Zmags, the leading provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, announced that Kenneth Cole has chosen Zmags CommercePro to create integrated Web, mobile/tablet and Facebook-commerce brand experiences that drive product discovery and inspire purchase.

Just in time for the holidays, Kenneth Cole’s first commerce-enabled catalog launched in November, providing a dynamic and engaging experience to help its customers discover and buy the perfect gift.

Zmags CommercePro integrates commerce transaction capability directly into the digital catalog environment, enabling retailers and brands to monetize online, mobile and social merchandising consistently across tablets, websites, smartphones and social networks.

The platform has driven as much as a 500 percent increase in page views, 100 percent increase in conversions, and more than 40 percent lift in order sizes for retailers worldwide.

Supporting Quotes:

“With Zmags, we have created tablet- and social-friendly content that makes browsing our lines more inspiring and buying the perfect gift much easier,” said Robert Genovese, vice president of media/marketing, Kenneth Cole.”

“The Kenneth Cole customer is always seeking inspiration and new looks. And this holiday season, our investment in Zmags will entice customers shopping with us using their tablet or via our Facebook page.”

“Innovative and forward-thinking retailers like Kenneth Cole appreciate that tablet commerce is a significant and growing revenue driver for their business,” said W. Sean Ford, COO and CMO of Zmags. “CommercePro by Zmags helps Kenneth Cole extend their unique brand experience to their customers in a dynamic, seamless and engaging way whether they shop via tablet, website, smartphone or Facebook.”

Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc. designs, sources, and markets a broad range of footwear, handbags, apparel and accessories under the brand names Kenneth Cole New York; Kenneth Cole Reaction; Unlisted, Le Tigre, as well as footwear under the proprietary trademark Gentle Souls.

Zmags helps thousands of the world’s most progressive retailers and brands drive product discovery and inspire purchase by creating a deeply immersive and compelling consumer shopping experience across all digital touchpoints.

Using the Zmags on-demand rich media merchandising platform, businesses measurably and dramatically increase customer engagement, conversion rates, order size and brand loyalty.

Exinda, a global provider of next generation WAN optimization solutions incorporating Unified Performance Management, today announced that York Data Services (YDS) has deployed its 6760 Series WAN Optimization Appliance to shape Internet traffic to customers, prioritize applications on its network, and troubleshoot network issues.

York Data Services is a premier provider of business Internet services throughout Yorkshire, England, and the company wanted to shape traffic among its customers, prioritize applications like VoIP, and improve its agility in troubleshooting and resolving network problems. The Exinda WAN Optimization appliance gives the YDS team unprecedented control over network services and visibility into network issues.

“With the Exinda appliance we can easily prioritize traffic by application type to optimize bandwidth in the network,” said Alastair Taylor, network manager at York Data Services. “We can also use the appliance to quickly spot and resolve performance issues related to applications using too much bandwidth.”

Exclusive Networks of South Yorkshire supplied the Exinda appliance for YDS. With the control enabled by the Exinda appliance, YDS is able to offer high quality managed services such as VoIP and to ensure that its customers obtain the highest performance from their network services.

About Exinda®

Exinda is a proven global supplier of next generation WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,500 organizations in over 80 countries worldwide improve the end user experience, manage application performance, manage congestion over the WAN and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

Thought-leadership content is key to thriving in the blogosphere. It is vital that companies combine new and traditional public relations practices with both local and national media in their media outreach, leading regional PR executives said.

Ty Kiisel of AtTask and Heather Erickson of Ancestry.com, two of Utah’s most progressive technology companies, shared their expertise, tips and newest secrets with attendees at the Utah Technology Council’s (UTC) (http://www.utahtech.org) Annual PR Event.

Kiisel discussed the benefits and importance of a company providing valuable, information-rich content through thought leadership via a company blog.

“Don’t push your products on your blog,” said Kiisel, manager of social outreach at AtTask. “The best way to utilize your company’s blog is to become a key influencer in your space and provide valuable information to people that are seeking it. This is the best way to utilize your blog to your organization’s advantage.”

Kiisel also discussed the goals set for their company blog and how they’ve been able to achieve them.

“We set a goal to become a key influencer in the project management space,” said Kiisel. “We did this by carefully studying the space for an entire quarter. Doing this enabled us to have a strong knowledge of the industry blogs and quickly rise to the top in project management. The influence gleaned by our organization through its blog is invaluable across all parts of our business. The main measurement of success: In the project management industry, everyone knows who we are. This influence is the most important metric.”

