The 10 Most Promising Google Solution Providers of 2022 July 2022

uilding great products and services for clients has

Bbecome the standard for businesses worldwide who want to excel in their field. This can be done through a thorough market study, creating a strong research and development wing, and delivering top-quality products according to the requirements of consumers.

Imagine a business having all these qualities but failing to reach its intended audience. Do business owners know the reason why this happens?

The answer is simple. Businesses are not using the internet in their favor. The internet is free for all platforms and can be leveraged to build businesses. More importantly, Google can amplify businesses, which means quick sales in a short period. The exact recipe for growth businesses needs today.

Businesses can try to expand their reach by creating a strong marketing strategy through several Google tools and taking the help of AI and ML solutions to make their brands unbeatable. They can simply outsource the process to reliable google solution providers who know the processes' ins and outs, enhancing the power of data and Google Cloud.

The solution providers fuse the business and marketing data for an in-depth view of business performance and market impact. Google cloud's vast machine learning capabilities build a differentiated audience. This helps businesses segregate audience segments like propensity to buy and high customer lifetime value. By knowing some tricks, companies can reach their most valuable customers based on data research and ML application.

Google offers marketing analytics and AI solutions for all businesses throughout the data and ML life cycle. Businesses can use this to continuously innovate in marketing to increase their brand value. It also has several tools that offer streamlined and scalable collaboration to

help businesses take advantage of continuous enhancements with Google Cloud's technologies. Businesses need to understand their core audience and formulate solutions according to that. Google solution providers act as a catalyst to know consumers' quantity, quality, and value so that a business gains a competitive advantage in its niche.

The digital marketing landscape is changing as new trends hit the market. The complexity customer journey is increasing with passing time. It is easy to track customer preferences and inclinations through the cloud. Regulatory changes affect how data is collected and used, impacting third-party cookie measurement. Google's pioneering AI research and best-in-class algorithms create a solution with reliable AI capabilities which help businesses navigate the changes effectively, working within the set limits. Businesses are using the services offered by Google to develop customized campaigns to reach their goals ethically.

While scouting through Google solution providers, which offer cloud-based solutions to cater to businesses' needs, we found pioneers in the field acing the process every time. We showcased them in “The 10 Most Promising Google Solution Providers of 2022” edition of Insights Success.

So, learn more about the leaders constantly challenging the norms to come up with something new every time through this informative read. Do not miss the articles and CxOs written by our creative in-house editorial team, which is sure to impart you with some valuable knowledge along the way.

Company Name

A.Y. Technologies aytech.ca

CAPSiDE capside.com

DefinedLogic definedlogic.com

Finch finch.com

Featured Person

Amin Yazdani Director

Josep Ruano Founder & CEO

Robert Arace Digital & Analytics Strategist

Bjorn Espenes Co-founder & CEO

iClick Interactive Asia Limited i-click.com Sammy Hsieh CEO & Co-founder

Pervorm pervorm.com

Proceed Innovative LLC proceedinnovative.com

Push pushhere.com

Spotinst spot.io

Zive, Inc. kiwiforgmail.com

Pieter Meijer Managing Partner

Patrick Panayotov Partner

Steven Hyde Co-Founder Ricky Solanki Co-founder

Amiram Shachar CEO

Eric Shashoua CEO & Founder

Brief

A.Y. Technologies is providing software solutions to conceptualize and consummate various software projects to assist developers in simplifying and , systematically structuring.

Through technology and innovation, CAPSiDE deliver a secure and connected future that empowers our people, clients and communities.

DefinedLogic is a Digital Product Agency here to help you create meaningful and engaging experiences.

Finch manages AdWords campaigns for advertisers with the purpose of growing revenues and optimizing for profit in a SaaS+ model.

iClick's suite of data-driven solutions helps brands drive significant business growth and profitability throughout the full consumer lifecycle.

An environment where there is room for people on both sides of the spectrum and for realising dreams.

Proceed Innovative LLC helps companies extend brand awareness and drive sales through interactive marketing strategies in search engine optimization (SEO)and other services.

Push uses meaningful data combined with insight and intuition to interpret and reflect a brand’s true voice.

Spot actively optimizes AWS with cloud spend analytics and recommendationsso that its consumers can effortlessly scale their business

Zive’s reshapes how cloud-based software is experienced.

In the digital marketing field, there is always something new, something game-changing that we can test," answered Patrick Panayotov, Partner at Proceed Innovative LLC when we asked about their ideology.

Proceed Innovative LLC has been driving growth and success for a range of business owners and their teams for over 14 years as a full-service Chicago digital marketing firm. The company uses interactive marketing strategies like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Ad Campaigns, Creative Web Design, and Web Analytics Consulting to help businesses enhance brand visibility and sales.

Proceed Innovative's team learns the nuts and bolts of a business and then conveys that understanding to Google and a digital audience, with a well targeted content and an optimized website. This high-quality content increases the online presence of a business, and more importantly gets them in front of the right audience. Proceed Innovative aims to collaborate with outstanding businesses, have them succeed online, and provide a fantastic experience for their customers.

Aim Behind the Establishment

Proceed Innovative was founded in 2008 with a core focus on digital marketing. At that time, digital marketing offered business owners one of the most effective growth opportunities, which is still true today. Many businesses still struggle with taking advantage of the opportunities the internet provides. The foundation of Proceed Innovative was to offer business owners a trusted partner in the digital marketing space.

Philosophy to Work By

The company's core focus is to bring new sales opportunities to its clients. In order to guide this core focus they follow these core values:

· Be effective, efficient, and results-driven

· Be passionate about our work and our clients' success

· Pursue growth and learning

· Keep our commitments to our clients

· Keep our commitments to our team

· Build a financially-strong and profitable company

· Keep it a fun place to work and create

It is simple, the owners and businesses that Proceed Innovative works with are incredible at what they do. They

are an integral part of their community and are trusted to provide high-quality and reliable service. Before working with Proceed Innovative, many of these businesses did not exemplify this same level of trust and expertise with what would be found online. Proceed Innovative's goal is to highlight these great businesses digitally so more people can find them.

The team follows its success-proven process, which has been refined consistently since 2008. These consistent steps have created a powerful online presence for over 150 businesses. The company's team translates business owners' industry knowledge and reputation into something that Google and a digital audience will understand. This quality content drives their visibility online and gets the business in front of the right people. These are products and services people need, Senior Home Care or Disaster Restoration for example, and they need a trusted company to call. Working with great companies, getting them found online, and driving a great experience for their customers is the philosophy behind Proceed Innovative's work.

"We have a passion for our client's success," says one of the team members.

“Results-Based" Focus

The company's team members are certified experts in Search Engine Optimization, Google Ads, and Web Design.

