Even though most people may not realize it, small and medium businesses are the backbone of the economy. In 2016, there were 28.8 million small businesses in the US, which translates to 99.7% of all American businesses – and in fact, since the 1970s, 66% of total net new jobs are generated by small businesses, which also make for 55% of all jobs in the marketplace. Yet only 50% of those businesses are set to surpass five years and only one third will survive for at least 10 years. This means that SMB owners have to play it smart in order to increase their chances in a highly competitive market – so why not take advantage of free applications that could be ideal for your enterprise?

1. Project Management

One of the most important questions you have to deal with as an SMB is how to deal with managing various projects among the few people that you employ. There are software tools out there that can help make that easier for you, by streamlining communication between team members and allowing you to stay on top of the workflow. Asana, one of the most popular PM apps, is free for the first 15 users, making it great for small businesses. It has a flexible interface and visually documents progress, while it can integrate with services like Evernote, Google Drive, MailChimp, and WordPress.

Source: Pexels

2. Traffic Management

When your SMB has a website – as most businesses today do – then sometimes managing traffic can be daunting. A load balancing tool such as HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) allows you to allocate load across multiple servers and help optimize system performance and speed. HAProxy is a free and open source (FOSS) application– it is included in some Linux distributions, if your system runs on Linux, or it can be downloaded separately. Due to its elaborate nature, though, it also requires IT expertise to set up and maintain – so having the right people on board in-house or hiring outside help is crucial.

3. Productivity

Especially when working in small numbers or when you are freelancing, time can really fly. A good time tracking app can help both you and people on your team stay more focused on the task at hand and spend less time distracted by social media or less important tasks. RescueTime is a time management app that tracks where you allocate your precious time by website and application and allows users to set productivity goals. The basic version is completely free, but if you want features like blocking certain sites or breaking down offline activity, then you’ll have to upgrade to premium for a little extra. RescueTime is flexible across platforms and can be used on Mac, PC, and Linux, but its app is currently only available on Android.

Source: Pexels

4. Team Communication

Besides specialized project management apps, it is nice to have a tool dedicated to internal communication in order to make sure that everyone is up to date and colleagues can get easily in touch when needed. Slack is your best friend – and its basic version is free for an unlimited number of users, although it comes with space and feature limitations. You can create a shared workspace with organized communication channels, customized notifications, searchable messages and mandatory two-factor authentication for extra security.

So if you’d like to increase productivity while on a budget, there is no better way to do it than to look out for these free software tools and choose which one right for your company’s needs.

Data protection comprises of a mix of services, all poised to ensure that IT environments do not experience data loss, data leakage and downtime. Data protection technologies hold a special place for Small to Medium sized Businesses (SMBs).

Importance of Data Protection for SMBs

As businesses grow they rely on digitalization and the data generated, as a result. Data can be classified into different types such as mission critical data, frequently accessed data, infrequently accessed data and archival data. Each type presents its own unique storage requirements and challenges. The most important type of data among this chunk is mission critical data. This is the type of data that fuels all of the processes of the IT environments of a business. If this data is lost or compromised, the business experiences an outage or downtime.

Outage or downtime tends to be very costly for businesses; they incur financial repercussions and reputation damage. If an SMB does not have adequate data protection technology and techniques, then they are more susceptible to data loss or downtime and in turn financial costs and reputation damage. In the worst case scenario, an SMB may not even recover from it.

That’s why data protection technology is very important for businesses and especially SMBs.

Now the question is “What are Data Protection Technologies?”

What are Data Protection Technologies?

The major part of data protection technologies can be severed into two: Backup and disaster recovery. Backup and disaster recovery technologies are sometimes confused with one another; however, the two are very different.

The comparison between the two is an explanation for another time but the concise difference is that backup is meant to prevent data loss in all its entirety; while disaster recovery services reduce downtime by prioritizing the restoration of mission critical data.

Data Backup Options for SMBs

Data backup options for SMBs can all be summed up in two major types: Cloud backups and On-premises backups.

On-premises backups require SMBs to acquire an infrastructure, set it up and then endure the dynamic costs of maintenance, power, cooling costs and an IT professional or a team that manages the infrastructure for them. The plus side to on-premises backup appliances is that they deliver reduced latency; if an IT environment is focused on faster data flow, then backup appliances are probably the better fit.

Cloud backups enable SMBs to acquire backup services without the acquisition of infrastructure and without initial costs. Cloud backup service providers deliver pay-as-you-go payment models. Instead of commissioning a backup infrastructure that has storage resources which sit idly until they’re used; SMBs can acquire the storage space that they need with cloud technology and then scale up later to add more space.

The most well sought after attributes of cloud technology are scalability and cost effectiveness.

The downside of cloud backups is that each time a backup file is retrieved, the process incurs charges. This requires detailed management of the backup and restore processes; otherwise, cost efficiency is compromised.

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) Options for SMBs

Similar to backup solutions, disaster recovery solutions also come in two major forms: on-premises disaster recovery and cloud disaster recovery.

On-premises disaster recovery solutions comprise of an infrastructure that replicates data using combinations of technologies like data replication technology and snapshot technology. Disaster recovery solutions tend to be quite expensive because they need optimized technology to reduce RTOs (Recovery Time Objectives) and RPOs (Recovery Point Objectives) as much as they can.

Cloud disaster recovery solutions are less taxing and less expensive than on-premises disaster recovery solutions. However, as with all cloud based services, latency remains an issue. For IT environments that cannot tolerate latency, on-premises disaster recovery technology is the better option.

Till this point, we are now familiar with backup and disaster recovery technology and we know why data protection is important for SMBs.

Let’s explore some data protection best practices for SMBs.

Best Practices – What SMBs should do to efficiently protect their data

Before indulging in the best practices, I’d like to mention here that each business has their customized data requirements. This implies that what’s best for one IT environment may not be for another; one shoe does not fit all. It’s better to scrutinize your data requirements before setting up data protection solutions.

With that in mind, here’s a general set of recommendations pertaining to data protection for SMBs.

Setup a Hybrid Solution – Cloud and On-premises

Instead of setting up a single on-premises or cloud based solution, I recommend setting up a hybrid data protection solution that uses both of them.

Initially, acquire a backup appliance for all your backup purposes and setup cloud disaster recovery services with it. As the data grows, you can either scale-out the appliance or you can set it up with a cloud based service. The compatibility depends on the appliance and the vendor. It is important to make sure that the desired services are being offered before the acquisition of the solution.

The initial setup will accommodate all the SMB’s data requirements and as the requirements increase, the SMB can use cloud connect services or cloud gateway appliances to tap into the cloud and utilize the different storage tiers offered by major cloud service providers.

With this setup, SMBs can have a scalable solution that’s optimized to address all their data requirements and is cost efficient. This sort of a setup is basically future proof; SMBs don’t have to worry about future expansion.

The cloud disaster recovery service will ensure that downtime is reduced while keeping the cost implications in check.

That sums up my insight about the subject. What’s your take on it? Comment below and remember to share with other professionals.

by Erica Dhawan and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

February 27, 2018

Remote communication isn’t always easy. Do you recognize yourself in any of these examples?

At 10 p.m., a corporate lawyer gets a text from a colleague and wonders (not for the first time) if there’s a protocol about work-related texts after a certain hour.

After a long and liquid client dinner, an advertising executive opens an email from his boss reminding him to submit his expenses on time. Annoyed by this micromanagement, he immediately responds with his uncensored thoughts.

On the weekly team conference call, a remote team member is confused about whether her colleague is really “on mute” when she delays a response to a question or if she’s just not paying attention and is using this as an excuse.

When it’s possible to be set off by a phone’s mute button, it’s safe to say that we’re living in challenging times. The digital era has ushered in a revolution in communication that’s equivalent to the one surrounding the invention of the printing press. It’s changing how we speak — often in bullet points. And it’s affecting what we hear, as the jumble of information coming at us can lead to frequent misunderstandings and confusion.

People who work on remote teams face these challenges consistently. According to recent estimates from Gallup and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 22% of Americans work from home, while nearly 50% are involved with remote or virtual team work. This continuing shift calls for a new range of behaviors and skills.

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Talk about a working vacation, I have returned well-rested and intellectually nourished from the just completed Ingram Cloud Summit held at an iconic, old-school Florida hotel (Boca Resort). In my earlier blog, I spoke toward CloudBlue, a new platform announced by Ingram Micro and Microsoft. 
But there were other nuggets at this event.

Here is my take.
1. SkyKick $40m Raise. Wow – that was a surprise. As I was monitoring Seattle-based GeekWire, a story broke that migration and backup ISV SkyKick closed on a $40-million investor round. It brings its

Lauren Wood (SkyKick) with a partner.

2. Women in Technology. I attended a pre-conference afternoon panel about Women in Technology. As I like to do, I asked one question. While most of the women leaders on stage were from the corporate world, there was one like-minded SMB entrepreneur (Dao Jensen, Kaizen Tech Partners) who spoke towards feeling challenged as a woman geek in high school. I asked her about the findings in a popular book “The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance---What Women Should Know” (Shipman and Kay) wherein as young people transition from tweens to teens, men become overconfident and women have a drop in confidence. Dao and the other panelists affirmed that inflection point in life and offered sage advice, experience, etc. Bottom line. A recognition that we all need to work on inspiring confidence in women.

3. IAMCP Expanding. I’m a fan of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) monthly lunch meeting in Seattle that I attend regularly plus its annual presence at the Microsoft Inspire partner conference. I wasn’t used to seeing IAMCP at a conference like Ingram Cloud Summit. It appeared to be happy hunting to recruit new IAMCP members as the Ingram Cloud Summit catered to larger partners.

4. Microsoft IoT. The coolest thing on the tradeshow floor was the Microsoft IoT SUV. IoT was the overarching theme for the Ingram Cloud Summit (hey – every conference has to have a theme). The IoT SUV was here, now and pragmatic. I felt a lot of the IoT conversations were still too far off in the future to impact today’s cash flow. But we’re getting closer. 

The IoT SUV was very popular! 

5. Hallway 101. Long-time readers know that I prefer to work the hallways all-day every day at conferences versus attending lectures to meet people (I wasn’t a well-behaved student due to ADHD). The good news is that there are folks just like me walking ‘da halls and open to networking. Shout outs to Jeff Ponts (DataTel) and George Mellor (KloudReadiness) for sincere business development conversations.

 Jeff Ponts from DataTel

George Mellor from KloudReadiness

Really enjoyed this event and I will repeat. Join me.

Rather than recycling 'seasonal' names for OS upgrades, the company changed things up this time around.

By Gregg Keizer

Senior Reporter, Computerworld | APRIL 30, 2018

Microsoft will start distributing the next Windows 10 feature upgrade, "Windows 10 April 2018 Update," today - a few weeks later then it had been expected to arrive.

Staff members are on the frontline when it comes to cyberattacks against their employers. They’re increasingly seen by hackers as a weak link in the cybersecurity chain. That’s why most threats today come via email, aimed squarely at tricking the recipient into downloading malware, divulging log-ins or making wire transfers to the attacker. Trend Micro predicts cumulative losses from Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks alone will hit $9 billion this year.

As attacks get smarter, so must we. That’s why Trend Micro is introducing two innovative new offerings to help in the fight against email scammers. One is a new AI-powered feature designed to improve BEC detection while the other will help IT teams train their employees to spot phishing attacks. It’s one more step towards taking the fight to the bad guys.

The email threat

There’s no doubt that email is the primary threat vector for attackers targeting organizations today. The Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™ blocked more than 66 billion threats in 2017, over 85 percent of which were emails containing malicious content.

BEC is an increasingly favored tactic as the rewards can be huge. It’s hard for many organizations to spot because attacks typically don’t contain any malware; they rely mainly on social engineering of the carefully selected recipient. That recipient, usually in the finance department, is sent an email impersonating the CEO, CFO, or other executive requesting that they urgently make a wire transfer or reply with sensitive data. With average losses topping $130,000 per incident, it’s no surprise that we saw an increase in attempted BEC attacks on our customers of 106 percent between 1H and 2H 2017.

This is not to underplay the impact phishing continues to have on organizations around the globe. By targeting employees, attackers can spread malware and covertly infiltrate networks to steal sensitive data and IP. Results from the Black Hat Attendee Survey last year illustrate the impact this trend is having on organizations.

Taking action

The potential financial and reputational damage of such attacks is obvious. In the face of these rising threat levels we must hit back — and we have, with two new free tools.

Writing Style DNA includes new AI-powered technology that learns how executives write so that it can spot impersonation attempts, and sends a warning to the implied sender, recipient and the IT department. It sounds straightforward but requires serious computing power and smart AI algorithms to achieve. For each user, a personal model is created using 7,000 features of writing characteristics to train the system — things like punctuation and sentence length. We convert emails to meta data before analyzing, to protect customer’s privacy and meet compliance requirements.

Focusing on the writing style in the body of the email complements existing techniques that analyze behavior and intention. Some of these current techniques can fail if, for example, the attacker uses compromised accounts at legitimate domains to hide the true origin of the email. It’s one more tool to help IT teams push back the rising tide of email threats, and it will be made available at no extra cost as part of Cloud App Security (CAS) for Office 365 and ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange (SMEX),

First line of defense

Technology is a vital layer of defense to keep email threats at bay. But what about your employees, who are often thought of as the ‘weakest link?’

We can help here, too. A new free SaaS-based phishing simulation service can help IT teams train employees to spot attempted attacks before they have a chance to impact the organization. Phish Insight is all about enhancing awareness of your staff. All it takes is one administrator, four steps and five minutes to run a real-world exercise designed to mimic what employees might see at their desks.

With the detailed reporting results, displayed in a handy graphical interface, IT teams can then tailor their education programs to make lasting behavioral changes.

Phish Insight is now available free of charge to all organizations of all sizes around the world. The service has been available for a year in Asia and has generated huge interest as organizations leverage it to turn their weakest link into a formidable first line of defense. As email threats continue to rise, we’d encourage you to take a look.

To stop phishing and social engineering attacks it is critical to make both your people and your technology smarter. Phish Insight trains your people to better spot phishing attacks and Writing Style DNA confirms the authorship of an email to prevent CEO fraud and other types of BEC attacks.

At this week’s Ingram Micro’s Cloud Summit conference for partners, MSPs and resellers, a new line of business called CloudBlue was announced and released into the wild whacky world of cloud computing. My take is CloudBlue basically aggregates a lot of existing Ingram Micro cloud assets under one umbrella. It is considered a new division within Ingram Micro and Microsoft is a significant strategic partner in this solution. Microsoft declined to specify if it was a financial investor.

The big data analytics technology is a combination of several techniques and processing methods. What makes them effective is their collective use by enterprises to obtain relevant results for strategic management and implementation.

In spite of the investment enthusiasm, and ambition to leverage the power of data to transform the enterprise, results vary in terms of success. Organizations still struggle to forge what would be consider a “data-driven” culture. Of the executives who report starting such a project, only 40.2% report having success. Big transformations take time, and while the vast majority of firms aspire to being “data-driven”, a much smaller percentage have realized this ambition. Cultural transformations seldom occur overnight.

At this point in the evolution of big data, the challenges for most companies are not related to technology. The biggest impediments to adoption relate to cultural challenges: organizational alignment, resistance or lack of understanding, and change management.

Here are some key technologies that enable Big Data for Businesses:

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by John Reed

7% of candidates that come through referrals account for 40% of total hires

As a source of new, competent staff, employee referrals have no equal. There is no other source for candidates that generate the same ROI; in fact the 7% of candidates that come through referrals account for 40% of total hires.

New data show that employee referrals provide better candidates, higher retention rates and help companies hire faster.

Referrals are the number one source of high performing employees.

Applicants hired from a referral begin their position quicker than applicants found via job boards and career sites (after 29 days compared with 39 days via job boards and 55 via career sites).

Referral hires have higher retention rates – 46% of employee referrals stay for three years or more, compared to only 14% of those hired from job boards.

Challenges to employee referral programs

Recruiters and hiring managers realize how important and effective employee referrals are, and every large enterprise today has referral programs to stimulate their existing workforce to help identify quality candidates within their network. Companies use monetary incentives, in some cases several thousands of dollars, to get employees to refer candidates for critical open positions.

The HR question is: why do only 7% of all applications come through referrals? What is stopping employees from referring more candidates?

Recruiters declare that especially for senior roles, the peers that could make an introduction to the right candidates are usually senior managers or directors with a very busy schedule and little or no time for browsing through a company’s open positions and then identifying great candidates within their network.

The other problem is that sometimes even though a first attempt is made, employees forget to follow up, and the referral doesn’t go further.

Make referrals easy for your employees

The best way for recruiters to quickly identify great candidates through referrals would be to source talent within an employees’ network and identify candidates upfront. Once the passive candidate has been identified, the employee’s job is to simply make the introduction and let HR follow up with the talent. In order to implement and manage this process, recruiters have to:
1. Access employee’s network upfront
2. Leverage automated notification and customized messages
3. Track in real-time the status of referrals

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Microsoft adds capabilities to the Visual Studio IDE almost every month. Here's what you can expect for the rest of 2018.

By Paul Krill

Editor at Large, InfoWorld | APRIL 26, 2018

Microsoft has published a roadmap of features planned for Visual Studio 2017 in 2018.

Some key capabilities anticipated by June 2018 include:

• Setup of continuous delivery for the Azure Functions serverless computing platform.
• Faster switching of Git branches.
• Just-in-time debugging for .Net Core.
• Customizing of the Visual Studio installation location to reduce the footprint on the system drive.
• Improved startup and load performance.
• Full C++ 17 conformancein the Microsoft C++ compiler and libraries.
• Creation of F#Net Core projects.
• Ability to fix code style violations via one-click code cleanup.
• Improved Python debugging experience.
• Full support for .Net Core 2.1, which will be in a beta version.

For July through September 2018, planned key features include:

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By Raman Mehta, star Advisor, CIO | Sep 19, 2014 12:10 PM PT

With all of the excitement around Internet of Things (IoT), it can be difficult to separate hype from reality. IoT is more about disruptive new business models than technology.

Move aside SaaS, IaaS, PaaS (Software, Infrastructure, and Platform as a service) – there is a new kid, TaaS (internet of Things as a Service), in town.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a trend in which the physical world is becoming a type of giant information system—through sensors and telematics embedded in physical objects and linked through wireless networks. As with all new and exciting technologies, it's difficult to separate hype from reality. Certainly the IoT, with its promise of connecting homes and cars, smart grids and smart manufacturing fit into this category. What is different this time around is the convergence of disruptive technologies such as cloud and mobile, shrinking hardware and ubiquitous connectivity, increasing business use cases that are rewriting traditional business rulebook.

IDC says the number of connected devices will increase to 30 billion this decade. The mix of devices will shift from traditional clients such as tablets, smartphones and wearables to IoT devices ranging from sensors to jet engines, transmission grids, and facilities equipment to assembly line machinery, train switches, even cattle. The things that we expect to connect to the Internet will consists of sensors, actuators with information processing and communication capabilities that will make themselves intelligent.

While consumers eagerly await a new iWatch, Android wear­able or a new smart home device from companies such as Nest; for organizations like Ford, FedEx, and GE it is all about IoT-enabled intelligent sensors, machine-to-machine connectivity, and sophis­ticated back-end data analytics to reap the busi­ness benefits of instrumenting, configuring, connecting, contextizing, and analyzing data from equipment, vehicles, physical infrastructure, smart grids and even humans. At the heart of IoT is ma­chine-to-machine (M2M) communications.

The first thing to keep in mind about IoT is the distinction be­tween the consumer and industrial spaces. IoT industrial needs to support a vari­ety of last-mile technologies driven by unique application and environmental requirements as traditional consumer oriented wireless and mobility would not work in all situations.

We would need a whole new infrastructure where disparate devices on industrial equipment, environmental sensors, home appliances, consumer wearables can relay data, and talk to the central public or private cloud services, where most powerful data aggregation and analysis will occur.

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By: Pedro Hernandez | April 03, 2018


The acquisition of Forerunner's Mobilizer and Report Viewer will help Microsoft improve Power BI's reporting capabilities for mobile and web apps.

Looking to grow its Power BI business intelligence and data analytics ecosystem, Microsoft went shopping close to home for its latest buy.

Microsoft has acquired enterprise report rendering technologies from fellow Redmond, Wash., technology firm Forerunner Software for an undisclosed amount, the company announced on April 2. Specifically, the software giant has snapped up Forerunner Mobilizer and Report Viewer.

Forerunner Mobilizer enables organizations to turn business insights from Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) into reports that can be viewed on a variety of mobile devices. Forerunner Report Viewer can be used to embed reports derived SSRS into web applications.

The acquisition effectively spells the end of Mobilizer and Report Viewer as commercial products, although Forerunner pledged to provide support to current customers through Oct. 20, 2020. Meanwhile, Microsoft has some big plans for the software.

"This technology includes, among other things, client-side rendering of Reporting Services (*.rdl) reports, responsive UI widgets for viewing reports, and a JavaScript SDK for integrating reports into other apps—a testament to what our partners can achieve building on our open platform," wrote Christopher Finlan, senior program manager for Power BI at Microsoft, in an April 2 blog post.

Forerunner's technology will also help pave the way for SSRS reports in the Power BI service, using client-side rendering capabilities to help deliver the experience, added Finlan. Power BI is Microsoft's cloud-based business intelligence (BI) offering, using the company's public massive public cloud infrastructure to crunch the numbers and generate interactive data visualizations, dashboards and reports.


