What SMBs need to know about SaaS...now

Software as a Service is one of—if not the most—popular cloud delivery models for small- and medium-sized businesses. According to Gartner—Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing (2011), SaaS is entering the mainstream market in the next two to five years.

The SaaS model levels the playing field between growing businesses and larger competitors, by equipping SMBs with application functionality that only large enterprises previously enjoyed. Moreover, this increase in functionality no longer requires huge investments in technology and resources. SMBs no longer have to worry about the costs and investment associated with building and maintaining an infrastructure to support modern business applications as the SaaS subscription and delivery model now makes these applications affordable to businesses of all sizes.

While SaaS adoption continues to grow amongst SMBs, it’s important to realize that nothing is ever as easy as it seems. There are thousands of SaaS applications on the market today. Which ones have the right features for your business? Which ones have the security and scalability you need? How do you get started and what support should you expect? How do you pull all these solutions together, with your existing applications and make sure they support your business?

These are important questions that growing companies typically have little time to consider, particularly with limited IT resources.Once you get beyond the basics of SaaS like cost, infrastructure, access, maintenance and support, here is the next level of items growing businesses should consider when choosing a SaaS solution:

Integration
As growing businesses increase their use of SaaS technology, the need for integrating the businesses’ applications is critical. With little appetite to rip and replace existing applications at once, SMBs must ensure that they connect new SaaS applications to legacy systems. When looking for a SaaS integration solution, SMBs should look for these main characteristics: 1. Simple to implement; 2. Out-of-the box connectors with cloud and legacy systems; 3. Ability to configure without customization

Analytics
Today’s organizations are overwhelmed with data that is siloed on a number of disparate business applications including sales, finance and human resources. SMBs struggle to access and analyze the data they need to get an overall view of business performance.

Today most businesses rely on spreadsheet-based reports that are cumbersome to build and maintain and are frequently out-of-date. They need an analytics tool that comes out of the box with 70 percent of the cross-application reporting capabilities they need yet is flexible enough to be configured and modified as the business changes.

Partners
While the comfort level with cloud computing is growing, many businesses are still wondering “Where do I begin?” When SMBs start to think about expanding their software portfolio from a sea with thousands of seemingly identical SaaS applications, it’s worthwhile to find a trusted partner to help along the way.

Thankfully, there is a new class of partners emerging who offer an end-to-end solution and who are capable of delivering multiple SaaS applications, plug and play integrations, cross application analytics and turnkey services. These partners have the experience and track record to help SMBs choose a solution and stand behind it. With limited IT staff, they don’t have time to sift through all the options and the value-proposition a partner can bring is significant for a small- or medium-sized business.

Now that the market is transitioning, there are new SaaS partner models emerging with companies offering end-to-end services including implementation, integration, business process consulting and support across multiple applications. If you are a growing company with limited IT resources, consider looking at a partner who offers a total solutions approach.

Telcos lost millions due to social messaging

New estimates from research firm Ovum indicate that consumers’ increasing use of IP-based social messaging services on their smartphones cost telecom operators $8.7 billion in lost SMS revenues in 2010, and $13.9 billions in 2011.

The analyst firm revealed that it expects the decline, representing nearly 6 percent of total messaging revenue in 2010 and 9 percent in 2011, to continue as the popularity of messaging apps continues to grow.

Ovum warned operators to rework their legacy services if they want to secure their future position in the messaging market.

“Social messaging has disrupted traditional services, and operators’ revenues in this area will come under increasing pressure,” said Neha Dharia, consumer analyst at Ovum and author of the report.

“Tapping into the creativity of app developers, forming industry-wide collaborations, and leveraging their usage data and strong relationships with subscribers are the key ways for operators to ensure that they hold their ground in the messaging market,” Dharia said.

However, despite the threat to messaging revenues, Ovum said it believes that the strong presence of social messaging should be looked upon as an opportunity. This threat will drive telcos to consider alternative sources of revenue, such as mobile broadband.

“And now the market has been tested, operators know what types of messaging services work,” commented Dharia. “In addition, operators are in a position of strength because they control the entire messaging structure through their access to the user‚Äôs phone number and usage data. The established billing relationship is a great advantage, as is the fact that operators control to a great extent the services to which the user is exposed.”

However, offering innovative messaging services and aligning revenue schemes with models in the social world will not be enough to win the battle against social messaging, Ovum said.

Industry-wide collaboration and co-operation will be the key to growth in the messaging realm, it added. “Operators must remain open to partnering with app developers, sharing end-user data with them and allowing integration with the user’s social connections. Working closely with handset vendors will also be important; they control some of the most popular social messaging apps, and can also provide preloaded applications.”

