Annual Report names Managed Solution in top 100 Cloud Computing Companies
September 9, 2015, SAN DIEGO - Talkin’ Cloud’s 5th Annual Report names Managed Solution in top 100 of the World’s Top Cloud Computing Companies in the IT Channel.
The Talkin’ Cloud 100 list is based on data from Talkin’ Cloud’s online survey, conducted January through May 2015 and recognizes top cloud service providers based on such metrics as annual cloud services revenue growth (both in actual dollars and in percentage growth rates), and input from Penton Technology’s Channel editors.
Managed Solution, a highly honored and tenured managed services company and pioneer in managed, utility-based cloud computing, along with 99 other CSPs generated more than $30 billion in cloud services revenues in 2014, up nearly 29 percent over what they reported the previous year.
As a technology company that empowers business, we are extremely honored to be recognized by Talkin’ Cloud for our efforts in creating viable business outcomes for our customers with the latest available cloud-architected solutions, said Sean Ferrel, CEO Managed Solution. “We will continue to invest in our customers by putting our time and resources into being the premiere source for business-based cloud solutions that support our clients productivity and bottom line.”
“On behalf of Penton and Talkin’ Cloud, I would like to congratulate Managed Solution for its recognition as a Talkin’ Cloud 100 honoree,” said Nicole Henderson, Editor in Chief, Talkin’ Cloud. “The industry is changing at a rapid pace and the Talkin’ Cloud 100 companies consistently demonstrate an agility and flexibility that sets them apart. They do so with innovation, via strategic partnerships, and through their commitment to providing superior customer experiences.”
Talkin’ Cloud, produced by Penton, is the go-to resource for CSPs, VARs and MSPs profiting from cloud computing. Talkin’ Cloud features news, research, Channel Expert Hour Webcasts, FastChat videos and more. It is the first online media destination for channel partners working in the cloud.
In addition to honoring Managed Solution, this year’s Talkin’ Cloud 100 report profiles:
Cloud Services Providers: CSPs offer SaaS (software as a service), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and/or PaaS (platform as a service) to partners/customers.
Cloud Services Brokerages: CSBs, or cloud brokers, recommend and resell multiple cloud services to customers, and often integrate those services.
Cloud Services Aggregators: CSAs, or cloud aggregators, typically offer a portal that allows VARs and MSPs to source multiple third-party cloud services for customers.
MSPs (Managed Service Providers) with cloud services expertise: MSPs proactively monitor and manage customers’ on-premises and cloud-based systems.
VARs (value-added resellers) with cloud services expertise: VARs offer a range of IT consulting, deployment, integration and management services to customers.
About Managed Solution
Managed Solution is the premier provider of outsourced IT support and managed services for small to large size businesses. Founded in 2002, the company quickly grew into a market leader and is recognized as one of the fastest growing IT Companies in Southern California. Managed Solution continues to deliver award-winning services paired with leading business technologies to assist clients in running their business efficiently.
About Penton’s channel brands
Penton’s channel brands (www.penton.com), define emerging IT markets and disrupt established IT markets. The brands’ channel-centric online communities include MSPmentor (www.MSPmentor.net), The VAR Guy (www.TheVARguy.com), Talkin’ Cloud (www.TalkinCloud.com) and the WHIR (http://www.thewhir.com).
About Penton
Penton drives performance for more than eighteen million professionals each and every day. They rely on us to deliver: Insights, information, data & workflow tools to inform critical business decisions; networking & community to engage them with industry peers & partners; and marketing services to advance their business performance & deliver ROI.
Penton is a growth company with a track-record of strong performance and success and is backed by its co-owners: MidOcean Partners and U.S. Equity Partners II, an investment fund sponsored by Wasserstein & Co., LP.
For additional information on the company and its businesses, visit www.penton.com.
Managed Solution Press Contact:
Tina Rountree, VP of Sales & Marketing
This week, Microsoft announced new compliance milestones for Azure Government which included a number of key security safeguards, from FedRAMP JAB P-ATO to Microsoft contractually committing to meeting HIPAA requirements in Azure Government (by offering a Business Associates Agreement (BAA) to supporting compliance with IRS 1075 safeguards for processing accessing federal tax information in the cloud.
All of these are important – for governments of all sizes. And each of these on their own are significant milestones in the lifetime of Azure Government, which has only been generally available to customer since last December. It shows Microsoft’s commitment to recognizing the security and compliance standards that are important to our customers and to driving towards alignment with each of them.
I’d like to focus on one that is particularly notable in the Federal space, namely the FedRAMP JAB P-ATO, confirmed by FedRAMP this month as approved for use by all U.S. government agencies. This achievement is particularly significant as Azure Government is the first major government cloud platform to receive a FedRAMP JAB P-ATO for its Iaas and PaaS solutions. This is essentially the “gold seal” of approval on security controls for our Azure Government platform. JAB approval means that our solution had to pass muster with the JAB board consisting of approvals from GSA, DHS, and DoD technical reviewers.
