Women Owned Small Businesses Enduring The Recession

What strategies did women owned small business owners use to ride out the recession and how are they recovering in its aftermath? Cutting costs was the major focus for most, reports Small Business: Lessons of the Recession, a new study by the NFIB, Chase Bank and the Center for Women's Business Research.

Here's more of what they found:

Money matters: During the recession, 45 percent of women business owners said they had focused on cutting costs; 31 percent focused on increasing their sales. Overall, the majority on both sides felt they had made the right decision.

Getting social: Women small business owners also began to rely heavily on social media during the recession, which coincided with the growth of many social media tools. More than half say social media is either “very important” or “important” to their companies. Before the recession, just 4 percent of women business owners even used it.

Seeking outside help: Women owned companies that got outside help in either boosting sales or cutting costs â€" whether by outsourcing to consultants, accounting professionals or sales reps â€" were more successful (by 23 percent) than companies that tried to handle it on their own.

Getting involved: Thirty-nine percent of women business owners said they had gotten more involved in local or school activities during the recession to help raise their businesses' profile in the community.

Being flexible: For some entrepreneurial women, surviving the recession required a major pivot. Nearly 25 percent of women business owners say they now market to a different customer base than they did before the recession. (However, the majority, 54 percent, succeeded by finding new business opportunities among the same customer base.)

Did it work? In some ways, women owned businesses are bouncing back. For example, 45 percent say they are hiring and just 9 percent are reducing staff. By comparison, during the recession, 36 percent report they cut staff and 40 percent cut their employees' hours.

But by other important measures, women business owners are losing ground. Forty-one percent of women business owners say they're now working even harder than they were when the recession was at its peak. Despite the extra effort, respondents say, their sales volume is still lower than when the recession began in 2007.

Clearly, these approaches and attitudes could easily be very similar for male business owners. Whether you're a man or a woman, how do these figures jibe with your experience? What tactics have worked for your small business in riding out the recession?

Weathering Economic Storm Photo via Shutterstock

Cloud Technology Has Some Businesses Struggling for Bandwidth

Over the years, businesses have grown comfortable with their bandwidth, turning the other way as employees stream internet radio services like Pandora while hard at work. As workplaces have advanced to large servers and fast internet connections, small business owners haven't seen a need to lock down internet use. But thanks to Cloud computing, that may soon change.

“Back in April Proctor and Gamble announced that they have banned their employees from using Pandora and Netflix, precisely because they utilize Cloud technology and they needed to free up more bandwidth,” James McNeil of Walker Sands Communications says. “As implementation of Cloud technology continues to grow so will this issue.”

At Proctor and Gamble, workers were listening to 4,000 hours of music on Pandora daily. 50,000 YouTube videos were being downloaded by Proctor and Gamble employees each day, as well. As it looks to streamline operations and rely more on Cloud-based technology, Proctor and Gamble is placing an emphasis on increasing productivity and freeing up bandwidth for work-related data transfers.

In the early days of workplace internet usage, employers paid more attention to computer usage policy abuses. Internet radio was a no-no because it slowed the network down. As bandwidth and server space increased, businesses loosened restrictions and, in the time that has lapsed since, workers have grown lax in moderating non-work-related internet use during work hours.

“Clients say they keep adding servers and still don't have enough [bandwidth],” Jack Cullen, president of IT staffing firm Modis, told USA Today. “People leave Pandora open and don't even think about it.”

But the Cloud has brought new complications. Workers expect to access work servers via smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops, requiring fast access. With so many sites embedding audio and video, internet streaming has reached epic proportions, prompting businesses to ask, should we block certain sites?

Cisco Networks is working hard to address these issues, with its Cloud Connectors. Bandwidth variations can affect a server's performance drastically, according to Cisco, prompting the company to come up with solutions that can make a user's experience more consistent across all platforms.

