Central Desktop Upgrade Targets Project Managers

by OpenView

Continuing a string of upgrades that came as recent as this past June, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider Central Desktop announced today its latest set of improvements, adding professional project management tools to its namesake technology.

Key to the upgrade enhancements include: task management, Gantt scheduling charts and resource tracking tools most commonly used by project management professionals. The big benefit for Central Desktop users is that it is “…organically combined into a comprehensive offering versus bolting on features or simply providing a narrow, one-off solution,” the company said today.

By “organic,” the company means combining its growing suite of tools into one tool chest of services to enhance productivity of disparate groups by leveraging the power of their cloud-based services.

For instance, back in June Central Desktop revealed upgrades consisting of a set of social collaboration tools that included presence detection and team polling features to help quantify opinions in discussion threads. Combining these tools with the latest set of upgrades allows project managers to gain perspective on a project or decision task from participants throughout the enterprise.

eEye Releases New Version of Retina CS With Vulnerability Management for Mobile Devices

by OpenView

eEye Digital Security, the company that provides Security in Context, today released a new version of Retina CS, which dramatically reduces security risks in physical and mobile environments.

With this release, Retina CS is the first vulnerability management solution to provide mobile device assessment as part of its unified vulnerability management solution, decreasing mobile security risks and protecting against data theft.

Because security around mobile devices is generally not integrated into overall security and vulnerability management practices, organizations are open to network security breaches, data loss, intellectual property theft, and regulatory compliance issues. Retina CS allows organizations to identify mobile vulnerabilities within the context of all vulnerabilities, to prioritize and fix the highest risk issues first — all from a single, web-based console. Benefits include:

  • Complete visibility and context on all vulnerabilities — including those from mobile devices — to find and fix weaknesses from a central management console
  • Decreased mobile security risks through agent-less technology that extends vulnerability management capabilities to BlackBerry devices through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server
  • Efficient and effective mobile security management with built-in and custom scanning for weaknesses in mobile device hardware, applications, and configurations

In addition to vulnerability management for mobile devices, Retina CS 2.6 also brings several new features and enhancements that improve security risk remediation, reporting, and insight including:

  • Patching for Microsoft and Third-Party Applications: Simplify remediation with integrated patching for both Windows and third-party applications.
  • New Heat Maps with Exploit Data: Improve risk prioritization with exploit mappings from Core Impact, Metasploit, and Exploit DB provided in an easy-to-read Heat Map with one-click drilldown to details.
  • New Assets View: Improve efficiencies with access to detailed information across vulnerabilities, ports, services, users, malware and attacks in a single click.
  • Nested Smart Groups: Improve asset organization and optimize scanning with nested smart groups.
  • Scanner Pooling & Locking: Optimize performance and control by assigning scan jobs to pools of scanners and locking certain scanners to specific Smart Groups.

“This release of Retina CS brings many unique capabilities particularly around mobile security. As the consumerization of IT continues, mobile security is an increasingly serious IT security problem,” said Brad Hibbert, vice president of strategy at eEye Digital Security. “The visibility that Retina CS provides eliminates the ‘blind spots’ mobile devices can create to reduce security risks in both physical and mobile environments.”

Retina CS 2.6 with vulnerability management for mobile devices is available now. It is also included for free with Retina CS Community for up to 128 IPs, available for download now: http://www.eeye.com/CSCommunity.

Follow eEye Digital Security

Twitter: http://twitter.com/eEye
Blog: http://blog.eeye.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/companies/eEye-digital-security
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/eeyedigitalsecurity

About eEye

Since 1998, eEye Digital Security has made vulnerability and compliance management simpler and more efficient by providing the only unified solution that integrates assessment, mitigation, protection, and reporting into a complete offering with optional add-on modules for configuration compliance, regulatory reporting, and integrated patch management. eEye’s world-renowned research and development team is consistently the first to uncover critical vulnerabilities and build new protections into our solutions to prevent their exploit. Thousands of mid-to-large-size private-sector and government organizations, including the largest vulnerability management installations in the world, rely on eEye to protect against the latest known and zero-day vulnerabilities.

