Collaboration, Contract Management, iPad, LoadSpringMobile, Mobile, Mobile device, Program management

LoadSpringMobile Releases Mobile Project Management

LoadSpring Solutions today released LoadSpringMobile, a streamlined, secure interface for mobile devices such as smartphones, iPads and tablet PCs.

LoadSpringMobile was designed to maximize the usability of PM applications such as Oracle Primavera P6, Contract Management 14.

It solves a prominent problem among project personnel in the field—how to view and interact with advanced PM software on a small mobile display. In the past, many mobile solutions were of limited value because they attempted to duplicate the full desktop experience on a much smaller screen. The result was a cluttered workspace with more features than needed, making them difficult to view and use.

With LoadSpringMobile, working on the fly is easier, thanks to simple graphics and the elimination of unwanted features and information. Still, every essential tool is available in a mobile setting.

According to Eric Leighton, LoadSpring’s founder and CEO, “We based our interface on ‘What You See is What You Need.’ That’s because mobile teams and contractors only require certain functions and data to do their job. Anything more would just reduce usage and lower efficiency and ROI.”

Mr. Leighton went on to say, “For those who need a mission-specific version of the interface, our Customer Services division can accommodate them by customizing LoadSpringMobile to fit their exact needs.”

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The Impact of Big Data and Cloud on Data Connectivity

How can we regain control of our data and get a complete view of critical information, while still reaping the many benefits that SaaS has to offer? The explosion in Software as a Service has changed the world of data access dramatically. Business critical information that was once within the four walls of the organization is now locked in a variety of SaaS applications deployed on the public Internet. This presents a serious challenge to business decision makers who are driven to make the right choices for their organizations based on a now incomplete picture of the world.
In this General Session at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, Jesse Davis, Director, DataDirect Research and Development at Progress Software, looks at how you overcome these challenges and regain full visibility to your business data wherever it may live.

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How Can I Avoid Cloud Vendor Lock-In?

“Despite the lock-in…it’s really not about the money but about the features and the product offering.” So states a blogpost I just read from a company that is dissatisfied with one major cloud vendor and is moving to another.

Yet cloud vendor lock-in — what I like to call Vendor Lock-In 2.0 — seems to me to be a major issue facing our industry.

I say this as I experience my own cloud build-out. I’ll be spending a lot of my time this year implementing a number of cloud-based solutions at a small enterprise near by current base in northern Illinois. We are already hosted by one of the major cloud vendors, and upping the number and size of our instances with this company.

Then, last week, I met with the company’s matriarch, to discuss the company existing, ancient workflow and how we could use PaaS and then other -aaS within the cloud to bring the company from the 19th to the 21st century. This is a family-owned business, started a couple of generations ago. The matriarch alleged she knew very little about technology, and listened to me patiently for a few minutes.

She then pounced: “can I move all this to another vendor if I’m not happy?”

“Well, not really.”

“Why? Is this a technical issue?”

“Yes, sort of.”

“But the vendors could make this easy for me if they wanted to, right? I can plug everything in this building into the same socket. But your cloud vendors won’t let me do this with their cloud services, right?”

And there you have it. We’re moving forward, albeit more slowly and cautiously than I’d like. My clients wasn’t worried about security – she assumes a massive cloud infrastructure vendor will do a better job than we could ever do locally. She wasn’t worried about the price per se – she knows it’s prohibitive to buy our own iron. She wasn’t even worried about downtime – she’ll make that stuff roll downhill to her titular CIO.

But for this company, it is about the money if she has to, in essence, develop everything twice. It’s also about not being trapped, anymore than having a single option for any other part of this business. The local Chinese restaurant is great, but not a place we go to every day.

I’ve written a little bit about the “metadata” problem, and it looks like I should write some more about it.

But as a customer — not a writer — I must ask: “what are the major cloud vendors doing to fix this? Why do you think Vendor Lockin 2.0 is any more appealing than the original version?”

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Business Processes, Customer Relationship Management, JDA, Retail, Supply chain

JDA Releases Customer Engagement Cloud Solution for Retail

JDA Software Group, Inc. today announced the release of JDA Customer Engagement Cloud, a single solution that addresses omni-channel commerce and optimization logic in real time. It not only helps retailers deliver goods to customers, but also aligns real-time supply processes and inventory to profitably source those goods.

“The retail industry is at a critical juncture in its history. Consumers today — empowered with mobile technology — have instant access to information that shapes what they buy, when and where they buy it, and at what price,” said Hamish Brewer, President and CEO, JDA Software. “These connected consumers determine which retail enterprises succeed and which fail. With JDA® Customer Engagement Cloud we have developed a comprehensive approach to address this challenge now, helping retailers to avoid becoming a victim in this rapidly changing retail environment.”

JDA® Customer Engagement Cloud is designed to help retailers profitably achieve customer-centricity in every interaction through the following key capabilities:

JDA® Customer Engagement Cloud enables enterprise visibility to critical information like inventory levels, product information, customer history – including access to a customer’s universal online shopping cart – and customer preferences to associates who interact with the omni-channel customer. Providing this type of customer information in real-time enables in-store associates to better convert in-store visits into sales.

