TECHNOLOGY

What Modern Technologies Should Small Businesses Take Full Advantage Of?

Published

2 years ago

May 10, 2022

Wondering how you can harness the power of the latest technology to improve your business operations?

Technology is rapidly changing, and it impacts almost all facets of the business. Businesses that fail to incorporate technology into their operations often face challenges in attaining growth and satisfying their customers.

Read on to learn the modern technologies that small businesses should take full advantage of to improve their operations.

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Consider Remote Work

The internet offers far-reaching advantages if you harness it properly. Operating a brick-and-mortar business can be costly since it involves many factors like office rentals, utility charges, transportation costs, and other related expenses. However, you can consider implementing remote work depending on the type of business you operate. This option is less costly since your employees can work from the comfort of their homes and also set flexible schedules.

You will need adequate communication avenues to run a remote workforce successfully. There are different communication technologies like Skype, Zoom, and other video conferencing tools you can use to handle your operations. You can also use other web-based instant messaging tools like Slack, and chatbots to promote communication among the workforce in diverse backgrounds. Make sure you choose the appropriate technology that can help you achieve your goals when you decide to implement remote work.

Cyber Security Solution

While digital tools are designed to make life easier, they also invite threats that can impact business. It is vital to ensure that sensitive company data is protected from hackers and other cyber threats. One way of achieving this is to consider cloud migration services, which can help you secure your data and keep it inaccessible to any unwanted or unauthorized parties. When you store your company data in the cloud, you can enjoy peace of mind since it will be safe from different forms of threats. Keeping your company data in the cloud also means that you can access it from any place using internet-enabled devices.

Use Tracking Software

Tracking software is ideal for your business since it helps measure your team’s performance and enhance productivity and accountability. With this kind of technology, you can streamline your processes to eliminate challenges that can impact productivity. For example, with the ideal management software, you can monitor the activities of all employees who work remotely. When the workers know that they are being monitored, they will not waste time on social media or doing other activities not related to their work.

Create a Functional Website

In this digital era, no business can function without a website since it represents the face of your brand. This is a platform where you can provide your customers with critical information about your brands such as services and products offered, contact details, price lists, and opening hours. When you optimize your site for search engines, you will improve its visibility online. Make sure your site has a fast loading speed, and it is easy to navigate if you want to attract more visitors.

Use Affordable Telephony Services

Traditional phones are slowly becoming incompatible with the new demands of businesses in this digital era. Additionally, landline and mobile phone services can be rather expensive. This is where Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP) comes in handy. This service is not only affordable, but it offers increased accessibility since it only requires internet access and an appropriate device. This phone service offers cheaper international calls which can help your business lower its operational costs.

Harness the Power of Social Media

Most businesses aim to maximize profits from their operations. Instead of using paid marketing services like traditional advertising, your business can harness social media in its operations to improve customer engagement and promote brand awareness. Different social media platforms can help your business connect with a wide range of potential customers from various backgrounds.

Web-Based Payment Solutions

As technology continues to improve, any business should provide varying payment solutions for their customers and partners. Simple and secure payment options such as Skrill, PayPal, and stripe are convenient and easy to use since they do not require any intermediaries. Online payment systems will help make your transactions more flexible, making you a much more accessible option in the market; especially if you work with freelancers based in different countries across the globe. Transfers are encrypted as well, ensuring safety and security.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The success of your business depends on the customers you have. When you generate leads, you convert them into customers. Furthermore, you need to build quality relationships with your clients so they can continue buying from your company. You can do this by utilizing a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) tool to manage your company’s relationships with existing buyers and potential leads. This tool also helps you collect data about the customers to help you understand their needs.

Use Accounting Software

It is essential to use accounting software to streamline your bookkeeping processes. With this tool, you can automate your finances, and this helps you eliminate human error and improve accuracy. It also allows you to focus on your core business. Your small business can benefit from accounting software if you cannot afford to employ a full-time accountant. It will help you perform simple tasks like tracking payments and generating invoices with relative ease.

Analyze Your Target Audience

When you use different online marketing tools to attract more customers to your business, you should be able to analyze critical data. For instance, you need to know the number of visitors to your website, the type of content they look for, and the time they spend on your site. You can use Google Analytics to track and obtain accurate data about the traffic to your website. This tool helps you analyze the readership trends, so you can make necessary changes to your content.

Technology continues to improve and alter the way we go about business relations and interactions in many different ways. If you operate a small business, it is a good idea to take advantage of different tools available to you, as it will help you maximize your leads and profits. You also need to find appropriate technologies that can help streamline your operations and workflow so as to enhance productivity. We hope the tips mentioned above can help you better shape the operations of your business and eventually develop a more competitive edge in your market.

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TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

Published

5 months ago

December 1, 2023

Max

AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

Published

5 months ago

November 29, 2023

Max

Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

TECHNOLOGY

Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

Published

5 months ago

November 28, 2023

Max

Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud