Now that the World Wide Web has taken over bricks-and-mortar shops as the primary medium through which to sell a product or service, there’s never been a better opportunity for anyone, regardless of financial or business background, to set up their own e-commerce store.
While bank loans, property leasing and constant monitoring meant that it took an incredible amount of effort to set up a business 15 years ago, the internet has provided entrepreneurial opportunities that nearly everyone can take advantage of. Provided they know the basics, of course.
So, where should businesses begin when creating an e-commerce site?
Monthly Archives: September 2012
New SkyRouter Mobile Satellite Tracking, Fleet Management Apps Support iOS, Android
Blue Sky Network today launched its New SkyRouter mobile application, a fleet management portal for land mobile, aviation, and marine applications. New SkyRouter is a cloud-based solution designed to support connectivity with remotely dispersed mobile assets including Blue Sky Network’s advanced dual-mode GSM and Iridiumtracking and communication services. With the New SkyRouter application, fleet managers are provided around-the-clock connectivity with assets via most Android or iOS mobile phones or tablets.
“The reliance that we have toward our mobile devices has opened up new fleet management opportunities for Blue Sky Network,” said Jon Gilbert, CEO and founder of Blue Sky Network. “The New SkyRouter App provides fleet managers the same constant connectivity in a user friendly mobile interface. Our easy-to-use mobile application provides fleet owners and managers who are on the go, real-time access to asset information.”
Features of the New SkyRouter mobile application include GPS location, fleet asset lists, breadcrumb mapping, active asset indication, automated event reports, and drill-down on asset events. Leveraging the integration of Blue Sky Network’s industry-leading tracking hardware, the new application provides truly global coverage of assets located anywhere in the world. The New SkyRouter application works in combination with Blue Sky Network’s robust and Iridium certified hardware, which can be easily installed on land, aviation and marine assets.
The New SkyRouter Mobile application will be available for download at the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store in early October. The product is in beta release and slated for production in Q4 2012.
Blue Sky Network will also be showcasing the New SkyRouter mobile application at the MINExpo International 2012, taking place in Las Vegas during September 24-26, in booth number 21209.
For more information on Blue Sky Network and the new mobile SkyRouter application, please visit: http://www.blueskynetwork.com.
Stacks Evolve as Cloud Expo Approaches
As Cloud Expo approaches, the ongoing, evolving open-stacks scrum emerges as one of the most interesting stories in the business.
The high-level view finds three unique strategic ploys:
OpenStack launches its foundation, with IBM, HP, RedHat, and now VMware (primarily because of Ncira, we hope) as key members.
CloudStack pins its hopes on being an Apache Software Foundation project
Eucalyptus buddies up with Amazon
OpenNebula, led by OpenStack pioneer Christopher C. Kemp, is also in any open-source discussion, as it continues its strategy as a cloud-management toolkit.
Analysts and pundits enjoy viewing the world in term of absolute winners and losers, and indeed, some enterprise shops will make a sole winner out of one of the open-source cloud stacks. The reality is more complex, as one will no doubt find any or all of these products within many enterprises within a few years.
VMware is often said to be “the enemy” of open-source, although in many instances (so to speak) its foundational product is not said to be cloud at all, but merely a nice way to achieve server consolidation.
Meanwhile, the true enemy is the idea of a “cloud in a box,” offered by a company that has its core database technology in 90% of enterprise shops in the US, and likely, the world.
I don’t have a problem with the premise that cloud can be on-premise, but it must be decoupled into services, virtualized, metered, and highly elastic to be so. The same should be said for off-premise cloud as well – can’t live on hosted services alone.
Otherwise, we’re just fooling ourselves. Cloud computing’s promise is to let us use our IT resources wisely – one doesn’t need ideology or religion to be wise, but we can’t just sing the same old song either.
QlikTech Launches QlikMarket Business Discovery Exchange
QlikTech today announced the launch of QlikMarket, a Web marketplace that delivers an interactive way for QlikTech customers to evaluate and acquire technologies and applications that leverage the QlikView Business Discovery platform.
QlikMarket is a site to harness the innovation of QlikTech partners in the new breed of business intelligence, known as Business Discovery, or self-service BI. QlikMarket currently includes Big Data connectors and extensions (Google BigQuery), unstructured analytics solutions (Attivio), connectors to Facebook, Twitter and Google Analytics (Industrial Codebox), and Cloud offerings like RApid Spend Analysis – Professional and QlikView OnDemand (Rosslyn Analytics). Specific industry and functional applications include pharmaceutical and manufacturing apps and those focusing on specific areas like property management and sales channel management.
QlikMarket is live with over 50 offerings in its debut at market.qlikview.com, featuring technology connectors, extensions, and purpose-built apps powered by QlikView:
- Connectors: Link QlikView to specific source systems or data
including connectors to Salesforce.com, SAP, or ETL solutions. - Extensions: Extend the QlikView experience to include features
like new chart types, geo-spatial mapping, or real-time data streaming. - Purpose-built Apps: QlikView applications that solve a specific
buyer’s need from a CFO dashboard to procurement benchmarking.
