New Employee Announcement: Liliana Ciurlino, Marketing & Engagement Coordinator

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Liliana Ciurlino joins Managed Solution as a Marketing & Engagement Coordinator. She worked the last several years as a Regional Marketing Manager with H&R Block in the areas of new client growth strategy, execution and partnership development. She has trained hundreds of professionals on how to build their book of business in field marketing. Prior to her work in direct mail and TV advertising within the Financial Industry, she founded a 501 (c) 3 Non-Profit Organization, contACT ARTS, which produces the San Diego International Fringe Festival. In 2015, she created the World’s First Bi-National Fringe Festival (MEX/USA) and Emerging Fringe; a San Diego Regional Performance Competition for grades 6-12 to present their original work.    
Liliana is a native of San Diego and has had the opportunity to live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sonoma, Miami, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Business with a Marketing Concentration and is pursuing her MBA from Missouri State University. Liliana serves on the Latino Committee with the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce, California College Program Advisory Board and volunteers with the Girl Scouts.
Liliana enjoys playing guitar & piano, yoga, running and hiking. In Old San Juan, she studied black and white analog photography and would like to build herself a dark room. Her favorite movie is Rocky and one of her favorite quotes is by Henry David Thoreau, "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see". We’re excited to welcome Liliana to the Managed Solution team!

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New Employee Announcement: Ken Bayne, Project Manager (San Diego)

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Ken Bayne started working at Managed Solution on Monday, April 25, 2016. Ken was born in Burlingame, California and grew up in the town next door - Millbrae, CA. Both cities are located on the Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ken is married and has a 12 yr. old son, Kevin. Ken has a cantankerous old Chihuahua that he adopted from an animal shelter, named Ernie, as in Bert and Ernie.
Ken comes from Merlin Entertainments, which owns LEGOLAND, Madame Tussaud Wax Museums, Sea Life Aquariums and about 120 parks and attractions in 22 countries. He was primarily responsible for the end to end IT for New Attractions and Rides openings. Prior to that Ken was an IT Consultant with Robert Half Technology, a Manager of Infrastructure and Service Desk at a Mortgage Bank and Director of Information Systems at Rubio's restaurants. Ken has more than 25 years of IT Operations and IT Project Management experience. Ken has earned the Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI) and both ITIL Foundations and ITIL Practitioner Certifications.
Ken understands and can speak beginner level Thai. Ken enjoys playing golf and saltwater fishing with his son - and wife when he can get her to participate. Ken is an avid traveler and has been to more than 30 countries, and has spent more than a few weeks/months living in Japan, Thailand, Kuwait, England and Spain. Ken owns a home in Samut Prakan, Thailand, which is about 30 miles south of Bangkok. We are excited to welcome Ken to the Managed Solution Team!

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As Silicon Valley chills, Europe’s tech gets hotter

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As Silicon Valley chills, Europe’s tech gets hotter