Kiisel issued a warning that effective blogging is a challenge and said, “Keep in mind that patience and perseverance are the most important elements in building a solid company blog.”

Erickson discussed the importance of using media outreach to achieve the company’s corporate goals, particularly in its growth strategy. Ancestry.com set a goal to become better known in Utah so it could recruit more local talent.

“We faced an unusual challenge,” said Erickson, director of corporate communications for Ancestry.com. “Though many in Utah may know of our company, we wanted to ensure that they knew we were headquartered here in order to help with recruiting local talent for jobs available in the state. To do this, we needed to increase our media outreach in Utah as some of the most qualified talent for us is right in our backyard.”

She discussed how strategically increasing local outreach helped Ancestry.com achieve more visibility in the state and ultimately raise the awareness about jobs available in the area.

“In conjunction with our strong national media relations program, our local media outreach helped increase the number of Utah job applications we received,” said Erickson. “By utilizing all forms of local media and becoming a contributor to several local media outlets our efforts have truly paid off.

Both parties agreed that building a strong national and local message is key to achieving success in the 21st century.

Mark Fredrickson, APR and director of corporate communications for TechMediaNetwork and co-chair of the UTC Communications Committee, moderated the event.

“What these companies have done and are doing in terms of media outreach and overall message is phenomenal,” said Fredrickson. “All of us can take cues from these two Utah-based organizations on how to make our company’s presence better known among both local and national media outlets and mediums.”

For more information on the UTC, including future events, and to become a member, please visit www.utahtech.org or call (801) 568-3500.

The challenge

Ryerson University is located in downtown Toronto and offers close to 100 PhD, master’s, and undergraduate programs, with a total enrolment of 25,000 and more than 65,000 registrations annually in The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education.

A key priority for Ryerson is to provide fast and reliable access to network applications, which range from a public-facing web site to critical applications such as student registration and learning management. With students, faculty, and staff all vying for the same pool of bandwidth on the network (including as many as 5,000 wireless users at any given time), Ryerson needed a way to prioritize and optimize traffic.

Until 2011, the university had been using a packet-shaping appliance to prioritize traffic. However, when it upgraded its network bandwidth from 600Mbps to 1Gbps, the technical staff found that the appliance couldn’t prioritize traffic at more than 600Mbps.

“We were going up to a gigabit of traffic and we felt we would be expanding that pipe further in the coming years, so we needed a solution that could scale up,” Ken Woo, assistant director for communications services at the university, said.

“We bought additional bandwidth, but we had no way to prioritize the traffic or see what kind of traffic was coming into the university. And the additional bandwidth didn’t help, because as you added bandwidth, applications like BitTorrent would just use it up. We needed to be able to prioritize traffic going to core applications.”

Another challenge was the lack of strong reporting capabilities from the old packet-shaping product. “There was no charting we could show to upper management,” Woo said.

The solution

When Exinda announced a product that could break the 5Gb bandwidth barrier, Woo and his team immediately trialed an Exinda 8000 series WAN Optimization Appliance from Exinda partner EdgeWorx of Markham, Ontario. “We deployed it in line in our internet connection and put it in transparent mode, and we could immediately see all of our traffic and begin to prioritize it,” Woo said.

One obvious issue was that P2P traffic was using 200Mbps of bandwidth alone, crowding out more important applications. Using the 8000 Series’ policy management system, Woo set a policy that limited P2P traffic and within a minute, the P2P applications went from using 200 Mbps to using 30 Mbps. “I was impressed,” he said.

From there, it was simply a matter of prioritizing other applications on the network. “Typically we prioritize our learning management system, web services to the outside world, student registration system and e-mail get the highest priority, plus any VoIP and video conferencing,” Woo said.

“Other traffic that may be going to other parts of the campus is in the second tier of priority, and then P2P traffic is the bottom.”

Significantly, the 8000 Series allows policies that enable flexible bandwidth use. For example, P2P traffic is allowed to scale up to 50% of available bandwidth as long as no higher-priority applications need it.

Another improvement has been in reporting. “We now have a dashboard that shows us more and better information than we’ve ever gotten before, and we can easily produce reports for management that make sense to them,” Woo said.

