Diving into the new SiriusDecisions Demand Unit Waterfall

SiriusDecisions since around the time when Rich Eldh and John Neeson gave birth to the company. I’ve found their frameworks especially useful in helping focus my teams’ actions and report on the value of our contributions. Perhaps you’ve found the same. For many years, the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall has been used as the standard framework for managing demand generation processes. The beauty of the original Demand Waterfall was its clarity and simplicity. Built as a useful guide, it was never meant to become “the law.” Yet over the past few years, many marketers have found themselves ensnared by a rigid, faithful type of application. From helpful leading indicators, we’ve created rigid sets of KPIs that lock us into a way of doing things and shape how we “see” our world. A host of short-sighted KPIs are now constraining our ability to innovate. At worst, they’re locking us into counterproductive behaviors that actually hurt our ROI. I’m talking here about KPIs that drive up volumes even as they drive down quality; about filters that ignore tangible evidence of demand in favor of titles and contacts at accounts that aren’t in the market at all. The newly announced SiriusDecisions Demand Unit Waterfall concept contains major insights that could open the door to a new wave of progress. These observations should help keep many of us from going over the falls in a barrel crafted of our own short-sightedness.

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Backup and Disaster Recovery

Expedient Announces Partnership with Kyndryl to Deliver Disaster Recovery as a Service

PR Newswire | October 03, 2023

Expedient, a Full-Stack Cloud Service Provider, announced a partnership with Kyndryl the world's largest IT infrastructure services provider. Through this collaboration, Expedient's robust data center colocation and cloud infrastructure will enhance Kyndryl's industry-leading cyber resilience offerings to customers. By joining forces with Kyndryl, Expedient is extending the reach of its state-of-the-art data center colocation and cloud infrastructure known for its reliability, scalability, and security capabilities. Expedient's award-winning infrastructure is an integral element of its Cloud Different™ multi-cloud services and is delivered across a nationwide network of highly interconnected data centers. Infrastructure is available in dedicated, private cloud, and VMware-based Expedient Enterprise Cloud configurations to meet the needs of customers and prospects across regions and industries. This partnership will enable Expedient and Kyndryl to extend the reach and effectiveness of security and cyber resilience services to a wider range of customers, helping organizations across various industries strengthen and fortify their cybersecurity posture while further mitigating the risks associated with data breaches. "We are excited to partner with Kyndryl, a company known for its excellence in cybersecurity services, cyber resilience services and Disaster Recovery as a Service," said Dennis Musolino, Chief Revenue Officer of Expedient. "Expedient has a more than 20-year history and expertise in delivering unmatched disaster recovery and data center infrastructure solutions. We are proud and excited to be providing our data center and cloud infrastructure to help augment the comprehensive resiliency services that Kyndryl delivers to its array of clients nationally. Together, we will empower businesses to proactively protect their digital assets and maintain operational resilience in an increasingly complex digital landscape." "We're dedicated to helping customers navigate their ever-evolving cybersecurity challenges," said James Carrigan, Jr., VP, US Security Practice Leader at Kyndryl. "Partnering with Expedient will allow us to further provide our customers with access to a flexible, robust and security-rich infrastructure that supports their cybersecurity and cyber resilience needs and enables the uptime and availability of their most critical applications." About Expedient Expedient is a full stack cloud service provider, helping companies transform their IT operations through award-winning multi-cloud solutions and managed infrastructure services including enterprise cloud, disaster recovery, virtual desktop infrastructure, data center colocation, edge computing, security and compliance, and more. The company's Cloud Different™️ approach provides an on-ramp to the cloud, supporting the optimization and delivery of all applications. Named VMware's Americas Cloud Partner of the Year and acknowledged in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service, Expedient eases a customer's transition to the cloud by providing curated and bundled best of breed solutions backed by "white glove" services and support. Expedient data centers are compliant with a variety of regulatory mandates, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as well as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) service.

