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FEMA URGES PREPAREDNESS FOR HURRICANES AND SEVERE WEATHER
The CMAS system will allow the National Weather Service to soon begin issuing WEAs for the most dangerous weather through participating wireless carriers directly to cell phones. The alerts will be broadcast by cell towers much like an AM/FM radio station, and cell phones within range will immediately pick up the signal, provided they are capable of receiving these alerts. The availability of WEA alerts will be dependent on the network status of the wireless carriers and handset availability, since not all cell phones can receive WEAs. People should check with their cellular carriers to see if WEA alerts are available in their area.
"The wireless emergency alert capability provides an additional opportunity for the public to receive life-saving information needed to get out of harm's way when a threat exists," said Timothy Manning, FEMA deputy administrator for protection and national preparedness. "The public also has a critical role in their personal preparedness. There are a few simple steps that everyone can take to be prepared, like knowing which risks exist in your area and making a family emergency plan. Information and resources to help individuals and families prepare can be found at ready.gov."
WEAs will look like a text message, and will automatically appear on the mobile device screen showing the type and time of alert along with any action that should be taken. The message will be no more than 90 characters, and will have a unique tone and vibration, indicating a WEA has been received. If an alert is received, citizens should follow the instructions and seek additional information from radio, television, NOAA Weather Radio, and other official sources for emergency information. Citizens should only call 911 in a life threatening situation.
Only authorized federal, state, local, tribal or territorial officials can send WEA alerts to the public. As with all new cellular services, it will take time for upgrades in infrastructure, coverage, and handset technology to allow WEA alerts to reach all cellular customers.
FEMA urges individuals and businesses to take action to prepare themselves in advance of severe weather and hurricanes such as taking the pledge to prepare at www.ready.gov/pledge. This is the first step in making sure you and your family are ready for an emergency This includes filling out your family communications plan that you can email to yourself, assembling an emergency kit , keeping important papers and valuables in a safe place, and getting involved.
With the start of hurricanes season it is even more important to know your risk, take action, and be an example. While hurricanes often offer some warning that a threat is approaching, severe weather can occur at anytime and in any place, including high winds, inland flooding, severe storms and tornadoes.
For more on family preparedness, visit www.ready.gov/hurricanes for more planning information and safety tips.
Debriefing Software add new features to the Wizards Storage Portal
Viby J, Denmark -- Debriefing Software, the experts in cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), Storwize and SVC solutions, today announced: a major upgrade to its Wizards for Storwize application, Heat Maps for TSM, an enhanced Wizards Control Center (WCC) and the availability of its new Dynamic API program.
"Corporate IT departments need tools that allow them to manage and optimize operations with minimal time input. Resellers and users of Wizards Storage Portal will know how the service frees up valuable time for other tasks in the IT department. With the new features we are launching today, Wizards Storage Portal offers great new visual tools for monitoring storage resources, while several administrative tasks have been further simplified," said Paul Ström, Sales Director at Debriefing Software. "Releasing resources to drive business innovation initiatives in the data centre and other critical areas."
The Debriefing Software Wizards Storage Portal is a non-intrusive, cloud-based, pay-as-you-use storage resource management (SRM) solution designed to reduce and optimise storage and backup costs for mid-sized and large IT infrastructures. The service is offered to corporate users through a network of IBM specialist service providers and resellers.
Wizards for Storwize and SVC Upgrade
Debriefing Software this week announced a major upgrade to its Wizards for Storwize, responding to requests from customers for increased reporting information functionality. Jesper Matthiesen, Debriefing Software CTO, said: "Among the many new features, we have added new advanced reporting tabs so now it's easy to visualize and compare different nodes' workload and throughput. The counters and graphs help users quickly identify why servers may have long response times and then take the necessary corrective actions. Other improvements include a more descriptive error log which will help system administrators understand more quickly the cause of a problem."
Wizards Control Center Upgrade
The new version of the Wizards Control Center WCC has been simplified to allow automated upgrades of the client-side monitoring plug-ins. WCC now handles the entire life cycle of the application stack, and new plug-ins can also now be downloaded, installed, updated and uninstalled directly from within the WCC rather than needing to launch from the download page.
