Lexmark has new ownership

We just had notification that Lexmark has entered a definitive merger agreement to be acquired by a consortium of investors.  According to the press release and our representative at Lexmark we should see and change in services or availability of product and that this merger will help to provide a larger base of cash to continue to grow from.

Supporting Quotes

“This is an exciting transaction that Lexmark’s Board of Directors believes is in the best interests of our shareholders following an exhaustive strategic alternatives review process to maximize value,” said Paul Rooke, Lexmark chairman and chief executive officer. “The transaction will benefit our customers and provide new opportunities for
our employees. 

“As part of the Consortium, Lexmark will be able to reach the next level of growth and innovation, to the benefit of our customers, business partners and suppliers, faster than we could achieve on our own,” added Rooke. “With the Consortium’s resources, we will be able to continue to invest in and grow the business to more fully penetrate the Asia
Pacific market for hardware, software and managed print services.”

Jean-Paul Montupet, lead director of the Lexmark Board of Directors, said, “This transaction represents the culmination of an extensive review process by the Board of Directors and the next step in Lexmark’s growth and transformation. We anticipate that the transaction will cause no disruption to our operations or our ongoing cost-savings
initiatives, and will only strengthen the business.”

“Lexmark is a recognized global leader in printing technology and enterprise software, with a proven track record of performance, a consistent annuity-based business model and a talented workforce,” said Weijian Shan, group chairman and CEO of PAG. “We look forward to working with Lexmark’s management team and focusing on expanding
the business in the Asia Pacific region.”

“Lexmark’s passion for excellence and unwavering commitments to customers, employees and communities represent a tremendous cultural fit,” said Jackson Wang, Apex Technology chairman. “We are excited to work alongside Lexmark as it continues  to invest in advanced technologies and solutions to best serve its customers and business partners while simultaneously pursuing additional untapped opportunities for future growth.” 

Savings in the Cloud: How the Cloud Cuts Costs

Local IT infrastructure and the employees needed for maintenance, troubleshooting and general repair are a costly investment. However, the advancement of cloud technology has made localized infrastructure obsolete. While some businesses are skeptical, others have embraced cloud computing and reduced their operating costs in the following areas:

Hardware

Localized IT infrastructure is an expensive investment. On top of the initial costs of the hardware, most companies don’t use the majority of their hardware, which wastes space and money. A lot of IT infrastructure is more complex than most businesses need, so they end up paying for capabilities and functionalities they’ll never use.

Alternatively, cloud computing services utilize the hardware they have because multiple companies, businesses, firms and individuals use different aspects of their hardware. Cloud service companies pack huge amounts of hardware into secure data centers, so when a company pays for their service, they are technically renting the hardware the cloud provider owns. Cloud providers make the initial investments in hardware and IT support, so businesses have more time to complete other tasks and focus on the products and services they specialize in.

Capital

In addition to most companies not needing all the functions of local hardware, many cannot afford the upfront costs of purchasing the local servers. Even though they may recoup the costs over time, the initial investment may be too much for startups and small businesses to pay. However, cloud computing enables businesses to forego this equipment and let specialized cloud companies invest in it instead. By not having to come up with the capital when starting their organization, businesses can put that money into production, marketing, advertising or other areas that may need it more.

Power

Businesses are not turning the cloud on and off like they would with their computers or overhead lights to save energy. One of the byproducts of the cloud is that it uses less energy than localized servers because it uses more efficient hardware. Since cloud service providers run hardware at its maximum capacity, they pass the savings onto businesses who subscribe to their services. As a bonus to cutting down on the cost of the power bill, the cloud is a greener option for the environment.

Labor

Any company that uses localized servers should have a dedicated IT department that can troubleshoot and support the business’ employees in-house. However, many cloud services provide full IT support, which eliminates the need for in-house IT employees. Outsourcing IT support can cut costs for businesses using servers without cloud support, but this is not the only affordable option. Many cloud services can provide IT support for their servers as well as support for internal IT departments. This enables businesses to grow their company and maximize their profits, rather than wasting time, energy and resources on IT maintenance.