What makes them stand out is their "results-based" focus on digital marketing. One can spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week putting in work within digital marketing. Part of their process is finding the results a business owner is looking to achieve before starting their work. With those results in mind, the team can determine if this business is a good fit and what strategies will meet their criteria for success.

There is never a one size fits all solution. With every project there are variables that need to be accounted for: client objectives, competition, time constraints, and budget. Taking these metrics into account formulates the best strategy for a successful outcome.

During the life of a project, the experts at Proceed Innovative continue this "results-based" conversation with the business owner and his team. They connect the investments made in their successful online presence to the new business opportunities finding them and converting to bottom-line results. Proceed Innovative is a great partner for established businesses that are looking for new channels

to drive growth. For many, digital marketing and Search Engine Optimization provides that incredible opportunity.

Overcoming Challenges

Google adjusts its algorithms often, and these changes need to be accounted for. This is a common challenge that the industry faces and why a one-and-done optimization strategy is no longer a long-term option for owners.

Additionally, businesses are getting more and more engaged with their online audiences. Proceed Innovative works with various businesses that have seen tremendous growth from its work. Throughout the years, there are competitors constantly striving to rank for those top positions on Google. It takes consistent, high-quality work to continue delivering great results and staying one step ahead of the competition.

Adapting to New Trends

The last two years of pandemic-driven lockdowns and evolution to a remote work environment have highlighted the importance of digital marketing. Many of the businesses that Proceed Innovative worked with during the initial lockdown found most of their traditional marketing efforts inefficient. Overnight many of these businesses looked to their online visibility as the main way to continue driving

growth. Proceed Innovative's clients were well placed to take advantage of the growing digital audience during this span. The company's team is incredibly grateful for their client's trust and support!

In many cases, the businesses they worked with had already laid out a vision for the year and were determined to continue growing. The focus on their online presence was a major part of generating new opportunities and achieving those goals.

In one example, a business found that they no longer had to send thousands of dollars' worth of catalogs annually when the digital version generated similar results. Besides, if no one is in the office, where would you send them?

Keeping Up with Technology

The Proceed Innovative team is highly dynamic with new tools and processes. The culture of the company fosters creativity and learning from the bottom up. Consistently, the company sees team members test, implement, and train the organization on new tools and strategies. Every year, the team implements companywide changes that make their lives and work more efficient and impactful.

There is always something new, something game-changing that specialists can test in the digital marketing field. The team at Proceed Innovative is fortunate to have an abundance of information and tools at their disposal and a team willing to test, learn, and innovate to stay at the forefront of its field.

Supporting the Growth of Communities

Proceed Innovative is invested in the growth and success of the local Schaumburg, IL community. Proceed Innovative has been a member and supporter of the Schaumburg Business Association (SBA), the premier local business organization, since 2007. Patrick Panayotov currently serves as a Vice-Chairperson on the Board of Directors and the Chairperson for the Ambassador Committee. Proceed Innovative continues to work together with the SBA on

events to engage local business owners and foster growth in the community.

Looking Ahead

Over the last 14 years, the company has driven growth and success for various business owners and their teams. That will continue to be its core focus. The next chapter for Proceed Innovative will be to increase the scale of its focus. The team's work online is now starting to impact business growth worldwide. The goal will be to provide businesses looking to be premier players in their industry with an opportunity to drive growth at a massive scale.

At the same time, internally, the company will continue growing a team passionate about its client's success. The team has the experience, tools, and, most importantly, the autonomy to drive growth for the clients that invest in their work.

Customer/Client Testimonials

"We have been working with Proceed for over five years, and they have been wonderful to work with! They have redesigned 2 of our websites and provided us with SEO on each, and since then, we have seen a tremendous increase in online exposure. They are quick to help you and resolve any issues you have along the way. I would recommend this company to anyone." - Kiefer USA

"I have been working with Proceed Innovative for over two years. My visits to the website have increased dramatically, but, more important, so has my business! They are interested in how their efforts affect my results. They are always making recommendations to improve my website. Jasmine Panayotov, the owner, is involved and always has excellent input. Enis, who works directly with me, is professional, responsive, and creative. I cannot recommend them enough." - Marina Ramirez

"We have worked with Proceed Innovative on disaster restoration lead generation for a few months. Since we began our digital marketing work together, our return on investment has been through the roof. We have had a wave of new opportunities sent directly to our businesses. The team quickly answers any questions and provides detailed reports on our results. Great people, great program, and hands down the best Chicago SEO Agency." Change — to– Patrick O'Conner

Using AI to Automatically Optimize Cloud costs

The Birth of Cloud Computing

Back in the early days of cloud computing, if we would tell you that every business and consumer would eventually be running their entire compute and storage infrastructure digitally, we would sound crazy. But just 17 years later, it seems inevitable that the old world of data centers and on-premise servers will go the way of the physical newspaper and radio.

Indeed, even Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, didn’t envision this future back in 2000. At the time, Amazon was simply struggling to scale despite hiring a lot of new developers. Jassy, who was Amazon’s Chief of Staff at the time, dove into the problem to discover that the hardware and infrastructural needs simply were not being met fast enough. Jassy set out to speed up this process internally, allowing the internal R&D team to access a pool of common compute and storage resources, making it easier for each to launch their own projects without needing to deal with the underlying infrastructure. Eventually, at a team summit in 2003, they realized this was a need for every other company on the planet, and so AWS was born.

The birth of Spotinst: Rising cloud costs

Today, there is a similar revolution beginning in the world of cloud computing. One still in its early stages, but seemingly destined to grow just as quickly as AWS. “Spotinst aims to be the largest provider of cloud infrastructure without running any servers,” says Amiram Shachar, CEO & Founder of Spotinst. The statement is bold on its own, but when you dive a bit deeper, not much bolder a claim than had you asked Andy Jassy the same back in 2003.

Just as Jassy found an internal struggle today, Spotinst began with Shachar’s identification of a problem at his company, then Lycos Global Group. As Director of DevOps, Shachar was pressed with the task of migrating all Lycos’ servers to the cloud, but costs quickly jumped. “Within a couple of months of moving to the cloud, our costs had actually risen dramatically, way beyond any calculator that we used to predict it” continued Shachar. “To the point where we were actually planning to move everything back to on-premise.”

Just around that time, Shachar encountered the relatively unused offering at AWS, called Spot Instances. Spot

Amiram Shachar Chief Executive Officer

About the CEO

Amiram Shachar is CEO & Founder of Spotinst, which leverages excess cloud capacity to help customers save ~80% on cloud costs. Before Spotinst, he was Director of DevOps at Ybrant Media and led the Israeli Defense Forces migration to the cloud.

Instances were spare server capacity at AWS, cleverly packaged to enable monetization of these servers. AWS offered these idle servers for massive 90% discounts with one major caveat - they’ll kick you off once a customer wants to pay full price for those servers.

