Today we released Parallels Toolbox for Mac, version 1.5. In this blog post, I will tell you and show you what is in this new release. As you may recall, Toolbox 1.2 and 1.3 were released in the fall of 2016. These releases added five new tools (Launch, Eject Volumes, Take Photo, Take Video, and […]
The post What’s in Parallels Toolbox 1.5 for Mac? appeared first on Parallels Blog.
In just the past ten or so years, consumer devices have swamped enterprises. Along with those devices have come apps and services and the expectation of ease and convenience from technology. The consumerization of IT is more than just the need to support and monitor personal devices on the enterprise network. It’s a mindset shift among your employees that’s silently impacted the IT department.
Cognitive Computing is becoming the foundation for a new generation of solutions that have the potential to transform business. Unlike traditional approaches to building solutions, a cognitive computing approach allows the data to help determine the way applications are designed. This contrasts with conventional software development that begins with defining logic based on the current way a business operates.
In her session at 18th Cloud Expo, Judith S. Hurwitz, President and CEO of Hurwitz & Associates, Inc., put cognitive computing into perspective with its value to the business. The session detailed what it takes to build a cognitive application and the types of solutions that are the best fit for this data-driven approach.
Every successful software product evolves from an idea to an enterprise system. Notably, the same way is passed by the product owner’s company. In his session at 20th Cloud Expo, Oleg Lola, CEO of MobiDev, will provide a generalized overview of the evolution of a software product, the product owner, the needs that arise at various stages of this process, and the value brought by a software development partner to the product owner as a response to these needs.
As cloud adoption continues to transform business, today’s global enterprises are challenged with managing a growing amount of information living outside of the data center. The rapid adoption of IoT and increasingly mobile workforce are exacerbating the problem. Ensuring secure data sharing and efficient backup poses capacity and bandwidth considerations as well as policy and regulatory compliance issues.
Microsoft is looking to make a big impact in the Australia New Zealand (ANZ) region this year, and to this end, it has brought in Steven Worrall as the new managing director of its Australian business. In this role, Worrall has the responsibility to ensure that Microsoft meets the needs of its customers in the ANZ region, and also continue to cater to the more than 11,000 partners and independent software vendors that work on the Microsoft platform in Australia.
Though this sounds like a huge responsibility, Microsoft believes Worrall has the skills and experience to handle it. He joined Microsoft in 2014 as the Director of Enterprise and Partner Group – a division that is responsible for driving business and building a strong relationship with customers and partners. He had done remarkably well in this role, as he showed strong results and improvements in the areas of productivity solutions, cloud, and mobility platforms.
Worrall was offered this job after Pip Marlow, the long-standing director of Microsoft Australia, quit her job to take up a new role as the chief executive of strategic innovation at Suncorp. After accepting this position, Worrall told The Australian Financial Review that he would make the most of his stint at the top, especially at a time when Microsoft is on a roll world over, fueled in part by the phenomenal success of its cloud platform, Azure. It’s other cloud-based products such as Office 365 and Dynamic 365 are also enjoying a huge popularity, and Worrall plans to extend their application further in the ANZ region.
At the same time, he also opined on the skills gap that exist in cloud technology, and promised that he would work on this area to ensure that Microsoft’s capabilities reached every customer and partner to the fullest extent possible.
Worrall could not have asked for a better time to lead Microsoft, as the company is gushing ahead in the cloud business. Last week, it’s quarterly results exceeded the expectations of investors and analysts, with a substantial chunk of revenue coming from its cloud business. Worrall is the right choice for this position, as he has the experience and skills to steer the Australian business in the right direction, and to contribute to the overall profitability in a big way.
Before joining Microsoft, Worrall worked in IBM for 22 years, and held various roles in the areas of sales, marketing, software and finance. In his last stint at IBM, he was responsible for furthering IBM’s software business in the Asia Pacific region, and more specifically, for promoting its cloud-based services.
Besides experience, Worrall also has a solid academic background as he holds an Honor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and an MBA degree in Business from Macquarie University. In addition, he is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a board that aims to promote excellence in governance and also to provide solutions on issues faced by Australian directors.
On the personal front, Worrall lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.
The post Microsoft Australia Gets a New Head appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
(c)iStock.com/Maciej Noskowski
If your business is ahead of the curve when it comes to cloud adoption, then prepare for a hit of good news; organisations which execute a strategic cloud plan are growing revenue 2.3 times faster than their competition and are on average generating a 35% lift year on year in top line revenue.
But for those not quite there, what are the strategies which need to be examined? These and other findings comprised a new study from CloudHealth Technologies which argues cloud-leading firms have the edge on mitigating risk, cost, and governance.
To define the gap between the best and the rest, cloud leading organisations are more likely to have cloud SLAs (87-91% of higher tier respondents compared to 54-62% of lower tier respondents), proactively monitor for abnormal cloud behaviour (92% vs 63% respectively) and have a ‘comprehensive, clearly articulated strategy for managing cloud cost’ (94% vs 37%).
Naturally, one of the knock-on effects of outperforming the competition is greater agility. Top tier respondents were four times more likely to develop and roll out new apps, ranging from ‘somewhat’ to ‘extremely quickly’, according to the report, while leading cloud enterprises are twice as likely to say they are able to roll out new cloud deployments more efficiently.