The deal will also help Microsoft squeeze SSRS reports into smartphones and other mobile devices. Finlan expects the Power BI mobile apps to provide a snappier, more responsive user interface while users await report parameter values and navigate within reports.

Finally, Forerunner's rendering technology will offer developers more options.

The ReportView rendering control from Microsoft is based on ASP.NET Web Forms, explained Finlan. After completing its integration work, his team hopes to deliver a client-side, JavaScript solution that can be integrated "into any modern app," Finlan said.

Microsoft's mission to popularize BI in the workplace goes beyond the typical mobile devices that today's business professionals tote around.

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Author: Ryan Delany, Trend Micro MSP Solution Marketing Manager

Expanding and putting more focus on your current security offerings is a great way to find new business opportunities.

By Paul Tien, Contributor, Network World | Mar 27, 2018 9:00 AM PT

File storage modernization for the small and midsize business

Evaluating the myriad options for small and midsize business that want to upgrade their storage architecture, including on-premise, cloud storage, hybrid-cloud architectures and managed service providers.

In our last two columns, we’ve focused our discussion on industry trends that are impacting storage architectures, as well as a few “broad stroke” architectures that may help businesses address the issues those trends created. For this month’s column (as well as more than a few future ones), I’d like to instead focus on solution strategies for improving and modernizing the storage architectures for today’s businesses.

Market drivers for SMB storage

Let’s start with looking at small and midsize businesses (SMBs). By our definition we’re talking about firms with less than 1,000 employees. While that’s hardly FORTUNE 500 territory, firms with hundreds of employees still have a deep need for enterprise-class file storage capabilities. Think design firms, software developers, architectural firms, creative businesses, etc. – all of these SMBs rely on their data and file storage as the lifeblood of their business.

The key drivers for SMBs that are looking to modernize their file storage are many times identical to the drivers for the rest of IT. In the cloud era, these firms want to take advantage of the clear business benefits in adopting the scalability and reliability of the cloud. SMBs also are almost always multi-office once you get above 10 employees, and these companies also commonly use freelancers or shared workspaces. As a result, the reasons for moving to the cloud are quite clear; SMBs need to maximize ROI by leveraging cloud solutions rather than buying, managing, and maintaining on-premise infrastructure. Why would you do this when Amazon, Azure and other solutions beckon?

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New documentation, still in draft form, details how companies can craft specialized reports and custom alerts from Windows Analytics' data and integrate the data with other info.

By Gregg Keizer

Senior Reporter, Computerworld | Apr 10, 2018 9:19 AM PT

Electrodes on the face and jaw pick up otherwise undetectable neuromuscular signals triggered by internal verbalizations

Gil Press, Contributor

As the big data analytics market rapidly expands to include mainstream customers, which technologies are most in demand and promise the most growth potential? The answers can be found in TechRadar: Big Data, Q1 2016, a new Forrester Research report evaluating the maturity and trajectory of 22 technologies across the entire data life cycle. The winners all contribute to real-time, predictive, and integrated insights, what big data customers want now.

Here is my take on the 10 hottest big data technologies based on Forrester’s analysis:

1. Predictive analytics: software and/or hardware solutions that allow firms to discover, evaluate, optimize, and deploy predictive models by analyzing big data sources to improve business performance or mitigate risk.
2. NoSQL databases: key-value, document, and graph databases
3. Search and knowledge discovery: tools and technologies to support self-service extraction of information and new insights from large repositories of unstructured and structured data that resides in multiple sources such as file systems, databases, streams, APIs, and other platforms and applications.
4. Stream analytics: software that can filter, aggregate, enrich, and analyze a high throughput of data from multiple disparate live data sources and in any data format.
5. In-memory data fabric: provides low-latency access and processing of large quantities of data by distributing data across the dynamic random access memory (DRAM), Flash, or SSD of a distributed computer system.
    distributed file stores: a computer network where data is stored on more than one node, often in a replicated fashion, for redundancy and performance.
     
   

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Alex Konrad, FORBES STAFF

Covering venture capital, software and startups

Dropbox made everyone wait. But its shares are now trading on the public markets after one of the most hotly-anticipated public offerings for a technology company in months.

Two hours after CEO Drew Houston and cofounder Arash Ferdowsi rang the opening bell at Nasdaq and after long minutes of the company’s executives milling around Nasdaq’s MarketSite center in Times Square in New York, Dropbox finally opened for trading at 11:35 ET as Houston grabbed a glass of champagne for a longer-than anticipated toast.

Shares of Dropbox were trading at $30.90, up 47% percent from the company’s list price of $21, as of 12 pm ET, a major boost even in what has been one of Wall Street's most troubled recent weeks for stocks.

A collaboration software company known for its file-sharing tools, Dropbox was founded by Houston and Ferdowsi in 2007 and quickly became one of Silicon Valley’s more closely watched startup companies. It reached a multi-billion-dollar valuation in 2011 and a $10 billion valuation in 2014, and reported revenue of $1.1 billion for 2017, up 31% from the year before. At its opening price of $29, Dropbox’s market capitalization would be about $11 billion.

“The market and investors responded really well to our message,” chief operating officer Dennis Woodside said in an interview. “What’s interesting to them is, we built this enduring business that combines the best of consumer tech in its virality and ability to scale—with hundreds of millions of people using it around the world—with the predictability of a subscription business.”

That positioning of Dropbox as a “consumerized enterprise” company, or a subscription software company that users bring home with them after work, has helped the company become one of the most scrutinized in Silicon Valley. In its regulatory S-1 filing for the IPO process, Dropbox had disclosed it had more than 500 million registered users, the majority of whom use the product for free: 11 million users pay for the service, according to Dropbox’s filing, paying an average of $9.33 per month.

While Dropbox says its relatively low cost of customer acquisition helped separate it from other software companies for investors, Woodside credits the decision about three years ago to build product for business use cases as arguably the most important in its path to public company. Dropbox’s business popularity had been a surprise to Houston and Ferdowsi, the COO says.

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    Everything is clear looking in the rearview mirror.

    This is the story about how it all started with SMB Nation “back in the day.”  I can literally share the first chapter of this book, right here, right now. What’s not as clear is how it all ends; the final chapters have yet to be written LOL.

For Your Consideration

    Exhibit A below depicts the first newsletter I wrote in the SMB Nation community realm. It’s about Small Business Server (SBS) of course. Look closely at the date and you’ll see it was mid-2001; a timeline marker that only justifies the fact that life is short and time goes so fast. The first issue was only 400-readers; today we can click a button to hit 50,000 readers.


Issue 1-1

Just perusing the topics is worth the price of admission alone – and causes pause for reflection on where we were and, in essence, where we’re at 17-years later. I’ll speak to a few nuggets.

On the technical side, it was all about Exchange Server 2000 SP1, Windows 2000 SP and a deep dive into an MMC-based ITProConsole. There is even a newbie tip on how to add a user.

For the business side, there was a conversation with Brian Jeans, a senior product manager in the bCentral area. I’ll be speaking with Brian Jeans in April 2018 and have an update on where he is today inside Microsoft. I make mention of a few conferences (who remembers FUSION?!?!?). And I concluded with a welcome editorial. PM me if you’d like me to email you the entire Issue 1-1 newsletter (it’s several pages long – all text back in those days!).

Looking forward

Over the years and beers, we built an avid enthusiastic community on the back of SBS. It’d be easy to fast forward the movie and simply say we’ve evolved with the times but the story is much richer than that. We’ve tried over two dozen startup ideas; most weren’t successful. Some ideas didn’t see the light of day. Several ideas were home runs such as our exploration of Microsoft Response Point, Cisco UC and VoIP. Today we’re exploring analytics.

We’ve made countless friendships along the way. But like any journey, we’ve lost a few friends due to death, divorce and irrelevancy. I celebrate the community we built and still have and stay focused on the positive. Everyone reading this blog can count grievances and resentments on two-hands but that’s not really news.

Anyways

There you have it – a focus on how it all began. BTW – did you look closely at the original name for SMB Nation? It was NetHealthMon which was an RMM play using the SBS Health Monitor before Level Platforms, Kaseya or nAble capitalized on that opportunity. What’s also interesting is that the “channel partner” (aka MSP) wasn’t part of our conversation yet; we were focused on the SBS product stack!

Talk to Me!

So what’s your day zero story? PM me.

We’ve entered a new era of cyber threats. It’s like no other that’s gone before, in that CISOs must battle not only the huge volume of “old threats” out there but also a growing array of stealthier new attacks designed to circumvent traditional tools. These could include certain types of targeted attacks, ransomware, zero-day threats, and even business process compromise. And they have to deal with a much larger attack surface created by cloud, mobility, and riskier user behavior.

That’s why, in this new era, organizations need to bridge the gap between an old and new generation of threats, IT architectures, and yes, even user behaviors. That’s just what Trend Micro XGen™ security was designed to do.

Known and unknown

IT security teams have a problem. On the one hand the volume of known bad threats knocking at the door has reached epidemic proportions. Trend Micro blocked 80 billion such attacks in 2017 alone. But that’s just the start. Thanks to the growing availability of tools and knowledge on the dark web, we’re also seeing a surge in new and unique threats – something like 500,000 every day. These require more advanced techniques to spot and block.

Deploying advanced security to all parts of the organization can be challenging because it requires different operational skills and resources. Many organizations do so with point products, which multiply the IT workload, impair visibility and performance and can leave gaps for the threats to sneak through.

The XGen difference: cross-generational

Many security vendors claim to have a single silver bullet to tackle this new era of cyber threats. I wish that were true, but it simply isn’t that straightforward. Machine learning alone is not the answer. While it can be a powerful way to predict whether an unknown file is malicious, it is also more computationally intensive with a higher rate of false positives, so is not the most efficient or effective way tackle the massive volume of known bad threats. Instead, there needs to be a ‘cross-generational’ approach that knows how to use the right threat defense technique at the right time to ensure maximum protection with the utmost efficiency. XGen™ security does exactly that, including – but not limited to – the following:

Antimalware and Content Filtering to quickly detect and block the massive number of known bad files, URLs and spam.

Behavioral Analysis including memory inspection, suspicious action monitoring and browser exploit protection examines an unknown item and its behavior at runtime to determine if it’s suspicious.

High-Fidelity Machine Learning uses mathematical algorithms to predict maliciousness, with the ability to analyze unknown files before execution and during runtime for greater accuracy,. It also features “noise cancellation” capabilities to reduce false positives.

Sandbox Analysis enables on-the-fly analysis of unknown threats – allowing them to run in a safe environment to examine their behaviors.

Intrusion Prevention shields known vulnerabilities against unknown, zero-day exploits.

Application Control allows only known good applications to install or run.

Integrity Monitoring flags any suspicious system changes.

Response and Containment enables investigative forensics, quarantine of suspicious items and automated security updates.

The Trend Micro Smart Protection Network – our cloud-based global threat intelligence which blocks 250 million threat each day – fuels these techniques to ensure customers are protected against the latest threat findings.

What’s more, the XGen™ approach to security also eases the burden on IT security. Threat defense techniques are designed to fit each layer of security—user environments, networks and hybrid clouds—making it faster and easier to deploy and manage. And, the solutions seamlessly share threat intelligence, enabling automated security updates. Everything is also nicely connected through a central console that offers visibility across security layers, speeding time to response.

As this generation quickly blurs into the next—with hackers continuing to add new types of threats to the volume of existing ones, and with the number of points to protect growing every day – IT security leaders must adopt a cross-generational approach to security.

PowerPoint has long been the tool of choice for creating business presentations, but Google Slides is worth a second look. We compare their strengths and weaknesses.

By Preston Gralla

Contributing Editor, Computerworld | MAR 27, 2018 3:00 AM PT

If you’re going to give business presentations, odds are you’ll be choosing between Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides, the two best-known presentation applications. They’re both solid, useful tools — and both have changed a great deal over the years. Given all their changes, you may want to reconsider what you’re using today.If you’re going to give business presentations, odds are you’ll be choosing between Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides, the two best-known presentation applications. They’re both solid, useful tools — and both have changed a great deal over the years. Given all their changes, you may want to reconsider what you’re using today.

To help you choose, I put them through their paces by building a presentation that many business professionals might create: announcing a new product or service line. In each program I started by looking for suitable templates, then created a new presentation; added slides; juiced them up with graphics, video and animations; collaborated with others on it; and finally, gave presentation itself.

It’s a multiplatform world, so I worked on it using a Windows PC, a Mac, an iPad, an Android tablet and an iPhone. I used the local clients and the online version of Microsoft PowerPoint, as well as the mobile versions. Google Slides is web-based but also has client versions for Android and iOS, so I tested those as well.

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Companies of all types must handle problems on a constant basis, but these challenges are more difficult for a small business. Having limited resources makes it difficult to compete with larger enterprises. Companies of all types must handle problems on a constant basis, but these challenges are more difficult for a small business. Having limited resources makes it difficult to compete with larger enterprises. 

In the past, access to something as powerful as Big Data was limited due to the costs and skills required. In recent years, however, cloud vendors have begun providing data solutions that are simpler and more affordable. For SMBs, this usually requires no more than a subscription fee to begin leveraging the benefits of big data. One report forecasts that big data use by small businesses has increased by 42 percent over the past year.

Even if you run a small proprietorship, you can still utilize big data – for example, to discover patterns and trends in your internal operations or supply chain, identifying new prospects, developing new products, improvements to efficiency, and otherwise making informed decisions to drive faster growth. 

One area where big data is proving highly effective is in employee training. In this article you'll discover how data analysis will improve your workforce and your bottom line.

Photo Credit: Unsplash.com

Meeting the Expectations of Your Employees

Big data will help you to pinpoint the skills your workers need to perform better, whether on an individual, team, or departmental basis. You can then prioritize and implement a training program that targets the skills and knowledge your employees need most. 

You can establish training courses in a variety of formats according to your needs and resources. These might involve mentor programs with veteran employees, online courses, demonstrations and lectures, or traditional classroom settings. You'll be able to determine which combination of training situations works best and how to schedule them around employee work hours.

You will need to identify which information and materials are required for your training sessions, such as instructors, video, printed handbooks, and smartphone or computer apps. If you can find the right materials and environments to suit your workforce, employees can actually become excited about attending training sessions.

Using big data to track your training programs, you can focus on the most effective training aids, developing better lesson plans, and designing new content and exercises. This way, you'll be able to provide the training that your employees will find the most engaging.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Training

Tracking the effectiveness of your training program will provide the data you need to keep making improvements for greater results. You can identify employee preferences in comparison to the rate of progress. This will help you establish more interesting and even personalized learning activities.

Big data can help you adapt your training to each employee's specific needs. Advanced e-learning technologies can improve the learning experience for everyone to provide optimal returns on your time and investment.
Immediate correlation of test results with demographic data can help you easily chart overall development as well as where individuals may be struggling. People learn at different rates and in different ways, so that some may need special attention or fresh approaches. You'll be able to determine which learning modules are most productive for which employees.

Big data analysis of training activity can also help you to spot employees who demonstrate special talents or capabilities. It would be in your company's best interests to develop these talents as much and as quickly as possible, or prepare gifted individuals for leadership roles. 

Learning through a cloud-based big data solution will provide real-time feedback for employees, instructors, and management. You can take corrective actions to improve the process as training continues. 

The cloud provides a highly responsive and flexible platform for a mobile, connected workforce. The easy accessibility of cloud computing technology has made the perk of working from home possible for an increasing number of people, so now it’s easy for remote employees to get all the benefits of education without having to leave the comfort of their home.


Minimize Employee Turnover

In the U.S., corporate spending on employee training amounted to $70 billion in 2014 and continues to grow. Your small company may not be able to commit a huge sum, but the benefits of developing a better workforce are clear. 

Employees who receive ongoing training are happier in their jobs and more committed to their employer. More capable workers are more confident, more comfortable, and more likely to remain with your company long-term. 

Zoe Weintraub of Guild Education maintains that employees who receive job training are up to 40 percent more likely to stay with their employer than those who don't receive extra training.

A business culture that involves employee skills training benefits both the company and the individual worker, which makes it well worth the investment. Your employees will understand that their efforts are important to the business and its mission. They'll have a greater sense of job satisfaction knowing that you are prepared to invest in their future.

One of the rewards of incorporating big data into your small business comes from its applications in employee training. Cloud-based systems allow you to improve and adapt training programs in real time to get the best from your workforce. At the same time, it creates a sense of involvement and loyalty in your employees. This double benefit of ongoing training makes it a shrewd investment for companies of all sizes. 

Author Bio:Jasmine Williams covers the good and the bad of today's business and marketing. When she’s not being all serious and busy, she’s usually hunched over a book or dancing in the kitchen, trying hard to maintain rhythm, and delivering some fine cooking (her family says so). Tweet her @JazzyWilliams88

Two years after its launch, the service had attracted around 30 active customers

By Peter Sayer

DG News Service - Paris bureau chief, IDG News Service | MARCH 28, 2018

SAP has decided to “sunset” a front-office service with which it hoped to crack the small business market.

Launched in May 2016, SAP Anywhere was supposed to help small companies build online stores, create marketing campaigns, manage inventory and analyze business performance. To achieve this it offered integrations with web services from Google, PayPal and United Parcel Service.

Perhaps more surprising than SAP’s retreat from the small-business market is how little ground it won there.

Despite a worldwide footprint, with launches in the U.S., China and across Europe, SAP Anywhere has fewer than 60 customers -- and almost half of those are inactive, said an SAP representative.

Inactive customers have been given 30 days notice, while active customers will be supported to the end of their current contract, said the representative.

“The needs of each customer are unique, but we will offer alternatives wherever suitable and we will be interacting with each active customer,” he said via email.

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Calvin Price

Strengths, Weaknesses, and the Likely Road Ahead

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most exciting paradigms in emerging technology. The principle of connecting billions of devices to automate networks is absolutely thrilling and has considerable applications in agriculture, manufacturing, consumer tech, and virtually all mechanically intensive industries. It also has a big problem: at its current stage, IoT is objectively infeasible and dangerous.

IoT connects a web of devices that typically operate with minimal computational power and are embedded with chips for the purpose of connectivity and little else. This is a major security flaw. Thus far, researchers have demonstrated horrifying capability and creativity in breaching IoT devices. Hackers have thus far managed to control implanted cardiac devices, entirely disable cars remotely, and launch the world’s largest DDoS attack.

The Case for Blockchain in IoT

IoT security flaws typically revolve around three areas: authentication, connection, and transaction. Devices improperly verifying, improperly connecting, or improperly spending with other devices are all major security concerns. (These are all software/protocol issues. Although is not the focus of this article, it is worth noting that IoT suffers from physical and hardware security flaws, too). A blockchain can alleviate all of these areas. Distributed ledgers seem like such a minor change to IoT networks considering how physically distributed the systems are, but the blockchain brings several killer apps with it.

Trustless: Fully operational IoT devices interact with known and (ideally) unknown devices. For example, autonomous machine repair is a big goal for the autonomous industry: when a mechanical failure or signs of deterioration is detected, the network responds by ordering new parts. In a trusted environment, such issues do not pose as a problem; in the real world, this is a major attack vector against the IoT network. But this otherwise thorny problem is solved by the trustless, consensus protocols of the blockchain, protecting from all but the most extreme malicious actors.

Auditable: Tracking the actions of network components and provably verifying that record is another big goal for IoT. Such auditability improves analytics, network performance, legal compliance, and safety. The blockchain’s immutable record is ideal for creating reliable networks histories.

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by Nathaniel Meyersohn   @CNNMoney

Dropbox wants to raise as much as $648 million when it debuts on the stock market.

The cloud storage company is selling 36 million shares for between $16 and $18, according to a regulatory filing released Monday.

Based on the number of shares of eligible for sale, Dropbox would have a valuation of about $7.4 billion. That's lower than the $10 billion Dropbox was reportedly valued at on the private market.

If there's more investor demand for the stock, Dropbox could sell another five million shares to bring the total to $745 million. Salesforce's (CRM) venture arm has agreed to buy $100 million in shares.

Dropbox will list on the Nasdaq under the stock ticker DBX.

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I’ve just returned from IBM PartnerWorld (inside of the Think conference) and over the next several blogs, I’ll share my experiences. Long story short – I got hand it to IBM for inventing itself continuously and having crossed a decade+ in the analytics field. It declared that, in the IBM partner ecosystem, 2018 is the year of simplicity. I hear that three times: simple is hard! 

Concerning channel partners, there were four pillars messages to launch the PartnerWorld conferenceand it's 2,000+ attendees. 
   

Enabling ecosystem transformation. 
The basic premise that IBM is marking it easier for Business Partners who currently resell IBM technology to shift between engagement models and move up the client value chain with flexible benefits and support through PartnerWorld, its premiere partner program. Simplification means IBM has consolidated the number of competencies offered and believes it’s added to relevancy to product authorization so that partners can get higher recognition. For those carrying the bag, here is how it works. To help partners get greater insights into their partner journey, IBM has added features to the Program Console and PartnerWorld Advisor. Additionally, IBM touted adding enhancements for partners that want to embed IBM technology into their solutions, including new bundled partner benefits and expanded SaaS trials, sandboxes, IBM Cloud credits and development assistance for those who want to build new solutions on IBM technology. Finally, IBM asserted it will continue to expand our marketing development funds, further aligning them to partners that are building new skills in areas like digital marketing so they can reach new clients across new routes and drive demand when they are ready to go to market. 