Shachar smelled opportunity. “By building algorithms that could predict the spare capacity terminations in advance, we could then migrate to another spare server beforehand, saving us 80% on our cloud costs.” After a few months, Shachar and his team were running nearly 75% of their compute power on AWS spare capacity. Just like Jassy back in 2003, the lightbulb eventually went off - there was a far larger opportunity at hand here.

The virtual cloud: run code without dealing with cloud providers

“All companies running on cloud struggle to keep costs down,” Shachar says. “But with a long list of priorities including security and maintaining site reliability, DevOps teams often don’t have the time to do all of the work required to optimize cost.” But while Spotinst’s first product was aimed at helping companies reliably leverage spare capacity to reduce costs, Shachar and his co-founders, Liran Polak and Aharon Twizer, had a bigger vision.

Today, managing cloud infrastructure has become just as complex as running on-premises. With a plethora of new AWS, Google, and Azure offerings launching every month, along with an increasingly vast list of companies that build off these offerings, figuring out the balance between cost and performance is a major challenge. But, Shachar envisions a world where you don’t have to.

The promise of the virtual cloud

The promise of Shachar’s vision is simple at heart - a virtual cloud. Spotinst will leverage machine learning to

ensure that your applications are always running on the most cost-effective servers, given your performance requirements. Instead of exploring the long list of alternatives within and across the different cloud providers, Spotinst will take care of it all under the hood. Today, their platform recognizes any workload that could be run on a cheaper server. Just put those workloads under Spotinst’s control and their algorithms will take care of the rest - those workloads will forever run on the cheapest servers available. All without compromising performance or availability.

Using a new Serverless offering, where developers can simply write code without dealing with any of the underlying infrastructure, Spotinst aims to deliver on this promise in a major way. “All you should ever have to do is write code,” says Shachar. “Our algorithms will make sure it is always running on the most cost-effective infrastructure, across all cloud providers, for your performance and availability needs.” In other words, just write the code, and Spotinst will make sure it always runs at the lowest cost possible for your performance needs.

As Shachar says, “in 10 years, just as everyone is making the shift to cloud today, they will be making the shift to Serverless computing. Only with Spotinst, they’ll be able to also ensure they are paying the best possible price, all without doing anything.” The promise of companies all running a perfectly optimized cloud without ever dealing with the infrastructure seems bold. But as we learned from Jassy and AWS, in another 10-15 years, it may just be an inevitability.

Josep Ruano Founder & CEO

CAPSiDE: Revamping the Phases of Cloud Transformation

Every organization desires to stay ahead of its competency. And mostly, prefers to adapt technological advancements for attaining such stature. Although, the volatile disruptions in IT sector have reinvented the course of customary business methods yet, many still strive to adapt Cloud transformation.

Meet CAPSiDE , a leading European Cloud Managed Services provider. Its cloud technology not only simplifies the complexities faced by customers but also deliver proven benefits. Born in 2001, CAPSiDE has matured its expertise in Cloud Architecture, SysOps, DevOps and SecOps and has assisted many multinational companies by running their critical infrastructure. Whether just starting a Cloud transformation journey or executing a Cloud adoption strategy, CAPSiDE is committed to help you by combining Cloud consultancy, enablement, design, automation and 24/7 operation. Their vendor-neutral approach has been a key to develop

top-notch solutions and cloudautomation tools to boost their client’s Cloud transformation.

Captivating Solutions

CAPSiDE’s expertise in both hybrid and public Cloud environments has been the driving factor behind its exceptional Cloud solutions.

CAPSiDE’s holistic approach on Cloud consultancy and enablement provides the latest insights on the newest Cloud-related technologies. Cloud Architects at CAPSiDE are nurtured on bleeding-edge technologies, and use the necessary tools in each project according to the requirements and the real business needs.

Additionally, CAPSiDE has developed a set of Cloud-automation tools that boost the use of Cloud computing. One of them is ENZiME®, a blue/green code deployment engine that enables customers to improve DevOps workflow, automate code

deployments and accelerate time-tomarket. REPLiCA®is another tool that allows consistent launches of complex infrastructures in the Cloud. The use of its own Cloud-automation tools combined with continuouslytrained engineers enhance the performance of Cloud environments which are designed automated and operated by CAPSiDE.

The Spearhead of the CAPSiDE

Josep Ruano , the Founder and CEO of CAPSiDE has worked in the software industry for more than 20 years, holding positions in software engineering, technical lead and team management. He is a frequent speaker in Cloud Computing, Software Engineering and Digital Transformation, which has made him a key influencer in the Cloud transformation of several companies. He also has been tailoring the minds of the future leaders by teaching at prestigious business schools about Digital Transformation.

Alongside navigating the Cloud landscape, Josep has infused a culture of achieving the right worklife balance at CAPSiDE. His passion for cooking reflects in the company’s employee training programs. Josep takes pride in investing 6 per cent of the company’s turnover for internal training programs, while closer to 18 per cent is allotted for Research & Development—towards improving tools and technologies for the infrastructure and systems automation. This adds potential to the engineering team to make systems as automated as possible, and handle exceptions through a single tier of on-going support system. By ensuring the quality and maturity of the company’s processes, CAPSiDE became one of the key leaders in Cloud transformation when companies started to pivot to the Cloud.

“This is an important differentiator in terms of response and issue-solving time. Since we focus on systems that cannot fail, our senior engineers attend to any alert in less than 10 minutes round the clock,” states Josep.

Tackling Obstacles with Better Tools

The primary challenge faced by any public cloud vendor is regarding the governance in Cloud environments. Most of the times, IT and Financial managers both are scared to make the change because it may turn into bigger costs and fewer infrastructures control. Whereas CAPSiDE has developed REPLiCA®, a Cloud management tool that allows

consistent launches of complex infrastructures in the Cloud. The use of REPLiCA® as a governance tool is essential for IT managers as it allows companies to directly control each Cloud environment.

Another challenge that companies face while migrating to Google Cloud is the lack of knowledge and expertise. Even though Google Cloud Platform is an easy environment to start a Cloud transformation, it is important to develop a good Cloud strategy.

Google Cloud related technologies while leveraging the power of Google Cloud to develop new tools that will boost their clients’ performance.

Testimonies from Client’s

“Not only they are technically good profiles, but they also know your platform very well. You don’t have to give them any details, and it doesn’t matter who picks up the phone. It doesn’t matter if it is Guillem, Rael, Luis Alberto… everyone knows exactly how your infrastructure is configured. ” Belén Jódar, CTO at Grupo Zeta – Diario SPORT

Future Endeavours

CAPSiDE has been working with Google Cloud Platform since its inception. Therefore, the team at CAPSiDE has had on-going training on new Google Cloud features for many years.

