All posts by Richard

Accountancy, Balance Sheet, Business Processes, FreshBook, Intuit, Invoice, QuickBooks, Small business

FreshBooks Adds Balance Sheet Tool for Small Business Accounting

Image representing FreshBooks as depicted in C...

As part of FreshBooks  shift from online invoicing only to cloud accounting for small businesses,  they’ve expanding on their accounting offering with the release of Balance Sheets, a tool at helping businesses prepare to apply for loans, grants, submitting taxes, or seeking investors.

The new Balance Sheet tool allows users to see a summary of assets, liabilities, and equity and easily determine the health of their business.

FreshBooks claims more than 5 million users in 120 countries, and says “No one in North America has more paying users online other than Intuit’s QuickBooks Online. ”

More info on Balance Sheets is available at the FreshBooks Blog.


Canonical, Cinder, nova, Open Source, OpenStack, Partnerships, SolidFire, Storage

SolidFire, Canonical Deliver Deployable OpenStack Nova, Cinder

SolidFire, a provider of all-solid-state (SSD) storage systems for cloud service providers, announced today, in conjunction with Canonical, a production-ready reference architecture for deploying OpenStack Compute (Nova) and OpenStack Block Storage (Cinder). SolidFire will be demonstrating the deployment of 1,000 production- ready VMs with predictable performance and fine-grain quality of service (QoS) via Canonical, OpenStack Compute and Block Storage at the OpenStack Summit, taking place October 15 through October 18 in San Diego.

John Griffith from SolidFire and David Medberry from Canonical will co-present the summit’s first workshop: “How to Deploy a Best-of-Breed OpenStack Compute and Block Storage Cloud” on Monday, October 15, at 9:50 a.m. local time. The session will include information on deployment tools, tips and tricks, targeted use cases, benchmark results and key enabling technologies.

“SolidFire has done a great job leading the Block Storage project in line with the OpenStack philosophy of delivering a pluggable architecture with integration points for multiple vendors and technologies,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation. “It’s exciting to see more production implementations and configuration options available to OpenStack users.”

“Canonical has worked with SolidFire to ensure tight integration of Cinder into Ubuntu OpenStack packages to deliver a production-ready cloud infrastructure. As the reference operating system for OpenStack, Ubuntu was the natural choice to integrate with SolidFire’s solution,” commented Nick Barcet, Ubuntu cloud product manager at Canonical. “We believe SolidFire’s work in OpenStack is extremely important to the ecosystem, because it allows cloud providers to enhance their offering with high IOPS storage and unprecedented quality-of-service. They have also been leading the Cinder project in OpenStack to deliver a great abstraction layer that can be reused by other vendors to integrate their own solution.”

“Cinder has gotten off to a very successful start thanks to the hard work of more than 50 individual contributors,” said John Griffith, senior software engineer at SolidFire. “We delivered a deep feature set in our first release of Cinder, which allowed us to move quickly with Canonical in executing this powerful production-ready reference architecture for large-scale multi-tenant clouds.”

Key SolidFire-related features in the first OpenStack Cinder release include:

  • Full SolidFire driver integration
  • Ability to create, snapshot and manage SolidFire volumes using
    OpenStack clients and APIs
  • Ability to set and maintain true QoS levels on a per-volume basis
  • Ability to store instances on SolidFire volumes
  • Enhanced boot from volume options, including support for SolidFire
    volumes

SolidFire’s efforts around OpenStack are further evidence of its commitment to delivering proven, integrated storage solutions for its customers’ cloud infrastructures. This Cinder integration milestone follows SolidFire’s recently announced integration with major technology vendors across the cloud ecosystem.

Learn more: www.solidfire.com | www.twitter.com/solidfireinc | www.facebook.com/solidfire.


Asure, FotoPunch, Human Resources, Partnerships, Time Tracking

Asure Software Partners with FotoPunch for Mobile Employee Time Tracking

Asure Software announced that it has entered into a private label licensing agreement with FotoPunch, Inc. FotoPunch is a SaaS-based technology company that offers biometric and geospatial technology solutions to track employee time from virtually anywhere at anytime.

