The 10 best performing microsoft solution providers 2018

www.insightssuccess.com JULY 2018

Best 0 1 PERFORMING The

MICROSOFT

SOLUTION

providers 2018

Andrew Michuda CEO

SOPHEON CORPORATION The ‘Gateway’ to Enterprise Innovation

Microsoft- Empowering Business and Digital Transformation

S

ince its inception in the 80’s, Microsoft has travelled a long way. Indubitably, Microsoft persists as one of the vital components in the success of computer and technology industry in the world. It was almost four decades ago that the creator of this gem, Bill Gates had envisioned a world where every desk will have a computer. Forty years later, today he can see his wish being fulfilled. None can deny the fact that Microsoft is the ubiquitous part of everyone’s life. Some of the implausible changes in the lives of humans were commenced by Microsoft.

Virtual gaming and partnering with strangers online and winning a war game existed long before Microsoft came into picture. However, it was the launch of ‘Xbox Live’ that changed the face of gaming as we see it today. Similarly, Microsoft can be credited for many of the life-changing inventions like Smart TV, smartphones and iPods. The biggest change initiated by Microsoft was use of computers. One can notice that in the early days when computer was invented, it was very complex to function. Microsoft today has made computers that can be operated easily.

Besides changing the lives of people, Microsoft has now stepped into the bigger world. Starting as the ‘home of computers’, Microsoft today offers various operating systems and other softwares. Contributing its crux in business, the Microsoft Solution Providers worldwide are trying to improve the businesses. On grasping the fact that small businesses rely on technology to run their business, Microsoft had started investing into Information Technology. This ingenuity completely changed the perception of business as it helped in reducing the operating costs, increase business connections from customers to clients and vice versa, and lastly it helped in elevating employee performance.

Moving ahead with time, Microsoft is innovating and revamping itself with the infusion of AI resources.

This distinctive line of expertise, focusing on cloud has created a niche in the IT industry and thus forming the mainstay of many businesses. Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a product of Microsoft is bringing a new paradigm in automation, which has helped in the smooth functioning of business. In this digital era the need to develop a business application has become mandatory to run businesses easily. The Microsoft Core Services Engineering is here by bringing a digital transformation with it.

It is already on its way to help companies evolve past the need of building an application for every purpose. At present, Microsoft’s bigger goal is to empower every person and organization and to achieve Digital Transformation. Putting business in motion, allied together with the change in the application of evolving digital technologies, the world will soon witness corporates who will have digital transformation at the centre of their business strategy.

Similar to the above mentioned proficiency there are numerous solution providers who are leveraging the competence of Microsoft and offering their expert advocacy in the smooth functioning of business. Keeping this in mind, we have introduced this issue named as, ‘The 10 Best Performing Microsoft Solution Providers 2018’. Through this issue we aim to help organizations help select promising vendors offering exclusive solutions that will help in bringing agility to business.

On the cover of the issue we have covered, Sopheon Corporation, who has been modernizing the business with its flagship Accolade. This enterprise innovation management solution leader has been bringing agility to business since its foundation. Along with it, we have covered few other companies including, Eperformance Inc.; an expert in Microsoft enterprise cloud solutions, iLink Systems Inc.; the creator of a platform which is way too efficient for all digital solutions in this era, Pyramid Analytics BV; fits on the top of the Microsoft stack and permits organizations to scale their BI and analytics experience across all sectors and customer types, FlexManage; for offering exceptional business consulting for advanced Microsoft technologies.

While turning the pages kindly take a note to read the CXO Articles by the business professionals.

These articles explicitly, What Drives Customer Experience, Leavening existing SAP Solutions with Cloud Procurement, and Cooling Solutions for Data Centres will give you detailed insight into the industry preferences. Also, make a note to go through the articles authored by our in-house writers who have focused on the industry trends and happenings. Through these articles namely, The Emerging Cloud Security Solutions and Challenges Ahead, and The Exponential Growth in the Cloud Service Solutions we have made an attempt to capture the happenings of the industry.

Suhel Mashayak

Cover Story 08

Sopheon Corporation : The ‘Gateway’ to Enterprise Innovation

CXO 16 SAP ‘n’ Cloud:

Leverage Existing SAP Solutions with Cloud Procurement

Articles 22

Securing Cloud: The Emerging Cloud Security Solutions and Challenges Ahead

30

Unfolding Cloud: The Exponential Growth in the Cloud Service Solutions

42

SAP Staandpoint: SAP HANA: A Revolutionary Step towards enhancing Database Servers

26

Experts Talk:

What Drives Customer Experience

36

Industry Hacks:

Cooling Solutions for Datacenters

s t n e t n o C 34

20

20

Eperformance Inc.: Harbingers in the Enterprise Cloud Solutions

40

28

28 FlexManage: Enabling Business Transformation with Flexible Technology Solutions

34

40

iLink Systems Inc.: Offering the Cutting-edge Technologies to Create Excellence in Digital Solution

Pyramid Analytics: Cultivating Strategic Data and Analytics Excellence throughout the Business

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Executive Editors Contributing Editors Visualiser Art & Design Director Associate Designer Co-designer

Pooja M. Bansal Suhel Mashayak Crescent CU Anmol Preet Singh Datta Taware David King Amol Kamble Sapana Shinde Asha Bange

Art & Picture Editor Paul Belin Jayant Khanna Senior Sales Manager Passi D. Business Development Manager Peter Collins Marketing Manager John Matthew Business Development Executives Sophie Smith, Brad Lee, Khushboo Srivastava, Kevin Thomas Sales Executives David, Kevin, Mark, Vinay Technical Head Jacob Smile Technical Specialist Amar, Pratiksha Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza Online Marketing Strategist Alina Sege, Shubham, Vaibhav K SME-SMO Executives Prashant Chevale, Uma Dhenge, Gemson, Irfan Research Analyst Chidiebere Moses Circulation Manager Robert, Tanaji Database Management Stella Andrew Technology Consultant David Stokes sales@insightssuccess.com

July, 2018 Corporate Ofces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

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Andrew Michuda CEO

The10 Best Performing

ICROSOFT solution providers 2018

SOPHEON CORPORATION The ‘Gateway’ to Enterprise Innovation

We propel innovation performance forward with our enterprise ®

Accolade software

I

n a digital age driven by the rapid pace of technology change and an increasingly powerful consumer, longstanding market leaders are looking to transforming themselves into more nimble and agile players who can innovate more quickly to remain relevant in the face of competition from disruptive start-ups. To be able to change course in response to market shifts – or better yet, to preempt those shifts and stay ahead of competitors – they need alignment of investments with strategic goals, access to shared and trusted real-time data, and collaborative teams that work cross-functionally with a focus on executing against those strategic goals. Yet, most do not have the necessary tools to support these capabilities.

One way companies are doing this is in partnership with global technology provider Sopheon Corporation and its flagship Accolade® software. Sopheon is the enterprise innovation management solution leader that effortlessly links and connects people, functional groups, systems and information, helping them to move beyond “islands of information” into an innovation environment that ensures enterprise-wide collaboration and alignment. The result is a more agile, transparent and efficient innovation culture, which ensures that organizations successfully execute on their plans, and bring the right products to market more quickly and with higher success rates.

We bring agility to businesses with our end-to-end enterprise innovation management solution

The Ultimate Tool for Innovation & Business Agility Launched in 2001, Sopheon’s Accolade software has today been implemented by over 250 customers − Fortune 500 organizations as well as smaller companies − and is used by more than 60,000 users in over 50 countries around the globe.