Environment

Although the environment is a less tangible type of savings, it can make a big different for organizations and their customers. People want to work with and buy from environmentally friendly companies, and corporate responsibility is becoming more popular. In addition to public perception, cloud computing reduces the amount of energy used and the amount of carbon dioxide emitted. Cloud data centers are doing more to decrease their carbon footprint, which means their business partners are reducing their environmental impact as well.

Kyle Peterson    March 28, 2016

Article Healthcare InfoSecurity questions why we are so stupid!

These tricksters are getting better and better at finding ways to bilk us out of our hard earned cash. Here is an article posted at HealthcareInfoSecurity Blog that asks: Why Are We So Stupid About Security?

And we really are at times, letting our greed and hopes for easy or quick returns to egg us on. The new FBI Alert states that businesses have lost over $2.3 billion in the last 2.5 years. The article above gives some examples of what to look for and some of the security that you need to consider with your transactioins.

Surface Book-OneNote-Handwriting-Text

I have been continuing to work with my Surface Book and finding new things that I can do with the pen or other applications in Windows 10 that are really quite amazing. I have been working between the OneNote App and the Desktop OneNote Program to see what the differences are and how to work around some of the limitations I have found in the OneNote App. If you take a quick look at it you don’t have anywhere near the options but the big ot ne that I see missing is the ability to transform handwriting to text. This is something that the OneNote Desktop Program does very well and is missing from the App. Not a problem though. If after you have done all your handwriting in the OneNote App when you are at a meeting or seminar or wherever, all you need to do is jump to the desktop program and go to the draw tab while on the page with you handwritten text and choose the function to Ink to Text. It works like a champ

Meet Root: The Robot that Brings Coding to Life

Here is a very interesting program presented by Harvard’s Wyss Institute that is providing a robot that can be controlled via a app and travels on a school’s whiteboard, making drawings primarily but it is being controlled on several different levels of programming platforms. This is an interesting video discussing this new concept.

Safe Browsing Site Status – Transparency Report – Google

So what is this all about? Is it a hoax? Is it a disclaimer? I don’t know but it just goes to prove that it isn’t 100% safe anywhere on the Web.

Safe Browsing Site Status

Google’s Safe Browsing technology examines billions of URLs per day looking for unsafe websites. Every day, we discover thousands of new unsafe sites, many of which are legitimate websites that have been compromised. When we detect unsafe sites, we show warnings on Google Search and in web browsers. You can search to see whether a website is currently dangerous to visit

Podcasts are now available through Google Play Music

This is not going to be anything that I am accessing soon, their library is something to be desired. No place to go but up, right? I’m still using my BEYONDPOD APP to access my favorites and that still seems to be working pretty well. So I won’t be leaving that anytime soon. Of course you have to pretty much program where you want to take things from (the RSS Feed) to be able to get the items that you care about. Apple still seems the king of the hill with their management of Podcast access through iTunes (GAG!).

But this is why in the Android world we have so many apps that we can use to gather our content into. A wide open world with no restrictions. I like it. Hopefully Google were work on this and make it a better experience soon.

By the way… Google Play Music Podcasts are only available in the US and Canada. I am sure that will be changing as well soon.

Microsoft's OneDrive for business is expecting a facelift in the next few months

RCP Magazine posted on their Blog an article discussing the recent announcements by Microsoft for upgrades to their Microsoft OneDrive for Business Product. While many of the enhancements revolve around better synching with pc’s and mobile devices there are a few other things that might interest you as well. Take a moment and see what they posted.

Podcasts coming to Google Play

It's about time. One of the keystones to Apple’s iTunes has been its access to the huge reservoir of independent information sources known as podcasts. For many of us ensconced in the tech industry this has been our method of gathering both technical and current newscasts of up and coming industry products and services. There is a wide range of subjects to draw upon that are both audio only and video content.

Hopefully Google’s access to this vast library of information will catch up quickly to what Apple offers. I will be watching closely to see where there goes.

It's about time. One of the keystones to Apple’s iTunes has been its access to the huge reservoir of independent information sources known as podcasts. For many of us ensconced in the tech industry this has been our method of gathering both technical and current newscasts of up and coming industry products and services. There is a wide range of subjects to draw upon that are both audio only and video content.

Hopefully Google’s access to this vast library of information will catch up quickly to what Apple offers. I will be watching closely to see where there goes.

