Get optimal results from your IT investment by choosing Fusion Factor Corporation

Fusion Factor Corporation, one of the foremost IT Consulting companies is helping organizations to strengthen their business and get ahead of the competition with their flexible, proactive, consistent and on-time service & support at affordable prices. They are offering the full suite of managed services that incorporates with monitoring and management of IT networks, software maintenance, storage, security and backup. By making the use of most updated tools and advanced technology, Fusion Factor operates competently; keeping costs low, while delivering incredible customer service, and ultimately escalating the effectiveness and profitability of their patrons.

Are you struggling to keep your network up to date and run smoothly? Are your employees able to connect and perform remotely whereas keeping your business data secure? Are you worried about losing your important data as your backup solution is out-of-date and incompatible? Are your company workstations adversely affected with viruses and poor internet connection problems? When you are dealing with such questions and looking for permanent solution, Fusion Factor is there to aid you. They provide their clients with proactive, agile, responsive, timely and reliable IT solutions to work efficiently, flawlessly and securely.

Outdated infrastructure, virus threat, poor IT strategy, poor network performance, system downtime, high IT cost etc. are the few common ITsupport issues. Fusion Factors’ positive, advanced and systematic approach enables its professional team to protect your IT resources, improve their performance by stepping up to a highly reliable IT solution that is specially configured for businesses like yours. They reduce system downtime and make better network and workstation performance by their instantaneous, round-the-clock monitoring of your machines and networks and providing you with prompt notifications of possible problems.

Through continuous monitoring of your network, they increase system security and prevent serious data loss by averting both external and internal attacks on your data systems. They offer an integrated team approach where team of certified IT experts with more than 10 years of collective experience will work for you instead of one person with limited IT knowledge.  Fusion Factor’s primary goal is to boost your organizations profitability and competence by recommending, implementing, and handling technology that is suitable for you.

Microsoft Office 2013: With Greater Feasibility and Considerable Performance

On 29^th January, 2013 Microsoft released Office 2013 to general availability. Microsoft Office2013 is the successor of Microsoft Office 2010 and is suitable for x64 and IA-32 systems. Office 2013 requires Windows Server 2008 R2 or later version or Windows 7. 

A public beta of Office 2013 was launched in July 2012 by Microsoft; this is well known as successor of Microsoft Office 2010. Office 2013 actually consists of two forms, Office 365 and Office 2013. It is not essential for users to purchase both since Office 2013 can be used without Office 365. Microsoft Office 2013 includes new and upgraded features like Outlook.com, Skype, Hotmail, Yammer, Flickr, Open Document (ODF), improved format support for Office Open XML (OOXML) and Portable Document Format (PDF) and support for multi-touch interfaces. Office 2013 comes with 12 different editions including 5 subscription-based editions available through Office Web Apps, the Office RT edition, 3 editions for retail outlets and 2 editions for volume licensing channel. Although Enterprises pay a price for on-premise installation, but Office RT edition for mobile and tablets, Office Web Apps are available free of charge, online.

Microsoft has made most dramatic changes to entire Microsoft Office suite that is Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook within Office 2013. As compared to Microsoft Office 2010, Office 2013 comes with a multitude of templates, Cloud Interface, Cloud syncing and inline replies for Outlook. Best part of Office 2013 is on screen keyboard on which one can actually type and gesture support which will allow organizations to deploy tablets more than document viewers. Office 2013 comes with a new clean interface and “read mode” in Word 2013. One can insert audio and video from online sources in MS Word. Also PowerPoint has new “Presentation mode”. Both MS PowerPoint and MS Word have new bookmark like features which allows syncs between different computers to locate position of the document. 

All the Office programs come with better inking and improved touch when compared to Office 2010. Office 2013 has capability of broadcasting documents on the web. Users will experience subtle animations and flatter look of the Ribbon interface with Office 2013 when selecting or typing Excel 2013 and Word 2013. Users won’t find Microsoft Office Picture Manager, Microsoft Clip Organizer, Office 2007 & Office 2010 chart styles in Office 2013. Older WordArt objects are replaced with new WordArt objects. For legal reasons Custom XML Markup has been removed from MS Word. Apart from these there is a new start experience, graphical options available in MS Word, new animations, transitions and slide designs available in MS PowerPoint. Excel 2013 supports new model limits. For scheduled tasks, Outlook 2013 comes with new visualizations and it also supports Hotmail.com and Outlook.com mails. Users can experience new alignment lines while moving objects, there is online picture support with content from Flickr, Bing.com and Office.com. It also provides support from Yammer, Skype and SkyDrive. Thus by all means Office 2013 gives all new experience and great compatibility with new user interface.

