Most businesses are using some type of cloud computing. According to one report, 94% of businesses use some type of cloud service.
While cloud services do have a lot to offer businesses, they also come with a range of security concerns. In some cases, cloud security issues can be mitigated with a range of Infrastructure as Code tools, but there is a lot you have to consider before moving resources to the cloud.
Manage Remote Access
One of the reasons many businesses move to the cloud is because it makes resources more accessible. With various workflows and data resources in the cloud, employees can work and be productive from anywhere. This offers obvious benefits, but it can also be a security concern.
Making it possible for employees to access systems from anywhere is great, but it also means that there is the potential for criminals to access these systems over the internet as well. Furthermore, employees might not always follow cybersecurity best practices when they are using their personal devices.
One of the best ways to protect against issues associated with remote access is to teach employees about cybersecurity best practices. Teach them about creating strong passwords and tell them not to use public Wi-Fi. You should also teach them about common attacks and how to protect against them.
The Cost of Security Breaches
A data breach can come with significant costs. The average cost of a data breach in 2021 is $4.24 million. For many businesses, an event like this would be devastating. Even if you can weather the financial cost, you also have to consider the reputational fallout that may come with a data breach.
Businesses need to go to great lengths to protect the data they store in the cloud. Consider the cloud services you use and the security tools and practices you apply to cloud security. You should also perform regular security audits to make sure you are doing everything you can to protect your cloud systems.
Disaster Recovery Plans
Crime is not the only threat that concerns cloud resources. Beyond data breaches and employees that do not follow security best practices, there is the potential for a disaster to cause data loss or system downtime. For that reason, businesses need to develop strong disaster recovery plans.
Disaster recovery plans need to cover all of your IT infrastructure. You should have data backups to protect against loss in the event of a disaster. Backup systems should also be in place so you can keep things running if there is downtime at one location. Many organizations also buy insurance to protect against the financial costs that can come with a disaster event.
Controlling Access
Access control is another issue for cloud services. You want the resources to be accessible to the right people, but you do not want all data and systems to be accessible to every person that has access to the system. This is why you not only need passwords, but you need to be able to assign different privileges to different people.
By assigning different access levels to different people, you can make sure employees only have access to the resources they are supposed to access. Beyond that, it can protect your business if an employee’s credentials are compromised.
Compliance
There are standards you have to follow when you store or use private data from the public. This is especially true if your business operates in areas like healthcare or finance. If a business fails to follow these standards, it could end up on the wrong side of regulators in its industry.
If the data you store goes beyond the private information of your business, you need to be aware of the regulations. Make sure you meet your obligations to protect data and maintain a secure system. Failing in this regard can not only damage your reputation, it could result in serious fines.
Moving to the cloud can come with obvious benefits, but it also comes with some risk. With that said, most of these risks are manageable. You just need to be aware of the risks and take steps to protect against these issues.
Ten years ago, the current in-demand tech jobs such as Cloud Specialist, iOS and Android app developers, Big Data Architect, and Data Scientist did not exist.
Projecting forward, statistics indicate that 47% of the jobs now will disappear in the next 25 years thanks to the efficiency technology brings. Technology is changing lives and systems at an unprecedented speed, and governments are realizing that those who control it in the future will garner significant global influence, and more importantly, reap the financial gains from dominating the market.
In that regard, tons of countries are implementing laws that create a favorable environment to foster interest in technology in a bid to spearhead technological breakthroughs in the country. Amongst them, 2 prime examples are Singapore and Taiwan.
Taiwan’s goal to dominate the market in blockchain technology
Recently, Taiwan has begun implementing serious laws and legislation that will help make the country a notable crypto nation and a ‘blockchain island’. The effort is spearheaded by entrepreneur turned Congressman and Legislator Jason Hsu.
In an interview, Jason said that he intends to turn the country into a haven for people working on different applications of blockchain technology. Additionally, he said that he sees the potential for blockchain technology in many areas of life, including education, health, and the justice system.
He also noted that he intended to develop a ‘special economic zone,’ that would bring 200 global blockchain companies to Taiwan. In a bid to spur on adoption, the government of Taiwan will also come up with a digital identity solution known as “Taiwan Global ID,” that allows citizens to get their visas utilizing decentralized blockchain.
Finally, the government will leverage Taiwan’s primary strength—semiconductors and IC chip design—to build more powerful mining chips. As a result, instead of just one company monopolizing mining machines, the average citizen will be able to mine and add on to the ecosystem.
Decentralizing the hash power or hash rate, Jason believes, will help contribute to the advent of a true Bitcoin peer-to-peer network.
