Tag: Amazon

Digitization of the Workplace

Let’s face it: we’re accustomed to instant gratification in the Internet Age. With the expansion of technology, Amazon order confirmations arrive in email inboxes instantaneously, while hungry customers track the location of their much-awaited pizza delivery each step of the way.

Instant gratification is a sign of the times!

Likewise, if you want to run a sustainable, profitable business in 2019, then digitization is not only useful– it’s necessary. And it’s easier than you think.

Did you know that 30 percent of tasks involved in over half of all jobs could be automated using technology that exists right now?

According to McKinsey & Company, a global management consultancy firm, this number will grow even higher as technology develops–which is great news for your business, your employees, and your profits.

And no, we’re not talking about robots coming to take over your job (although some pretty cool robots exist). From automatic “Abandoned Cart!” emails to payroll and employee onboarding, automation is already a mainstay of modern organizations.

So, looking for inspiration? Here’s just a few of the amazing ways to automate your business.

AI Technologies

Artificial intelligence is taking over the world–and it should be taking over your daily processes. Machine- and deep-learning AI provides a cost-effective solution for both carrying out mundane day-to-day tasks and engaging with customers.

For example, AI-powered bots are revolutionizing customer service abilities by providing 24/7 assistance for regular inquiries and troubleshooting.

Meanwhile, SiriusDecisions, an industry analyst firm, found that sales reps spend only about one-quarter of their entire work week actually selling to customers. The rest of the time–approximately 27 hours each week–is spent on administrative tasks like data entry.

These duties tend to consume a lot of time and energy. Instead, by automating the process, employees could spend their time closing deals and making connections to new leads and investors.

Customer & Employee Relations

At its core, CRM, or customer relationship management, includes all the technologies and strategies involved in these relationships, like email marketing, telephone calls, mail, and social media marketing

If it sounds like a lot — well, that’s because it is. Manually logging all customer data (accurately) throughout the sales funnel is time-consuming and subject to human error. It’s also nearly impossible to maintain communications with every single lead. In those cases, both the business and the customer suffer.

Thanks to automated email responses, data collection, and communications, these problems are a relic of the past. According to a study by Enterprise Apps Today, over 60 percent of respondents believe that automation boosts customer experience. Digitization not only eases business processes, but it improves B2C ( business-to-consumer) relationships, too.

Boost Cybersecurity

Hackers and cybersecurity threats are growing more complex and common every day. Automating your data security systems with AI machine learning can provide a base level of protection while freeing up IT professionals to focus on progressing your business’ systems or confronting only the most complex of threats.

Read more about Cybersecurity here

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Reduce Setup Costs

According to McKinsey, digitizing data-heavy processes within businesses can cut costs by up to 90 percent. You can automate everything from employee and customer onboarding, legacy-system integration, data migration, and far more.

Although the initial implementation of automation can take time, effort and money, the payoff is well worth the investment.

Where Should You Start?

To figure out where to start digitizing your business, there are a few questions you should be asking yourself, like: what would improve my customer’s experience and, how can I better communicate with customers?

Further questions such as: which tasks can I automate to save time and cut costs; and finally, how you can ease the daily tasks of your employees in order to better utilize their skills (productivity) are also important points to consider.

Whether you begin with cybersecurity, automating payroll and onboarding, or equipping your site with AI-powered technology, digitizing your small business will lead to happier employees, satisfied customers and a profitable structure for the future.

30 August 2019
The latest cloud computing trends in 2019

It’s 2019, and the Cloud is everywhere—from the apps we use every day to the infrastructure of global tech giants.

According to researchers at Gartner, revenue generated from public cloud services is projected to grow 17.5 percent in 2019. This amounts to a total of $214.3 billion, up from $182.4 billion in 2018.

More than a third of organizations surveyed by Gartner saw cloud investments as a top three investment priority. With this kind of growth, tech organizations are racing to get on board with cloud-only software and platforms.

Here are some of the trends to look out for this year:

Hybrid Cloud, Multi-Cloud and Mergers

IBM announced its purchase of Red Hat last October, calling it the “most significant tech acquisition of 2018.” This combined Red Hat’s extensive network of open-source clouds with IBM’s Hybrid Cloud team.

Mergers like these are likely to become a trend this year, as companies see the benefit of using multiple clouds across all sectors of their organization.

Furthermore, this system will dominate in the future, as businesses find public clouds inadequate to meet every one of their requirements.

As a more flexible and functional solution, many organizations will shift to a network of multiple private, public and hybrid clouds in the future.

Serverless Cloud

Serverless computing is a young market in technology, but it will continue growing in 2019. It isn’t actually “serverless.” Instead, it is a cloud-computing model in which the cloud provider itself runs the server on a dynamic, as-used basis (FaaS).

Rather than buying server space, developers can use a back-end cloud service to code. They will only then pay for the server space they actually use.

As this relatively new technology develops, we can expect to see more companies providing and expanding their “serverless” offerings.

Artificial Intelligence

Although cloud technologies are growing exponentially, artificial intelligence (AI) could prove an even greater economic driving force. According to Accenture, the impact of AI could double economic growth rates by 2035 in developed countries.

Around 80 percent of large companies have adopted some form of AI, according to the Harvard Business Review.

Amazon, Twilio and Nvidia, to name a few, are thus, incorporating AI with cloud computing, next-gen GPUs and the Internet of Things (IoT). This has led to the developing of applications with “smart assistants,” and voice-to-text technologies.

Such a combination of AI and the cloud provides an extremely powerful and unconstrained computing network.

Security

Digital transformation is already underway, with Gartner also projecting that 83 percent of all workloads will shift to the cloud by 2020. However, this movement presents issues of cybersecurity.

Many businesses have not properly secured their cloud-stored data. For example, marketing and data aggregation firm Exactis left around 340 million records exposed on its cloud servers. This was uncovered in a data breach last year.

Mitigating factors

The implementation of the General Data Practice Regulations (GDPR) makes this even trickier. It affects cloud security, and IT companies will likely struggle to comply with these new laws while protecting sensitive information.

Cloud computing services are progressing exponentially, as are their new developments. The year 2019 will surely be filled with businesses pouring investment into enterprise solutions. This while expanding, securing, and implementing cloud technologies to their fullest extent.

Bridget is a freelance writer and editor, and the founder of Lost Bridge Blog, where she writes about traveling as a Millennial woman on a budget. When not writing, you can find her traveling, drinking inhuman amounts of caffeine and scrolling through the latest tech & political news.

19 May 2019
The Impact of AI, Machine Learning & Automation on Businesses
We are living in exciting and innovative times with futuristic technology literally at our fingertips. But for the longest time, small to medium-sized businesses were not serviced by the latest tech trends enterprises have been able to benefit from. That is, until now. This piece explores these technology trends and how they will impact business in 2018 and beyond.

So, what kind of things can this ‘smart’ tech do? Just 4 months ago, an AI machine managed to complete a University level math exam 12 times faster than it normally takes the average human. How? Through the art of machine learning; where computers learn and adapt through the experience without explicitly being programmed.

