Brief Review of Cloud Trends in 2016 and Beyond

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Cloud trends include1:

  • Options – Switching Public Cloud platforms and Private Cloud compliance
  • Familiarity – Greater understanding leads to refinement in selections
  • Growth – Cloud tends to be the primary engine for IT growth
  • Benefits – Reduction in costs leads all other benefits

Options

Approximately 43% of companies using Public Cloud services that were surveyed in CompTIA’s Trends in Cloud Computing2 switched to a different Public Cloud platform (i.e.: from Google G Suite to Microsoft Office 365). Of these, 46% noted that this secondary migration was more difficult than the initial migration to the Cloud.

The top Public Cloud implementations – email, web presence, and business productivity suites – were used by 51%, 46%, and 45% of the survey respondents, respectively.

Familiarity

Most Cloud-using organizations have a one-to-five year history with Cloud services; they have been through the process before, which simplifies the selection and procurement of new options.

Cloud options, Public, Private, and Hybrid, also are better understood, leading to greater refinement in the cloud-selection process. However, Private Cloud is likely the least-understood option, often being used to refer to a hosted datacenter solution, which is becoming the norm.

Growth

The Gartner Group forecast Cloud revenues of $204B in 2016, a 16.5% growth over 2015.3 Gartner’s 2017 forecast is continued, double-digit growth of 17.3%.

Benefits

Of the CompTIA respondents, over 40% of all organization types – large, medium, and small – cite “Ability to cut costs” as the primary motivation in Cloud computing. Small and medium organizations were also likely to emphasize “Reduce capital expenditures” as a primary motivator.

1Please see ClikCloud Technology Trends for 2017.

2See CompTIA Trends in Cloud Computing from September 2016.

3Visit Gartner Group Gartner says Worldwide Public Cloud Services Market Forecast to reach $204B in 2016 from January 25, 2016.

Disruptive Tech Trends for 2017

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So, another year departs, obsoleting old technology while ushering in new gadgets and trends. Even though gadgets get the attention; trends set the direction.

A survey of 196 IT professionals1 revealed these disruptive trends in technology2:

  • Predictive IT and Self-service IT
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Mobile payments
  • Next-gen WiFi

Predictive IT and Self-service IT

In the IT-support world, things have been transitioning from:

  • Reactive – Your PC’s drive is broken; we are going to fix it now, to
  • Proactive – Based on our remote tooling, it looks like the drive in your PC is starting to fail, which we can replace now before serious damage occurs, to
  • Predictive – Based on historic data of similar drives and on our ongoing analysis of the specific drive in your PC and its expected, long-term behavior, we are going to replace the drive now before it exhibits failing tendencies.

Predictive IT reduces the effort and improves the response of an IT-support team; it allows the team to focus on critical issues, while optimizing the time spent on predictive issues.

The ease of deploying consumer-grade technologies and lower-level Cloud services, combined with service-management platforms with knowledge-based response capabilities (like ConnectWise, a leading Professional Service Administration tool used by Bryley Systems), is leading end-users toward self-service IT.

Self-service IT enables both IT-support teams (by redirecting their time spent on end-user issues toward higher-level IT concerns, like security) and end-users, providing a world where the end-user can support themselves (to some extent).

Internet of Things

IoT is here, and it can be hacked: One of the most-hacked, in-home appliances are Samsung TVs, but a recent, Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack on DNS providers3 was perpetrated primarily through unsecured, IoT-based surveillance cameras.

IoT refers to all of the IT-enabled items, both home-based and commercial, that communicate through the Internet, primarily providing end-user access and/or sending data back to a collection point for analysis.

IoT traffic and security are significant concerns: All of those not-so-smart devices (projected at 20B by 2020) constantly sending data can consume bandwidth, while presenting themselves as easy targets to hackers and crackers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Remember HAL? (No, I’m not referring to Bryan Cranston of Malcolm in the Middle.) Back in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a fairly accurate portrayal of space travel; the HAL 9000’s cognitive ability and self-preservation-at-all-costs behavior seemed extreme, but may become necessary since AI has been bent to the will of hackers, teaming repetitive acts with mindful observation to attack secure sites.