“The most important factor, however, will be co-operation between telcos. They are no longer competing merely among themselves, but must work together to face the challenge from the major Internet players,” concluded Dharia. NEWSBYTES.PH

Kingston Fastest USB Flash Drive

Top memory products manufacturer Kingston recently announced the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0, designed for enthusiasts and gamers, and features the fastest speeds and largest capacities that Kingston has to offer in a USB Flash drive.

Its high-speed eight-channel architecture provides USB 3.0 data transfer rates of up to 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write.

Users can save time associated with opening, editing and copying large files and applications between devices.

The fast write speeds also allow users to work on large files or applications directly from the USB 3.0 drive without performance lag.

The DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 is available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities.

The 256GB capacity can store approximately 10 Blu-ray Discs (25GB each), 54 DVDs (4.7GB each), 48,640 MP3s (4MB each) or 13,473,684 Microsoft Word files pages with various formatting and basic graphics.

With a durable and sleek design, the Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 is a terrific portable storage solution for gamers, enthusiasts, early adopters and high-end consumers who require the best performance and highest capacities to carry their digital library.

Faster speeds and higher capacities enable users to quickly store their digital files and keep it with them at all times, in HyperX style.

DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 features a metal and rubberized casing with a reinforced key ring hole for daily use.

Tablet computers the new electronic babysitter

 Move over TV. Tablet computers are the new electronic babysitter.

A Nielsen survey published on Thursday broke down the ways tablet-owning parents of children under age 12 are using gadgets such as the iPad to keep the kids occupied.

More than half of parents — 55 percent — said their kids used tablets for entertainment while traveling and 41 percent said they give the children the device to use in restaurants.Some 77 percent said their children play downloaded games on a tablet while 57 percent said they access educational applications.

Forty-three percent watch television shows or movies on their tablets.

Only 15 percent of children use tablets to communicate with friends or family.

Nielsen said seven out of 10 children under age 12 in tablet-owning households are using the devices.

Apple: Top Vendor for Smartphones

Worldwide smartphone sales to end-users soared to 149 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 47.3 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2010, according to research firm Gartner.

Total smartphone sales in 2011 reached 472 million units and accounted for 31 percent of all mobile devices sales, up 58 percent from 2010.

Smartphone volumes during the quarter rose due to record sales of Apple iPhones. As a result, Apple became the third-largest mobile phone vendor in the world, overtaking LG.

Apple also became the world’s top smartphone vendor, with a market share of 23.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, and the top smartphone vendor for 2011 as a whole, with a 19 percent market share.

“Western Europe and North America led most of the smartphone growth for Apple during the fourth quarter of 2011,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.“

In Western Europe the spike in iPhone sales in the fourth quarter saved the overall smartphone market after two consecutive quarters of slow sales.

”The quarter saw Samsung and Apple cement their positions further at the top of the market as their brands and new products clearly stood out.LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Research In Motion (RIM) again recorded disappointing results as they struggled to improve volumes and profits significantly.

These vendors were also exposed to a much stronger threat from the midrange and low end of the smartphone market as ZTE and Huawei continued to gain share during the quarter.

Worldwide mobile device sales to end-users totaled 476.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 5.4 percent increase from the same period in 2010.

In 2011 as a whole, end users bought 1.8 billion units, an 11.1 percent increase from 2010.

“Expectations for 2012 are for the overall market to grow by about 7 percent, while smartphone growth is expected to slow to around 39 percent,” said Annette Zimmermann, principal research analyst at Gartner.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Nokia’s mobile phone sales numbered 111.7 million units, an 8.7-percent decrease from last year. ”Samsung closed the gap with Nokia in overall market share,” said Cozza.

“Samsung profited from strong smartphone sales of 34 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011.

The troubled economic environment in Europe and Nokia’s weakened brand status posed challenges that were hard to overcome in just one quarter.

However, Nokia proved its ability to execute and deliver on time with its new Lumia 710 and 800 handsets.

Nokia will have to continue to offer aggressive prices to encourage communications service providers (CSPs) to add its products to portfolios currently dominated by Android-based devices.”

Apple had an exceptional fourth quarter, selling 35.5 million smartphones to end users, a 121.4 percent increase year on year.

Apple’s continued attention to channel management helped it take full advantage of the strong quarter to further close the gap with Samsung, which saw some inventory build up for its smartphone range.

Apple’s strong performance will continue into the first quarter of 2012 as availability of the iPhone 4S widens.

However, since Apple will not benefit from delayed purchases as it did in the fourth quarter of 2011, Gartner analysts expect its sales to decline quarter-on-quarter.