Heat Maps for TSM
Also launched this week has been the addition of Heat Maps for TSM which is unique to cloud-based applications. Heat Maps is an innovative tool for discovering usage patterns in large datasets by providing a coloured heat map that lets you review up to 60 days of activity, easily pinpointing nodes that perform above or below average and identifying cyclic performance issues that would be hidden in traditional reports. The analysis allows you to then optimize the system workload before you run into serious bottlenecks. Matthiesen said: "With the Heat Maps for TSM you can visualize and compare different nodes' workload and throughput to determine how to best maximize the performance of your servers."
WSP Dynamic API
The Wizards Storage Portal Dynamic API is an industry first. It delivers custom-designed integration tools that enable end users, resellers and service providers to integrate the data that sits in the Wizards Storage Portal cloud with their own applications. Matthiesen added, "Usually an API consists of a number of predefined functions that deliver specific information. The Debriefing Software WSP Dynamic API does more than that. WSP Dynamic API puts you in the driver's seat, letting you design the integration you need."
Paul Ström, Sales Director added, "We strive to continually enhance usability and add important features to Wizards Storage Portal. We work to improve our service offering based on specific requests from partners and end users. These latest additions exemplify this approach, and our reseller partners will be able to take advantage of these improvements to provide compelling services to their customers with Wizards Storage Portal."
About Debriefing Software
Debriefing Software A/S is part of the Portalized group, a private company formed in 2003 and headquartered in Viby J, Denmark, is a worldwide leader in cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for IBM TSM, Storwize and SVC with its innovative Wizards Storage Portal. The Wizards Storage Portal is sold exclusively through its reseller partners and currently analyzes and monitors more than 44,000 servers worldwide.
Debriefing Software A/S was recently been selected as a winner of the 2012 Red Herring Top 100 Europe award for its cloud-based Storage Resource Management software solution, Wizards Storage Portal.
To learn more about the Debriefing Software Wizards Storage Portal and associated services, please go to the Web at www.debriefingsoftware.com/.
MaxxVault Welcomes SymQuest Group Inc. as a Reseller Partner
Ranked by MSPmentor as one of the top 20 Managed Service Providers in the world, SymQuest is very discerning in their choice of solutions for their clients. "MaxxVault's line of solutions were compared to other industry leading solutions and our decision to partner with MaxxVault was based on its scalability and the on-going commitment to support and product development," said Larry Sudbay, President and CEO of SymQuest. "The success of SymQuest is our ability to provide business hardware and software solutions that enhance productivity, security, and reliability while reducing costs. The MaxxVault solutions will enable us to fulfill this mission with all of our clients, no matter the size or industry."
The MaxxVault EDMS captures documents electronically, either from a scanner or directly from the software application, and securely stores them in a central library for easy access, easy collaboration, and easy control. Documents can be quickly retrieved via index or full text search, routed through workflows and managed according to industry and government regulations. With MaxxDocs, even the smallest business can eliminate the headaches of paper files or disorganized computer folder trees. For those that need mobile access to their documents or want to leverage the benefits if cloud computing, MaxxCloud makes EDM simple and without the need for an I.T. team or capital expenditures.
"We are very happy to be working with a company as accomplished as SymQuest," said Bruce Malyon, CEO of MaxxVault. "They have the experience and vision to build solutions that leverage every possible benefit for their clients for maximum return on investment. SymQuest's commitment to the environment and to their community distinguishes them as a true leader. The team at MaxxVault looks forward to building a strong document management partnership with SymQuest and their clients."
About MaxxVault
MaxxVault LLC provides software solutions for the management, distribution and control of corporate documents. Benefits of MaxxVault Enterprise include: reduced costs, improve efficiency, increase customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance. MaxxVault is an open system; it is built using the latest technology which provides enhanced security, dependability and interoperability with existing systems.
For more information about MaxxVault LLC, visit: www.MaxxVault.com
About SymQuest Group Inc.