Still, small businesses should strive to limit waste, blocking sites like Netflix and Pandora. Online streaming certainly has its use, especially for businesses that use social media sites and YouTube for marketing. For small businesses relying on Cloud-based servers, here are a few tips for freeing up bandwidth in the workplace:

• Check your equipment. If you haven't updated things since you moved operations to the Cloud, it might be time for an overhaul. Either way, technology changes every couple of years and by upgrading routers, cabling, and even your desktops and laptops, you can see a significant increase in productivity.
• Create a computer usage policy. Every employee on your network should be required to sign a computer usage policy. This policy reinforces that equipment is to be used only for work-related purposes, including when that employee is on breaks and at lunch. Addressing streaming radio and video specifically in the agreement may cut down on bandwidth usage due to these behaviors.
• Block access. This can be done on the server level, by an expert who knows how to implement it, or using third-party software on a server, like EdgeWave Remote Web Filtering. Check with your server provider and make sure this capability isn't available as part of your current plan.

While small businesses may feel this crunch later than mid-size and large businesses, it is never too early to start freeing up bandwidth. Slow bandwidth can reduce productivity, slowing down operations and affecting your business's bottom line.

\'Facebook\'s appeal is lasting\'

Facebook will have to do a lot of work to build its revenue and sustain its US$74 billion ($92 billion) market value, says the company's former marketing director and sister of co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Randi Zuckerberg was a presenter at a social media event in Auckland yesterday but spoke to the Herald about her brother's website, which has more than 900 million users worldwide.

While some social networks will "come and go", Zuckerberg said Facebook had lasting appeal.

"I do think that things like sharing photos, connecting with people you've lost touch with, they are human behaviours and something that's always going to happen ... I think [Facebook] tapped into a human need and emotion to connect with people," she said.

While there has been scepticism around Facebook's market value since it floated in May, Zuckerberg said the company would be able to generate the revenue to sustain its worth.

"It's going to take a lot of work, getting into regions like China, into regions like India and Brazil," she said.

"I do think it's accurate to imagine a world where half the people on the internet are on Facebook, or more." As well as pushing more into growing economies, Facebook also needs to focus on its service for mobile users, the 30-year-old entrepreneur said.

While half of all Facebook users are now accessing the social network on mobile devices such as smartphones or tablet computers, this platform does not have the same level of advertising, and therefore revenue, as the core website.

"Fifty per cent of people who log on to Facebook now are doing it from their mobile and you just can't afford as a business to lose all that revenue," she said.

Although she left the company last year, Zuckerberg still has a stake in the firm, which was valued at US$104 billion at its initial public offering in May. Its value has since slipped and its market capitalisation was around US$74.2 billion yesterday.

Zuckerberg believed Facebook will experience the same growth pains as tech giants like Microsoft or Google.

"They started doing one thing really well and you see now that Google tries to do everything. They want to do maps and email and they want their own social network," she said.

"When you try to do everything well you end up doing nothing well. "I think Facebook is going to have a lot of the same problems, as they're growing they want to be everything to everyone."

Zuckerberg has now founded her own firm, RtoZ Studios, which she says will look to build and invest in televisions shows that use social media in interesting ways.

While she praised the "incredible things" her brother achieved in founding Facebook, Zuckerberg said she doesn't envy the "notoriety" he has gained.

"[Mark's] done incredible things, he also can't walk down the street without people seeing him and recognising him," she said.

"I value my personal privacy a lot, especially having a little baby and a family.

"I don't think I would ever want that notoriety. That's why I don't think there is any sort of sibling rivalry."

By Hamish Fletcher | Email Hamish

10 Tips for Being More Independent With Your Small Business

You may think you won your independence from the workforce when you quit your job, but the truth is: running your own business sometimes means you're dependent on many factors. You may depend solely on the revenue produced by just a handful of clients.You may depend on your vendors to produce products and services to you in a timely manner. Are you really as independent as you think?

Here are tips to help you get your independence back as a business owner:

1. Diversify Your Client List

A co-dependent small business owner gets their income from just a few clients. If one of those clients should leave, that business owner is in trouble. They'll scramble to generate enough business to replace that single client.  Instead, work to score a few key clients, as well as smaller ones, and become an independent business so that you're not dependent on the money you generate with one or two clients. This way, you diversify your client list and if one client should stop needing your services, you won't be desperate to pay your expenses.

2. Get a Backup Vendor

A co-dependent business produces great products…only because their vendors are cheap, on time, make great materials, etc. But what happens if the vendor is late one time, or goes out of business? Your reputation is at stake.  Become an independent business by finding a few other vendors you can turn to in a pinch or if your current supplier raises your rates.