The company plans to continue delivering cloud solutions on Google Cloud Platform for the upcoming future. To do so, CAPSiDE will continue training its team to the latest

“Our company works everyday with sensitive data and critical information. The legal standards and government obligations are also one of the principal aspects that can affect our business. We needed someone trustworthy, able to develop a great cloud structure focusing on security and the people at CAPSiDE knew exactly what to do. The service was attentive, and the outcoming results couldn’t have been better. We haven’t worked with another SysOps company since then.”

-Philippe Gelis, Co-Founder and CEO at Kantox.

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Making the world more reliable through the design, automation and 24/7 operation of Critical Cloud Platforms.

Can Create Business Developmentswith Different Revenue Streams

SaaS or ‘Software as a Service’ is being used rigorously in current business ventures as it provides more accuracy and vision to any business project. Interestingly, with this solution, the importance of installing the hardware devices to run the data and different applications has lost its importance. It is a very selective section of cloud computing, through which the future business data collection process can be simpler than ever. SaaS is a very profitable genre in the field of futuristic business ventures, and thus a question may arise about the SaaS business, and that is what could be the revenue stream for such business enterprise, or in general words, the earning process for the SaaS business!

Unfortunately some people believe that there are no such good ways of earning revenue for Saas business and if there are some sources, those are very minor in their conducts. Interestingly, the reality and the current situation are otherwise, and there are a number of ways in which the SaaS business can earn its revenue. ‘Payment’ to get the software is not the only mode of earning, and the enterpriser of this business can earn great revenue with multiple options, without stressing out on particular section of the business venture. Here are some of the solutions:

Set-up Cost and Upsell

A Set-up cost is one of the common ways to earn the revenue and it gives clarity to the providers about the authenticity of the users and determines the commitment too, thus it is a great way to explore the minds of the customers and the possible future relationship with the users. On the other hand the set up earning can actually lead to the upsell market for the SaaS providers. It is one of the easiest ways to enhance the revenue through the existing customers, and it is a great business opportunity, as this way of earning lessens the dependency of the brand on the pressure of adding up new customers. To maintain the continuity with the existing customers certain facilities like offering additional storage, speed, data, bandwidth or the frequency are enlisted as 'services'. Though, this process of earning is largely dependent on the benefit of the product or the service, along with the need or requirement of the client.

Affiliate Marketing

It is another great way to boost the earning for the SaaS business as, through this process, it becomes a two-way system to get business, where the users advertise or sell the product. As the process is

dependent on the users, it is not dependent on any other external way from the business providers' side. The SaaS providers are only responsible to pay the commission after getting the revenue. So it is definitely a win-win situation for the SaaS providers.

Customer Service and Information Charges

Saas providers are on the verge of adding a new structure for great revenue, which are customer service and information charges. As with this system, the business providers offer to sale some of the researched information to the clients. It is not very difficult for the clients to value them by paying the money as they are getting a great help, and interestingly it can work for the clients to cling to the services which can create the path for more business. Basically, a great customer service is the key to earn good money and with the satisfaction of the customers; the process can be on the loop for a great revenue system.

Advertisement Advertisements are the most common sector of

earning money, and it is the best way of earning through the free version users, but not very apt for the paid customers. As the paid customers already pay a certain amount, adding advertisements can create a negative impact on them. So even if the ads are there, they must be in a way that looks less annoying for the users.

API Model

This is rather a complicated but effective method of earning lucrative revenue. If the SaaS can coordinate or work with other software applications, the importance of it can rise to a whole new level. This work model can do magic for some of the users and it can have a great value or earning in the future. But this great system comes with certain risks, and the reason is, the amount of money invested to create and run it. But if the developers can be assured of its service and the demand of the customers, it can turn out to be a great moneymaking option.

Reselling

When some of the SaaS is so apt that the potential customers want to avail it for their business purpose, the tie-up with the providers or the reselling of the product can be beneficial form the point of view of the revenue. This process is known as the White Label Licensing.

At the end of this discussion, the conclusion is, a better service can open up new trails for Revenue Streams for SaaS Business. SaaS is not a new concept, but the vast implication is definitely new. So there are a number of scopes yet to be explored by the developers of this new business. Thus, the future and the success of SaaS business is dependent on exploring various ways for SaaS revenue, and with more innovative ideas for the revenue, the market of SaaS business will be more strengthened to touch the zenith.

DefinedLogic: Driving Your Digital Purpose

The world is digital. Gone are the days of managing work using pen and paper, whiteboards and dry erase markers, sticky notes and your cubicle walls. Saving Microsoft Word Documents and spreadsheets in a folder on your computer is a thing of the past. The business world is ensuring its success with much better, efficient and costeffective option; Digital Projects.

Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Red bank, New Jersey, DefinedLogic recognized this evolutionary approach eighteen years ago and created a Digital Agency that enables companies to drive their success digitally. Through collaborative client relationships rooted in trust, DefinedLogic identifies the right digital strategies, helps manage change and works with client teams to move business forward. The company helps clients across all areas of business, including strategy, creative, technology, and marketing and analytics. In an interview with Insights Success its Digital and Analytics Strategist,

Robert Arace sheds a light on the company’s flagship services, its vision and approach.

Below are the highlights of the interview between Robert Arace and Insights Success add :

Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness, and its vision.

DefinedLogic was started in 2002 by partner William Meyers and Alex Shanley. As the internet became a key driver of business strategy, DefinedLogic found a niche working alongside business and IT teams to improve dialog and define requirements for digital projects. Our foundation, rooted in consulting, allowed companies to achieve better results from technology investments. As technology has advanced; so does the DefinedLogic’s offerings.

What are the cutting-edge solutions offered by DefinedLogic? We have created practices to support development of our expertise and the value we offer to clients.

DefinedLogic offers strategy, creative design, technology, and marketing and analytics services to provide a turnkey approach to any digital project, or we can enhance your existing teams with specific expertise as needed to accelerate and ensure project success.

Give a detailed description of the featured personnel’s influence over the company and the industry.

Robert Arace is the Head of our Digital Acquisition and Insights group at DefinedLogic. His specific realm of influence within the company is multi-channel digital marketing strategy, execution, and measurement. In addition to this, Rob also specializes in web analytics tracking strategy and execution.

From a marketing/analytics strategy perspective, Rob is involved with defining business objectives and goals internally and with our clients, digital campaign preparation, execution and reporting/optimization.

From a measurement perspective, Rob and his team are involved with outlining the tracking strategy,

Robert Arace Digital & Analytics Strategist

detailing the technical requirements, implementing the architecture via a tag manager platform and creating reports in business intelligence software.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned that have shaped the journey of the company.