AI forms the basis of Big Data, IoT, and Predictive IT; although disruptive, it will likely remain safe for human beings, with the ability to secure itself (somewhat).

Mobile Payments

Being a cash-carrying/credit-card-wielding, baby-boomer payer; I am not sure I agree with this one, but I do know millennials who always upload gift cards onto their smartphones, using them to expunge their purchasing debts.

Statistics support the supposition that Mobile Payments will endure and prosper:

  • Over 70% of US citizens own a smartphone, and
  • Over 70% of those using a mobile-payment tool are millennials or Gen Xers.

Retailers and urban-area merchants best get ready; if they wish to accept payment from their young clients, they will need to deploy the technology to enable mobile payments, or risk losing them to the competition down the street.

Next-Gen WiFi

Tomorrow’s WiFi ain’t what grandpa uses today; it will be faster, but will also work over greater distances with lower-powered, IoT devices.

The emerging standard is known as WiFi HaLow™, based on IEEE 802.11ah. It will double the range, provide greater penetration through obstacles (walls, doors, etc.), and enable power-efficient use.

IEEE 802.11ah also supports machine-to-machine (M2M) markets, permitting direct communication from sensing devices to the applications they serve.

REFERENCES

1Please see ComputerWorld Tech Forecast 2017: Complete survey results.

2See the ComputerWorld article 5 Disruptive Technologies to track in 2017 by Beth Stackpole on December 5th, 2016.

3See Jon Gold’s article DNS provider Dyn hit by DDoS attacks that takes out major sites in the October 21, 2016 edition of ComputerWorld.

Bryley Basics: Working with Webroot

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Greg Livingstone (Engineer) and Gavin Livingstone (President), Bryley Systems Inc.

Webroot1 is a cybersecurity firm with “…leadership in developing next-generation approaches to prevent attacks, and a proven technology base that spans millions.”2

Webroot’s SecureAnywhere® Nex-Gen Endpoint Security (NGES) is a small-footprint (<1Mb) agent with Cloud-based threat intelligence designed to deliver advanced, next-generation, endpoint security. Webroot NGES offers these advantages:

  • Detection – Behavior-based, predictive/proactive detection
  • Management – Minimal impact with no signature updates
  • Protection – Collective protection among Secured EndPoints
  • Remediation – New threats are journaled to facilitate rollback
  • Threat Intelligence – Machine learning

With its innovative, predictive capabilities, it is becoming the standard end-point protection application of many IT-service providers, including Bryley Systems.

Webroot basics

When Webroot is deployed, this Webroot icon webroot-logo displays on the bottom-right taskbar. Right-clicking on the Webroot icon exposes these options:

  • Scan now – Perform a malware scan
  • Open – Open the SecureAnywhere console
  • Help and support – Show the online help site
  • About – Display the current Webroot version
  • Refresh configuration – Refresh Webroot version*
  • Save a Scan Log – Save scan results to a log file
  • Shutdown Protection – Disable Webroot

scan-now

 

*Refreshing the configuration uploads the current profile, resulting in this message:

secure-anywhere-prompt

Webroot SecureAnywhere console

Selecting Open displays the Webroot SecureAnywhere console, which may also appear in the bottom, right-hand corner during scans. The SecureAnywhere console displays current protection information.

secure-anywhere-icon

Webroot Browsing Security

Webroot SecureAnywhere includes BrightCloud® Threat Intelligence, an add-in for Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer to warn against unsafe browsing.

When enabled, BrightCloud shows the following Reputation icons prefixed to web sites. Hovering over the icon will display a risk statement:

trustworthy Reputation: TRUSTWORTHY – When visiting this website there is a very low probability that you will be exposed to malicious links or payloads.

low-risk Reputation: LOW RISK – When visiting this website there is a low probability that you will be exposed to malicious links or payloads.

moderate Reputation: MODERATE RISK – When visiting this website there is some probability that you will be exposed to malicious links or payloads.

suspicious Reputation: SUSPICIOUS – When visiting this website there is higher than average probability that you will be exposed to malicious links/payloads.

high-risk Reputation: HIGH RISK – This website is a “Malware Site”; there is a high probability that you will be exposed to malicious links or payloads.