Furthermore, Facebook made headlines earlier this year when their chatbots created their own language. Some Fake News stories claim that the engineer’s pulled the plugin a panic as they were getting too smart. However, the truth is that for Facebook’s purposes the chatbots needed to stick to English rather than developing their own shorthand. Their machine learning chatbots did nevertheless, create their own language outside their explicit programming.

This evolving area of computer science is the future for service businesses, and it’s already affecting the way we live and work today. In fact, research firm Markets and Markets estimates that the machine learning market will grow from $1.41 billion in 2017 to $8.81 billion by 2022!

So buckle up because these technology trends will affect every part of your business, from marketing to operations all the way through to payroll and here’s how.

Marketing Gets Smarter with AI and Machine Learning

AI and Social Media Marketing

In April 2017, CRM software provider, Salesforce conducted a study of marketing leaders worldwide, and the results were mind-blowing. Respondents said they expect to see improvements in efficiency and advancements in personalization over the next five years. More than 60 percent of marketers also envision leveraging AI to create dynamic landing pages, websites, programmatic advertising and media buying.

The main way AI will affect marketing is through nurturing leads through social media. But how? Through personalized, real-time content targeting that produces 20 percent more sales opportunities. With behavioural targeting methods, AI will be able to locate and start the nurture process, for example, a marketing stack that employs AI algorithms might learn that a specific buyer who checks into LinkedIn on Monday mornings has recently started looking for a new CRM tool. The software can then suggest (or even create) targeted posts to be published on the days and times that they’ll see them: one that asks their requirements of the software and another follow up piece with a comparison of the CRM ecosystem.

Currently, savvy marketers that are using social listening as way to nurture leads don’t have the necessary enhancement of AI and is, therefore, time-consuming, manual and not in real-time. So how do you start to get ready for this type of future content marketing distribution?

Firstly, you will need to have your buyer personas (using the consumer black box theory ) well defined. Taking a solid look at your CRM will give you tons of hints for content that will get qualified leads to respond. By taking a step back and analyzing your channel’s content (like emails, phone calls and social media messages) you will start to get the right kind of insights that will prompt a lead to take the next step into the second phase of your sales funnel. For instance, a C-Suite executive might respond best to data-driven whitepapers and infographics to peak their interests, whereas a fellow marketer might be more suited for an interactive case-study or video.

The only way to get these kinds of insights is to do a deep dive into your CRM platform and conduct a thorough review of customer details – using semantic analysis to understand the level of buying intent behind the words your qualified prospects use.

Hot tip: Starting to run your analysis now and developing strong personas will be key to implementing AI algorithms to your social media in 2018 and beyond.

Marketing and Machine Learning

Put simply, machine learning is about understanding data and statistics. It’s a technical process where computer algorithms find patterns in data, then predict probable outcomes – like when your email determines whether a particular message is spam or not depending on words in the subject line, links included in the message, or patterns identified in a list of recipients. This is a perfect example of how machine learning can be applied in marketing to optimize for successful campaigns.

Businesses can also use machine learning to up-sell the right product, to the right customer, at the right time. In 2018, marketers will continue to rely on machine learning to understand open rates when it comes to email – so you know exactly when to send your next campaign to increase click-through rates and ROI. The next big thing? It might sound small but ticket tagging and re-routing can be a massive expense for small businesses – costs that can be saved with machine learning.

Having a sales inquiry automatically end up with the sales team, or a complaint end up instantly in the customer service department’s queue, is going to save companies a lot of time and money, and this is all being made possible with modern technology.

And while solving issues in record time and delivering successful email campaigns is great, this is just the beginning.

Here’s what else to expect in 2018:

E-Commerce Reaches New Heights

You’ve been shopping for a new pair sunglasses on Amazon, then before you know it, your Facebook feed is filled with multiple eyewear ads and related trends for summer: this is machine learning. In fact, this example of analyzing data based on a user’s purchase history or online shopping behaviour is the future for e-commerce.

Retail companies are also tracking what ads or images you’re most likely to stop scrolling on, in order to target you with specific content. For example, if you always click on ads that contain happy women and some text, then a machine will log this as preferred content so that you are only targeted with ads that fit this description. Machines can also track what time of day you are most active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and/or Pinterest, in order to present these ads to you at an optimal buying time.

Then when it’s time to purchase, machine learning is applied to reduce the risk of credit fraud in small businesses. How? Machines learn from historical datasets that contain fraudulent transactions and can identify patterns that represent a typical fraudulent transaction – similar to the way spam emails are detected and deterred. Machine learning will start to affect other parts of your business funnel as well, just take a look at the rise of Chatbots.

Integrating Chatbots

There was a time in which chatbots were only thought of as manmade pests on the Internet, but through machine learning, they are getting smarter and businesses are embracing them en mass.

In 2018 and beyond, chatbots will play a key role in the future of customer service. Why? Chatbots can help achieve a faster customer service resolution, as well as provide quick histories of each customer for impeccable customer service. There are some key benefits that chatbots have over solely human interactions:
- Giving 24/7 customer service: The great things about machines? They don’t sleep! Coupled with the fact that chatbots are getting sophisticated enough to recognize human emotions such as anger, confusion, fear and joy. So should a chatbot encounter negative sentiments from the customer, they can seamlessly transfer to a human to take over and finish assisting the customer.
- The era of being ‘on hold’ is gone: A huge barrier to providing excellence in customer service is long wait times. How many times have you tried to get customer service from Comcast (or any TV/Internet provider) and you are getting progressively more frustrated with the wait times? This can all be eliminated with chatbots!
- Quick access to customer data makes service more personal: One thing that humans will never be better at than chatbots is quickly digesting customer data and history to provide context to customer questions. Chatbots excel at collecting customer data from support interactions. They can serve as virtual assistants that can feed customer data to your customer service officers so they have a full history of each account quickly.
This emerging tool for businesses already has significant buy-in from thought leaders around the globe. In fact, Larry Kim, Founder of Wordstream, is all in on chatbots as he has started his own company where his bots are currently in beta. With this move, it will be interesting to see how businesses will leverage robots throughout other aspects of their business. The final trend we’ll explore is Automation and how it affects businesses today.

Automation now and beyond 2018

Though Machine Learning and AI are hot topics in the tech world, it is not to a point that small to medium size businesses can leverage it in the immediate future. But there is still hope for them with automation. Powered by the Cloud, this type of technology has already revolutionized Marketing and Sales workflows and interactions but it is also starting to touch the various other parts of a business. For example:

Operations Automation

Once you win an important sale, you’ve got to deliver the product or service you’ve promised to the client. What does that process look like for most businesses now? You all will have a kick-off meeting and hope to cover all the promises that marketing and sales have given to your client.

However, with the use of operations automation and a powerful CRM, you will be able to read the interactions and see all the various touch points a client had with your company before that kick off call even happens. This will give all service businesses a head start in providing great client relations and managing expectations. This category of SaaS products is called Service Operations Automation, or ServOps for short.

Accounting Automation

If there is one data-entry heavy department it would be Accounting. The problem is that as humans, we are fallible and much slower at data entry than a machine. Innovations with bank feeds, rules-based categorization and integrated payments have dramatically reduced the workload of clerical and bookkeeping staff and given business owners more timely access to accurate financial information for their businesses.