Contact Information

Justin Gillespie

Trainer Communications

Email Contact

(925) 271-8215

Exinda Receives a 2011 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award

by OpenView

Exinda announced today that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named its WAN Optimization Appliances with Unified Performance Management as a recipient of the 2011 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award presented by INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine.

With the Exinda Unified Performance Management (UPM) solution, all of the core capabilities needed to effectively manage a WAN are incorporated into a single network appliance. These tightly integrated capabilities include real-time monitoring, reporting, traffic control, optimization and intelligent acceleration. Users can toggle between a simplified or advanced interface and may also choose a centralized management platform for controlling multiple appliances across the network.

By dramatically simplifying WAN optimization, Exinda empowers organizations to improve application performance, lower network operating costs, defer costly bandwidth upgrades and increase productivity by reducing the time employees spend waiting for slow applications to respond.

“Exinda’s Unified Performance Management solutions are the only WAN optimization products on the market that deliver all aspects of WAN optimization in a single, fully-integrated appliance,” said Kevin Suitor, vice president of marketing at Exinda. “We are pleased to receive this recognition of our products’ outstanding capabilities.”

“Taking risks to advance IP Communications technology and provide real solutions has earned Exinda recognition from the editors of INTERNET TELEPHONY and an INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award. Exinda’s WAN Optimization appliances have excelled in delivering cutting edge solutions. Its customers are extremely pleased and have offered their testaments of support,” said Eric Linask, Group Editorial Director of INTERNET TELEPHONY.

“We are proud to present Exinda with a 2011 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award. Exinda WAN Optimization solutions have proven their outstanding contribution to IP communications and provided winning solutions for its customers,” stated RichTehrani, CEO, TMC.

The 2011 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Award winners are published in the October 2011 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine, http://www.itmag.com.

For more information, please visit http://www.tmcnet.com.

About Exinda(R)

Exinda is a proven global supplier of next generation WAN Optimization 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.

Angie's List, ExactTarget and Slingshot SEO Present Webinar on Discovering the Untapped Potential of Email + Search

by OpenView

Three of the top national companies in online marketing are hosting a free webinar to share insights and marketing strategies that have helped shape one of the country’s leading brands and powered them to the top of the Inc. 500 National Consumer Marketer list.

Angie’s List, one of the world’s largest recommendation engines for local contractors, service providers and doctors, is teaming up with Slingshot SEO, the company dedicated to providing digital relevance for deserving brands, to host the webinar with ExactTarget, the leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and interactive marketing solutions.

The webinar offers marketers a chance to get expert advice on combining email strategy and search engine optimization to:

  • Maximize the ROI of your email program
  • Reach new customers
  • Nurture leads through the sales process

The free webinar is Thursday, October 27 at 1 pm Eastern. Register here —http://bit.ly/emailandseo

About Angie’s List

Angie’s List collects consumer reviews on local contractors and doctors in more than 550 service categories. Currently, more than 2 million consumers across the U.S. and Canada rely on Angie’s List to help them make the best hiring decisions. Members get unlimited access to local ratings via Internet or phone, exclusive discounts, the Angie’s List magazine and help from the Angie’s List complaint resolution service.

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and interactive marketing solutions. The company’s Interactive Marketing Hub technology provides organizations a single solution to connect with customers via email, integrated text messaging, landing pages and social media. Supported by collaborative global services teams, ExactTarget’s technology integrates with more sales and marketing information systems than any other in the industry, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Omniture and Webtrends among many others. ExactTarget powers permission-based multichannel communications for thousands of organizations around the world including Expedia.com, Best Buy, Papa John’s, CareerBuilder.com, Gannett Co., Inc., The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, The Home Depot and Wellpoint, Inc. For more information, visit www.exacttarget.com.

About Slingshot SEO

Founded in 2006, Slingshot SEO provides professional SEO services to more than 150 clients across the country. The company’s results are driven by a tireless passion to make its enterprise client base more digitally relevant. In May 2011, Slingshot SEO was recognized as the “IT Company of the Year” at TechPoint’s Mira Awards, the premier technology awards program in the state of Indiana. For more information about Slingshot SEO and to read customer reviews, visithttp://www.slingshotseo.com.