Specifically, for our Digital Acquisition and Insight group, we used the fail fast method. We have been building out this group for the past several years and we never feared failure, we learned from it and learned quickly. From each of our failures we adjusted our services to better meet the demand of our clients. This allowed our team to build out established processes that we were able to prove out in the market place. In the first 2 years of our groups existence, we became a Google Marketing Platform Partner –we believe that this is a testament to ability to hypothesis test different practices and deploy that quickly.

What are the challenges faced while providing Google solutions and how is DefinedLogic serving to tackle them?

a. One challenge that we face is to ensure that we are aligning expectations with our clients -making sure that our clients have a complete understanding of the capabilities and the limitations of the platform is imperative to execute a successful campaign and to maintain a healthy partnership with our clients. In order to do this we host a kick-off meeting where we clearly define our main objectives and goals

and how we plan on accomplishing them.

b. Our team looks to approach each project with a customized solution to each of our client’s needs, we don’t necessarily have an out of the box solution for each of our clients. We have found that taking the time to create a unique strategy for each client is extremely beneficial to the long-term success to each of our campaigns.

able to service multiple platforms if needed – we stay prepared by not singling out any particular language or platform.

Testimonials by Clients “Defined Logic is a true business partner. They were instrumental in helping us implement our digital analytics strategy. Their knowledge and expertise helped us overhaul our Google Analytics configuration ensuring it aligned with our business objectives. They skillfully handled a complex Google Tag Manager implementation. Defined Logic continues to play an active role in our ongoing analytics management, turning data into actionable insights. They are a pleasure to work with and a very talented team.”

- SVP Lead Generation and Marketing

What according to you could be the potential future of Google solutions and how does DefinedLogic envision sustaining its competency?

A potential next step for Google in our minds would be for them to provide a CMS solution to their Google Marketing Cloud Customers. This would give them a unique opportunity to integrate Google Analytics and many of the new 360 suite offerings that Google Provides. DefinedLogic takes an agnostic approach to our platform selection, we always have the resources to be

“Defined Logic is our strategic digital partner continuing to exceed our expectations in web development, support and SEM. The dedicated Defined Logic team brings a unique ability to understand our goals and visions, while incorporating out of the box solutions. Since implementing the Defined Logic strategy our website traffic and web revenue have realized consistent year over year growth.”

-VP Global Business Development

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At DefinedLogic, every action we take to serve our clients starts with an understanding of their Digital Purpose.

Decoding Digital Transformation for Utilities

Massive technology changes, never seen or experienced before are revolutionizing the businesses with advent of the new wave of digital innovation. From cloud computing to mobility, to big data analytics, IoT, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, these technologies have completely transformed the business landscape irrespective of the industry— banking, retail, telecom or utility alike. The pace of this technological advancement is growing exponentially, establishing new business models and creating tectonic shifts in market dynamics.

The technology-savvy and digitally connected customers of today are further forcing businesses to take cognizance of their preferences, expectations and consumption trends. Unless business aligns their approach and processes with this customercentric approach, survival may be thwarted in the competitive landscape.

Today, the energy and utility industry grapples with its unique set of challenges comprising aging infrastructure, workforce retention and recruitment, widening demand-supply deficit, evolving regulatory mandates,

stricter environmental compliances, need to increase grid resilience, and economic and social ramifications. Ultimately, utilities face the risk of disintermediation of their relationship with the customer, allowing new entrants to capture the value, while they are left holding the costs.

For utilities to meet these challenges while delivering quality service and sustaining their financial viability, it is paramount to reexamine their approach technology and digitalization. While the traditional energy and utility industry had been a relatively slow adopter of technology compared to other sectors, nonetheless, it has picked up pace in last couple of years. The energy and utility companies today are beginning to comprehend the value of digital innovation and its impact on improving their operational efficiencies, boosting service levels, reducing costs and most importantly on increasing customer satisfaction. This has led them to explore the opportunities extended by adopting latest technologies such as cloud, mobile, big data, predictive analytics, IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics and others. The industry is now quick to leverage latest

innovations to modernize processes, gain efficiencies and gain customer confidence.

By adopting a “mobile-first” strategy, the utilities can enable real-time connectivity with customers and their workforce alike – from anywhere, anytime and using any device. This has empowered customers who can easily manage or monitor their real-time and historic usage, and make better choices based on data-backed insights. They can conveniently plan and manage their bills and payments with increased ease and flexibility. The utilities can use mobile technology to become proactive in sending alerts, notifications and personalized communication to the customers. It can also boost the workforce productivity and efficiency by equipping them with on-the-go updates using mobile devices. Driving customer engagement can help utility increase customers’ adoption for energy efficiency and water conservation programs. This in turn is a win-win for both – the customers who save on resources as well as on bills, and even the utility which is able to manage peak loads and optimizing resources; thereby also meeting the state mandates.

About The Author

EricDresselhuys is the President at SmartEnergy Water(SEW). He has been contributing in the energy, utility and infrastructure industry for 20 years. With his domain know-how, technical expertise and business acumen, Eric is responsible for the overall strategic outlook and business development at SEW. Over the years he has played a leading role working with utilities across 5 continents to help guide their digital transformation . Eric is a well-known speaker thought leader across the energy, utility and infrastructure industries.

Eric Dresselhuys President Smart Energy Water

However, this digital shift poses another set of complexities for utility industry – huge quantum of customer data, lack of in-house technical expertise, implementation risks, integration complexities and ongoing support concerns. Thus, for utilities, the adoption of technology and solutions necessitates a strategic outlook rather than tactical detours focused on quick fixes.

The industry must carefully assess and evaluate the “build vs. buy” adage to be able to deploy technology or solutions which are a best-fit for their business requirements and are also cost-effective and efficient. They must look for solutions that can easily integrate with existing legacy systems, require minimal deployment cost and can deliver faster returns on investment. Since, customers today are prime drivers of change; another important consideration for the utility industry must be customer adoption rate. The customers are doubtlessly more technology savvy today, but adoption rate depends upon how user-friendly a platform is, and does it offer self-service capabilities. Similarly, how quickly and easily the utility workforce can familiarize with the solution and can use it address customer concerns. Carefully weighing these considerations can help the industry truly leverage the emerging technologies and thrive on the wave of digitalization.

The acceleration of digital transformation in the utility industry has predictably driven an upsurge in the number of service providers offering technologies to address these needs, each with their unique value proposition, but generally focused on only a small sub-set of the overall challenge. Thus, the utility companies must be cautious while identifying their digital transformation partners’ basis not just the technical competencies but also ensures both are aligned in terms of long-term architectural compliance and are driven by a shared goal to build the utility’s primacy with its customers.