Singapore’s smart nation initiative
Last year, Singapore appointed the first Government Chief Digital Technology Officer—Mr. Chan Hoe—as part of the Smart Nation Initiative. The initiative aims to serve Singaporean citizens and businesses better through technology.
One of the ways the initiative will serve citizens better is by thinking of Singaporeans as customers of digital services the government puts through the GovTech agency.
Once the government starts thinking of its citizens as customers, it will then consider their input when developing solutions and as a result, provide better solutions. Mr. Chan Hoe likened it to the Agile software development framework which depends on customer feedback at each stage of development, which results in updates and tweaks that produce more comprehensive apps that end users love.
An example of the Singaporean government commitment to this mode of thinking was a session held in May last year to get feedback from senior citizens on the emergency alert system that uses sensor technology.
Moreover, one of the services already deployed—parking.sg—was in response to citizens’ need for an efficient way to pay for parking instead of using physical coupons.
Finally, the government is doing its best to educate its citizens so that there can be a mind shift, and citizens can embrace technology and see it as a good thing.
Conclusion
Referencing the above examples; it is evident that governments are doing three key things to put their countries at the forefront when it comes to technology.
One, as noted with Singapore, the government is educating local talent to increase interest in tech innovation. The GovTech agency noted above is a government-sponsored agency that sources its talented engineers and software developers locally. GovTech is responsible for creating the hugely successful parking.sg app also mentioned above.
Second, as seen in Taiwan, governments are working to attract foreign talents through favorable policies. The ‘special economic zone,’ in Taiwan will play a key role in putting the country on the map regarding global companies that want to invest.
Finally, governments are also equipping their citizens with needed tools to enable them to succeed in the highly competitive tech industry — case in point, Taiwan’s manufacture of high functioning machines to help in mining cryptocurrencies.
Just in time for CES 2019, Chinese tech leader Huawei, strategically unveiled the Kunpeng 920, the industry’s highest-performing ARM-based processor. At Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China, Huawei released the impressive CPU, intended for handling applications like big data processing and distributed storage.
William Xu, Director of Huawei’s Board and Chief Strategy Marketing Officer, said during the press conference that “Huawei has continuously innovated in the computing domain in order to create customer value. We believe that, with the advent of an intelligent society, the computing market will see continuous growth in the future. Currently, the diversity of applications and data is driving heterogeneous computing requirements. Huawei has long partnered with Intel to make great achievements. Together we have contributed to the development of the ICT industry. Huawei and Intel will continue our long-term strategic partnerships and continue to innovate together.”
William Xu, Director of Huawei’s Board and Chief Strategy Marketing Officer (credit: Huawei)
Kunpeng 920: High-Performance ARM-based CPU
Huawei’s high standards of leading the industry are very clear with the release of the new Kunpeng 920. The new CPU, similar to Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 980 (launched in October 2018), was designed in-house and manufactured on a 7-nanometer processor. According to Huawei, the gain in performance between these two CPU’s emerges from a series of optimized branch prediction algorithms and an increased number of OP units, along with an improved memory subsystem architecture. The Kunpeng 920 provides both higher computing performance for data centers while decreasing overall power consumption. The Kunpeng 920 is packed with 64 cores, clocking an impressive 2.6GHZ, and paired with 8-channel DDR4 memory allows the Kunpeng 920 to score over 930 on the SPECint Benchmark, 25% higher than the industry benchmark. For the sake of comparison, the previous industry leader was the Fujitsu 7-nanometer A64X. Beyond its speed is the CPU’s power efficiency, which performs 30% better than its competitors.
Kunpeng 920 performance (credit: Huawei)
In terms of system integration, the new CPU has increased with two 100G RoCE ports. Kunpeng 920 also supports PCIe Gen4 and CCIX interfaces, and provides 640 Gbps total bandwidth. In addition, the single-slot speed is twice that of the incumbent offering, effectively improving the performance of storage and various accelerators.
TaiShan Series: Huawei’s ARM-based Server Built to Perform
To complement the Kunpeng 920, at today’s press conference Huawei also released its TaiShan series servers, powered by the company’s new CPU. Aimed at tackling three distinct issues, storage, high-density, and balancing both requirements, the Taishan series designed three unique models. Powered by the Kunpeng 920, the TaiShan servers are built for big data, distributed storage, and ARM native application scenarios. These unique scenarios are ideal for the ARM architecture offering many advantages in many-core and performance per watt. The TaiShan series are ideal computing platforms for enterprises with high performance and low power consumption. Designed especially in big data scenarios, the TaiShan servers are tuned for optimal many-core high concurrency and resource scheduling to deliver a 20% computing performance boost.