Power up your productivity with Microsoft Office 2010

In today’s advanced and hi-tech world, it has become a must for individuals and corporate companies to stay updated. Microsoft Office 2010 is the latest version of Microsoft Office 2007. For volume license editions Microsoft Office 2010 is first version which requires product activation.

Microsoft Office products help to increase productivity at work and are more user-friendly. Microsoft Office 2010 was released to manufacturing on April 15, 2010. On June 15, 2010, Microsoft Office 2010 suite became available for online and retail purchase. With Microsoft Office 2010 one can manage their presentations, charts, spread sheets and other professional documents in a more better and easy way. It has new and latest features like new SmartArt templates, background removal tool, built-in screen capture tool and author permissions. Menu Button leading to full-window file menu is present in Office 2010 this is a replacement of Office Button in Microsoft Office 2007. A modified Ribbon interface is present in all Office applications, including Publisher, Office Outlook, Visio, Project and OneNote. 

This suite comes with more advanced and powerful share feature when social counter feature for LinkedIn, SharePoint and Facebook are compared. It also comes with changed user experience, extended file format support and user interface updates. A 64 bit version of Microsoft Office 2010 is also available but it is not for Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP. Microsoft made a number of improvements to the entire Office suite, but mainly to the Ribbon. It offers much improved Ribbon, which was launched for the first time by Microsoft in Microsoft Office 2007. Similar to PowerPoint, Excel spreadsheets can now run in the browser and can be published to the browser via the desktop version. This browser version of Excel though has limited features, but it offers more in-depth functionality when compared to Google Spreadsheets.

With Microsoft Office 2010, one can get some of the notable features like more tools for editing pictures or images and documents. It also offers faster synchronization, new content auto highlighting, real-time changes display, version support and Broadcast Slideshow feature making PowerPoint exceedingly creative and technologically advanced. 200 million licenses for Microsoft Office 2010 were sold till December 31^st, 2011. When it comes to business productivity and advantages Microsoft Office 2010’s benefits are endless. It also supports Office Open XML, ECMA 376, ISO/IEC 29500, ISO/IEC 29500:2008 and Open Document Format 1.1. Microsoft launched an Office 2010 application compatibility program with all the guidance and tools available for download to enable customers and clients with deployment of Office 2010. 

Main attraction of Microsoft Office 2010 is Outlook makeover which makes it a lot easier to cut through e-mail overload and thus enabling one to stay updated on social networking sites and ever expanding group of contacts. In Microsoft Office 2007, it was very troublesome to switch among applications with different menuing systems but all these bugs have been resolved and Microsoft Office 2010 comes with more advanced and attractive features to work on. Thus, Microsoft Office 2010 is an advanced and easy to use offering by Microsoft that helps in increasing productivity and stay updated in the market.

Cloud Computing : Opening new possibilities for your data storage

Cloud Computing has emerged as a term that has changed software technology. It describes different computing concepts involving many computers which are inter-connected through a communication network like Internet.

Cloud Computing is not just a mere term but it is an innovation in software technology by which

software programs are transformed into services, and not just as products. Worldwide market of Cloud Computing and relative adoption of various types of cloud services has increased. It owes its popularity in the market for selling hosted services which can run client server software on a remote location like ‘Platform as a Service’ (PaaS) and ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS). Apart from this, cloud based applications can be accessed by end users through a mobile app, light weight desktop or a web browser. Universal availability of storage devices, adoption of hardware virtualization, high capacity networks, low cost computers, service-oriented architecture, autonomic and utility computing have led to a growth in Cloud Computing.