More and more, commerce is happening not just in the checkout lines, but in the aisles of today’s retail stores. Empowering associates with full access to enterprise data and point-of-sale (POS) capabilities in the aisle is critical to creating the ultimate in-store customer experience. Store associates can maximize their ability to help customers by using the JDA® Customer Engagement Cloud associate app on a mobile device. In addition to accessing information and standard POS capabilities, the associate app supports guided price negotiation and alternate delivery options.

Mobile, Mobile payment, Mozido, Partnerships, Savvis

Mozido Partners with Savvis to Increase Cloud Infrastructure Offerings

Mozido, LLC, the cloud-based, white label integrated platform of mobile payments, commerce and marketing, today announced a multiyear agreement with Savvis which will provide Mozido with access to Savvis’ cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions to deliver the performance, scalability and security needed to meet the everyday demands of customers in the mobile payments market.

“Mozido’s agreement with Savvis underscores our continued commitment to meeting the diverse needs of a global customer base,” said Greg Corona, CEO and President, Mozido. “By leveraging Savvis’ leading cloud and hosting infrastructure, we will enable customers in the mobile payment ecosystem to quickly implement and scale as their businesses grow, while ensuring the quality of their IT systems and operations.”

With a global footprint, Savvis manages one of the largest and most sophisticated hosting infrastructures in the world. Through this relationship, Mozido will offer its customer base a suite of Savvis solutions including:

  • Access to premium, PCI-audited data center facilities with multiple
    levels of security and redundancy to ensure maximum availability to
    customer applications;
  • Skilled data center management professionals available 24 hours a day,
    seven days a week;
  • Cloud infrastructure that meets end-to-end enterprise requirements for
    application security, privacy and performance;
  • Advanced security options with dedicated locked cabinets, on-site tape
    vaulting and highly secure off-site vaults to meet the most stringent
    security requirements.

“As the mobile payments market expands, Savvis has become a preferred hosting partner for leading players in this space,” said Varghese Thomas, global head of financial services, Savvis. “Backed by our secure global data center footprint, Mozido’s mobile payment and commerce solutions offer the scale and stability to meet the diverse needs of the global payments base.”

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Amidst the Developer Noise, PaaS Signals for Growth

The PaaS market is filled with noise. “Platform as a Service” is surrounded with blind men around the elephant, each with their own definition PaaS. This is further compounded by the fact that the Application Platforms landscape is changing quickly as well. We keep hearing that “Developers” want control of the code, access to the nuts and bolts of the service they intend to consume. The same “Developers” seem to be adopting PaaS because of the tremendous speed and scale advantage. And the same “Developers” seem to be clamoring over the security and architectural compliance matters. There’s even talk of developer cloud mutiny! There are use cases that are simplified to the usage of a Private PaaS, but that’s only addressing the matter from a hosting and Data Control standpoint, beyond which the concern should be how the Platform Stack is built and provided to the developers. However, there’s a context to every statement.

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Hybrid Cloud Is Not Public Cloud

It is tempting to see a hybrid cloud as merely a collection of clouds, versus the seamless integration of clouds and data centers. Yet hybrid cloud is a game changer that offers tremendous new potentials for a new generation of solutions… not merely low cost IT infrastructure.
The current popular forms of cloud can be difficult to enter and even more difficult to depart. Plenty of risk-prone and frustrating manual processes are in between the promoted and real economics of public cloud. In the case of cloud and even with the occasional outage, the journey may be much riskier and costlier than the destination. That may be the major reason enterprises have been hesitant to invest in migrating their apps into public clouds.

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Evaluating cloud performance and decision making

If your business has made the leap into the cloud, then it is very likely that IT processes have become transparent and business productivity is improving.

The whole idea behind the concept of cloud computing is to remove the backend maintenance and inconsistencies that may happen with even the best in house server systems.

Users should have less functionality issues, as many that would formerly stem from any number of hardware or software related issues are mostly eliminated as cloud computing generally only requires a web access through a browser and a functional computer.

Unless an organisation purchased a subscription through an underdeveloped cloud service provider, business has the tools it needs to optimise processes. So now the question remains, is your cloud service being utilised to its fullest potential?

As of this point in time, no cloud is impervious to disaster. There are events that can cause serious problems …

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10 tips for keeping your information safe in the cloud

Using the cloud to store your data via virtual datacentres is great! You can have lots of space for a cheap price, which you can access virtually anywhere. You don’t get issues such as threat of contracting aggressive malware and snooping software etc. However, having an account on the cloud does not mean total safety, and it is easy to forget this. Here are 10 tips to ensure total security, even if our entire data has been put there.

1. Passwords

This should seem obvious, but try and create a unique username and password for every account. At least, create a unique password including various symbols. Cracking a password takes significantly longer where symbols and upper-case are used, compared with a lower-case alternative.

2. Security Questions

Choose a question which isn’t obvious, something which can’t be found on Facebook for instance. Choose a question and answer it …

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CES: Boxee and Dish vs. content licensing

It’s becoming a cliché in TV land that content-rights restrictions, and not technology, are slowing the pace of industry development. At CES, Boxee and Dish demonstrated workarounds that have allowed them to offer two products frequently blocked by rights issues; namely cloud-based DVRs and out-of-home live TV viewing.

The cloud news categorized.