QlikMarket allows customers, prospects and the over 90,000 members of QlikCommunity to easily navigate the site by industry or solution, sort by relevance or partner, monitor solutions that are “most downloaded” and research offerings that are “highest rated.” They can also make educated selections of solutions with access to feedback from peers. In its first months in beta use before launch, two geo-spatial mapping apps (IdevioMaps for QlikView and GeoQlik extension), as well as the Connector Suite QVSource were among the leaders for both popularity and ratings.
“Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for our partners and customers to do business with QlikTech,” said Drew Clarke, vice president of Business Development at QlikTech. “For partners, QlikMarket creates revenue opportunities for their developed assets. For customers, it provides a one-stop shop to create their own ecosystem around the QlikView platform. For QlikTech, it allows us to use crowdsourcing to gauge customer interest and demands for specific applications and technologies to better serve customers’ needs.”
QlikMarket offerings come from submissions from QlikTech’s Qonnect Program solution providers, technology partners, OEM partners, and system integrator partners. QlikMarket is different from other software companies’ catalog-style exchanges because it enables users to interact with and experience the solution with live demonstrations.respective owners.
BYOD and the Death of the DMZ
BYOD remains a topic of interest as organizations grapple not only technologically with the trend but politically, as well. There are dire warnings that refusing to support BYOD will result in an inability to attract and retain up and coming technologists, that ignoring the problems associated with BYOD will eventually result in some sort of karmic IT event that will be painful for all involved.
Surveys continue to tell us organizations cannot ignore BYOD. A recent ITIC survey indicated a high level of BYOD across the global 550 companies polled.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Top Ten Cloud Security Threats for SMBs
SMB cloud adoption is critical for growth of most cloud vendors, but the SMB market is typically ill-prepared for some of the nastiness the sophisticated attackers in Russia and Asia are throwing at them, like ransoming their sites with DDoS, draining bank accounts with ZEUS, and more.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Terry Woloszyn, Founder/CTO of Leeward Security Ltd, will cover the most important security concerns SMBs need to address for safe cloud computing, as well as some of the “roadkill” we’ve seen in the past year.
Old Model: Patents Protect Products. New Model: Patents Themselves Are Products
Unwired Planet, Inc. has filed patent infringement complaints against Apple Inc. and Google Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada. Unwired Planet claims to be “the inventor of the mobile Internet.” It is now an “intellectual property
company that makes and sells no products – except patent licenses. Or as they say on their website:
Old Model: Patents Protect Products. New Model: Patents Themselves Are Products
In two separate complaints filed in Reno, Nevada, Unwired Planet charges Apple with infringing 10 of its patents, and charges Google with infringing 10 different patents. Together, the two cases charge infringement of a total of 20 patents related to smart mobile devices, cloud computing, digital content stores, push notification technologies and location-based services such as mapping and advertising.
“Today’s actions follow a careful review that we launched in late 2011 as we began to transform Unwired Planet into an Intellectual Property company,” said Mike Mulica, CEO of Unwired Planet.
In the case against Apple, the complaint specifically alleges that infringing Apple products and services include, among others:
- Mobile Devices (including mobile phones, tablets, and music players
with the iOS operating system including iPhones, iPads, and iPods), - Mobile Digital Content Systems and/or Services (including Apple App
Store, Apple Apps, iTunes), - Cloud Messaging Systems and/or Services (including Apple Push
Notification Service (APNS), Siri), and - Map and Location Systems and/or Services (including Apple Maps, Local
Search, iAds, Safari web browser, Find My iPhone, Find My iPad, and
Find My Friends).
The patents asserted against Apple are:
1. United States Patent No. 6,317,594, entitled “System and method for providing data to a wireless device upon detection of activity of the device on a wireless network,” asserted against devices such as iPhones and iPads which are able to get information, for example update notifications, when the device is switched on or moves between cells of the cellular network.
2. United States Patent No. 6,317,831, entitled “Method and apparatus for establishing a secure connection over a one-way data path,” asserted against services which use a push mechanism to get notifications to devices such as update badges sent to iPhone and iPad applications.
3. United States Patent No. 6,321,092, entitled “Multiple input data management for wireless location-based applications,” asserted against devices such as iPhones and iPads which use more than one source of location information, for example GPS, Wi-Fi and cell tower location.
4. United States Patent No. 6,532,446, entitled “Server based speech recognition user interface for wireless devices,” asserted against wireless server-assisted speech recognition for personal assistant services and dictation, such as Siri on iPhones and iPads.
5. United States Patent No. 6,647,260, entitled “Method and System Facilitating Web Based Provisioning of Two-Way Mobile Communications Devices,” asserted against Appstores for selecting and downloading applications on devices such as iPhones and iPads.
6. United States Patent No. 6,813,491, entitled “Method and apparatus for adapting settings of wireless communication devices in accordance with user proximity,” asserted against ways of using motion and proximity sensors to control devices like iPhones and iPads.