As Mr. Xu stated at the press conference, “The ARM industry is seeing a new development opportunity. The Kunpeng 920 CPU and TaiShan servers newly released by Huawei are primarily used in big data, distributed storage, and ARM native applications. We will work with global partners in the spirit of openness, collaboration, and shared success to drive the development of the ARM ecosystem and expand the computing space, and embrace a diversified computing era.”
TaiShan server (credit: Huawei
Open and Collaborative ARM Ecosystem is Geared for Mutual Success
For years, Huawei has continuously promoted industry cooperation and collaboration among its industry partners in terms of hardware, basic software, and applications. The company’s unique approach is predicated on the growing trend that an intelligent society, with all things connected, and sensing, is well underway. In light of these industry trends and application requirements, a new era of diversified computing is emerging. The ability to process multiple data types and scenarios are the driving force behind optimizing computing architecture.
Summarizing the company’s vision of serving as an industry leader across all verticals, from telecommunications to servers to handsets, Mr. Xu noted that “With Kirin 980, Huawei has taken smartphones to a new level of intelligence. With products and services (e.g., Huawei Cloud) designed based on Ascend 310, Huawei enables inclusive AI for industries. Today, with Kunpeng 920, we are entering an era of diversified computing embodied by multiple cores and heterogeneity. Huawei has invested patiently and intensively in computing innovation to continuously make breakthroughs. We will work with our customers and partners to build a fully connected, intelligent world.”
From the past 12 years, Amazon cloud services are offering prominent data and cloud computing solutions to companies that deal with large data. They assure accessibility to big data solutions to their customers for computing and analyzing data. AWS web services offer a wide range of efficiently distinguished tools that extends all the cloud computing need from the framework required for computing big data to analytics used for understanding those data. Additionally, AWS web services offer other actions and tools for managing big data. Let’s have a glance at some of the features of the most popular big data solutions offered by AWS. We will focus on the benefits of AWS for big data. An adequate understanding of the approach of AWS towards big data will leave an impact on the business of big data solutions in the future.
In this post, we discuss 6 big data solutions that are expected to boostl the Amazon web services in India.
Framework: The foremost crucial step in working with any data is to process it. To accomplish this, AWS offers managed and distributed frameworks for quick, cost-effective, and simple processing of copious data. The fact that AWS web services offer pay-as-you-go approach to the users that assists them to run a variety of frameworks as per their needs to process the data.
Storage and Databases: A substantial number of databases is required to store and process big data. It is crucial to prefer a scalable storage option in order to maintain the variations in cost-effectiveness. AWS web hosting services offer several database and storage options to meet the needs of the business’ data with all the flexibility to maintain broad capabilities of big data.
Intelligence: Big data is quintessentially present in the business intelligence of the gained data. Furthermore, the BI offers feasible insights to businesses to radically transform their landscapes. AWS web services platform provides the access to Amazon QuickSight (AQS) to its patrons. AQS serves as a business intelligence solution for big data, supporting business calculations, their market valuations, and rich visuals.
Data Warehousing: Another very prominent solution offered by Amazon cloud services is Amazon Redshift, a data warehouse to entirely organize, process, and manipulate the business data. Compared to the traditional data warehouse, Redshift is less expensive, easier to maintain and analyze a large amount of data. Users can obtain rapid responses by running queries on structured data using Redshift.
Serverless Compute: Handling servers is a thing of past. Nowadays, big data server compute is taken care by AWS Lambda, where the users are charged for when the code is running and compute is being utilized. This service is highly cost-effective and scalable when working with a vast amount of data.
Analytics: Big data analytics is a system involved in examining and processing the diverse and large amount of data. The big data analytical tool offered by AWS web services is used to concurrently load and process large data. The real-time analytical tools possess effective services, such as loading streaming data into AWS, running analytical queries and scaling them instantly. These tools also build custom apps directly in AWS to provide processed data.
Among all the options for big data solution, AWS web hosting is absolutely leading the charge as a big data solution provider. The most legitimate part of Amazon cloud services is that it comes down to the needs of the individual business and the kind of big data the business is working with.
When the blockchain concept started years back, without a shade of doubt a considerable amount of people was probably skeptical about how far it would go. Seeing where blockchain is now, and how it has swiftly and steadily taken a firm stand in the market world, it is safe to say that the only way forward is up.
You may wonder, what exactly is blockchain? We assure you that it is not at all an unfamiliar concept as in one way or the other, the majority of the world population have found themselves partakers of its implementations. BitFortune reveals just how popular the technology has already become across numerous industries. However, breaking it down to simple terms, blockchain is a system that enables decentralized transactions across p2p networks. Simply put, it is one of the next ‘huge things’.
