We've added a seminar on The Cloud, and we love it! Seemingly out of nowhere (although it's been in discussion for years), the cloud is now the hottest technology out there. We put it all together for you, and included the relationship between the cloud, Web services, and Web 2.0 – that's what we're so excited about. These things really do relate, and the cloud is where they meet.
It's fun to be excited again. Keep up with technology – the cloud's not the only thing going on. CSTA covers it all…..
In the meantime, my usual thoughts: Make sure you're keeping current!!!
Here's the schedule or you can view the complete schedule on our Website:
CSTA Web sessions:
April 8,9
May 6, 7
June 3, 4
UITJ (Understanding IT Jobs) Web sessions:
May 7
TR Web sessions:
May 13
The Cloud Web sessions:
April 15
May 20
Keep in touch and keep up with technology!
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CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
CRM has really become critical for most companies. These systems started as customer tracking and customer support (call center) products, but now they really contain all the front office functions: sales, marketing, support center, analytics, and channel management. The analytics include BI (Business Intelligence) and data mining, and MDM (Master Data Management) is used to integrate information from multiple, diverse sources. Channel management is used in two ways. One, these systems support different communications including phone, the Web, email, and messaging. Two, the systems work very differently depending on how many channels (sales people, agents, distributors) are between the vendor and the customer.
CRM systems were originally written for large companies and were way beyond the budgets of most SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses). Large companies would purchase the software, bring it in-house and customize it. To reach smaller companies, the CRM vendors started offering SaaS (Software as a Service). A company who couldn't afford a six figure price tag to purchase software could cover monthly subscription fees for one or two people. This model proved to be popular, not only with SMBs, but also with the large companies. They were delighted to have someone else provide security, backup the data, manage the network, etc. Most vendors offer both options, and companies spend time and money evaluating the two.
CRM in now including 2.0 techniques and we're seeing CRM 2.0, or Social CRM. Collaboration is the key to these systems, which are designed to engage customers in a collaborative interaction in order to provide mutually beneficial events. they provide a way to collaborate with customers, and acknowledges that customers are in control of the collaboration.
Social CRM is driven by the customers and their experiences, and builds social networks of customers who share information and experiences not only with the company but also with each other. Marketing is more than just campaigns, it must ensure that proper information is communicated, and must challenge misinformation spread by individuals on social networks. The Web is used to advertise new product launches and to collect and disseminate feedback to product management groups. Marketing incorporates Web 2.0 techniques into campaign initiatives, embracing social networks, blogs, etc. These systems must also provide 24-hour availability as customers want to conduct business over any channel (email, phone, messaging, etc.), at any time. This means everything – sales and support.
Reference is often made to CEM (Customer Experience Management) systems when talking about CRM. CEM focuses on all points of customer interaction: in person, telephone, website and email. It includes all parts of the sales activity, but mostly concentrates on the contact center. If you've ever heard a voice say, "This call may be monitored for quality assurance," you've participated in CEM. Call centers have participated in CRM by appropriately centering keywords like "cancellation" or a product name into the CRM system to help with statistics, now they're participating in CEM by capturing (recording) interactions between agents and customers and applying business rules to them. These business rules trigger the CEM system to digitally record and file the conversation for specific owners like product or marketing managers. Alerts can be sent, or files can be listened to at their owners' leisure. This is supported by the query functions which let managers tap a single point of interest and monitor the recorded calls. A typical CEM system includes:
Complaint handling
Customer advisory board
Customer satisfaction research
Dissatisfaction analysis
Focus group research
Mystery shopper research
Usability design and testing
These systems all use pull technology, and ask for information from the customer. It does no good at all to have great marketing systems that attract new customers, if the customer has a bad experience with the support center if, e.g., the wrong item was shipped. They don't wait to see if the customer complains; they proactively reach out to build a relationship with each customer. Which is what CRM was designed to do.
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1. What is the Gunning-Fog index of TechConnections?
2. Is EC2 an IaaS or a PaaS?
3. Does Microsoft manufacture computers?
4. What's the difference between failover and fault tolerant?
5. What's the best feature of WiMax?
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Are you lost in the cloud? It seems that every time you get close to understanding what's happening, another wisp of information floats in and you lose your grasp. And it all gets confused with Web 2.0, Web services and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). Well, we've put it together for you. Virtualization is key to the cloud and both storage and server virtualization are covered. Services in the cloud can be put into categories, and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service) are covered and illustrated. Storage and databases, development issues, and the major cloud vendors and their products conclude the session.
The Cloud is a 45-minute Web session, and is scheduled for April 15th at 11:30 AM (Eastern Standard Time) and May 20th at 1:30pm ET. Get more details, see the outline, and enroll at The Cloud.
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Virtualization
Virtualization has been the most important technology in IT for the past few years, and, as the key technology behind cloud computing, it's grown even more important. This technology allows users to allocate and use resources on demand, and to automatically assign resources as needed (provisioning). Of course, as all technology does, virtualization has its own vocabulary.
virtualization Systems technology. Pooling together resources throughout the entire enterprise into a single unit that can be managed from a single point. This allows resources to be assigned to a user only as needed, and returned to the pool when free. The resources most commonly affected are storage and servers.
