Monthly Archives: June 2012

Asia/Pacific Rim, Business Processes, Japan, Kyriba, Partnerships, risk management, Treasury management

Kyriba Establishes Japanese Joint Venture

Kyriba, a provider of cloud-based treasury management solutions today announced the establishment of a new joint venture in Japan called Kyriba Japan. The joint venture will enable Kyriba to meet the demands of the increasing number of corporations in Japan and throughout Asia that are turning to cloud computing and mobile solutions to help them manage their global treasury operations.

Kyriba’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution delivers a fully web-based cash, treasury, and risk management solution to over 25,000 users across 700 leading global organizations.

Key features of Kyriba’s platform include:

  • Global Cash Visibility, including SWIFT integration
  • Cash and Liquidity Forecasting
  • Payment Factories
  • Bank Fee Analysis
  • Accounting Reconciliation
  • Exposure Management
  • Hedge Management
  • Supply Chain Finance

Kyriba Japan is a joint venture between Kyriba, as the majority shareholder, SunBridge Corporation, the firm responsible for the salesforce.com Japan and Concur Japan joint ventures, and Marc Benioff and Steve Singh, acting as minority direct investors. Japan operations will begin in June 2012.

“Kyriba has enjoyed remarkable success over the last few years delivering Internet-based Treasury Management Solutions to the foremost corporations around the world. We are now investing in Japan to support our global clients’ business goals and continue our geographic expansion. This growth further demonstrates Kyriba’s commitment to satisfy our clients’ needs globally,” commented Jean-Luc Robert, CEO of Kyriba. “We are extremely pleased to be partnered with SunBridge Corporation, Marc Benioff and Steve Singh who have demonstrated great success in building the Japanese operations of top tier global companies.”

“The Kyriba solution’s ability to combine global cash visibility, treasury productivity, and risk management on a single web platform is a critical requirement for Japanese enterprises doing business internationally as well as for multi-national corporations doing business in Japan,” said Allen Miner, the Founder and CEO of SunBridge. “Feedback from potential Japanese customers gives us confidence that Kyriba will enjoy great success in Japan.”


Uncategorized

The Challenge of Herding Cats: Your SaaS Portfolio and Security

It’s obvious the rise of SaaS (software-as-a-service) has changed the game. The benefits of subscribing to a cloud-based application service are already well-known and documented: cost-efficiencies, speed, hands-off maintenance, etc… It’s no longer an emerging practice and, for most IT managers, has become an inextricable component of any go-forward IT network strategy. What this means is now there are dozens of new sign-ons per user from a variety of endpoints (including mobile and tablet). And if we are talking enterprise-wide deployments, this is can be as challenging as herding cats.

read more

Accounting, Asia/Pacific Rim, Business Processes, GSC, Singapore

Gurango Software Corporation Launches Gurango Accounting Online for Singapore Accountants

Gurango Software Corporation (GSC) recently launched Gurango Accounting Online, an IRAS-certified online accounting software for accountants, bookkeepers, and tax advisors. The software is based on Microsoft Dynamics ERP technologies and was designed to meet the specific requirements of certified accountants and tax advisors in Singapore.

Gurango Accounting Online complies with GAAP, IFRS, and the IAF standards published by IRAS. “It’s important for us to provide accountants, bookkeepers, and tax advisors in Singapore an efficient platform to accomplish their day-to-day work. Gurango Accounting Online is compliant with Singapore standards and best practices. So there are no issues in terms of aligning financial reporting with regulatory requirements,” said GSC CEO and managing director Joey Gurango.

Accessed online, Gurango Accounting Online is a Software as a Service application and is provided through GSC’s on-demand cloud service for businesses, Gurango Hosted Solutions (GHS). The service provides accountants, bookkeepers, and tax advisors the freedom to work on their day-to-day deliverables anywhere and at anytime.

Security and cost savings are also some of the top features of Gurango Accounting Online. All data is hosted in the company’s private cloud, or remote data centers, ensuring data security. Gurango Accounting Online is offered at a SME-friendly price, according to Gurango. “A big IT budget is not required to obtain this solution, and empowering small and medium businesses with enterprise-level software.

“Because there is no software to install, hardware to acquire, or IT staff to hire, additional savings are realized. The only thing required is an Internet connection,” he said. GSC provides free training classes and free technical support.

Aside from GHS, Gurango Accounting Online is built on Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Windows Server 2008R2 with Remote Desktop Services and Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 Standard Edition.

GSC has received numerous awards and distinctions including the Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the Year three years in a row (2008-2010). GSC has offices in the Philippines, Singapore, and Australia. It also offers business software services ranging from financial and human capital management to customer service.

For more information on Gurango Accounting Online, please visit http://www.gurango.com/gurango-accounting-online.


