Posts Tagged ‘partner marketplace’

This is a guest blog from ICC Global Hosting’s Mark Moeller. ICC’s Hosted Virtual Desktop delivers full-featured Windows desktop computing environments, including Microsoft Office, anti-virus, and data storage to any device, anywhere, anytime.

Accessing Desktop Apps Anytime, Anywhere, from Any Device

The computing world is changing rapidly – driven by the consumerization of applications, the demands for employees to be in an “always on” mode, and the revolution of mobile computing. End users have become App savvy and with the advent of the “there’s an app for that” generation applications that have become very easy for end users to install and run on their own. The computing platforms they use have become self-service in nature and new applications are now easy to find and no longer require IT to research, purchase, install, and manage. In fact, IT departments have lost control over what applications run on these devices posing a huge support problem and security threat.

In today’s economy organizations demand their employees to do more with smaller staffs forcing employees to be “always on” with e-mail and other work data now delivered to their desktops, smart phones, tablets, and home computers. People on average now access work data and applications from three devices with new choices of mobile devices available almost daily.

VDI Sticker Shock – With all of these changes many IT departments have considered virtual desktops as a solution to provide access to multiple platforms, remote access, and secured network stored data. Consultants and vendors have been trying to sell organizations virtual desktops as VDI, but most organizations suffer from sticker shock facing huge start-up costs and little or no economies of scale. Most organizations fail to see any potential ROI with VDI solutions and end up tabling the decision for next year’s budget.

Read the rest of ICC’s Guest Blog! »

This is a guest blog from FaxLogic CEO Eric Lenington. The unique FaxLogic service combines the best of analog fax, Internet fax, and fax servers to create a highly reliable, secure and scalable collaborative environment.

Why the (Right) Cloud is the Best Place for Your Documents

Every business produces and consumes documents — this includes both paper and digital, both those created internally and those received from customers and business partners — all needing to be sorted and organized and most needing to be safely stored and easily retrieved (and ultimately, securely disposed of when they are no longer needed). The vast majority of companies find themselves trying to do this today in highly fragmented ways and usually with radically different approaches for paper documents than with digital ones. Often different departments, or even different groups within a department, develop their own way to deal with “their” documents, a way that “works for them.”

Digital documents are usually stored on in-house servers, on “shares” with folder structures that may only make sense to the person that originally built it — not to the person trying to find something in it. And few companies can say that they don’t have reams of paper files stored in file rooms or in “personal” file cabinets. FaxLogic helps our customers solve this problem by seamlessly integrating their paper and digital worlds.

We do this by supporting their existing network of fax machines, scanners and multi-function printers (the “gateways” to the digital world for paper documents) and by incorporating key features of current technologies that we are all familiar with – like email and search engines – into the realm of organizing, archiving, retrieving and sharing documents. FaxLogic is a cloud-based service, running on a cloud-based infrastructure, and it uses “the cloud” to safely and securely store our customer’s documents (whether paper or digital). This was no accident, and that is what I will focus on in this article, trying to “demystify” the cloud a bit, and discuss why it’s the best place for your documents.

Read the rest of FaxLogic’s Guest Blog! »

This is a guest blog from 3DCart Co-founder and CEO Gonazlo Gil. 3DCart is a technology partner with a robust eCommerce platform hosting thousands of merchants all over the world … And it’s clear they have an enduring drive for innovation and value.

5 Must-Have Features in a Hosted Ecommerce Provider

In 1997, the concept that would eventually become 3DCart came into existence. I developed 3DCart with the idea of putting every single ecommerce tool and resource at the fingertips of web entrepreneurs so anyone with a computer could start their own online store. Today, we’re still going strong, and we pride ourselves on launching new ecommerce features before the competition has a chance.

The market for shopping carts has exploded over the past decade. If you’re considering the ecommerce business, choosing a shopping cart can get overwhelming. Because not all ecommerce software solutions are created equal, we’ve put together a list of five must-have features for aspiring entrepreneurs to consider when choosing a hosted ecommerce provider.