By Mattias Ljungman as written on techcrunch.com
We are accustomed to hearing that European tech is perpetually in Silicon Valley’s shadow. Now there have been suggestions that the local tech scene is starting to feel Silicon Valley’s valuation woes.
If true, this should raise alarm bells, because if European technology startups struggle to raise money from wary investors, it could hit the brakes on Europe’s budding digital economy just as the EU begins ramping up its tech industry, preparing for a digital single market.
However, the data paints a more nuanced picture, one showing that, in the main, Europe is not as susceptible to the impact from a U.S. tech downturn, because it has now laid the foundations — talent, mentors, angel investors, local VCs, incubators, accelerators and communities — that are propelling Europe on its own, separate investment cycle.
The data about Series A funds raised, capital invested and $100+ million exits, gathered from Dow Jones VentureSource, CB Insights and S&P Capital IQ, shows that in relative terms, Europe is now starting to fire on all cylinders, much like Silicon Valley did in 2013.
Silicon Valley is indeed undergoing a chill, while tech in Europe is growing, purposefully, confidently and across a broad front of geographical hubs and industries. Currently, France is leading Europe in investments so far this year.
CB Insights shows that the absolute number of funding rounds for early-stage companies — what’s called Series A rounds — in the U.S. appear to have peaked in 2014 (2015 was down from 2014 by -4 percent).
We have the opportunity to both learn from the successes in the U.S. and pre-empt some of their issues.
Series A rounds are important because they are one of the best indicators of the health of an ecosystem in producing a solid pipeline of companies that have gained sufficient traction to raise an institutional round from venture capitalists.
In Europe, Series A investments only really started to ramp from 2014, and the number of local companies hitting this funding milestone continues to rise. 2015 was a record year for Europe — up 12 percent from the year before. In January and February so far this year, A rounds are up 38 percent year-over-year (versus 19 percent up in the U.S.).
Generally speaking, venture investing in tech companies in the U.S. has been volatile, with a large uptick in funds raised by venture capitalists since 2012, and big spikes in 2014 and 2015, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.
In Europe, we’ve yet to see any big jumps or dips in VC funding.
According to CB Insights, $100+ million exits — when startups are acquired by larger firms or IPO — started to ramp in the U.S. from 2011 onwards, reaching an eight-year high of 122 exits in 2014, but then declining again in 2015 to 83.
In Europe, the ramp in $100+ million exits only really kicked in from 2014 (18 exits), and reached a new high of 26 exits in 2015.
None of this is to say that the gung-ho spirit of Silicon Valley has dampened and that Europe has magically thrown off its yoke of conservatism. U.S. startups are still raising money, although, for some, the valuations are coming down to what some might say is a more realistic level.
European institutional investors — with some exceptions such as in the Nordics — could still step up their activity in late-stage funding, and a handful of activist EU data protection authorities are erecting barriers to the global free-flow of data. Investment pace in the Nordics is currently four times faster than just two years ago.
But tellingly, this year (so far), several fast-growing private tech firms in the U.S. have seen their valuations plummet. You can’t really argue with the numbers: For Silicon Valley, the hangover from heyday valuations has started. CB Insights has even created a Downround Tracker on companies that have raised money or exited at valuations lower than their earlier investment rounds. For now, it’s mostly populated by companies from the U.S. (83 percent of all companies on the list). This could, of course, spread to Europe, but so far the data does not show this to be the case.
Listed companies haven’t fared much better. The aggregate market cap of the 34 public Internet Software & Services companies that have IPO’d in the U.S. since January 1, 2013 was trading at 42 percent below their aggregate first-day market cap on March 16 this year, according to S&P Capital IQ. Here too, Europe has not seen the same impact. The 25 public Internet stocks that have listed in Europe in that same time period have been much more resilient, and are trading 9 percent above their initial first-day aggregate market cap.
Given all of the above, it seems that a more informed way to think about whether or not Europe will be caught in Silicon Valley’s downturn is to understand that the Valley has been on fire since 2008, and Europe has only really got going in the last three years.
So does Europe’s trajectory mean that we’re heading for the same kind of correction just a few years down the line? Not necessarily. Due to the relative scarcity of capital in Europe when compared with the glut in the Valley, Europe’s tech industry has also had less hype — and hopefully the conditions for more sustainable, long-term successes.
We have the opportunity to both learn from the successes in the U.S. and pre-empt some of their issues. That’s a great position to be in.

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Brewery Boosts Efficiencies, Drives Local Sales with Connected Global Workforce

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Carlsberg Group Microinfographic managed solution