For more than a decade, SymQuest Group, Inc., headquartered in South Burlington, Vermont, (with additional offices located in Rutland, Vermont; Keene and West Lebanon, New Hampshire; Plattsburgh, New York; and Portland, Maine) has upheld its reputation as an affordable and accessible network infrastructure and document solutions technology services company; working extensively with small businesses, as well as larger enterprises. SymQuest Group, Inc. focuses on highly-customized and accessible customer service, innovative document solution programs, and the crafting of high-availability infrastructure solutions. United by the pursuit of excellence in information management, service and corporate responsibility, SymQuest's experienced people, refined processes and best of technology keep its clients out front.
For more information about SymQuest Group Inc., visit: www.symquest.com
In Preparing for Disasters, Dont Forget Fido
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has worked with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the American Kennel Club, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Humane Society of the United States to develop these pet-preparedness guidelines.
Have a pet-supply kit ready, including:
Pet food for three days in an airtight, waterproof container and bowls;
Water for three days;
Pet medicines and first aid supplies;
Collar (with ID tags firmly secured), harness or sturdy leash;
Important documents such as registration, adoption papers, vaccination and medical records in a plastic bag or waterproof container;
Travel crate or other pet carrier;
Cat litter, litter box, paper towels, newspapers, plastic trash bags and cleaning supplies;
Photos of you and your pet together for identification purposes; and
Familiar items such as toys, treats and blankets.
The single most important thing you can do to protect your pets is to take them with you if you must evacuate. Animals left behind in a disaster can easily be lost or injured. If evacuation is necessary, consider friends or family outside the area who can take in you and your pet.
Other options may include a pet-friendly hotel or motel. If your only evacuation option is a Red Cross or other publicly run shelter, be aware that not all shelters are equipped or designed to accept non-service animals. Consider boarding your animals at a kennel or veterinary hospital before going to a public shelter.
Plan with neighbors, friends or relatives to evacuate your pet for you if you are unable to do so yourself. Talk with them about your evacuation plans and pet supply kit.
Consult your veterinarian and consider “microchipping” your pet. These permanent implants may be invaluable if you and your pets are separated.
After the disaster, don't allow your pets to roam loose. Familiar landmarks and smells may have been changed by the disaster and your pet could become disoriented or lost.
For information on pet-friendly accommodations in your area and disaster planning, visit www.fema.gov/plan/prepare/animals.shtm.
FEMA’s mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.
The Employee’s Guide to Social Media Crisis Management
What happens if the company or organization you work for finds itself in a social media crisis, but hasn’t invested in a social media crisis plan?
What do you do when the stress of the situation starts to escalate and you’re still left unclear of your role within the crisis? When you feel unhelpful, confused and frustrated? When you haven’t been trained in the proper ways to respond to such a situation or are even clear in what your team expects of you?
To read the article, please click here:
Business Continuity Planning - something just for the big global corporates?
A recent survey undertaken in New Zealand by Massey University revealed that less than 10% of SMEs have a business continuity plan in place despite the fact that over 40% of them have experienced a crisis in the last five years. The survey found a high degree of vulnerability in SMEs across New Zealand and concluded with a recommendation for a national programme to address this gap. But it is not just SMEs in New Zealand that need to consider business continuity planning.
To read the article, please click here:
http://thebceye.blogspot.com/2012/05/business-continuity-planning-something.html
Depressing HHS study finds gaps continue to exist in nursing home emergency preparedness…they are overall woefully unprepared
Federal regulations require that Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing homes have written emergency plans and provide employees with emergency preparedness training. According to the study, these plans often lack specific steps such as coordinating with local authorities, notifying relatives or even pinning nametags and medication lists to residents in an evacuation. The net-net of this… the plans may not be worth the paper they are printed on!
To read the article, please click here:
eBRP Solutions and BCM Central Form Partnership
For Immediate Release
Toronto, Canada
eBRP Solutions and BCM Central Form Partnership
Award-winning eBRP Solutions and BCM Central have entered into a partnership to mutually enhance their capabilities to deploy leading-edge Business Continuity software and services to their clients.
“We see this as a positive addition for all concerned.” stated eBRP Director David Gray, “BCM Central, eBRP and our mutual Customers all gain opportunity and benefits. With their experience and market presence in Australia, we believe that partnering with BCM Central and its founder, Shawn Brown, aligns nicely with eBRP’s commitment to its Customers.”