As more and more utilities adapt and adopt emerging technologies, CIOs have an important role to play as they must carefully balance long-term and short-term deployment decisions. With the evolving utility-customer relationship, they must probe areas where digital can help them strengthen relationship with customers, while improving operations, bridging organizational siloes, and developing topline opportunities. Indeed, digital transformation opens arrays of opportunities for utilities, but, success will require a significant investment in new talent and capabilities, and careful prioritization.

Pieter Meijer Managing Partner

Pervorm: Accelerating Brands into the Digital Future

Renowned Canadian ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky once famously quoted “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

In the world of business as well, an organization that comprehend the future of its products or solutions and execute strategies accordingly marks its success and stays ahead of competition. As marketing is constantly changing , almost every brand around the world tasting fruitful benefits of employing technology for its marketing purposes. However, pertaining to the growing competition digital marketing agencies are focusing on offering temporarily beneficial advertising solutions to differentiate themselves instead of ensuring that their customers focus on the value that they bring to their end user

Founded in 2010, Pervorm is a leading digital marketing company that puts end user expereince first to reach their clients’ business goals. By simultaneously unlocking the full potential of data, technology, creativity

and media, orchestrate andPervorm optimize all digital channels, including display, social and search advertising and helps advertisers to in-house these capabilities.

Driving Factors

Since its inception the people at Pervorm are dedicated tto improve business results of its corporate and scale up clients from digital marketing. The company always put the end user first and therefore advises an integrated approach of branding and performance goals. Moreover, to achieve its clients’ desired business results the company realizes that its clients need to be in control of the most important digital marketing means; media, creativity, data and technology.

Pervorm is recognized by industry leaders for its precision and perfection in digital marketing. The company reasons from three key beliefs to help the growing brand needs and enable it to offer them a precise customized solution

Ÿ Consumers First: Pervorm believes tailoring customer journeys is not a

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possibility but a necessity and encourages approach where its consumer is in control of every process.

Nowadays the advertiser is the marketing conductor and is expected to develop in-house skills and knowledge. Through available customer data, advertisers can now have direct connections with their customers or audiences. Therefore they need to build and control those relationships to adapt and service in the best way possible.

Ÿ

Automation and usage of AI is the key: According to Pervorm automation will enable marketers to focus on the core of their proposition and decrease time on project management, marketing calendars and media tactics. It strongly shortens time between insights and the possibility to take action. Hence, the company primarily emphasizes on automating processes and utilizing AI for better results.

Beyond Shiny New ‘Things’

Pervorm asserts advertisers themselves have the most leverage to improve their client experiences, not the agency. It claims an expert agency can fail due to the siloed organization of the client. This believe of ’your agency is as good as you’ has transformed Pervorm from a performance media agency to a marketing services provider. Thus, next to execution the company accentuates the consulting role, to empower advertisers and their marketers to be on the driving seat. Its end user first approach enable it address the core issue.

Sometimes there are advertisers who look for shiny new ‘things’ to use in their marketing. However, for Pervorm improvement is about filtering the trends from real developments and matching those with brands business goals. For example, the last 3-4 years there was a lot of talk about Data Management Platforms and customer data platforms. Many organizations were already working on audits and so on, but did not have a clue on why or how to use it. On the contrary, Pervorm help organizations to get more knowledge and skill in-house to increase their productivity and use their agencies in a better way.

Tackling Challenges with Transparency Google plays a crucial role in digital marketing and advertising as its influence in tech and data impacts every demographics. Google will continue to become a ’one-stop-shop solution’ for digital advertising. Many tools have already been integrated in the Google Marketing Platform (GMP) and the ad server will disappear as a standalone solution after the integration. Possibly also social advertising will become available

through GMP and advertising may become on a ’quid pro quo’ basis. The amount of data available to parties like Google, is more than enough to connect the dots which provides them with a unique position.

Coping up with consistent developments in Google is quite a dominant challenge. The platform is increasingly becoming a walled garden. It has moved to a cookie less environment. Parties being dependent

Pervorm employs unique approach to tackle these challenges. It makes sure that its clients understand the terms & conditions and thoroughly explains advantages/disadvantages while using Google. The company utilizes third party measurement tools like Nielsen Dar or Moat to get sufficient insights and advise clients to make the full use of Google and get the most value for their buck. The company believes it is its responsibility to be up-to-date with the leaders like Google. Follow the developments when they make sense and challenge them when it affects client interests. Pervorm’s clients are happy with its transparent customer first approach and admire its commitment towards customer satisfaction.

Motivating Client Admirations

“Pervorm has enabled us to quickly increase the programmatic marketing knowledge of our (international) marketers. They have proven to be a reliable partner in the process of in-housing our ad server and DSP account by asking the right questions and by having a deep understanding of the market.”

- Perfetti van Melle

on cookies will become obsolete in a very fast pace. Stricter privacy laws makes data-companies, like Google, depend more on their algorithms and the availability of data. For example you can’t use third party view trackers on YouTube anymore which creates adversities in lead generation. In addition, enormous data uploaded on these platforms lead to lack of flexibility for the product. Ensuring lead generation in such protective environment becomes hard for advertisers as they require investing in expensive technologies and cost of advertising or digital marketing significantly increases.

“Together with Pervorm Friesland Campina has gone through a successful transformation and now has a transparent digital media buying process. Pervorm has also provided us with valuable insights in how to increase the effect of digital marketing”

- Friesland Campina

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We help brands communicate with their audiences on a truly personal level.

Green Cloud Computing

Saving Energy through Technology

The rapid expansion in data centers, due to the exponential growth of the cloud computing has caused the dramatic increase in energy consumption and its effect on the environment in term the carbon footprints. To reduce the power consumption, it is required to develop some energy efficient solutions. The Green Computing improve efficiency of the computing resources in such a way as to reduce the energy consumption and environmental impact of their utilization. Green Cloud Architecture is rising fr only to energy efficiency, but also a carbon emission aware concept. In order to reduce energy consumption, a greener environment needs to be built.

Among all industries, the information communication technology (ICT) industry is arguably res for a larger portion of the worldwide growth in energy consumption. The goal of green cloud computin to promote the recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste by reduci of hazardous materials and maximizing the energy efficiency during the product's lifetime

Energy to be saved

The objective is to reduce power consumption of the data center. It offers the features li online monitoring, live virtual machine migration, and optimization of Virtual Machine Placement. Through this proposed Green Cloud Architecture, energy up to 27% can be saved. The need to manage multiple applications in a data center creates the challe on-demand resource provisioning and allocation in response to time-varying workloads. Data center resources are statically possessed to applications, base the peak load characteristics, in order to provide performance guarantees and to maintain the isolation.

Energy-efficient resource management has been first introduced in the context of battery fed mobile devices, where energy consumption has to be reduced in order to improve the battery lifetime. Techniques which are developed for mobile devices also can be applied or adapted for servers and data centers; this kind of systems requires specific methods.