On the surface, this is all good but an interesting piece from well-known SMB Nation fan Jay McBain, now a analyst at Forrester, shared deep insights into the speed of partner transformation here. https://go.forrester.com/blogs/ibm-channel-executives-are-frustrated-with-the-pace-of-partners-transformation/   He is well qualified to do so having spent 17-years inside IBM/Lenovo and the basic premise of Mcbain’s piece is that IBM is frustrated at the partner’s transformation pace. 

Another well-known analyst, Joe Panettieri (ChanelE2E), asserted that IBM is a humble bumble here. https://go.forrester.com/blogs/ibm-channel-executives-are-frustrated-with-the-pace-of-partners-transformation/ Panettieri correctly captures that “work in progress” spirit of the executive comments in his reporting. 

Three more pillars
As promised – here are the other three messaging pillars for your consumption. In Part II of my installment, I’ll share interviews with IBM executives Carola Cazenave (VP, IBM Global Business Partner – Ecosystem Strategy & Programs), John Teltsch Jr. (General Manager – Global Business Partners) and global build winner Paola Mazza (referenced below). In Part III of my coverage, I’ll share insights from IBM Business Partner QueBit and its success with analytics. 

• Introducing Watson Build 2.0, the AI challenge to build new IP. The second iteration of our Watson Build challenge will help even more partners develop AI skills, build working prototypes of Watson-based solutions on the IBM Cloud in less than 10 months and incubate their ability to embed IBM technology faster. Last year, the first Watson Build challenge drew more than 1,300 firms to IBM design thinking workshops, spurred 400 AI-based business plans and enabled more than 100 partners to advance and develop new embedded AI solutions. Our 2017 global winner, Italian partner Blueit Group, took home the grand prize for its precision farming solution, which is designed to disrupt the agrifood industry. In phase 2, we expect even more partners to join the movement by dreaming up the next big prototype for their industry and make it a reality. 
• Launching a new, digital self-service platform. Designed for partners who are building and selling solutions with integrated IBM technology, the platform provides access to leading-edge technologies and offers technical support, pre-built code patterns and skill-building courses. Partners can also take advantage of several promotional offers to help them get started building quickly with IBM Cloud, AI and data, including 10 TB of IBM Cloud Object storage, 100,000 conversations using IBM Watson Assistant and USD 50,000 in migration services for partners migrating over USD 20,000 per month in workloads from a competitor’s cloud. Once partners are ready to take their embedded solutions to market, they can list them on the IBM Marketplace and extend their reach to new clients globally. Businesses can further extend their access to resources by joining IBM developerWorks or by becoming a member of IBM PartnerWorld.
• Expanding IBM's digital footprint with third-party cloud marketplaces. Over the past year, we have doubled down on IBM’s presence with third-party marketplaces and cloud aggregators. In 2018, we signed new deals with AppDirect and ALSO Deutschland GmbH, which means that partners and clients can now find IBM offerings in a total of 10 different cloud platforms and reach more than 60 million new customers worldwide. New and existing partners can reap the benefits of these new routes to market as new customers bundle IBM technologies with other complementary catalog offerings and partner services. This provides a new integrated route for partners to serve their clients digitally.

These new initiatives build on IBM’s next-generation ecosystem framework, which will go into effect April 10, 2018. As part of IBM’s increased commitment to its partners’ growth, IBM will launch a restructured engagement model designed to improve the end-to-end partner experience and reward partners for shifting to higher value solutions that are aligned to strategic growth areas like AI, cloud, security and as a service offerings. In the new model, partners have an opportunity to experience greater profitability by contributing value through intellectual property, focusing on new clients and building new solutions.

 It could include a new Surface Book, a Surface Pro LTE and more.

John Fingas, @jonfingas

Microsoft might not be done introducing new Surface hardware this year just because the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro are on store shelves. The company has confirmed that devices executive Panos Panay will be presenting at the company's two-day Future Decoded event (starting October 31st -- yes, Halloween), hinting that he'll introduce new hardware. A source speaking to The Verge supports this with word that there will be "at least one" new piece of hardware at the event, so it seems like Microsoft's habit of introducing new Surface machines in October will remain intact. As it stands, there are a few systems that could stand to get upgrades.

The most obvious candidate is the Surface Book. Microsoft introduced the current base model back in 2015, and the 2016 refresh ultimately amounted to a high-spec option rather than a true replacement. Provided the Surface Book line carries forward, it's due for new processors (8th-generation Core seems likely), new graphics and other tweaks that you'd expect after two years.

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We are pleased to announce that, effective March 19, 2018, ZLan Partners has joined the Sharp family. 

As a newly created branch of Sharp Business Systems (SBS), the direct sales division of Sharp Imaging and Information Company of America (Sharp), ZLan Partners will operate under the new name of "ZLan Partners, a Sharp IT Company," and we will continue to provide our clients with network design, virtual CIO, cloud, IT security, and managed network services. In addition, we will also be supporting Sharp Business Systems operations in the Chicago, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati areas as well as around the country. 

To ensure that this transition is as smooth as possible, Sharp has offered to retain all of the employees from our ZLan team so that you continue to receive the highest quality of service, support, products, and solutions to meet your organization's needs. Rest assured, ZLan remains committed to providing seamless services to new and existing customers; we value our customer relationships dearly, and we will uphold the expectations of the finest service and support that ZLan has become known for. Ultimately, our goal is to enhance our relationship and your satisfaction by leveraging the capabilities of Sharp's technology and solutions. 

To that end, it is important to note that your local ZLan service, supply, sales, and administrative telephone numbers will remain the same. As always, our team is available every business day, Monday-Friday, 7:00 am to 7:00 pm, and you can contact us at the same main number - 888.817.1115. 

Sharp is a global technology manufacturer of cutting edge electronics and a leader in the office equipment industry. Sharp's line of advanced office products and solutions have won numerous industry awards for their high levels of performance, connectivity, and security. In fact, the Sharp multifunction printer (MFP) product line has recently been awarded Pick Awards and Highly Recommended Ratings from Buyers Laboratory LLC (BLI), a world-wide and leading independent evaluator of document imaging products and solutions.  

The vision at Sharp Business Systems is to "solve the business challenges of our customers with innovative technology and solutions through local, caring people, and turn our customers into fans by exceeding their expectations." This is a vision we plan to fulfill with your organization and here is a glimpse of the great services and technologies you can now access via ZLan's acquisition by Sharp: 

• Preventative maintenance programs for maximum equipment uptime
• Offering award-winning MFPs engineered to help increase efficiency 
• Managed Print Services to curb inefficiencies and expenses in your printer fleet 
• Managed Network Service to proactively maintain the health of your IT infrastructure
• Collaborative presentation tools such as our AQUOS BOARD®interactive display systems 
• High impact professional LED monitors and multi-screen video wall display systems and digital signage• Document management and workflow software and much more ...  

We are excited about our continued partnership with you, and we look forward to addressing your IT and document management needs going forward. If you should have any immediate questions, please reach out to your ZLan Sales Account Manager. If you want to learn more about Sharp Business Systems, please visit our website at www.sharp-sbs.com. 

 Welcome to the Sharp Family!

Depending on how much you know about big data, you may be surprised to learn that a data scientist and a business analyst don’t provide the same results. If that’s the case, then you’re not alone—since these two professions are often confused with one another. That’s why Analytics@American, a masters in business analytics, created this infographic to help clear the data science fog.

Both business analysts and data scientists are experts in the use of data, but they use their expertise in different ways—as is evidenced by the current job outlook with business analysts in much higher demand than data scientists.

Typically with educational backgrounds in specialties like business and humanities, business analysts tap into the data within a variety of sources to evaluate past, present and future business performance. Then they explain those results to the business users who need them with the analytical models and approaches that are most effective for that situation.

In contrast—with a strong educational background in computer science, mathematics and technology— data scientists use statistical programming to actually develop the framework for gathering and using the data by creating and implementing algorithms that support their efforts. Such algorithms help with decision-making, data management, and the creation of visualizations to help explain the data that’s gathered.

To learn more about the differences between data scientists and business analysts, check out the infographic to make sure you’re hiring the right type of professional to meet your unique business needs.

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FILE PHOTO: The seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hangs on the wall at SEC headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S., June 24, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

By Pete Schroeder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday that many online trading platforms for cryptocurrencies should be registered with the regulator and subject to additional rules, in a further sign regulators are cracking down on the digital currency sector.

In a statement, the SEC said these “potentially unlawful” platforms may be giving investors an unearned sense of safety by labeling themselves as “exchanges.” The regulator said these platforms need to register with the SEC as a regulated national securities exchange or an alternate trading system, or ATS.

The new statement marks the latest effort by the SEC to apply federal securities laws to the rapidly growing cryptocurrency sector. SEC Chief Jay Clayton has repeatedly expressed concern about cryptocurrencies and “initial coin offerings,” or ICOs, and has urged investors to exercise caution.

“The SEC staff has concerns that many online trading platforms appear to investors as SEC-registered and regulated marketplaces when they are not,” the agency said on Wednesday.

Bitcoin, the best known cryptocurrency, fell 11.9 percent to a 1-1/2 week low of $9,450 on Wednesday on the news, before rebounding slightly to $9,760, according to prices on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.

Other digital currencies also fell sharply, with Ethereum and Ripple losing 9 percent and 8 percent, according to CoinMarketCap.

Clayton has said in the past that he generally considers ICOs to be securities offerings subject to certain regulatory requirements.

On Wednesday, the SEC went further by suggesting the majority of secondary market trading in those digital tokens was also subject to its jurisdiction.

The regulator said any platform providing trading of digital assets that behave like securities and which operate like exchanges must register with the SEC as a national securities exchange, or seek an exemption such as ATS registration.

There are dozens of platforms offering trading in cryptocurrencies, but Reuters could only identify two ATS registrations for trading cryptocurrencies, according to SEC data.

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by Jon Arnold

As businesses shift to the cloud, the combination of Microsoft Office 365 and Skype for Business (SfB) Online provides a powerful solution for workplace communications. The tight integration between these provides a rich set of both productivity applications and communications capabilities that can seamlessly be managed in the cloud. Not only does this make IT’s job easier, but there’s really no need to look elsewhere for third party UC platforms that may or may work well with your Microsoft environment.

For most businesses – especially SMBs – this would be enough to make a business case for going to the cloud with Microsoft. While this value proposition stands well on its own, it can be even stronger if you think just a bit more broadly. As you know, Microsoft has many partnerships to enhance their offerings, but one in particular is worth noting for taking O365 and SfB to another level.

In terms of supporting their customers, most SMBs have either limited or no contact center capabilities. The cost of entry is high, operational needs are complex, and IT must balance this with other priorities. That said, declining customer satisfaction ratings present a challenge to all businesses, and in today’s hyper-competitive market, reversing this trend is becoming a strategic priority for management.

While IT will be hard-pressed to get the resources needed to add or upgrade their legacy contact center, the cloud presents viable options that can bypass these obstacles. More specifically, for Microsoft users, TouchPoint Agent from Enghouse Interactive can make a good solution even better. Rather than focus on the attributes of a specific vendor, my focus here is to show how SMBs can get more value from Microsoft by rethinking their approach to customer support.

The first thing to recognize is that SMBs don’t always require a full-fledged contact center operation. Aside from the hefty financial requirements, these operations will generally require a purpose-built contact center platform, which then needs integration with your Microsoft environment.

A more practical approach is to set up a modest contact center that’s manageable today, but can be scaled up as needs dictate. Or, you could just have a simple help desk run within a department – even this level of effort can go a long way to improving customer service.

With that end result in mind, TouchPoint Agent is the kind of add-on that extends the value of your Microsoft investment beyond the workplace to include customer support. All within one platform, and all hosted in the cloud. In essence, TouchPoint Agent provides the advanced call management features needed in today’s contact center, such as intelligent call routing, call recording, CRM-driven screen pops, and rich presence for real-time management of call flows and agent support.

For many SMBs, these capabilities will be a major improvement, and represents a solution for improving customer service in ways that IT can support, and that management will understand. Being cloud-based, this approach doesn’t require any new infrastructure, and can be both deployed and scaled on the spot. On the technology side, what TouchPoint Agents brings is native Microsoft integration – especially between O365 and the phone system - making it easy to extend O365 and SfB from the workplace to the contact center.

With most contact center interactions being telephony-based, this is a great way to maximize the utility of SfB Online, and provide your customers with better-than-ever service. That’s a pretty strong return for enhancing your Microsoft environment with a single add-on, and it starts from rethinking customer support after tying all these elements together.

Jon Arnold is Principal of J Arnold & Associates, an independent analyst providing thought leadership and go-to-market counsel with a focus on the business-level impact of disruptive communications technologies. Core areas of expertise include unified communications, cloud services, collaboration, Internet of Things, future of work, contact centers, customer experience, video, VoIP, and social media.

By Mustaali Marvi

Cybercriminals are always on the hunt for targets to exploit and make an easy buck from them – and small businesses are not immune to this. Here are five types of cybersecurity breaches you need to try to prevent as well as prepare for.

Since cybercrime damages are expected to grow beyond $6 trillion per year by 2021, it is high time for small and midsize businesses to identify the cybersecurity concerns that are a threat to their existence and take the appropriate measures.

Image credit: BeeBright/Shutterstock

1. Malware attacks

"Malware" is an umbrella term for malicious software that can infiltrate and compromise a system or an entire IT infrastructure. Hackers and other cybercriminals use a wide array of malware, with ransomware being the most common and effective.

Ransomware attacks infiltrate a target system and force-encrypt target files, documents or other sensitive material. To decrypt the content, users require a decryption key or a tool that only the hackers have access to. The hackers then ask the victim to pay the ransom to regain access to their files.

2017 saw a massive burst of ransomware attacks, the most prominent being WannaCry and NotPetya. The WannaCry attack affected hundreds of thousands of systems across the globe. In fact, the U.K. National Health Service had to turn down some routine checkups and essential appointments because of the attack.

What businesses can do to protect themselves against such attacks is update their systems, because most cyberattacks, like WannaCry, exploit a security vulnerability in the operating system. Moreover, businesses should install firewalls and antivirus or antimalware tools.

2. Insider attacks

According to a 2016 Ponemon Institute survey of 874 insider attacks, 22 percent of those attacks were carried out by malicious users (employees). The same report mentioned that 56 percent of organizations reported data breaches at the hands of employees who were leaving the company or new employees.

Amongst other concerns, insider attacks remain most troubling for both large and small businesses. Employees with privileged access to sensitive data pose a bigger threat to a company than outsiders. Those who are terminated may also pose a threat to the company's data if they harbor ill feelings for the company.

What makes these attacks most damaging is that they may go unnoticed for years. After all, these attacks are often caused by people the company trusts, and it is relatively easy for such malicious users to cover their tracks when working from inside.

To reduce or avoid insider attacks, companies should keep a detailed record of the employees with privileged access to the data. The company should also terminate the access of users who have left the company.

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 by Todd Clark and Dan Wiesenfeld

During the past decade, business analytics platforms have evolved from supporting IT and finance functions to enabling business users across the enterprise. But many firms find themselves struggling to take advantage of its promise. We’ve found three main obstacles to realizing analytics’ full value, and all of them are related to people, not technology: the organization’s structure, culture, and approach to problem solving.

Structure

Structurally, analytics departments can range between two opposite but equally challenging extremes. On the one hand are data science groups that are too independent of the business. These tend to produce impressive and complex models that prove few actionable insights.

Consider the experience of one retail financial services firm. There, the analytics function was comprised of employees who used specialized software packages exclusively and specified complicated functional forms whenever possible. At the same time, the group eschewed traditional business norms such as checking in with clients, presenting results graphically, explaining analytic results in the context of the business, and connecting complex findings to conventional wisdom. The result was an isolated department that business partners viewed as unresponsive, unreliable, and not to be trusted with critical initiatives.

On the other hand, analysts who are too deeply embedded in business functions tend to be biased toward the status quo or leadership’s thinking. At a leading rental car agency, for instance, we watched fleet team analysts present intelligence purportedly showing that the fleet should skew toward newer cars. Lower maintenance costs more than compensated for the higher depreciation costs, they said. This aligned with the fleet vice president’s preference for a younger fleet.

But it turned out that the analysts had selected a biased sample of older cars with higher-than-average maintenance costs among cars of the same age. An analysis of an unbiased sample (or the entire population) would have yielded a different result. (Of course there might have been other motivations to keep a younger fleet—customer satisfaction and brand perception, to name two—but cost reduction was not one of them.)

Culture

Culturally, organizations that are too data-driven (yes, they exist) will blindly follow the implications of flawed models even if they defy common sense or run counter to business goals. That’s what happened at a financial services firm where management was mulling a change to its commission structure. They wanted to switch the basis of its salesforce compensation from raw results to performance relative to the potential of each salesperson’s market.

In response, analysts developed an admirable data envelopment model. The model simultaneously compared sales of different types of products with local demographic and financial statistics to come up with a single efficiency measure for each salesperson relative to their peers. Indeed, this seemed to have made compensation more equitable. But it reduced the compensation of salespeople who were less efficient but ultimately more valuable—causing them to defect to competitors.

Alternatively, organizations that rely too heavily on gut instinct resist adjusting their assumptions even when the data clearly indicates that those assumptions are wrong. The aforementioned rental car agency, for example, was extremely reluctant to change course even after discovering that the data didn’t support their cost reduction claims.

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Pre-recession, my basic mo·dus op·e·ran·di (MO) was to take fun seriously in business. I’ve emerged battle-tested over the past decade and have adopted a tougher stance on life: Lead…or follow…or get out of the way. I still try to have fun where I can find it but the economy isn’t as fun as a decade ago and neither am I!

First, before you proceed, I’d ask you to peruse my LinkedIn profile HERE so you  can get the foundation to understand the context I’m about to present. Hopefully you’ll note that I’m committed to education both formal and semi-formal (that would be my technology-related certifications). Second, my goal is to lead by example and have your follow along and join the parade. Third, as I’ve opined many times over the past few years. Small Business Server is GONE and it’s time to reinvent ourselves. You’ve done it before; you can do it again.

Side Hustle
It’s all Karl Palachuck’s fault. About 20-months ago at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (2016), it announced a “degree” in Data Science. Karl signed up to participate in this and I openly questioned whether it could be called a “degree” as Microsoft is not an accredited University. Fast forward the movie and the program has been rebranded a professional certificate (which is appropriate) and the title is Microsoft Professional Program. There are three majors: Data Science, Big Data and DevOps. Note that these are “earned” certificates; not honorary. These are the real deal.

I’m pursuing the Big Data certificate for a few reasons. It’s how I’m wired (I’m not a developer and flunked out of C++ years ago). I was a SQL Server MCSE in the late ‘90s to support my employer (Clark Nuber) and its vaunted Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics accounting consultant practice (once Great Plains Dynamics abandoned Btrieve on the NetWare platform, it adopted SQL Server as the engine on a Windows NT Server network). The Big Data certificate is a natural extension of my background in this area. Finally, many readers know I recently exited a Seattle-based Big Data startup in Predictive Analytics and I want to go all in and double down in this area as the New Harry!

Program Referrals

You’d be amazed concerning the support I have received when I have made mention of my latest education side hustle. After a brief mention in one of the recent MSP Tech Talk lectures (you can sign up HERE for Spring quarter where one of the lectures is a deeper dive on marketing analytics), I received several inquiries about the program and the sign-up link. Ditto a catch-up coffee last Friday with Brandon from Bainbridge Technology and his wife (she has a data analyst background). Finally, there was my friend who works for a State of California’s I-Bank (Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank) and is seeking to take his career to the next level with his passion concerning alternative energy such as solar power (yes – Big Data plays nicely in science to).

Just ‘Da Facts
I know. I know. Get to the fricking point Harry!

In the Microsoft Professional Program Big Data certification HERE https://academy.microsoft.com/en-us/professional-program/ – there are ten required courses that take 12-30 hours each to complete. The education outcome is to train you in eight new skills. Each course runs for three months and starts at the beginning of a quarter. January—March, April—June, July—September, and October —December. The capstone runs for four weeks at the beginning of each quarter: January, April, July, October. Accordingly, I have budgeted two years to complete this journey. Not only do I want to acquire new skills along the way but I want to demonstrate forward professional progress. Again, I implore you to join me right here right now.

Last missive. This is essentially free for Microsoft Partners. I consider this to be in the neighborhood of a several thousand-dollar subsidy compared to what you might pay for other programs. You can pay $99 USD to receive a completion certificate suitable for framing – something I’ll treat myself to upon successful completion.

This is a "Where is he now? Dana Epp’s new startup!" startup piece. Read on.

Few SMB Nation event speakers captivated like Dana Epp at our Fall Conferences. In SMB Nation 2009, Epp spoke in a packed, long narrow room at the now demolished Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. He performed live hacking before a mesmerized audience (long before Kevin Mitnick started his current road show). Fast forward

the movie and Dana enjoyed well-deserved success directing his last security focused startup (Scorpion Software) to an ultimate full acquisition by Kaseya, an investor-backed RMM ISV.

Disappearing Act
With all due respect, post-acquisition Epp and SMB Nation lost touch. As is often the case, the acquirer asks or requires the acquired party to join the parent company for a period of time to assist in the logistics such as brand transition. That’s exactly what Epp did – joining Kaseya as one of their principal architects. A year later Dana was promoted to CTO and asked to redefine software engineering at Kaseya. With Epp’s focus on his day job, we missed our occasional conversations.