The partnership covers Australia and New Zealand with a road map to into Asia and other parts of the globe as BCM Central expands its operations. BCM Central will leverage eBRP’s SaaS-based Business Continuity Management software to enhance its ability to provide BCM as a managed service to its customers – the first BCM Managed Service offering in Australia and New Zealand.
About eBRP: eBRP Solutions Network, Inc., founded in 2002, offers an award-winning, web-based and fully integrated set of Business Continuity Management software tools that address the entire BCM lifecycle. eBRP’s flagship product, eBRP Suite, serves the Fortune 500 and other large organizations , while eZ-PLANNER, its rapidly-growing SaaS-based toolset, addresses the immediate needs of medium and smaller business organizations. For more information, visit www.eBRP.net , or www.eZ-PLANNER.com , or contact them at info@eBRP.net
About BCM Central: Founded in 2012, BCM Central offers managed services in which they implement and administer Continuity Management (BCM) Programs on the behalf of their customers. BCM Central’s experts ensure customer programs remain effective and under control, while adapting to change with their organizations. With BCM Central in place, customers’ staff can focus on continuous quality improvement initiatives to achieve organizational resilience. For more information, visit www.BCMCentral.com, or contact them at +61415505515
For additional information contact:
Jim Mitchell, Director, eBRP Solutions
(905) 677-0404
Egenera Acquires Fort Technologies to Transform Cloud Management
BOXBOROUGH, MA – December 5, 2012 – Egenera, a pioneer in physical, virtual and cloud management and automation, today announced the acquisition of Fort Technologies, a cloud lifecycle software provider based in Dublin, Ireland. The acquisition enables Egenera to bring Fort’s innovative management capabilities to its PAN Cloud Director software providing customers a means to design and deliver enterprise-class cloud services. The deal also expands Egenera’s sales footprint, partner network and customer base in EMEA. The Fort Technologies personnel have been fully integrated into Egenera’s Cloud Products Group and Fort’s CEO, Gerry Murray, will head Egenera’s EMEA operations.
“The acquisition allows us to help our customers move to the cloud faster and create more enterprise-class, resilient and secure clouds,” said Pete Manca, CEO of Egenera. “Fort Technologies’ distinctive approach to cloud management turns the design, deployment and management of IT services into a simple drag and drop exercise. This enables service providers and enterprises alike to grow and succeed in the cloud.”
Unlike other cloud management products, Egenera’s PAN Cloud Director software allows organizations to turn any infrastructure – not just virtualized servers – into reliable, scalable and elastic cloud resources. Advantages of the platform include:
- Choice – Create clouds that consist of bare metal physical or virtual servers or a mix of the two environments.
- Ease of Use – Through the service catalog and drag and drop palette, the product makes designing cloud a simple, fast and intuitive exercise.
- Openness – With the Egenera solution, organizations can use any server, storage, switch, application, hypervisor, and operating systems that they need – at the same time, and all without any vendor lock-in.
- Resiliency – The software allows users to dial in their required service levels, guaranteeing cloud services automatically meet the security, performance and availability requirements.
- Flexibility – The software enables organizations to build new and highly differentiated cloud services such as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Metal as a Service (MaaS) clouds.
- Control – With integrated pricing and reporting capabilities, PAN Cloud Director provides real time billing and monitoring for cloud chargeback or showback.
- Efficiency – Provides service providers a means to commercialize and resellers the ability to quickly deliver highly customized cloud services to their customers.
“Egenera and Fort share a common vision for providing frictionless and reliable IT services in the era of cloud,” said Gerry Murray, CEO of Fort Technologies. “I am excited about Fort joining forces with Egenera and expect our joint customer bases will each benefit as we invest to bring greater choice, flexibility, simplicity and reliability to cloud computing.”
The solution is designed for both private and public cloud deployments. The software benefits users by reducing IT complexity and making it simple to design, consume, track, manage and protect services running in a cloud environment.
“With the ever-increasing complexity of applications entering our private customer cloud, the management of the underlying infrastructure and services is extremely important. Ease of use and automation will increasingly become a critical factor for our success,” said John Fitzgerald, managing director of Interactive Network Communications GmbH. “For us as a service provider, Egenera PAN Manager and PAN Cloud Director are products with the potential to significantly reduce our operating costs and dramatically shorten the time-to-market for our services.”