These icons are displayed on your Internet browser pages and define the risk associated with clicking on a particular site.

webpage-image

By default, HIGH RISK sites are blocked with the following pop-up.

high-risk-icon

REFERENCES

1Wikipedia history of Webroot.

2Please see the 2015 Frost and Sullivan review WebRoot Smarter CyberSecurity.

Announcements, news, events, and promotions

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Bryley Holiday party

It was a fun-filled early afternoon as many Bryley employees sat down to a luncheon feast followed by an old-fashioned Yankee swap!

holiday-party-2016

 

Nicole Sawitz Accomplishes her HP Sales – Personal Systems Services Certification!

In this day and age, it’s imperative for sales professionals to be able to bridge the technology gap and gain insight into how to best serve their clients.  That is precisely what Nicole Sawitz, Sales Support within Bryley’s Sales team, accomplished when she earned her HP Sales – Personal Systems Services certification.  She underwent highly relevant, practical training to demonstrate her ability to effectively anticipate clients’ business needs and provide the optimal HP solution.  we look forward to seeing Nicole put this certification to work for our clients!

Introducing Engineer John DeCola

John DeCola recently joined Bryley Systems.

John has over 20 years of computer-support experience, working with clients throughout the Northeast. He is well-versed in Microsoft Server products, firewalls, and network-support tools and holds a degree in IT Technology.

john-decola

 

Introducing Jessica Giunta

Jessica, a Marketing Specialist, joined Bryley Systems late November.

Jessica has worked as a marketing/project manager and as a Marketing Associate where she maintained the ConnectWise database, managed social-media accounts, assisted in presentations and events, and fielded calls from clients.

Jessica is a graduate of Bentley University and a Girl Scout Gold Award Recipient.

jessica-giunta

 

STEMPower – A manufacturer’s resource

STEMPower is the Massachusetts Hub for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Manufacturing (STEM); it can be used to review resumes of recent trainees and to network with other STEMPower members.

You can join STEMPower as a member simply by setting up a user account. STEM employers can sign-up by emailing Lisa Oden, STEMPower Project Director.

We’re looking for field-service and business-development employees

Bryley Systems is growing. We have an immediate need for field-service personnel with IT experience and plan to add a person to our business-development team.

Interested applicants may email HR@Bryley.com or call 978.562.6077.

 

Beware! Fake Update Request from Firefox Is a Virus!

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By Michelle Denio, Technical Support Supervisor, Bryley Systems

Thanks to a vigilant Bryley Systems client, we can now alert you to a new malware threat.
A Bryley client submitted a service ticket about a Firefox update on his home computer. I was immediately suspicious because the supposed update had come through as a java script file type (.JS), instead of an executable (.exe). Luckily Outlook had blocked the attachment and our client, who was cautious, did exactly what he was supposed to do. He brought it to our attention!

While it appeared to come from Firefox, our research easily determined that this update request is fake and is in fact a virus.

Here are the two links I found on Mozilla:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/i-found-fake-firefox-update
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1137056

Below is what the fake request looks like. I’ve underlined and circled the source of the update request so you can see that it did not actually come from Firefox. Looking at the source is one of the first steps you should always take when you’re unsure about the validity of an email or a pop-up message. Had our client clicked on the Download, this hacker would have been able to install malware on our client’s computer.

Bryley Basics: WordPress maintenance

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Gavin Livingstone, Bryley Systems Inc.

Reference article by Al Morel, Web1776

WordPress is the most-popular Content Management Systems (CMS); it powers over 25% of all Internet-based websites since it is a free, easy-to-use, open-source CMS with a large and vibrant community.

Because it is an open-source utility, and even though it includes automatic security updates (since version 3.7), it has ongoing maintenance requirements. Business partner, Web1776, offers these helpful suggestions:

  • Backup – Backup your site every before and after a change is made and keep copies of your backup onsite and offsite. (You might consider BackupBuddy, a plugin that assists the WordPress backup process.)
  • Update – Update WordPress first, then its plugins, and finally, themes.