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Virtual Server Infrastructure

Scale Computing Offers Simple, Secure, Reliable IT Infrastructure to Combat 'Zombie' Technology

PR Newswire | October 10, 2023

Scale Computing, a market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, today announced its new campaign targeting outdated, 'zombie-like' infrastructure and calling on organizations to learn more about Scale Computing Platform's (SC//Platform) future-ready solutions. Between now and November 4, 2023, end users in North America and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) can register for the company's free Zombie Apocalypse Essentials Kit, containing a water bottle, lantern, and powerbank. "IT managers are increasingly dealing with unreliable, inflexible, and inefficient systems. Instead of being haunted by outdated and traditional infrastructure, we invite users to learn more about Scale Computing and our Scale Computing Platform. SC//Platform brings together simplicity and scalability, replacing existing outdated infrastructure and providing high availability for running workloads in a single, easy-to-manage platform, while leveraging our patented self-healing technology to maintain maximum uptime for all applications," said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder of Scale Computing. October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of digital security and protecting personal data. As cyberattacks become more sophisticated, maintaining modern infrastructure with a powerful cybersecurity stance is key to keeping critical business applications and data secured. Scale Computing's campaign aims to help businesses fortify their defenses against the three blood-thirsty 'zombies' that commonly haunt outdated, traditional three-tier infrastructure Dreadful Downtime — an unreliable network that causes unexpected and expensive downtime for an organization Mangled Management — disparate technology systems, managed across multiple platforms, that make upgrades, patching, and overall management unnecessarily time- consuming Creeping Complexity — old and outdated systems across multiple locations that make scaling overly complicated SC//Platform provides infrastructure that is simple, secure, scalable, and reliable. With SC//Fleet Manager, the industry's first cloud-hosted monitoring and management tool built for hyperconverged edge computing infrastructure at scale, customers can quickly identify areas of concern using a single pane of glass, scaling from 1 to over 50,000 clusters. Zero-touch provisioning and Secure Link features allow administrators to centrally and securely monitor and manage hundreds or thousands of distributed edge infrastructure deployments, with few or no on-site IT personnel. About Scale Computing Scale Computing is a leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions. Using patented HyperCore™ technology, Scale Computing Platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and corrects infrastructure problems in real-time, enabling applications to achieve maximum uptime, even when local IT resources and staff are scarce. Edge Computing is the fastest-growing area of IT infrastructure, and industry analysts have named Scale Computing an outperformer and leader in the space, including being named the #1 edge computing vendor by CRN. Scale Computing's products are sold by thousands of value-added resellers, integrators, and service providers worldwide.

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Virtual Server Management

Precisely Announces Powerful New 3D Visualization Capabilities in Latest MapInfo Pro Release

businesswire | September 14, 2023

Precisely partner, Pelican GeoGraphics, has long understood the power of location intelligence for complex research and planning purposes. The team helps clients in the natural resources industry with the exploration of minerals to help create renewable energy sources. “Understanding the 3D nature of your data is essential in mineral exploration, so we’re thrilled that this feature will now be available directly within the familiar interface of MapInfo Pro - and at a fraction of the cost of some of the more specialist standalone packages on the market,” said Caroline Hilton, Managing Director at Pelican GeoGraphics. “Even at grass-roots level, geologists will be able to visualize their regional and project data in greater detail, draping aerial images, geological mapping, geophysics grids, and geochemistry data onto the landscape with ease.” As an all-in-one solution for managing, analyzing, and visualizing location data, MapInfo Pro is widely recognized for its ease-of-use, empowering customers to leverage critical location-based insights across a wider range of business users. It can also be easily customized through a wide variety of features and functionality available to customers via the MapInfo Marketplace. “Precisely remains committed to delivering a complete desktop GIS solution in MapInfo Pro, that is powerful, flexible, and easy to use,” said Clarence Hempfield, Senior Vice President – Location Intelligence at Precisely. “The latest release helps to unlock maximum levels of location-based context for our customers across an almost endless array of critical business scenarios.” MapInfo Pro v2023 is available today in English, German, and French, with 13 additional languages slated to go live by early 2024. About Precisely Precisely is a global leader in data integrity, providing 12,000 customers in more than 100 countries, including 99 of the Fortune 100, with accuracy, consistency, and context in their data. Precisely's data integration, data quality, data governance, location intelligence and data enrichment products enable better business decisions to drive better results.