Blockchain is currently where IT was over two decades ago and seeing what has become of the latter, it is only understandable that experts have such high hopes for the former. Blockchain is powerfully taking over the stock market, with recorded estimated value of $20B in 2014.
The merits of blockchain are limitless. From enhancing business performance by reducing costs and efficient maximization of time, to fraud reduction, security, transparency, assured privacy, impeccable record keeping and decentralization.
It is no wonder that about 16 industries are actively getting involved in the system, eagerly developing the technology daily. Even better is the fact that there are numerous benefits and implementations for each industry and smaller businesses are also starting to take part in this new movement.
The industries cut across a wide range, from the banking sector, to cyber security, networking, insurance, cloud technology, charity, health, energy, government, real estate and several others. Obviously, no one wants to be left behind. Perhaps this is one of the few cases where joining the band wagon could turn out to be a really good thing.
Yan Lida, President of Huawei Enterprise Business, Huawei Connect 2017 (credit: Huawei)
We live in an era of unprecedented technological innovation.
According to Forrester Research, only 12% of the Fortune 500 companies from 1955 remain Fortune 500 companies today.
Why?
Most likely because, as Forrester research discovered, only 27% of businesses have a coherent digital transformation strategy for creating customer value in place. Yet, many companies are placing digital transformation at the center of their strategies through 2020.
Over the last few years, digital transformation has become an industry megatrend. Legacy enterprises are forced to embrace this critical shift out of fear of becoming obsolete.
Innovation and growth are no longer optional to the enterprise.
Today, enterprises use ICT technology to improve working efficiency, create business innovations, and provide better customer service.
For many of these Fortune 500 companies, the challenge is to develop new business models that increase connection and engagement. What’s needed is a digital transformation platform that connects intelligence, data, and devices, enabling them to increase engagement with partners and develop applications that foster innovation.
Cloud computing, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and other new technologies are driving the human society into the smart era. The most striking feature of a smart society is the connection and fusion of the physical world and the digital world. The problems of the physical world are now being solved by the digital world.
As enterprises are constantly striving to attain new business value, the speed of innovation is crucial.
Companies need to be swift, agile and leverage all aspects of technological innovation. A truly digital enterprise uses emerging technologies as a strategic effort to go leaner, focus on agile business processes and enhance the business analytics of the enterprise. A digital enterprise relentlessly searches out, identifies and develops new digital business models, always ensuring that customers and employees are at the center of its innovation.
Digital Transformation
Digital innovation has become an essential catalyst and a driving force of economic growth. It’s a journey, not a sprint.
Designing a digital transformation framework for success is focused on innovation and attaining new business value, aimed at a creating an optimal user experience. To the point that the needs of the end-user need to be integrated into the service model. Consumers today, demand a faster, simpler, and enhanced digital experience that provides the best product and combines it with stellar service and most advanced technology.
The Digital Transformation Journey for Enterprises
Digital transformation is a massive undertaking, especially for larger, established companies. When done right, it will result in a business that is more aligned with customer demands and resilient in the fast-moving digital future.
Embracing digital transformation at the enterprise level requires a strategic approach that factors in all of the goals, people, technologies and required integration to form a proper strategy.
Digital Transformation, Disrupt and Innovate
A core function of any business is to continually advance and improve its operations, products, and services. Enterprises that adhere to a digital transformation framework are not only focused on improving, they are the key drivers of innovation and disruption. Equipped with disruptive and innovative strategies, these companies can compete in today’s fast-paced market that is being driven by consumer demands, new technologies, and new business models.
Why Embark in Digital Transformation?
Many legacy enterprises have built their business on certain methods of operation. It is these operating systems that have enabled the company to prosper and survive until today. The digital realities of today, however, are forcing these companies to reconsider and reimagine the fundamental systems that have been the keys to their success. The technological environment is changing, highlighting how ill-equipped these companies are to adapt and change.
Speed is essential in digital transformation.
While the speed of digital transformation may vary with industry, stagnation is the antithesis of the digital mindset. A company maintaining a static mindset in the digital era is paving their path to failure.
With external pressures – customer demands, emerging technologies, lean startups and disruptive business models- pushing the business towards innovation, the classic methods of operation are no longer delivering the expected results. As the impetus for change increases the need to design a strategic path towards digital transformation becomes inevitable.
While many companies may opt to slowly tweak specific inefficiencies, a true digital transformation requires a revolutionary approach. An all-encompassing digital revolution can revitalize an enterprise and pave the road to future success.
A digital transformation framework will guide the leaders and direct the business towards a path of progress. Businesses need to be in a state of constant evolution. Building a momentum and a rhythm reflects a shift in the mindset. It is a sign of a new reality and creates a paradigm shift for the entire industry.