Amazon is unbundling Prime Video for $8.99 per month`

I guess Amazon figures our New Math can't make sense of this. Let me see... $99/year for prime and $8.99 per month for Prime Video $119.88/year. That's my math and you lose all of the other services associated with the Prime Membership. Hmmm....

Compare that service to Hulu, $7.99 and NetFlix $7.99 and what are they thinking? I really don't fine Prime Video as that great of a source of video options so I think they really missed the mark on this one.

They are also going to offer the full Prime Services as a monthly option for $10.99 per month. That comes to $131.88 per year. That's $42.88 extra over paying it annually. That's a pretty big premium! But I understand budgets are tight and this may allow you to afford the service when you can't afford the annual fee. However, that is a pretty big premium.

Apple Confirms that QuickTime for Windows is at End of Life

As with all End of Life products that means that there will be no more updates to the software. The main concern is that there will not be any more security updates and this piece of software can become a big hole in the security of your system. So you will need to consider alternatives to QuickTime if you haven't already. For most of us using a Windows System this is not a big deal since we don't really care about the Apple Centric World, we like the availability of choice and that is exactly what you have. Most everything that is being produced today will run on media player or groove, and if you want to get more sophisticated there are plenty of programs to choose from. So don't worry, no big deal!

However, even the government is getting in on suggesting that you uninstall QuickTime after two bugs were found in the current version that could be exploited. See article.

Should you pay to get your data back after a Ransomware Attack?

Here is an interesting discussion about whether it is ever ok to pay of the Ransomware Hackers. The discussion revolves around whether it is just an incentive to be attacked again. With all the recent news about Medical and Financial Institutions being attacked this is something that you may want to consider or prepare for.

Badlock Revealed - by Naked Security

Beware and patch often is what Sophos has recently stated in their Naked Security Blog. There was a lot of hype out on this one but it if you just install the recent patch updates by Microsoft and SAMBA you should be fine. Here is there article.

Netherlands under attack!

Websites in the Netherlands are under attack with MalWare Advertising exploits. Naked Security article discussing how these attacks are being pulled off and what to look for.

Microsoft OneDrive storage decreases in July 2016

The free storage tier used to be one of the largest in the industry at 15GB absolutely free. In 2015 Microsoft announced that they were going to lower their free offering back to 5GB's and gave user the chance to claim the 15GB's by acknowledging that they want it. If you have not made that effort to claim the extra storage you will need to make sure you are not using more than 5GB’s because you will lose anything above that if you don’t pay their $1.99/month fee for the next step up of 50GB’s.

The smaller space will be for all new users so if you don’t have an account yet, all new users will get 5GB’s for free. Microsoft is in the middle of the pack of other options from competitive companies. Of course if you have made the move over to Office 365 the amount of storage you will have starts at 1TB for personal space. This for most people is more than adequate for most users. Let us know your thoughts about these changes.

Intel's SSD Drive Pricing bringing them into the mainstream

We have noticed great pricing on Intel's SSD hard drives making them a great alternative over the older spinning plate designs of the past years. Why do you want to jump to this technology? Speed! Once you have jumped to SSD technology you will never go back. I currently boot into my systems in less than 30 seconds and that includes my login. If you don’t need extra storage than you will probably be able to get by with a 250GB drive. This is a great size for office workers that are attached to network servers that are storing all their information up to the server and have no need for great amounts of local storage.

If you need more, than go with either a 500GB or 1TB. They too are very reasonable but are more of a premium than their spinning platter counterparts. Be sure when you are getting a quote for your new workstation that you ask for a comparable price for a SSD upgrade on your new system. Believe me when I say that it will bring a big smile to your face.

Ingram Micro Cloud Summit (Part II)

The Ingram Micro Cloud Summit used both general meeting sessions and breakout sessions to get its enormous amount of content out to us. While much of the general sessions material discussed the "Why the Cloud", I think that most of us that were there did not need to be convinced that the trend for most software manufacturers is for them to learn how they can leverage "The Cloud" advantageously with their products.

One of the major categories of software/services that I saw here was for offsite storage. From the fire sharing applications like OneDrive and SharePoint from Microsoft and DropBox to Backup and Disaster Recovery from Acronis, Veritas and Azure. There are a lot of options to enhance how you work and how you protect your office's data.

