Blog News

At this week’s Ingram Micro’s Cloud Summit conference for partners, MSPs and resellers, a new line of business called CloudBlue was announced and released into the wild whacky world of cloud computing. My take is CloudBlue basically aggregates a lot of existing Ingram Micro cloud assets under one umbrella. It is considered a new division within Ingram Micro and Microsoft is a significant strategic partner in this solution. Microsoft declined to specify if it was a financial investor.

By Raman Mehta, star Advisor, CIO | Sep 19, 2014 12:10 PM PT

With all of the excitement around Internet of Things (IoT), it can be difficult to separate hype from reality. IoT is more about disruptive new business models than technology.

Move aside SaaS, IaaS, PaaS (Software, Infrastructure, and Platform as a service) – there is a new kid, TaaS (internet of Things as a Service), in town.

I like to periodically communicate with SMB Nation members on business topics of interest. This is a startup and start over story. It’s about honoring the past but staying keenly focused on the future. I’m recapitalizing by divesting the house the Microsoft Small Business Server built (you can look at my LinkedIn profile to discover my 15+ years carrying the SBS flag here.

New documentation, still in draft form, details how companies can craft specialized reports and custom alerts from Windows Analytics' data and integrate the data with other info.

By Gregg Keizer

Senior Reporter, Computerworld | Apr 10, 2018 9:19 AM PT

Gil Press , Contributor

As the big data analytics market rapidly expands to include mainstream customers, which technologies are most in demand and promise the most growth potential? The answers can be found in TechRadar: Big Data, Q1 2016, a new Forrester Research report evaluating the maturity and trajectory of 22 technologies across the entire data life cycle. T

Companies of all types must handle problems on a constant basis, but these challenges are more difficult for a small business. Having limited resources makes it difficult to compete with larger enterprises. Companies of all types must handle problems on a constant basis, but these challenges are more difficult for a small business. Having limited resources makes it difficult to compete with larger enterprises. 

In the past, access to something as powerful as Big Data was limited due to the costs and skills required.

I’m a guy and of course delay going to the dentist and so on. Over morning coffee, today March 31, 2018, I realized I can’t avoid it any longer. Today is World Backup Day! Darn it,  I’m making a couple special backups just to honor the holiday. 

I spoke with John Zanni, well-known in the SMB partner channel for his work as a Microsoft general manager back in the day plus his tenure at Parallels. Today he is the president of Acronis, a leading backup solution ISV. Later in this blog I’ll do a “where is John Zanni now?” commentary. 

World Backup Day

"This is of course an international event,

Calvin Price

Strengths, Weaknesses, and the Likely Road Ahead

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most exciting paradigms in emerging technology. The principle of connecting billions of devices to automate networks is absolutely thrilling and has considerable applications in agriculture, manufacturing, consumer tech, and virtually all mechanically intensive industries. It also has a big problem: at its current stage, IoT is objectively infeasible and dangerous.

Depending on how much you know about big data, you may be surprised to learn that a data scientist and a business analyst don’t provide the same results. If that’s the case, then you’re not alone—since these two professions are often confused with one another. That’s why Analytics@American, a masters in business analytics, created this infographic to help clear the data science fog.

 By Todd Clark and Dan Wiesenfeld

During the past decade, business analytics platforms have evolved from supporting IT and finance functions to enabling business users across the enterprise. But many firms find themselves struggling to take advantage of its promise. We’ve found three main obstacles to realizing analytics’ full value, and all of them are related to people, not technology: the organization’s structure, culture, and approach to problem solving.

One of the hottest questions in Information Management now is how to deal with Big Data in all its applications: how to gather, store, secure, and – possibly most importantly – interpret what we collect. Organizations that are able to apply effective data analysis to massive amounts of data gain significant competitive advantages in their industries.

Pre-recession, my basic mo·dus op·e·ran·di (MO) was to take fun seriously in business. I’ve emerged battle-tested over the past decade and have adopted a tougher stance on life: Lead…or follow…or get out of the way. I still try to have fun where I can find it but the economy isn’t as fun as a decade ago and neither am I!

First, before you proceed, I’d ask you to