This announcement comes on the heels of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) granting a FedRAMP ATO for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Government cloud. Together, these important milestones build on Microsoft’s commitment to providing the most complete and trusted cloud environment to its customers.
It also rounds out our Gov cloud with Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online Government. The JAB and Agency approved cloud workloads and partner solutions ready to go NOW is unmatched in the Federal industry. In fact, Microsoft is the only major cloud vendor that offers a hybrid cloud solution that is designed to support the rigorous compliance and security demands of government, healthcare, public safety and defense agencies.
Microsoft Azure Government is a government-community cloud that offers hyper-scale compute, storage, networking, and identity management services, with world-class security. A physical and network-isolated instance of Microsoft Azure, operated by screened U.S. persons, Azure Government enables new forms of cross-agency collaboration and rich cloud service integration. Learn more.
The Azure Government 90 day trial includes $500 per month to spend on all Azure Government services. This is a non-renewable, fixed term free trial agreement. Customers and partners who wish to continue to use Azure Government after 90 days must have a Volume Licensing agreement in place.
Managed Solution partners with IT staff to offer consulting and government solutionsto improve IT infrastructure to reflect the latest technology.
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Metrics That Matter: How Does Technology Affect Government Outcomes?
CIOs need to develop better ways to measure the impact of technology. By Kevin C. Desouza as written on Govtech.com.
There's little doubt that government's already substantial investment in information technology is going to continue to grow as public agencies look for ways to streamline processes, engage with citizens and achieve social outcomes. Chief information officers are going to be required to show not only that IT funds are being expended effectively but also that these resources are driving outcomes that government and the public care about. Consider this question: If you were to invest $1 in a parks program and $1 in the IT department, which would provide a greater return?
Questions like that are going to take on even more importance with the emergence of new technologies (think about drones and self-driving cars), new platforms (consider bitcoin and the future of digital currency), and new tools (such as predictive analytics and the emerging field of algorithmic regulation).
Over the last six months, I have interviewed more than two dozen CIOs and other IT executives across all levels of government on the state of IT metrics for performance management in the public sector. The findings from these interviews are summarized in a new report published by the IBM Center for the Business of Government.
In the report, I offer three overarching recommendations to help CIOs begin to develop meaningful metrics for their organizations or to improve the ones they already use:
CIOs should engage stakeholders -- both internal and external ones -- in creating logic models that outline and trace the impact of IT assets to intermediate outputs and ultimately to outcomes that matter. In doing so, CIOs should engage with clients to develop client-specific metrics. They also should strive to gather input to gain a better understanding of how IT is perceived by stakeholders.
CIOs should develop networks to share data on IT performance, both internally and with other communities with similar populations, industries, demographics or needs. These networks offer CIOs an opportunity to gain insights about experiences, challenges and good ideas; benchmark or compare metrics; and gain buy-in for specific initiatives or projects. Currently, CIO networks at the local level are underdeveloped. Where we have seen these networks utilized, CIOs have used them as learning opportunities and are doing much better in utilizing metrics to improve performance.
CIOs need to work creatively to arrive at innovation metrics. In my research, I found a general lack of metrics to capture innovations associated with IT. CIOs are innovating and have anecdotal evidence to share, but they lack quality methods to measure those innovations. While metrics around innovation are inherently difficult to define and establish, they are needed more than ever. Creativity and constant refinement are essential.
As technology continues to develop, the level of IT innovation will become even more of a key differentiator among governments, particularly across local jurisdictions striving to streamline operations and create sustainable neighborhoods and resilient communities. A key question that will be asked of CIOs is how their investments in technology measure up. Clearly they are going to need to be able to answer that question.
This article was originally published by Governing.
Managed Solution partners with IT staff to offer consulting and government solutionsto improve IT infrastructure to reflect the latest technology.
Long Beach (Calif.) Evolves its IT Workforce, Platforms and Focus
Millennial workers without tech backgrounds and coding on their phones -- this isn't your father's IT shop.
By Steve Towns as written on Govtech.com.
With baby boomers gradually leaving the government IT workforce, public agencies are scrambling to attract a new generation of employees. Long Beach, Calif., CIO Bryan Sastokas says he’s working to attract millennial employees by adopting open source and cloud-based platforms and emphasizing community-focused initiatives. Sastokas also is hiring more employees who lack traditional IT backgrounds, and the result of that, he says, is a shift toward agile, business-centric solutions. Sastokas talked about his department’s workforce evolution in an interview during Government Technology’s Los Angeles Digital Government Summit earlier this week.
Managed Solution is the premier provider of IT support services and technology recommendations for the government sector.
Contact Managed Solution at 800-550-3795 or fill out the contact form.
New Azure SQL Database offerings add capabilities to scale data up and out
As written by Tiffany Wissner, Senior Director of Data Platform Marketing on Technet.com.