Research, done by Xero, (a popular financial software provider) suggests that by 2020, automation will be commonplace in accounting, and a significant number of finance professionals will be using the next level of analytical tools to help them add value to business models across the globe.

Payroll/HR Automation

Finally, the Cloud and Automation have come to the Payroll and Human Resources sector. These important areas of a business too often suffer because small businesses aren’t big enough to afford a full-time HR department. What’s the alternative? Having only part-time efforts of founders and principals which can often lead to serious risk to the business.

For instance, Zenefits will automatically submit forms to the national tax authorities on the behalf of companies. With new automation technology, compliance is automated by platforms and the effort of keeping time-off approvals in sync with PTO balances and payslips becomes a thing of the past.

In the near future, we will see the rise of great technology, powered by the Cloud, Automation, AI and Machine Learning. This truly is the start of the Golden Age of Information Technology and it is time for businesses to take a hard look at their organizations and find ways to start integrating these tech trends.

This is a slightly shortened re-blog from a marketing post on Tenfold.com *

*This post was guest-authored by Tara Callinan and Jenneva Vargas from Accelo
23 July 2018
Impact of Automation on Business
We are living in exciting and innovative times with futuristic technology literally at our fingertips. But for the longest time, small to medium-sized businesses were not serviced by the latest tech trends enterprises have been able to benefit from.

That is, until now. This piece explores these technology trends and how they will impact business in 2018 and beyond.

So, what kind of things can this ‘smart’ tech do? Just 4 months ago, an AI machine managed to complete a University level math exam 12 times faster than it normally takes the average human.

How? Through the art of machine learning; where computers learn and adapt through the experience without explicitly being programmed.
Furthermore, Facebook made headlines earlier this year when their chatbots created their own language. Some ‘fake news’ stories claim that the engineer’s pulled the plugin a panic as they were getting too smart.

However, the truth is that for Facebook’s purposes the chatbots needed to stick to English rather than developing their own shorthand. Their machine learning chatbots did nevertheless, create their own language outside their explicit programming.

This evolving area of computer science is the future for service businesses, and it’s already affecting the way we live and work today. In fact, research firm

Markets and Markets estimate that the machine learning market will grow from $1.41 billion in 2017 to $8.81 billion by 2022!

So buckle up because these technology trends will affect every part of your business, from marketing to operations all the way through to payroll, and here’s how.

AI and Social Media Marketing

In April 2017, CRM software provider, Salesforce conducted a study of marketing leaders worldwide, and the results were mind-blowing. Respondents said they expect to see improvements in efficiency and advancements in personalization over the next five years.
More than 60 percent of marketers envision leveraging AI to create dynamic landing pages, websites, programmatic advertising and media buying.

AI will affect marketing by nurturing leads through social media. But how? Through personalized, real-time content targeting that produces 20 percent more sales opportunities.

With behavioural targeting methods, AI will be able to locate and start the nurturing process. For example, a marketing stack that employs AI algorithms might learn that a specific buyer who checks into LinkedIn on Monday mornings has recently started looking for a new CRM tool.

The software can then suggest (or even create) targeted posts to be published on the days and times that they’ll see them.

Currently, savvy marketers that are using social listening as a way to nurture leads don’t have the necessary enhancement of AI. This is, however, time-consuming, manual, and not in real-time.
So how do you start to get ready for this type of future content marketing distribution?

Firstly, you will need to have your buyer personas (using the consumer black box theory ) well defined. Taking a solid look at your CRM will give you tons of hints for content that will get qualified leads to respond.

By taking a step back and analyzing your channel’s content (like emails, phone calls, and social media messages) you will start to get the right kind of insights. The ones that will prompt a lead to take the next step into the second phase of your sales funnel.

For instance, a C-Suite executive might respond best to data-driven whitepapers and infographics to peak their interests, whereas a fellow marketer might be more suited for an interactive case-study or video.
The only way to get these kinds of insights is to do a deep dive into your CRM platform and conduct a thorough review of customer details – using semantic analysis to understand the level of buying intent behind the words your qualified prospects use.

Hot tip: Starting to run your analysis now and developing strong personas will be key to implementing AI algorithms to your social media in 2018 and beyond.

Marketing and Machine Learning

Put simply, machine learning is about understanding data and statistics. It’s a technical process where computer algorithms find patterns in data, then predict probable outcomes. An example is when your email determines whether a particular message is spam or not depending on words in the subject line, links included in the message, or patterns identified in a list of recipients.

It’s the perfect example of how machine learning can be applied in marketing to optimize for successful campaigns.

Businesses can also use machine learning to up-sell the right product, to the right customer, at the right time. In 2018, marketers will continue to rely on machine learning to understand open rates when it comes to email. This way, you know exactly when to send your next campaign to increase click-through rates and ROI.

The next big thing? It might sound small but ticket tagging and re-routing can be a massive expense for small businesses – costs that can be saved with machine learning.

Having a sales inquiry automatically end up with the sales team, or a complaint end up instantly in the customer service department’s queue, is going to save companies a lot of time and money, and this is all being made possible with modern technology.

Here’s what else to expect in 2018:

E-Commerce Reaches New Heights

You’ve been shopping for a new pair sunglasses on Amazon, then before you know it, your Facebook feed is filled with multiple eyewear ads and related trends for summer.
This is machine learning.
In fact, this example of analyzing data based on a user’s purchase history or online shopping behaviour is the future for e-commerce.

Retail companies are also tracking what ads or images you’re most likely to stop scrolling on, in order to target you with specific content. For example, if you always click on ads that contain happy women and some text, then a machine will log this as preferred content so that you are only targeted with ads that fit this description.

Machines can also track what time of day you are most active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and/or Pinterest, in order to present these ads to you at an optimal buying time.

Then when it’s time to purchase, machine learning is applied to reduce the risk of credit fraud in small businesses.

How? Machines learn from historical datasets that contain fraudulent transactions and can identify patterns that represent a typical fraudulent transaction.
Similar to the way spam emails are detected and deterred. Machine learning will start to affect other parts of your business funnel as well, just take a look at the rise of Chatbots.

Integrating Chatbots

There was a time in which chatbots were only thought of as manmade pests on the Internet. Through machine learning, they are getting smarter and businesses are embracing them en mass.
In 2018 and beyond, chatbots will play a key role in the future of customer service. Why? Chatbots can help achieve a faster customer service resolution, as well as provide quick histories of each customer for impeccable customer service.

There are some key benefits that chatbots have over solely human interactions:
- Giving 24/7 customer service: The great things about machines? They don’t sleep! Coupled with the fact that chatbots are getting sophisticated enough to recognize human emotions such as anger, confusion, fear and joy. So should a chatbot encounter negative sentiments from the customer, they can seamlessly transfer to a human to take over and finish assisting the customer.
- The era of being ‘on hold’ is gone: A huge barrier to providing excellence in customer service is long wait times. How many times have you tried to get customer service from Comcast (or any TV/Internet provider) and you are getting progressively more frustrated with the wait times? This can all be eliminated with chatbots!
- Quick access to customer data makes service more personal: One thing that humans will never be better at than chatbots is quickly digesting customer data and history to provide context to customer questions.
- Chatbots excel at collecting customer data from support interactions. They can serve as virtual assistants that can feed customer data to your customer service officers so they have a full history of each account quickly.
The final trend we’ll explore is Automation and how it affects businesses today.