One of Sopheon’s primary strategies is to give customers the tools they need to make better investment decisions on key business and product initiatives, with the aim of improving performance, success rate and speed to market.

This is especially important today, when most companies are moving more slowly than the markets they serve, and change can be difficult to implement, especially by large enterprises with disconnected systems and deeply entrenched processes. The threat to the incumbent leaders is real; Creative Destruction author Richard Foster has estimated that 75 percent of the S&P 500 firms will be replaced by 2027.

Sopheon does this by allowing clients to adopt modern, connected technology without abandoning their day-to-day tools of choice, which frequently include Microsoft Office products. This reduces the amount of time it takes to capture, manage and share the data required to move the company forward towards its growth goals.

Sopheon’s software has integrated seamlessly with Microsoft products from the start. Sopheon has been a Microsoft Gold Certified partner since 2004 and shortly thereafter was acknowledged by Microsoft as the “First to Market” solution partner for Office Project 2007. Sopheon was the first in the industry to introduce one-click PowerPoint integration to the enterprise software market in 2005. This capability enables the creation of a PowerPoint presentation on the fly leveraging existing data, information and images, saving hours spent building presentations from scratch and freeing that time up to be spent on more valuable activities.

Documents created in the course of daily work in Microsoft applications like Microsoft Word or Excel are captured by Accolade with a single click, making the data available to other Accolade users (as well as other Microsoft applications) for collaboration, reporting and decision making. This feature, which Sopheon calls Smart Document Integration, has minimized the complexity, time and rework required to manage data during the innovation process, simplifying and speeding the flow of information across the

organization while delivering added insight and intelligence for improved decision making.

Accolade’s Smart Document integration saves users as much as 34 percent in time to create and manage data. It helps create a more integrated environment by using standard Office document templates that have two-way integration with Accolade. This allows users to work on the same technology platform, using their choice of Microsoft tools. It also enables users to input data into the system and get output to Word, Excel or PowerPoint files, or vice-versa, and save files to Accolade at the push of a button.

Sopheon is committed to supporting other technologies, but the company plans to remain firmly anchored in the Microsoft technology and stack.

Another strategy Sopheon has embraced is a market shift from “customization” toward “customer configurability” in their Accolade platform. The software provides out-of-thebox flexibility to support customers’ unique processes and internal governance, while also creating reporting and visual appealing layouts designed for each specific organization and their users. This allows business users to administer unique process models and reports without having to rely on external consultants or even the company’s own IT department.

Innovation Maturity is a Journey As a leader in enterprise innovation management, Sopheon has faced plenty of challenges and lessons on its journey.

Regarding the company’s market and customers, Sopheon has learned to map its offering to the innovation maturity of their customers. Whether a client is just beginning its innovation journey or is very mature and advanced in their processes and requirements, Sopheon has learned it is important to work with organizational leaders who understand the power of analytics enabled through improved visibility and transparency and who have a thirst for data-driven decision making.

However, there are still organizations that are not yet ready to take the transformational step of replacing traditional silos with cross-functional teams. This is where Sopheon works hand-in-hand with the client to help these companies ease their transition towards a digitalized business model.

For example, an initial focus on leveraging the strong integration with popular Microsoft Office applications can help organizations become familiar with Accolade while

“ With our Smart

Document integration, information is

shared across the

organization for reuse, with no extra effort

maintaining the existing software that teams are already accustomed to using.

Signals of a Bright Future

Sopheon has reported continued record growth performance in recent years and has been shortlisted for Growth Company of the Year in this year’s UK Stock Market Awards. The company’s market differentiation continues to be validated. Sopheon is the only vendor recognized in three different Gartner Market Guides – for Strategy Execution Management Software; Innovation Management Tools; and Strategy and Innovation Roadmapping Tools – as well as in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Project Portfolio Management Worldwide. The capabilities called for in each of these respective reports are required to deliver on the promise of connecting strategic planning and operational execution.

In addition, Sopheon was named a Leader in the 2017 Forrester Wave™: Strategic Portfolio Management Tools.

Recently, the company was also recognized by Consumer Goods Technology magazine, which named Sopheon as “Best in Category” in new product development and introduction as voted by readers. Collectively, these are major strategic milestones in establishing the credentials of both the company and the market.

Focused on growing Sopheon’s business, the company’s leadership expects continued growth in revenue, employee

“

We consider our development team to be a very good

Agile team, and customer IT organizations have been impressed when

they see how our teams work

count, geographical coverage, services and partner network.

Compared to just a few years ago, there is growing awareness and maturity in the market around the broad theme of enterprise innovation – from initial demand and idea collection through strategic alignment, portfolio management and optimization, and in-market product management. Sopheon’s subject matter expertise, combined with the adaptability of Accolade to meet the requirements of many different use cases and applications allowing customers to add value to their investment in the software, will serve the business well for years to come.

Like many other companies, one major challenge and opportunity facing Sopheon is keeping up with the swift changes their customers and markets require. The expert developers at Sopheon have made this a key priority and have created a release cadence that supports their everchanging market. The company uses Agile methodology to release new versions of Accolade at a predictable pace, multiple times per year, in order to map to the breakneck speed of change happening within the world's biggest and most complex enterprises.

A zest for learning, patience, vision toward a bigger goal, and an unmatched technology solution are what set Sopheon apart and speak to the company’s exceptional leadership in the enterprise innovation management category.

Advice for New Entrants

The sheer pace, magnitude and omnipresence of digital transformation has created a new dynamic for the world’s most successful enterprises, and companies that adapt constantly and creatively with speed will continue to lead the way forward. With enterprises booming in the Microsoft solution sector, Sopheon CEO Andy Michuda has some words of advice on how to tackle these big changes and stay ahead in the market.

“Depth is better than breadth,” Michuda says. “Don’t try to be all things to everyone or attempt to ‘eat the elephant’.

Find a niche where you can deliver value, and then build your solution and business to serve that market, partner with your customers, and make your users happy. Listening to your customers will allow you to focus on what matters and help you solidify a longer-term strategy providing consistent performance year after year.” www.sopheon.com/contact-us/

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The10 Best Performing

ICROSOFT

solution providers 2018

Company Name

Management

Brief

Accela accela.com

Ed Daihl CEO

Accela is a company that designs delivers cloud-based engaement and software solutions to government.

e-Con Solutions e-consolutions.com

Peter Willemse CEO

e-Con Solutions, a company with 20years of expereince in CPQ for Micrposoft dynamics.

EdgeWave edgewave.com

Louis Ryan CEO

Edge Wave is an IT company that has been backing up web and email security with unique and advanced srevices.

Eperformance Inc. eperformanceinc.com

Eric Alain President & CEO

Eperformance is a solutions and services firm specializing in web-centric applications for electronic service delivery within the public sector.

FlexManage flexmanage.com

Lee Hovermale CEO

FlexManage™ is a national Microsoft Solution Provider (NSP) that is committed to helping clients develop solutions that solve real business problems with measurable results.

Flintfox flintfox.com

Mike Ridgway CEO

Flintfox is the developer of trade and revenue management software and also provides ERP implementaion and consulting services globally.

iLink Systems Inc. ilink-systems.com

Sree Balaji CEO

iLink Systems Inc. is a Microsoft managed Global Software Solution Provider and Systems Integrator.

Infront Consulting infrontconsulting.com

Rory McCaw CEO

An award winning Miscroft partner, Infornt Consulting is an IT company specialized in the Azure technologies and Microsoft Datacenter.