New Startup: Wildrook
Recently my LinkedIn notification made mention of Dana’s professional update. I double-clicked down and discovered that Dana had exited Kaseya and was out in the wild again, starting Wildrook in his hometown of Vancouver BC. I spoke at length with Epp to get the scoop. Epp’s tenure at Kaseya arrived at a completion milestone once he integrated Scorpion Software into its operations and he helped fundamentally transform the CTO role. The call of the wild to get back into the startup scene resulted in the formation of Wildrook (www.wildrook.com). The core solution, called AuditWolf, is the cloud threat protection platform to protect your cloud resources in Azure. The topic of a whole ‘nother future blog post, AuditWolf takes advantage of Microsoft’s Cloud Management APIs to start aggregating data related to configuration changes, host setup and activity and user interactions with resources in Azure ,all without impacting live services. It then applies Dana’s expertise and experience in Azure security (he’s been a Microsoft Security MVP for 14 years now) to make sure your data and deployments are properly secured. “We allow you to gain operational intelligence and insight into the security of your data and deployments hosted in the cloud.” Epp shared.

When asked “why” he was building his new startup, Epp responded by saying “it is far too easy for IT professionals to screw up security in Azure. I see it every day. With the proliferation of public cloud computing outpacing cybersecurity defenses, and the concepts or IT administration blurring with DevOps to drive “Infrastructure as Code (IaC), a single click or command in the Azure Portal can cause a security violation if you don’t know the impact of that decision. And you won’t even know you did it... until it’s too late. That’s a real pain point. We can solve it.”

“At the highest level, we help you get the big picture with a contextual view of your Azure environment, and constantly monitor for change. Our report card paradigm and grading system allows you to see how we rank your cloud risks and helps to prioritize remediation efforts.” Epp said. “Then AuditWolf helps you remediate your risk by by generating the commands to run in Azure to fix the security violation(s), educating your administrators responsible for managing the cloud infrastructure while helping them fix it.”

Hear from Epp
Epp will led a security lecture in our MSP Tech Talk – Spring Quarter in late June. You can click HERE to sign-up for this complimentary speech. And there you have it. Epp is alive and kicking across the border in Canada. Yes – he’s back, helping to keep us secure!

One of the hottest questions in Information Management now is how to deal with Big Data in all its applications: how to gather, store, secure, and – possibly most importantly – interpret what we collect. Organizations that are able to apply effective data analysis to massive amounts of data gain significant competitive advantages in their industries.

Organizations no longer question the value of gathering and storing such data but are far more heavily focused on methods to make sense of that all the valuable information that data represents. Although security and storage remain critical issues for IT departments, organizations are finding that their commitment to Big Data can’t stop there – they must be able to make sense of their data, to know what data is valid, relevant, and usable, as well as how to use it.

The more data an organization has, the more difficult it is to process, store, and analyze, but conversely, the more data the organization has, the more accurate its predictions can be. As well big data comes with big responsibility. Big data requires military-grade encryption keys to keep information safe and confidential.

This is where data science comes in. Many organizations, faced with the problem of being able to measure, filter, and analyze data, are turning to data science for solutions – hiring data scientists, people who are specialists in making sense out of a huge amount of data. Generally, this means making use of statistical models to create algorithms to sort, classify, and process data.

What is Data Science?

Data science has been a term in the computing field since around 1960 when it was first floated as a substitute for the term “computer science”. Over the next twenty years or so, it gradually came to mean that blend of statistics and methodology that specifically pertained to data analysis. However, it was not until the much more recent emergence of Big Data and its role in organizational development and direction, that data science began to be a fundamental requirement of any organization working out how to analyze such massive amounts of data.

Data science is interdisciplinary, incorporating elements of statistics, data mining, and predictive analysis, and focusing on processes and systems that extract knowledge and insights from data. It is also known as “analytics transformation” because the goal is to “transform” raw data into usable insights. It has also been called “industrial analytics” because the context is industrial rather than scientific – to analyze data for competitive or quality improvements that can be gained by having a better understanding of one’s customers, potential customers, service model, and almost any aspect of the organization that can be represented in bytes.

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New Software Appliance and Portal is Purpose-built for MSPs to Help Their Clients Navigate the Complex General Data Protection Regulation Mandates.

ATLANTA, GA, USA –March 5, 2018– RapidFire Tools Inc. today announced the availability of Audit Guru for GDPR™, the world’s first compliance process automation solution designed to address the sweeping new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which becomes law on the May 25, 2018. The tool is being offered exclusively through the RapidFire Tools channel of authorized Audit Guru partners, and includes a robust cloud-based portal that resellers can use to manage the entire GDPR audit and reporting process. MSPs can provide an array of value-added GDPR services built around Audit Guru, which can range from a simple and straight-forward resale of the tool to organizations that have their own internal IT and compliance staff, all the way up to a fully managed, ongoing GDPR Compliance-as-a-Service offering.

“The new GDPR requirements put into place tough new standards that regulate how personal information is collected, electronically stored, and secured,” noted Rapidfire Tools CEO, Mike Mittel. “These new laws impact every company that collects data about any individual living in the European Union. There is a huge amount of confusion, fear and uncertainty associated with GDPR because of the fines and crippling sanctions associated with non-compliance,” he added. “Audit Guru addresses these concerns by providing MSPs with a solution that literally guides them through the compliance process, automates the collection of necessary data, and generates the required documents.”

The new offering leverages the same technology found in Network Detective, the company’s market-proven, award-winning family of IT assessment, documentation and reporting tools. “This is not just another check-list product with a laundry list of tasks that the MSP has to perform,” explained Win Pham, lead developer of the tool. “We've created a turn-key virtual software appliance that automates the production of mandatory compliance reports, provides ongoing issues detection, and manages the manual collection of supplemental information required from key stakeholders.”

The marketing opportunity extends far beyond MSPs located within the European union. “As if the EU isn’t a big enough market, even if the MSPs or their clients are based outside of the EU, if they own electronic database files that contain personal information about customers, prospects and other individuals who are based inside the EU, they are subject to the regulation,” explained Mark Winter, RapidFire Tools’ vice president of sales. “This makes the market for Audit Guru even broader for MSPs, MSSPs, and VARs who wish to expand their offerings to include GDPR compliance services.”

Audit Guru is sold to MSPs directly by RapidFire Tools or through any of their European distributors. MSPs who are interested in becoming an Audit Guru Reseller Partner should visit www.auditguru.com, send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or call +1-678-323-1300, ext. 2.

About RapidFire Tools
RapidFire Tools, Inc is the leading global supplier of business-building technology tools for MSPs to help them close more business, offer more services, keep more customers, and make more money. The company’s offerings include: a complete set of IT Assessment, Documentation and Reporting tools; tools for IT Compliance Process Automation; and tools for Insider Cyber Threat Detection & Alerting.
European distributors include: Achab (Italy), Prianto (UK), and Upstream (Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden).

Cortana will read your emails aloud during car journeys

By Tom Warren     @tomwarren    Mar 5, 2018, 10:19am EST

Cortana in Outlook for iOS Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Microsoft has been slowly adding more email intelligence to its Cortana digital assistant, but it has resisted integrating it directly into Outlook mobile. That’s about to change, soon. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Outlook plans tell The Verge that the company is currently testing Cortana within Outlook on iOS and Android.

The Cortana integration will allow users of the popular mobile email client to listen to and respond to emails with their voice. This will be particularly useful during car journeys, and Microsoft is testing Cortana integration directly within Outlook mobile that will work over Bluetooth and read messages aloud. Users will be able to ask Cortana phrases like “what’s my email,” or just to read messages from specific contacts.

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As a small business owner, you understand through your first-hand challenges how difficult it is to accomplish specific goals because of a limited budget. Other challenges may stem from a lack of expertise in a specific and vital area. Specifically, building and IT infrastructure present challenges that small business owners in previous years and decades were stymied by. However, modern solutions to these challenges are available to today's small business owners through cloud-based services. Understanding the primary cloud-based solutions available to your small business may help you to make smarter decisions going forward.

1. Intuit QuickBooks Online
Intuit QuickBooks has been available to small business owners for years, and this accounting solution  makes it easier for you to manage your books, project your financial status into the future, create invoices and more. This online application has incredible depth, and it is flexible enough to be useful for almost any small business environment. If you are challenged by financial management or if you feel that financial management is taking up too much of your valuable time each week, this may be a solution to take a closer look at.

2. Zapier
If you are looking for a collaboration tool, Zapier is an excellent solution to consider. Zapier makes it easy for you to connect the apps that you use most frequently together for seamless efforts. Workflows can be automated in many ways, and you may be able to save an exceptional amount of time and energy because of the collaborative benefits that this tool provides. It is functional with a wide range of popular business apps. You can learn more about the apps that it can connect for you to determine if it may improve your current work processes.

3. MailChimp
Email marketing is an effective, direct way to communicate with your customers, but it also is stressful and time-consuming. MailChimp takes the time and stress out of planning, executing and even analyzing email marketing campaigns. Through its impressive features, small businesses can level the playing field with larger companies that have a more substantial marketing budget and more in-house assistance. You simply use the platform to build a campaign and to customize your message. There are even pre-built automation features that make it fast and easy to execute your campaigns.

4. Microsoft Power BI
Managing business intelligence tasks is a common challenge for many small business owners, and Microsoft Power BI strives to address those challenges head on. This is a user-friendly platform that is available to you for free. It enables you to organize and analyze data in a drag and drop environment. You can do everything from enhance analytics to print reports and more. The dashboard helps you to keep your analytics organized, and the dashboards can be perfectly customized to meet your specific needs. You can create attractive reports through this program as well, and the reports can easily be distributed to your entire team for viewing on any type of Internet-based device. The program is interactive with Microsoft Office 365 products.

5. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus
Viruses and malware are legitimate and substantial concerns for small business owners. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus is an affordable solution to this problem. This is a regularly updated program that works with Microsoft platforms. It has remote capabilities so that you can initiate a scan from your smartphone. Because of its affordable price and its convenient features, it is ideal for a smaller business that does not need to purchase many licenses to make the solution cost-effective. This program also makes it easy to secure your online experience and to properly manage passwords. The company has been in business for more than 15 years, and it serves millions of customers. It prides itself on its ability to quickly identify threats and to update its products accordingly to protect its customers.

With limited operating capital, it makes sense to feel as though your business is placed at a disadvantage in the marketplace. However, you can see that there are many applications and programs available that can help smaller companies stand on equal footing with their much larger and more well-established competitors. Analyze these applications today to determine if they could benefit your operations in a substantial way.

When Netscape released the source code for its Netscape Communicator web browser 20 years ago, a discussion was sparked in the developer community. A new term was being sought that could appropriately explain this stuff. A related term, “free software,” existed but its seeming focus on price confused the newcomers.

For the first time, on February 3rd, 1998 in Palo Alto, the term Open Source was coined by Christine Peterson, who was executive director at Foresight Institute.

Christine Peterson has recently shared her unpublished account of how she came up with the term and how she proposed it. “Oldtimers must then launch into an explanation, usually given as follows: “We mean free as in freedom, not free as in beer.”,” she writes in her account.

As per Peterson, after Eric Raymond’s meeting with Netscape, he took Foresight’s help to strategize and refine their message. During that meeting itself on Feb 3rd, Peterson, who believed the need for a clearer term to describe such code, came up with the term Open Source Software.

Later that week, in another meeting on February 5, 1998, with the help of Todd Anderson, she was able to gather some kind of consensus around the open source name. “These were some key leaders in the community, and they liked the new name, or at least didn’t object.”

The Open Source Initiative was formed in following days. People like Tim O’Reilly, Bruce Perens, and others played a pivotal role in popularising the term. Perens also adapted his Free Software Guidelines for Debian GNU/Linux to serve as Open Source Definition (OSD).

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By James M Connolly

Even with the ongoing new developments in core technologies, IT organizations are facing dramatic changes in how they work in 2018 as they embrace new business concepts and strategies.
We just might be at a point where IT professionals -- from the overworked help desk staffer up to the CIO in the fancy office -- long for the good old days. You remember those days, when technology, that "T" in IT, ruled the day.

That was when the to-do list was filled with tasks such as configuring hardware, testing compatibility of software packages, upgrading databases, responding to "stupid user" complaints, and fighting to keep hackers out of a system. Even the move to the cloud often was a bits and bytes and connections challenge. Today, a whole new layer of IT complexity has landed on top of all those pure tech issues.

That layer is a sometimes bewildering mashup of raw data, analytics, innovation, customer relations, and business strategy. How those elements -- once largely in the purview of only a few specialists or the most senior IT executives -- have been woven into the day-to-day lives of most IT pros was illustrated in a 12-part series of feature articles posted on InformationWeek.com over the past two months. Our writers looked at the state of a dozen technology and management concepts and explored the new world of IT for practitioners and the business as a whole.

Image: Shutterstock
Take the example of the IoT, which John Edwards examined in The Internet of Things: Still Lots for You to Learn.

One could look at IoT and conclude that it's really just a network, feeding lots of data into a database. Granted, it includes Internet-enabled sensors, but IT knows how to connect things to the Internet, and it certainly knows databases. Oh, but IoT is so much more, with so much more to know.

The IoT network is useless unless IT understands the business and the challenges that business leaders and operations people face. Consider what the optimum operating temperatures are for refrigerators in 1,000 restaurant outlets, and at what temperature the food starts to go bad. When an IoT-connected fridge has issues, and the temperature hits a level where an alert is issued, who gets notified? What does that service rep need to know about past temperature trends? What type of repair or preventative maintenance has to kick in at what point? What do the other sensors in a fridge tell food quality managers about when food stocks need to be rotated out or replenished? All of that data plays into corporate decisions on everything from which refrigerator supplier to use to how inventory control factors into corporate margins.

The fact that the IoT is about analytics as much as it is about networking raises another question. What is the role of IT in an analytics initiative? Writer Lisa Morgan explored that as part of her feature Beware Analytics' Mid-Life Crisis.

Citing the ever-popular business shift to software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications procured by business units rather than IT, Lisa wrote: "Organizations serious about competing on insights need to think holistically about how they're approaching analytics and the role of IT. Disenfranchising IT from analytics may prove to be short-sighted. For example, a proof of concept may not scale well or the data required to answer a question might not be available."

In other words, the next phase of "Shadow IT" shapes up as "Shadow Analytics," which can only mean a huge problem with data siloes, some sitting in marketing, others in operations, and still more back in the IT group.

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SMB Group’s 2017 U.S. Small and Medium Business Digital Transformation Study reveals that today’s small and medium businesses (SMBs) have tuned into the digital revolution. As noted in Pulse Check: SMBs and Digital Transformation, roughly three-quarters of SMB (including small (1-99 employee), medium (100-999 employee) and upper midmarket (1,000-2,500 employee) businesses) decision-makers agree/strongly agree that digital technology is impacting their businesses and industries.

So, why, when, where and how will SMBs place their digital bets?

Why: Drivers for Digital Transformation
The top reasons that SMBs are investing in digital technology are to attract new customers, improve employee productivity and streamline operations (Figure 1). However, the top-ranking driver varies fairly dramatically based on company size as follows:

• Small business: attract new customers
• Medium business: keep up with competitive pressures
• Upper midmarket: improve employee productivity

Figure 1: Top Drivers to Invest in Digital Technology

When: Most SMBs Are in the Planning Phase

Survey results indicate that 48% of SMBs are currently planning to engage in activities that will help them adapt and transform their businesses for a digital future. Meanwhile, 36% are already implementing activities to support digital transformation, and 16% have no plans underway.

Phase of digital transformation correlates strongly with company size (Figure 2). Upper mid-market and medium businesses are 2.6 and 1.9 times more likely, respectively, to say they’re currently engaged than small businesses. In addition, younger companies–those that have been in business less than 5 years–are twice as likely to be currently involved in activities to support digital transformation.

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Google introduced their home-baked machine learning chips at last year’s I/O. Known as Tenor Processing Units, TPUs for short, these chips were later known to be around 15 to 30 times faster than traditional CPUs and GPUs.

TPUs are designed to accelerate machine learning processing on Google Cloud Platform and reduce the time required to train and run TensorFlow-based AI models. Google is already using TPUs in their data centers.

Now, as a part of a limited beta program, Google has made the second generation of chips available for public use under the name Cloud TPU. But using the same doesn’t come cheap. It is up for trial for anyone who can spend $6.5 per Cloud TPU per hour. For a start, Google is providing a variety of open source reference ML models for Cloud TPU ranging across image classification, object detection, etc.

Each TPU board packs four custom ASICs, floating-point performance of up to 180TFlops, and 64GB memory. Google says multiple TPU boards can be combined over a dedicated network to form supercomputers which the company calls TPU Pods. During tests, Google used a TPU Pod (with 64 TPUs) to train the ResNet-50 model in less than 30 minutes, down from 23 hours when using a single TPU.

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Christine Ashton

It’s beyond debate that data is one of a company’s most valuable resources. The total revenue from online advertising in 2014, for example, reached US $49.5 billion, the majority of which is based on users’ personal and demographic information to show more relevant messages. The direction of travel since then has only been in one direction.

The European Union’s new law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), focuses on controlling the use of individual persons’ private information and ensuring that it can be protected. If your company violates the regulation, you could face penalties of as much as 4% of your annual global revenue or €20 million, depending on the details and severity of the violation.

To avoid incurring substantial fines, businesses need to plan well in advance on how to deal with the requirements of GDPR. Although the details may vary from one organization to the next, the roles and perspectives listed below are some of the most important for your company to take into account.

CEO and board of directors
These people will mainly be interested in GDPR’s impact on their business processes. This means performing a top-to-bottom review of the relevant personal data that you handle.

CEOs and the board of directors may also want to understand the cost-effectiveness of their data strategy. Are you collecting and access more personal data than necessary? If so, check into reducing this amount. Continuing to accumulate silos of unused and potentially toxic data increases the need for encryption, and therefore will require more investment.

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Mario Farag

Last year, most of the world swooned over new technological evolutions such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things, and automation. Even though these technologies are proving to be catalysts for growth, many small business leaders have decided to concentrate most of their investments on data analytics.

In fact, according to IDC’s infobrief “The Next Steps in Digital Transformation,” 47% of surveyed entrepreneurial companies adopted business analytics or business intelligence software for data analytics in 2017. While IDC’s finding is encouraging, most small businesses also recognized in 2017 that they are only scratching the surface of what they need from analytics to compete effectively.

Ray Boggs, vice president of small and medium business research at IDC, recently commented in an IDC Analyst Connection that this reality can be attributed to the misunderstood value of analytics. “The benefits of advanced business intelligence can come not just from better [or] faster answers to current business questions, but from an appreciation of what the most important questions are that aren’t yet being asked,” he shared. “As small and midsize firms grow, there is a risk of extending business practices and processes without a critical review of what is essential.”

But this news is so 2017. It’s time to kick into high gear a brand-new mentality around analytics for 2018.

Why embracing predictability reveals the full potential of data analytics
Small business leaders have often felt left behind by the growing acceptance of analytics, fearing that their workforce, customer base, or operations were too small to justify the cost. Although this view is shortsighted, it’s entirely understandable. Budgets are usually so tight that it’s difficult to take money from one department to pay for a new solution when ROI is not 100% predictable.

While most things in life are anything but predictable, the cost of implementing and maintaining technology, especially business intelligence analytics in the cloud, is. Here are three reasons why.ks back to the primary network?

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By Paul Simons

Spamming, hacking and the breach of cyber security are an unfortunate reality of the digital world. According to some reports, almost one in three internet users in the United States are a victim of cyber crimes in one way or another. The cyber security attackers are launching more and more harmful malware every day and are evolving their techniques to strike more devices than ever before.

The situation is even more alarming for small businesses and ecommerce stores. Some statistics indicate that almost 64% of online companies have experienced web-based attacks and millions of customers have been affected. This means that online retailers must take necessary safety measures to secure their websites and ensure that customer’s sensitive information is duly protected.

The Battle Against Hackers
The moment you create a website, it is at the risk of being hacked. As an online retailer, there is nothing more threatening than the damage done by hackers. Once they manage to penetrate, they can destroy all the records, steal information, and most importantly, they just ruin your customer reputation.

There is a lot you can do to secure your ecommerce website. The first and the foremost measures are to make sure that your passwords are secure, admin pages are hidden, and HTTPS is enabled on the website. Furthermore, you can use parameterized queries and CSP, limit file uploads and install further security plugins.

HTTPS – The Ultimate Warrior
HTTPS is the ultimate missile in your arsenal. What it does is that it encrypts the information traveling between a browser and a web server. This means that the communication between the browser and the website is protected from “man-in-the-middle” AKA hacker’s attacks. HTTPS typically deploys one or two secure protocols to encrypt communications, so the customer’s credit card information and logins remain secure from the perverts.

There are many instances when users need to share credentials like signing up for an account, placing an order, or submitting reviews and testimonials. They need to ensure the website is secure and trustworthy. The presence of SSL certificate symbolizes that the website is secure enough to share personal details. But, still they need privacy while placing orders or submitting details.

The eCommerce websites that are powered by stand alone platforms like Magento or PrestaShop are made secure by default, whereas for improving user experience, merchants can integrate extensions and add-ons. Magento Testimonials extension is one of the reliable tools that create an autonomous environment for the end users to submit testimonials without fearing for data theft, whereas, the installation of SSL certificate is like the final nail in the coffin in gaining the consumer trust to share personal details.

Difference between HTTP and HTTPS
For someone who is new to web development or internet business might find it hard to figure out the difference between the two. HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-based protocol designed for distributed, collaborative and hypermedia information systems. Whereas, HTTPS connections include an SSL certificate and the computer agree on a “code” that will transfer between them. They scramble the messages using that particular “code” so that no one in between can read them. This means that HTTPS connection is far more secure than HTTP connection.