Automation now and beyond 2018

Though Machine Learning and AI are hot topics in the tech world, it is not to a point that small to medium-sized businesses can leverage them in the immediate future. But there is still hope for them with automation.
Powered by the Cloud, this type of technology has already revolutionized Marketing and Sales workflows and interactions but it is also starting to touch the various other parts of a business. For example:

Operations Automation

Once you win an important sale, you’ve got to deliver the product or service you’ve promised to the client. What does that process look like for most businesses now? You all will have a kick-off meeting and hope to cover all the promises that marketing and sales have given to your client.

However, with the use of operations automation and a powerful CRM, you will be able to read the interactions and see all the various touch points a client had with your company before that kick off call even happens.

This will give your service businesses a head start in providing great client relations and managing expectations. This category of SaaS products is called Service Operations Automation, or ServOps for short.

Accounting Automation

If there is one data-entry heavy department it would be Accounting. The problem is that as humans, we are fallible and much slower at data entry than a machine. Innovations with bank feeds, rules-based categorization and integrated payments have dramatically reduced the workload of clerical and bookkeeping staff.

This gives business owners more timely access to accurate financial information for their businesses.

Research, done by Xero, (a popular financial software provider) suggests that by 2020, automation will be commonplace in accounting. A significant number of finance professionals will be using the next level of analytical tools to help them add value to business models across the globe.

Payroll/HR Automation

Finally, the Cloud and Automation have come to the Payroll and Human Resources sector. These important areas of a business too often suffer because small businesses aren’t big enough to afford a full-time HR department.

What’s the alternative? Having only part-time efforts of founders and principals which can often lead to serious risk to the business.

With new automation technology, compliance is automated by platforms. The effort of keeping time-off approvals in sync with PTO balances and payslips becomes a thing of the past.

In the near future, we will see the rise of great technology, powered by the Cloud, Automation, AI, and Machine Learning.

This truly is the start of the Golden Age of Information Technology and it is time for businesses to take a hard look at their organizations and find ways to start integrating these tech trends.

This is a slightly shortened re-blog from a marketing post on Tenfold.com *

*This post was guest-authored by Tara Callinan and Jenneva Vargas from Accelo
23 July 2018
Cloud (Storage) Wars!

The term “storage wars” has taken on a new meaning. It has shifted literally from the ability to keep one’s belongings in physical containers to having one’s data stored and managed in the digital realm.

A question often asked is whether the (Internet) cloud is infinite. The answer is both a yes and no.

The top four cloud tech companies are endlessly engaged in a silent market share war. It is a tough choice as they all offer millions of gigabytes in storage. We can only attempt to investigate to what extent is there an abundance of storage when we ‘run out’.

The “Cloud” as explained in our previous blog, is a series of backed-up servers scattered across the globe.

Consequently, in terms of availability of storage, it is just a matter of where (location) a datacenter can be run and at what its maintenance costs are.
The answer to how infinite is the cloud, therefore, boils down literally to a cost, rather than a capacity issue for cloud-storage providers (CSPs).

The main CSPs vying for a market share in the paid cloud storage subscriptions are Google, Microsoft (Azure), Amazon, and IBM.

There are also smaller yet significant players such as Box, Dropbox, Tresorit, and Barracuda. A quick online search on their websites will reveal what they can offer you.

Similarly, the pages of any one of the smaller companies will give some comparisons of each cloud storage offer (bundles).

We will, however, focus on the major ‘players’ and summarize their offerings based on offers for both individuals and small to large enterprises.

What to look out for

Some of the key features to look for when storing data in the cloud include Encryption at rest and in transit, as well as end-to-end encryption; 2-Step Verification, HIPAA Compliance.

Other factors to consider are the actual server location, ability to sync any folders, and perform selective Synchronization.

There are also key offerings such as offering the ability to edit files on mobile devices. For businesses, the ability to remotely wipe mobile devices, perform file-versioning, and other useful features for data management.

As a business, if the above-mentioned features are not in your cloud solution, you better look into switching away.

While you can technically run your own cloud, it would require a full-on IT team. That or a very good support system to assist in its maintenance and administration.

It is for this very reason that a SaaS(and Hybrid)-approach to storage is preferred by many medium to large enterprises.

4 of the most popular CSPs

Google

Weaponry:

A standard (personal) GoogleDrive starts from 15 GB in size and comes when you open a Google email account. This is a standard with most Android-powered mobile phones which require a Gmail account to register the phone.

It is a convenient way to store and access your pics, videos, and files across multiple devices or back them up in case of a hard drive crash.
If you do not mind the inconvenience of having several logins, you could get away with multiple drives giving you 15 GBs each.

There is, however, a drawback as there is no such a thing as a free lunch – the level of security and compliance features naturally are little to almost none. Additional storage can also be purchased with different upgrade plans, which may come with more add=ons such as extra file encryption.

When it comes to their business offering, their Team Drive is available with the G-Suite bundle. One can upload 750 GB of data per day and up to a total of 5 TB in size. Team Drive can contain a maximum of 100,000 files and folders, however, this limit can be increased upon request.

The basic package including the more advanced security costs $5 per user per month and gives you 30 GB for storage and collaboration.

A full comparison of available storage plans

Tactical strengths:

The ease of accessing and using the drives via strategic partnerships such as Android provides them with a growing market share. As it is cloud-based and not linked to physical devices, you can access your GoogleDrive using a Mac computer as well.

There are growing talks of incorporating Artificial Intelligence <AI> into the data management systems. They are currently building a full AI Center in Accra, Ghana. This will help bigger companies manage, access, and organize their stored information faster and with more purpose.

They have recently launched a set of new cloud storage tiers under the branding Google One. This comes with revised pricing and storage options: 15 GB: remains Free; 100 GB costs $1.99/month; 200 GB $2.99/month and 2 TB $9.99/month.

Potential weakness/es:

Google is a latecomer when it comes to offering business solutions and still battles with the stigma of being a free service and thus associated with inferior quality.

The integration with Office applications is still something they struggle to get right. Not many are fans of Googlesheets.

Most non-Microsoft platforms will have this compatibility problem.
They also run into a few data syncing problems ever so often, especially with the free storage. Google offers full 24/7 customer and technical support with their products. More aggressive advertising and pricing of their business offerings now serves to hopefully alleviate this issue for them.

How Google bounces back from a hefty EUR 4,34 billion fine for colluding with Android will determine if they survive the storage war. This especially if they will be now forced to allow other CSPs to offer services on mobile devices.

Amazon

Weaponry:

One of the first cloud solution providers to offer eCommerce and Business-to-Business (B2B) offerings. Amazon and its Amazon Web Services (AWS) have come a long and calculated way from just offering/selling books online.