Contact Information

Kate Snedeker

[email protected]

(888) 603-7337

Acronis Survey Confirms SMEs’ Need to Consolidate Disaster Recovery and Data Protection Strategies into a Single Solution Across Physical, Virtual and Cloud Environments

by OpenView

Acronis, a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, today announced the results of a survey of Australian businesses into their current and planned backup and recovery strategies.

The answers to the survey, conducted from the Acronis stand at the 2011 Microsoft Tech.Ed Australia conference in September, highlight the issues faced by companies of all sizes as they deal with operating securely and efficiently in ever more complex ICT environments.

Of the 800 companies represented in the survey, 69 percent currently have separate software solutions for disaster recovery and data protection within their IT infrastructure. However, more than half of the respondents revealed their wish for a single solution able to manage both.

Karl Sice, General Manager, Pacific at Acronis, said: “The survey gives us an excellent snapshot of the current situation in Australia. Our larger organisations, with dedicated ICT resources, are struggling with effective backup and recovery strategies and the issue is even more profound in smaller organisations with very limited resources.”

Enterprise size companies (which Acronis classifies as those companies with more than 100 servers) are significantly more likely to have one solution for backing up both virtual and physical machines (60 percent), against 52 percent of mid-range companies and 42 percent of smaller companies (those with fewer than 10 servers). The survey also revealed that 12 percent of small companies never back up their virtual machines. This is three times the rate of risk exposure of their larger counterparts.

The survey also revealed a definite shift to the potential benefits of cloud with more than 85 percent of respondents having either implemented or planning for cloud-based backup.

Another area which emphasises the differences between Australia’s large and small organisations was in the level of access to automated disaster recovery (DR) plans. These provide certainty and the discipline required to ensure minimum downtime in the event of a system failure. They also operate without being an overhead on IT resources. The survey confirmed that 47 percent of the larger companies are benefitting from using a DR solution with a built-in customised DR plan in place. By comparison, less than one-third of smaller organisations are supported by such functionality.

Sice said: “From reactions to our demonstrations at the conference, many IT professionals were delighted to find the answer to their problems with packages such as Acronis Backup & Recovery that provide a single solution across all platforms – whatever their mix of physical, virtual and cloud environments.”

About the Survey

1476 responses were received from 801 companies in the survey conducted from the Acronis stand at the 2011 Microsoft Tech.Ed Australia conference. End users represented 89 percent of respondents, with the remaining 11 percent from the reseller community.

The breakdown by server numbers was: 44.5 percent of the companies had more than 100 servers; followed by 37.9 percent with up to 100; and 17.6 percent with less than 10 servers.

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis’ disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com.au. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis.

 

VersionOne Delivers New Product Release

by OpenView

VersionOne, recognized by agile practitioners as the leader in agile management tools, today announced its Summer 2011 product release.

Building on the momentum of its Spring release which featured a streamlined UI, the company’s latest release continues to focus on improving the user experience. Release highlights include more configurable board views, enhancements to Analytics and new email notification capabilities for VersionOne’s collaboration feature Conversations.

The new release improves functionality in several of the most popular areas of the application. For instance, electronic board views are used daily by most team members, so VersionOne invested considerable effort in that area to provide flexible customization options better supporting the needs of teams. In addition, VersionOne evolved its social media-styled collaboration model to provide more engaging team communications. Each of these enhancements provides greater usability and efficiency helping organizations to better adopt and scale agile methods.

Key Highlights:

Customized board views (Kanban/Storyboards, Taskboards and Testboards)
o   Designed to support the way your team works
o   Expanded filters let you quickly control what you see and highlight
o   Configurable swim lanes let you group and manage stories the way you want – by priority, type or even custom attributes (for example Class of Service)
o   Colored visual cues convey richer information without having to open individual stories
Email Notifications for Conversations Keeps Everyone in the Loop
o   Automatically email story owners when conversations occur on their items
o   Receive notifications when people reply to conversation where you have posted
o   Receive notifications when you have been mentioned in a conversation
o   See other people and stories that have been mentioned in conversations
Easier Date-based Reporting
o   Multi-team, multi-project forecast and velocity for teams using differing sprint schedules

Fast Access to Analytic Grid Views

o   Create and save reusable views of your analytics grids
o   Access views created by other team members
The latest release also contains updated integrations for VersionOne’s free, openAgile Platform. The VersionOne application now includes support for the latest version of Atlassian JIRA 4.4, including additional logging controls, and the ability to create stories in VersionOne based on issues in JIRA. The release also includes support for the latest version on Eclipse 3.7. A full list of updated integrations is available in the detailed release notes.