3. Don't Put all Your Marketing Eggs in One Basket

If you've invested in one or two types of marketing and are waiting for them to pay off, stop being co-dependent, stop waiting and add more tools to the marketing mix. A single strategy won't net you as great of results as one that plays nicely with others. So yes, take out a banner ad if you think that will work, and become an independent business by also blogging and updating social media so that you diversify how you connect with customers.

4. Get Firm in Your Payment Terms

If your customers are all over the place regarding when they actually pay their invoices, leaving you dependent on their wonky pay schedules to pay your own bills, lay down the law. Independent business owners have their own payment terms and clients who don't follow them pay late fees. This will keep your cash flowing smoothly and keep you from having gaps in your accounts receivables.

5. Learn to Say No

A co-dependent business owner has trouble saying no to new business, even if it's not in their primary line of services. All they see is the money, and they ignore the amount of time it will take to get the work done. Become independent and learn to say no to projects outside of your scope of expertise.  This will free you up to take on projects you actually enjoy doing.

6. Be Less Available

We've all become dependent on instant access to anyone via email but being so accessible isn't to your benefit. Instead, become more independent and check your email a handful of times a day.  Don't respond immediately if you don't need to and don't answer your phone after hours. Your customers will learn your parameters of availability.

7. Take Vacations

This ties in to #6. Become more independent, your business will survive without you for a few days or weeks, especially if you set it up to do so. Trust in your staff to handle things while you're gone. You'll be better for it.

8. Open Your Mind

Don't become dependent upon defining your company's capabilities too narrowly, you'll miss out on great opportunities. Let new ideas come to you through employees, clients and even your own inspiration. See where they take you.

9. Hire Enough Competent People

When an employee quits, it can be a shock, especially if you don't have a contingency plan to replace them. Become independent and prevent this by 1.) having processes in place to make it easy to train a replacement and 2.) ensure you have enough employees to get the work done, rather than having extra strain on one person who will soon quit from the pressure.

10. See the Future

Don't limit yourself by what you want your business to accomplish today.  Instead, keep the bigger picture in your mind. Where do you want to be in five, ten or more years? Use this as inspiration for today.

Business Independence Photo via Shutterstock

Hurricane Season\'s Coming! Are You Ready?

If there's one thing scarier than having your company's IT resources broken into, it's probably the possibility of a hurricane cutting off power and Internet communications that are crucial for your operations. Hurricanes have a knack for destroying businesses and even the most robust facility will not get away without a scratch.

That said, you need to start thinking about how to protect your IT infrastructure especially if your business depends on it to a moderate degree. You might run a tight ship, but a single tiny hole in that ship could send it sinking at the first sign of a high wave. This is why you need to invest in clear-cut solutions that offer you the most reliable security against natural disasters. Investing in these solutions should be top-priority, next to paying your insurance.

Here are some pointers about what you should do to be ready when disaster strikes:

• Gather emergency contacts - At any point when the power's out, you need to get connected with people who can help you get your business back online. This information is normally stored on a digital device. You should write it down instead and put it up on your fridge or somewhere you'll find the information quickly.
• Discover what you have and think about how to get it back - There are tons of things you take for granted every day that might not appear again at the event of a disaster. Make sure you know what you'd possibly lose in a hurricane and find ways of getting backup systems underway. If you run your website locally, have a mirror hosted in another location on the planet just in case. The best solution would be to have a shared hosting plan set up in another continent. If you have heavy traffic from your own country, though, just make sure the server hosts your site in another part of the same country. Land lines sometimes go down, so make sure you have cell phone numbers for all your employees, and they all have your cell number as well.
• Gather your financial resources â€" It's important to save for a rainy day, but it's even more important to save up for a hurricane. That said, you should have enough money left over to run your business for an entire month, maybe more. If you can't make any back orders through your ordering platform because the Internet's down in your location, that could mean the end of your business if you don't have the money to support running costs and pay the bills without any revenue.
• Get as much data as possible on the Cloud â€" While you're still thinking about what to do to prevent issues in your IT infrastructure during a disaster, you have to think about adequate recovery solutions. Services like Quorum Hybrid Cloud and Symform specialize in data backup and recovery. You might encounter physical damage to your infrastructure that results in data loss. Never forget that you must account for this when hurricanes come strolling down your avenue. Be sure to also adopt server virtualization, a service that allows you and other users to take control of a remote server when in need.
• Now, test it! - If you think you're ready for a disaster, turn off your entire IT infrastructure, recover your data into dummy systems, and disconnect your landlines. Try this on an off-day for a few hours and see if everything is working as it should. Check your employee reactions and see if they're managing well under the circumstances. You need to assess the performance of your disaster preparedness to see if it will be effective when the real thing blows through your shores.