The primary method is to consolidate the Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling technique in an efficient way to maximize the resource utilization and to minimize energy consumption of the datacenters which will result in the reduced

carbon footprints and thus will help more in achieving the Green Computing.

The Green Benefits Cloud computing is the way to save money and energy for the business. Users emphasize Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and can improve their manageability and facilitate the maintenance of the resources. It means that benefit of business enterprises implicates to avoid spending on software and infrastructure resources, and allow business clients to focus on earning money rather than being weighted down with infrastructure concerns. Therefore, operating this model allows reducing the consummation of the power energy without spending money on running the servers. Moreover, with no servers to repair, the absence of hardware to upgrade and no software to install, labor costs are also reduced.

With SaaS software accesses usually through a browserbased client, i.e., it can run on virtually any authorized computer, making desktop and laptop resources easily replaceable. Thus, when the user also saves on the support, it doubles the impact and in fact increases green role in business. The employees can work remotely, traveling and moving from one place to another because they have fast access to the internet and the ability to use all the services at hand, on the other hand, it reduces the consumption of fossil fuels and the harmful pollution that results from vehicle emissions as well.

The reduction of energy and power consumption has become a first-order objective in the design of modern computing systems. The roots of energy-efficient computing, practices can be traced back to 1992, when the U.S. environmental protection agency had launched Energy Star, a voluntary labeling program which was designed to identify and promote the energy-efficient products in order to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. Computers and monitors were the first labeled products. This has led to the widespread adoption of the sleep mode in electronic devices. The term “green computing” was introduced to refer to the energy-efficient personal computers.

Interesting Research Findings

While deploying data center, the sole concern is high-performance, and this demand has been fulfilled without paying much attention to the energy consumption. An average data center guzzles energy as much as 25,000 households. There is a necessity to move the focus to optimizing for energy efficiency while maintaining high service level performance than optimizing data center resource management for pure performance, as the energy cost is increasing while the availability dwindles. According to certain reports, the total estimated energy bill for data centers in the year 2010 was $11.5 billion and energy costs in a typical data center doubles every five years.

For the development of cloud computing and it to sustain green technologies is exceedingly essential. Of the numerous green methodologies enquired, the DVFS technology is a highly hardware oriented approach and hence it is less flexible.

Cloud computing is a highly scalable and cost-effective infrastructure for running an enterprise and the web applications. But the critical issue is the drastic surge in the energy consumption of data centers which is triggering by the growing demand for cloud infrastructure. Hence, the energy-efficient solutions are required which results in less number of carbon footprints and thus help in achieving greener computing.

Eric Shashoua CEO & Founder

Zive, Inc.: Designing Better Cloud-based Applications

In a recent interview, Insights Success spoke with Eric Shashoua , CEO and Founder of Zive, Inc. about his experience building technology products using design as a key differentiator. In addition to sharing some resourceful insights, he also told us more about Zive’s approach to reshaping how cloud-based software is experienced along with his future goals to make people using applications like Google’s G Suite more productive.

Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Eric and Insights Success:

Please give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness, and its vision.

Since its introduction, G Suite’s cloudbased approach and simplicity has won over millions of businesses. Google’s cloud-based email and productivity apps are great, but their main drawback is that users are stuck using them in the web browser.

Kiwi, a desktop app, untethers G-Suite from the confines of web browsers. What we’ve done is create a desktop

app for Gmail as well as G Suite apps like Docs, Sheets and Slides that turns them into a set of desktop applications that exist outside the browser, functioning much more like Microsoft Office and not as a series web pages in tabs in your browser.

What are the cutting-edge solutions offered by Zive, Inc.?

We began by focusing on consumers with Kiwi for Gmail. It took us more than two years to rethink and rebuild from the ground up how Gmail functions on the desktop to make it faster, easier to use, and more reliable. It has become one of the highest overall rated (average rating for all versions) third-party email apps in Apple’s Mac App Store.

Our enterprise solution, Kiwi for G Suite, enables businesses to provide their employees with a desktop-like experience for productivity applications like Docs, Sheets, and Slides. The uniqueness of Kiwi is that it works as a full-featured desktop application that is fully integrated with your computer’s operating system and file system.

This means Kiwi is faster, lighter and has additional features that can’t be built by Google in a web page. The browser environment limits developments and enhancements in different ways, which Kiwi the desktop application makes possible.

Since security is a huge issue for both enterprise and consumer users, Zive implemented a theoretical computer science research paper on securing banking websites to isolate everything happening in Kiwi from what’s going on in the browser and even from other related accounts.

What Kiwi for G Suite really does is help enterprises improve their G Suite rollouts, increase user adoption and make them more likely to stay with G Suite after transitioning from Microsoft Office.

Give a detailed description of your role at the company and impact on the industry.

I guess you could describe me as a serial entrepreneur who has developed a devotion to humanized design that is beautiful, seamless, and simple. My dedication to design is reflected in

every aspect of our products. Before Zive, I previously started and led Zeo, Inc., where I raised $14M in VC funding and launched the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach in the US and Europe.

Underpinning everything our company does are two pillars, speed and multitasking, which help clients make a difference in the way their people work and ultimately their business propositions.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned that have shaped the journey of the company.

My management philosophy has been strongly influenced by the CEOs of Bose and iRobot, who were active members of Zeo’s board. As a result, Zive’s management now embraces a passionate design philosophy for creating humanistic, friendly products that are also powerful. We firmly believe that our products make real differences in people’s lives by making the tools they rely on not only more useful, but also more elegant and intuitive.

We believe in the power of design that results in an effortlessness, which invites engagement. We believe that beauty is indispensable, because life is bigger than work. We believe that details matter, because the realization of a vision is ultimately nothing more than an assemblage of these. And we believe in obsessive design, because true perfection requires persistent iteration fueled by burning passion for the thing created.

We believe that the only way to do transcendent work is to find something way more important than simple revenue. For us, that’s saving the world from bad software, with resounding works of art and engineering that stand boldly in defiance of the status quo.

What are the challenges faced while providing Google solutions and how is Zive, Inc. serving to tackle them?

Companies transitioning to G Suite and the resellers that assist them often find the process of rolling out the new platform and onboarding new users difficult. Employees often miss the familiarity of Office and find using applications like Google Drive via the browser difficult.

As a result, they often prefer to continue to use more intuitive and familiar alternatives like Dropbox and Box. Unfortunately, this means that

A recent analysis of Kiwi for G Suite users revealed a significant increase in the amount they use key G Suite apps. In fact, we saw a +74% increase in overall editor usage (Docs, Sheets and Slides) and a huge +140% rise in Google Drive usage.

These findings demonstrate that Kiwi can help companies achieve dramatically better adoption of G Suite among employees by delivering a more familiar and user-friendly experience when compared to using these same apps in the browser.