Disk Virtualization software manages many physical disks as a single unit. This allows devices to be added without shutting down the system, handles disks from different vendors that have different sizes, speeds, and vendors, and provides the most efficient use of the physical resources by creating virtual devices, e.g. if a system needs more storage, unused space from another disk can be used. SANs (Storage Area Networks) provide storage virtualization.
Server Virtualization software builds a pool of servers that can be allocated to tasks, applications, databases, or the Internet as needed. Virtualization software defines virtual machines which allow multiple operating systems to run in one physical machine. This increases the flexibility of the total enterprise.
fault tolerant Terminology. The ability of a system to respond to an unexpected hardware or software failure. Computers that have redundant processors that automatically take over in the event of a failure are said to be fault tolerant. There are many levels of fault tolerance, the lowest being the ability to continue operation in the event of a power failure. Fault-tolerance can be achieved through failover and mirroring.
Failover A backup operation that automatically switches to a standby database, server or network if the primary system fails or is temporarily shut down for servicing. The backup system mimics the operations of the primary system. Absolutely necessary for systems that rely on constant accessibility.
Hyper-V System management software. Hypervisor-based virtualization feature included as part of Windows Server 2008. Allows users to virtualize multiple operating systems onto a single physical server. Released: June, 2008.
hypervisor System software. Program central to virtualization, and included in some operating systems or operates as an operating system enhancement. Software that allows multiple operating systems to run on the same machine. There are two types of hypervisors. In one, the software runs directly on the machine and manages the other operating systems. Examples include z/VM (IBM), Xen (XenSource), Hyper-V (Microsoft), and ESX Server (VMware). The other type of hypervisor is included within an operating system and runs guest systems. Examples include VMware Server (VMware), Virtual Server (Microsoft), and Parallels Workstation and Desktop (Parallels). Also called VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor).
Mirroring Storage management technique used to provide fault tolerance (protecting against system failures) by writing to two duplicate disks simultaneously. This way if one of the disk fails, the system can instantly switch to the other disk without any loss of data or service.
on-demand systems On-demand systems provide IT resources to the user as needed. Resources include both hardware and software. Hardware resources would be provided to companies when needed and companies would pay based on actual use of computers, disk storage, and networks. Software would be provided in a way that is similar to BTO (Build-to-Order) manufacturing. Companies would not create software systems and then sell them, but would build customized systems on-demand. Open standards and virtualization are major components of on-demand computing, and grid computing and autonomic technologies are used to create infrastructures robust enough to support enterprises' increasing IT complexity.
provisioning General terminology that simply means "providing." It's currently used in on-demand computing to describe software that automatically provides resources to applications as needed in real-time. Often used with a descriptive adjective such as "server provisioning" or "storage provisioning."
redundant Terminology. When used in Information Technology, redundant means the exact same thing in more than one place. Redundant data can be a problem. If you maintain a customer's name, address, and phone number in multiple databases, then if that customer moves, you have to update all the databases. Planned redundancy, however, is a necessary part of many systems. For example, if a company maintains an exact copy of a database, it can then go to this backup in case of system failure, or even for system upgrading. Redundancy is inherent in virtualization, used to create fault tolerant hardware and software, and a major part of most backup systems.
VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor) See hypervisor.
Xen hypervisor On-demand technology and software. Open source, server virtualization technology that lets a single computer run multiple operating systems at the same time while maintaining security and isolation between them. Xen is a VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor) and currently allows Linux, FreeBSD, and NetBSD OS instances to share a common physical host. The full name of the software is Xen Hypervisor while the technology is simply Xen. Xen technology is characterized as para-virtualization as it requires some modification to the guest operating systems. Originally released as Xen 3.0 in September, 2006 by Xen Source which was acquired by Citrix in 2007. Hypervisor 3.3 released: August, 2008.
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1. The Gunning-Fog index is a test designed to measure the readability of a sample of English writing. The resulting number is an indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily understand the text on the first
reading. A selection of TechConnections came out a 12. So, high school seniors and up.
2. I love this question – acronyms, nothing but acronyms. And the answer is – both. This so illustrates the confusion caused by tech jargon, especially with new technology. EC2, part of Amazon's cloud technology, functions both as Infrastructure as a Service and as Platform as a Service. It provides the servers, disks, etc. to run applications (IaaS) and the development tools needed to create these applications (PaaS).
3. This does seem like an odd question, but those game machines are computers. Even closer to what we think of when we hear computer – Microsoft's Surface. This tabletop computer uses a "surface" user interface; users communicate with the system by hand movements and gestures. Applications have been written by third parties for the health care industry, education, and the government. System costs $12,000; $15,000 with an SDK (Software Development Kit), and has been available since 2008.
4. Failover is part of fault tolerant; it's a backup operation that automatically switches to a standby database, server or network if the primary system fails or is temporarily shut down for servicing. Fault tolerant is the larger concept – it is the ability of a system to respond to an unexpected hardware or software failure. Both hardware and software can be designed to be fault tolerant.
5. WiMax proposes a range of almost 31 miles – compared with WiFi's 300 feet. That's quite an improvement! We're starting to see this technology in the U.S. although it's much more prevalent in Europe and Asia. This really does take wireless to rural areas..
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