As a business owner, you may be hearing the term “cloud computing” going around in your network and are wondering what this is and how it works. Cloud computing, or virtualization, has actually been around for quite some time, but is rapidly catching on with small businesses everywhere. This is due, in part, to the convenience and cost savings that cloud computing provides. Let’s take a look at what cloud computing is and how it can help your business this year. More…

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Here’s a very interesting article on this topic – More…

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix.  He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Much is being made of the “the cloud.” The money it will save. The agility it will bring to computing. What is less obvious is how IT departments are actively employing cloud services today. How they are reacting to both public and private cloud initiatives, and what it will mean over the next couple of years for IT decision makers and implementers.

To examine these questions, a study of IT professionals was conducted in North America and Europe to understand their perceptions and plans for cloud computing. The study finds that enterprises are active in the cloud, and their virtualization efforts are contributing to broader “cloud thinking.” As a result, the cloud is coming of age within large organizations and aligning IT decision makers and implementers around a cloud computing platform.  Here’s a whitepaper that may help you sort it out – More…

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix.  He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

I heard a very impressive presentation from ERP GM Andy Berry this morning during the general session at TUG.  Infor has very agressive plans to put several of their ERP solutions in The Cloud.  Here’s what they are telling us…

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix.  He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

You may already know that Infor Global Systems has a very powerful ecommerce application they are now calling “Storefront”.  Storefront fully integrates with Infor’s ERP products, including FACTS, SX.e and A+ to allow business-to-business or to-consumer a dizzying array of functionality.  This, of course, includes shopping cart, and pay-online.

Gary Tudino conducted a very informative session on “Tips and Techniques” of Storefront, that included a discussion of deployment planning.  Gary listed several important planning elements, including:

• Server sizing and software stack
• Internet bandwidth and security
• Scalability expectations
• System redundancies for increased availability

This was an excellent setup for the short talk I gave on the merits of hosting Storefront.  In short, a hosting partners can take most of the burden of planning for and dealing with the deployment and ongoing platform responsibilities of Storefront.  In fact, the virtual environment we have engineered for our Storefront customers very elegantly addresses all of the elements and more.  Drop me a note if you’d like to discuss further.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix.  He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Things got kicked off bright and early this morning at the 2011 TUG Conference in Orlando.  For those not familiar with TUG, it is the user group for all ERP software products sold and supported by Infor Global Systems. 

First up, I attended the special interest group for Storefront, Infor’s web portal for their various ERP products.  In short, Storefront is slated to get some very nice enhancements this year.  Version 2.0, which is scheduled for general release this summer, will boast the following:

• A much updated look, including banner and carve-out options
• Better performance (this to be measured against metrics)
• More customization tools
• Easier administration
• Multi-currency/multi-language
• Much more

Version 2.1, slated for the end of the year will bring an equally dazzling array of functionality improvements, with the highlight being translation for Smartphones.

More information to come…

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix.  He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Yes it has!  And, we will be there.  Will you?

  Infor ERP/Storefront User Group Meetings: March 27, 2011 |  Conference : March 28-30, 2011 | The Peabody Orlando

Click here for a preview of our ad in this year’s TUG Conference brochure.

What do CSI: Miami, ACR Supply and Pro Chem, Inc. have in common?  They are all businesses who recently decided to leverage enterprise computing services here at Matrix.  What is Matrix delivering to these new-comers?  Let’s take a closer look:

Pro Chem of Alpharetta, Georgia (www.procheminc.com) manufactures and distributes a wide variety of environmentally sound chemical products.  While still considered a “small business”, the owners of Pro Chem recognized that to be truly world-class in their approach to international markets, they needed to leverage enterprise-grade information technology tools and infrastructure in order to elevate the availability and reliability of their applications and data.  Matrix is delivering this world-class computing environment.

ACR Supply of Raleigh, North Carolina (www.acrsupply.com) distrubutes HVAC and refrigeration components and supplies from 10 locations across North Carolina.  Part of their very aggressive growth plan looking out over the next 5 years includes use of Matrix infrastructure to deliver their applications and data uniformly to a wide variety of devices and user skill levels.  Using the DataServe virtual environment, ACR users can securely access their systems via any Internet connection using just about any workstation, tablet, iPad or Smartphone device.

CSI: Miami (www.miami-csi.com) is, well, I’m sure you have heard of the wildly successful CSI television shows.  CSI has tapped Matrix for special IT security needs.  That’s all I can say about that.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix.  He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

TUG • U2U is the annual conference for licensed users of Infor Distribution Software products. Over 150 sessions of technical, managerial and executive content over three days along with a marketplace of third party solution providers make this THE distribution event to attend this year.  More…

McAfee announced on February 14, 2011, that services users saw several new enhancements incorporated into the McAfee® SaaS Email and Web Protection services.  Click here to see the complete list.