Ericka Chickowski

Salesforce.com leader Marc Benioff has announced that his company is "doubling down" on its Salesforce Service Cloud portfolio by spending $50 million to buy Assistly, an instant customer-service help desk built for the cloud. "(It puts) us at the heart of the new trend of customer service help desk applications that have instant sign up […]

The Surprising Truth About Corporate Security Policies Only about 25 percent of employees have tried to bypass company security policies while at work. No Title 95 percent of these employees respect the importance of their employers’ measures to protect their IT assets. No Title 89 percent of employees think that security policies help with the […]

Last week Accenture agreed to pay $63.7 million to the U.S. Department of Justice to settle a long-running case against it in which the government and two whistleblower former employees claim it received kickbacks from vendors to sell products to government agencies at inflated rates, but the IT consultancy still insists the payments it received […]

Intel and McAfee took the first big step to rationalize the technology reason for the marriage between the two companies with a product launch at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) this week that unleashes a hardware-assisted security technology designed to mitigate risks at the sub-operating system level. Called McAfee DeepSAFE, the product was demoed by […]

This week HP is making good on its promise to gel together its various security assets acquired over the last few years with the release of its expanded Security Solutions portfolio, which includes updates to its ArcSight, Fortify and TippingPoint security products.  The new additions will help VARs and service providers offer a more comprehensive […]

If you are just starting up a new IT consulting firm, it’s an exciting time.  But even the smartest technical gurus can quickly get so ensnared in all of the minutiae of running a business that it hampers their ability to get their enterprise off the ground. According to Gene Zaino, CEO of MBO Partners, […]

Almost half of PC users around the world say they acquire software through illegal means most or all of the time, according to a new survey out from the Business Software Alliance (BSA). Conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs among 15,000 PC users in 32 countries, the survey followed up the annual Global Software Piracy Study […]

Self Employed Workforce Gains Momentum MBO estimates that the independent workforce stands at 16 million in the United States No Title 60 percent of contractors say they’re highly satisfied with their work situation, compared to half of employees who are unhappy with their work. No Title 55 percent of independent workers say they made a […]

The global content security gateway market continues to gain at a steady clip, growing at more than double the rate of standard network security products according to a new report out by analysts with Infonetics Research. The report found that security gateway appliances and software market sales grew 8 percent in the second quarter of […]

8 Tips For Recovering Data After Hurricane Irene Short-Term Recovery TipDo not shake, disassemble or attempt to clean any hard drive or server that has been damaged – improper handling can make recovery operations more difficult which can lead to valuable information being lost. No Title Short-Term Recovery TipNever attempt to dry water-damaged media by […]

Meet Tim Cook 20 Facts About Apples New CEO Cook is currently 50 years old. No Title Cook has a B.S. in industrial engineering from Auburn and an MBA from Duke. No Title He has a strong background in channels and supply chain, working for over a decade as the director of North American fulfillment […]

The first news came last week from Level Platforms, which took the lid off of added functionality to its Managed Workplace platform that improves managed service providers’ monitoring and support capabilities . With this new release Level Platforms added a new remote tools function and a new plug-in Service Module architecture to extend the Policy […]