Carlsberg Group

The Carlsberg Group produces and markets more than 500 brands. Following an unprecedented growth period, the company wanted to optimize global business operations, while remaining close to local markets—a new operational model it calls “GloCal.” Carlsberg is achieving this goal by using the productivity and collaboration tools in Microsoft Office 365 to connect with colleagues around the world.
J. C. Jacobsen founded his family-owned brewery more than 160 years ago to serve the Danish market. It wasn’t until 1990 that the Carlsberg Group began a period of acquisitions and global growth that today represents its biggest success—and its biggest challenge. Managing more than 500 beer brands that cater to diverse tastes and cultures around the world, the company needed to realign its organizational structure and corporate culture in a way that would help it succeed in a highly competitive global market, while staying true to loyal local customers.
Need for Global Collaboration The Carlsberg Group is organizing itself around a new operational model—called GloCal—designed to find the right balance between working together at a global level and allowing its many regional beer brands to flourish. “If we are going to be successful as a GloCal organization, we have to be more cohesive in how we do business across the world. And for that to happen, we need to enable our employees to communicate and collaborate seamlessly, no matter where they are,” says Etienne Dock, Vice President of IT Architecture and Sourcing, Carlsberg Business Solutions. “One way we are helping our employees work better together is by deploying Microsoft Office 365.”
When choosing productivity and collaboration tools, the Carlsberg Group also evaluated Google Apps for Business, but employees wanted to work in the familiar Office user interface and the IT group valued the level of integration built into the Microsoft cloud-based communication, collaboration, and social networking services. The company also felt that a Microsoft offering met its security and availability requirements. “Coming from a position where we had disjointed email services, inconsistent web conferencing tools, and isolated web portals for different countries, integration was important to us,” says Dock. “The more we grew, the more obvious was the need for a single, consistent, reliable collaboration platform.”

Optimizing Operations with Global Supply Chain

The Carlsberg Group is minimizing the significant costs of delivering beer to local markets and optimizing brewing capacity at its more than 80 breweries around the world thanks to the formation of a new subsidiary in Switzerland, the Carlsberg Supply Company (CSC) that generates global efficiencies and cost savings across the company’s vast supply chain.
“The formation of CSC points to our growing, global business agenda. Office 365 was a key IT initiative that we put in place to support this agenda,” says Dock. “Beer is heavy, so we don’t want to transport it for long distances. Breweries are capital intensive, so we don’t want to build too many. The CSC will derive huge business value from using Office 365 as a global collaboration tool to interact with our global markets and exchange the information we need to fine-tune the balance between these variables to optimize our operations and save money.”
The Carlsberg Group worked with Microsoft Services Consulting to validate the company’s overall architecture, assess the readiness of its IT infrastructure for deployment, and support the company through the migration. To promote videoconferencing usage, the Carlsberg Group posted a series of educational videos on its intranet.

Accelerating Business with Integrated Tools

The company is accelerating the pace of business through impromptu and planned videoconferences that are quickly being adopted by employees at corporate headquarters and in local offices. A recent videoconference attended by more than 100 supply chain leaders, the CEO of the Carlsberg Group, and several members of the board successfully communicated the CSC three-year strategic plan to a global audience in under two hours. “Not only did we broadcast our strategy to a global audience, but we gained feedback from participants through a Q and A session and a poll asking if this was a useful way to share information. The majority of responses were favorable,” says Werner K. Budek, PhD, Vice President, Strategy at Carlsberg Supply Company. “It would have taken us three weeks to travel around the world to meet and greet everyone on that call. Sharing knowledge online is one way we are improving efficiency and boosting business agility.”
Personal productivity is also on the rise, thanks to anytime, anywhere access to documents that are automatically synced between different devices. When employees have everything they need at their fingertips, the pace of business accelerates. “I’m on the road frequently and I carry at least two phones, one laptop, and a tablet,” says David Fang, Corporate Affairs Vice President, Asia, at the Carlsberg Group. “Now I can access all my email and documents with any of my devices, so I can get work done quickly without worrying about technical issues.”
“We are currently testing online data storage and anticipate that when we roll it out, users will benefit from secure access to their documents anywhere they have Internet connectivity,” adds Dock.
When the Carlsberg Group quietly launched its new enterprise social network, employees in the Product Innovation Group discovered it themselves and began sharing ideas to innovate.
“People are using Yammer to discuss innovative packaging concepts, more inviting store displays, and new technologies for beer cans,” says Anders Munck, Enterprise Architect at the Carlsberg Group. “Compared with an official innovation system, it’s so easy to get involved. Already we are seeing ideas flowing all over the company.”