Uncategorized

Cloud Computing: NASA Forsakes OpenStack for Amazon

NASA has retreated from OpenStack, the open source infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud computing platform it helped RackSpace launch by contributing its Nebula (Nova) compute controller.
Apparently NASA doesn’t want to play developer anymore. Instead, it’s on an “IT reform” tear that started a year ago.
This reform has a lot to do with NASA watching how it spends the taxpayer’s dime and using commercial cloud services when appropriate.
Ah, but the sweet irony is – according to a June 8 blog posting by NASA CIO Linda Cureton – that the agency has “shifted to a new web services model that uses Amazon Web Services for cloud-based enterprise infrastructure. This cloud-based model supports a wide variety of web applications and sites using an interoperable, standards-based and secure environment while providing almost a million dollars in cost savings each year.”

read more

Uncategorized

Avoiding the Operational Debt of Cloud

If you ask three different people why they are adopting cloud it’s likely you’ll get three different reasons. The rationale for adopting cloud – whether private or public – depends entirely on the strategy IT has in place to address the unique combination of operational and business requirements for their organizations.
But one thing seems clear through all these surveys: cloud is here to stay, in one form or another.
Those who are “going private” today may “go hybrid” tomorrow. Those who are “in the cloud” today may reverse direction and decide to, as Alan Leinwand puts it so well, “own the base and rent the spike” by going “hybrid.” What the future seems to hold is hybrid architectures, with use of public and private cloud mixed together to provide the best of both worlds.

read more

Cloud computing, Public Cloud

The Private Cloud Strikes Back

Having read JP Rangaswami’s argument against private clouds (and the obvious promoting of his version of cloud) I have only to say that he’s looking for oranges in an apple tree.  His entire premise is based on the idea that enterprises are wholly concerned with cost and sharing risk when that can’t be farther from the truth.  Yes, cost is indeed a factor as is sharing risk but a bigger and more important factor facing the enterprise today is agility and flexibility…something that monolithic leviathan-like enterprise IT systems of today definitely are not. He then jumps from cost to social enterprise as if there is a causal relationship there when, in fact, they are two separate discussions.  I don’t doubt that if you are a consumer (not just customer) facing organization, it’s best to get on that social enterprise bandwagon but if your main concern is how to better equip and provide the environment and tools necessary to innovate within your organization, the whole social thing is a red herring for selling you things that you don’t need.

Traditional status quo within IT is deeply encumbered by mostly manual processes—optimized for people carrying out commodity IT tasks such as provisioning servers and OSes—that cannot be optimized any further, therefore a different, much better way had to be found.  That way is the private cloud which takes those commodity IT tasks and elevates them to automated and orchestrated, well defined workflows and then utilizes a policy-driven system to carry them out.  Whether these workflows are initiated by a human or as a result of a specific set of monitored criteria, the system dynamically creates and recreates itself based on actual business and performance need—something that is almost impossible to translate into the public cloud scenario.

Not that public cloud cannot be leveraged where appropriate, but the enterprise’s requirement is much more granular and specific than any public cloud can or should allow…simply to JP’s point that they must share the risk among many players and that risk is generic by definition within the public cloud.  Once you start creating one-off specific environments, the commonality is lost and it loses the cost benefits because now you are simply utilizing a private cloud whose assets are owned by someone else…sound like co-lo?

Finally, I wouldn’t expect someone whose main revenue source is based on the idea that a public cloud is better than a private cloud to say anything different than what JP has said, but I did expect some semblance of clarity as to where his loyalties lie…and it looks like it’s not with the best interests of the enterprise customer.

Uncategorized

Where to allocate resources in the cybercrime war

The cost of protecting ourselves against cybercrime can far outweigh the cost of the threat itself, according to a new study led by computer scientists at The University of Cambridge.

At the behest of the UK Ministry of Defence, the research team compiled the first estimate of direct, indirect and defence costs of different types of cybercrime.

The report’s authors, which included experts from Cambridge University, working with colleagues in Germany, the Netherlands, the USA and UK, concluded that Governments should spend less trying to anticipate online crime, and more trying to actively pursue and prosecute its perpetrators.

“Advances in information technology are moving many social and economic interactions, such as fraud or forgery, from the physical worlds to cyberspace,” said lead author Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory.

“As countries scramble to invest in security to minimise cyber-risks, governments want …

Uncategorized

Cloud & National Security: Report to the President on Cloud Computing

In view of the the quick-moving push to modernize many national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) capabilities to be cloud based capabilities, the White House tasked the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) to produce a report aimed at answering the central issue: Can NS/EP processes be migrated to the cloud without undue risk?

read more

Uncategorized

Cloud & National Security: Report to the President on Cloud Computing

In view of the the quick-moving push to modernize many national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) capabilities to be cloud based capabilities, the White House tasked the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) to produce a report aimed at answering the central issue: Can NS/EP processes be migrated to the cloud without undue risk?

read more

Uncategorized

What security lessons can be learned from LinkedIn?

Users are making it too easy for hackers.

If we take a closer look at the 6.5 million hashed LinkedIn passwords that leaked we find a large swathe of the user population are ignoring warnings of overly simplistic and obvious passwords. Would you believe the most common word or phrase found in a 160k sampling of the list was “link”?

And would you further shake your head in disbelief that “1234” and “12345” followed close behind. Rounding out the top 10 were “work,” “god,” “job,” “angel,” “the,” “ilove,” and “sex.”

More so than Facebook, LinkedIn is the social media of choice for business. So it is likely to be used by the users in your enterprise as part of their security-as-a-service (SaaS) profile. This makes their problem your problem.

If we learn anything from this debacle, it is that password management should be a priority for any organisation that …