For the complete maintenance information and instructions, please see the Web1776 recent blog article WordPress Maintenance Recommendations.

Donald Trump’s potential impact on technology

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Lawrence Strauss, Strauss and Strauss

Gavin Livingstone, Bryley Systems Inc.

People expect that President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory, combined with a Republican Congress, will mean big changes. Because organizations depend on technology, what can be foreseen concerning the tech fields, based on Donald Trump’s campaign statements and on the team he is gathering around him?

In the election’s immediate aftermath, some of the biggest tech-sector stocks’ lost value (which has since changed with the more-recent rise in US stock markets), possibly due to campaign rhetoric where Donald Trump threatened to look into Amazon for monopolistic behavior and tweeted that Americans should boycott Apple for its refusal to help the FBI unlock the iPhone used in the California terrorist attack. He also reminded us of the possibility of a Google election-bias in its search returns. (Google employees have become President Obama’s top tech officials and Google employees visit the Obama White House about once a week, 10x as often as employees from comparable businesses.)1

President-elect Trump appointed Jeff Eisenach and Mark Jamison to reshape the policies of the FCC, which just last year, in a 3 to 2 vote, passed the so-called Open Internet rules. (These rules are somewhat based on the concept of “net neutrality” where the Internet is considered a utility and all Internet traffic is treated equally.) Eisenbach, Jamison, and many others believe these rules were poorly constructed and oppose them on the grounds that they could lead to government overreach with greater consumer costs and reduced investment by business.

The Wall Street Journal, in an Op Ed page2, discussed President-elect Trump’s position in more than 500 companies, of which about 125 do business around the world. Most of these successful businesses are related to real-estate development, hotels and golf courses.3 So, how do such interests intersect with the tech sector?

One way may be gleaned from Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and the President-elect’s most vocal booster in the tech world, who told Forbes4 “it’s hard to overstate … Jared [Kushner]’s role in the campaign.” Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with a family background in commercial real estate, brought to the campaign (per Forbes) advanced computer-based selling techniques like machine learning and micro-targeting. Forbes reports that Kushner learned about these methods through his interactions with Silicon Valley.

Jared founded a start-up, technology-oriented business, Cadre, with his brother, Joshua. Cadre makes buying and selling interests in commercial property akin to a blend of shopping on Amazon mixed with online stock trading. This NYC business has the kind of unique product with a vast upside that it is attracting top tech talent away from Google, Apple, Twitter and others.5

Cadre is a reinvention of that marketplace through technology. And what policies would a tech startup desire? Among the things it, and businesses in general, need are low interest rates to finance investment. And, Donald Trump has a unique opportunity to keep interest rates low with two vacancies on the Fed’s seven-member Board of Governors and the two chairs’ terms expiring in 2018. During the September debate, Donald Trump called out the Fed, saying “When they raise interest rates, you’re going to see some very bad things happen, because they’re not doing their job.”6 So, the president-elect’s vision is a Fed that keeps interest rates low, which could continue to spur business and technology investment.

Similarly, Donald Trump promised in May to dismantle the 2010 Federal financial regulations known as Dodd-Frank, which according to Donald Trump, “makes it very hard for bankers to loan money for people to create jobs, for people with businesses to create jobs.”7

Donald Trump wants to shrink the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. And he has floated the idea of tax incentives to repatriate monies businesses currently have invested overseas.8

One of the issues that Donald Trump took up during his campaign, was the idea of US workers being replaced by foreign workers. And directly impacting the tech sector are H1B visas, as many Silicon Valley companies train non-US citizens that enter the US on H1B visas. Donald Trump suggested attaching fees to the H1B that would make it less appealing for businesses to seek non-US employees.

The H1B visa issue does not have any effect on outsourcing overseas, a major issue for businesses and their workers; Donald Trump has not yet directly addressed outsourcing.9 However he did spend a lot of time addressing the loss of US manufacturing and the imbalance of trade with China in particular. The solutions he’s proposed include changing the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a 45% tariff on Chinese goods.