At Microsoft we’re committed to meeting the needs of our customers by offering choices as they build cloud applications for scale and performance. Today we’re continuing to deliver on this commitment with two announcements:
•New high performance levels for Azure SQL Database, P4 and P11, with greater flexibility to start small and scale up as data grows
•Basic and Premium tier for Elastic Databases for more flexibility for SaaS developers looking to scale out with higher performance and more resource control.
As more customers build more powerful applications in Azure using Azure SQL Database, we've seen strong demand for more options to scale performance. We’re dedicated to offering a portfolio of data services for cloud applications that effectively scales up to support data growth from more users, and scales out to support growth from more customers and fluctuating resource demands.
To meet this scale up demand, we are announcing the release of new Azure SQL Database Premium performance levels, P4 and P11. With the introduction of both P4 and P11, we’ve expanded the range of throughput performance developers can leverage to scale their applications. Developers can quickly start with our basic or standard performance tiers and easily scale database performance up to 350 times greater with our premium tier as their data needs grow – all without code or application changes. This enables developers to match application needs with the right database performance.
On the scale out front, we have seen an increasing demand for Elastic Database pools since we announced its public preview. We’ve seen SaaS developers adopt and embrace elastic databases because it makes it easier to manage their growing number of customers. With Elastic Database pools SaaS developers can manage hundreds of databases for each of their customers, optimize the performance of each database, and manage the cost of these databases to support their explosive growth. This means their customers still get a great experience, even during peak usage periods, and there’s no need to over-provision resources during lulls.
One example is StudioPlus, which offers solutions for professional photographers. CEO Matthew Hunt says, “We are expanding our legacy on-premises solution with a SaaS solution. Azure SQL Database is a fundamental part of this journey because it allows us to leverage an existing code base and gives us a platform for unlimited customer growth. From a DevOps perspective, it’s simple to set up and manage Azure SQL Database Elastic Database pools to support the unlimited scale-out of a one-database-per-customer pattern.”
To support the increasing demand of Elastic Database Pools, we are now introducing a public preview of two additional service tiers for Elastic Databases, Basic and Premium. These new tiers give organizations and developers with SaaS applications greater options and flexibility for getting started with Elastic Databases and scaling out to meet new customer demands.
We are thrilled that we can support StudioPlus and a growing number of developers on their SaaS journey with Azure SQL Database.
Our announcements today add scale and performance options, and these releases are just part of our end-to-end data platform. We continue to make it easier for customers to maximize their data dividends with our data platform and services. It’s never been easier to capture, transform, mash-up, analyze and visualize any data, of any size, at any scale, in its native format using familiar tools, languages and frameworks in a trusted environment on-premises and in the cloud.
You will be able to watch Apple’s upcoming event live using Microsoft Edge only in Windows 10
Apple just announced its upcoming event, where the company is expected to release the next iPhone. Now, if you’re a Windows 10 user, you’ll be glad to know that you’ll finally be able to watch Apple’s event without using any media player like VLC. Yep, Apple has added support for Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 – the company’s live event page states:
Requirements: Live streaming uses Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) technology. HLS requires an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with Safari on iOS 7.0 or later, a Mac with Safari 6.0.5 or later on OS X v10.8.5 or later, or a PC with Edge on Windows 10. Streaming via Apple TV requires a second- or third-generation Apple TV with software 6.2 or later.
If you’re planning to watch the company’s upcoming event, you’ll now be able to watch it “officially” using Microsoft Edge on Windows 10. To be honest, this is kind of surprising as the company didn’t allow Windows users (and Android users) to watch their live streams.
For those wondering, the company’s upcoming event is on September 9 at 10 a.m PDT.
For life's little interruptions, use Windows + F4 to mute yourself in #Skype4B.
When it's time to speak up, use it again to unmute.
Start an online presentation in PowerPoint using Skype for Business
You can schedule an online meeting ahead of time or start a meeting right away – all from within PowerPoint using Skype for Business. You need to have a microphone connected to your PC, so you can speak to your meeting attendees.
Important: This feature isn’t available in Office on a Windows RT PC. Want to see what version of Office you're using?
1. Slide Show > Present Online > Skype for Business.
Note: A list of active Skype for Business conversations and scheduled Skype for Business meetings (within 30 minutes) will appear, and you can also start a new meeting right away.
2.In the list, pick a scheduled meeting or start a new Skype for Business meeting, and then click OK.
3.In Skype for Business, do one of the following:
Begin your scheduled meeting.
To begin a new meeting, invite attendees by choosing Invite More People Add contact button.
i.Under Invite by Name or Phone Number, select contacts from the contacts list or type each name in the box, and then click Select.
ii.Begin your presentation.
Tips for using other options in Skype for Business:
Note: These button images will change color. For example, dark grey means that you’re not performing an activity at the moment, but you can click it to start one. Blue means you are engaged in an activity. Light grey means you don’t have functionality for that option.
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