Some Extra Benefits of Using HTTPS
Earlier, HTTPS was primarily used by the websites that involved the use of sensitive information or payment gateways. However, due to the increased security concerns and the severity of cyber security breach, HTTPS is now a must-have feature for all websites.

Apart from security, I have discussed further reasons why HTTPS must be enabled on your website.

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Sometimes the idea looks great on paper but doesn’t really work out when you try to configure it. And often, the only way to be sure is to break out the good old scientific method and try. So I tried. And it didn’t work, so I’m putting here in case you get a similar wild idea in near future.

The goal was to start with a primary VNET in Azure for some VMs. This network was going to act as a collection point for data coming in from a number of remote physical sites all over the world. In addition, some machines on the primary network would need to send configuration data to the remote sites. Ultimately, we were looking at a classic hub and spoke network design, with an Azure VNET in the center.

There are several ways you can do this using Azure networking, VNET peering between Azure VNETs, Site-to-Site (S2S) VPNs, and even ExpressRoute. ExpressRoute was off the table for this proof of concept, and since the remote sites were not Azure VNETs, that left Site-to-Site VPN.

The features you have available to you for Site-to-Site VPN depend on the type of gateway devices you use on each end for routing purposes. For multi-site connections, route-based (aka dynamic) routing is required. However, the remote sites were connected to the internet using Cisco ASA devices. The Cisco ASA is a very popular Firewall/VPN that’s been around since about 2005, but it only uses policy-based (aka static) routing.

So while we could easily use a static route to connect our primary site to any SINGLE remote network using the S2S VPN, we couldn’t connect to them all a simultaneously. And since we couldn’t call this a “hack” without trying to get around that very specific limitation, we tried to figure out a way to mask the static route requirement from the primary network. So how about VNET Peering?

VNET Peering became generally available in Azure in late 2016. Prior to its debut, the ability to connect any network (VNET or physical) required the use of the VPN gateways. With peering, Azure VNETs in the same region can be connected using the Azure backbone network. While there are limits to the number of peers a single network can have (default is 10, max limit is 50) you can create a pretty complex mesh of networks in different resource groups as long as they are in the same region.

So our theory to test was…. What if we created a series of “proxy” VNETS to connect to the ASA devices using static routing but then used the VNET Peering feature to connect all those networks back to the primary network?

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Toni BowersToni Bowers

SMB Tech 

Companies of all sizes often have difficulty understanding the importance of developing trust and engaging employees in their organizations. CEOs will sign off on a serverless API because someone has shown them that it can save cloud computing costs, but the value of employee engagement, employee collaboration and trust often goes uncalculated.

That is not to say that companies don’t see problems that result from the lack of employee engagement and collaboration. A survey by Forbes and Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends revealed that 76 percent of survey respondents (2,500 organizations in 90 countries) believe that they have a significant retention and engagement problem. Ninety percent of these leaders think an engagement strategy will have an impact on business success, but barely 25 percent of them have such a strategy.

How Employee Engagement Can Affect Your Bottom Line
There is a direct and tangible added business benefit to organizations that invest in their employees. In fact, Gallup (via Dale Carnegie) claims that companies with engaged employees outperform those without by up to 202 percent.

On the flip side, there is a measurable cost to having unengaged employees: higher turnover (estimates show employee turnover equals about 150 percent of an employee’s salary), lower productivity while on the job, and increased employee absence. American businesses lose approximately $500+ billion per year because of disengaged workers, according to Gallup1 and Office Vibe.

How to Build Employee Engagement
Trust is a necessary ingredient of both engagement and innovation. If the people in your company are innovating, producing sustainable results, and building exceptional work relationships, they are also building trust in each other, and your company, in the process.

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There are a lot of great things to say about the faster release cycles we see with software these days. Bugs are fixed and features become available to us sooner, security issues are resolved quicker too. In a lot of cases, our operating systems and software packages are smart enough to check themselves and let us know updates are available or automatically install themselves.

I work between two different machines regularly and depending on my schedule sometimes favor one machine over the other for several weeks at a time. For better or for worse (mostly for the better), Windows 10 takes care of itself for me, as does Visual Studio Code and Docker for Windows. This means I often find myself sitting down at the “other” machine and once again waiting for those updates to install. While sometimes I admit to rolling my eyes in frustration every time I get an update alert, I do appreciate that I don’t have to think about those updates otherwise.

But for software that doesn’t automatically update, I will sometimes find myself wondering why demo notes I’ve drafted on one machine suddenly aren’t working when I try them on the other machine or worse, blaming documentation for being incorrect when the commands don’t work as instructed.

When it comes to documentation freshness vs software freshness… Let’s not go there today. I generally always start with docs.microsoft.com when I’m looking for information about Azure and other Microsoft products. While nothing is above being error free and sometimes out of date, more often than not my problems exist between my keyboard and monitor – in the form of some piece of software needing an update.

The top two things on my machines that I have to manually update regularly are:

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Wise minds are always innovating. That’s exactly what’s occurred with long-time SMB Nation member Grace Schroeder (remember the Idea2 CRM?) with her new company Slingr.

Schroder and team have launched a supporting actor application in a category I just made up called SMB channel partner ecosystem extenders. Essentially Slingr found a gap that needed to be filled. In particular this blog concerns Slingr’s integration of Slack to the Autotask professional services automation (PSA) solution.

I spoke with Slingr executive Thomas Beck at a recent cloud computing event in the Seattle area to learn  more. “Essentially Slingr is a low code, high productivity application platform as a service combined with an integration platform as a service capability. Our value proposition is that you can build and integrate apps much more efficiently than starting app development/integration from scratch.” Beck shared. “We’re so efficient that , on average, you save about 80 percent of time on labor and resources when building from a platform basis versus the alternative of building from scratch.”

With Thomas Beck (right) from Slingr.

Autotask Integrations with Slack

I asked about Slingr’s new Autotask/Slack integration solution. “We build a lot of apps and integrations for our customers. Sometimes we have ideas or requests from customers like ‘Hey – we wish this was something that did this’ and one of those requests came from a friend in the MSP community who shared a lot of MSPs are using Slack and Autotask.” Beck said. “The basic request was could you make Slack and Autotask work together. We determined it was a broad enough market profile and that exactly what we’ve done: integrate Slack and Autotask.”

Okay. I asked how would I use the Slack/Autotask integration in the day in the life as an MSP? “Think of it this way. If you use Slack, you tend to start living in it; Slack becomes your windows to the world. You stop wanting to get out of Slack and you don’t want to swivel chair to another app to get something done because that’s inefficient and loses productivity.” Beck shared. With the Sling bot for Autotask/Slingr integration, you can do 90% of what you need to do in Autotask by staying inside Slack. All within ten commands. You can open, assign/reassign, check and fetch tickets, etc. all with in Slack.

Get the App and Costs
Download from the Sling.io app store.
Free ten (10) day trail
Costs are $9.99 per user per month

Roadmap
I asked if the Datto acquisition of Autotask has impacted the integration. “No – nothing has been broken.” Beck said. “Everything is still full operational. Based on the success with the Autotask/Slack integration, we expect that we’ll expand into the other PSAs such as ConnectWise. Everything is driven by customer feedback.”

Finally, I asked how MSPs can work with Slingr? “We do have a partner program for MSPs that want to work with clients. Take an two or even ten applications and you can partner with Slingr to build integrations. We can work with the MSPs and clients to be an enabler on digital transformation. All in the cloud; partially in the cloud, etc." Beck stated.

I’ve had this blog written in my mind for months. I’ve just been trying to find the words to articulate my vision of animal behavior as the best way to explain “machine learning.” So what motivated me to type this out? I read an article in the New York Times this week here about artificial intelligence (AI) and how animals are helping with machine learning.

My study was based on the SMB Nation mascot,

Astro, an English Springer Spaniel who hunts. Hunts food that is. But his hunting to spring birds on Bainbridge Island is for pleasure only (and its instinctual). He has quickly learned via nurture and from over 15,000 years of canine domestication (nature) that its far easier to beg for food from humans. Astro uses a charm offensive much like an infant to get what he wants - food - from humans. Loosely translated to machine learning, think of it this way. Animals are very good at detecting what works and doesn’t work. Begging works.

Old Dog, New Tricks
Animals such as dogs are creatures of habit. Normally they repeat routines such as awaiting kids at 4pm when the yellow school bus pulls up to unload. And Astro isn’t getting any younger, so I embarked on a mission to teach an old dog new tricks! The task was to teach Astro to go through the doggy door to the home office. It was harder than I thought as the see-through plastic flap appeared to be a barrier to entry. So, like AI, I modified the approach to find a tactic that worked. With food being a primary canine motivator, I’d place a dog treat inside my office and Astro could see through the plastic shield and nudge his nose to open the “doggy door” to enter. The downside was that Astro would only open the doggy door if there was a dog treat on the other side because that’s exactly what I trained him to do.

So back to the basic axiom of machine learning and AI: modify and try again.

I removed the actual see-through doggy door under the auspicious that I’d first get him to go through the cutout hole unimpeded then I could reintroduce the true doggy door. See Figure 1 below as evidence that this worked. Now Astro comes in-and-out of my office at will. And this is the current state of my animal learning experiment. The downside to the current state – with the doggy door removed is that my office is colder and yesterday a song bird flew into the office. Had to shoo the bird out with a fly swatter. All good.

Parallels
Machine Learning/AI and animal learning are analogous. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself at home. Feedback always welcome.

Just a short note to invite you to join me in a complimentary 5-session online conference during February 2018. I'm supporting my good friends Peter Jensen, Marie Wiese, Jim Hamilton (Yay!), Julian Lee and Marc Gordon. Discover more about this complimentary conference here. I consider this a startup/start over topic as we should all be educating, transforming and reinventing ourselves – continuously!

Here is the back story. This online conference is based on the Office 365 CSP/MSP community. 

Topics are both technical and business - so something for everyone. In fact, it's entirely reasonable that you might only attend a couple lectures that are of interest to you (e.g. security). or perhaps you are interested in all five lectures. Make no mistake - the lectures are "pure content" and made possible with the generous financial support of Sherweb, an Office 365 CSP.

Want to see if this is the right fit? You can watch a short Accelerate conference video here.

What’s interesting about this particular online conference offering is that it’s outcomes-based. You will receive a participation certificate at the end of the five lectures. How cool is that?

Again - you can sign-up for the complimentary conference here. I’ll see you there (and thanks for supporting the SMB MSP community).

Here is a lecture summary to review!

SESSION 3: MARKET INTELLIGENCE SESSION: TRENDS IN IT SECURITY
PRESENTED BY: JIM HAMILTON DURATION : 30 MINUTES
1 PM EST

As technology becomes a critical component for digital organizations, security becomes an even higher priority. Most companies know that security is important, but they aren’t sure which steps to take as they change their IT approach. This market intelligence session, based on CompTIA’s latest research, lets you know which new technologies, new processes and end-user education you should be looking out for.
Key takeaway: The three key areas that every business should focus on.

Look to these excellent tools to improve CLI and web admin, SQL queries, schema migration, and replication and recovery in your MySQL environment

                     ThinkStock

For database administrators (DBAs), keeping databases running at peak performance can be a little like spinning plates: It takes agility, concentration, quick reactions, a cool head, and an occasional call out from a helpful onlooker. Databases are central to the successful operation of almost every application. As DBAs are responsible for an organization’s data, finding dependable tools that help them to streamline the database management process and ease day-to-day maintenance tasks is essential. DBAs need good tools to keep their systems spinning smoothly.

So what are the tried and trusted tools for MySQL administrators? Here I share my top five open source tools for MySQL administrators and discuss their value in the support of day-to-day MySQL administration tasks. For each of them, I’ve provided a link to the GitHub repository and listed the number of GitHub stars at the time of writing.

Mycli

The Mycli project provides MySQL command line auto-completion and syntax highlighting. It is one of the most popular MySQL tools for administrators.

Security restrictions such as jump hosts and two-factor authentication leave many MySQL DBAs with command-line only access to their systems. In such circumstances, beloved GUI tools such as MySQL Workbench, Monyog, and others are not an option.

At the command line, much of the time is spent in a light-on-black terminal world. So one of the best things about Mycli is the richness of its syntax highlighting. This allows you, for example, to visually separate functions and operators from query strings in WHERE clauses. For a short, single-line query this may not be such a big deal, but it becomes a game changer when you work with queries that perform JOIN operations over more than a couple of tables. Am I doing the JOIN using indexed columns? Am I filtering using leading wildcards in my WHERE clauses? Mycli supports multi-line queries and syntax highlighting, which means you can home in on the sections that matter most when reviewing or optimizing queries. You can choose from a number of syntax highlighting color schemes or create your own.

The other killer feature of Mycli is smart completion. This allows to you pick out table and column names from a context sensitive list by entering just their first few characters. No more abandoning your current input to run SHOW CREATE TABLE because you forgot the name of the column you want in your WHERE clause!

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Cutting-edge WiFi Distribution Solutions Accommodate Consistent Bandwidth Performance for More Seamless, Flexible, and Collaborative Wireless Small Business Environments —

HARRISBURG, PA – January 22, 2018 – D&H Distributing, a major provider of SMB and consumer technologies to the North American high-tech channel, wants its SMB resellers to take advantage of powerful “mesh” computing solutions. These offerings are making their way from the enterprise to small office environments in the form of affordable, easy-to-install and manage solutions.
“Mesh” computing technologies feature a series of access points, or hubs, that distribute and balance a company’s WiFi signal throughout a facility. The systems reduce connectivity “dead spots” so an SMB network can perform more seamlessly, accommodating the roster of wireless and IP-based devices associated with an increasingly more sophisticated small business workplace—even across multiple floors of a single building.
Many regional offices have been forced to locate equipment and workstations within a certain proximity of their WiFi routers to ensure consistent connectivity. Yet today’s modern workplace involves workers who depend on a plethora of wireless devices, ranging from Bluetooth headsets, to tablets and smart phones, to portable speakerphones and high-performance notebook computers. In addition, bandwidth-heavy amenities such as IP surveillance systems or cloud-based storage and printing services create additional demands on bandwidth.
The same office environments often feature open floor plans and ad-hoc conference areas that can be set up on-the-fly, to encourage collaboration between personnel. SMB mesh computing solutions support this trend, allowing workers to take advantage of the collaborative communication these new open-office environments were designed to inspire.

For example, D&H carries the HPE OfficeConnect OC20 802.11ac, which can cluster up to eight access points. It’s a sophisticated yet cost-effective wireless solution that’s easy to set up and administer without significant technical expertise, allowing SMB companies to deploy robust and flexible WiFi of their own accord. The system is installed via a no-cost, straightforward mobile application that can be deployed in minutes, either via cell phone using an Android or iOS app, or through a cloud-based portal. Both the app and the web-based portal also facilitate easy remote network monitoring for the reseller.
The HPE OfficeConnect OC20 allows the business owner to conduct Internet filtering, regulating what sites employees may access and/or restricting adult content. And the solution’s simple remote management capability allows resellers to offer monitoring and troubleshooting via a managed services contract, creating incremental revenue opportunities, and allowing VARs to transition into a basic, hosted services offering.
In addition, D&H offers the popular Cisco Meraki family of wireless access solutions, which incorporates cloud-managed mesh networking into its powerful wireless access points. The Meraki products extend WiFi coverage to hard-to-wire areas and supports resilient, high-performance routing across facilities. These access points “self-configure” to automatically establish a high-performance, robust, and resilient network, without manual intervention or provisioning from the reseller.
The Meraki solutions offer a cloud-based controller interface that can be managed from anyplace with Internet access, and similarly offers an Android or iOS app for administration. This makes the solutions easily accessible, as well being a powerful and versatile mesh networking option.
D&H offers services to support customers in selecting the most appropriate solution for their business models, including assessment services; pre-sales support; and specialized training sessions including live trade show sessions, streaming webcasts, and on-demand presentations. Plus, resellers can take advantage of brandable brochure templates from D&H’s Partner Services Marketing library, including a dedicated piece on the Cisco Meraki products. VARs can use these materials to communicate the benefits of these high-performance WiFi solutions.
“Bandwidth requirements continue to grow as the contemporary SMB workplace incorporates more connected devices and platforms, and as we transition toward the delivery of digital services in almost every facet of business, from email exchange to storage to cloud-based printing and collaboration,” began Peter DiMarco, vice president of VAR sales at D&H. “Manufacturers such as HPE-Aruba and Cisco are now delivering robust, reliable, and cost-effective WLAN WiFi distribution to the small business community. Mesh computing is becoming a necessity in these work environments, to accommodate the increasingly mobile and digital paradigm we all enjoy. In the process, it’s creating ongoing opportunities for VARs and MSPs.”

About D&H Distributing
D&H Distributing believes the most important element of doing business is developing relationships for mutual success. The company continues to build upon its 100-year-old culture by providing its manufacturers, co-owners, and partners with the utmost customer care, consultative guidance, and multi-market expertise. As one of North America’s leading technology distributors, it delivers a wealth of enablement resources and hands-on support services that empower resellers in the IT channel.
The company engages with solution providers, integrators, and VARs to meet current business challenges, as well as forecast their evolving, real-world needs and prospects for lucrative growth opportunities. D&H maintains a special focus on independent VARs expanding their competencies in areas such as hosted and cloud services, the modern mobile workplace, comprehensive SMB server networks, and cross-market expertise across the small business, education, healthcare, and government verticals, to name a few. The company's value proposition includes professional marketing resources, a new transactional service model, dedicated Solutions Specialists, and a highly-lauded webcast training venue; plus reseller engagement events such as technology trade shows, roundtable opportunities, training “track” sessions, and hands-on "lab" sessions.
The distributor is headquartered in Harrisburg, PA, in the US and in Brampton, Ontario, in Canada. Additional warehouses are located in Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Fresno, CA; and Vancouver, BC, Canada. Call D&H toll-free at (800) 340-1001, via www.dandh.com, or follow the distributor’s Facebook and Twitter feeds, https://www.facebook.com/DandHDistributing/ and @dandh.

Jon Gold By Jon Gold
Senior Writer, Network World

Thanks to the Mirai botnet attacks, few people in the world of tech need a reminder that IoT devices remain a serious threat to enterprise networks. Still, more than a year after the botnet made headlines worldwide, IoT security remains mostly an idea, rather than a reality.

Such is the scope of the problem that Frost and Sullivan IoT research director Dilip Sarangan argues for governmental intervention. Sarangan says that, because the responsibility for IoT security is diffused across device manufacturers, network providers, software developers and many others, it’s difficult for the industry to make progress on all-encompassing standards.
“The only entity that has the ability to actually dictate what the minimum threshold is, unfortunately, is the U.S. government,” he said.

The difficulty in creating overarching standards mostly has to do with the fact that any given IoT implementation has a large number of moving parts, each of which may be administered by different organizations, or even by third parties. For example, a set of medical devices provided by company A connecting to a network provided by company B, running an application, originally written by company C and residing in company D’s cloud.

“Everyone talks about it like they’re going to provide end-to-end security, and there’s actually no way to do that,” said Sarangan. “You have no control over a lot of parts of an IoT solution.”

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LONG BEACH, Calif. – Jan 16, 2018 – Epson, a leading provider of innovative business solutions, today announced it received two awards in the seventh annual Best in Biz North America Awards, the only independent business awards program judged each year by prominent editors and reporters from top-tier publications in North America. The Epson WorkForce® Enterprise WF-C20590 A3 multifunction printer (MFP) was awarded silver in the “Best New Product of the Year – SMB” category. The WorkForce DS-780N was also awarded bronze in the “Small or Medium Business Product of the Year” category.

Each year, Best in Biz Awards’ entrants span the spectrum, from some of the most innovative local start-ups to the most recognizable global brands. The seventh annual program was particularly hotly contested, with more than 650 entries from an impressive array of  public and private companies of all sizes and from a variety of industries and geographic regions in the U.S. and Canada. Best in Biz Awards 2017 honors were presented in 65 categories, including Company of the Year, Fastest-Growing Company, Most Innovative Company, Best Place to Work, Support Department, Executive of the Year, Most Innovative Product, Best New Product, App, Event and Website of the Year.

“Epson emphasizes the importance of understanding the evolving business market and delivering products that can make our customers more efficient and profitable,” said Larry Trevarthen, director of Business Imaging, Epson America, Inc. “We are honored to be chosen by Best in Biz North America Awards for two solutions across multiple business categories, which underscores our continued commitment to delivering solutions that meet the industry and our customer’s needs.”

About the Epson 2017 Best in Biz North America Awards Winners

• WorkForce Enterprise WF-C20590: Powered by innovative PrecisionCore Line Head Technology, the WF-C20590 is Epson’s first high-speed multifunction color line head printer delivering brilliant-quality output. With breakthrough speeds up to 100 ISO pages per minute3, this powerful A3 MFP offers business productivity and versatility for large workgroups and departments within SMB and corporate environments.
• Workforce DS-780N: Designed for greater efficiency in heavy-use environments, the Epson DS-780N delivers high-quality scans with speeds of up to 45 ppm/90 ipm1 plus a 100-page ADF. With a programmable touchscreen, ease-of-use and document management while delivering fast scan speeds, the DS-780N offers enhanced connectivity for versatile scanning.