1. PCI Compliance to Protect Customer Information
You hear about it on the web, on the television, in the magazines: cyber-theft. Recent instances of online fraud (like the hack of Playstation’s network) have caused online shoppers to stiffen up when it comes to sharing financial information. For your sake and the sake of your customers, it’s important to put the minds of shoppers at ease as soon as they discover your brand.

Born from new rules created by the Payment Card Industry, PCI compliance standards are stringent guidelines for ensuring your online store is up to code in terms of security. The last thing you need as an online storeowner is responsibility for losing sensitive personal data to fraudsters. Beyond general culpability, you run the risk of losing trust in your brand, which could sink your business entirely.

The process for reaching PCI compliance is vigorous and expensive. That’s why most ecommerce software providers undergo PCI compliance measures on their own — so online stores can offer security to their customers. It offers a little more peace of mind on both sides of the business relationship and ensures your transactions go through smoothly.

Read the rest of 3DCart’s Guest Blog! »

This is a guest blog from Verecloud, a technology partner that makes it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to shop for, select, purchase, manage and monitor the performance of their cloud services and related spending.

Cloudwrangler from Verecloud

Ubiquitous Internet access and technological advances in virtualization and IT management have caused an explosion in the availability and adoption of cloud services. Just a few years ago, it would take hours – if not days – to activate a new cloud service for a customer. SoftLayer can now perform this feat with servers in minutes, and other providers of email, CRM and accounting solutions have equally fast turn-up times.

The cloud gives small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) access to enterprise grade technology so that they can compete more effectively with little, if any, capital investment, so those SMBs are prime consumers of cloud services. By moving to cloud services, their businesses gains flexibility and affordable scalability to throttle their infrastructure and services up and down as their business grows, changes, moves locations or becomes more mobile.

Even with all of those benefits, adding a little cloud here and a little cloud there ends up making it difficult for these SMBs to manage all of the disparate services. Who is paying for what? Are they accounted for in expense reports? How can you allocate the costs to your sales, marketing, operations or support departments? Is IT aware of all of the cloud services? What happens if someone leaves the company and you need to deactivate their access and reassign all of their data to other employees?

Read the rest of Verecloud’s Guest Blog! »

This is a guest blog from Tim Falls of SendGrid, a technology partner that provides cloud-based email infrastructure for reliable delivery, scalability, real-time analytics and flexible APIs for customers who want to focus on driving their own growth and profitability.

Understanding the Value of [Email] Infrastructure Services

The Fall of DIY … As We Know It
Today more than ever before, businesses depend on third party services to operate efficiently and achieve their objectives. As a business leader, you have countless web applications and software as service solutions at your fingertips, which collectively address just about any problem or demand imaginable. Examples include cloud-based file storage, cloud and dedicated web hosting, recurring billing applications, online HR management portals, APIs for telephony and geo-data, and managed email infrastructure and delivery services. Startups and established corporations alike can utilize these tools quickly and simply with a credit card and a few clicks on a trackpad.

So, what does this mean, and why is it worth recognizing and appreciating? Well, it means that your life is a lot easier than it was 10 years ago. And if you fail to recognize the opportunities and advantages that these resources offer, your competitors will soon leave you in their proverbial dust … if they haven’t already.

The gist:

• You don’t have to do everything yourself anymore … So don’t!
• Be the best at what you do, and rely on other experts to help with everything outside of your realm.

The Email Puzzle
Let’s face it. Email sucks. Not email in and of itself – obviously, it is an essential part of our lives and is arguably one of the most transformative communication tools in human history. But, from a business standpoint, the implementation and maintenance of an effective and efficient email system is truly a nightmare. If there is one thing that web developers across the world can agree upon, it may be this: Successfully integrating email into a web application just ain’t fun!