Since deploying the 8000 series appliance, Ryerson has upgraded to the newest 10000 series model, and with its ability to manage 10Gbps of traffic, this will take care of the university’s needs for years into the future. In addition to traffic visibility, prioritization and reporting features of the new appliance, Woo is considering using the built-in cache to handle video and software updates. “We can relieve a lot of load on our servers by caching video and software updates,” he said.

In all, the Exinda appliance has given Ryerson University a way to see, prioritize, and report on bandwidth consumption throughout its network, making the most of available capacity while pleasing its many users.

About the vendor:

 Exinda is a global supplier of WAN optimisation and application acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,000 organizations in over 80 countries worldwide improve the end-user experience, manage application performance, manage congestion over the WAN and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

Acronis has entered into a new distribution relationship with Avnet Technology Solutions to provide protection for businesses threatened by potential technology disasters in Thailand and Vietnam.

Under the new alliance, Avnet will sell, market and support Acronis’ suite of disaster recovery and data protection solutions to resellers and managed service providers (MSPs) throughout Thailand and Vietnam.

William Chu, President, Avnet Technology Solutions, Asia Pacific said, “Disaster recovery and data protection solutions present a tremendous revenue opportunity for value-added resellers, especially in the mid market. With Acronis solutions, we will provide channel partners with the technology and resources they need to successfully address this market opportunity and help them build competitively differentiating business practices that help organisations of all sizes simplify and automate backup and disaster recovery processes, including the ability to manage geographically distributed PCs, workstations and servers. Furthermore, partners can rely on Avnet’s proven expertise through its technology solutions practices, which will help partners gain a deeper understanding of how Acronis solutions can solve customers’ business challenges.”

Bill Taylor-Mountford, President, Acronis APAC said, “We are pleased to be able to work with Avnet. With their established channel network and advanced marketing programs, we believe we will be able to extend our footprint extensively in the Indochina region and expand our suite of disaster recovery and data protection solutions throughout Thailand and Vietnam.”

Despite the lower costs and increased availability of bandwidth in South Africa, network managers are still engaged in a continuous struggle to ensure business applications perform optimally, enabling users to maximise their productivity. Unfortunately, measuring network performance is all too often relegated to connectivity issues, says Alan Rehbock, Sales Director, sub-Saharan Africa, Exinda.

 

The reason for this could be that network managers are rewarded according to the uptime of their networks, not the actual performance. The result is managers monitor their connectivity and can easily see when they reach or regularly breach the 80% threshold of their available capacity. When this happens, the normal response is to simply buy more bandwidth.

However, while adding more bandwidth may seem to solve the problem, it is only a temporary solution, as bandwidth usage always increases to consume the amount available.

Bandwidth availability is not the primary cause of poor network performance. Performance problems are often the result of a lack of visibility into the application layer of the network, or layer 7 for the more technically inclined.

Unfortunately, while network managers focus on ensuring their networks are connected and operational, they can neglect the real issues affecting the performance of applications at the user interface. In other words, they fail to gain insight into exactly what is hampering the performance of business applications.

When network managers do manage to gain insight into their networks at the application layer by in-depth examination of the traffic in transit over their networks, they usually find their performance issues are not related to bandwidth. The problem is usually unauthorised applications hogging corporate bandwidth as some users take advantage of what they view as “free bandwidth”.

Port 80, for example, is left open in all networks for Internet data transmission. Companies may assume this will be used for loading legitimate Web pages; but by leaving it open, they automatically also allow Skype conversations, the downloading of torrent data through which most movies and audio piracy occurs, and live streaming of videos from YouTube and other sites.

If a company fails to gain visibility over the application layer, it will not be able to properly manage this unauthorised usage of network resources. The result is corporate bandwidth vanishes and the performance of business applications declines.

In-depth visibility not only delivers insight into data to determine what applications are being used, but also allows management to set and manage service-level agreements (SLAs) on a departmental or even a per-user level. In other words, each user can be guaranteed a specific level of network performance to ensure they have optimal access to the relevant business applications by automatically reducing the priority of, or even ban the use of unauthorised applications.

Effective application visibility enables efficient management that ensures networks perform optimally. The result is more productive users, better performing business applications, and, in some cases, can even result in lower bandwidth costs.

Exinda Exinda is a proven global supplier of WAN optimisation and application acceleration products. The company has helped over 2 000 organisations in over 80 countries worldwide improve the end-user experience, manage application performance, manage congestion over the WAN, and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

Editorial contacts Exinda Alan Rehbock Sales Director, sub-Saharan Africa (+27) 11 655 7390 [email protected]