Since 2011, winners of Best in Biz Awards have been determined based on scoring from independent judging panels composed of prominent editors and reporters from some of the most respected newspapers, TV outlets, and business, consumer, technology and trade publications in North America. Best in Biz Awards’ uniqueness stems, in part, from this distinct composition of its judging panels, allowing it to best leverage the judges’ unparalleled expertise, experience and objectivity to determine award winners. The 2017 judging panel included: Accounting Today, AdWeek, Associated Press, Atlanta Tribune, Business News Daily, Consumer Affairs, Entrepreneur, eWeek, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Healthcare Innovation News, Inc., Investment Advisor Magazine, Laptop, MediaPost, Pittsburgh Business Times, Security Products Magazine, Wired, WLRN and Yahoo Tech.

For a full list of gold, silver and bronze winners in Best in Biz Awards 2017, visit: http://www.bestinbizawards.com/2017-winners.

About Best in Biz Awards
Since 2011, Best in Biz Awards, Inc. has made its mark as the only independent business awards program judged each year by a who’s who of prominent reporters and editors from top-tier publications from North America and around the world. Best in Biz Awards honors are conferred in two separate programs: North America and International, and in 65 categories, including company, team, executive, product, and PR and media. For more information, visit: http://www.bestinbizawards.com.

About Epson
Epson is a global technology leader dedicated to connecting people, things and information with its original efficient, compact and precision technologies. With a lineup that ranges from inkjet printers and digital printing systems to 3LCD projectors, smart glasses, sensing systems and industrial robots, the company is focused on driving innovations and exceeding customer expectations in inkjet, visual communications, wearables and robotics.

Led by the Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, the Epson Group comprises more than 80,000 employees in 86 companies around the world, and is proud of its contributions to the communities in which it operates and its ongoing efforts to reduce environmental impacts.

Epson America, Inc., based in Long Beach, Calif., is Epson’s regional headquarters for the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. To learn more about Epson, please visit: epson.com. You may also connect with Epson America on Facebook (facebook.com/Epson), Twitter (twitter.com/EpsonAmerica), YouTube (youtube.com/EpsonAmerica), and Instagram (instagram.com/EpsonAmerica).

SEO Audit Tools make it easy to perform an SEO Audit of Websites & Blogs automatically. Otherwise, doing an SEO Audit can be very time consuming and involve tons of complicated manual checks. Luckily, there are plenty of good website audit tools available online. Here’s a list of Top 10 SEO Audit Tools that you can use for your websites & blogs.

10 Best SEO Audit Tool for Website SEO Audit

It’s important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all SEO Auditing Tool for Websites. You need to try out each of these good SEO Audit tools to see if they fit your requirements, before picking a website auditing tool to improve your search engine results.

1. SE Ranking Website Audit

SE Ranking is an amazing SEO Audit Software for web developers, content writers & web designer. It identifies all Website Errors in minutes and provides a list of tasks to improve website SEO performance. It performs SEO Audit of your website based on more than 70 parameters such as On-Page SEO, Meta Tags, Content, Domain Checks, Image checks, Link Analysis, Usability, Mobile SEO Optimization and Website Technologies.

Here’s an SEO Audit Report Sample

It generates a detailed and free SEO Audit Report that provides a website audit checklist of Errors, and Tips to improve SEO performance of your website & blog. After completing the SEO Audit Analysis, you can even export the Audit Report as a PDF or email it.

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It’s that time of year when pundits are preaching what’s hot and what’s not in the new calendar year. As a fancy pants analyst sitting at his desk on Bainbridge Island typing, I resemble that. Today I want to focus on security. Recently I checked off the box on IoT here.

Security Supply Chain
For five years, I sat on the program advisory committee for

ITT Technical Institute (a for profit college that ultimately was shuttered for student lending irregularities but that’s for another blog and way past my tenure LOL). Despite what you read with a simple “ITT” search, I can tell you this – they were spot on with a focus on technology-based security. In their information systems curriculum, it was brilliant. At the time, there was only one academic major: security. The system had over one hundred campuses, typically in office parks and near major employers like Boeing. By my estimate, it was training 10,000+ technology professionals annually. They all used the same curriculum (books, syllabus, etc.) and were literally on the same page. That is, if you attended ITT in Everett Washington near Boeing and your job transferred you to Long Beach, CA; you would start on the same page (e.g. Page 56) that you were on the prior week in Everett. Hope that makes sense but it was a solid way to teach security across a large student population.

More importantly, this example of ITT and security underscores the importance of filling the supply chain with talent. This is both an opportunity (especially for a young person in college looking for the next great thing) and clients and firms seeking training talent. Does that make sense?
If you kill the supply chain, you kill the industry.

Can’t Swing a Dead Cat
Looking over the other annual forecasts in the SMB channel plus the line card for 2018 conferences, I see no shortage of security conversations. Ours is an industry of excesses and pendulum swings so it’s not a surprise that security is one of the most mentioned/trending topics. That’s typically a warning sign (my first “overexposure” to trends in this industry was the introduction of switches a lifetime ago). However, security is different. It’s an evergreen and just keeps getting greener.

One to Watch
Security is a huge topic with lots of niches and areas of expertise. So let’s take a small bite to chew on. In 2018, I’m encouraging you to keep an eye on a nimble and spunky ISV called NinjaRMM. It’s core business is measurement. But as the old song goes, that which we can measure, we can manage. And that’s both the beauty and simplicity of the ninjaRMM single pane of glass management console. One of its IP assets concerns its acquired knowledge in the security field; and I’d offer it’s roadmap investments in the security space in 2018.

This is your invitation to play in our Amazon HQ2 guessing game. Please vote and we'll publish the results shortly. As you know, Amazon is searching for a second locaiton for a second HQ to be built out over the next decade. It reportedly host up to 50,000 workers. It's an interesting strategy to have a split management team. I suspect it's to create internal competition and allow the cream to rise to the top. Not sure it's the SMB Nation way but each to their own.

Complete the survey here.

With new CEO Scott Wagner assuming office January 1st at GoDaddy, one of the first “differences” is Danica Patrick’s return back to power with a couple twists. GoDaddy will sponsor her historic racing finale with primary sponsorships in both the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500. The two marquee auto races, being dubbed the “Danica Double,”

mark an end to what is considered the most successful career of any woman in racing history – and the beginning of Danica’s next chapter as an entrepreneur and business owner.

Side Hustle to Full Hustle

In addition to the high-profile race sponsorships, GoDaddy is supporting Danica’s life-after-racing by powering the online presence for her business endeavors related to health, apparel and wine – all of which are enriched with her brand and GoDaddy’s savvy in helping people turn their business dreams into reality.

“This is definitely the way I want to finish my racing career – at these two iconic races, backed by my iconic, long-time sponsor,” said Patrick. “GoDaddy was there for me when my career was just really starting so it’s exciting to be getting back in the GoDaddy ‘green’ for my final two races. Our brands have always been powerful together, and I think it’s awesome to have them at my side when I go ‘all in’ with my businesses after racing.”

Danica has been referred to as “the most recognizable female athlete on the planet,” and “the woman who changed NASCAR forever.” She’s the only woman to have led laps at both the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500, a feat achieved by only 13 other drivers in the history of the sport.

Danica’s history with GoDaddy dates back more than a decade. GoDaddy signed her in 2006, just after she launched her career and two years before she made history as the first woman to win an IndyCar race in 2008. Then, in 2010, GoDaddy ushered Danica into NASCAR as her primary sponsor before she made history as the first woman to win the pole position at the Daytona 500 in 2013.

“You could say, ‘we’re getting the band back together,” said Chief Marketing Officer Barb Rechterman. “It makes sense in that our goals are so well-aligned – she’s passionate, tenacious and creative just like so many of our customers who are also looking to leverage the power of the Internet and turn their ‘side hustle’ into a full-time business. Danica absolutely epitomizes the heart of our GoDaddy customers. We love it.”

Danica has already forged into new career territory, having authored a fitness book, entitled Pretty Intense, released earlier this month, and launched her Warrior clothing line. She also owns a California vineyard, Somnium, which is Latin for the word “dream.”

“Having business ideas outside of your primary career can be overwhelming. It takes guts to go after a side hustle full time,” Patrick said. “Helping you get your ideas out of your head and making them a reality is what GoDaddy is all about – getting online with a domain name and website tells the world you are open for business and ready to go.”

Danica is one of TIME’s Most Influential People, and in what is shaping up to be the ‘Year of the Woman,’ Danica is sure to soak in the spotlight for her final NASCAR event, the Daytona 500, one month from today, February 18. She’s planning to unveil her special Daytona 500 GoDaddy car next month.

Danica’s final race is the Indianapolis 500, where she made history as the first woman to lead the most laps, 19, in her 2005 rookie season. “I don’t think I could have written a better ending to my racing career – driving my last laps on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway … although winning it with GoDaddy would obviously be the icing on the cake,” said Patrick. She has driven some of her best open-wheel races at the Brickyard, including earning a podium spot in 2009 with a third-place finish.

Danica transcends racing, in large part because of her ability to compete in a male-dominated sport. Danica did more than drive for GoDaddy. Over the years, she has appeared in 13 GoDaddy Super Bowl commercials, earning her the distinction as the celebrity in the most “big game” ads ever.

“We have always believed in Danica – and how she is inspired to set big goals, even in the face of adversity. We invite everyone to join us in watching how this next chapter unfolds out on the track, and then stay tuned for how she reinvents herself post-racing,” said Rechterman.

My only question? Will we see a racy GoDaddy Super Bowl ad this year?

Acquisition supports the company's long-standing vision of making enterprise-grade security accessible to every organization through simplification of packaging, pricing, and product usability.

SEATTLE - January 16, 2018 - WatchGuard(r) Technologies, a leader in advanced network security solutions, today announced that it has acquired Percipient Networks, a developer of simple, affordable, automated security solutions for small and midsize organizations. Percipient Networks' flagship product, Strongarm, stops phishing and malware attacks by offering an easy-to-deploy, security-focused Domain Name System (DNS) service. Integrated into WatchGuard's security platform, Strongarm will further improve the security efficacy of existing malware protection techniques, increase the value of the company's popular Total Security Suite (TSS) advanced services bundle, and become a key element in the evolution of WatchGuard's cloud security offering.

In 2016, 76 percent of organizations reported falling victim to phishing1. Company size and vertical industry played no role in likelihood of an attack, making it critical for companies to have protections in place against phishing, happy clickers, and other web-based threats. The Strongarm service monitors outbound DNS requests and blocks traffic to websites based on a list of known malicious domains. Furthermore, by monitoring requests at the domain level, Strongarm's filtering capabilities extend to all ports and protocols. Integrating Strongarm into WatchGuard's comprehensive unified security platform, will provide customers with the strongest possible protection from the widest variety of threats.

"In a world of increasing and constantly changing security threats, there is no silver bullet when it comes to protection. Many organizations don't have the resources to research and deploy a long list of security point-solutions. As such, it is WatchGuard's mission to continually evolve our unified security platform to provide the best combination of security services in a simple package, making enterprise-grade security accessible to all. The addition of security at the DNS layer is just another example of execution of our mission," said Prakash Panjwani, CEO of WatchGuard. "Based on years of research and development, the Percipient Networks team has developed a simple, enterprise-grade solution. We are excited to add the Strongarm solution to our platform and to welcome the teams behind developing and launching it to WatchGuard's ecosystem of rapidly growing partners, customers, and employees."

In addition to blocking traffic to dangerous sites, the Strongarm platform was architected to facilitate maximum user and IT admin education. Rather than just blocking traffic to potentially malicious sites, the service redirects users to a 'blackhole' where additional information about the attack is collected, and the user is presented with educational materials aimed at preventing future attacks. Percipient Networks also employs a threat analysis team who engages with the IT managers and managed service providers (MSPs) to provide additional insights into attacks and how to prevent them in the future. WatchGuard will continue investment in both areas.

"Phishing is one of the most common methods used to gain a first point of entry into an organization. It is one of the most effective tactics because it targets people. As such, organizations must employ a two-pronged approach to combat phishing - malware prevention services and employee education," said Todd O'Boyle, co-founder and CTO at Percipient Networks. "By protecting users and using blocked attacks as an opportunity to educate we significantly reduce the odds of that employee making the same mistake a second time. We are delighted to continue development of the product and our threat research team under WatchGuard's leadership."

WatchGuard partners and customers will be able to gain early access to the new DNS filtering service later this month when the product is released into Beta. The new service will be generally available as part of the company's all-in-one security package, Total Security Suite, shortly thereafter in an upcoming release of Fireware. All active Total Security Suite customers will gain immediate access to the new feature at no additional charge with the simple check of a box.

"We are extremely proud of what we have built with the Strongarm platform and this partnership with WatchGuard will put our award-winning technology and education tools into the hands of tens of thousands of organizations around the world almost immediately via WatchGuard's extensive VAR and MSP community," continued O'Boyle. "We are also excited to extend WatchGuard's approach to total security to our customer base, expanding their protection to cover more threats, and to our partner community, who will gain immediate access to the award-winning WatchGuardONE program and full product portfolio."

About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.
WatchGuard(r) Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in network security, providing best-in-class Unified Threat Management, Next Generation Firewall, secure Wi-Fi, and network intelligence products and services to more than 80,000 customers worldwide. The company's mission is to make enterprise-grade security accessible to companies of all types and sizes through simplicity, making WatchGuard an ideal solution for Distributed Enterprises and SMBs. WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visit WatchGuard.com.

For additional information, promotions and updates, follow WatchGuard on Twitter, @WatchGuard on Facebook, or on the LinkedIn Company page. Also, visit our InfoSec blog, Secplicity, for real-time information about the latest threats and how to cope with them at www.secplicity.org.

Here are the steps to take to keep your Windows laptop or PC safe from Meltdown and Spectre.

by Matt Elliott

A major security flaw has been discovered in many modern processors that could allow hackers to access data -- passwords, encryption keys and other information you want kept private -- stored in the protected kernel memory of your computer, phone or tablet. Known by the names Spectre and Meltdown, the flaws affect chips from Intel and Arm. Intel's rival AMD believes its chips are safe, saying in a statement, "Due to differences in AMD's architecture, we believe there is a near zero risk to AMD processors at this time."

Click here for a broad overview of the fixes currently available for a variety of devices. Considering the vast number of users with Intel-based Windows PCs and laptops, here's a deeper dive on what you need to do to protect yourself.

Install the emergency Windows patch

Microsoft has released a rare, out-of-band emergency patch for Windows 10 users. It should pop up and ask you to restart your machine so it can be installed, but if you have yet to receive such a notification, then head to Settings > Update & security see if there are updates waiting on the Windows Update page. If you are running Windows 10 version 1709 (Fall Creators Update), the patch you need is labeled Security Update for Windows (KB4056892).

For older versions of Windows 10, here are the patch numbers:

• Windows 10 version 1703 (Creators Update): KB4056891
• Windows 10 version 1607 (Anniversary Update): KB4056890
• Windows 10 version 1511 (November Update): KB4056888
• Windows 10 version 1507 (Initial Release): KB4056893

Manual install route

If you have yet to receive the patch via Windows Update, you can manually install it by going to this Windows Update Catalog page. Odds are you are running a 64-bit version of Windows, so you'll want to install the file for x64-based systems. For Fall Creators Update, for example, it's the bottom-most option labeled "2018-01 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1709 for x64-based Systems (KB4056892)."

How can I be sure I'm protected?

To check to see if you have installed the necessary patch, go to Settings > Update & security and click View installed update history. Under Quality Updates, look to see that Security Update for Windows (KB4056892) was successfully installed. You can also check by going to Settings > System > About and scrolling down to the Windows specifications section. After installing the KB4056892 patch, the OS Build will read 16299.125.

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Microsoft's Windows 8.1 has moved out of mainstream support, meaning that users are essentially running a dead OS. But there's still one more way to upgrade to Windows 10 for free.

By Mark Hachman

Senior Editor, PCWorld

If you’re still running Windows 8.1, be advised that Microsoft shut down mainstream support a week ago. But there’s still a last-ditch upgrade path to Windows 10: Microsoft’s assistive technology loophole, which closes January 16.

Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 8.1 on January 9, five years after the operating system’s debut. Essentially, it’s dead, and for the average consumer, Windows 8.1 will remain forever unchanged, with no new features or bug fixes. Instead, Microsoft has migrated the OS to “extended support,” which will provide security updates for another five years, until 2023.

In Microsoft’s world view, consumers should have already migrated to Windows 10, a modern OS with big fixes, patches, and period updates. And while the company gave users a one-year window to upgrade to Windows 10 for free, NetMarketshare shows about 7 percent of users have refused to upgrade, or simply forgot to do it by the July, 2016 deadline.

Well, know this today: You have one last opportunity to upgrade (unless Microsoft once again extends the deadline).

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The Version 15.6 beta provides a raft of C++ improvements, as well as enhancements for developer productivity and diagnostics

By Paul Krill

Editor at Large, InfoWorld | January 12, 2018

                         ThinkStock

The second beta of the Version 15.6 update to Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2017 IDE is now available.

[ Review: Visual Studio 2017 is the best ever. | Cut to the key news and issues in cutting-edge enterprise technology with the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. ]

Visual Studio 2017 15.6 beta’s features

Microsoft on January 10 released a second beta of Visual Studio 2017 15.6. Its features include:

• Improved solution load performance, focused on scenarios where a project already has been opened.
• The design time build cache has been optimized, with project data loading now done in parallel. Visual Studio thus can use the disk and CPU with greater efficiency. Microsoft has found that large C# and Visual Basic solutions will “warm-load” twice as fast as before.
• For productivity, the beta lets developers navigate to decompiled sources.
• For diagnostics, the CPU usage tool now displays logical call stacks for asynchronous code when used during post-mortem profiling with the Alt-Z Performance profiler. Asynchronous code running on behalf of a parent function or task appears as a child in Call Tree and Caller/Callee views. This view makes it easier to navigate asynchronous code and understand performance.
• For Azure cloud development, continuous delivery can be configured for solutions with ASP.Net Core projects.
• The Test Explorer capability, for running tests, has added a hierarchy to organize tests by project, namespace, and class.
• Test Explorer has changed real-time test discovery so it is now on by default, rather than require a flag be set.
  

The preview also offers new capabilities for C++ developers:

• For C++ standards conformance, the preview implements more of the C++ 17 standard library, including APIs such as stable_sort and partition.
• Missing include files are automatically discovered for C++ Open Folder if under the workspace root.
• Debug options are now available for embedded ARM GCC development.
• Five new checks have been added to enforce rules around integer overflow and additional rules for C++ guidelines
• CMake projects are now automatically listed in Test Explorer.
  

Features introduced in the December 8, 2017, initial beta include:

• The CPU Usage tool shows source-line highlighting based on consumption of specific lines of code.
• Using Intellisense capabilities for Python code no longer requires a completion database.
• The Team Explorer collaboration tool improves Git tags functionality, with the Tags tile available for viewing all tags in a repo. Developers also can delete and push tags and build a new branch from tags.
• Access to the App Authentication Extension, for configuring a device to use protected settings when working with the Azure cloud, has been moved into the main setup.
• Real-time test discovery, used for projects using the Roslyn compiler to find tests and populate the Test Explorer, is on by default. It had been available via a flag in the Version 15.5 release.
• For Azure cloud development, Visual Studio supports configuring continuous delivery to Azure for Team Foundation Version Control, Git SSH remotes, and web apps for containers.
• The WCF Web Service Reference connected service provider now supports an existing service reference, simplifying the process of regenerating client proxy code for an updated web service.
  

Where to download the Visual Studio 15.6 beta
You can download the Version 15.6 beta at the Visual Studio website.

Now available: Visual Studio 2017 15.5 features

Visual Studio 2017 15.5 was released on December 4, featuring faster load times for C# and Visual Basic.

Visual Studio 2017 15.5’s compiler and standard library gained the following new support for the C++ 17 standard:
• The compiler supports about 75 percent of C++ 17 features, including structured bindings, constexpr lambdas, inline variables, and float expressions.
• C++ code generation has been improved.
• New C++ Core Guidelines checks should ensure the quality of C++ code.
• Support for the Google Test Framework assists with writing Google Test C++ unit tests
• The Linux C++ workload supports cross-compilation for ARM microcontrollers.

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By Pete Johnson

Security” used to mean worrying about HTTPS certificates on your websites. The notion of a “device” was a browser and all you really had to do was to guarantee that traffic between it and your web servers was encrypted.

Then the “bring your own device” (BYOD) phenomenon caused system administrators to worry about things like isolating WiFi traffic for visitors and providing VPN tunneling software of iOS and Android, so that employees could access corporate assets in the palms of their hands. “Device” then meant “smartphone.”

But now, “device” means something different. Manufacturing equipment, plane engines and even parking meters all qualify. Devices seem to outnumber people, reminding us why we need IPv6. But this new notion of “device” also requires a very different security model unless you want to fall victim to a hacker because you forgot to secure every thermostat in your building.

Building Multiple Security Levels on top of HTTPS
Different vendors address this more complex security model in different ways, but generally speaking, it has three components to it: Authorization Engine, Handshake Certificates and HTTPS.

HTTPS is still the underlying technology for encrypting traffic, but unlike the old days of web surfing (when we used to argue about the length of the keys), modern device traffic puts two layers on top of that base encryption. First, there is a set of certificate handshakes that makes sure that some cloud entity should be talking to the device in question. On top of that is typically a cloud-driven authorization engine that can confirm or deny specific instructions to the device.

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Google Analytics Tools make it a lot easier to use Google Analytics as well as extend its functionality in many ways. Here are 10 Best Free Google Analytics Tools to help you get more things done with Google Analytics in a lot less time. In fact, some of these tools & add-ons can be used with Google Tag Manager (GTM) as well. All of these tools are free browser add-ons that you can simply download & install with a click.