Local Presence, Global Family

The Carlsberg Group is benefiting from increased knowledge of regional markets because sales representatives who are out all day meeting customers at bars, pubs, and restaurants can use their smartphones to connect and share information with colleagues and management directly from the field. This flow of information enriches the company’s understanding of regional markets. “The local flavor of our beer is a huge part of our value, so the more we learn about our customers in different parts of the world, the better we can satisfy their unique tastes,” says Dock.
Today, the Carlsberg Group is much closer to becoming a true GloCal organization. With user-friendly tools and an enterprise social networking platform that opens up the lines of communication via any device anywhere, the company is breaking down business silos to achieve what the Carlsberg Group defines as a true “family of brands in a world of diversity.”
“Because employees around the world are working and communicating better together, we can satisfy customers at less cost,” says Dock. “That’s because we gain the efficiencies of business done on a global scale, while staying close to our local markets. Thanks to Office 365, we’re becoming a true GloCal organization.”

The Technologies Involved

Most employees at the Carlsberg Group use the Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan. This plan includes Office 365 ProPlus, the familiar Office desktop suite, which employees can download on more than five devices and work productively with synced files on all of them. Employees use Microsoft Exchange Online for email and calendaring and Microsoft Lync Online to connect via web conferencing and instant messaging. Virtual teams are beginning to adopt Microsoft SharePoint Online to collaborate on projects, and employees are adopting the Yammer enterprise social networking platform for messaging and collaboration on product innovation. And when the company deploys OneDrive for Business for online document storage, employees will be able to access the latest version of their files on any device anywhere.
Source: https://customers.microsoft.com
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.

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Olá! Skype Translator welcomes Portuguese

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Olá! Skype Translator welcomes Portuguese

On December 10, 2015, Skype Translator started including Brazilian Portuguese as one of its seven spoken languages offered for speech-to-speech translation.
With Brazilian Portuguese as one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, today’s news is yet another step in Skype’s mission to help people connect through conversation simply and easily, regardless of where you are in the world, and what language you speak.
Just one year ago, Skype released Skype Translator with Spanish and English for people using Windows 8.1. Now, Skype Translator is available on Skype for Windows Desktop and in the following seven spoken languages: Chinese Mandarin, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and now Brazilian Portuguese. Skype Translator also offers over 50 IM languages in text-to-text translation.
In the past year, since Skype CVP, Gurdeep Pall, announced the public preview of Skype Translator, we’ve opened a new chapter in communication and enabled millions of people to connect globally. We continue to be tremendously grateful to our partners at Microsoft Research who have worked tirelessly to improve the technology’s accuracy and have played a key role in releasing new languages.
For those who have not yet taken advantage of Skype Translator, it is this dropdown in the latest version of the desktop app.

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33 Must Know Facts about Women in Tech (Infographic)

33 Must Know Facts about Women in Tech

Via coupofy.com
While the likes of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are the icons of a male dominated tech industry, women are rapidly entering both regular and high level positions. Data from the top 8 tech companies reveals a rate of growth 238% faster than men, with no sign of slowing down.
Inspired by the rising trend of women in the tech, we have aggregated the data from 30 trusted sources and looked at the most successful women in the industry and their roles as founders, leaders and venture capitalists.
Look at the most interesting facts in this infographic!
- See more at: http://www.coupofy.com/blog/infographics/the-238-percent-faster-growth-of-women-in-the-tech-industry-than-men-infographic#sthash.2UOBzwN8.dpuf
The 238% Faster Growth of Women in the Tech Industry Than Men

Made by: Coupofy

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OneDrive for Business update on storage plans and Next Generation Sync Client

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OneDrive for Business update on storage plans and Next Generation Sync Client

By Jeff Teper, corporate vice president for OneDrive and SharePoint as written on blogs.office.com
Today, I’d like to share an update on our OneDrive for Business storage plans, the availability of our Next Generation Sync Client and several other new capabilities we’re delivering in our December update.

