Today nearly all of us have our information stored on the cloud. It’s a very easy solution that allows users to seamlessly create back-ups of photos, contacts and other personal information, giving users access to their accounts anywhere from any device. Perhaps its most prized feature is that it has no storage limits, unlike mobile devices and PCs.
There is, however, a downside to cloud services. Although it is useful in storing data, it could be the reason data is lost. Recently, the celebrity iCloud hack went to trial. The hacker admitted he acquired the credentials by spear phishing his victims and once he had them, all the data they stored on the cloud, whether intentionally or not, was exposed and later posted online.
Monthly Archives: October 2016
[session] Organizational Agility for Digital Transformation | @CloudExpo #Cloud #DigitalTransformation
Successful digital transformation requires new organizational competencies and capabilities. Research tells us that the biggest impediment to successful transformation is human; consequently, the biggest enabler is a properly skilled and empowered workforce. In the digital age, new individual and collective competencies are required.
In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Bob Newhouse, CEO and founder of Agilitiv, will draw together recent research and lessons learned from emerging and established companies, providing a road map for engaging our organizations in the creation and support of digital value chains.
Five ways to humanise your MSP marketing
(c)iStock.com/Peshkova
MSPs planning a marketing strategy today will find an overwhelming array of technologies and tactics at their disposal. But those that adopt technology- and data-driven marketing while maintaining a consistent human touch will stand the best chance of success.
Here are five practices we often recommend for MSPs looking to humanise their brand and make stronger connections with prospects:
Lead with your people
Business owners looking to outsource their IT support want to know that you’ll provide technical expertise and reliable customer service. A great way to demonstrate both attributes is to lead with real people and real stories in your marketing. Examples of this include video interviews with your engineers and support team, frequent client case studies and team bios featured prominently on your website.
Deliver on-point content for every question and objection
A comprehensive, buyer-centric content library is a key building block of a good IT marketing strategy. You can build this by first holding an internal workshop to understand the common stages of the decision process for each of your services, then creating a piece of content that addresses the typical questions and concerns a prospect has at each stage.
Once built, this library can fuel nearly every aspect of your marketing—from lead generation to social media to sales calls.
Avoid marketing buzzwords
Contempt for marketing buzzwords and generally empty language is universal among IT pros. When you build your website and content library, try doing it without using phrases like “world-class,” “end-to-end,” “best of breed,” or “industry-leading.”
Instead, try to convey your true identity and differentiators in a direct, simple and transparent voice. Tell them what you do, tell them what youdon’t do, and have a clear and painless call to action for starting a conversation.
See also: Why Jargon is a Disaster for Your IT Marketing (and How to Recover)
Build email lists organically
Particularly for new MSPs starting from zero in marketing, the temptation to purchase an email list can be strong. But the serious drawbacks of this tactic have been well documented by popular platforms like Convince & Convert, AWeber, HubSpot and MailChimp®. Simply put, you risk brand damage and compromise your future email deliverability while likely seeing poor returns.
The good news: When you build your email list through slow and steady inbound marketing (drawing people in with useful content and getting them to subscribe) you will likely see much higher engagement levels and ultimately better leads. It’s quality over quantity.
If you cold call, be armed with knowledge
Cold calling can turn off busy business decision makers, but sometimes it feels like a necessary evil to build a pipeline. If you must do it, be sure your sales reps have the depth of knowledge to lead a meaningful conversation with the few people that do want to engage. Our own research as well as that of others has shown that IT pros don’t care much for cold calls, but they really don’t like getting them from people who can’t answer their questions.
Lauchlan is sponsoring Continuum’s upcoming user conference and SOLD-OUT industry event, Navigate 2016, taking place in Boston, MA from September 28-30. Visit us at booth #108, and learn more about the humanised approach to MSP marketing. We look forward to meeting you and talking about your marketing challenges!
The article ‘5 Ways To Humanize MSP Marketing’ first appeared on Continuum Blog.
[session] Moving Fast with Microservices By @Mies | @CloudExpo #Cloud #Containers #Microservices
As software becomes more and more complex, we, as software developers, have been splitting up our code into smaller and smaller components.
This is also true for the environment in which we run our code: going from bare metal, to VMs to the modern-day Cloud Native world of containers, schedulers and microservices.
While we have figured out how to run containerized applications in the cloud using schedulers, we’ve yet to come up with a good solution to bridge the gap between getting your containers from your laptop to the cloud.
How do we build software for containers? How do we ship containers? How do we do all of it without shooting ourselves in the foot?