Supporting Quote:

Robert Holler, President and CEO, VersionOne
“The positive response we’ve received to our new UI has been rewarding, and convinced us we’re on the right track. With that in mind, we’ve continued our focus on experiential improvements particularly within the most popular areas of the application. These improvements will make the user experience more enjoyable and efficient, while enhancing team communications and overall usability.”

Supporting Information:
•   Detailed Release Notes – Here
•   VersionOne Release Webinars – Register Here

About VersionOne

VersionOne is recognized by agile practitioners as the leader in agile project management tools. By simplifying the planning and tracking of agile projects, we help teams deliver better software faster. Since 2002, companies such as Adobe, Boeing, bwin, Intuit, Lilly, Lockheed Martin, McKesson, Oppenheimer, Qualcomm, Sabre and Siemens have turned to VersionOne. Today more than 30,000 teams from over 170 countries use VersionOne. Agile Made Easier @ VersionOne.com.

Additional Resources:

•   Learn more about VersionOne
•   VersionOne’s suite of agile project and lifecycle management tools helps companies scale agile faster, easier and smarter: http://www.versionone.com/Product/
•   Learn more about VersionOne’s Ultimate Edition – a comprehensive agile lifecycle management platform for scaling agile organizations
•   Agile Sherpa serves newcomers, practitioners, trainers, consultants, event planners and more:http://agilesherpa.org/
For regular VersionOne and agile news follow us on Twitter and Facebook, as well as our blogs.

Media Contact:

Crystal Macaulay
[email protected]
781.871.8860

Firms want to consolidate data recovery

by OpenView

Two-thirds of companies have separated software for data recovery and software protection, despite a desire for the two to be combined.

Acronis said that the poll of 800 Australian companies highlights the complex issues faced by firms of all sizes around the world as they try to deal securely and efficiently with increasingly complex IT.

It found that 69 per cent have separate software solutions for data recovery and data protection within their IT infrastructure, while more than half wanted a single solution for both.

Worryingly, 12 per cent of small companies never back up their virtual machines, the study also revealed.

“The survey gives us an excellent snapshot … our larger organizations, with dedicated ICT resources, are struggling with effective backup and recovery strategies and the issue is even more profound in smaller organizations with very limited resources,” said Karl Sice, general manager, Pacific at Acronis.

Research by Newtek Business Services found that only 27 per cent of small businesses have prepared against attack by having their systems tested by a third party.

Looking for data recovery specialist? Kroll Ontrack has over 50,000 successful data recovery stories to tell every year.

Small Local Business Gains a Large Voice

by OpenView

As President of Medical Billing Services & Solutions, Bob Nichols has been awarded the honor of serving on the Kareo National Advisory Board.

One of fifteen members selected nationally to provide feedback and improvements to one of the highest rated medical billing software companies in the United States, Nichols has been recognized for his 20 years of expertise, knowledge, and success as an owner of a medical billing company.

Upon the opening of his second successful medical billing company in March 2010, Nichols started using Kareo, the web-based practice management and medical billing software, due to the rapidly changing environment of the medical billing industry. Studying daily to keep up with industry changes and to continue as an expert in his field, the Kareo client relationship naturally evolved into a partnership as well. This relationship now consists of a monthly conference call with company figureheads and approximately 15 other appointed board members to discuss system feedback, improvements, and billing issues and trends. Kareo has also made Nichols a spokesperson for the rapidly growing company by featuring his video testimonial on the Kareo YouTube channel which can be seen at http://www.billingandehr.com on the homepage. With medical practices facing upcoming government regulations such as the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR), Nichols also lends advice and updates to medical practitioners through his company’s website and blog located athttp://www.billingandehr.blogspot.com.

Re-opened in 2010 in Chesapeake, Virginia, Medical Billing Services & Solutions offers full service medical billing and EHR consultation to medical practices throughout the Hampton Roads region. For more information on this company and the medical billing industry visit http://www.billingandehr.com or call 757-842-4500.