1. Tag Assistant

Tag Assistant is a great google analytics tool that enables you to verify if you’ve properly added google analytics tracking code to your website or blog, and troubleshoot in case of problems. In fact, you can also use it to verify Google Tag Manager Installation as well as Google Adwords Conversion Tracking. Tag Assistant is a Chrome extension that you can easily download & install from Chrome store.

Bonus Read : 8 Google Analytics Metrics Every Business Must Track Regularly

2. Google Analytics Debug

Google Analytics Debug is a Chrome extension that allows you to debug Google Analytics right from within your browser. It basically inserts a piece of code when you load a page containing Google Analytics Tracking Code in your browser. This allows you to see useful information, warnings and errors messages about Google Analytics installation and performance, in your browser console. It also provides in-depth information about each tracking beacon/variable that your website sends to Google Analytics.

Bonus Read: How to Get Google Analytics Individual Qualification

3. Page Analytics by Google

Page Analytics is a wonderful Google Analytics Tool that allows you to see how customers interact with your web pages, including what they click & didn’t click. You can use these insights to optimize your web page layout, and increase conversion. When you load a page for which you have Google Analytics Access, it basically uses the Google Analytics Report data for it to generate page insights. You can even use the Google Analytics date comparison and segmentation tools right from within the extension.

Bonus Read : 10 Best Google Analytics Reports for Your Business

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From VPNs to mesh networks, efforts to find an alternative route to internet access are gaining ground in Silicon Valley

Daniela Perdomo, goTenna’s founder, holding the $90 antenna, with engineer Raphael Abrams. PHOTO: RYAN BOBROWSKI

By Douglas MacMillan

Daniela Perdomo is concerned about the power of U.S. telecom giants that stand to gain from the repeal of “net neutrality” rules. Her company offers a way around them: A $90 antenna that lets users send messages without cellular service or Wi-Fi.

Ms. Perdomo is among the entrepreneurs whose vision for an alternative route to internet access is finding takers in Silicon Valley, where tech types were rattled by a recent government decision to overturn rules that required big internet providers to treat all traffic equally.

“Society requires connectivity to function and to advance but we are leaving telecommunications in the hands of a few large corporations,” Ms. Perdomo said. “The lack of a choice is a problem.”

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Hang on fast for a fat opportunity you might have overlooked. It concerns a new approach to health care and pain relief with just a bit of pleasure sprinkled in. I’m discussing the medical and recreational cannabis industries. I discovered this opportunity via research over the course of 2016/2017 in the Seattle area.

High School Jokes Aside…
Once you get the White Elephant out of the room (high school and college jokes), you’ll quakily discover that the cannabis  industry is deadly serious. In my research, it resembles the local pharmacy dispensary business. You have similar legal compliance and supply chain issues.

And most view cannabis as a cure for ailments. Ergo I’m leading with the health care paradigm, not the black market drug dealing nonsense that has often defined cannabis.

Facts

• 5-states (including California) recreational legal plus Washington D.C.
• 22-states medical legal
•  California is recreational legal as of January 1, 2018.
• Massachusetts will become recreational legal in July, 2018

Risks
If you, the entrepreneurial MSP, considers yourself a risk taker, the cannabis vertical is for you! Right now the future is not an assured outcome. At the Federal-level, cannabis is still a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance under Federal law. Furthermore the Trump administration under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has rescinded the Cole Memo issued by the Obama administration as of early 2018. You can learn more about the Cole memo here but essentially it states that the Federal government was to stand down on active enforcement at the Federal-level of laws prohibiting cannabis. That effectively allowed the states above to legalize the sales and distribution of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes. By undoing the Cole Memo, there are legitimate concerns that Federal enforcement against cannabis will happen.

Another industry risk is banking. Currently cannabis-related industry players can’t participate in the banking system at the federal level. There are a couple loopholes such as state chartered credit unions but it’s clearly a business model impediment to not have a full service banking relationship.

MSP Opportunity
Some SMB Nation community members are ideologically opposed to cannabis use and have little interest in this industry. Others are following the money. Say what you must but the cash rich cannabis industry is an ideal vertical market if you like interesting technology work and want to get paid (well). I’ll be defining the MSP opportunity over the next couple of months but the purpose of this blog was a HEADS UP!

I’ve really struggled to see the Internet of Things (IoT) opportunity for MSPs. While IoT was/is a topic de jour at nearly every MSP-related conference currently, it’s still a pie in a blue sky concept. So what’s the reality of IoT as I write this in early 2018? I’d offer industrial applications that are, to be brutally honest, far afield from the traditional MSP world.

I have two data points to back up my research.

Both involve relationships I have from the Microsoft days. First, there is an employee

who recently returned to Microsoft from other endeavors and spent a year researching IoT in the Azure product group. We had lunch discussing the old Response Point product inside Microsoft Research but more importantly, his view of IoT. Basically the Azure product team is going to view IoT as CONSUMPTION! The trillions of data bits gathered from industrial cafeterias (rea coffee makers needing a maintenance visit) and trucks crossing the country will fill up Azure storage containers. At the end of the day, the Azure business model is timesharing and consumption so the more the merrier.

The other IoT encounter concerns Stijn Henrikse. We worked together inside Microsoft SMS&P during the Small Business Specialist Community (SBSC) era. Recently he landed at Fluke Corporation as the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of its Fluke Digital Systems group. MSPs will fondly recall Fluke as the gold standard for network measurement instruments. We met for coffee over the holiday break and he offered the most practical insights into IoT that I’ve received to date. It concerns industrial applications here and now. Think HVAC systems inside buildings. Then think of a medical campus with a large number of building having different and varied systems. I’d offer Fluke early success in IoT in this realm are akin to the adage “…that which we measure we can manage.”

So how can I relate this to the world of MSPs. There is an emerging answer: NinjaRMM. This spunky ISV has gained traction in the SMB Nation community with its solid RMM product and, equally important, its community participation. In working with NinjaRMM during 2017, I discovered its development roadmap was already pointing towards incorporating IoTisms into its portfolio. Of course the timing isn’t announced but I can tell you this. It’s the underlying commitment to product research and development from NinjaRMM that will make IoT reality for MSPs. How do I define reality? The answer is that it must cashflow (hey – payroll is due on the 1st and 15th mate).

Here is an interesting article we recently curated on the SMB Nation site “The Top 8 IoT Trends for 2018” that you might enjoy.

I’d love to hear how you, the SMB Nation member, is working with IoT. You know how to reach me. Thanks!

When launching your startup, it is likely that the thought of how to best get exposure and a loyal following for it is at the front of your mind. And even better if you can do so while also building up your brand identity and its ability to be recognized and remembered by consumers, right? With the right elements, your website can make this happen for your startup. Use your website as a powerful tool to develop your brand and its ability to connect with and engage consumers.

Domain name
Your domain name is a link to your website (both literally and figuratively) that people will interact with before even reaching the homepage of your site. Therefore, you must help set your site up for success by choosing and registering a domain name that ties in with your brand and promotes recognition and remembrance of it.

Make the domain name for your site something that is short and sweet, no longer than about four words. It should also be simple to spell out and to share, whether through word-of-mouth or digital mediums. Avoid using hyphens or numbers, as they tend to be accidentally put in the wrong place or left out entirely. These things will help your site’s domain name be remembered and shared, and as a result, promote brand recognition with more people, both on- and offline.

Your site’s domain name should also be brandable in the sense that it should itself be relevant to your brand. When a person sees it, they should know that it is connected to your brand if they are familiar with you. If a person has never before heard of your startup, once they visit your site they should see how its domain name ties in with the brand that is presented there.

Logo
Your brand’s logo will take up some valuable real estate on your website, placed prominently at the top of its homepage and various other internal pages. Ensure that it speaks to the message your brand wants to communicate and gives people the right idea of what your brand stands for and represents.

Both in design and in color scheme, your logo should not be too similar to that of your competitors. Avoid having it be overly fussy in a way that detracts from all your hard work on the rest of the site or that makes your brand look like it was indecisive on what it most wants to convey with its logo. The right logo makes a website and its design, as well as further promoting the site’s brand. The wrong logo can confuse consumers as to what your startup values and/or has to offer them.

Links to social media
Include links to each of your brand’s social media accounts on its website in a way and in a location that they are easily seen. Place them prominently on the site’s homepage or on a clearly identifiable tab. By directing traffic to your social media accounts through your website, you are allowing web users to see more of your brand’s content through its social media posts and your brand to build up the engagement of its social community online.

Content catered to your target market
Everything your brand does with its website needs to be done with its target market in mind. Give them content they find interesting and useful within your site. If you are not quite sure of who makes up your target market and what it is your target market wants to see from your brand, you will need to conduct market research in order to find out. This can be done either through primary research methods (like surveys and focus groups) or secondary research, in which your startup takes data already collected by an outside organization and uses it to form its own conclusions.

Know who you are using your site to market to, what it is they like and want to see, and craft your site around this knowledge. It is much easier to promote brand recognition with a specific segment of the market that you are working to get the attention of with your site than it is to attempt to do so by making general content that you hope pleases everyone.

Of course, your startup’s website needs to express what it is as a business and what it has to sell to the consumer. On top of that however, it needs to be a part of your startup’s online presence that serves as a strong representation of its brand and allows visitors to it to see that brand. Having your brand represented well on your site will allow people to recognize it, remember it, and be encouraged to follow along with all it is doing.

Daniel Newman , CONTRIBUTOR
Exploring all things Digital Transformation

An IHS survey estimates that there are 20 billion connected devicesglobally as of this year. Will 2018 be “The Year of IoT”? Not exactly, but the future looks promising and 2018 will show a promising trajectory.

Despite the huge gains in connectivity, the truth is 2018 will be more of a steady (rather than explosive) growth period for the IoT, full of fits and spasms, and everything that goes along with them. It will see lots of investment—lots of growth—and widespread adoption in a few major industries. But it will also see some growing pains—“fragmentation frustration,” potential data breaches, and security issues galore.

So, will 2018 be an exciting year? Yes—ish. The truth is, we’re right smack in the midst of a revolution—no matter how imperfect it may initially seem. If that isn’t exciting, I don’t know what is. The following are the top eight trends we’ll see in the coming year.

1. The IoT Will Grow: In what might be the most obvious prediction of the decade, the IoT will continue to expand next year, with more and more devices coming online every single day. What isn’t so obvious about this prediction: where that growth will occur. The retail, healthcare, and industrial/supply chain industries will likely see the greatest growth. Forrester Research has predicted the IoT will become “the backbone” of customer value as it continues to grow. It is no surprise that retail is jumping aboard, hoping to harness the power of the IoT to connect with customers, grow their brands, and improve the customer journey in deeply personal ways. But industries like healthcare and supply are not far behind. They’re using the technology to connect with patients via wearable devices, and track products from factory to floor. In many ways, the full potential of the IoT is still being realized; we’ll likely see more of that in 2018.

2. It Will Also Become More Fragmented: Just as the IoT continues to grow, it will also become increasingly fragmented. As we’ve seen with the growth of as-a-Service (aaS) programs and cloud solutions, that fragmentation will create some hurdles for many companies, as they deal with compatibility issues throughout their industries. Though companies like Qualcomm are leading the push for IoT device standards and certifications, in many ways, the genie has already left the bottle. It’s now a matter of wrangling her back into place if we want to put those standards in place.

3. Which Leads to Greater Security Concerns: I’ve said it before, but fragmentation leads to system compromise. Almost every time. The more complex, the more network security challenges. Indeed, securing all these connected devices in an environment with minimal regulation will be difficult. Finding a solution to keep data safe will be a main goal in the coming year.

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Chee Tung Leong , CONTRIBUTOR

Shutterstock

You may have already noticed it.

Subtle changes in your office space allowing you to concentrate more. Your boss being that little bit more concerned about your professional growth. Maybe it's also gotten just that bit easier to get your application for time off approved.

2017 has seen people analytics arrive "with a vengeance": this year, 69% of companies studied have been actively taking steps to improve the way they look at people data, compared to only 10-15% before.

If managers are able to effectively analyze and predict staff needs accurately, making the office environment more productive, improving career development, and implementing human resource processes should become much easier.

 The increasing adoption of human resources (HR) software has helped streamline the data analytics process and expedite “social connections” by providing management with the speed to act on these real-time and actionable insights.

With this as a strong foundation for progress, 2018 promises to have some radical changes to the HR landscape.

1. Shift from Employee Engagement to Employee Experience
With the growing influence of millennials and the increasing transparency catalyzed by the digitalization age, employees are expecting a more engaging and enjoyable work experience. 2018 will finally be a year where leaders start to focus on developing the “Employee Experience”, an ecosystem that integrates three core dimensions: engagement, culture and performance management.

This new focus will drive leaders to examine their employee journey map and optimize it much as customer experience teams do for customer journeys. It will be an exciting time where HR will continuously experiment with technology in the market such as pulse feedback tools, employee wellness apps, modern communication and productivity tools that will help facilitate the understanding and development of the employee experience.

2. Race to Digitalize HR
An important corollary to improving the employee experience through analyzing employee data is the digitalization of the workplace itself. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning tools like GetLinks or Arya have disrupted recruitment practices, effectively lowering costs and obtaining candidates with the better fit.

Josh Bersin shares his perspective, “just as many digital disruptors have toppled businesses in travel, retail, and other industries, we should essentially ‘topple’ our HR thinking with the adoption of digital solutions,” he says. “HR organizations now have to learn how to ‘be digital,’ not just ‘buy digital products.'”

In this vein, Singapore-based OCBC Bank recently developed an in-house mobile app, HR In Your Pocket, giving employees a holistic HR resource center for submission of leave and claims, tracking medical and lifestyle benefits, and internal job postings. It also features an in-app chatbot to address questions employees might have about HR.

As this rolls out, such practices are getting high visibility in many other companies. In Asia, where HR practices in some countries are still relatively nascent, there is a significant opportunity for ‘leapfrogging’ - skipping legacy technologies and processes altogether and progressing directly towards a more digital HR that would rival developments in more advanced countries.

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It was all explained to me a decade ago by well-known SBSer and SMB Nation member Bob Hood from Chicago, IL. Loosely translated he indicated many a wise person has gone to their grave trying to “beat the street” in investor parlance. Yet it seems that Harrisburg, PA-based D&H Distributing has done exactly that according to its most recent quarterly report. Because D&H Distributing in privately held, it doesn’t file standard reports like a 10K statement so it’s a bit difficult to confirm its growth; it doesn’t report revenues or earnings. But taken at face value, here is what I know about D&H’s success in beating the street.

Top Growth Categories at D&H, September to November 2017 (year-over-year):
Digital Signage 51%
Connected Home 42%
Server Products 36%
Network Security 26%
Workstations 19%
Wireless/networking 17%
Notebooks/desktop 14%
Printers 13%

Server-side
Gartner reports that server shipments grew 2.4 percent in the second quarter of 2017 after declining 4.2 percent in the first quarter of 2017. IDG reported similar numbers. If you look closely above, D&H is reporting that Server Products are up 36%, clearly a case of beating the street. But hailing from Seattle and the home of Microsoft Servers, forgive me for being a bit skeptical. I dug a bit deeper.

First there are two different measurements. Gartner and IDC are measuring server shipments. D&H is measuring the category of server products. So the growth rates don’t align (not apples to apples). D&H offered the following as sources of server-side growth.

1. Server refreshes – Small businesses tend to lag behind in upgrading technology. There are a number of five to ten year-old servers out in the small business channel running Windows Server 2008/2008 R2, and we are seeing a bit of a refresh cycle for that market.

2. Component and accessory add-ons – Many competitors and peers in the channel focus on selling a lot of inexpensive servers. D&H focuses on selling servers built to last. We sell more memory and hard drives per system than our competitors, on average. We sell upgraded RAID solutions on average far above the channel. We sell remote management modules, encryption modules, premium RAID keys, and other advanced technologies, even on servers for small businesses. All of these items are sold based on the value proposition of each one. The greater market tends to selectively overlook this strategy.

3. More sophisticated server solutions – D&H actively recommends high-availability solutions for our clients, typically two or three servers and an iSCSI or FC SAN. Most of the channel reserves this kind of solution for the mid-market and up, but there are a lot of small businesses who rely heavily on their data and systems being available. Those are the customers we cater to.

4. Focus on new technology – when Intel brings out a new family of technology, we drive that message in the market not only through our Intel customers, but through our HPE and Lenovo DCG customer bases, also. We find that we traditionally get a head-start on selling the latest and greatest by educating our customers on the value proposition and business advantages of moving to a newer technology platform, which tends to bring some server upgrades onto the calendar for D&H and its customers.

Any way you slice it, it’s both bold and impressive that D&H can beat the street. It’s niche focus on small business has resulted in extraordinary returns from expertise.

Forward looking
D&H is headed towards it’s 100-anniversary and it expects to add a 5% increase in its customer base over the next 18-months. “The distributor foresees significant opportunities for resellers who are looking to expand, as the industry faces a potential SMB back-office refresh cycle, spurred by the latest end-of-service dates for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 solutions.” What it’s referring to is the end of mainstream support on January 9, 2018. You read it here first!

In a recent Tech Pro Research survey, 39 percent of respondents said their 2018 budget would increase between 1-10 percent over 2017. This infographic has more information about how that money will be spent.

By Amy Talbott

In July and August, ZDNet's sister site, Tech Pro Research, surveyed tech workers about the IT budget for the 2018 fiscal or calendar year within their organization. Over half said that in terms of funding, their organization would dedicate more to IT.

However, another interesting trend emerged from this survey with regard to organizational IT spending. In this year's survey, 48 percent of respondents said they felt executive management at their organization valued IT funding as much as other departmental budgets. Last year, 65 percent of respondents said the IT budget was given equal importance within their organization. The portion of respondents who felt that their organization values the IT budget less than other departmental budgets was up to 36 percent this year, from 21 percent in last year's survey.

Within IT departments, a premium is being placed on security spending. Fifty-three percent of respondents said security will be a top priority in the 2018 budget. This isn't terribly surprising after high-profile events in 2017 like the WannaCry, or WannaCrypt, attacks and the Equifax consumer data breach. Respondents listed hardware purchases, cloud services, and software purchases as other high priorities for IT funds.

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Image: Erik Underwood/TechRepublic

All mixed up

By Casey Newton    @CaseyNewton

Snap today introduced a redesign of its flagship app intended to promote more intimate sharing among friend groups while pushing professionally produced content into a separate feed. The redesigned Snapchat includes a new dynamic friends page that incorporates both chat messages and ephemeral stories, and pushes items from your close friends to the top of the feed for the first time. It will begin appearing later this week for a small test group, and is expected to roll out more broadly in coming weeks.

The move comes at a time when Snap is under mounting pressure to grow its stagnant user base. The core idea in the new Snapchat is to put your friends on one side of the app, and brands on the other. In the center is Snap camera, which will remain the app’s home screen. (It produces 3.5 billion snaps a day, the company says.) The left side of the app is now for sharing and discussing, while the right side is for searching and consuming.

The idea is not completely new. The left side of the app has always been for chats with friends, and the right side has always been for brands. But before now, stories — the ephemeral, public photo and video posts that disappear after 24 hours — have been housed in their own tab to the right of the camera screen. The stories tab blended content from friends and brands, to sometimes confusing effect.

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Microsoft in 2016 changed the way it rolls out updates for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, leaving many IT admins and users confused. Here's how to sort out what the company is doing.

By Gregg Keizer

Senior Reporter, Computerworld

It's been more than a year since Microsoft ended the decades-old practice of letting customers

choose which patches they apply, and instead instituted a cumulative update maintenance model for Windows 7 and its shadow-of-a-sibling, Window 8.1.

And yet some users still don't grasp the new scheme.

"There are plenty of people who don't know which kind of update they should use," Chris Geottl, product manager with client security and management vendor Ivanti, said in a recent interview. "'Which one should I do? What non-security features are included in the monthly rollup? There's still some confusion."

No wonder there.

Microsoft asked for a lot last year. It asked enterprise IT administrators to upend ingrained patching practices. It asked them to make radical changes to how they maintain Windows 7 deep into its lifecycle, when there were just three years and change remaining before retirement, a phase most admins probably thought they'd be coasting as they prepped for Windows 10. It asked customers to absorb new terminology. And it changed the rules more than once after the new process debuted.

In return, users had questions - ans still do. The top query may seem among the simplest - what's the difference between the two types of Windows 7 updates now offered - but as Computerworld found out, appearances are deceiving.

What's in the security-only update? Just as the name implies, this update includes only security-related fixes, the kind that Microsoft has issued for 14 years on the second Tuesday of each month (aka "Patch Tuesday").

Just as important, though, is that the security-only update contains this month's fixes, and nothing more. (Again, that characteristic is what has defined Windows patches for years.)

What's in the monthly rollup? The Windows 7 and 8.1 monthly rollups include not only this month's security patches, but also all past security and non-security fixes, going back to at least October 2016, and possibly further. In other words, a monthly rollup is a superset of the month's security-only.

Side note: "Rollup" is a term Microsoft has used for ages to label catch-up updates, those that bring a program or operating system up to current status by bundling all past fixes. (Usually from a specific point in time, say, the last major release, which in the past were called "service packs" and abbreviated to "SP" as in "SP1" to designate the first such collection.)