These are complex issues, and China’s 1990 inclusion in the WTO has given us everything from cheap, dollar-store junk to computers and cell phones. Because small goods are no more expensive to consumers than they were in the eighties, economists Robert Lawrence and Lawrence Edwards estimate that trade with China returns $250 a year to every American.10 However, Mr. Lawrence also calculates that between 2000 and 2007, Chinese imports caused about a third of the 484,000 annual manufacturing job losses, with productivity increases due to technology making up the bulk of the remaining losses.11

Donald Trump’s road-blocks to free trade are opposed by many who depend on the cheap, foreign manufacturing and, to a lesser extent, foreign markets. Creating barriers to imports suggests our partners may respond in kind, so the methods proposed for doing this may not have the desired effect.

Conversely, it is interesting that his top Secretary of State pick (as of this writing), Mitt Romney, is seen as welcoming trade agreements during his 2012 campaign.12

One thing is evident; investors have responded to Trump’s campaign promises pushing the Dow past 19,000 for the first time and Small Cap stocks (generally understood to be the riskiest) are seeing their largest gains by percentage.11

Generally, the upcoming Trump Administration will likely favor business investment and development, which should enhance technology research and business overall. However, the effects may impact technology companies unevenly, with likely short-term winners and losers.

REFERENCES

1http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548

2http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trump-family-political-business-1479426984

3https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/29/the-myth-and-the-reality-of-donald-trumps-business-empire/

4http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2016/11/22/exclusive-interview-how-jared-kushner-won-trump-the-white-house/#4d6e2de62f50

5http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-cadre-and-how-to-invest-in-its-real-estate-deals-2016-6

6http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-22/trump-looks-to-put-stamp-on-fed-in-first-months-of-presidency

7http://fortune.com/2016/05/18/trump-dodd-frank-wall-street/

8http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/15/how-trumps-likely-tax-reforms-will-impact-tech-sector.html

9http://www.computerworld.com/article/3140166/it-outsourcing/trump-tapped-the-viral-anger-over-h-1b-use.html

10http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21695855-americas-economy-benefits-hugely-trade-its-costs-have-been-amplified-policy

11http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/22/americas-smallest-stocks-are-biggest-winners-post-trump.html

12http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/11/17/mitt-romneys-foreign-policy/

Wi-Fi® is not Wireless Fidelity

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Garin Livingstone and Gavin Livingstone, Bryley Systems Inc.

Wi-Fi is not an abbreviation for wireless fidelity1; it is a trademarked phrase that refers to wireless communication between electronic devices and a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) based on the IEEE 802.11x standards.

Wi-Fi is brought to us by the Wi-Fi Alliance®, a worldwide network of companies with the mission to drive the adoption and evolution of Wi-Fi globally.  The Wi-Fi Alliance tests and certifies that WLAN equipment meets its stated standards.

Current standards include:

  • 11g
  • 11n
  • 11ag

Speeds have grown substantially, now rocketing up to a potential 1,300Mbps using the latest WiGig™, 802.11ac, standard (although actual performance is typically significantly less than its potential).

wifi-standard

At their core; wireless networks are less secure than wired networks (since a potential intruders does not need a physical connection), although encryption technologies (Wi-Fi Protected Access or WPA and WPA2) exist to secure WLANs.

Large-scale Wi-Fi implementations include:

  • City-wide Wi-Fi – Free Wi-Fi provided in St. Cloud, FL, Sunnyvale, CA, etc.
  • Campus-wide Wi-Fi – Wi-Fi throughout a campus environment

1See ‘Wireless Fidelity’ Debunked by Naomi Graychase of WiFi Planet.

2See WikipediA IEEE 802.11.

Game Changers – Worcester Chamber Business Conference & Expo on October 14th

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Hear from the experts – the innovators, investors, and developers – who are transforming Worcester’s skyline on Friday, October 14th, from 7:30am to 1:30pm at Mechanics Hall, 321 Main Street, Worcester, MA.