Pyramid Analytics Pvt Ltd pyramidanalytics.com

Omri Kohl CEO & Founder

Pyramid Analytics is a global BI & A leader offering an analytics platform that helps companies compete as world-class datadriven organizations.

Sopheon Corporation sopheon.com

Andrew Michuda CEO

Sopheon Corporation is a Microsoft solution provider that offers software and services for Enterprise Innovation

SAP ‘n’ Cloud

Leverage Existing

SAP Solutions

with Cloud Procurement

C

ompanies that have already invested in SAP find that they can achieve even better results from their existing investment with cloud technology and eProcurement. After the initial investment, companies find certain roadblocks preventing mass user adoption and diminishing cost savings. Issues such as inability to stay connected, lack of insight into data, and complex and fragmented business rules stop businesses from using the full power of SAP. As cloud application technologies advance, companies gain the benefits of rapid deployment cycles, increased self-service tools, and faster performance.

Vroozi delivers on the promise and power of eProcurement in the Cloud with seamless integration into SAP. SAP users looking to the cloud generally face a few questions, including: · How can I benefit from using cloud procurement? · Will my transition to the cloud be cost-effective? · How will my business processes be affected by cloud technology?

To understand the benefits of cloud technology to existing SAP users, let’s evaluate three procurement strategies that highlight the power of cloud procurement.

Value Realization Return on Investment (ROI) is a central factor in any

16

procurement strategy. Buyers and trading partners of cloud procurement solutions need to feel confident that solutions will lead to cost savings and higher productivity and efficiency. Users quickly see returns by focusing on user adoption, compliance, and spend management. Spend Management allows companies to visualize purchasing spending patterns and usage and drives employees to leverage preferred pricing with contract suppliers. To increase user adoption and compliance, the cloud empowers a mobile workforce with the right resources and experience so everyone stays connected and available so that business is not disrupted. As user adoption and compliance frameworks increase with cloud-based systems, organizations gain immediate cost savings in procurement by decreasing transaction costs and preventing spend leakage with your supply chain.

Efficiencies Process efficiency is key for a successful, healthy business.

Cloud technology enables better processes by keeping everyone connected through a mobile experience and automating transaction tasks through the use of machine learning and pattern matching. With a centralized, unified system, cloud automation can yield immediate benefits in requisition to invoice and payment business processes and reduced errors and issues leading to higher productivity and decreased processing costs. Further, by allowing employees

| July 2018 |

to interact with cloud procurement via smart Phones and tablets, business can continue to move with efficiency and speed.

IT Cost Savings Perhaps no determinant is more important in realizing the benefits of cloud technologies versus traditional on premise software is in IT Cost Savings. Systems and applications which required large physical infrastructure and monetary investments can now provide inexpensive and scalable solutions through the Cloud and cloud infrastructure providers. A procurement solution that integrates with SAP is easier to access, less expensive, and takes a fraction of the implementation time companies once faced with traditional software solutions.

Cloud technology relieves the user of hidden costs such as hardware, consultants, infrastructure, maintenance, and costly upgrade cycles, providing lower risk and lower total cost of ownership.

Conclusion The cloud offers little upfront expense, automatic upgrades, and pre-integrated best practices which allow organizations to focus on business growth and improved operating margins. Vroozi’s eProcurement solution that takes SAP solutions to the cloud empower users with better returns, better processes and higher savings, so their overall SAP investment’s ROI is accelerated.

According to IDC, spending on Cloud computing is growing at 4.5 times the rate of IT spending since 2009 and is expected to continue growing at more than 6 times the rate of IT spending from 2015 through 2020. (via Forbes) This massive growth is easily understood when businesses understand the power and value of cloud solutions. With the Vroozi Platform, companies can take advantage of robust eProcurement technology delivered in the Cloud and integrated seamlessly with SAP.

| July 2018 |

Brad Hill Director of Global Sales & Marketing Vroozi Brad Hill, Director of Global Sales & Marketing of Vroozi is a passionate leader and is responsible for expanding the Vroozi Product Suite, Brand Adoption, Partnership Network & ensuring our customers receive an unparalleled experience with Vroozi. Brad spent the last 20 years building Enterprise Sales and Product strategies with leading IT Services organizations. His entrepreneurial strategies have served a vast number of Fortune 500 industries and verticals. He is also an aspiring mechanic and frustrated golfer, two good reminders to keep his day job.

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EPERFORMANCE INC.: Harbingers in the Enterprise Cloud Solutions

N

early a decade ago, cloud computing took the Global IT Industry by storm. Since then, the cloud solutions have fundamentally changed the way several industries across diverse sectors operate. It’s still a buzzword in the Industry. Enterprise Cloud Solutions possess huge operational potential as they deliver integrated set of IT solutions which are highly scalable, cost-effective (pay-per-use model), agile, increase efficiency and effectiveness. It offers streamlined collaboration, the speed of connectivity and lowers the IT complexity for an organization.

Tech giants like Microsoft offers intelligent enterprise cloud solution platform by partnering with cloud service providers which offer wide-ranging products and solutions, to streamline and automate the end-to-end business processes. Eperformance Inc. is regarded as a trusted expert in Microsoft enterprise cloud solutions, specially designed for public sector organizations.

An Organization on a Mission to Deliver Excellence Eperformance Inc. was incepted in the year 2001; with the motto to deliver excellent enterprise cloud solutions in public sector domain.

The organization is a leading edge technology solution provider, focused on secure, compliant portals, Enterprise CRM (Dynamics) as well as Grants and Contributions.

Since initiation, it has been focused on the public sector, providing best practices and automated solutions to the government for the purpose of modernizing and streamlining government service delivery operations.

Solutions that Deliver Business Value Public sector undertakings and associations in any country perform huge administrative operations on a day-to-day basis. However, these organizations are not at par with private sector companies in terms of technological advancements, productivity and efficiency of work.

Eperformance offers a portfolio of wide-range of solutions and services to cater the public sector organizations and associations in the design and deployment of Enterprise solutions that focus on creating business value. The latest solutions offered by the company include iGrant, iContract,

20

Eric Alain

President & CEO

and CRM Government Client Portal. iGrant™- Grants and contributions are funding programs from Employment and Social Development, Canada. iGrant enhances the capability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which provides a library of software grant management services that, once configured, empowers your organization to manage grants and contributions program efficiently. It leverages the CRM to its fullest potential. iContract™ is a software accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, that enables an organization to configure and manage the contracting process quickly and efficiently.

It is loaded with several features, for instance, the software reduces the time and cost of contract processing and enables vendor tracking and management to reduce contracting risk. With the regular version releases the company ensures that the contracting solution is up-to-date with technology advances.

CRM Government Client Portal- If the organization wants to automate the business operations with the smooth

| July 2018 |

‘‘

‘ ‘

We believe Dynamics CRM is a new paradigm shift

in automation. It is capable of making a huge impact unlike conventional spreadsheets, or document workflows that has been in the past

exchange of information, avoid paperless transactions and keep the clients and stakeholders happy, this portal proves to be the best! CRM Government Client Portal solution improves the efficiency and satisfaction of an organization by engaging its clients & stakeholders in service delivery. It also ensures that the online solution remains accessible, usable and future proof.

The Heralded Leader Eric Alain, President and CEO, Eperformance Inc., is a multifaceted leader. Being a co-founder of Institute for Grants and Contributions Professionals, he also had his stints as President, CEO at various organizations in his career spanning over three decades.

