Today's Top Stories The BYOD trend, along with strict regulatory requirements for data retention, is fueling demand for data storage at small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), IDC analyst Liz Conner tells PC World. Network-attached storage enables tablets and smartphones to access shared corporate data more easily, Conner notes. According to the latest IDC stats, shipments of entry-level business storage units, which include those for SMBs and small/home offices, increased 20.3 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of 2014. Higher bay storage devices--five bays or more--saw a unit shipment increase of 22.6 percent in the quarter. "The increased interest in both the entry level and higher-end portion of the personal storage market can be attributed to improved customer awareness of data storage, increased vendor offerings, shifting expectations of data storage, improved marketing/customer education, and average selling prices that more closely align with personal storage than enterprise storage," explains Conner in a statement. Ethernet is the "interface of choice" for the entry-level business storage market, securing 93.8 percent of the market. Hard disk drive (HDD) vendors increased their market share for personal and entry-level storage, reaching a 77.6 percent market share in the second quarter of 2014. At the same time, the entry-level business storage market was dominated by the mainstream non-HDD vendors with 58.8 percent unit shipment market share, down 13 percentage points year-over-year, according to IDC.
For more:
- read the PC World article
- check out IDC's stats
Related Articles:
Infographic: Small firms are embracing mobility
Accellion, Box, Citrix and EMC are leading EFSS vendors, says Gartner
BYOD poses hurdles for data backup administrators Read more about: IDC, Mobile Devices
back to top
Now that Amazon has decided to compete with Square and PayPal in the mobile payments market, does that mean mobile payments, after sputtering for years, is set to take off? Yes, says Alberto Jimenez, director of mobile payments at IBM. Jimenez, who has an obvious interest in promoting mobile payments, believes that three industry trends are coming together to give mobile payments a much needed kick in the pants. The first trend is providing value-added services before and after the actual transaction. These include data analytics-enabled services to find new products and services, save money through price-comparison tools and use location-based services to quickly locate stores carrying the desired item. The second trend is the use of "cards on file" for repeat customers. "Once the visions of in-store mobile engagement become a reality, 'cards on file' will become a central driver for mobile payments in the offline world as well. That may sometimes not even be in the hands of merchants, but rather in those of centralized repositories that expose APIs [application programming interfaces] to retailers looking to bill/collect from consumers," explains Jimenez. The final trend is increased security for mobile payments. Due to some highly publicized data breaches, such as the one at Target, transaction security is no longer assumed by consumers. Vendors that can offer a proven security track record and secure tools will gain a competitive edge. "Industry-wide initiatives, such as tokenization, have the potential to significantly increase the level of security and subsequently the general public perception about payments--specifically the kind initiated on mobile devices," Jimenez concludes.
For more:
- read Jimenez article at TechCrunch
- check out Amazon's announcement
Related Articles:
Consumers like mobile payments, not mobile wallets
Amazon Local Register aims to lure retailers away from Square, PayPal
Why retailers need to board the e-commerce bandwagon Read more about: Square, Amazon
back to top
Are you running late for a company meeting because of traffic? Well, if you have a Pebble smartwatch, you can let your colleagues know without taking out your iOS or Android smartphone and risking an accident. You can just use your Pebble smartwatch and the Glympse app to share your location and estimated time of arrival with them. The app is also available for the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch. "We've been focused on making it easy for anyone to share their location at any time. By partnering with Pebble, we are [giving] their hundreds of thousands of users the ability to share their location, in real-time, wherever they are," Rob Foley, Glympse director of partner development, tells Venture Beat. Glympse recently raised $12 million in venture capital to expand its market penetration, which currently includes messaging, connected car, navigation, air travel and wearable apps. New named investors UMC Capital and Verizon Venture joined existing investors Ignition Partners, Menlo Ventures and Naya Ventures in the financing round. "Verizon was one of the first to integrate Glympse's location sharing tools into our Messages app and we quickly saw the technology solving a very real problem for our customers," says Dan Keoppel, executive director at Verizon Ventures.
For more:
- read the Venture Beat article
- check out the Glympse release
Related Articles:
Timex enters smartwatch market
Wearables are best suited for fast-paced workplaces, says Android developer
Enterprises get ready: Here comes Apple's 'iTime' Read more about: Glympse location app, Android
back to top
| 
Why hospitals are investing in telemedicine technology 
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.