While you're concerned about keeping the roof over your head while a 100+ mph wind is roaring and throwing things at it, you might forget the little boxes and bleeping lights that form the bread and butter of your business. Don't wait for the calm before the storm to secure your IT infrastructure!

Two Reasons To Check Back In With Yelp

Who doesn't love Yelp? As small business owners and consultants, many of us love Yelp. It gives us the ability to advertise and unlock our businesses, provides access to cool tools to learn more about our audience, and it helps others find us by aggregating reviews and giving us social proof. What's not to love?

If you haven't taken the time to claim and build out your Yelp presence, below are another two big reasons you'll want to pay attention to the local powerhouse. There's some cool stuff going on over at the world of Yelp that you may not have heard about.

1. Bing & Yelp Pair Up For Content

As SMBs and consultant, it's a constant fight for visibility. We want our customers to find us and to find the information about our businesses that will lead them to want to learn even more or visit us offline. Well, guess what? Thanks to a new partnership between Yelp and Bing, finding Yelp content is about to get a whole lot easier.

As of last month, Yelp content will now be heavily integrated into Bing Local pages, meaning that searchers will be able to scan reviews, business information, photos, and more directly from the Bing search results page. To get an idea of what the integration will look like, Bing offered up some screenshots.

As a searcher, this means that now you'll see Yelp-provided content in with the rest of your search results so you won't have to make the extra click and go to Yelp directly.

As a business owner, this is means now is the time to go claim and optimize your Yelp listing if you haven't already. This content is being made considerably more accessible to relevant searchers, so you want to make sure they're finding the right business information and that you're getting plenty of positive reviews for Yelp and Bing to show off.  Get that review strategy kicked into high gear and show off what you can offer directly from the search results.

2. Pictures Are Alive At Yelp

The next interesting bit of Yelp news comes directly from Yelp itself. Yelp recently shared that a picture is worth 1,000 Yelps. What does that mean? It means Yelp did the numbers and found that users searching Yelp spend 2 and a half times as much time on a business page with photos as opposed to one without.

Hello, this is your customer speaking. If you haven't uploaded pictures to your business listing, I suggest you hop to it. Now.

If you're not familiar, Yelp allows business owners the ability to add photos to their profiles for absolutely no charge. Yelp encourages businesses to share photos of their food, their exteriors and interiors, staff, specials, popular items, renovations, before and after shots, etc. You may remember that Google was also encouraging business owners to add photos to their business listings, so take those photos once and use them all over the Web.

If you want to spice up your photos and get lots of different angle, SMBs may also want to encourage customers to upload photos on their behalf and add them to Yelp themselves. This is another great way to make your profile more dynamic and attract more eyeballs. With Yelp content now showing up in Bing, it's just more incentive to flush out your profile and get those eye-catching images into the search results.

If you haven't checked in with Yelp lately, now may be a good time to give that business listing a little spruce. Your customers and the search engines are watching.

SC Total Security Conference: Challenges of creating an effective employee awareness campaign

An efficient awareness campaign should understand the business you are in and how colleagues behave.

Speaking at the SC Magazine Total Security Conference in London, Matt Leggett, head of information security at Best Buy Europe, parent of the Carphone Warehouse, said that it had worked with users on tests to rank risks on how severe a risk is.

He said: “We ran a campaign and benchmark users as to whether the campaign is effective or not. 51 per cent said that emailing with encrypted customer or employee information in the subject line was ‘very high risk'. We also introduced lanyards for the identity pass and gave out laptop locks so the message that they take home and understand is ‘I work for a company that takes information security seriously'.”

In terms of technical controls for devices, Leggett encouraged delegates to create a matrix of devices and key areas for protection to identify gaps to address.

He also said that within his business, the executives had been driving a bring your own device (BYOD) policy for colleagues, but a risk analysis showed that employees at Best Buy Europe did not understand the risks about this, and that most wanted access to email, their calendar and contacts.