Due to his prolific nature, Eric’s life since last ten years has revolved around developing an international practice addressing the area of Enterprise Grants Management. In his career of over thirty years, Eric specifically focused on government automation programs and development of its standards and best practices in conjunction with professional from Canada, US and Australia.

Eric, a visionary, has played an instrumental role by dedicating his efforts in assisting government organizations in the design and application of methodologies and technologies. These technologies are aimed at streamlining grants management processes through automation.

Technology is what drives Eric; he is very much active in the High Technology Community through involvement with a number of industry and government associations and special interest groups.

Leveraging MS Dynamics to its Fullest Potential Irrespective of in what industry or sector the organization operates, automating the business processes and streamlining the operations, which delivers value to the business & its clients, is highly essential for any organization.

| July 2018 |

Eric states, “The enterprises need a solution which can offer seamlessly connected operations, deliver actionable insights for better decision making, scalable at any point of time considering the constantly changing business environments and flexible and easy to deploy.”

“I believe Dynamics CRM is a new paradigm shift in automation. It is capable of making a huge impact unlike conventional spreadsheets, or document workflows that have been in the past.”

It is a foundation tool to allow organizations to rapidly automate business processes with the solution to reduce administrative burden.

The value delivered by MS Dynamics to Eperformance’s clients and eventually to their customers has been proven time and again with their enterprise cloud solutions.

“The appropriate implementation of enterprise solutions, on much shorter timelines and reasonably less IT investment has allowed government agencies to make much use of the tax payer’s money, and to deliver solutions that focus on citizen satisfaction with government delivery services”, asserts Eric.

Forecasting the Future Eperformance is focused on public sector domain especially in grants and contributions. It aims to transform the public sector for electronic service delivery with its web-centric solutions and applications in the future.

While sharing his thoughts on future endeavors, Eric says, “Our portals are now starting to make decisions & recommendations for government officers using enhanced analytics and algorithms to reduce risk in the granting and case management process. As these capabilities improve, you might see grants officers training systems to catch risky investments, or understand the language in applications – all types of AI enhancements that will help the right Canadians see funding over those who aren’t ready.”

21

Securing Cloud

22

| July 2018 |

Cloud The Emerging

Security Solutions and

Challenges Ahead

I

n the world of cloud computing, the companies are facing new security challenges every year. The essential principles of the security are secure access, credentials, application usage, anomaly detection, encryption, and storage. Cloud security companies are developing products with prominent security features to tackle these issues. Transition periods for the organizations moving from mainframe systems to cloud systems are reducing sharply. They are operating with on-premise and off-premise devices spread across countries with different security laws.

Such organizations are bringing greater security challenges and hence valuable business for security service providers. The security solutions providers should care for the needs of both security requirements and performance.

Cloud Security Services with High Growth Potential Technologies such as artificial intelligence, the machine learning and the most recent deep learning encompass a number of solutions that can be used for security purposes. Anomalies in the behavior of ‘entities’ within the system can be detected easily with the help of deep learning technology. Machinelearning technologies will help to differentiate between the good and the bad software. This approach will offer a significant tool for security practitioners enabling them to detect the threat in advance and

| July 2018 |

23

Security hardware, firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems have taken a virtual mode for operations. As more organizations have started using the cloud technology, more kinds of vulnerabilities will emerge and consequently more approaches to security will also be developed. If cloud service providers can also expand their services to emerge as ‘infrastructure-as-a-service’ provider they will be able to offer the high-end data security available even to the small enterprises.

High-performance solutions for the cloud security are available today which enable the governance. The management of sensitive data in a centralized manner for all applications, systems across all platforms with onpremises and partially or fully cloud environments is possible.

Encryption can be an effective technology for data loss prevention. There’s been a lot of security spending over the last several years, and yet the number of records breached is considerably high in recent years. Companies are considering this as the business opportunity to aid in compliance with data privacy and security regulations. It indicates the necessity of sophisticated encryptions and authentication therefore they are considered as emerging security trends for data loss prevention.

• Classification and protection, security assessment and audit, document management and watermarking, and encryption.

• Security-as-a-service platform, cloud discovery, real-time monitoring and blocking, on-demand application and configuration, and Sensitive data discovery.

• Privacy and confidentiality, risk assessments, data loss prevention, tokenization, flexible and granular email security controls, capabilities around user behavior, data loss prevention, and policy restrictions.

• Secure web gateway platforms positioned to capture traffic and see the flow of data to and from SaaS applications with reports of data flow, content, and user activity monitoring.

There are technologies which use big data analytics to identify the anomaly in behavior by a user. System defenders can spot a red alert if they are working with the user behavior analytics (UBA). There is a lot of interest shown in this technology by the enterprises as this can enhance the workforce output also. These technologies offer huge business opportunity. The technique called ‘peeranalysis’ compares how some user is behaving compared to other users with the same manager or same department.

Training can be given to the employees for better security practices and enable them to adhere to the security policies.

Technology can also enhance the security of endpoints like desktops, servers, tablets and laptops using most improved security monitoring, detection of threats and quick response capabilities to incidents.

Chipset within a device can be a part of the authentication process. Apart from passwords, the device acts as a token for security in cloud networks including laptops, desktops and mobile devices. Hardware authentication solutions at processor level can combine a variety of hardwareenhanced factors simultaneously to validate a user’s identity.

Solutions Offered by Cloud Service Companies Clients have got multiple expectations while using the cloud service from providers. They should maintain complete control over their data processing even in multiuser cloud environments. They should be able to retain their efficiency and flexibility according to business objectives and policies. Access to ‘Software as-a-Service’ applications should be as secure as before.

24

There are companies specializing in cloud security solutions and providing following services –

Challenges Ahead There is a great service opportunity opening up for creative and innovative solution providers in the area of cloud security solutions but they are equally challenged on various fronts. Organizational level challenges represent those risks that may impact the structure of the organization or the business as an entity. The functional areas that are vulnerable and can be compromised are identified by exploring past business records. These areas represent potential threat or source of failure and needs to be secured on priority. The physical location of the cloud data center can come across a challenge of unauthorized on-site access.

It can be prevented through staff training, physical location security, and network firewalls. Technological Security challenge is related to hardware, and services such as portability, maintenance. Compliance and issues related to the audit, lack of jurisdiction information or changes in jurisdiction and sometimes even illegal clauses in the contract often lead to the legal disputes over information security. Data Security challenges are mainly pertaining to data integrity, confidentiality, and availability. Multiple companies are coming to the market with same approach to deal with the security challenges and have similar solutions to the same problem. Real challenge is creating innovative and proactive solutions which can offer better security and smooth flow of business operations.

| July 2018 |

Expert Talk

What Drives Customer Experience

Lindsey LeBlanc VP of Strategy Cloud Automation Solutions

26

| July 2018 |

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ecently, I sat in a client road map meeting to discuss a major platform migration effort. Their VP of Technology, QA engineer, orchestration architect, and software development director walked through the delivery plan of how content would be moved from one automation platform to the new platform. While the major topic was not software integration, the questions continued to arise around integration, APIs, and the interaction of these within the systems. In tech, we all know that integration is at the center of almost any project because so many groups are on disparate technologies and solutions. Teams are sold into multi-year license agreements, managers find their preferential tools, or companies fall into the age-old “it’s the way we’ve always done it” and end up on different solutions or even different versions of software.