They are actually seen as a formal threat and a direct (more superior) competitor to Microsoft’s cloud (equivalent) offering – which we touch on next.
Most of this comes from a robust and apparently the world’s largest global cloud infrastructure.

Based on this, its cloud storage, dubbed Amazon S3, works on a “pay as you use” basis while its free tier starts you off on 5GB of storage. Thereafter you pay in increments based on the storage class you fall under.

So the first 50 TB will cost $0.023 per GB per month and then the next 450 TB will cost $0.022 per GB per month and so on.
This is practical for businesses that do not have a limit to storage space but scale up and down very quickly based on their operations.

Tactical strengths:

Amazon’s storage platform gives users and businesses alike the ability to geographically store and move data with the highest levels of encryption. In addition, one can use data analytics on your data without moving the data into a separate analytics system.

Amazon Athena additionally provides anyone who knows SQL on-demand query access to vast amounts of unstructured data. As with Google, AI incorporation along with Alexa would facilitate this even further.

Other notable benefits offered include open workflows, Hybrid-cloud storage capability, powerful APIs, and easy and reliable access to many Third-Party vendors & Partners.

Naturally, you get access to its AWS Marketplaces. It also has a strong compliance adherence including HIPAA/HITECH, EU Data Protection Directive, and FISMA.

Comparison of the various storage classes available.

Potential weakness/es:

Its primary offering of consumer goods and online delivery will make it prone to any bad press received if that arm of operations does not work well.

Further expansion into areas like streaming TV via Amazon Prime and cashless stores might result in a jack of all trades expert in none phenomenon. They are, nevertheless, handling all well so far.

Microsoft

Weaponry:

The “go-to” tech company for word-processing software as well as operating systems. This software giant like Amazon is branching into many products.

They now offer games, server hosting software, applications, an online store for all its devices, software, services, and of course, storage.
Its Azure platform powers certain parts of Nasa and utility giant Schneider Electric to mention a few clients. Its purchase works similarly to Amazon via ‘pay-as-you-use’ terms.

Storage users need to have a .Net Framework and SQL installed to use the storage. For those looking for quick storing solutions without building heavy infrastructure, they can adopt the cloud completely.

With the launch of its online services (Microsoft 365), it has had to repackage a portion of its Azure platform to cater to small to mid-sized businesses.

These include functional/specific bundles such as OneDrive (personal), OneDrive for Business, and Sharepoint (powerful storage and content management tool).

The online version of the Sharepoint starts at $5.00 per user per month for a rather limited 1 TB per organization. Thereafter, users can purchase more in 1 GB increments of 12 to 16 (US) cents depending on the total (storage space) size ordered.

Tactical strengths:

Also early adopters of AI (Machine Learning) and recently, the Blockchain (Blockchain Workbench), Microsoft is providing its developers with more and better reasons to use its storage space for practicality.
Like their online storage offers on Office 365, Azure storage packages are also quite structured and well categorised.

There are specific functions such as a database server-data management system. Then there is one for application running services, and others to handle rest-based object storage (Blob Storage).
Lastly, they offer storage to help perform computations and process events (Functions).
These bundles are all provided free for the first 12 months and then range from $0.002 per GB to about US 0.20c per million executions.

They have a good Partner system to help distinguish and provide support for the best storage package based on one’s immediate needs.

To bolster their growing Marketplace, they recently also purchased a business that deals with OpenSource (GitHub). This enables more freedom for developers to manipulate the software on their platform.

For a comparison of the storage types via Azure and pricing for each, click here.

Potential weakness/es:

People have found its pricing a little to steep on the storage side and so keeping market share will be tough. Many new smaller CSPs offering cheaper per GB rates.

They can only counter this by offering more products that require their storage (compatibility-wise).
Some other cumbersome restrictions like users being only able to upload 20 000 files at once or the actual file-size limit might not bode too well with heavy cloud data users.

They also don’t have as many APIs as Google or Amazon does, but these are growing by the day.

IBM

Weaponry:

Probably the first of the CSP batch that provided cloud computing. It therefore has had the experience of honing ways of storing and retrieving data for larger businesses. International Business Machines (or IBM) can be considered as the grandfather of data storage.

As with the other CSPs, there is a free offering called the “Lite plan” consisting of a single IBM Cloud service instance with storage up to 25 GB/month.
Paid storage is staggered, per consumption and based on complex costing tiers based on location, storage class, and resiliency choice.

Storage charges start from $0.09 for up to 50 GB down to $0.014 for 500+ TB on what they call the Cross-Region Flex plan.

For more insight into the complex costing table, visit the IBM storage pricing page here.

Tactical strengths:

Their security is their biggest pride and strength and makes them a firm favourite for large companies and potentially governmental institutions.
The fact that they do not actively advertise as much as Google or Microsoft is telling. They clearly need to provide high secrecy and protection for their existing clients.

One such feature unique to the way data is stored on their cloud servers is using Information Dispersal Algorithms (IDAs). This helps to separate data in unrecognizable “slices” that are distributed across datacenters.

So basically the complete copy of the data resides in any single storage node, and only a subset of nodes are available in order to fully retrieve the data on the network. This is similar to how peer-to-peer sharing or data encryption works.

And speaking of heavy encryption, they have allegedly recently also started on the Blockchain and are experimenting with a particular Cryptocurrency to enable ease of payments. This in the light of IBM with its Watson platform looking to become more of a cloud-based data operating system.

Potential weakness/es:

IBM relies too much on its reputation as a forerunner for tech and cloud-based computing. It has earned that title for several decades before the likes of Google and Amazon barged in.

They might lose out on market share once the newer CSPs start to offer more robust products and compliance services like theirs.

Their high security and complex system come at a premium so designed for or rather restricted to wealthy companies essentially. The hosting option (main server locations) looks limited and restricted to geographical areas primarily in the US and EU.

Be wary of clandestine terminology such as ‘unlimited archiving/storage’ even with a paid subscription. This usually refers to storing data at rest and not the ability to constantly and unlimitedly sync files.

Another salient factor to compare would be the number of files that you can upload or sync at the same time.
This will be relevant for larger companies that need to upload large files and by large, we mean 10 GB files (2 and a half HD DVDs’ worth of content) and upwards.

Making a choice

At the end of the day, your decision to take on a faction in the storage war should be based on your priorities. You simply match it to what each of the companies is offering taking your budget into consideration of course.

You may need to consider running a combination of two or more of them.
Some larger companies offer storage as a “must-have” with hosted email or something as basic as purchasing a new smartphone.

You will, however, have to ask yourself a few more pressing questions around functionality, data security, and compliance before taking it up.

Or you can simply not accept the offer or disable it in cases where it is presented as a freebie!

18 July 2018
A peer-to-peer Crypto marketplace

You can still tap into the pool of 17-odd million Bitcoins that is now in circulation. You can even purchase them in the fiat currency equivalents.
But where do you get them then? After all, Cryptocurrency is this dark and mysterious transaction system used only by criminals and drug addicts.
So you acquiring them would naturally be in a shady place like the dark web – where it is used to acquire illicit things – right?
Not quite and there are publicly accessible marketplaces where one can securely purchase Bitcoins.
Find out more via A peer-to-peer Crypto marketplace

1 July 2018
How would you like to be served?

The thought of “servers” and “hosting” are rarely things you consider on a daily basis. If you are not an IT or a software architect, then probably not at all.