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Virtual Server Management

EMA and Auvik Research Reveals Hybrid and Remote Work Has Increased Workloads, Posed Challenges to Remote Network Experiences

Business Wire | September 28, 2023

New research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and Auvik, an award-winning provider of cloud-based network management software, revealed that the ongoing shift to hybrid and remote work environments has resulted in key changes to the roles and priorities of network administrators in order to address new connectivity challenges and prioritize and preserve a secure, productive end-user experience. The report examined the remote and hybrid work paradigm through the lens of network operations teams – 73% of which reported an increase in workloads, either slightly or significantly, following the shift from traditional to hybrid work environments. Results from the report demonstrated that the top challenges associated with the remote work experience are poor home Wi-Fi setups, distance from applications, and poor ISP quality. To combat these obstacles, 72% of surveyed organizations have deployed network hardware to the homes of remote workers, including network security devices (62.7%) and Wi-Fi access points (54.1%). Additionally, 90% of organizations with hybrid workers shared that they had to upgrade Wi-Fi networks to address increased office mobility requirements. “These results reinforce that although people are beginning to return to the office, hybrid work is here to stay and is resulting in significant changes for network administrators,” said Alex Hoff, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer for Auvik. “Although IT teams no longer own all the assets utilized daily by employees, they are still responsible for these operations. And despite not being able to directly exert control over employees’ home networks, they can have visibility over these environments with network monitoring tools. Implementing network visibility software helps IT professionals overcome these new obstacles by providing the ability to maintain visibility and control amid changing work circumstances. The data provided in this report reinforces Auvik’s place in the market and demonstrates that our recent acquisitions, integrations, and expanded product offerings that were designed to help IT teams adapt to these new norms are well-suited for the challenges that are being identified within the industry.” Additional findings from the report include Nearly 49% of network operations teams started working with a new tool vendor to help them manage the network experience of remote workers. 76% of organizations need to unify how they manage network access policies across on-premises networks and remote users. Remote desktop access tools (deployed by 81% of companies) remain the go-to solution for troubleshooting remote users’ problems, but endpoint monitoring tools are increasingly popular (79%). Although 87% have allocated funds in their budget to update network operation tools for remote and hybrid user support, only 32% of organizations shared that they have been successful in doing so. The top issues employees most often report when they are working from home are VPN access issues, followed by performance issues with SaaS applications. “96% of IT organizations said they are supporting hybrid workers, and 30% of all employees who work remotely are hybrid workers,” said Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, EMA. “With employees working both at home and in the office, it is important to have the assets and software necessary to support them in both locations. This means enterprises must invest in more secure remote access solutions that offer integrated network security automation, centralized management, and network optimization or network enhancement, as well as network observability tools that are able to monitor performance across disparate locations.” Methodology Auvik commissioned an independent research firm to survey 354 IT professionals directly involved in supporting the networking requirements of employees who work from home. About Auvik Auvik’s mission is to simplify how IT teams work and live by providing cloud-based IT monitoring and management with simplicity and speed. It lets IT professionals visualize IT infrastructure, SaaS applications, and shadow IT in minutes. As a result teams can identify and resolve issues in seconds, saving valuable time. Auvik is one of the fastest-growing North American technology companies, and is winner of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 and Deloitte Fast 500. Visit www.auvik.com for more details. Auvik is a registered trademark of Auvik Networks Inc. About EMA Founded in 1996, EMA is a leading industry analyst firm that specializes in providing deep insight across the full spectrum of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices, and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help their clients achieve their goals.

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