Both the VP of Technology and the QA engineer brought up the point that multiple groups were using different ticketing, support, development, and project management tools to complete their work across the entire company. None of the technologies talked to each other and most of the teams were based in different regions, effectively siloed from collaboration. A major issue with these disparate solutions is the lack of reporting, which ultimately means a lack of visibility into the system. The VP, Director, and QA engineer are all looking for report-outs of various items— development status, API calls, use percentages, release timelines, or others. How do you know what is functioning well versus what is hanging up in a system? This translates to: how can you determine a successful ROI versus what is ineffective? We know that at the heart of every customer’s end-game is revenue return. By mentioning the variety of software that teams were using, the client was really saying that there was a void in their software solutions.

Development is working on deliverables in Jira, QA is testing in Swagger, and management is missing reports of the entire release process. The void is the lack of visibility.

Traditionally, integrated software solutions are thought to be technologies like Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, AppleWorks, etc. that bring a variety of software tools into a one license, one suite download. As the market changes and companies look at increasing revenue and reducing operations burden, there becomes a need for integration across multiple software solutions that is not as simple as “click and save.” With APIs and the increasing amount of connections that various tools include, integration across these solutions becomes an expectation

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for any customer. When I assess a tool, I automatically look for integrations. Can I connect my CRM to my marketing automation platform? Can I connect my project management tool to my company’s instant messaging? Can I integrate my QA tools with my development solution to speed-up releases?

As a standard, customers now look for unified systems to accelerate growth and improve business productivity. As competition increases, it becomes paramount to provide a first-class customer experience and satisfy customer expectations from the start. If you are unable to provide integrated software solutions from implementation and quickly resolve issues with hang-ups in systems speaking to each other, customer satisfaction levels drop and the risk of losing the client rises exponentially. It is vital to launch new products, projects, or experiences with the end-user in mind; proper planning of the pain points before launch enables faster revenue for both you and the customer.

While it can be time consuming to develop the target mission and pain points prior to a sales pitch, the comprehensive big-picture ultimately enables you to spend more time on customer acquisition and retention efforts instead of developing or resolving software solutions after the fact. Investments of both time and resources at the start can feel like a burden as it cuts into short-term revenue goals; however, long-term growth evolves from the ability to nurture customer relationships through the understanding of their frustrations and bottom lines. Through understanding the customer’s need for integration first, we enable bigger, faster, and more frequent growth opportunities.

If customers demand integrated software solutions outside of the traditional one suite downloads, how can today’s software providers and customized service providers meet this demand and improve the customer experience?

Ensuring that your services integrate with a variety of technologies and software solutions have integration points to connect to a multitude of solutions is a great starting point. At our company, we ensure that we stay up-to-speed on changing technologies and market demands to remain agile in the vendor space. Our independence and expertise to many solutions allows us to work across any vertical with any technology to meet any demand. Ultimately, it is not a single IT strategy that drives customer experience, but really the broader business strategy that fosters their experience, long-term loyalty, and complete satisfaction.

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FLEXMANAGE:

Enabling Business Transformation with Flexible Technology Solutions

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oday, Microsoft solutions have virtually become a backbone for almost every organization, wherein some of the most vital business applications function and run efficiently on a stable Microsoft platform.

But choosing an able and cost-effective Microsoft solution provider from a myriad of options becomes a rather daunting task. But FlexManage separates itself from the crowd and stands-out with its deep roots in business consulting for advanced Microsoft technologies. There is an overall movement to become more customer-centric.

Microsoft is doing the same. Companies are shifting from being product companies to true solution providers. Just knowing the Microsoft solution set is not sufficient enough in most cases. Clients expect providers to have a deep knowledge of their business and industry and show up with relevant intellectual property that can help them drive their business forward.

Headquartered in Chicago, IL, FlexManage has been an IT solutions provider for over 20 years. The company has deep roots in business consulting and still today leads with business strategy before IT implementation. Any new customer engagement begins with a Business Impact Assessment (BIA) which helps to align business goals with IT initiatives. This assessment provides the necessary information and context to understand current situation as well as future vision so they can align IT strategy accordingly.

The Driving Force behind FlexManage Lee Hovermale, CEO of FlexManage has been in the IT field for his entire career with roles spanning sales, engineering and leadership. Lee not only serves as the leader but he still actively consults with clients and occasionally serves as a virtual CIO when needed for major law firm clients. His long list of achievement includes the

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Lee Hovermale CEO

implementation and adaptation of IT and Management systems for global players. This comprises successful planning, implementing and delivering the client/server networks in different fields of leading edge industries. Lee prides himself on delivering what he promises to its clients.

Opportunities & Challenges The opportunity is that the massive advancements provide unprecedented opportunities to increase capabilities and grow a business better and faster than ever before in history.

Opportunities are everything. That is also the challenge.

There are so many opportunities that the challenge becomes having a solid plan and making sounds decisions as to which opportunities to pursue and which ones to ignore.

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We provide flexible and scalable IT services to help clients harness the power of technology and become “agents of change” driving modern business transformation

Inspiration behind becoming a Microsoft Solution Provider Microsoft being the leader in enterprise software, it just made sense. And with shared philosophy of conducting business and serving customers, it still makes sense today.

It also helps that FlexManage specializes in deployment and Microsoft is driven by deployment and adoption of their software. So there is a natural synergy there. In fact MCS is one of their largest customers for Deployment Coordination Services (DCS) group.

Out-of- the-Box Strategy of FlexManage They are in the process of launching a new product called LegalHive and FlexDesk. This is a desktop as a service offering that includes Microsoft 365 along with deployment, management and security services.

Additionally, for law firms, this offering comes with their new LegalHive product, which is an intelligent portal product, built on the Microsoft Stack. The product incorporates Office 365 with other productivity and analytics features to provide all of the applications that law firms use today but also configured in a way to support the firm in improved decision making and access to information. The portal provides native functionality such as document management, case management and business intelligence. If 3rd party applications for these functions already existing, they can be incorporated into the portal as well. This is truly a game changer, shifting the focus of IT from “keeping things running” to “growing the business and improving capabilities”.

The Client Base

FlexManage have setup a lifecycle management process where they can be heavily involved in the planning/strategy stage, but then also part of deployment and management as needed. Also, due to their deep involvement in multiple industries, they not only gain insight from customer to customer but also from industry to industry. The human capitals gained from these collected experiences allow them to grow as well as server their customers better.

Advice for the Budding Entrepreneurs The world today changes so fast, thus being able to think on your feet and keeping strong awareness of your competitors is incredibly important. But at least equally important is your belief in your idea, belief in yourself, and belief that you can change the world for the better. Your knowledge and expertise are almost a given; but it is your passions, persistence, and perseverance that will get you further. You should also surround yourself with a great team because working solo and trying to do way too much as one person will wear you down.

Future Ahead The world is rapidly moving towards digitization creating well-built opportunities for all organizations to transform and change their existing business model. The transformation is putting businesses in motion, allied together with the change in application of evolving digital technologies. When it comes to future planning FlexManage will be aggressively rolled-out their managed desktop offerings as well as LegalHive products. The legal industry will be a heavy focus in the near term but that will not detract from their other core markets include Healthcare and Deployment Coordination Services (DCS).

FlexManage truly partner long term with their customers. | July 2018 |

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Unfolding Cloud

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| July 2018 |

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he cloud is not a personal private space anymore. Enterprises have accepted that this future service is not a tool anymore. The cloud has evolved in the last five years ranging from private storage to being a computing centre for a company. Executives are finding new easy ways to use cloud services to achieve their desired goals.