For the mentioned professionals, however, these decisions are critical to the operations of a business however large or small.

There is a fine line between how (and where) your software systems are used. This line has become thinner because of evolving cloud technology and automation.

Sourcing and deploying the right IT architecture could therefore help your business stay afloat, or sink without.

Communication is key

The most effective mode of communication in any business (other than verbally or telephonically) is still electronic mail (E-mail).

It is effective because it helps you get a time-stamp and a reference point when it comes to the documentation of your conversations. This is important tool when it comes to your legal obligations and commitments.

Emails are, therefore, something that should not be taken for granted!
We consequently send, receive emails with attachments through various devices. All this without a second thought as to how this happens.

After all, this is the job of the IT-guys, right?

Well quite rightly so. They often clash with their management and board of directors for funds to keep this going without compromising operations. Emails are crucial not only from a daily functional point of view but from security but also the compliance facet.

Defining servers

Your company’s IT infrastructure: Emails; File-servers; Databases (CRMs and ERPs) and other communication tools are commonly managed on-site on systems referred to as ‘on-premise’ solutions.

These are managed by computer-like CPUs that look like the standard boxes that you plug your monitor and keyboards. They, however, have a lot more processing power and storage than your average desktop and are called Servers.

Your servers naturally must be kept cool because of the heat they generate from being on all the time. As you can imagine, built-in fans are far from being enough to cool them off!

There an array of server types. Each of them is designed to run the tasks of your mail exchanges, file storage, and the storing/deploying of remote PC operating systems. Others handle your databases and other dedicated functions.

You would need to have the licensed software to operate each server providing unique services. This makes it quite an expensive outlay if you have all of the abovementioned requirements!

Servers are not irreplaceable and can overheat, get corrupted, or crash like a hard-drive (or a NAS server system). You, therefore, need to be maintain them at a cost to your business via your IT department.

Depending on the amount of data and complexity, the maintenance is outsourced to specialized IT companies or software license providers.

Cloud-computing

In the early 2000s, ‘the cloud’ or ‘cloud computing’ became a new concept. It is basically a very large set of high-end servers equipped with software to manage all the tasks mentioned above. It is usually offered as a service under a single (monthly or annual) subscription.

So basically, you are renting the service of a server as opposed to owning it. Renting, just like with property or cars, relieves the user of all the costs of maintaining the product in question.

This sort of rental service offered by cloud service providers is now known as Software as a Service (SaaS). This also saves you from purchasing any hardware let alone paying for the extra electricity bill to cool a server room.

According to Quora.com, the main difference between a cloud and a datacenter is that a cloud is an ‘off-premise’ form of computing that stores data on the Internet.

A Datacenter, on the other hand, is an on-premise set of hardware that stores data within an organization’s local network.

As an IT professional, you constantly face the burning question of whether to go for a solution that will relieve you of mundane tasks – like server maintenance. Naturally, you would also want a solution that facilitates the daily administering of user-profiles, data archiving, and backups. But to what costs then?

Deciding on which to go for

There are many pros and cons when it comes to the hosting of your company’s data on a local server as opposed to having it run via the cloud. There is also a massive array of choices and bundles between the top cloud service providers.

Cloud service providers have several data centers used as backups. So your email hosting may have several servers in different locations to serve that function. This curbs the risk of your data getting lost, unavailable, or hacked.

Naturally, Datacenters are kept highly secure in undisclosed locations globally. Google is known to have one of its datacenters floating on a massive container ship somewhere over the Atlantic ocean.

Maintenance

Maintaining a server is expensive as you require massive cooling systems. Some smarter companies like Microsoft, are now taking to the deep oceans for that function.

When it comes to email hosting or the storage of your files in the cloud only five large multinational corporations’ names come to mind. Microsoft, Oracle, Google, IBM, and Amazon.

These companies however bear the burden of maintenance, while providing just the service you require on a subscription basis.

Setting up an on-premise solution, in contrast, can be a tedious exercise and an expensive one. This is more applicable to smaller companies that do not have large IT budgets.

Licensing your server is no child’s play either!

Having to decide on costs versus functionality will determine how to license your server. This would be either per-server, per virtual machine needed, or per processor core and then you need CALs). If you don’t believe it, just have a look at this licensing guide!

An example

To illustrate the difference, let’s say you have an outlay of a hundred thousand dollars to acquire the software licenses for three years. This compared to a cloud-hosted package that performs the same function over the same timeframe.

You can then piggy-back off companies like Amazon and Microsoft’s security services, which then costs eight thousand dollars monthly ($96k annually).

So, within three years of using the cloud, you would have reached the $100K cap that would be spent only for licenses. You would have also saved with an extra $188K in additional services.

This is a portion of what you would have been spent on maintenance, technical support, security, upgrades, and updates.

These figures are rudimentary, but the long-term savings are noticeable as cloud service providers tend to provide value-add solutions when pricing their bundles.

Microsoft recently launched its Microsoft 365 package which includes an upgrade to the latest operating system (Windows 10 Professional or Enterprise). This is something you would have had to source and pay for separately.

Stress relievers

Software deployment and the administration of user accounts is cloud-based. This means you can do this conveniently and remotely from your PC, laptop, tablet, or even your smartphone!

This means as an IT professional, you will now have more time to oversee more important issues like data security and overall IT policies. Better yet, you would have the time to investigate ways to automate and improve your systems.

This is possible without the inconvenience of running from PC-to-PC to install operating systems, Office software, or manage mailboxes.

Remote desktop services of an on-premise server were a step in this direction – but are a pain to set up. So, you can view the cloud as an evolution of remote-desktop services.

Infrastructural setbacks

The only (and potential) hindrance to using cloud services naturally would be the availability of good and cheap broadband (Internet connectivity).

Without both, the justification for running your business fully on the cloud would not stick. Some businesses, especially in developing countries, go endure desperates attempts to adopt the cloud.

They use what is known as hybrid-systems: a combination of cloud and on-premise solutions.

If you operate in a country without forward-thinking government officials that facilitate broadband availability, you will suffer the most.

Like an old, car, outdated hardware and software can lead to costly services (out-of-date and warranty solutions). This leads to you having heftier maintenance fees and support costs by third-party IT professionals.

The old rhetoric of ‘not trusting the cloud’ is now one of the past. Cloud services often outperform on-premise solutions when it comes to high-end security software and data protection. This is because of the obvious economies of scale involved in setting up expensive security software.

The level of security has to be the digital equivalent of Fort Knox. This especially if you are dealing with sensitive data such as financial, legal services, healthcare, and educational institutions.

Your company would need a system that will keep all such data secure and data compliant.

Data is now treated as a commodity. There is now a subsequent need to trade and value it. We now have Blockchain-based solutions like IOTA to facilitate your payments. This while keeping data encrypted, decentralized, and safe.