Ikomm Ensures High Availability (HA) and Scalability of Virtual Desktop Environment with Sanbolic Melio Data Management Software
Waltham, MA – (February 19, 2013) – Sanbolic®, the market leader in distributed data management, today announced that Ikomm, one of the world’s premier application services providers (ASP), has deployed its Melio™ VDI software solution in order to streamline management, as well as protect and extend the capabilities of its virtual desktop environment. With Melio VDI, Ikomm has eliminated single points-of-failure, enhanced server and storage utilization, and can now create highly available (HA) and scalable shared storage that enables and extends the capabilities of Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS)
Operating over 800 applications, accessed by over 12,000 clients, from more than 310 locations across Norway and Scandinavia, Ikomm’s on-demand software offerings, or software as a service (SaaS), enables its business, government and personal consumer customers to plug-into specialized applications that would have previously proven far too expensive to utilize from a capital and/or operational standpoint. Its clients have come to depend on Ikomm to ensure secure access to their data, from anywhere they have Internet access, as if they were accessing it directly from their office (i.e., mail, applications, documents, desktop – everything). Moreover, clients trust Ikomm to ensure all applications and information hosted in the Ikomm data center are protected and secure with state of the art technology, methodologies and professional expertise delivered from its team of 50 highly trained, uniquely experienced professionals, each of whom are passionately dedicated to meeting and exceeding customer expectations. For Ikomm clients, outdated technology, carbon footprint/emissions/power management, as well as unforeseen IT challanges and associated business complications, are a thing of the past. IT becomes predictable, environmentally friendly and profitable.
Recently, Ikomm embarked on an endeavor to find a more efficient and cost effective method for deploying their XenApp Server farm. Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) was chosen to deploy its 200+ XenApp Servers. This was a critical service totally dependent on two provisioning servers. Ikomm therefore needed true high availability (HA). Its first attempt to meet this goal led them to Microsoft Cluster Server, however they soon learned that this technology would require them to map the disk using the network share and this would cause the server to not cache data in memory. This of course was unacceptable. After a bit of research and conversations with peers, it turned to Sanbolic’s™ Melio™ virtual desktop (VDI) management software.
“Traditional storage options for PVS HA, including replication, would have introduced data and storage management complexity that would have meant higher cost. Likewise, file shares would have introduced a single point-of-failure that would have rendered PVS HA useless should the server hosting the file share go offline for even a moment,” said Kristian Helseth, Senior Konsulent Leveranse & Utvikling, Ikomm. “Sanbolic Melio has greatly simplified Ikomm’s data and storage management while ensuring no single point-of-failure, and enhanced resiliency to ensure desktops and servers are able to maintain uninterrupted access in the event of a failure.”
“With Sanbolic Melio VDI, Ikomm has been able to create highly available and scalable shared storage that enables and extends the capabilities of Citrix PVS. Its administrators can now create, manage, deliver and maintain virtual disks (vDisks) for HA and load balancing without the challenges typically introduced by other storage options such as replication, file shares or proprietary hardware-based file serving appliances,” said Eva Helen, Co-Founder, President and COO, Sanbolic. “Moreover, additional benefits are enjoyed, such as reliable vDisk protection, improved desktop and server performance, and dynamic infrastructure scale to support environments comprised of hundreds of servers and thousands of desktops.”
For further information on Sanbolic’s Melio desktop virtualization (VDI) software solution and/or to request a free demo, please visit: http://www.sanbolic.com/citrix.htm.
About Sanbolic, Inc.
Founded in 2000, Sanbolic® is a global leader in distributed data management. Its Melio™ software suite delivers dramatically increased levels of application availability, scalability, protection and performance while decreasing cost and management complexity across enterprise data center applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint and Windows file-/web-serving, Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop (VDI), and Microsoft Hyper-V private cloud environments. For further information please visit the Sanbolic website at: www.sanbolic.com or email: info@sanbolic.com. Join the conversation - follow Sanbolic on Twitter.