Breaking the Silos
Digital transformation with its customer-centric marketing and business processes requires the ability to work across business verticals and silos. In fact, digital transformation focuses on cross-vertical collaboration, restructuring the organization to create methods that break down the silos. In a digitally focused enterprise, the goal is to encourage cross-department interface and to create an environment that is fertile for consumer-focused innovation.
Huawei: Strategic Digital Transformation Partner
Huawei Connect, Shanghai 2017
Over the past six years, Huawei has quickly developed into a global leading digital transformation facilitators. The rapidly changing digital landscape has enabled Huawei to take advantage of the new realities by providing new ICT solutions to customers, creating best practices for digital transformation, public safety, finance, electricity, transportation, education, and media.
Before enterprises choose an appropriate digital transformation strategy, IT and CT are now converging and transforming enterprises. There is no single technology alone capable to execute the digital transformation.
What is different about Huawei’s ecosystem?
Yan Lida, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei Connect 2017 (credit: Huawei)
During my experience at Huawei Connect 2017, I was able to learn about some of the company’s strategies and gain insights into how Huawei is developing this platform and ecosystem.
During his keynote speech, Yan Lida, President of Huawei Enterprise Business, highlighted Huawei’s ecosystem that is based on three primary characteristics:
Huawei wants to become the customers’ most trusted partner. Huawei’s commercial model chooses to rely on the monetization of technology and services; it does not monetize user data. This is the biggest difference between Huawei and traditional Internet companies.
Huawei abides by its own business boundaries and is committed to becoming a platform for the platform. There are many companies that through their own experience in a specific industry have transformed into an enabler platform for that industry. It is very common to see companies such as GE, which is now providing an industrial cloud platform for the aviation and manufacturing industries. Huawei believes that it must create an open, secure, and reliable ICT infrastructure platform within its business boundaries to become the platform for its customers and partners’ platforms. Huawei’s platform is a cloud-pipe-device collaboration full-stack ICT platform; it provides all-in-one ICT services for customers and partners. The upper layer platform does not need to bother with the lower layer’s complex software and hardware systems; it can focus on its own service optimization and innovation.
Huawei is committed to becoming the ecosystem’s soil (the platform) to help customers grow quickly. This is why its plan for developers is called the ‘Developer Enablement Plan.’ This platform is the presence of Huawei in over 170 countries around the world. Developers and partners could use this platform for their global marketing and services.
In order to enrich this ecosystem, Huawei has laid out the plan of establishing OpenLabs, which cover all areas of jointed innovation with customers and partners across industries: public safety, finance, power electric, and manufacturing.
In the next three years, Huawei will continue to invest $200 million to build and operate OpenLabs (currently 13 and grow to 20) in Asia, Europe, Middle East and Americas.
Huawei provides a one-stop cloud-side collaboration infrastructure platform that integrates all new ICT technologies to help businesses stay competitive in the digital age. Huawei’s business has achieved rapid growth via industry-leading customization solutions for government and associated industries.
By carrying out joint innovation with partners centering around the business needs of customers, Huawei focuses on creating a win-win ecosystem.
In the transformation process, customers, partners, and Huawei each have their own unique advantages: customers understand their businesses, partners know how to transform the business needs of customers into industry-relevant applications, and Huawei knows how to utilize hardware and software ICT infrastructures to deliver effective business support to customers.
Partnering on the Digital Journey
In the digital transformation journey, Huawei has embraced the vision that partnership and collaboration will be a bigger driving force than the technology itself. By partnering and guiding its customers in their digital transformation journeys, Huawei is strategically guiding each enterprise to their destination. The goal is to be connected, intelligent and cloud-based.
Huawei is uniquely positioned to take enterprises on this journey because the company is able to provide a holistic suite of solutions from devices, to infrastructure, to services based in the cloud equipped with Artificial Intelligent capabilities.
According to Mr. Lida, “Huawei’s business positioning is to be a pioneer of digital social and intelligent social development processes, the industry’s digital enabler, and the best partner. In 2016, Huawei’s Enterprise business grasped the historical opportunities of digital transformation by focusing on infrastructure”.
Road to Digital Transformation Isn’t Smooth
Of course, the road of digital transformation from traditional ICT manufacturers to the enterprise market isn’t easy, even for Huawei.
Backed by six years of hard work, Huawei focused its ICT infrastructure and carefully chose partners with complementary strengths. By working together with its partners, Huawei has been able to deliver key industries with true digital transformation. The combined results have been to help public safety and government, finance, energy, and transportation enterprises to achieve digital transformation while still generating sales revenue of 40.7 billion yuan (about $5.9 billion) – a 47% increase from 2011 when the business was formed.