In the advent of the new GDPR laws, some companies will still opt to keep and maintain their servers internally. By doing this, however, you might lack the transparency and tools needed to show your consumers how you handle their sensitve data.

16 June 2018
Already GDPR-ed Out?

Well, it didn’t take long. Less than a full week in fact, for the first GDPR-related court cases to surface against social tech giants Facebook and Google.

It was as if lawyers were just waiting to pounce on them for their apparent failure to protect our rights as online users. This pertains specifically to issues relating to data privacy and the sharing of private details mainly with third-party marketers.

How Facebook stores and shares your data has been clarified by several intense inquiries in the US and recently in Europe. This is where the law is set to benefit users of the social media platform in that geospatial area of the world.

The said lawsuit, however, focuses on the opt-out clause that forces you to make a choice to comply or leave. The claimant is a privacy campaigner. He has made the Billion-Euro complaint on behalf of several users; seemingly a challenge to Facebook.

Additionally, he has launched a separate suit against Google, accusing them of “pressurizing” users into accepting their data collection policies.
This ‘comply and accept or get thrown out’ clause could leave you without your routine dose of social media consumption. Such a clause is thus deemed unfair.

It could cost Facebook a lot if they get their way based on the terms stipulated in the new law. The social media giant could be fined up to a few billion or a sizeable fraction of their earnings in punitive damages.

The aim of the new law

The passing of the new regulation on May 25^th, 2018, better known as the General Data Protection Regulation {GDPR} has been a long time coming.

Despite the warnings of the “kick-in” of the regulation, many are unprepared for it. Some of the reactions to the law include confusion, anxiety by both large and small firms alike, and plain comical hysteria!

Non-compliance now carries heavy fines and penalties, up to 20 million euros for anyone operating within the EU borders.

So, what then, is the big fuss about GDPR?

Well, it boils down to a right that has since the launch of the Internet to the mainstream, been waivered and overlooked. Gaining CONSENT to use your data for anything other than the reason you went public on the Internet is very crucial.

This has become a contentious issue as many companies have over the years, unscrupulously benefited from data acquired (mined) – without your consent. Facebook only brought this into the spotlight recently.

You can read more about data mining here

Ad: Web, Network & App Scanner

Who needs compliance?

If you hold a folder, database of clients whether online or on your internal server, you would have to comply with the rules which stipulate full disclosure. This includes who you share your details with, and how the information is tracked, shared, and kept secure.

Furthermore, research in March this year showed that only 39% of the Fortune 500 companies in the UK and 47% had GDPR compliance taskforces.

Another UK firm commissioned study found that our buying behaviours are heavily influenced by we perceive our data is being handled by companies.

The consent given to use your basic information cannot be taken for granted – even in the medical environment.

German doctors’ practices, in the wake of GDPR, are manually making you sign consent forms. Doctors are now required to fully disclose who they share your contact information with.

How to be compliant

There are simple ways you can stay GDPR compliant. One method is to adopt an attitude of embracing it rather than just complying with it. You can be transparent with your customers by doing the following:

Add a cookie bar to your website. You can also add a clause/paragraph to that effect (website disclaimer) in your ‘About Us’ section.

Similarly, you must state clearly on any opt-in forms. Newsletters and any forms where their data is collected, used, and passed onto other third-parties must be announced. State clearly who they are and which data they have access to.

You then need to give your customer the option to select what they want to share. Even if such data may not be necessary for them to receive services from you.

Constantly review your relationships with third-party affiliates and partners to ensure that they are also complying with the law.
They could be jeopardizing your data compliance efforts – as Cambridge Analytica did with Facebook.

The last and most challenging step requires the action of what is promised above. This means an upgrade of your internal software to include security/encryption.

GDPR compliant software

You can obtain full compliance by using a GDPR-compliant package like Office 365 Enterprise E3. This package has email software specially designed for those of you dealing with sensitive client’s data that need to be kept for long periods. Litigation hold, heavy archiving features; as well as basic email encryption are all included.

You can add supplementary encryption software such as Azure Information Protection as an extra layer of security. This helps you to safeguard emails and stored data from being lost, compromised, or accidentally shared.

All said and done it is likely that if you are a bigger firm, you would either need to create the position of a data security officer internally. If your lawyers are not up to date with digital laws, however, you can simply outsource the service.

This should help make you become fully compliant thereby having to avoid issues with the data compliance authority altogether.

1 June 2018
Data (Gold) Mining

Let’s face it, if you really were going to quit Facebook, you would have a few years ago. Fact is, you should have asked the serious questions when the ‘free’ social media platform started turning over billions of dollars.

No free service can generate that amount of money out of goodwill and thin air. So much that they could list on the stock exchange. So, we are not quite sure why everyone is acting amazed or why the knee-jerk #DeleteFacebook campaign is only now coming to light.

There really is no such thing as a free lunch. If you believe that all these online social platforms would keep it that way, then you are as naive as they are hoping you to be.

Think about it, the companies behind the platforms, actively recruit in pretty much tens and hundreds of cities globally.

And the simple fact of the matter is that in order for them to pay all their staff of programmers, developers, executives, lawyers, and other stakeholders. They need to be paid!

What your data means

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, and any social media platform that has over 100 million users sit on a goldmine for advertisers.

The commodity, however, is not just what their users wish to own in the short term, or their purchasing power directly for that matter.

The commodity is simply you, the user. So, your preferences, habits, and views along with their personal data are analyzed via machine-learning systems to study behaviours and habits.

The data, in turn, is used for constant revenue maximization. In some extreme cases, it is used for political, psychological, and social manipulation!

“Your ‘payment’ on a social media platform is your consent to have your information used for marketing purposes. Opting out of marketing would give you true ‘free use’ of the service. But no profiteering company offers you that privilege today. The best you can get is a month’s free trial.”

Your likes, spending habits, music preferences, political views, location and working habits enables marketers to present their goods and services.

They can position their offerings (sometimes subliminally) into spaces where you are likely to indulge in them.

Social media platforms, in this case, become the marketplace for them to ‘mine’ data to use.

Social network sites worldwide as of January 2018, ranked by the number of active users (in millions).

Source: © Statista 2018

How the mining works

Data mining is not a new idea and completely legal if presented transparently in the terms and conditions of any service. The terms get longer by the day (small print) that we don’t bother to read them.
Microsoft envisioned this a decade ago and changed the way its operating systems work (with its Windows 8 series).

Its operating systems are now more of a social, interactive, and information gathering system. Allegedly designed to “help you” organize things better.
This is fostered by a voice-activated app called Cortana – all under one Microsoft account.

Amazon has its own ways of data mining via your shopping habits and Alexa – is its own voice-activated search and information-providing device.
Google (owned by Alphabet company) has the biggest stranglehold of the lot. They must, therefore, be the most cautious when it comes to data privacy and security.

This applies especially with its partnership with Android, which makes it a requirement for you to use for all their devices to link all your data.

These include phone contacts, emails via Gmail, pictures via GoogleDrive, apps (music, movies, etc) orders via the Google (Play)Store, and social media (Google+).

You can even have your search fields stored and synced onto your devices – from your laptop to phone and tablet via Google.