Comparing Statistics, around 1.6 ZB of traditional data centre traffic was reported in 2013 which rose to 6.5 ZB as cloud data traffic in 2018. Businesses that work with such big data will use this increased space to store large data sets, analyse them, and collect valuable insights into systems, investments, and customer behaviour. IoT has been one of the biggest impediments to the cloud computing. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are the current leaders in the terminology of cloud computing.

Furthermore, The SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS will increase the number of cloud solutions. By 2020, the default way for business will be cloud service.

Organisations will take continuous advantage of cloud services to tackle their daily diverse array of business problems.

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The Money Talk Forrester, an American technology market research company predicted a significant rate of growth in cloud services from the year 2015 to the year 2020. The overall rise is expected to be at 22 percent CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) between these five years.

Additionally, the public cloud platforms and business services will reach $236 billion by 2020. Silicon Angle, a modern data-driven digital media platform has predicted that the cloud spending will reach 16 percent CAGR by 2020. The International Data Corporation observed an increase at 4.5x in cloud data in the year 2009 and predicted it to grow at 6x through 2020. Last, the dollars spent on IT softwares and services will reach 547 billion in the year 2018. US business spends more than $13 billion on cloud computing and services in 2014 and post-2015 showed end users were spending around $180 billion on cloud services.

The “As a service” Formula SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS will play crucial role in the growth of cloud solutions. SaaS (Software as a Service) enables a user to use software as a service usually on a subscription basis.

This service eradicates the need to own and support a highend hardware system. The Brian and Company have predicted the increase in the growth of SaaS to reach 18 percent CAGR by 2020.

PaaS (Platform as a Service) delivers hardware and software tools required for application development. It is expected to rise from 32 percent to 56 percent in the year 2017 and 2020 respectively.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) provides virtualized computing resources over the internet is expected to reach $17.5 billion as predicted by Statista.

Amazon’s, AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft Azure, and Google’s GCE (Google Compute Engine) are currently the leaders in cloud solution providers.

Basic Reason- It’s Inexpensive It can be said that the cloud services do not follow the rule of supply and demand. This cloud solution has both supply

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and demand in high requirement, some even providing cloud solutions free. The lack of on-primes infrastructure removes associated cost and actually saves a lot of money in the long run. Currently, a price war can be seen in the cloud market where the Amazon and Microsoft are fighting to dominate the market by providing the cheapest cloud services.

Spark Generated by the Revolutionized Internet The main notion to store data online is sparked by the highspeed internet. These both attribute i.e. Internet and cloud, mutually provides service to each other; one becoming the source of data and the other the destination. Additionally, with artificial intelligence in play, the continuous innovation in real-time data analytics and cloud computing is pushing the internet to rise further in the upcoming years.

Consumers need to expect the faster and better internet connection from ISPs to store and generate a huge amount of data. Furthermore, the IoT and IoE industries will be able to receive and deliver data in real time by using this fast networks.

Advancements in Privacy and Security Security has always been an issue with the technology.

WannaCry, ransomware, and CIA vault 7 have already made their name in the list of dangerous cyber-attacks from 2017. These breaches have made enterprises to make security and privacy their top priority. In the future, cloud infrastructure will see more individual and sponsored attacks undermining its security. IRTC (Identity Theft Resource Centre) reported that cyber breaches have increased at the rate of 37 percent from 2016. GARTNER estimated that the security division is going to reach $93 billion in 2018 from 2017’s $86 billion. IDC researched the same and predicted the overall number to reach $101 billion through 2020. The government, public, and private sectors have to become more sophisticated in the prevention of these attacks. Industry giants such as Microsoft and Google are already investing heavily in tools which will reinforce improved privacy and security in cloud solutions.

Prediction can also be made in the rise of hybrid cloud solution combining on-premise public and private infrastructure adding layers of data protection.

| July 2018 |

ILINK SYSTEMS INC.: Offering the Cutting-edge Technologies to Create Excellence in Digital Solution

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ith each passing day, technologies are getting more intelligent and smarter, and surprisingly the expectations from the technologies for the best and even better for upgrading business have become part of the requirement. Keeping up with the pace, digital market has increased the scale of excellence and there comes the names of the best of the industries like iLink Systems Inc. The organization has raised the bar and has created a platform which is too efficient for digital solutions. iLink Systems Inc. is one of the Microsoft managed Global Software Solution Provider and Systems Integrator which has outshined from the very beginning of its journey. iLink delivers the next-generation technology solutions to help the clients solve complex business challenges, increase business productivity, realize sustainable enterprise value and transform businesses inside-out. Started with very few people in a small office and with limited infrastructure, the company currently has its headquarter in Redmond, Washington. Today iLink is a well-known name in the field of solution providing, it is the courage, commitment, belief and the willingness to go the extra mile have made iLink a successful organization in the global arena.

The Pillar behind the Success With the vision of creating something unique, Sree Balaji, the CEO came up with iLink Systems Inc. in 2002. While a number of companies were going bankrupt due to the Dotcom bubble at that time, the faith and precession of this man were enough to sail through the struggling time, to reach the shore of ultimate success.

Sree Balaji is an alumnus of highly esteemed Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani. His strong knowledge in technology management and his background

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Sree Balaji

Founder & CEO

and specialties in technology consulting, along with different business ventures and business transformation comes from his notable educational background.

Before founding iLink Systems Inc., he had also worked for other brands, aiding their product development efforts and has also served as a BI expert. All these acquired knowledge and skills worked well for him in his business venture. Believing in three pillars of a successful businessSales, Marketing and Client Delivery, he went on to win the odds against him.

The Root of Excellence iLink started as product-development-service-shop providing solutions which are used in a broad range of | July 2018 |

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Our team's dedicated efforts helped us gain high rating in customer satisfaction index, thus helping us win continuous business from customers and Microsoft

industries and functions. Gathering confidence, this brand then unfurled its talent in focusing on industry-specific solutions and addressing challenges faced by different industries including Healthcare, Communications Sector, Environment Compliance, Education, Public Sector, Life Sciences and Oil and Gas. Everyday new business ideas come and go, but there is certain linchpin which works as the winning factors, and the well-known formula is customer satisfaction, which iLink Systems Inc. never forgot or belittled. To create a permanent place in the market and cement the proficiency among the rest, there are certain factors that always work. iLink has been stellar to vouch for including new systems faster to the market, with a reduced cost, along with increased scalability, flexibility and creativity. It is counted as wise decisions of taking the advantage of already proven business integration experience and pre-built tested code for any new developments. Incorporating best practices and industry-standard designs are some of the other factors known for a great business skill. These certain factors of running new improved ideas with inventiveness and convention marked the path of eminence for iLink Systems Inc. The Out-of-the-box Strategies Originally started as a Product Development service shop, with the passage of time iLink Systems Inc. gained its preeminence on Microsoft Product Development and Maintenance, System Integration and Consulting Services. iLink is recognized by Microsoft as a ‘Gold Certified Partner’ and a preferred partner to Microsoft’s clients and partners. Going ahead, iLink has embarked on focusing on the industry-specific solutions and addressing the | July 2018 |

challenges faced by different industries. To succeed in a certain field surpassing the competition is not easy.

However, iLink has successfully evaded all the boundaries, only by working on out-of-the-box strategies. Some of their master strategies are: • Continue maturing its existing frameworks and differentiate itself from rest of the group through industryspecific solutions.

• Offer Solutions + Licenses through Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Program and be a one-stop partner for customers’ technology needs.