Read the rest of SendGrid’s Guest Blog! »

This is a guest blog from Chris Lantrip, CEO of CyberlinkASP, an application service provider focused on hosting, upgrading and managing the industry’s best software.

The DesktopLayer from CyberlinkASP

Hosted virtual desktops – SoftLayer style.

In early 2006, we were introduced to SoftLayer. In 2007, they brought us StorageLayer, and in 2009, CloudLayer. Each of those solutions met a different kind of need in the Application Service Provider (ASP) world, and by integrating those platforms into our offering, DesktopLayer was born: The on-demand anytime, anywhere virtual desktop hosted on SoftLayer and powered by CyberlinkASP.

CyberlinkASP was originally established to instantly web-enable software applications that were not online in the past. Starting off as a Citrix integration firm in the early days, we were approached by multiple independent software vendors asking us to host, manage and deliver their applications from a centralized database platform to their users across multiple geographic locations. With the robust capabilities of Citrix, we were able to revolutionize application delivery and management for several ISV’s.

Over time, more ISV’s starting showing up at our doorstep, and application delivery was becoming a bigger and bigger piece of our business. Our ability to provision users on a specific platform in minutes, delete them in minutes, perform updates and maintain hundreds of customers and thousands of users all at one time from a centralized platform was very attractive.

Read the rest of CyberlinkASP’s Guest Blog! »

This is a guest blog from Shmuli Goldberg of ClickTale, an industry leader in customer experience analytics, providing businesses with revolutionary insights into their customers’ online behavior.

Understanding the User Experience with In-Page Analytics

Since ClickTale’s start back in 2006, we understood that engaging visitors on a website is the first step to increase conversions. Although traditional web analytics are great for delivering general statistics such as number of visitors or pages per visit, they leave a big black hole when it comes to understanding what happens inside the pages themselves.

ClickTale’s In-Page Analytics feature set enables you to identify, observe, aggregate and analyze visitors’ actual interaction inside your site, so you know exactly what page elements work, what to optimize and how to increase visitor engagement.

Our wide range of web optimization tools include Mouse Tracking, Heatmap Suite and Conversion Analytics solutions, but was our Visitor Recordings feature that started it all. Giving you a front row seat to your visitors’ browsing sessions and delivering a thorough, in-depth view into what your visitors are focusing on and interacting with inside the pages themselves. All you need to do is grab the popcorn.

Our Heat maps are aggregated reports that visually display what parts of a webpage are looked at, clicked on, focused on and interacted with by your online visitors. See exactly what images, text and call to action buttons your visitors’ think are hot and what’s not!

Both these features allow you to instantly see how to go about optimizing your website instantly so you don’t have to guess.

As a fully hosted subscription service, ClickTale is quick and easy to set up. We believe our wide range of heatmaps, behavioral analytics and full video playback make ClickTale the perfect way to round out your traditional web analytics suite. For more information, please visit www.clicktale.com.

- Shmuli Goldberg, ClickTale

This is a guest blog from Troy Davis of Papertrail, a SoftLayer Tech Marketplace Partner that helps customers detect, resolve and avoid infrastructure problems using log messages.

Receive DB Slow Query Logs in Your Inbox

Want to wake up to important database and syslog messages with your bagel and coffee? Here’s how. It’s free and takes about 5 minutes.

Most of us run a database somewhere on our SoftLayer servers. Whether it’s MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, or another relational or NoSQL sibling, a responsive data store is critical to happy users. That’s why databases send slow queries to a log file. It’s much better than no logging at all, but as an engineer, I’d wanted more. I wanted to:

• View all my query logs in one place, without SSHing to each server for tail and grep. My workload shouldn’t scale linearly as I add systems
• Share log visibility with employees who don’t have server access or command-line knowledge (and email links to specific log messages to my developers and DBAs)
• Receive log messages in my inbox – or send them to my team or monitoring service – when I know they need attention
• Examine logs for related HTTP requests, daemon output, API invocations, and other parts of our stack — I can troubleshoot faster with start-to-finish logs on a single screen.