“We are very excited to be partnering with FotoPunch to offer mobile time and data collection solutions to our AsureForce™ Time & Labor Management (TLM) clients,” commented Pat Goepel, Asure’s Chief Executive Officer. “This partnership is in complete alignment with our strategy to quickly bring to market innovative, cloud-based solutions that work when, where and how workforces are operating today. FotoPunch technology is the first of its kind in the time and labor management industry.”

FotoPunch uses facial recognition and GPS software to allow employees to punch in and out using any mobile device, including smartphones, feature phones and dumbphones with a camera and SMS capabilities. When clients deploy this capability, they increase manager and employee productivity, reduce payroll costs, and avoid hardware costs. And users can access data without requiring Internet access, which is significant for highly mobile employees. The solution can also run through wall-mounted tablets in busy work areas.

From a workplace productivity perspective, managers have instant access to information via a web-based dashboard to track when and where employees are working, eliminate time fraud and stop buddy punching. FotoPunch also integrates with AsureForce TLM solutions and virtually any payroll solution.

“Our patent-pending technology will help expand Asure’s solution portfolio, but more importantly, this one-of-a-kind mobile technology provides truly measureable benefits to clients,” said Lance Ellsworth, Vice President of Business Development for FotoPunch.


High Performance Computing, OpenStack, Penguin Computing

Scyld Cloud Management Platform Moves HPC Applications to the Cloud

Image representing Penguin Computing as depict...Penguin Computing today announced the availability of the Scyld Cloud Management Platform (SCMP) on its public HPC cloud Penguin Computing on Demand (POD). SCMP is a comprehensive software suite that makes it easy to implement service-based on-demand access for HPC applications. SCMP provides services for:

  • web-based user sign-up and account management
  • generating detailed resource usage reports
  • provisioning and managing of virtual servers
  • instantly allocating storage
  • managing users and user groups

SCMP’s storage system is based on the distributed open-source storage system Ceph, which supports file-based, block-based and object-based storage. The management of virtual servers leverages OpenStack, an open-source solution for creating and managing large groups of virtual servers in a cloud computing environment. All SCMP components are accessible through an intuitive web-based interface, as well as a web-service API.

“As the first organization to offer commercial cluster management solutions for HPC and as one of the first to offer a public HPC cloud, we have a solid foundation on which we built SCMP,” says Tom Coull, Senior VP of Software and Services at Penguin Computing.

SCMP is also the foundation of Penguin Computing’s upcoming Scyld Cloud Manager (SCM), a packaged software suite that will enable customers to build their own public and private HPC clouds.

An early adopter of SCMP is the global biotechnology company Life Technologies. The Scyld Cloud Management Platform has enabled Life Technologies to offer cloud-based genomic sequencing analysis services through its Torrent Suite Cloud offering.

“SCMP is the core component of our Torrent Suite Cloud infrastructure,” says Matt Dyer, associate director of Bioinformatics at Life Technologies. “It enables us to offer a flexible solution for processing and managing genomic sequencing data to our customers. Typical use cases include software development and testing, as well as data sharing in collaborative projects.”


Content Management, Intellectual Property, Patent, Site Management

RAMP Gets Patent on Automated Content Tagging

RAMP announced today that it has been issued its 19th patent as part of its ongoing development of intellectual property. USPN 8,280,719 covers RAMP’s unique ability to automatically tag large catalogs of audio, video, text, and image content using natural language processing combined with human guidance to create self-learning algorithms.

This technology enables RAMP to build highly scalable and cost-effective solutions for automatic content tagging – one of the most difficult and important challenges facing content producers across media and enterprise. Inadequate or incomplete tagging of content negatively impacts the performance of content management systems, adservers, and recommendation engines, and results in content that fails to generate its maximum value. USPN 8,280,719 nicely complements RAMP’s unique, patented ability to generate automated transcripts on audio and video content delivering a complete metadata solution for publishers of all content types.