He said: “You can talk to employee communications, but go with what you feel is best. Legal need to be happy and you need to deal with HR, while representatives from employee channels should be involved too.

“To execute a good awareness campaign, get a friend with design skills as you will have much more work than you planned for. Keep the messaging simple and clear as employees do not understand jargon.”

SC Total Security Conference: ICO talks about need for encryption

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has talked about the need for encryption to be used efficiently and for businesses to be aware of their dataset.

Speaking at the SC Magazine Total Security Conference in London, Dr Simon Rice, principal policy adviser (technology) at the ICO said that many simple mistakes are being made that lead to investigations and ultimately, monetary penalties.

Rice highlighted the 19 monetary penalties issued to businesses, saying it was '19 too many' and it was ‘not something that the office enjoys doing and it does not represent everything that we do'.

He said: “What can we learn from these? There are many things that are essentially lacking and encryption of mobile devices is one and in the future, mobile and tablets are a high priority area. Our research found that 48 per cent of the drives we purchased from auctions and clearances contained information, 11 per cent of which was personal data.”

He claimed that the fine against Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust in June, where hard drives containing sensitive patient information were sold by a third party who had been tasked to destroy the data, showed that ‘lessons had been learned'.

“There were no checks to what they were paying the third party to do. Security steps are not being taken, it is about choosing difficult passwords, websites storing passwords in plain text or poor coding practises,” he said.

He said that a problem lies with legacy websites being insufficiently tested and maintained, and often policy exists but it is not followed, particularly with encryption.

He said: “Full disk encryption exists in newer operating systems, but users buy a new laptop but they are not aware of it. I heard of someone having full disk encryption but leaving their laptop open on a train unlocked. We ask can you prove your laptop was encrypted? You have got a policy, but what audit trails do you have? If it is just basic encryption and not data encryption then it is still on the disc.”

Rice also covered recent announcements on cookies and changes to the EU Data Protection Directive. He said: “The ICO supports the current system but recognises that things need to be updated.”

He concluded by encouraging delegates to audit their data to know what they have got, especially after security breaches of data that a business was not aware of. “So audit, see what data is there and what is appropriate to what industry standard. Also get a third opinion via a vulnerability scan or penetration tester to make sure of what you might not be aware of,” he said.

Microsoft name two \'John Does\' from Zeus disruption

Microsoft has named two men as being members of the ‘Zeus botnet family' and being in the team behind the banking Trojan.

Richard Domingues Boscovich, senior attorney at Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, said that of those originally named as 'John Does 1-39', he was ‘pleased to announce that we have identified and named two defendants as members behind the Zeus botnet family'. He also said that it will be referring the case to the FBI for criminal review and turning over all of the evidence gathered so far, including evidence of a broader group of perpetrators beyond the named defendants.

The two men, Yevhen Kulibaba and Yuriy Konovalenko, are currently serving a custodial sentence in the UK for other Zeus malware related charges. He said: “The original complaint was filed against a group of ‘John Doe' defendants and with the exception of Kulibaba and Konovalenko, our best efforts to identify the remaining John Doe defendants turned up no response.

“We will continue our efforts to serve defendants Kulibaba and Konovalenko, and the John Doe defendants, with this amended complaint. Meanwhile, the botnets' command and control (C&C) domains remain disabled. It is Microsoft's goal to ensure that these domains ultimately remain disabled, and we hope the evidence collected from these domains leads to a criminal investigation.”

The disruption of Zeus' C&C servers in March was not intended as a permanent shutdown, rather as a ‘strategic disruption of operations' in order to mitigate the threat to cause long-term damage to the cyber criminal organisation that uses and relies on botnets.

Boscovich said that the Electronic Payments Association (NACHA) has seen a decline in regards to Zeus infection rates, with 779,816 infections between March 25th and 31st 2012, with this dropping to 336,393 for the period of 17th to 23rd of June 2012.

Boscovich said: “Additionally, as a result of sink holing the Zeus IPs seized during Operation b71, we have learned the locations of hundreds of thousands of computers infected with Zeus malware. These computers belong to innocent people, and we want to rid their machines of the Zeus malware for good.

“To this end, we will coordinate with Internet service providers (ISPs) and Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) around the world to help people regain control of their Zeus infected computers.”

Study states benefits of smart tokens over hard and soft options

Research has found that authentication costs can be halved if large companies if they switch to smart tokens.

