP address rotation feature automatically changes your IP address every few minutes. If you need even more features, you can get Surfsharks security package called Surfshark One as an add-on. The app also has the Camouflage Mode, which ensures that not even your ISP can detect the VPN.

Surfshark is more affordable than ExpressVPN and NordVPN, especially when you consider you have unlimited devices. You can also try it out with its 30-day money-back guarantee. Find out more about Surfshark in our comprehensive Surfshark review.

Surfshark Plans

CyberGhost has one of the largest server networks, with over 9,000 servers.

More details about CyberGhost:

Pros:

CyberGhost offers a massive server network with over 8,900 servers spread across 91 countries. You dont get as many security protocols to choose from as with other services, but you still get one more than ZenMate. CyberGhost offers OpenVPN, IKEv2 and WireGuard with AES-256 encryption.

CyberGhosts apps for desktop and mobile devices have a quick-connect button on the main screen and a list of servers. The app shows you the distance between your physical and server location, as well as the server load.

The information is especially helpful in CyberGhosts case, given that speed isnt the services strongest suit. The interface also makes selecting a server easier by allowing you to sort them by distance or server load.

None of the major services listed here offer anything in the way of automation. However, CyberGhost lets you automate VPN-related tasks using smart rules. For example, you can set a rule for connecting to a specific server location automatically whenever you launch the VPN app. Learn more about CyberGhosts features in our CyberGhost review.

CyberGhost is the most pocket-friendly ZenMate alternative on the list.

CyberGhost is the lowest priced service on the list with its three-year plan, its best value. It also offers a generous 45-day money-back guarantee on all annual plans. You can claim a full refund if youre not fully satisfied.

Windscribe is the best free ZenMate alternative.

More details about Windscribe:

Pros:

Cons:

Windscribe is a free ZenMate alternative. In most cases, we dont recommend using free VPNs. Theyre generally slow, unreliable and even insecure, unless theyre on our best free VPNs list and Windscribe is at the top of that list.

Even on the free version, you get top-notch connection speeds and no bandwidth cap. Like ZenMate, Windscribe also offers unlimited simultaneous connections. The free plan gives you access to servers in 10 countries and 10GB of monthly data once you confirm your email.

Windscribe also offers a powerful browser extension called R.O.B.E.R.T. However, the free version only allows you to set three custom access rules. If you want to set more than three custom access rules to block domains or IPs, youll need the paid version. Learn more about R.O.B.E.R.T. and other Windscribe features in our thorough Windscribe review.

Not many free VPNs can help you access Netflix U.S., but Windscribe can. It can also unblock other major platforms. Since Windscribe offers fast connection speeds, you wont need to worry about buffering even when youre on the free plan.

Windscribe offers flexible pricing where you can choose to add server locations.

Windscribe also has a premium version with two pricing models: build-a-plan or the time-based plan. The build-a-plan option offers more flexibility because you can choose your server locations for a dollar each and get access to unlimited data for another dollar. The build-a-plan option has a minimum checkout value of $3 per month.

Pro Plan

ZenMate has a no-logging policy, and for the most part, it should ensure your privacy online. However, its based in Germany, which is a Fourteen Eyes alliance member. If youre looking for airtight privacy, you should consider a different service like ExpressVPN or NordVPN.

ZenMate is an average VPN at best. If youre looking for top-notch security and superior performance, there are better options.

The best VPN services offer various security protocols, can easily unblock streaming platforms and come with a bunch of extra features like browser extensions such as ExpressVPN. You also dont have to shell out a lot of extra money either when you pick the right alternative to ZenMate with NordVPN and other VPNs on this list.

Have you switched to any of the ZenMate VPN alternatives? What was your experience like? Let us know in the comments below, and as always, thank you for reading.

Let us know if you liked the post. Thats the only way we can improve.

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Weird quantum experiment shows protons have more ‘charm’ than we thought – Space.com

August 24, 2022 | Author: admin

Protons may have more "charm" than we thought, new research suggests.

A proton is one of the subatomic particles that make up the nucleus of an atom. As small as protons are, they are composed of even tinier elementary particles (opens in new tab) known as quarks, which come in a variety of "flavors," or types: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. Typically, a proton is thought to be made of two up quarks and one down quark.

But a new study finds it's more complicated than that. Protons can also contain a charm quark, an elementary particle that's 1.5 times the mass of the proton itself. Even weirder, when the proton does contain the charm quark, the heavy particle still only carries about half the proton's mass.

The finding all comes down to the probabilistic world of quantum physics (opens in new tab). Though the charm quark is heavy, the chance of it popping into existence in a proton is fairly small, so the high mass and small chance basically cancel each other out. Put another way, the full mass of the charm quark doesn't get taken up by the proton, even if the charm quark is there, Science News reported (opens in new tab).

Though protons are fundamental to the structure of atoms (opens in new tab) which make up all matter they're also very complicated. Physicists don't actually know protons' fundamental structure. Quantum physics holds that beyond the up and down quarks known to be present, other quarks might pop into protons now and then, Stefano Forte, a physicist at the University of Milan, told the podcast Nature Briefing (opens in new tab). Forte was a co-author of the new paper showing evidence for the charm quark in protons, published in the journal Nature (opens in new tab) Aug. 17.

There are six types of quarks. Three are heavier than protons and three are lighter than protons. The charm quark is the lightest of the heavy batch, so researchers wanted to start with that one to find out whether a proton could contain a quark heavier than itself. They did this by taking a new approach to 35 years of particle-smashing data.

Related: Why physicists are interested in the mysterious quirks of the heftiest quark (opens in new tab)

To learn about the structure of subatomic and elementary particles, researchers fling particles against each other at blistering speeds at particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest atom smasher, located near Geneva. Scientists with the nonprofit NNPDF collaboration gathered this particle-smashing data going back to the 1980s, including examples of experiments in which photons, electrons, muons, neutri (opens in new tab)nos and even other protons were crashed into protons. By looking at the debris from these collisions, researchers can reconstruct the original state of the particles.

In the new study, the scientists handed over all of this collision data to a machine-learning algorithm designed to look for patterns without any preconceived notions of how the structures might look. The algorithm returned possible structures and the likelihood that they might actually exist.

The study found a "small but not negligible" chance of finding a charm quark, Forte told Nature Briefing. The level of evidence wasn't high enough for the researchers to declare the undeniable discovery of the charm quark in protons, but the results are the "first solid evidence" that it can be there, Forte said.

The structure of the proton is important, Forte said, because to discover new elementary particles, physicists will have to uncover minuscule differences in what theories suggest and what's actually observed. This requires extremely precise measurements of subatomic structures.

For now, physicists still need more data on the elusive "charm" within a proton. Future experiments, such as the planned Electron-Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, may help, Tim Hobbs, a theoretical physicist at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, told Science News.

Originally published on Live Science.

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