Ingram Micro Cloud MarketPlace is looking to add more and more vertical applications to its portfolio of products as well and providing bundles to make it easier to manage and supply services that these vertical markets can take advantage of. One of the first vertical markets that IMCM is working on is the legal profession. Some of these applications include: Office 365 E3 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and more), Law Toolbox (Matter Time Management), RPOST (Encrypting), Rmail, Trend (Virus Protection), Dropbox for Business (secure file synchronization and file sharing), and Acronis (Backup and Disaster Recovery).

While many of the products in the Cloud MarketPlace are considered to be horizontal in nature, covering a wide variety of business types and needs, having a distinct set of applications that fit together well for a specific industry helps to us to bring our customers a good offering to choose from for their business processes.

Ingram Micro Cloud Summit (Part I)

This past week I was lucky enough to attend the Ingram Micro Cloud Summit that was held at the JW Marriott in Phoenix Arizona. It was a three day event that covered many new products and services that are or will be shortly available for our customers. While Microsoft's cloud offerings were a main focus, new product lines that enhance Office's capabilities were also shown. In the sales area, Dun & Bradstreet is offering a service for $25/ month that provides access to their large company databases to enhance your sales contact collection as well as gathering financial ratings about your current or prospective clients. They charge you $0.75 per returned record that is changed against the $25 retainer that is charged each month. You can purchase larger amounts is your search needs are greater but they must be purchased in $25 increments. Their app uses Excel as its reporting medium and has seven different functions to choose from.

HPE announced some interesting new server offerings on WednesdayWednesday that could be very interesting. They are bringing several network functions together in a single box, including: Server, Firewall, Switch, Antivirus and more. Their intent is to bring this product to market as a HaaS (Hardware as a Service). While we are waiting for more information on this in the next couple of months I will be sure to give you more detail then.

 The Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace (IMCM) also announced that Azure directory services were being made available and Microsoft announced 'Project Madeira' during u very interesting demo. 

Microsoft's "Project Madeira," a new, cloud-based business application that's built on the company's Dynamics NAV platform, is now available as a public preview for U.S. organizations.

Expected to become generally available in the second half of 2016, Madeira is described by Microsoft as a multitenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that runs out of the Azure public cloud.

Madeira integrates tightly with Office 365. One benefit of that is users performing business functions can reduce the time it takes them to jump back and forth from Office applications. For instance, Madeira "automatically identifies business context such as invoices and quote requests within Outlook, and presents the user with the tools and data needed to take immediate action -- all without leaving Outlook," wrote Perisic.

In fact, Project Madeira features are accessed primarily through Microsoft Outlook.To try out a preview of this product you can sign up for the preview here. 

there is so much more that I can talk about thisconference that I will try to let you know about in the next few days. See you soon!

Microsoft Vista Support ending in less than a year

The extended support time frame for Windows Vista will expire one year from this week on 11 April 2017. That will mark the end of 10 years of total support for the operating system. Vista never really had a following but it did achieve 19% adoption at one time until Windows 7 came along.

There are still about 25 million computers running Vista still even though it has less than 2% adoption today. So what options do have? You can purchase a new computer or you can try to find an upgrade option to Windows 7. Looking at Amazon there are several options for around $75. However, I would suggest that you replace the hardware with a new system instead of upgrading just the operating system.

If you decide to take the software upgrade route, run Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to make sure all of your hardware and software are compatible. Based on my experience Windows 7 ran very well on Vista era hardware and should be OK on many of those systems.

You should also consider the amount RAM in you system as well. Windows 7 will run on 4GB’s of RAM but does a much better job with 8GB’s.

While holding onto older hardware and upgrading to modern versions of Windows are not upgrades that are full of performance increases – it will at least get you onto an OS that has more support left than Windows Vista itself.

In today’s security landscape it is extremely important to be actively protected from security threats.

Bottom Line: The best option to choose that will result in the best performance for the money that you are spending is to purchase a new device to upgrade from Windows Vista. You will not only get current and better performing hardware but you will also be on a more modern operating system that is ready to handle the security threats that are out there.

If you are using Office 365 you may be interested in these monthly video updates for Microsoft

Microsoft is posting on YouTube a video monthly recap of their updates from their blogs. Here is the link.