Ericka Chickowski

Microsoft Partner of the Year Vertical Industry and Segment Awards Alliance ISV Industry Partner of the YearInvensyswww.invensys.comInvensys is a Microsoft Global Alliance partner focusing on the Manufacturing and Resources and the Consumer Goods industries. With solutions that are used by more than 40,000 clients around the world in over 200,000 plants and facilities, Invensys Operations […]

Dell is hoping to give customers a turn-key open source cloud solution option as an alternative to proprietary, licensed software models with the launch today of Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution. With this first ever cloud solution based on the OpenStack platform, Dell’s banking on channel partners to help deliver open source Infrastructure-as-a-Service to customers and […]

Microsoft Partner of the Year 2011 Innovation and Sales Awards The BizSpark Partner of the Year StorSimple www.storsimple.com StorSimple gave customers the ability to seamlessly integrate on premises and cloud storage services for Microsoft Exchange Server, SharePoint Server and Windows Server, while integrating with cloud storage providers like Windows Azure through its hybrid storage solution. […]

Microsoft Partner of the Year 2011 Network Competency Awards Content Management Partner of the YearKnowledgeLakewww.knowledgelake.com Using SharePoint Server 2010 to create an enterprise scalable and comprehensive document imaging solution for searching, viewing, securing, routing and annotating mission-critical electronic content for one of the world’s largest producers of chicken, beef and pork, KnowledgeLake helped its client […]

IT Pros Go Out On Their Own A Look At The Modern Freelancer 90 percent of freelancers say that the ability to control their own schedule is the best part of freelancing No Title 92 percent of freelancers use online job sites as their primary way of landing gigs and employment No Title 41 percent […]

For the first time in over five years the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) released a new guidance for online banking security that will likely prod banks and credit unions to improve the way they protect customers from fraud and should have channel partners thinking carefully about who they partner with and how they […]

Good Bad and Ugly of the New FFIEC Guidance on Banking Security THE GOODLayered security in favor of just authenticationGartner’s Litan thought it great that the document made it clear "that virtually every authentication technique can be compromised." She believes the FFIEC’s emphasis on urging banks to implement layered security is a big improvement. No […]

Spiceworks is broadening its reach again today with a new service that will put it squarely in the middle of the tech purchasing process as an intermediary between SMBs and their channel partners and service providers. Called Request for Quote (RFQ), the service will offer small businesses the ability to anonymously ask for and receive […]

Rackspace’s Worst Enemies AmazonAmazon Web Services versus Rackspace has for years now been brewing a competition for the ages. Amazon ratcheted up the pressure in February when it announced customers could host their websites using an Amazon S3 account. No Title LinodeEspecially now that Rackspace has forcefully migrated the old Sliceworks customers over to Rackspace […]

Consumer Tech Products An IT Security Nightmare 84 percent of organizations are allowing employees to use consumer technology such as iPads, iPhones, Facebook, Twitter and instant messages. No Title Of the 16 percent of organizations that don’t let employees use consumer technology in the workplace, 64 percent suspect employees are using it anyway. No Title […]

IT Security Spending What IT Executives Are Planning 41 percent of IT staffers said that security was their number one priority, making it the most cited top priority above concerns such as ensuring ROI of all investments and managing change within IT infrastructure. No Title 48 percent of organizations reported an increase in the number […]

Preventing IT security breaches: 41 percent of IT executives name it as a top concern Ensuring IT systems are used fully to maximize ROI of IT: 32 percent of IT executives name it as a top concern Understanding the full range of new technologies that are available and how to use them: 31 percent of […]