Microsoft has touted rollups as a customer convenience, because they allow a long-out-of-date PC to be made current with just one download and install, rather than being forced to retrieve scores, maybe hundreds, of individual updates. That's exactly how the company described what it dubbed the "Windows 7 SP1 convenience rollup" it issued in May 2016.

"Install this one update, and then you only need new updates released after April 2016," Microsoft said at the time of the convenience rollup, which preceded and presaged the monthly rollups announced three months later.

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After spending so much time and energy creating an amazing prototype that you are excited about, you may be eager to take it to market and to start generating a profit from it. As simple as this sounds, it actually is more complicated than you might think. After all, the prototype should be carefully analyzed and tested before it is mass produced. Furthermore, you have to understand market requirements, competing products and even how your customers may actually use the product. The prototype is only the first step in the full production process. However, you may be able to start marketing your prototype quickly through several different strategies.

Create a Prototype First
Before you start marketing the prototype, ensure that the prototype is the best version possible. It should be very detailed and made of high-quality elements. At one time, creating a quality prototype was cost-prohibitive for inventors and smaller companies. However, 3D printing is now easily accessible and affordable. Prototypes made from this type of technology may even the playing field and potentially increase the number of great inventions that are brought to market. With your prototype in hand, you can market it in these ways.

1. The Teaser
A teaser is a website that is specifically designed to promote your prototype. Your website should use Google Adwords and SEO strategies to bring visitors to it. Once on the teaser website, visitors can see the prototype in detail. They can also learn about its features and uses. However, avoid stating all features and benefits. This website should be akin to a movie trailer. You want to entice visitors to contact you for more information so that you can customize your sales pitch specifically to them.

2. The Funds
To effectively market your product on a wider scale, you generally need to have access to a substantial amount of capital. You can fund this endeavor through your own personal funds if you have access to that amount of capital, or you can raise money from friends and family members. Your teaser website may be useful in this situation. You can also raise funds through venture capitalists, angel investors, silent partners and others.

3. Offer Early Purchase
Your product may not currently be available for sale, but that does not mean that you cannot accept orders for it. A pre-order is a great way for you to raise the revenue needed to bring the product fully to market. It also can show your potential investors that there is a strong market for the product. However, if you do accept pre-orders, try to deliver a product that is as close to the prototype as possible. You do not want your first few customers to be unhappy with the product they received because it is different than what was promised to them.

4. The Tryout Period
Another idea is to offer a free trial of your product. Some customers who are interested in your product and who may be uncertain about buying something seemingly new or untested may be eager to try a product without strings attached. This is also a great way to get feedback that is necessary to further refine your product. A smart idea is to offer these initial customers a discount to encourage them to make a purchase after the trial period ends.

5. The Power of Social Networks
There are many free or cost-effective ways to promote your product online. For example, social networks like Facebook and Instagram are free for you to use, and you can spread the word about your product to your followers. They can share the information with others. This potentially lets you expand your reach to a significantly larger group of people than you otherwise would have access to on your own.

Important: Ideas and Patent Protection
If you have a truly great idea, there is always a chance that someone else will mimic or outright copy your idea. In order to protect your rights, you need to have a patent on your product. You may seek legal assistance with this process if you are not familiar with it, or you can contact the U.S. patent office yourself to begin the process.

You could try to bring your product to market immediately on your own, but there are ways to promote your prototype that may be more effective and affordable. These alternatives may give you time to work the kinks out and to further refine the product before it is mass produced. Explore these various concepts to identify the most effective strategies for your unique prototype.

Author’s Bio:
Heather Redding is a part-time assistant manager and freelance writer based in Aurora, Illinois. She is also an avid reader and a tech enthusiast. When Heather is not working or writing, she enjoys her Kindle library and a hot coffee. You can reach her on Twitter.

The way that you run your business will have evolved over time. From the early days when there may just be you working for your business, to the current day when you may have a number of employees, your business processes will have changed with the increase and possible variation of workload; but are you working effectively? One way to boost your company’s bottom line is to review your working practices, procedures and environment, and take action on your findings.

Staff
With business growth comes the need to recruit staff who can help you accomplish your business goals, but you may not have considered that the working practices that they bring onboard could be harming the effectiveness and productivity of your business. You need to fully understand how your employees perform their duties to make changes that will benefit the business. It could be something as simple as moving the printer nearer the reception desk, or slightly more complex changes that require an examination of the company’s culture. One example of when the company’s culture needs to be addressed is if colleagues have too many meetings that fail to achieve the action points detailed in the agenda. The culture of your organisation needs to work with your objectives in mind, and not against them.

IT Infrastructure
Office workers are often frustrated by the technology that is in place in the office. While your IT infrastructure may have been adequate when you initially started your business, you are required to update your technology periodically. A slow computer that takes too long to load is a sign that you need to address your IT issues by upgrading the memory on the computers.

Seek out specific software solutions that can help your employees fulfil their roles. There is software available that can help HR, accounting and even warehouse management. You will lose time while you implement the new systems, but most will be compatible with your current infrastructure and will boost productivity with time-saving technologies.

The Office
As previously mentioned, simple changes to the layout of an office can significantly boost productivity. You need to ensure that the environment that you provide for your employees is conducive to optimal output. The impact of the aesthetics of the work environment on workers’ wellbeing is well documented, but have you taken advantage of this research? Workstations that are placed in natural light, office plants, artwork on the walls and a fresh coat of paint have been found to reduce fatigue, headaches and stress. As well as your staff’s mental wellbeing, you must also cater for their physical health: choose ergonomically designed office equipment. By taking care of the people that help you run your business, they will reciprocate and take care of you.

The need for change is often prompted when you recognise that your business is not performing as well as you know it can. There are many reasons for a reduction in performance, but by taking time to understand the workings of your business intimately, you will be able to identify solutions to the issues raised.

The New Year is right around the corner, and most employees are thinking about one of three career-related decisions. It is time to search for a new job, stay with my company or go back to school to improve their education.

A complicated reality to accept for most business owners is retaining top talent to save the expense of hiring new employees. Have no fear. We researched the latest employee engagement trends for you to use at your company in 2018.

1. Flexible Workplace Options
Think about the convenience you will add to non-customer facing employees lives such as accountants or telephone customer service reps with work from home option. It can be a once per week or month program that can be beneficial to single mothers, students, or employees with disabilities. According to Forbes, a recent study by CTrip stated: “remote workers ended up making 13.5 percent more calls than their comparable office workers, which is the equivalent of almost a full extra day’s worth of work in a given week.” Employees working from home feel valued by their employer. The pressure of meeting a quota motivates them to work harder.

2. Healthcare Tailored to Employee Needs
Imagine what your employees will think if you introduce healthcare benefits that will suit their lifestyle. You can lower healthcare costs for employees that exhibit financial hardship. An example of a successful launch is Schneider Electric that noticed a decrease in healthcare claims after implementing an employee program where workers can select personal options that will meet their healthcare benefit needs.

3. Performance Management Technology
The day of paper surveys handed out to employees is a thing of the past. In 2018, companies will use online feedback platforms such as 360-degree feedback to discover their thoughts on improving products and the appearance of your shop. The feedback they offer to your competitors and how to improve the customer service experience will help companies succeed. It might appear to be an expense you would prefer not to spend, but employees speak with customers every day. They are the ears and eyes of your business.

Another trend in technology will be online invoicing platforms that help employees focus on important work versus entering mundane spreadsheets that consume their time.

4. Mobile Fosters Employee Engagement
The workforce attracts employees of all ages. The age of technology through smartphones will change the way employers communicate with their team. Most people prefer to receive information from text because emails can accidentally be deleted or end up in junk mail. Human resources departments will connect with employees with the following strategies:

• Onboarding documents sent via SMS versus email
• Friendly reminder of upcoming training or workplace events
•  Connect with employees on payroll inquiries versus phone calls, emails
  

5. Time Off Programs
The popularity in Silicon Valley with some start-ups is granting unlimited vacation to help ease stress most people experience with heavy workloads. A few examples include a full day paid off for your birthday, half work days on Friday’s or a day off on the weekend if your state football team has a game. You can be creative or send a poll to employees to find out if 1 Personal Day per year will help with studying for exams, taking their child to the dentist or a day to relieve stress. If you notice your team is burnt out, it will negatively impact your bottom line.

A productive employee is one that will spend a few hours after their shift ends to do a good job cleaning up inventory.. It means an employee that will go the extra mile to put a smile on disgruntled customers face. The more productive employees are, the result can be increasing your profit.

Will anything stop this rocket to the Moon?

By James Vincent @jjvincent

llustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Bitcoin’s value crossed the $15,000 threshold for the first time today, marking another milestone in its dizzying ascent. In recent months, the cryptocurrency has undergone a staggering increase in value; surging from roughly $3,500 in mid-September to its current price. And at the start of the year, a single Bitcoin was worth less than $800.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, and most analysts are united only in their uncertainty over the cryptocurrency’s future. Bitcoin long ago stopped being useful for actually buying things (partly because of its rocketing value and partly because of achingly-slow transaction times), so the questions facing speculators are: is this a bubble? And if so, when will it burst?

Bitcoin’s price earlier today when it crossed the $15,000 threshold. Not long after it fell, back to $14,800. Image: Coindesk

Some traders figure we’re getting close, and are preparing to short Bitcoin; that is, make bets that its value will decrease in the future. “[It’s] one of the greatest shorting opportunities ever,” cryptocurrency Lou Kerner told Bloomberg earlier this week. “You have a lot of zealotry, and a lot of people, including me, who think it’s the greatest thing to ever happen in the history of mankind. You have a lot of people who think it’s a bubble and a Ponzi scheme. It turns out both of them can’t be right.”

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© Depositphotos So that's where you left it ...

Finding yourself out and about without your smartphone can make you feel naked. We rely on these devices so much that losing them creates a huge problem, preventing you from messaging friends for aid or mapping your way back home.

Losing any similarly essential device, like your laptop, creates an equally huge headache. To rediscover these lost gadgets, we've collected tech that finds your tech. These six apps and trackers can plot your devices on a map, force them to make audible sounds, and perform other tricks to help you reunite.

For Apple: Find My iPhone/iPad/Mac
Apple wants you to keep its devices safe, and to that end, it built a phone and tablet tracker into iOS and a laptop finder into macOS. Enable the feature on all your Apple hardware, and you'll be able to see the current location of any device on a map.

To set it up on an iPhone or iPad, open Settings and tap your Apple ID at the top. Then pick your device and select Find My iPhone (or Find My iPad) to switch on the feature. On a computer, open System Preferences and click iCloud. Then tick the Find My Mac box. During this process, Apple may prompt you to sign in with your Apple ID credentials, so make sure you have your password close to hand.

Once you've enabled the tracker, you can forget about it until you need it. If you do lose a device, grab your remaining machine(s) and open the appropriate app: Find My iPhone on a phone, Find My iPad on a tablet, or the iCloud web app in any browser window. Sign in, click the All Devices menu, and pick a device to see its location on a map. Within this app, you can also select a device and prompt it to make a sound, lock itself, or erase all its data.

The lock option is particularly useful because you can make the lost device display a custom message. For example, if you lose your iPhone, make the gadget share a message requesting its safe return and providing an email address where finders can contact you. And to prevent those finders from snooping further, locking the screen will protect your data.

For Android: Find My Device
Like Apple, Google has included a device-locating tool, called Find My Device, on Android. To enable it, open Settings and tap Security & location. Turn the feature on to start tracking your phone or tablet. Then install the Find My Device app on a backup phone or tablet.

To see where your gadget is, you have a few options. Open the app on your backup device, visit the Find My Device web portal, or just sign into your Google account and then type "where's my device?" into the search engine. As with the Apple service, you can make the lost machine play a sound (even when it's in silent mode), lock the device while its screen displays a message, or completely erase your information. Check out a map to view its last known location, battery level, and even the name of the Wi-Fi network it's currently connected to. Based on this information, you can decide whether it's gone forever or still can be retrieved.

Unfortunately, Google doesn't offer similar protections for Chromebooks — at least for the time being. So if you lose one of these Chrome OS-powered laptops, you won't be able to find it through Google. However, keep reading to learn about a third-party app that may be able to do the job.

For Samsung: Find My Mobile
Samsung owners can use the aforementioned Google tracker or Samsung's built-in Find My Mobile tool, which works very similarly. To access it, first set up a password-protected Samsung account.

Next, enable the tracker by opening Settings, tapping Lock screen and security, and choosing Find My Mobile. On this menu, make sure to toggle the Remote controls switch to On so that you can operate your phone or tablet from another device.

If your gadget goes missing, head to the Find My Mobile website and sign in with your Samsung credentials. Here, you can check out the last known location of your phone or tablet on a map. Like with the other tracker apps, you can ring your device even if it's in quiet mode, lock it so nobody else will be able to access it, and wipe it remotely if you don't think you're going to get it back.

From the same website, you can perform other useful tasks, such as unlocking a device whose PIN you've forgotten and backing up data. Just pick the relevant option from the list on the right-hand side of the site.

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WeWork has agreed to buy Meetup for an undisclosed amount, the coworking company announced. It’s a natural fit between WeWork, valued at $20 billion, and Meetup, a community platform with 35 million members that has hosted more than 300,000 “IRL” events (in real life), Mashable notes. WeWork has continued to rapidly expand its empire — including purchasing Lord & Taylor’s flagship New York store, opening a private kindergarten, and leading a $32 million investment in a women’s coworking space. Meetup will stay a standalone company for now, but will go on a hiring spree, per Wired.

Local SEO is the wave of the future. People are glued to their mobile devices 24/7 and are looking for services near them more than ever. Those who are still stuck in the pre-mobile-first era are bound to be left behind unless they ramp up their local SEO efforts. Unfortunately, many small business owners have absolutely no clue how local SEO works and end up making mistakes that can set them back. Find some examples below:

Incorrect or Outdated Information

One of the most important things with local SEO is the consistency of your contact information. If your information is all over the place and is inconsistent across platforms, your rankings will be affected. Make sure that you double check every outlet where your address is listed, whether it is a business directory, Facebook page and, of course, your Google My Business address.

Not Having a Google My Business Page

For those of us who are familiar with local SEO, we may take our Google My Business page for granted, but there are still a surprisingly high number of businesses who don’t have one setup. Whether it’s by ignorance, or simply because they don’t see the benefits of it, many business owners still are absent from Google’s business directory.

Others wrongfully believe that the information generated by local searches comes from their website. However, all listings in local results come from Google My Business page information. So, if you don’t have one, you have no chance to rank locally. You should create one immediately; it only takes a few minutes to complete. Just make sure that you don’t skip the verification at the end as it will be used to authenticate your address. 

No going the Extra Mile to get Reviews

Reviews are another crucial aspect of local search rankings. Sites at the top not only have more reviews on average, but also good reviews. If you have bad reviews, you’ll have no choice but to address recurring problems and commit to quality. Don’t be afraid to interact with negative posters and don’t make the mistake of coming off as defensive. Sincerely show that you’re listening to your customer's concerns and are ready to make some changes.

If you don’t have enough reviews, you’ll have to be more proactive in getting reviews from your clients. One of the great ways to get reviews is to add it as part of your packaging. For instance, if you’re in the restaurant business, something as simple as a message that prompts your visitors to review your restaurant on Google could make the world of difference.

Conclusion

Local SEO should play a central role in any marketing strategy. It’s one of the most effective marketing methods out there and is completely organic, allowing you to reap the benefits over time.

ClearCenter to integrate Minebox blockchain-based decentralized technology with ClearOS open source Security, Cloud, Server, Network and Gateway IT management offerings

MADRID, Spain, OREM, Utah and VIENNA, Austria - (Nov. 30, 2017) - ClearCenter today announced that it has acquired Minebox IT Services GmbH in a move to round out ClearCenter’s Hybrid IT Linux-based IT management operating system, ClearOS. Minebox is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and today’s announcement was made at the HPE Discover 2017 show in Madrid, Spain. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Both Minebox and ClearCenter have existing partnerships with HPE and each have optimized their solutions for HPE’s new Gen10 line of ProLiant servers.

"The escalation of general interest in the blockchain has produced a spike in security concerns around protecting blockchains and associated technologies," said Michael Proper, ClearCenter Founder and CEO. "By integrating Minebox with ClearOS and ClearCenter’s Gateway.Management security layer, we will provide the most secure method to manage decentralized hybrid on-premises and cloud-based storage.”

Minebox is based on an open source decentralized cloud backend. It stores files locally like Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems do, but also keeps encrypted pieces of each file on multiple nodes around the world. This eliminates any single point of failure, ensures redundancy and offers the highest possible uptime. With Minebox, users hold the encryption keys and own their data. No outside entity can access or control a user’s files.

"ClearCenter is a perfect fit together with Minebox's employees and customers," said Vlado Petrushev, CEO and COO or Minebox. "By joining forces with ClearCenter, we will be able to support a larger audience, expand into new markets and build new products to serve data storage needs for the coming decades."

ClearCenter's ClearOS is a next-generation open source server operating system that includes critical gateway, network and cloud security features. It delivers a powerful Hybrid IT management solution with an elegant user interface that is completely web-based. A key service within ClearOS is the Gateway.Management security layer. ClearCenter plans for a tight integration with Gateway.Management and Minebox technology to aid in protection from ransomware, viruses, malware and IoT-targeting threats.

Gateway.Management uses full egress control and Machine Learning-based whitelisting. These features allow customers to protect networks, machines and users without expensive hardware, subscriptions, or labor costs.

"The one layer of security that consistently mitigates modern threats, even during zero-day periods, is egress control," said David Redekop, ClearCenter Security Architect and Gateway.Management creator. "From an endpoint device, this Zero-trust Model means that all outbound access is denied unless approved."

About ClearCenter
ClearCenter creates simple, secure and affordable products for managing Hybrid IT. ClearCenter's ClearOS is a Linux-based open source operating system for managing Cloud, Server, Network and Gateway layers. It is designed for homes, small-to-medium size businesses and distributed environments. ClearOS has more than 430,000 deployments serving more than 10.4 million users. It is available in multiple languages and being used in 154 countries around the globe today. Visit http://www.clearcenter.com for more information.

About Minebox IT Solutions GmbH
Minebox is building data storage, archiving and backup solutions using NAS computers, blockchain technology, peer to peer networks, public-key cryptography and open source, decentralized data storage systems. Visit http://minebox.io for more information.

Success for modern small businesses depends on the effective use of digital marketing channels. Unfortunately, many companies have failed, despite their effort to engage their online audience.

To help your company gain the most from online opportunities, learn about the following five digital marketing mistakes and use the tips that follow to help you avoid them.

1. Lack of Planning

Before you do any marketing, you should thoroughly understand your business and its mission. Afterward, you can plan your digital marketing strategy in a way that is consistent with the other parts of your operation.

By spending time understanding your goals, you can stay focused and avoid wasting resources on unnecessary and counterproductive activities. So, before moving forward take some basic steps:

• Identify and understand your operational environment. This includes your customers, competitors, industry, and logistics.

• Write down what you want to accomplish via digital marketing.
• Break down your objectives so you know what you need to do with each of your marketing channels.

As soon as you have a plan, you can start promoting your brand.

2. Irrelevant Content

Companies that lose their focus face all-but-certain doom. Avoid that mistake by sticking with your marketing plan. As part of that focus, make sure that everything you either publish or post has relevance to your business.

Both poorly defining your market and creating low-quality content can contribute to a loss of focus. You can avoid these problems by first understanding your audience and then send the right messages.

As part of your effort, remember that relevance has much to do with channel selection and timing. Even the most valuable content will fall flat if you fail to get it to the right people when they most need it.

3. Focusing on Social Media Alone

Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter attract millions of daily users. For this reason, many companies make the mistake of focusing on social media and ignoring their website.

Without a website, your prospects and customers have no way to expand their knowledge of your brand and products. So, after reading your social media posts, people have nowhere else to go.

Rather than using social networks to replace your website, use them to funnel qualified traffic to your website. That way, people who want to learn more about your brand can click links that lead to your website.

4. Missing Out On Automation

Many growing companies fail to capitalize on their opportunities because the needs of customers exceed their support capabilities. Businesses in this predicament are doomed unless they embrace automation. Many never do.

When you use technology to perform repetitive tasks and distribute information, you expand the capabilities of your staff. As a result, you can control expenses while improving service. In other words, automation is a win-win option, so never ignore it.

In addition to reducing the number of manual actions required in your daily operation, automation can improve accuracy. After all, every time either you or your team manually enters data, you can make a mistake. Meanwhile, automated tools can without error repeatedly enter the same data all day, every day.

5. No Genuine Email Personalization

Email is a powerful weapon in your digital marketing arsenal, so make sure you use it properly. However, successful email marketing involves much more than sending out promotional notices.

Personalization can make a big difference with your email campaigns by tailoring your messages to individual recipients and audience segments. For starters, you should use an email tool that can insert first names into the text and mention the last products that recipients have bought.

In the end, email personalization gives you a chance to make your customer relationship data work for you. As you include more data points in your messages, you can expect to see more conversions. Additionally, every message you send should include new content.

Final Thoughts

Many companies before you have met their doom because of the above five marketing mistakes. Act now to plan your digital strategy and follow that action with relevant content and an effective website.

Furthermore, by using automation, you can boost your ability to support customers and create personalized email messages. Ultimately, these tips can lead to operational stability and long-term growth.

Author bio: Ashley Wilson is a freelance writer interested in business, marketing, and tech topics. She has been known to reference Harry Potter quotes in casual conversation and enjoys baking homemade treats for her husband and their two felines, Lady and Gaga. Connect with Ashley via Twitter.