After Apple, ZTE and Huawei were the fastest-growing vendors in the fourth quarter of 2011.

“These vendors expanded their market reach and kept on improving the user experience of their Android devices,” said Cozza.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, ZTE moved into fourth place in the global handset market.

ZTE posted a strong smartphone sales increase of 71 percent sequentially.

The company was able to extend its portfolio to three CSPs in its home market and benefited from consumers’ interest in low-cost smartphones.

Huawei moved ahead of LG in the Android marketplace to become a top-four Android manufacturer, thanks to strong smartphone growth in the quarter.

Huawei has made significant progress in moving to its own-branded devices, and it has continued to expand its portfolio into higher tiers as its tries to build more iconic products.

RIM dropped to the No. 7 spot in the fourth quarter of 2011, with a 10.7-percent decline.

RIM’s delay with its BlackBerry 10 platform will further impair its ability to retain users.

However, RIM’s biggest challenge is still to expand the developer base around its ecosystem and convince developers to work and innovate with BlackBerry 10.

HP Plans New Tablet by Year-End

Hewlett-Packard will take another shot at Apple’s iPad with the release late this year of a tablet computer geared for work instead of play, chief executive Meg Whitman said Thursday.

The tablet will run on Microsoft Windows 8 software and take on iPad in the workplace, where HP will bank on its reputation and its strengths in providing gear and services to businesses, according to Whitman.

“It is not really a tablet market, it is an iPad market,” Whitman said during an on-stage chat before a small gathering of entrepreneurs and executives at a Wall Street Journal Viewpoints West gathering in Silicon Valley. “The iPad is terrific; I have one,” she continued.

“I use it to read books or watch TV but I don’t use it to really get work done.”

HP will release by Christmas a new tablet tailored for security, productivity and business network compatibility, said Whitman, who took over as the California-based technology titan’s chief executive five months ago.

“There is a big trend to BYOD to work; which is all well and good until there is a security breach,” she said, referring to people increasing bringing their own devices such as iPhones or iPads to use on the job.

“We are going to provide an alternative.”

A blockbuster hit with people in their personal lives, iPads have been gaining traction in workplaces.HP made a dismal initial foray into the tablet market last year with a TouchPad powered by webOS mobile operating system software it acquired as part of its $1.2 billion purchase of Palm in 2010.

Citing disappointing sales, HP decided to discontinue the TouchPad just seven weeks after it hit the market.

HP later promised to make webOS available to the open source community by September, meaning that developers anywhere would be able to tinker with it as they wished and it would be available for anyone to use free of charge.

The Palo Alto, California-based HP abandoned plans to make smartphones and tablet computers using the platform.

HP’s first tablet to take on iPad ‚ “was not a happy ending,” admitted Whitman.

Mitsubishi HC7800D 3D Projector

The number of movies filmed in 3D is growing, as well as the number of movies that are being converted from 2D to 3D to boost their box office appeal.

Since the smash hit “Avatar,” many more films have been shot in 3D, including “Alice in Wonderland,” “Sanctum,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Mars Needs Moms” and “The Green Hornet.” Films such as “Green Lantern” and “The Smurfs” were filmed in 2D and converted, while “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” and “Puss in Boots” were shot in 2D but also shown in Imax 3D.

This year, many more are coming to theaters while old movies are now available in 3D Blu-ray discs for home enjoyment. And with the increasing popularity of this medium, more people want to enjoy the bold images of 3D on a large screen at home.

To meet that demand, there’s growing interest and innovation in 3D projectors. For example, Mitsubishi Electric’s new 3D projector, the HC7800D, brings the 3D experience home. The projector uses DLP technology to create exciting, vibrant 3D images in full high-definition, 1080p resolution. When paired with a Blu-ray disc player capable of 3D movie playback, 3D projectors like this bring movie enjoyment to a whole new level never before experienced at home.

The projector shows impressive 3D images viewable through its high-performance proprietary active-shutter glasses. The HC7800D also boasts one of the industry’s best 2D to 3D conversion technologies that can transform ordinary 2D classics like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Ben-Hur” into a seamless 3D experience with near-perfect 3D simulation that makes content jump off the screen.

The projector’s frame rate conversion technology also produces high-speed image reproduction for showing fine, smooth details and reducing any motion blur, especially in fast action scenes, so even watching sports and games becomes an event to look forward to, whether it’s in 2D or 3D.

With a long life of up to 5,000 hours in low mode, the lamp provides years of typical use before you need a new one. With a rich 100K:1 contrast ratio, the projector produces images that are smooth, dazzling and true to the original 2D and 3D content from Blu-ray discs, cable or satellite subscription services.