As businesses make more use of social networks, the number of engagement, analysis and monitoring tools has exploded. Enterprises are trying to understand their return on social media investments, to find out if their Twitter and Facebook marketing campaigns are actually delivering customers. They want to track social mentions across multiple networks and be responsive to both kudos and complaints.
The next revision of Office adds touches of Metro without itself being a Metro app
With the revamped System Center 2012 suite of management tools, Microsoft has launched a powerful new weapon in the battle to control the virtualized data center and the cloud, both private and public.
While SQL Server 2008 was little more than a service-pack level upgrade, the 2012 version of Microsoft's database has a boatload of new features and delivers solid performance improvements.
Virtually all our testing took place across 512Kbps frame relay, T-1 and T-3 WAN links. The test bed network consisted of six Fast Ethernet subnet domains linked by Cisco routers. Our lab's 50 clients consisted of computing platforms that included Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/Win7, Macintosh 10.x and Red Hat Linux (both server and workstation editions).
We initially attempted to implement System Center 2012 modularly, which is almost impossible, so we used the Unified Installer after reading the salient documents for each module, then installed each module into its own VM, combining SQLServer resources where necessary. We recommend that up to four SQL Server instances may be necessary for protecting all of the modules.
Windows Server 2012 Release Preview features a better virtual desktop experience, much easier DirectAccess deployment and a full-scale file-classification and access control system.
We take a hands-on look at 10 e-commerce tools that can help businesses large and small sell products and/or services online. Insider (registration required)
From network services and storage to virtualization and private cloud, the beefy new Windows Server leaves no server role unturned
With Ubuntu 12.04, Canonical has delivered a much improved product that spans desktops, servers and the cloud in a bid to become the cross-platform mainstream product that Apple's Mac OS might have been had Apple not abandoned the server market.
NetSuite offers extensive ERP, CRM, and other business management functionality to organizations that recognize the value proposition associated with SaaS
A new service called Fluent promises to revolutionize the way you use Gmail. We put it to the test to see what it's really all about.
Monitoring services from Boundary, Circonus, and Librato combine simple setup and richly different capabilities
We all need to gather our thoughts every now and then. Some of us do that by just writing in a simple text editor, such as Simplenote, but others may find the look of a blank page intimidating.
I just finished watching the PayPal Platform Preview, which was PayPal's official announcement of their new open development platform (it was previously leaked on TechCrunch). Officially called "PayPal X," the platform was presented by Osama Bedier (VP of platform and emerging technology) in broad, almost utopian terms, as something that would unleash waves of innovation transforming the way goods and services are delivered. Maybe.