Smart Cities
In the field of smart cities, Huawei delivers ultra-wideband network, cloud computing, large data, Internet of Things and other facilities and technologies for cities to create a “nervous system” that enables all things to be interconnected in a smart way. Huawei has also been widely recognized for their participation in the smart city project through the “one cloud- two network- three platform”.
During the 2016 Barcelona Global Smart City Expo, Huawei was also awarded the “Southern Innovation Award” for the construction of a digital health system in Kenya.
To date, Huawei Smart City solutions have been successfully applied to more than 40 countries around the world and more than 100 cities.
Huawei Smart City (credit: Huawei)
At HUAWEI CONNECT 2017, Huawei and the Shandong Weifang Municipal Government ushered in a new generation of information technology. By including Internet of Things, cloud computing, and large data, Huawei is creating a NB-IoT city network and establishing the first city level based on the company’s OceanConnect IoT platform. Huawei has also used the Internet of Things to integrate various types of sensing devices to achieve data collection and management.
Public Security
In the field of public security, Huawei has continued to apply new ICT technologies such as cloud computing, large data, mobile broadband cluster, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence to the public security field. By working together with partners to build solutions to help cities achieve digital transformation, public security has improved and cities become more secure. Currently, Huawei’s safe city solution has served 80 countries, more than 200 cities and more than 800 million people in Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America.
Technology and the Competition
As traditional industries enter a critical period of digital transformation to drive business innovation and growth, the cloud is at the foundation for enterprise digitization. To meet this growing demand, Huawei has launched a number of industry-leading ICT products and solutions.
Huawei IT products continue to innovate thereby expanding their role as a digital transformation leader.
With Huawei’s IT products and solutions serving more than 170 countries and regions worldwide, the company is setting a new standard for the future of digital innovation and outperforming its competition.
So far, 197 of the top Fortune 500 companies and 45 of the top 100 companies have chosen Huawei as their digital transformation partner. This list includes SAP, Accenture, Deutsche Telekom, Volkswagen, Oracle, Honeywell, GM, ABB, Intel, Sony, the Russian Federal Savings Bank and more.
Small businesses make a big impact. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, 54 percent of all sales are created by 28 million small businesses operating nationwide.
These businesses are facing a new challenge: embracing digital transformation to stay competitive and customer-focused on a global scale. Cloud computing has emerged as one key component in this strategy, with nearly 40 percent of SMBs already leveraging cloud technology, and experts predicting this number to double in the next three years. Let’s look at some of the best reasons for small businesses to embrace the cloud.
Lower Costs
Often tapped as the biggest enterprise benefit, cloud computing can help reduce total IT cost for SMBs as well. How? Instead of purchasing computer hardware that must be serviced, maintained and ultimately replaced, businesses leverage provider hardware and reduce capital expenditure. Software costs also come down — instead of licensing “X” copies of productivity suites or graphic design programs, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions let SMBs get the tools they need on demand.
Flexibility and Automation
Need more space or bigger bandwidth? No problem. Cloud providers can scale up on demand to meet emerging requirements. And scalability works both ways — increase throughput as needed for high-value projects or high-traffic events, then return to previous resource levels to keep costs down. In-house IT experts also enjoy the benefit automation; patches, upgrades and software renewals are all handled by your vendor, giving your team more time to innovate.
Recovery and Security
Disasters happen — not if, but when. When disaster strikes, what happens to your data? If it’s stored on local servers only, you could lose everything. Using the cloud, meanwhile, lets you make multiple redundant copies and store them off-site for easy recovery if something goes wrong close to home. In addition, cloud security has evolved to match — and, in many cases, exceed — that of local IT protection. Using a combination of regular audits, advanced encryption and remote data wiping, its possible to enjoy the security of data defense with all the benefits of device mobility.
Freedom and the Playing Field
Small businesses need employee freedom — many rely on remote workers who can get their job done anywhere, anytime. With the cloud, you can effectively take company networks wherever you go, and staff can access cloud services from any approved device.
The cloud also levels the playing field, giving SMBs access to enterprise-grade IT infrastructure without breaking the bank. Add a reduced carbon footprint, and it’s no surprise that more SMBs than ever are tapping the cloud to enhance their IT delivery.
Ready to dig deeper? Learn more about how the cloud can benefit your SMB.
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Author bio: Steve Johnson is President of Maryland Computer Service, and has been helping businesses harness the power of technology for nearly 20 years. His experiences during that time make him uniquely qualified to guide small and medium businesses through the technologies of today into the future.