• Continue to invest more in Microsoft Customer Immersion Experience program and help customers get a hands-on introduction to Microsoft’s suite of productivity tools.

• Continue to invest more TCG group – A group of handpicked people who focus only on next-generation technologies and help customers adopt these technologies/platforms and reap business value out of it.

The Vision of iLink Systems Inc. Like every flourishing company, iLink too is expanding its operations and global presence through mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The company wants to continue to focus on delivering value on cloud-based solutions. Invest in expanding out the Internet of Things (IoT) practice, artificial intelligence (AI) & machine, learning (ML) initiatives and enterprise mobility & security (EMS) offerings. With the target of being the prioritized global solution, iLink Systems Inc. is currently devoted to coming up with the emerging technology to solve the global issue of data privacy for their clients.

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Industry Hacks

Cooling SOLUTIONS FOR DATACENTERS

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atacenters are facing new cooling challenges. The servers and storage today are more efficient, faster, and incredibly dense. You can pack more computing power and storage in a much smaller footprint.

Datacenter floorspace is expensive, so space savings are great. But how do you maximize density without compromising cooling?

scary, but when combined with their patented Leak Prevention System which maintains a negative pressure on the coolant, this becomes a non-issue.

With 45% to 98% better performance you have several benefits.

1. Reduced operating cost

We have watched datacenters evolve from general CRAC based cooling: where the entire room is cooled without any attention to the efficiency, to Aisle Containment, where there are hot aisles (backs of racks) and cool aisles (front of racks), to In-Row cooling where cool air is provided in cool aisles, and warm air is returned from the warm aisles, which provided a dramatic improvement.

2. Reduced demand on electrical sources, which makes more electricity available for computing without having to add more capacity, which can be extraordinarily expensive.

Most datacenters still use one of those methods, with a surprising number just cooling the entire facility with or without Aisle Containment. These methods are not only very inefficient, but also uncomfortable for staff working in those datacenters.

4. Higher density in each rack. More effective cooling allows much higher density racks, which also reduces TCO by reducing the number of racks and amount of floorspace required.

The answer is LIQUID COOLING. The method the gaming industry has been using for years to cool overclocked processors and memory.

In 2013 Cambridge University, using ColdLogik reduced their cooling power consumption to a super PUE of 1.05 placing them number 2 in the Green 500 datacenters in the world.

A rear of cabinet cooler of this kind can save a lot of energy. Our UK partner USystems have documented energy savings of up to 98% over CRAC, 83% over Aisle Containment, and even 45% over In-Row cooling with their ColdLogik system. I know liquid in a datacenter sounds

In 2012 STIHL needed a hurricane proof solution for their new 200KW datacenter in Virginia Beach. The ColdLogik team designed the most energy efficient solution for STIHL. Thanks to their access to a natural underground water supply, water was taken via a bore hole from the

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3. Greener datacenter with much lower carbon footprint.

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About the Author Andrew Lindzon is the President of Ashlin Technology Solutions Inc. Ashlin Technology Solutions specializes in Managed IT Support, providing Cloud Solutions and Network Services in Henderson, Las Vegas, Paradise, Enterprise, Summerlin South, and Sunrise Manor.

Andrew Lindzon President

underground springs with a nearby lake used as a back up resource. This solution was naturally hurricane proof as no water towers or external plant would be required.

Because the datacenter cooling solution source was below ground the water supply temperature was a constant 64.4°F allowing for all year-round free cooling therefore benefiting hugely on cost savings as it took less than 7.5kW to cool 200kW IT heat load.

The back up water source at the nearby lake had large coil heat exchangers deployed and a reverse cycle heat pump, this meant during the winter months the supply could switch so waste-heat from the datacenter could be recycled to heat their building free of charge.

In 2010 ARM, the world’s leading semiconductor intellectual property supplier, required a very small, very efficiently cooled datacenter. In 12m x 4m they were able to deploy 60 cabinets with a PUE of 1.045 on full load 68% current load PUE of 1.08-1.16. Because ARM required the pipe work to run through their data center, they opted for the additional security and peace of mind that the | July 2018 |

patented Leak Prevention System which complements the ColdLogik rear cooler solution in many scenarios.

In 2008 Jaguar Land Rover expanded their data center with 40-foot containers due to space restrictions. Each container was to house 17 cabinets with a cooling capacity of 10-30kW per cabinet. Therefore, cooling for this project was the priority as there was no false floor, an extremely small footprint and a serious heat issue with such high densities. ColdLogik rear-cooler was the only viable option for this requirement. Three containers were deployed and allowed this datacenter in Spain to expand outside of the existing building.

With ColdLogik you can be green and increase the density of your existing data center or build a state of the art high density data center from scratch. It can be phased-in rack by rack or implemented data center wide.

If you want to reduce your carbon footprint while reducing your TCO, then you want to look at this innovative solution from ColdLogik.

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PYRAMID ANALYTICS:

Cultivating Strategic Data and Analytics Excellence throughout the Business

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icrosoft has come a long way as a leader in the mainstream technology market, as well as in the visionary technology market. Today, with a consistent focus on providing cross-platform software and services, along with a bold vision for the future, Microsoft has transformed business operations in the modern era through a thriving partner ecosystem. There are numerous partners—in fact, over a million—offering prominent solutions and consultation, driving insights into crossmarket and domain-specific best practices. An exclusive set of cloud-focused, line-of-enterprise solutions has influenced the decisions across IT, and in many cases now forms the infrastructure backbone of every organization.

One such platform-agnostic, ecosystem-agnostic and ‘Microsoft Gold Partner’ is Pyramid Analytics BV. The company began its journey in the Microsoft ecosystem and is now expanding to other ecosystems, which is helping it to navigate the complexities of the business market. The company offers an enterprise-grade Analytics Operating System that scales from single-user self-service analytics to thousand-user centralized deployments.

This enterprise-grade platform covers simple-but-effective data visualizations to advanced machine learning capabilities that feature shared data, content, and business logic, eliminating the typical chaos of self-service analytics.

Pyramid fits on the top of the Microsoft stack and permits organizations to scale their BI and analytics experience across all sectors and customer types. Pyramid Analytics is also recognized as one of the 20 Most-Recognized Vendors in the BI space and actively participates in CDO engagements.

Leading Lights of Pyramid Analytics Omri Kohl is the CEO & Co-founder of Pyramid

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Omri Kohl

CEO & Founder

Analytics. He is also the Founder and Chairman of the Kohl Group. Omri has an MBA from the Leonard Stern School of Business, New York, and is a lifelong entrepreneur. His personal passion for data, and for helping businesses across a range of disciplines thrive, led him to establish Pyramid Analytics in 2008 along with Co-founders, Avi Perez and Herbert Ochtman. Their vision was to create an enterprise-grade BI platform with a scalable multi-tenant architecture.

Before Pyramid, Omri’s organizational innovations included technology companies Newton and Pdway.

Newton helped students to learn enhanced technology skills and Pdway enabled mobile micro-payment processing in a constantly changing technology environment. Today, he leads Pyramid as CEO, guiding the company through a competitive analytics and BI market. He spends a lot of | July 2018 |

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What makes us unique is our ability to balance self-service capabilities and enterprise-grade governance

time building relationships with partners and mega vendors, which has proven vital to Pyramid’s success.