To register, please visit 2016 Game Changers – Business Conference and Expo.

What’s new in Massachusetts manufacturing and technology

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Gavin Livingstone, Bryley Systems Inc.

Manufacturing (which represents about one-third of our client base) is a growing and vital industry within the Commonwealth.  Some relevant statistics1:

  • There are over 6,500 manufacturers in Massachusetts
  • They provided more than 248,000 jobs in 2014; about 7% of the workforce
  • The average manufacturing-employee compensation was $93,682 in 2013
  • Over $45b in manufactured goods were sold nationally and worldwide in 2013, which accounts for over 10% of the state’s economy
  • 40% of Mass. manufacturers report difficulty finding skilled craftsmen

According to the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative, a sub-group of MassTech (Massachusetts Technology Collaborative) launched in 2011, manufacturing is a “…cross-cutting sector that touches essentially every region and every industry of the state’s innovation economy and which provided good paying jobs to citizens of every skill and ability…”.1  Because engineering and technology tend to associate closely with manufacturing, it is attracting attention within both state and local governments as well as educational facilities at the high school and college levels; the priority is to invest in training future employees, while removing the outdated stigma that manufacturing jobs are dirty and underpaid.

MassTech based the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative on a 2008 study2 that focused on manufacturing health in Massachusetts, followed by a second study3 from the same team in 2012.  The focus areas brought forth from these studies:

  • Promoting the image of manufacturing
  • Education and workforce development
  • Technical assistance and innovation
  • Access to capital

Related programs include:

  • Technology & Market Acceleration:
    • Technology Acceleration Program – Grow and succeed with invention, innovation, and commercialization endeavors
    • Technology Driven Market Intelligence (TDMI) – Focus on the market benefits a technology enables in a product
    • Technology Scouting – Search outside of normal channels for an unmet technology need
  • Workforce training grants:
    • The Express Program – Up to $3,000/employee, but restricted to companies with under 100 employees
    • The General Program – Grants up to $250,000
  • On-the-Job Training (OJT) and Apprenticeships:
    • Train Employees – Reliable OJT and apprenticeships
    • Aging Workforce – Prevent brain drain due to retirement
    • Recruiting the Right People – Core skills training
  • Working Capital Loan Guarantees – Guaranty product by MassDevelopment to guarantee up to 25% of working-capital loans for manufacturers
  • Massachusetts Manufacturing Month 20164 (October) event categories:
    • Education – Prepare/motivate people to pursue manufacturing careers
    • Innovation – Solve difficult problems and pave the way for the future
    • Products – Highlight amazing products manufactured in Massachusetts
    • Sustainability – Promote incorporation of green/sustainable processes
    • Workforce and Jobs – Spotlight training and career paths

Additional state-wide organizations and their missions:

  • AMPItUp! (Advanced Manufacturing Program) – Amping up students for an amazing future in manufacturing.
  • Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM) – Largest employer association (4,500 members) within Massachusetts that addresses manufacturer’s (1/3 of membership) and employer’s concerns; they advocate for their members.
  • MakerSpaces – Evolving hotbeds of innovation where woodworkers, robotics engineers, machinists, etc. can participate or rent incubator space.
  • MassMEP (Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership) – The expert resource committed to manufacturing growth in Massachusetts.
  • Massachusetts Technology Collaborative – An innovative public agency working to support a vibrant, growing economy across Massachusetts.

qcc-mac1

qcc-mac2

Finally, a look in a classroom at the new Manufacturing Advancement Center at Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, MA; the center, funded by a $2M grant in 2014, opened to students this week.

1Massachusetts Manufacturing Facts from the National Association of Manufacturers.

2Please see Staying Power – The Future of Manufacturing in Massachusetts by the Center for Urban and Regional Policy, School of Social Science, Urban Affairs, and Public Policy, Northeastern University.

3Please see Staying Power II – A Report Card on Manufacturing in Massachusetts 2012 by the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University.

4Please see Massachusetts Manufacturing Month 2016 from AMPitup!.