For consumers using software programs, Cloud Technology has opened up new possibilities and it has started attaching to their everyday lives. Although with advancement in technology, Cloud Computing has grown to its peak but there are many people who feel that this technology will fade with time and it poses a major threat to traditional IT. This would impact server market posing a high risk to traditional vendors like HP. Due to security reasons many enterprises have pushed back on Cloud Computing but this resistance will come to an end soon. There is a major change experienced in what has been computed in past years and still core applications, other IT services, computing and storage have started moving towards public clouds although slowly but it is continuous and steady. Thus, traditional vendors who sell technology and those who consume this technology will need to prepare themselves to the rise of cloud technology.

Many think that Cloud Technology would never fade as it rules the trend and offers many benefits like helping consumers to conduct quick online collaboration through Virtual file sharing and other collaborating tools. One can make changes and save files on the spot which is more convenient and speeds up the time to complete a particular task or project. Accessibility of virtual offices has increased with coming up of this technology. Also, CloudComputing offers help to artists and has become their favorite as its applications like ‘SaaS’ caters to the needs of modern artistic community. Apart from these it also increases business flexibility and number of apps consumed in the market has also increased due to the same. Thus, with market’s growing and continuous consumption of end products, Cloud Technology has not just remained as a mere trend but has come up to stay and expand its horizons. 

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A Successful Focus of IT on Business

Late in 2011, I had the fortuitous opportunity to meet Mike Wilkinson, Ph.D., EVP and CIO of PPD Inc., a leading biopharmaceutical industry contract research organization providing drug discovery, development and lifecycle management services. Mike, a business professional, was appointed CIO by the CEO. PPD’s story is interesting because it shows that having a business leader in charge of IT and closely managing IT and business and process development works and can improve the business and make IT recognized as a significant asset.

What follows is a paraphrase of a discussion I held with Mike to discuss his and PPD’s experiences as a broad hint to businesses that close alignment between IT and business operations can bring significant benefits – if well communicated and designed as overall business improvement, not as a punishment to IT or the business units.

PPD’s CEO appointed Mike, who had been a significant business leader within PPD, as the CIO in 2010. As an already respected business leader, the transition may have been easier had an outsider been given the role. 

Mike indicated that this realignment was consistent with the broad macro-trend/desire to better align business objectives and technical strategy – to align dollars and provide value to the company, its personnel and, most importantly, its customers. PPD wanted to align technology spends better with the business needs as expressed by customers. Ultimately, the goal was to improve PPD’s value proposition and quality of delivery to customers – by having better alignment of technology deployments along with the needed process improvement, change management, training development and data analytics accomplished simultaneously, across the business.

Mike concluded that PPD has achieved significant improvement in IT ROI because it is no longer a siloed/separate operation, but instead is well integrated with the business, its processes and objectives. In fact, the IT and business leads work together (shoulder to shoulder) on projects with joint responsibilities for success. IT now operates in a virtual matrix organization, but without dual reporting.

When asked how both the business and IT folks reacted to his initial appointment and the overall realignment/change, Mike indicated that it was very positive as the vision was communicated very well as an overall focus on business improvement with both the business and IT people being well respected and treated well throughout the transition.

Over a little more than a year now, the overall benefit has been holistic improvement across the business – IT projects are not considered as a standalone, but, rather, are cross-functional programs implemented across the business. Among the specific benefits have been shorter lifecycle improvements because the required process changes are done holistically with all relevant functions included – IT, business, process, training and analytics taking responsibility and developing their portion as part of an integrated solution.

While the details of PPD’s actions are specific to its business, the idea of aligning the IT and business organizations around projects/initiatives can be readily translatable to all businesses. Again, the keys are having all functions included and respected in the re-alignments, having the ideas/objectives well communicated, realizing holistic management of initiatives across all involved functions and, most importantly, a focus on business improvements for customers.

Thank you Mike, and PPD, for providing a strong case for making IT and its leadership part of the overall management of key business process transformations, not a standalone silo of technology specialists disconnected and often under appreciated.

Source: http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/columns/articles/283537-successful-focus-it-business.htm

IE 10 Security Feature Offers Bumpy Ride for 'Desktop' Users

Internet Explorer 10 contains a new security feature called "enhanced protected mode" (EPM) that Windows 8 beta testers may soon encounter.