That’s where Papertrail was born. We built Papertrail to make log aggregation and log management effortless and usable. It’s the hosted log management service that we wanted as developers, systems engineers and tech entrepreneurs.

We know the hesitation you might have when approaching this kind of service, so our goal was to enable users to have Papertrail deliver those SQL slow query logs – or any other logs – to your inbox every morning for free:

Read the rest of Papertrail’s Guest Blog! »

This is a guest blog from Mike Genstil of Visualize ROI, a SoftLayer Tech Marketplace Partner providing a flexible platform for enabling sales and marketing professionals to place ROI models on the web in an engaging format.

Don’t Tell Me … SHOW Me the Numbers

We are living in a new world of increased corporate accountability and frugality. Thanks to unpredictable markets and unscrupulous leaders, the stakes have been raised in corporate decision-making. We have entered an “ROI revolution,” where CFOs, CMOs, and CIOs are demanding detailed business cases before they will make a purchase. Questions asked of vendors by executives are, “What is the Return on Investment?” and, “What is my Total Cost of Ownership?”

Read the rest of Visualize ROI’s Guest Blog! »

We invite each of our featured SoftLayer Tech Marketplace Partners to contribute a guest post to the SoftLayer Blog, and this week, we’re happy to welcome Dmitri Eroshenko from Relenta. In his guest post, Dmitri explains Relenta’s inspiration and history to help you better understand how Relenta’s online app can benefit your business.

Relenta: Get Things Done with One Click

We’re all suffocating from information clutter. Our customer data and communications are scattered all over the place — multiple email accounts, social networks, CRMs and contact managers, instant messengers and chats, spreadsheets, various productivity and collaboration apps, calendars, and so on. We enter and re-enter data in different apps, which we endlessly cross-reference to reconcile discrepancies. We worry constantly that we’re missing something.

At some point, we reach the threshold where pain becomes unbearable, stop and say, “There must be a better way!”

Our small software development team started working on Relenta six years ago with these very words. The idea was to take several apps our team used regularly — including email, of course — and distill them into one single program. Soon after we started building the program, we realized that by storing different types of customer records in the same backend database, we’d actually only begun the process of consolidating the information … And that’s where we started building Relenta’s interface to truly streamline the process.

Instead of displaying various bits of customer information on separate screens, we created an interface that aggregated ALL data in one single activity stream. These “news feeds” provide at-a-glance views on the history of each of the customer relationships being tracked by the system. The feeds also put you in a one-click zone, from which no information is more than a single click away and no activity takes more than a single click to perform.

The rest is history. Today, Relenta is an elegant online application that lets you organize your entire customer-related life so that nothing is more than one click away.

The idea of building our platform around the one-click zone became our mantra and guiding principle. To put you into a one-click zone,
Relenta offers:

• A unified inbox for all customer communications, including email and social network messages from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter
• A centralized platform for contact management, shared calendar, internal messaging, workflow management and document management
• A built-in email marketing and email-autoresponder solution
• A product philosophy that emphasizes disciplined process management and minimizes the number of steps it takes to get things done
• A framework that enables asynchronous and geographically dispersed collaboration by keeping everyone and everything on the same page

As a result of this streamlined workflow, your data isn’t fragmented or unnecessarily duplicated across your systems and you can be more efficient in your operations. By interlinking all communication activity between our team and each customer, we found ourselves getting twice as much work done in half the time.

If you find yourself bouncing between platforms to manage your customer relationships, Relenta might be a great fit for you. While I can talk about the value Relenta can provide and send you as many customer testimonials as you want to read, what matters is whether the app meets your needs. Check out our Live Demo and sign up for a Free Trial to put us to the test.

-Dmitri Eroshenko, Relenta

Join the one-click revolution at www.relenta.com!