Storage plans

Office 365 customers on our premium Enterprise, Government and Education plans will receive OneDrive for Business unlimited storage. Specifically, this includes unlimited storage for individuals in organizations with more than five people subscribing to one of the following plans:
We will begin rolling out increased storage to these customers by the end of this month, starting with an automatic increase from 1 TB to 5 TB per user. We expect this rollout to complete by the end of March 2016. After this point, customers who want additional storage can request it as needed by contacting Microsoft support.
Customers on all other Office 365 Enterprise, Business and standalone plans that include OneDrive for Business will continue to receive 1 TB of storage per user. While customers on these plans will not receive the full unlimited benefit, we expect it will serve the vast majority of users. Today, most OneDrive for Business users consume significantly less than 1 TB.
Overall, we have taken too long to provide an update on our storage plans around OneDrive for Business. We also recognize we are disappointing customers who expected unlimited storage across every Office 365 plan, and I want to apologize for not meeting your expectations. We are committed to earning your business every day by delivering a great productivity and collaboration service and improving our communication approach.

Next Generation Sync Client for Windows and Mac

After a successful preview program, we are happy to report that the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client is now available for deployment. Our top priorities for this release were improved reliability and performance, as well as delivering core capabilities such as selective sync, support for large files up to 10 GB in size and removing the 20,000 file sync limit. For IT Professionals, we’ve provided the ability to silently deploy and configure the client on behalf of your end users. The OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client is available for Windows 7, 8 and 10 (8.1 support will be added in the first quarter of 2016) and Mac OS X 10.9 and above. The Windows client is available today with the Mac client being available before the end of December 2015.
With this first release, the Next Generation Sync Client supports OneDrive for Business only, but we will add support for SharePoint document libraries in future releases. In the interim, if customers require sync for both OneDrive for Business and SharePoint document libraries, the Next Generation Sync Client is designed to work side-by-side with the existing sync client.
Additionally, we are actively working on other important features including Office integration to support the co-authoring of documents and sharing scenarios (planned for the second quarter of 2016), as well as a more seamless experience for users who are migrating from the existing sync client (planned for the first quarter of 2016).

Mobile updates

In addition to updates on our desktop offerings, we have several improvements for our mobile apps. First, we recently released a new OneDrive app for Windows 10 Mobile. This app offers all the essential capabilities to view, edit, delete, share and upload files onto both your personal OneDrive and OneDrive for Business storage services.
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Users can easily manage their files and folders on their Windows 10 Mobile device.
A range of required actions such as view, edit, delete and share are available for the user.
We are also happy to announce the OneDrive for iOS app will support offline storage. You can selectively flag files for local availability and open them when disconnected. The updated app will be available before the end of December 2015. We first released offline storage on Android in September 2015 and will take this same capability to Windows 10 Mobile in the second quarter of 2016.
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You can select one or more files to take offline.
All offline files can be accessed through a single view.
Lastly, Office Lens for iOS now supports uploading your content directly into OneDrive for Business. Office Lens is essentially a mobile scanner that lets you to take pictures of printed documents, business cards, expense receipts and even whiteboards, with automated cropping, trimming and searching of those images. We will add OneDrive for Business support to Android and Windows 10 Mobile in the first quarter of 2016.
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Use the whiteboard capture feature to store all meeting notes in OneDrive for Business.
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Access whiteboards, business cards and photos quickly and easily.

New capabilities for developers

We are also releasing exciting new value for developers. First, we created a new OneDrive for Business API that allows developers to programmatically access OneDrive for Business files. The API includes support for thumbnails, search, large file upload and sync changes. Developers can write directly to the OneDrive for Business API or access it via the Microsoft Graph. We also provided new tools and SDKs for Universal Windows, iOS and Android—including support for simple “file picker” integration that enables import and export of OneDrive for Business content. Finally, we released an updated preview of a JavaScript Picker SDK for web app file management. All developer tools and documentation can be found on the new OneDrive developer portal.

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