Home monitoring solutions have helped to curb crime levels by a significant amount. However, a lot still remains to be done before the battle against criminal activities can won completely. There are many home monitoring solutions that are available on the market thereby making it hard for customers to choose their preferred surveillance system easily. Today, a good number of householders and business setups are currently using Wi-Fi cameras to monitor the happenings at their premises of residence. However, the use of Wi-Fi cameras based on physical servers is common today. Based on this, it is a good idea to switch to cloud based Wi-Fi cameras. There are numerous features that make such systems worth going for.
Stay connected anytime on any device. Smart phone, tablet, laptop, or PC. Receive alerts by email or mobile APP, and watch real-time video whenever you are connected to the internet.
Smart phone, tablet, laptop, or PC. Receive alerts by email or mobile app, and watch real-time video whenever you are connected to the internet.
Easily setup in a matter of seconds. Setup SpotCam is as easy as setup your mobile phone, yes, there is no setup.
Connect your SpotCam to WiFi and apply an account on MySpotCam.com, then you are ready to go!
Setup can be done easily with PC/Laptop/Mobile/Tablet.
View it now and save for later.
Choose our NVR plan to store video and review video footage as long as 30 days after it happens. Server is no longer required when you are using SpotCam.
Easily setup in a matter of seconds. Setting up SpotCam easy. Connect your SpotCam to WiFi, apply an account on MySpotCam.com, then you are ready to go!
Setup can be done easily with PC/Laptop/Mobile/Tablet…
View it now and save for later. Choose a cloud NVR plan to store video and review video footage as long as 30 days after it happens. A server is no longer required when you are using SpotCam.
Camera Spec
Dimensions: Bracket Ф 7.5cm
Body Ф 4.8cm × 14.8cm
Weight: 198g
Power Input: 12V,1A
Video: Up to 720P HD (1280×720) at 30 frame/sec
Streaming: H.264 encoding
Field of View: 110 degrees (diagonal)
Audio: Speaker and microphone
Night Vision: 12 High-power IR LEDs
Warranty: One-year
Operating Temperature: 0°C – 50°C, designed for indoor use
Live video streaming
If you want to enjoy unlimited access to the videos that are being captured by your surveillance camera, you can take advantage of cloud based Wi-Fi cameras. You can say bye to restricted access to surveillance videos. Enjoy live streaming of videos in HD. You can use any online systems to do this provided it is compatible with the camera. The system requires any internet connection that is sound enough to facilitate the live streaming of surveillance videos. This feature can enable you to monitor your home while you are out engaging in other important life activities.
Gain access to the footage from anywhere in the world
If you want to gain access to the camera videos from anywhere in the world, you can do well to upgrade to the cloud based systems. Thanks to these systems, home monitoring has never been easier. You can enjoy unlimited access to camera footage from anywhere in the world. This feature can enable you to easily monitor the security status of your home as often as the need arises.
Cameras compatible with almost any device
In order to access camera footage, you will need to use any compatible device. With this surveillance camera, you will be free to use any device provided it has a live streaming feature. You can use devices such as smartphones, tablets, PCs and any other compatible device. Today, there are also smart watches which have a live streaming feature. Such watches can also be synchronised with the camera and used to view security footage.
Use of electric cables not appropriate
If you are using the cloud based Wi-Fi camera, you will be free to enjoy wireless connections from the camera to the audio-visual system of your choice. You simply need to setup the Wi-Fi connections to be in a position to interface between the camera and the audio-visual system of your choice.
Highly resistant to extreme weather conditions
The Wi-Fi cloud based surveillance cameras are designed to withstand any kind of harsh weather conditions. You can still enjoy unlimited home security surveillance irrespective of the prevailing weather conditions. The cameras are designed to withstand water, strong winds and any form of precipitation.
Well, it looks like we don’t really need to wait until February 9 to get details about one of the most anticipated webOS products in the HP lineup – they’re right here, courtesy of Engadget tipsters, and we couldn’t be pleased more with this, could we? Generally speaking, we’re looking at two new webOS slates that HP adds to its most impressive burgeoning portfolio, a 9-inch codenamed Topaz and a 7-inch going by the name Opal. And while we couldn’t help noticing a certain similarity between Palo Alto’s future slabs and Cupertino’s trendy and fashionable iPad device, there are yet several differences distinguishing the two species from each other – the lack of “home” button, for instance, or the presence of a micro USB port on the bottom along with a 1.2GHz processor and a front-facing camera upfront. In addition to that, we can also spot a set of three stereo speakers for audio layout (in landscape and portrait modes) on both Hewlett Packard units, while their back side seems to be getting a black glossy coating material of some sort.