“This recent patent issuance is a real testament to the deep talent and skill of the RAMP team,” said Tom Wilde, RAMP CEO. “We work hard to develop innovative ways for content producers to maximize the value of their content, and this patent is another great example of RAMP’s capabilities.”


Cerner, Electronic health record, Health Care, Medical, Nuance, Nuance Communications, Partnerships, Voice

Cerner, Nuance Collaborate to Embed Cloud-Based Voice Techn in Mobile EHR Solutions

Cerner and Nuance Communications today announced that the companies have expanded their relationship to accelerate the adoption of simpler, faster and smarter healthcare solutions for clinicians worldwide. The expanded partnership reflects both companies’ commitment to providing innovative, proven solutions that keep patient care a top priority by leveraging voice and mobile technologies to optimize clinician workflow and maximize the benefits of electronic health records (EHRs).

Under a new worldwide agreement, Cerner will embed Nuance’s cloud-based medical voice recognition into its full portfolio of mobile EHR solutions – including PowerChart Touch™ that was announced at the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in February. This integration will create a new class of mobile healthcare solutions on phones and tablets that enable clinicians to capture more complete patient notes, navigate applications and search for information while on-the-go – simply by using their voice.

In addition, Cerner and Nuance announced the availability and integration of Nuance’s radiology reporting suite, PowerScribe 360, with Cerner’s RadNet® Radiology Information System (RIS). This solution is an example of both companies’ ongoing innovation and will allow radiologists to dictate, in real-time, reports that are integrated directly and instantly with the patient record.

“The expansion of our partnership with Nuance, a company that offers voice and clinical understanding solutions used by 450,000 clinicians worldwide, exemplifies our commitment to provide state-of-the-art solutions to customers across the globe,” said Don Bisbee, senior vice president of DeviceWorks at Cerner. “By incorporating Nuance’s voice recognition capabilities into our core clinical applications including our latest mobile solution, PowerChart Touch, we are able to provide the healthcare industry with a simple, fast method of capturing complex medical information within the patient record at the point-of-care.”

PowerChart Touch is a mobile, cloud-based solution that is part of the Millennium+ portfolio. PowerChart Touch offers role and venue-based mobile workflows which allow physicians to perform their job duties straight from a mobile device. PowerChart Touch will provide a true native application experience across an array of platforms. Nuance’s 360 | SpeechAnywhere medical voice recognition solution, the technology that is embedded within PowerChart Touch, is also cloud-based. Together, Cerner and Nuance solutions will help simplify the large scale deployment of these integrated technologies, while also reducing the overall cost of ownership for customers.

“For more than 30 years, Cerner has proven its ability to create digital technologies that solve problems and positively impact patient care. Its most recent mobile innovations are a prime example of how these solutions are transforming the EHR experience today, and a key reason why now is the right time to expand our partnership. Cerner’s solutions are enabling clinicians to experience a fully functional EHR – anytime and anywhere – and voice is playing an important role in making this a reality,” said Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager of Nuance Healthcare. “We are excited to expand our partnership and confident that intuitive, voice-enabled technologies with deep Cerner integration will spur further industry innovation, improve the clinician experience and help focus efforts on the core mission – providing quality patient care.”


ENVI, Exelis Visual Information Solutions, Geospatial intelligence, Imaging, Satellite imagery

Exelis Visual Information Solutions: When a Cloud Benefits Airborne, Satellite Imagery

ITT Exelis a subsidiary Exelis Visual Information Solutions, a developer of geospatial image and data analysis software, announced a new, cloud-based implementation of ENVI image analysis software to be released early in 2013.

ENVI Services Engine will make information from airborne and satellite imagery available to forward-deployed military and intelligence personnel via mobile devices. This new product will allow them to gain situational awareness, better assess terrain conditions and identify potential targets and threats. By delivering technology to create, publish and deploy advanced, ENVI-based image and data analytics as Web services, the new capability will allow geographically diverse individuals the ability to make more informed decisions on critical tasks.

