You’ve probably experienced a company acquisition at some stage of your career; they can produce great results for companies, customers and partners, but sometimes the ‘birth pains’ can be so bad you vow never to do it again!
As the high-tech industry matures it’s to be expected that companies will merge or acquire others as they seek to compete for market share and margins. However, it’s also during these times of change that competitors will try to grab market share and steal your channel partners, so there’s always pressure to complete the integration quickly and with minimal conflict. We know the channel hates uncertainty, so partner loyalty is put to the test if the result is confusion and delay as the new integrated business attempts to cope with any existing process deficiencies.
Google’s acquisition of SocialDeck at the end of August made it the 11th social media related company Google has snapped up so far this year - five of them in August alone. The buying spree raises questions as to where Google is heading with its much-anticipated play in social networking, particularly as many of the recent ones, including SocialDeck, are gaming specialists, suggesting that Google sees gaming as a cornerstone of its social media strategy. There is value in this but what Google needs, and what is not yet evident, is a coherent strategy for social networking that pulls together the disjointed pieces of its growing social media portfolio.
Catalyst Connector held the first of its series of social media workshops cum networking events on September 16th, 2010, attracting 30 plus participants from local SMBs interested in finding out how to better engage in the social media scene for business.
Brocade has announced its commitment to continued innovation in data center networking technologies with the support of the next generation of Fibre Channel (FC) industry standard, FC-PI-5, which will offer 16 gigabits per second (Gbps) performance. Brocade solutions currently represent 67.5 percent of the FC switch and director market share. As a result, the company's endorsement of the standard is a key element of widespread adoption. 16 Gbps FC is a key technology to support increasing data center scale and solid state storage, and it will be critical to scaling new virtualized workloads based on its proven performance, reliability and simplicity.
The Verizon RISK Team 2010 Data Breach Investigations Report reflects that the data breaches relate to the poor rates of compliance with PCI DSS. It points out that about 79% of the organizations that suffered breaches and were subject to PCI DSS were not in compliance as of their last assessment. The report also gives the impression that implementation of the compliance help reduce the risk of data breaches.
Openwave Systems Inc. has announced that its CEO, Ken Denman, has been elected to the CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association) board of directors, effective January 2011. Over the years, Openwave has played a vital part in helping set CTIA's strategic leadership direction on several key issues and initiatives.
One of the greatest challenges for IT managers in recent years has been how to secure an increasingly mobile workforce. Traditionally, IT security was simply a case of securing the corporate network, implementing a security policy and locking-down the firewall; however, with the network extending beyond the four walls of the office, there can be many pitfalls when a business seeks to lockdown and secure its more remote employees.
Traffic gnarled its way toward Orchard Road as the sun set on Friday, 8 October 2010, , or perhaps it was led by the enterprising business folks making their way toward an interesting networking event organised by the Toa Payoh South Community Club.
“E-mail continues to be a significant threat vector for most businesses around the world, and management of quarantined messages is critical to balancing security with productivity” says Tim Helming, director of Product Management at WatchGuard Technologies.
Cisco has appointed industry veteran Alex Zinin as its chief technology officer for its service provider business in Asia Pacific and Japan. Reporting directly to Edzard Overbeek, Cisco’s president for Asia Pacific and Japan, Zinin will work closely with Cisco’s service provider customers in areas such as Internet Protocol Next-Generation Networks (IP NGN), video, mobility, data centers and cloud computing.
Singapore has been the recipient of increased investment in data centers, and MNCs operating in the region are targeting the city-state as the infrastructure hub for a new wave of cloud computing services. Despite its high real-estate costs and electricity supply risks, Ovum believes its geographically strategic position, status as a financial center, and stable government will continue to boost its position as a favored hosting location for telcos developing cloud computing services in Asia Pacific, says Claudio Castelli, senior analyst in this article.