You are now having to give up your personal details to unknown affiliated marketers and partners of tech giants. They get first dibs on this data – and paying good money for it.

Read more about Affiliate Marketing here

Required by regulation

The main violation by Facebook, therefore, might not even be non-consensus selling of data to marketers. Such things could be countered with a clause.
They may have strategically stuck one in while you were busy posting selfies and liking random videos of cats.

The real issue is the potential use of the data for political or advanced manipulation of data for fraudulent purposes. This can be facilitated by the use of artificial intelligence to influence you without your knowledge.

Read more about the uses of Artificial Intelligence here

It is possible for you to have full data privacy and absolute freedom from advertising on social platforms. This, however, comes at a ‘cost’.

This was reiterated recently by the COO of Facebook who admittedly confirmed that ‘opting out’ would mean you will have to pay to use Facebook in the future.
They had just not put this in place but will now forcibly have to make it a clearly visible option.

The fact of the matter is we are in an era of Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), and AI. All of these require your data to ‘operate’.

Data mining is here to stay

Though many were reluctant at first, pretty much every company now has a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram page. It serves as a platform to showcase and communicate with thier clients via the newly termed phrase ‘social engagement’.

This has turned out to become a strong branding and marketing tool for them.

And if you think you are out of it by leaving one platform, just remember this: Facebook owns WhatsApp & Instagram; Google owns YouTube; Microsoft owns LinkedIn, and so on.

There is, in fact, nowhere to hide if complete online privacy is important to you. And let’s not forget your web-browser: Not many of us actively use ad-blockers: but your browsing data is being scanned and processed by external third-parties companies.

If you aren’t using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), you should seriously consider it! Along with some good plug-ins to help secure your online browsing from all types of behind the scenes snooping and ransomware.
It will be interesting to see the outcome and verdict of the probe into the Facebook case.

Rest assured, many other heavily used platforms will be deleting and removing ties with data mining marketers. Especially ones that have had a similar agenda to what Cambridge Analytica was accused of conducting.

A change in the verification of marketers, data storage and data security laws (such as the new GDPR law) were long overdue. Facebook will now be the scapegoat to enforce data security laws on social media.

8 April 2018
Data (Gold) Mining

Let’s face it, if you really were going to quit Facebook, you would have a few years ago. Fact is, you should have asked the serious questions when the ‘free’ social media platform started turning over millions and even billions of dollars in revenue. No free service can generate that amount money out of goodwill and thin air – so much that they could list on the stock exchange. So, we are not quite sure why everyone is acting amazed or why the knee-jerk #DeleteFacebook campaign is only now coming to light.

There really is no such thing as a free lunch and if you believe that all these online social platforms – who may have started off with sole intentions to provide a free service, would keep it that way, then you are as naive as they are hoping you to be. Think about it, the companies behind the platforms, actively recruit in pretty much tens and hundreds of cities globally. And the simple fact of the matter is that in order for them to pay all their (global) staff of programmers, developers, executives, lawyers and other stakeholders – they need revenue.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat and pretty much any social media platform that has over 100 million users, therefore, sit on a goldmine for advertisers. The commodity, however, is not just what their users wish to own in the short term, or their purchasing power directly for that matter. The commodity is simply you, the user. So, your preferences, habits and views along with their personal data are analysed via machine-learning systems to study behaviours and habits for constant revenue maximization or in some extreme cases: political, psychological and social manipulation!

“Your ‘payment’ on a social media platform is your consent to have your information used for marketing purposes – opting out of marketing would give you true free use of the service. But no profiteering company offers that privilege today – the best you can get is a month’s free trial.”

Knowing your likes, spending habits, music preferences, political views, personal information including location and working habits is enough for any company or institution to cater their goods and services and position them (sometimes subliminally) into spaces where you are likely to indulge in them. Social media platforms, in this case, become the marketplace for them to ‘mine’ data to use.

Most famous social network sites worldwide as of January 2018, ranked by number of active users (in millions).

Source: © Statista 2018

Data mining is not a new idea and completely legal if presented transparently in the terms and conditions of any service – which are getting longer by the day (and smaller in print) that we don’t bother to read them. In fact, Microsoft envisioned this a decade ago and changed the way its operating systems work (beginning with its Windows 8 series), to more of a social, interactive and information gathering system – designed to “help you” organize things better. This is fostered by a voice-activated app called Cortana – all under one Microsoft account.

Amazon has its own ways of data mining via your shopping habits and Alexa – is own voice-activated search and information-providing device. Google (owned by a group called the Alphabet company) has the biggest stranglehold of the lot and must, therefore, be the most cautious when it comes to data privacy and security.

This applies especially with its partnership with Android, which makes it a requirement to use for all their devices (phones and tablets) to link up all your data including phone contacts, emails via Gmail, pictures via GoogleDrive, apps (music, movies and games) orders via the Google (Play)Store and social media via Google+. You can even have your search fields stored and synced onto your devices – from your laptop to phone and tablet via Google.

You are now having to (almost mandatorily) give up your telephone number, location, and other preferences indirectly to unknown affiliated marketers and partners of the tech giants who are getting first dibs on this data – and paying good money for it.

The main violation by Facebook, therefore, might not even be non-consensus selling of data to marketers, because such things could be countered with a clause they may have strategically stuck in while you were busy posting selfies and liking random videos of cats making funny faces. The real issue is the potential use of the data for political or advanced manipulation of data for fraudulent purpose with the use of sophisticated and artificial intelligence to influence you without your knowledge.

Read more about the uses of Artificial Intelligence here

Full data privacy, though not conceivable, and absolute freedom from advertising on social platforms is possible – but at a cost. This was reiterated recently by the COO of Facebook who admittedly confirmed that opting out of the terms to have your data sold or used would lead to you having to pay to use Facebook in future. They had just not put this in place but will now forcibly have to make it a clearly visible option.

The fact of the matter is we are in an era of Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT) and AI – all which require data to analyze. These platforms are thus here to stay and still serve their specific functions well. More importantly, they’re also the livelihood for many small-to-medium-sized businesses. Though many were reluctant at first, pretty much every company now has a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram page to showcase and communicate with their clients via the newly termed phrase ‘social engagement’ – a strong branding and marketing tool.

And if you think you are out of it by leaving one platform, just remember this: Facebook owns WhatsApp & Instagram; Google owns YouTube; Microsoft owns LinkedIn and so on – there is nowhere to hide if complete online privacy is important to you. And let’s not forget your web-browser – not many people actively use ad-blockers unaware that even their browsing data is being scanned and processed always by external third-parties companies.

If you aren’t using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), you should seriously consider it along with some good (some free) plug-ins to help secure your online browsing from all types of behind the scenes snooping and ransomware.

It will be interesting to see the outcome and verdict of the probe into the Facebook case and rest assured, many other heavily used platforms will be deleting and removing ties with data mining marketers that have had a similar agenda to what Cambridge Analytica was accused of conducting.

A change in verification of marketers, data storage, management and data security laws (such as the new GDPR law targeting businesses coming in May 2018 to the EU region) were long overdue, and Facebook will now be the scapegoat to enforce data security laws on social media.

8 April 2018

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