EPM is a browser defense feature that follows in the tradition of Microsoft's "protected mode," which was first introduced as part of IE 7 running on Windows Vista, according to an IE blog post by Andy Ziegler, senior program manager of Internet Explorer. Protected mode was designed to prevent attackers from modifying a user's settings or installing malware. EPM enhances these capabilities, according to Ziegler, and it adds a new security sandbox called AppContainer.

The AppContainer Sandbox

AppContainer is a feature mostly designed to support the "Metro-style" version of apps and IE 10. AppContainer blocks read and write access to Windows systems, explained Eric Law, a program manager for Internet Explorer, in a blog post. He added that all Metro-style apps running on Windows 8 will run in AppContainer, as well as all tabs running in IE 10 with EPM turned on. He described AppContainer as a "tight sandbox" because it "does not specify internetClientServer, privateNetworkClientServer, enterpriseAuthentication, or any of the *Library capabilities."

AppContainer's internetClientServer restriction prevents browser add-ons from allowing inbound connections or remote connections. In addition AppContainer also doesn't allow Metro-style apps to connect with a locally installed IIS or Apache server, as might be done for Web site testing purposes. Law, who developed the Fiddler Web debugging program, explained that Fiddler will get blocked by AppContainer because Fiddler runs as a proxy server on local computers. He provided links to a workaround. Finally, the restriction on privateNetworkClientServer access is designed to ward off Internet port scanning and cross-site-request forgery attacks.

Cookies don't get shared between Metro-style apps because of AppContainer's read and write restrictions. Law noted an example where this feature would be useful, noting that if someone uses a banking Web app, "the banking app's cache, cookies, and credentials aren't available to be stolen from pages you browse in Metro-style Internet Explorer, even if a vulnerability was discovered that allowed an attacker to run arbitrary native code in the AppContainer."

Windows Versions and IE 10's EPM

Enhanced protected mode is pretty much a dead-end feature when run with IE 10 on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. It doesn't add security protections per se, except for enabling 64-bit content processes in the browser's tabs, according to Law. Microsoft hasn't really talked too much about running IE 10 on Windows 7, but it is possible to do, according to Microsoft's "Windows Internet Explorer 10 Consumer Preview Guide for Developers."

"When it's released, Internet Explorer 10 will be available for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 8 Beta," the guide states.

So, while EPM is really designed as a security feature for Windows 8 users, it also works differently, depending on which IE 10 browser is used. Windows 8 comes with essentially two IE 10 browsers, using different user interfaces. The Metro-style mode is tile-based, runs full screen and is optimized for touch, while the so-called "desktop" mode has a more classic chromed browser look.

One example of the difference between these two browser modes in tapping EPM is in bit support. Microsoft's browsers run "manager processes" and "content processes." For Metro-style IE 10, those processes run at 64-bit by default. However, for the desktop IE 10 experience on Windows 8, the content processes run at 32-bit by default. Users can change that default to 64-bit by enabling EPM for the desktop version of the browser, provided that the underlying Windows operating system also is 64 bit.

The one big drawback right now to enabling EPM on the desktop mode of IE 10 is that browser add-ons, such as Adobe Flash, aren't yet designed to work with EPM.

"Most users expect add-ons to work in Desktop IE, but very few add-ons are AppContainer-compatible today," Law explained. "If you enable EPM in the desktop and have a BHO [browser helper object] or Toolbar that isn't EPM compatible, the add-on will be disabled."

The desktop IE 10 also will encounter ActiveX controls at Web sites that don't work with EPM. However, rather disabling this control, a dialog box will pop up asking the users whether they want to disable EPM for that particular site.

Law listed a few other details for add-ons to be compatible with EPM. For instance, they have to be compatible with AppContainer too, and they have to be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Microsoft officials have been saying that they think people will prefer browsing the Web using the Metro-style version of IE 10. The Metro-style IE 10 may be problematic for some people with multiple "favorites" or bookmarked sites to track. However, at this point, Microsoft does appear to have mapped out the EPM security functions better for the Metro-style version of IE 10 compared with the desktop version. 

Source:http://redmondmag.com/articles/2012/03/27/ie-10-security-feature-offers-bumpy-ride.aspx