“Today’s defense, intelligence and disaster relief personnel rely on readily available geospatial imagery and data to assess important geographic conditions,” said Jaye Lampe, president of Exelis Visual Information Solutions. “But they do not always have access to the desktop software traditionally used to perform the required analytics. The cloud implementation of ENVI Services Engine will provide ready-now access to the critical information they need to make accurate decisions quickly and efficiently.”

ENVI image analysis products are already widely used in military and intelligence in tactical and strategic operations. It is widely known in the industry for its advanced analytical capabilities and for delivering highly accurate results. ENVI Services Engine has been successfully field tested in custom implementations by key customers. With an extremely flexible architecture, it can be easily deployed into nearly any existing enterprise, making it a cost effective solution that requires little additional training for users.

Exelis is previewing ENVI Services Engine at the GEOINT 2012 Symposium, Oct. 8-11, in Orlando, Fla. GEOINT is hosted by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation and is the nation’s largest intelligence event of the year. In-booth presentations on the new capability are available daily during show hours.


Information security, Information security management system, International Organization for Standardization, ISO/IEC 27001, Standards

London City Lifeline Colo Gets ISO27001 Security Certification

City Lifeline, the central London colocation data centre, has today been awarded ISO27001 Information Security Management Certification. This accreditation confirms that City Lifeline’s security systems and processes meet the highest recognised international standards for physical security and information security.

Security, both of equipment operation and data integrity, is critical for all companies and organisations. When asked, organisations using data centre and colocation services consistently rate security as their number one priority. The internationally administered and recognised ISO27001 certification gives customers confidence that a data centre operates at the highest level of security and that it consistently delivers what it claims.

Commenting on the achievement, Roger Keenan, managing director at City Lifeline said: “We are thrilled to have been awarded the prestigious ISO27001 accreditation. Achieving ISO27001 took us over a year of hard work. All of our existing processes and procedures were reviewed and overhauled where needed and comprehensively documented. City Lifeline has always been strong on security and this new certification confirms that companies and organisations can trust and rely on us to keep their equipment and data 100 per cent secure.”

ISO27001 is an internationally recognized certification that sets out specific physical and information security standards, which must be continuously maintained by those to whom it is awarded.


Agile software development, Asset management, Cloud & IT Management, Configuration management database, Information technology management, Scrum, ServiceNow

ServiceNow Takes Software Asset Management to the Cloud

ServiceNow today announced a new release of its IT service automation software. By embedding new IT Asset Management application, ServiceNow enables companies to more efficiently utilize software and help achieve compliance with license terms and requirements. At the same time, companies can avoid over-purchasing of software licenses and maintenance or support contracts. The release also includes new capabilities for agile software development that ultimately lead to an improved user experience.

Enterprises today waste a great deal of money and time through improperly managed software resources. ServiceNow software can help businesses rightsize and monitor a software portfolio through a fully integrated cloud-based service for all types of IT assets, while helping achieve audit-ready license compliance automation and reporting.

“Managing software assets is increasingly complex in the age of virtualization and cloud, and enterprises are wasting millions of dollars annually due to a fundamental lack of visibility and poor management,” said Matt Schvimmer, vice president of product management, ServiceNow. “In this new software release, ServiceNow provides a comprehensive view of all assets – physical, virtual, and cloud-based – and the processes to control the full lifecycle management of those assets.”

The ServiceNow IT Asset Management application helps IT organizations significantly reduce operational costs, identify software portfolio requirements, facilitate planning and simplify compliance efforts. It works across all types of assets, including SaaS applications and subscription services, licensing of virtual resources and the use of consumable assets.

The ServiceNow IT Asset Management application is fully integrated with all of the other ServiceNow applications for automating enterprise IT operations, including asset discovery, service catalog and configuration management database (CMDB), providing a single system of record for IT management.

The new release also adds a new Scrum process pack to the ServiceNow Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) application. Scrum is a popular development methodology for managing agile software development projects in multi-team, multi-product environments. The new capabilities include planning boards, progress boards, burn-down charts, preferential ranking and the assignment of standard roles associated with this methodology, like product owner and scrum master.

Click here for a detailed webinar on software asset management.