A study by Encap analysed the average cost of the six most prevalent approaches to authentication for a large enterprise with 3,000 users over a three year period. These include hardware approaches such as hardware one time passwords (OTPs) and smart tokens (a USB or smart card), as well as software such as smart device-based software, mobile OTP (usually an app), PC OTP (via a web-browser) and SMS OTP.

The annual total cost per user for a smart device software token is $15.10, while for a hard token it is $33.45. A mobile OTP soft token and PC OTP soft token have a cost per user of $24.12 in comparison; the cost of a smart card/USB token is 89 cents.

However the total deployment cost for a smart token is $181,000, compared to $127,000 for a soft token for mobile or PC while an SMS OTP costs only $82,000.

The company explained that the deployment cost for hardware OTP is $202,000 while a smart device-based software token is $9,000, representing a 95 per cent decrease in cost. It also claimed that hardware OTP replacement costs are over 90 per cent more expensive than all software based approaches.

Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen, CEO of Encap, said: “Having invested in remote access and cloud apps, enterprises must do everything possible to simplify speedy and secure access. Smart device software authentication turns smart devices â€" enterprise or employee-owned â€" into security credentials at an unbeatable price point.

“Our study shows that the time for hardware-based authentication has passed - it is just too expensive when compared with the alternatives. Hardware approaches are incompatible with today's world of smart devices, remote access and cloud apps. It's time for a change.”

Electrical Storm, Leap Second Bug Shake Up the Web: Online Businesses Beware

Over the weekend, online businesses like Instagram, Pinterest, and Reddit suffered unexpected problems, the result of a severe electrical storm that took out a critical data center, and a “leap second” bug, the product of attempts to correct the world's atomic clock. As businesses increasingly use collective resources within the cloud, your company could be in more danger than ever of becoming a casualty.

Amazon Outage

The perfect storm. Over the weekend a string of online titans, including Amazon's cloud customers Netflix, Instagram, and Pinterest, experienced outages when a single Amazon data center in Northern Virginia was disrupted by an electrical storm and backup systems failed to function. All Things Digital

A knock out punch. Here's the blow by blow as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud went crashing down Friday, taking a string of high profile sites with it. Netflix and Pinterest remained down until well after 9 p.m. PT, while other services did not seem to fully recover until early the following morning. Venture Beat

Working Out the Bugs

Hold on a second. As if Friday's fireworks were not trouble enough, the Web experienced another technical glitch Saturday evening as software handling operations for sites like Reddit, Mozilla, and Gawker hiccuped on a so-called “leap second” added recently to the world's atomic clock to put it in sync with the Earth's rotation. (Who knew?) Wired

Stop bugging us! If an electrical storm caused Amazon Web Services' outage problems Friday evening, it's looking like some previously unknown bugs in the system prolonged it. If the strength of cloud services is shared resources, this might also be its weakness. It's important for businesses to know the risks of hosting in the cloud. ZDNet

Forecast Cloudy

Down with the ship. A bit of speculation has some experts asking how to use the cloud's benefits without suffering its misfortunes. Many businesses depend on cloud services for diverse operations, but this can also make them vulnerable. TechCrunch

Prescient predictions. Almost a month before this weekend's problems, Yale University researcher and assistant computer science professor Bryan Ford was warning that growing interdependencies within the cloud could lead to instabilities and even potential meltdowns. His research and the recent problems might make any business owner think twice. PC World

Silver Linings

On second thought. The outage at Amazon Web Services has many businesses taking stock. While time and effort are certainly saved by leasing software and computer power from a cloud provider, companies find they have little control over situations when technical problems arise. The Wall Street Journal

Getting up to speed. If you're just now looking into cloud computing for your business, all this talk probably has you a bit worried. Cloud computing holds some uncertainty, true, so it might help to learn more about what the cloud is and what it can mean for your company. Josh Lowry

For Better or Worse

Don't get blown away. Once you've decided to move some of your computer operations to the cloud, there are some risks you must understand. From service continuity issues to e-mail security concerns and much more, cloud computing means certain sacrifices in return for the benefits obtained. CloudTech

A winning strategy. Perhaps the most obvious solution for dealing with outages in cloud provider services is the one many large scale companies are already pursuing. It's time to follow a multi-vendor solution for your cloud computing needs. SocalTech.com