7. United States Patent No. 7,020,685, entitled “Method and apparatus for providing internet content to SMS-based wireless devices,” asserted against automated searching and information delivery based on keywords in a message from a mobile device, for example as used in Siri for iPhones and iPads.
8. United States Patent No. 7,233,790, entitled “Device capability based discovery, packaging and provisioning of content for wireless mobile devices,” asserted against digital stores with content and Apps for devices with different capabilities, for example the App Store for iPhones and iPads.
9. United States Patent No. 7,299,033, entitled “Domain-based management of distribution of digital content from multiple wireless services subscribers,” asserted against services such as iTunes or the App Store that distribute digital content to multiple domains, internationally.
10. United States Patent No. 7,522,927, entitled “Interface for wireless location information,” asserted against ways of obtaining device location information such as Find my iPhone, Find my iPad and Find my Friends.
The complaint against Google specifically alleges that infringing Google products and services include, among others:
- Search and Advertising Systems and/or Services (including Google
Search, Google AdWords, Google+Local, Google Places, Google Mobile
Ads), - Mobile Digital Content Systems and/or Services (including Google Play,
Google Apps, Bouncer, C2DM, and GCM), - Cloud Messaging Systems and/or Services (including C2DM and GCM),
- Maps and Location Systems and/or Services (including Android Location,
Google Maps, Google Street View, Google Latitude, Google My Location,
Google+, Google+Local, Google Places), - Short-Range Radio Communications Systems and/or Services (including
Google Wallet, Google Offers, and Google Mobile Ads), and - Mobile Devices (including mobile phones and tablets with the Android
operating system, including Motorola Mobility and Nexus mobile phones
and tablets).
The patents asserted against Google are:
1. United States Patent No. 6,292,657, entitled “Method and Architecture for Managing a Fleet of Mobile Stations Over Wireless Data Networks,” asserted against mass updates to applications installed on devices such as Android phones and tablets.
2. United States Patent No. 6,654,786, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Informing Wireless Clients about Updated Information,” asserted against push mechanisms to get updated information to devices such as Android phones and tablets.
3. United States Patent No. 6,662,016, entitled “Providing Graphical Location Information for Mobile Resources Using a Data-Enabled Network,” asserted against placing a location marker for the current location of a mobile device on a corresponding map, such as My Location in Google Maps.
4. United States Patent No. 6,684,087, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Displaying Images on Mobile Devices,” asserted against zooming into a map on devices such as Android phones and tablets, and providing zoomed-in images to users of Google Maps.
5. United States Patent No. 6,895,240, entitled “Method and Architecture for Managing a Fleet of Mobile Stations over Wireless Data Networks,” asserted against group and mass notifications/updates to mobile devices such as Android phones and tablets.
6. United States Patent No. 6,944,760, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Protecting Identities of Mobile Devices on a Wireless Network,” asserted against authenticated push of information from application developers to devices such as Android phones and tablets.
7. United States Patent No. 7,024,205, entitled “Subscriber Delivered Location-Based Services,” asserted against search and advertising using location, such as sponsored links in Google searches which are paid for using Google Adwords.
8. United States Patent No. 7,035,647, entitled “Efficient Location Determination for Mobile Units,” asserted against identifying the location of a device, such as an Android phone or tablet, with increased accuracy using multiple sources, such as GPS, Wi-Fi and cell tower location.
9. United States Patent No. 7,203,752, entitled “Method and System for Managing Location Information for Wireless Communications Devices,” asserted against privacy control for applications requesting access to the location to a device, such as an Android phone or tablet.
10. United States Patent No. 7,463,151, entitled “Systems and Methods for Providing Mobile Services Using Short-Range Radio Communication Devices,” asserted against devices with advanced Near Field Communications (NFC) services, such as NFC-based commerce, advertising and coupons, and access to content using NFC.
Commentary: VMworld and Cloud Adoption in Enterprises
Technology companies need to target the enterprise to get big benefits for themselves as well as this customer segment. While there are a number of obstacles, proper messaging will help overcome these hurdles.
Cutting Through the Fog: Application Performance in the Cloud
IT professionals spend 35 percent of their time firefighting, according to analyst firm Research in Action. Moving applications to the cloud, instrumenting them, and enforcing end-to-end performance service level agreements (SLAs) can significantly make things better, reducing friction between teams and increasing operational agility.
However, to manage applications in the cloud, old tooling won’t cut it. You need new solutions to see through the extra complexity: solutions that are predictive, business-smart, and capture the details of how every single user interacts with your applications.
Cloud Computing: SnapLogic Gets $20 Million
SnapLogic, the enterprise cloud integration outfit that’s supposed to bestride cloud computing and Big Data, has gotten a $20 million C round led by Ignition, a new investor, as well as Triangle Peak Partners and existing backer Andreessen Horowitz.
That makes $32.5 million altogether.
SnapLogic claims to be a “standard for Global 2000 companies” in helping them integrate the cloud while ensuring interoperability across a complex range of on-premise legacy apps. It also caters to federal agencies.