Egnyte Makes Microsoft’s Azure as its Preferred Storage Choice
In another strategic alliance deal, Egnyte, an enterprise file-sharing and collaboration provider, has partnered with Microsoft to make Azure cloud platform the preferred storage choice for its customers. However, a company statement says that if a customer already has a license with a different cloud provider such as Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, IBM, or Google Cloud, Egnyte will still honor these licenses.
With this deal, users can open any Egnyte file directly on Microsoft Office Online for viewing and editing, and the changes are automatically saved back to Egnyte. Also, users can remotely edit and access Egnyte files from any native Office Mobile app. With this option, Egnyte plans to offer end-to-end integration services for its corporate customers to help them tackle a growing mix of documents, apps, images, and other data that are stored in employees’ personal devices.
Currently, younger employees prefer to bring their own devices for work, and tend to use the apps they feel most comfortable with. Though this flexibility is good for employees, it makes life harder for IT managers, as they have to stay on top of security and integration aspects for these different devices. Though some companies prefer to block users from bringing their own devices, it’s not seen as a viable option. Instead, many companies are turning to file synchronization and sharing providers like Egnyte, Dropbox, and Box to address this problem.
In fact, a research by Gartner shows that corporate customers tend to turn to companies that specialize in file synchronization and sharing, rather than using content management and storage tools offered by larger providers like Microsoft and Google. However, the downside with choosing smaller companies is that they focus only on a niche area, and this means, clients still have to turn to larger vendors for integrations.
To overcome this downside, many file sharing and cloud storage companies are collaborating with cloud vendors to offer a comprehensive service. Already, Dropbox has partnered with Hewlett-Packard, and Box teamed up with IBM to offer cloud storage services. Hence, it’s no surprise that Egnyte also chose this path, to stay on top of competition.
Also, Microsoft was a natural partner for Egnyte, as the two companies have been tapping into each other’s capabilities for more than a year now. In mid-2015, Egnyte and Microsoft entered into an agreement under which, business users can seamlessly access and manage all of their Windows files over a network. This partnership was a big success for both the companies, especially Egnyte, as it helped to expand the latter’s customer base.
Since then, both the companies have developed many integrations such as Azure Key Vault, Azure AD, Microsoft Office Mobile and Microsoft Sharepoint Online, and these tools have been beneficial for both the companies to reach out to a wider customer base and to take on competition in their respective segments. More importantly, users have gained immensely from these collaborations, thereby making the above agreements a win-win situation for everyone involved.
This new agreement too is expected to give Egnyte a big boost, both on the apps and IT infrastructure markets as Azure has become an important platform for enterprise integrations today.
The post Egnyte Makes Microsoft’s Azure as its Preferred Storage Choice appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
Enterprise #DevOps Model | @CloudExpo #APM #Docker #Microservices
It’s surprisingly difficult to find a concise proper definition of just what exactly DevOps entails. However, I did come across this quote that seems to do a decent job, “DevOps is a culture, movement or practice that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other information-technology (IT) professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes.”
ABCs of Service #Virtualization | @CloudExpo @Parasoft #SDS #DataCenter
To achieve “quality @ speed”, it’s essential to have unrestrained access to a trustworthy and realistic test environment. It is important to recognize that a complete test environment includes the application under test (AUT) and all of its dependent components (e.g., APIs, 3rd-party services, databases, applications, and other endpoints).
Service virtualization is an emerging technology that provides DevTest teams access to a complete test environment by simulating the dependent components that are beyond your control, still evolving, or too complex to configure in a test lab.
[slides] WebRTC Reborn | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #RTC #USaaS #WebRTC
WebRTC has had a real tough three or four years, and so have those working with it. Only a few short years ago, the development world were excited about WebRTC and proclaiming how awesome it was.
You might have played with the technology a couple of years ago, only to find the extra infrastructure requirements were painful to implement and poorly documented. This probably left a bitter taste in your mouth, especially when things went wrong.
Disruption in the Storage Market: Advances in Technology and Business Models
New technologies, business models, and vendors have led to major disruption in the storage market. Watch the video below to hear Randy Weis discuss the evolution of flash storage, how new business models have driven prices down, and the vendors that are making it possible.
Or watch on YouTube
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IoT Manufacturing Security | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #DigitalTransformation
The security needs of IoT environments require a strong, proven approach to maintain security, trust and privacy in their ecosystem. Assurance and protection of device identity, secure data encryption and authentication are the key security challenges organizations are trying to address when integrating IoT devices. This holds true for IoT applications in a wide range of industries, for example, healthcare, consumer devices, and manufacturing.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Lancen LaChance, vice president of product management, IoT solutions at GlobalSign, taught IoT developers how to introduce strong security elements into the manufacturing process, addressing the critical IoT security concerns but also accelerating time-to-market and reducing manufacturing costs.