More Successful G Suite Rollouts: Kiwi for G Suite makes it much easier for clients to take full advantage of G Suite and reduces reseller sales IT efforts and cost.

Increased User Adoption: Kiwi makes G Suite a better product by adding new functionality and providing a native Interface. This not only allows users to get even more from G Suite, but also provides a simple alternative to make G Suite more usable for resistant employees.

companies end up having to hold onto additional licenses and essentially double pay for storage services.

This can end up significantly raising the overall cost of deploying G Suite. When combined with slower than expected adoption among employees, CIOs may be tempted to reconsider their decisions to go with G Suite. Kiwi’s multiple windows and intuitive interface lets users work smarter by enabling them to quickly access each application, open new documents, and get back to recent documents with a single click.

Improved Client/User Retention: By making, Google Drive and apps like Docs, Sheets and Slides much easier to use, companies can save money by reducing the need to double pay for Dropbox and Office licenses. This reduces cost and improves overall ROI on a company’s G Suite investment.

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Our Kiwi for G Suite app helps improve G Suite rollouts, increase user adoption and improve client retention by taking Google’s cloudbased applications out of the browser on onto the desktop.

Mathivanan V Vice President ManageEngine

Rising Mobile Workforce and its Challenges in the Mobile-Cloud Era:

Data & Endpoint Management

Mobility and cloud computing are rapidly becoming the norm for enterprises around the world. In turn, enterprise IT departments are facing new management and security challenges as the amount of business data soars and the number of endpoints explodes. The question that is doing the rounds is what IT teams need to consider to manage and secure their businesses in this new era.

Industry analysts predict deep penetration of enterprise mobility by the year 2020. IDC, for instance, forecasts

that mobile workers will account for almost 75 percent of the total workforce in the U.S. Meanwhile, Strategy Analytics projects that the global mobile workforce will reach 1.75 billion users and account for 42 percent of the global workforce overall.

The economic perspective is just as bright as a button. The global enterprise mobility market will be worth as much as $140 billion, predicts the National Association of Software and Services Companies And the investments are paying off. To date, 84 percent of all companies who consider themselves on the cutting edge of mobility report an increase in overall productivity as a direct result of incorporating mobile apps into their business, according to a survey by AppsFreedom.

Likewise, enterprises are expected to continue relentlessly adopting cloud technologies. By 2020, Gartner forecasts the public cloud services market will reach $383 billion. This includes spending on cloud business process services, cloud application infrastructure services, cloud application services, cloud management and security services, cloud system infrastructure services, and of course, cloud advertising.

The flip side of increasing enterprise mobility and cloud usage is the increasing risk to enterprise security. Today, most users have at least two endpoints – a laptop and mobile device – and 80 percent of network devices are be endpoints that are constantly connected to the internet and exposed to its threats such as Meltdown, Spectre, Wannacry, and Petya.

More troubling, the typical end user has little knowledge of those threats or their ramifications. The result is more users are more likely to leak enterprise data by using compromised websites and rogue online services. The CVE listed 14,712 cybersecurity vulnerabilities for 2017 and has already listed 2,848 for the first two months of 2018. In response, vendors large and small are releasing patches on a daily basis. Enterprise IT teams clearly need to focus on endpoint security management to ensure business success in the mobile-cloud era.

Endpoint security challenges

Keeping endpoints up to date with the latest versions of their OSes and applications has become a full-time job, one that is getting harder to perform in the mobile enterprise. A growing challenge is the diversity of endpoint operating systems that must be managed, including Android, iOS, MacOS, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS. For each, the IT team must learn that OS along with its corresponding patching technique. Likewise, applications acquired from the various app stores are managed with different techniques that must be learned and mastered so that the team can secure the endpoints.

Another challenge is managing the endpoints from day one, especially mobile devices. While it’s been relatively easy for IT admins to install agent software on desktops and laptops, smart phones and other mobile devices make life harder for the admins because the devices are rarely if ever connected to the corporate network. Consequently, devices must be provisioned with the

necessary mobile device management software before they are given to end users. Devices that are not appropriately managed are security risks, so no business application should be installed or run on them.

Related to the day-one management challenge is updating endpoints that are on the go, anytime and anywhere. IT teams must be able to install critical patches while employees are traveling, commuting, or otherwise offsite.

Data leakage presents yet another security challenge for IT teams to overcome. Data leakage can happen with or without the users’ knowledge. For instance, users may knowingly copy business data to a USB device or upload it to a cloud storage service. They may also unknowingly expose that data to a public cloud service when using third-party apps such as document viewers and predictive keyboard apps. Such apps may compromise user IDs and passwords, account numbers, and other sensitive enterprise data by exposing it to public cloud services.

When a user’s device is lost or stolen, the IT team must be able to track and recover the device or wipe the data if the device isn’t recovered. To maintain the user’s privacy, however, the IT team can not continuously track the location of the user’s device.

BYOD presents another privacy vs security challenge: When users use their own devices for business purposes, privacy needs to be maintained. Photos, contacts, and other personal data should not be

managed by company’s mobile device management app.

On the other hand, security needs to be maintained, too. To that end, the IT team should create a container on the user’s personal device – a secure, managed area that isolates business email, CRM, and other enterprise apps and data from the rest of user’s personal apps/data.

To establish strong endpoint security and prevent unwanted attacks, IT teams must apply strict security policies on their endpoints. Laptops, for instance, should always run a firewall, prevent the creation of unwanted network shares, and encrypt data via BitLocker or FileVault. Such security policies can protect enterprises from the security risks posed by mobility.

Predicting the development of data and endpoint management

Going forward, machine learning and AI will help make data and endpoint management a proactive, rather than a reactive process. For instance, these technologies could prevent data theft by detecting anomalies such as unusual login activities or an unusually large number of documents being uploaded to the cloud. They could analyze the root cause of patch deployment failures and suggest fixes. They could also detect system idle times –during lunch hours, for instance – to deploy patches as

soon as possible rather wait until after hours or weekends, which can leave systems unnecessarily vulnerable.

Meanwhile, the internet of things (IoT) will introduce many organizations to a new breed of endpoints and connected devices. Unlike their iOS- and Androidpowered predecessors, IoT devices will be running many different OSes and applications, all of which may be vulnerable yet must be managed and secured.

Finally, most business applications are moving to the cloud and accessed via browser, effectively making the browser an endpoint. That means to defend against attacks, IT teams need to manage browsers and perform all security operations for them just as if they were desktops, laptops, or any other device.

As organizations continue to adopt mobility and the cloud, they must also adopt the practices necessary to support this new reality. Data and endpoint security and management are priority one in IT departments. For the vast majority of companies around the world, their future success depends on recognizing and committing to that priority.