Lets see, a cleaner “Metro-fied” look, Facebook, Twitter and Skype deeply integrated, and best of all, no more creepy ads! Among others, these are some of the new features in Microsoft’s new web email client. Outlook.com will serve as the successor to Hotmail and pose as a more aggressive competitor to Google’s Gmail, which in my opinion, is already one-upped with Skype seamlessly built in.
Looks good.
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Managed Service Hosting, Marketing | Tagged: Email client, Facebook, Gmail, Google, Hotmail, Microsoft, Skype, Twitter | 
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Posted by david ricketts
You’re ready to move into the cloud, but before you can get there you actually have to get your data to the cloud. Below are some tips on how you can optimize your first cloud backup deployment.
When you sign up for a cloud backup service, your trusted managed service provider will have to make an initial backup before they can begin to back up your data incrementally. Depending on the amount of data that is required to be backed up and on the speed of the internet connection, this initial backup can take a long time to complete.
With the first backup taking so long, it is important to prioritize your data. You may want to organize your organization’s operational documents (word processing files, spreadsheets, etc) to be backed up first and have uncommon file types backed up last. Depending on your managed service provider, you may be able to determine which files are used most often in your business and back that up first.
Although your initial backup may take a long time, you don’t want it to affect your network during working hours while people are trying to get their work done via the internet. During the day, you should be able to strike a balance between getting your backups done and having enough bandwidth for the workday. After business hours and on weekends you can increase your bandwidth to focus on your backups.
It’s best to minimize the data being sent over the wire and to the cloud through deduplication, especially if you’re paying for backups per gigabyte on a monthly basis.
One way to decrease the amount of data being backed up (without sacrificing data protection) is to use de-duplication. When seeking the services of a cloud backup services provider, this feature should be standard. The way de-duplication is performed can often be unique to each managed service provider.
Some providers will only back up each file once and if the same file exists in multiple locations, pointers to the files will be created. Other service providers will provide block-level de-duplication. Rather than skipping duplicated files, the software which powers the cloud backup service will create a checksum for each block that’s being backed up and then uses the checksum value as a way of determining whether a duplicate block has already been backed up.
It’s important that you continue to store backups on premise – it will always be easier and faster to restore data from a local backup then from the internet. Local backups also allow you to further align the value of data with the cost of protecting it. Using the cloud for backup will allow you to recover in any situation when data loss occurs, but creating a second local backup is best for accidental file deletion or to quickly recover a single server in your network.
For more information or to request a demonstration please visit http://www.c24.co.uk
Leave a Comment » | Managed Service Hosting, Marketing | Tagged: Backup, backup services, Computer file, Data deduplication, Data loss, deduplication, managed service provider, Managed services, operational documents, Remote backup service, Service provider, Site Management | Permalink
Posted by david ricketts
Sample findings:
• 91% of senior corporate marketers believe that successful brands use customer data to drive marketing decisions
• Yet, 39% say their own company’s data is collected too infrequently or not real-time enough
• And 51% say that a lack of sharing customer data within their own organization is a barrier to effectively measuring their marketing ROI
• Large firms are much less likely to collect new forms of digital data like mobile data (19%), than they are to collect traditional customer survey data such as on demographics (74%) and attitude (54%)
• 85% of large corporations are now using social network accounts (e.g. brand accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare) as a marketing tool
• 65% of marketers said that comparing the effectiveness of marketing across different digital media is “a major challenge” for their business
• 37% of respondents did not include any mention of financial outcomes when asked to define what “marketing ROI” meant for their own organization
• 57% are not basing their marketing budgets on any ROI analysis
• 22% are using brand awareness as their sole measure to evaluate their marketing spend
In order to leverage the opportunities of big data, marketers need to improve their ability to:
• Collect meaningful customer data from a variety of sources, including real-time data
• Link that data to metrics developed for measuring marketing ROI
• Share data across the organization, linking datasets together at the customer level
• Utilize this shared data to effectively target and personalize marketing efforts to customers
In order to effectively harness the capabilities of new digital tools, marketers need to:
• Set clear business objectives for any digital marketing effort
• Develop a variety of metrics for new digital tools—from audience metrics, to engagement metrics, to financial metrics
• Develop models that link channel-specific digital metrics (like retweets or Facebook interactions) to universal metrics, including your key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Continuously innovate new measurement models, as new digital tools and marketing rapidly evolve
Above all, get started. Start with the basics of determining marketing ROI so you will create the largest impact on your organization:
• Make sure you’re using some kind of metrics on most of your marketing.
• Be ready to invest in getting some kind of data relevant to your measures.
• Make coordinating your traditional and digital media campaigns a goal.
• Set specific measurable objectives for all your campaigns.
• Put ROI in stated objectives for all your vendors (so they know your expectations to retain them or to cut them loose).
• Link marketing ROI to employee compensation, perhaps a bonus.
• Start today… as the pay off and learning curve will likely take a few years.
Then, move on to ROI best practices:
• Make sure your marketing metrics are accepted by finance.
• Make sure your data is: timely, actionable, linked at the customer-level, used to personalize marketing and target customers.
• Share your data across your organization.
Leave a Comment » | Application Hosting, Marketing, Retail IT Solutions | Tagged: Big data, big data research, Business, Digital media, Facebook, Marketing, Marketing performance measurement and management, Performance indicator, Return on marketing investment, Twitter | Permalink
Posted by david ricketts
This may be a short movie made by Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo as part of their graduation project but that does not take anything away from it. This story holds an important message to us and how fast technology can take over our lives.
Leave a Comment » | Marketing, Retail IT Solutions | Tagged: Arts, Augmented reality, Contact lens, Daniel Lazo, Eran, Eran May, Google, Short film | Permalink
Posted by david ricketts
