SolarWinds MSP, a leader in delivering comprehensive, scalable IT service management solutions to IT solution providers and managed service providers (MSPs), today announced it has expanded its SolarWinds® RMM capabilities by launching the Network Device Monitoring feature. 

Network Device Monitoring is built to give MSPs the visibility they need to monitor customer switches, printers, routers, and firewalls-in addition to servers and workstations-from a single pane of glass. With greater visibility into the complete network, MSPs can proactively maintain network devices by getting information on hardware health, performance, and utilization. 

The following tips will help you advance your company so you can continue to grow and expand. When you put your time and energy into focusing on what’s most important, you’ll be able to succeed over the long-term. Keep in mind that change is difficult and it could take some time before you see your adjustments truly making a difference in how you operate your business.

1.   Set Goals

It’s imperative you take the time to sit down and set goals for what you want to achieve. You need this roadmap in place early so you know where you’re heading and can communicate these objectives to your leadership team and staff. Be specific in your approach and write down exactly what you’re going to do differently to ensure your goals are being met in a timely manner. Be diligent about tracking your progress, so you know what’s working and what areas will require you to go back to the drawing board.

Article Written by Avery Phillips

For the past few years, business owners have been scrambling to rework their websites to fit mobile technology. If you don’t keep up, you will be left behind. Right now, mobile is king and Google sets the pace. 

Late in 2017, Google decided to redesign their algorithm to prioritize mobile-optimized pages. Since more people (63 percent) now search using mobile devices, and almost 75 percent of all online searches run through Google, this is news that you cannot ignore. As of June of this year, websites that run quickly on mobile now rank higher than those that load slowly. 

Unfortunately, this puts a lot of businesses in a bind. If previously your website came up on top of a Google search, you may now find yourself buried beneath a lot of responsive, mobile-ready, dynamic loading websites. So what can you do about it?

This webinar, featuring Forrester Principal Analyst Lauren E. Nelson and Trent Fitz Solution Strategist at Zenoss, will discuss the pre-party and post-party requirements for facilitating a well executed cloud migration and the importance of having the right technologies in place to manage and support a hybrid environment.

Pre-Party Prep: Understand What You Have

Applications not built for the cloud often suffer from performance issues due to their monolithic architecture, which is unfit for horizontal scaling. Before beginning your cloud migration journey, it’s important to understand how suitable each application is for a cloud environment.

Party with the Lights On

During a cloud migration, it’s critical to ensure minimal service disruption. Proper care must be taken to manage the chaos among all IT systems and applications. It’s important to understand the proper tools and processes for seamless cloud transitions.

The Clean-Up: Manage Your Hybrid World

For most enterprises, a cloud migration isn’t like flipping a light switch. It is a journey, and one that usually ends with hybrid IT environments. It’s extremely important to have the right technologies in place to manage that hybrid environment.

WHEN? Thursday, November 08, 2018 @ 11:00 AM Central Standard Time 

Limelight Networks and Ericsson have signed an agreement to collaborate on content delivery and edge cloud services.

As more traffic shifts to the public internet from private networks, the need for high performance networks and distributed infrastructure is required to maintain a high-quality user experience. A key solution to this is edge cloud computing. Providing computing capabilities close to the user or device gives a superior quality of service. For new low latency applications such as IoT, gaming, and virtual reality, robust computing capabilities at the edge of the network are needed. Communications service providers and technology companies will play a pivotal role in scaling the next wave of internet traffic.

Ericsson is partnering with service providers globally to build the Ericsson Unified Delivery Network (UDN) Edge Cloud Platform – a web-scale edge delivery network, driving performance benefits and cost efficiencies. Content delivery is the first application built on the UDN platform. Under the agreement, Limelight’s content delivery technology will be deployed on the Ericsson UDN Edge Cloud Platform to expand its global delivery capabilities and increase delivery capacities.

Canonical announced the release of Ubuntu 18.10, focused on multi-cloud deployments, AI software development, a new community desktop theme and richer snap desktop integration.

"Ubuntu is now the world’s reference platform for AI engineering and analytics" said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. "We accelerate developer productivity and help enterprises operate at speed and at scale, across multiple clouds and diverse edge appliances."

This year, the financial services industry has engaged significantly with Canonical and Ubuntu for infrastructure efficiency on premise and to accelerate their move to the cloud. The push for machine learning analytics and of fintech efforts around blockchain, distributed ledger applications and cryptocurrencies are current drivers of Ubuntu investments and deployments.

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, has today announced the opening of two availability zones in the UK, in addition to its Frankfurt and Dubai data centres launched in 2016.

This expansion not only extends Alibaba Cloud’s capabilities within Europe, but also serves to highlight the provider’s ongoing commitment to the region. Alibaba Cloud’s local footprint is steadily increasing, with data centres across three EMEA locations: Frankfurt, Dubai, and now London.

Answering an increase in demand for Alibaba Cloud services across the EMEA region, the pair of high performance availability zones will enable organisations in the region to accelerate the upgrade of their digital infrastructure enabling more efficient digital transformation initiatives. Business continuity is also a clear focus, with dual availability zones offering stronger disaster recovery capabilities.

The London location also boasts 24/7 on-site support – including both security and engineering – as well as real-time monitoring and a ticketing system with SLA guarantees. The new data centres offer a wide range of Alibaba Cloud product lines, including: Elastic Computing, Storage, Database, Network, Application Services and Big Data Analytics.

Zscaler, Inc. today announced inline Exact Data Match (EDM) with native SSL inspection as part of its advanced Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) service. The inline EDM capability extends the Zscaler cloud platform to protect against the loss of sensitive information across all users and branches with more precision while reducing the number of false positives to near zero. This service is provided in the Zscaler cloud, providing the capacity of one billion data points per customer across 100 data centers globally.

Traditional DLP appliances that sit in the data center are expensive and resource-intensive, and their protection can be subpar, often failing to alert an organization until after data has been compromised. Zscaler’s inline EDM with native SSL inspection blocks sensitive information before it leaves the network. In the first half of 2018, the Zscaler cloud platform blocked an average of 800,000 SSL-encrypted transactions per day containing advanced threats. Zscaler EDM with native SSL inspection and policy enforcement secures all application and user traffic, providing enhanced security and a business advantage.

"IT organizations need better visibility into potential risks of data leakage with granular control and actionable outcomes," said Steve House, Vice President of Product Management, Zscaler. "With the addition of EDM, our customers, in real time, can more precisely identify and protect sensitive information that could potentially leave their network – keeping the good things in, and the bad things out."

Oracle today announced that Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) around the world are rapidly adopting Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to run enterprise and cloud-native applications with mission-critical performance and core-to-edge security. Spanning multiple industries, leading brands, including FICO, FireEye, KNAPP, and Manhattan Associates have selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to power their market leading cloud solutions.

According to IDC, ISVs using Oracle Cloud have experienced quicker time to market, faster customer onboarding, cost savings and an increased ability to operate reliable secure services.

"We continue to see tremendous growth in ISV adoption of Oracle Cloud," said Inderjeet Singh, executive vice president Global ISV, OEM and Java. "Oracle Cloud Infrastructure provides ISVs with the ability to innovate faster and streamline operations while at the same time offer increased performance at a lower cost compared to other public cloud providers."