Aside from the minor details, and the fact that the first webOS tablets family may start shipping in March of 2011 (unconfirmed), we do not have much to say, except that at least one version, out of the two that HP plans to release, will be offered in three optional paths: as a WiFi-only model, as part of an AT&T 3G plan or with Verizon’s Wireless’ LTE network. Either way, we hope these rumors turn out to be true. Stay tuned.
Update1: As far as measures go, rumor has it that the Opal will be sized at 180 x 144 x 13mm while the Topaz slate is a bit bigger, at 241 x 190 x 13mm. Screen wise, we’re looking at a 1,024 x 768 pixel TFT LCD multitouch display, instilled on both versions, along with a “premium audio” system based on HP’s most advanced Beats audio platform. Other than that, we also hear that potential buyers are likely to be given “tens of gigabytes” of cloud storage, which frankly sounds pretty neat as well, but then, you’ll have to wait for February 9 in order to get even more savvy.
Update2: The good guys over at Pre Central have managed to put their hands on an internal paper with a list of specs of HP’s upcoming tablet. As it turns out, the 9.7-inch HP Topaz is likely to include a 1.2GHz Qualcomm processor on board, along with 512MB of DDR2 memory, an Adreno 220 GPU for the graphics, a mic, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a 1024 x 768 touchscreen resolution, a front-facing 1.3MP webcam and either 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of storage at your choice. Besides that, we also expect some neat goodies under the lid, such as a built-in accelerometer, paired with a gyroscope, and a light sensor for auto background colors, while battery wise, we’re looking at somewhere around 8 hours of continuous work.
So, Google has finally rolled out its highly expected Chrome OS, which was demoed live across the net by Mountain View’s engineers few hours ago, and practically suppose to go out somewhere towards next year’s holiday season. Regretfully, the system won’t be free and it seems you’ll have to buy it pre-installed on portable devices approved by Google, either it’s a netbook, tablet PCs, smartphones, MIDs, etc. The Chrome OS is said to include third-party applications, but won’t support, at this point, any Android materials. The system itself is based on Linux and the Chrome browser, both packed together to run on a web-based platform that will operate any outside content, coming from USB drives or other different sources. Basically, it’s a cloud system but that should not set you apart from it, unless you guys really afraid of taking new tech “adventures” and start new liabilities. Nevertheless, the operating system will run everything that was originally placed in the application panel – and we’re talking about features like Gmail, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Hulu, Google Talk and many more. Google Docs was also included in Google’s OS compatibility list, while drivers from other companies, such as Flash and Silverlight suppose to work as well (although Google wasn’t very clear about it and has chosen to say this: “We are working hard to integrate plugins closely”).
Hardware wise, details are scarce at the moment, and Google will not share those nitty gritty things until next year, but looking at the overall picture, Chrome OS will probably run in compatibility with both x86 and ARM processors, while regular hard-drives support seems to be excluded – which means you’ll have to use SSDs instead. In general, booting time is set to load up in 7 seconds only, and login process will take 3 seconds more. That, in our opinion, should do best with any standard netbook available in the market, now and in the future (with SSD drives), and just in case you were wondering, Google itself was using an Eee PC machine to run the demo for the first time.
Update1: We’ve tossed some videos after the break, that will walk you through Google’s new system.
Update2: Looks like Google’s Chrome OS is now available free, in case you’re using a VMWare software on your desktop machine. The good part is that you don’t need to actually make it your primary bootable system at all, and by running any VirtualBox software, you can set any of your system folders to be used as a Chrome OS unit. If you think you’re qualified for using this pre Beta platform, you can download the image either from this torrent (we have no clue about this source background) or the build the guys at GDGT recently uploaded. TechCrunch team was all over it in passing hours as well, so you can read their step-by-step instructions in here, if you don’t feel safe to do it on your own.
Update3: Dell Mini 10V owners can now install the Chrome OS as their primary operating system, thanks to a Dell employee who’s managed to hack the USB-bootable edition via WiFi and make it available on Dell’s popular mini laptop, despite fussy restrictions from Mountain View’s direction. Truth is it’s not the perfect OS and in fact, many things are yet to be solved, but for early adopters who are willing to give it a try – it should probably be a great experience that’s worth a shot. Source code and explanations are now available on Direct2Dell‘s page. Enjoy the Chrome.
Update4: Mac and Linux users can finally use the Google Chrome Beta-version browser with their computing machines – as Mountain View’s searching giant officially announces in its blog. And although we face a lot of crashes while trying, you don’t really want to skip this experience, especially when Google has recently launched the extensions, do you? Checkout the video we’ve added after the break (3rd one).