Ground-Breaking Services The company acutely believes in Microsoft’s database offerings. The platform integrates seamlessly with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services. It focuses on the continual development of a leading analytics and BI frontend platform that provides self-service, web-based access, enabling all clients and end users to easily create and share information. Pyramid is easy to use and features one-click data visualizations, drag-and-drop presentation and report building, graphically based end user data prep, code-free calculations and more. It is available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace with solutions operating in several Microsoft environments by extending self-service BI across different sectors.

Out-of-the-box Strategies Outshining other Competitors Unlike other custom-developed solutions which require years of investment, Pyramid delivers immediate value. The company competes against two major types of vendors in the business intelligence market. The first group includes self-service solutions for very specific use cases and customer profiles. The other group includes legacy BI providers like Oracle, SAP, IBM, and Microsoft. Pyramid Analytics is effective in balancing governance and selfservice, which makes it flexible and better than either group. Its market strategies and solutions align on a single integrated platform, which enables it to outshine other competitors.

Pushing the Standards for Client Benefits

best-in-class front-end for Microsoft’s back-end analytics products. The platform can be deployed in any vertical—banking, retail, healthcare, and more—for both mid-market and enterprise organizations. Pyramid’s solution crosses all roles and sectors, creating significant benefits for organizations that thrive on data. It is a balanced solution that delivers governed, self-service analytics which can be scaled across any organization to all users and departments. The company provides its clients with a technology-agnostic platform which allows them to explore all their data in a centralized manner. This platform fuels Pyramid’s growth and customer benefits beyond the horizons.

Pyramid’s take on the New-age Technology Today, there are industry solutions that plan to integrate big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence concepts in their products and make advanced analytics more commoditized. However, Pyramid is unique because it exposes AI and machine learning as a core component, making it the most comprehensive, end-user-driven data analytics platform available in the market. This vision has kept it ahead of the technology curve.

Future Footsteps The company’s vision is to be a leader for mid-market and enterprise organizations seeking scalable BI solutions that can adapt to their evolving data needs. As Pyramid Analytics has adopted AI and machine learning, the company will be more flexible in adopting other new-age technologies in the near future. The company’s solutions will empower organizations to withstand tomorrow’s data and technology challenges.

Pyramid’s initial inspiration was customer demand for a | July 2018 |

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SAP Standpoint

A Revolutionary Step towards enhancing Database Servers “

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nnovative database server occupied with a secure and encrypted technique – SAP HANA”. SAP HANA is an introductory technology used as a database server to store and retrieve data followed by its application. It has a functionality which provides advanced features to store data. SAP HANA is used as a definite database solution for quick and efficient data storage. Column-oriented and relational database management systems are used as operations for storage and encryption of data. It performs advanced analytics for appropriate results such as predictive analytics, text analytics, text search and streaming analytics. These analytical functionalities emphasize on its performance and justify its usability.

SAP HANA contains compatibility as same as the application based server.

SAP HANA – How it introduced During development of SAP HANA, a number of technologies were proposed and acquired by SAP SE. SAP SE is a multinational corporation which makes industrial software to handle business management and customer relations.

The techniques it uses are TREX

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Search Engine which in-memory column-oriented search engine, MaxDB with its in-memory liveCache engine and P*TIME an in-memory OLTP Platform. SAP HANA was demonstrated in 2008 by SAP SE to examine its compatibility. Also, Stanford University has demonstrated this application to check real-time analysis and combination process.

Former SAP Executive, Vishal Sikka mentioned that before featuring, the name SAP HANA was relatively known as “New Database”. Previously the software was known as “SAP High-Performance Analytical Appliance”.

In the middle of 2011, SAP HANA gradually made business customers in the early days. It has proven its compatibility and reliability towards the system. Also in 2012, SAP had proposed aspects of cloud computing and also declared a platform which offers services known as SAP HANA Cloud Platform which is a variant of SAP HANA. In 2013, SAP announced HANA Enterprise Cloud service which

manages private cloud systems. A Business Suite version of HANA was also introduced, which enabled customers to use SAP Enterprise Resource Planning functions on HANA platform.

SAP Business Suite 4(S/4 HANA), the most popular operational database system was introduced in 2015, which comes with the in-memory computing platform. It comprises two operational systems such as Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Customer relationship management (CRM) into single HANA System.

S/4HANA was introduced for an easy business suite,

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switching past generation ERP systems. As the S/4 HANA runs on SAP HANA system, which customers are using on SAP Business Suite application hardware. The customer should go with SAP-certified HANA system for immigration and work on features offered by S/4 HANA. The architecture of SAP HANA The main difference between SAP HANA and earlier SAP system is that HANA includes a column-oriented system and in-memory database. SAP HANA includes Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) into a single system. In general SAP HANA is working on OLTP system to store data in database system instead of drives. HANA is a very cost effective data storage system as compared to general drive storage method.

Column-oriented system stores data in single column storage method and in the same location. It helps to improve the performance of OLTP systems to store database.

HANA is beneficial for recognizing queries and concluding solution.

Key Benefits of SAP HANA SAP HANA is beneficial for analysis of data and its compatibility. It is filled with advanced techniques that make database systems remarkable. SAP HANA gives a complete solution for database and makes it relevant for safe storage and usage. It reduces complexity which in turn enhances its performance and reliability. SAP HANA simplifies IT solutions and | July 2018 |

consistency of database and its analytical applications. It offers realtime business support which initializes live data support. It also reduces data redundancy and IT operations for better execution process. For operational usage, SAP HANA is a flexible database system which gives support and analytical outcomes. It also modernizes data center with flexible SAP HANA. With SAP HANA, companies have achieved better results with completion.

Companies have also accomplished best results in the form of ROI and profitability rate by using SAP HANA. Leading Capabilities of SAP HANA SAP HANA is now one of the important techniques for database storage system. This technology is evidently beneficial and also prominent for data management system. It has transformed database management system with perfection and consistency. It uses simplified operations for single enterprise database and also secure modern data platform. SAP HANA also provides an in-memory system to process data.

This technique is used as data virtualization, integration, and replication. Advanced leverage analytical technology has also been used for processing engines for business, with the help of text, spatial, series data and graph representation.

SAP HANA also introduced the development of next-generation applications which comprise of leveraging hybrid transactional and analytical processing capabilities.

HANA also gives easy data access to the system, with durability of data. It allows business to access data internally or externally, and it also ensures data quality and data consistency. At last, security is the main objective for any database storage. It secures data with robust identity and access management control which protect database system completely.

Deployment of SAP HANA SAP HANA has been deployed from major industries such as on-premise or in cloud computing. In a cloud system, data is stored as a quick and graceful usage of database storage. SAP HANA has deployed on-premise as a new application to run efficiently. HANA is also certified to run on multiple operating systems that support hardware platform.

Major cloud providers offering SAP HANA: a) Amazon Web Services b) Microsoft Azure c) Google Cloud Platform d) IBM Softlayer and Amazon Web Services is providing on-demand cloud computing platform for storage of database system for individuals and companies or government. This system is filled with web servers, database, and CRM. Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform built by Microsoft for testing, deployment and managing applications. It supports many programming languages tools and frameworks. Google Cloud Platform is a suite developed by Google for cloud computing services along with its management tools. It provides set of applications for cloud storage such as data storage and data analysis. IBM Softlayer a dedicated cloud service which includes a dedicated server which manages hosting and cloud computing.

There have been many ways were SAP HANA has been used by many organizations to secure their database systems and enhance performance.

SAP HANA has unique techniques to improve database quality and management system. It helps organizations to manage its database with durability and consistency. After all, organizations are gaining value from solutions that leverage SAP HANA as their database tool.

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