Writing in a company blog post, Mueller noted the importance of this study was not to tell people for the umpteenth time that cloud was ‘going to be really, really big’. “What we found is that there is an enormous disparity between the top tier and the rest of the pack,” she said. “There were no particular classifications, unique traits or industries that helped to formulate the overall profile of a trailblazer. The only thing that distinguishes them is the size of their organisation…so the good news is that anyone can be a cloud leader.”
The report gives five key tenets on how to become a cloud leader. Companies should designate responsibility and assign a ‘cloud steward’ who has a comprehensive knowledge of both the technology and the business goals, CloudHealth notes, with more than three quarters (76%) of cloud leaders polled having such a position in their ranks. Continuity was seen as vital – organisations should not only set metrics for success but make them a continuous cycle of measuring and tracking – as well as automating day to day routines and having best practice defined at the organisational level. Centralised governance and having a full understanding of spend – as well as it being linked to performance – were also cited.
“Any organisation can achieve similar results by applying the lessons from the trailblazers when it comes to cloud management,” the report concludes.
You can find out more here (registration required).
(c)iStock.com/Maciej Noskowski
If your business is ahead of the curve when it comes to cloud adoption, then prepare for a hit of good news; organisations which execute a strategic cloud plan are growing revenue 2.3 times faster than their competition and are on average generating a 35% lift year on year in top line revenue.
But for those not quite there, what are the strategies which need to be examined? These and other findings comprised a new study from CloudHealth Technologies which argues cloud-leading firms have the edge on mitigating risk, cost, and governance.
To define the gap between the best and the rest, cloud leading organisations are more likely to have cloud SLAs (87-91% of higher tier respondents compared to 54-62% of lower tier respondents), proactively monitor for abnormal cloud behaviour (92% vs 63% respectively) and have a ‘comprehensive, clearly articulated strategy for managing cloud cost’ (94% vs 37%).
Naturally, one of the knock-on effects of outperforming the competition is greater agility. Top tier respondents were four times more likely to develop and roll out new apps, ranging from ‘somewhat’ to ‘extremely quickly’, according to the report, while leading cloud enterprises are twice as likely to say they are able to roll out new cloud deployments more efficiently.
Writing in a company blog post, Mueller noted the importance of this study was not to tell people for the umpteenth time that cloud was ‘going to be really, really big’. “What we found is that there is an enormous disparity between the top tier and the rest of the pack,” she said. “There were no particular classifications, unique traits or industries that helped to formulate the overall profile of a trailblazer. The only thing that distinguishes them is the size of their organisation…so the good news is that anyone can be a cloud leader.”
The report gives five key tenets on how to become a cloud leader. Companies should designate responsibility and assign a ‘cloud steward’ who has a comprehensive knowledge of both the technology and the business goals, CloudHealth notes, with more than three quarters (76%) of cloud leaders polled having such a position in their ranks. Continuity was seen as vital – organisations should not only set metrics for success but make them a continuous cycle of measuring and tracking – as well as automating day to day routines and having best practice defined at the organisational level. Centralised governance and having a full understanding of spend – as well as it being linked to performance – were also cited.
“Any organisation can achieve similar results by applying the lessons from the trailblazers when it comes to cloud management,” the report concludes.
You can find out more here (registration required).
Change is hard, and many of us procrastinate, make excuses or lag behind. Today, we simply can’t. Digital technologies are no longer “nice-to-have” tools of the business – today they are the business. Digital laggards are already finding their markets disrupted and their abilities to compete overturned. As they desperately try to outrun the Darwinian effect of their slow responses, they are faced with not one but three periods – or ages – of digital transformation to navigate – disruptive transformation, hyper-digital transformation and ubiquitous transformation. Understanding these three ages, and when they will emerge, is critical for business success.
(c)iStock.com/gremlin
The recent article by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Sprinting To Value In Industry 4.0, provides insights into how real-time integration between enterprise systems is an essential catalyst for Industry 4.0 growth. Industry 4.0 focuses on the end-to-end digitisation of all physical assets and integration into digital ecosystems with value chain partners encompassing a broad spectrum of technologies. BCG surveyed 380 US-based manufacturing executives and managers at companies representing a wide range of sizes in various industries to complete the study.
Having attained initial results from Industry 4.0 initiatives, many manufacturers are moving forward with the advanced analytics and Big Data-related projects that are based on real-time integration between CRM, ERP, 3rd party and legacy systems. A recent Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) study of Industry 4.0 adoption, Industry 4.0: Building The Digital Enterprise (PDF, no opt-in, 36 pp.) found that 72% of manufacturing enterprises predict their use of data analytics will substantially improve customer relationships and customer intelligence along the product life cycle. Real-time integration enables manufacturers to more effectively serve their customers, communicate with suppliers, and manage distribution channels. Of the many innovative start-ups taking on the complex challenges of integrating cloud and on-premise systems to streamline revenue-generating business processes, enosiX shows potential to bridge legacy ERP and cloud-based CRM systems quickly and deliver results.
There are many more potential benefits to adopting Industry 4.0 for those enterprises who choose to create and continually strengthen real-time integration links across the global operations. Recent research completed by Boston Consulting Group and PwC highlight several of them below:
