June 1, 2016 | Larry Alton | Contributor | Entrepreneur
Sep
21
2018
As a digitally active business in 2016, you can’t afford to lose your data. Whether at the hands of a natural disaster, human error, or cyber attack, data loss is costly and extremely risky. That’s why you need a backup and disaster recovery solution.
Sep
21
2018
How Our Growing Tech Company Stayed Open During Hurricane María
July 30,2018 . Dolmarie Mendez | Guest Writer | Co-founder and CEO, Abartys Health | Entrepreneur
As the leader of a healthcare technology company,I have the responsibility to make sure my co-workers and I are ready for anything, in both the best and the worst of times.
While having our company headquarters in Puerto Rico gives us advantages that I wouldn’t trade for anything, Hurricane María last September brought about circumstances impossible to foresee. Our building flooded, power and telephone lines were disrupted and supermarkets and hospitals were closed for weeks.
To put the devastation into perspective, Hurricane María completely destroyed more than 87,000 homes in Puerto Rico (with more than 385,000 other homes sustaining major damage). Some 250,000 Puerto Rico residents were displaced to the mainland United States, in some cases permanently.
One study from the New England Journal of Medicine said that Hurricane María claimed some 4,600 lives, though the authors added that even this staggering figure could turn out to be conservative. In terms of costs, it’s estimated that Hurricane María has cost more than $90 billion.
We were one of 10,000 businesses affected by the hurricane. And yet, we knew that maintaining normal operations in the face of such obstacles was non-negotiable, given the vital technical services we provide to insurance companies and medical providers. And while not every tech company will have to deal with the catastrophe of a hurricane, there will almost certainly be unforeseen obstacles that test every company’s resilience.
We’re in the middle of hurricane season again.
Now that we’re in the middle of hurricane season 2018, here are the lessons we learned that other companies facing disasters similar to ours — especially companies in technology — can do to “weather the storm” when disaster strikes.
Sep
21
2018
Hurricane Maria Almost Destroyed This Entrepreneur’s $300,000 Franchise Investment. Here’s How she Moved Forward
Post-hurricane, this Pita Pit franchisee in San Juan dealt with lack of food, gas, power and communication. Here’s how she used a new mindset to move forward
Hayden Field, EntrepreneurStaff, Associate Editor, July 11, 2018 Women/Entrepreneur
In the Women Entrepreneur series My Worst Moment, female founders provide a firsthand account of the most difficult, gut-wrenching, almost-made-them-give-up experience they’ve had while building their business — and how they recovered.
When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2018, it left almost insurmountable tragedy in its wake. Although the death toll is widely disputed, one Harvard study estimates a potential 4,645 excess deaths, and the storm likely caused between $40 billion and $85 billion in damage, according to catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide. Businesses — and plans for businesses — were also heavily impacted. Valeria Quinones had invested $300,000 to open a Pita Pit franchise, and although her construction site wasn’t destroyed, she faced hunger, power outages and monetary losses. Here, she tells us how she used a new mindset to take her next steps and move forward.
Sep
19
2018
You May Have a Disaster Plan, But What About Business Continuity Planning?
Written by ACCOUNTEX
Every few years, we get reminders of how vulnerable we are to acts of nature. Events beyond our control, including fires, floods and hurricanes causing large-scale disaster, have been experienced in various parts of North America recently. Both man-made and natural events will occur, frequently without warning.
Randy Johnston is a top-rated technology speaker at the annual Accountex USA conference. Randy is broadly known for his Technology Update presentation, which he updates continuously. At Accountex 2018 in Boston, Randy will be presenting on Cloud Technology. Randy has expertise in technology, security, accounting, software and computer infrastructure, and strategic planning and management.
With technology, additional risks come from hacks by bad actors resulting in data breaches or malware infections, hardware manufacturer errors that lead to issues such as the Spectre or Meltdown processor exploits, and software manufacturers making erroneous updates to their software that lead to work stoppages. These events all illustrate the need for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.
Let’s separate these two concepts, try to understand the difference, and focus on what we can do to improve business continuity.
Sep
19
2018
10 Things Great Leaders Do to Handle a Disaster
Crisis will test any leader. Here’s how the best get through it.
Sep
04
2018
Disney’s Ben Havey: Collaboration & Content in a 5G World
CxO Spotlight
Phil Harvey, US News Editor
8/29/2018
Content creation, distribution and ownership are having more sway than ever on the world of communications and that influence is likely to accelerate as the next generation of mobile networks is constructed and consumed.
As this is happening, it does help to find out what the people at the major intersection points of technology, communications and content are thinking, and how they’re planning to take advantage of the capabilities that are just around the corner.
To that end, Light Reading took a tour of the new Disney’s new StudioLAB to see what kinds of projects are in the works and how the company’s work with Cisco and other technology partners will help it become a new kind of service provider — one creating content experiences for mobile devices and public spaces alike.
Check out this interview with Ben Havey, VP of the Technology Innovation Group at The Walt Disney Studios, and just imagine what’s ahead. Once you’re done reading this interview, please have a look at our quick video recapping the StudioLAB tour and my blog with some additional reporting and analysis.
Phil Harvey: We’re in a space called StudioLAB. Is it more of a studio or more of a lab?
Sep
04
2018
Updated: Microsoft Azure’s southern U.S. data center goes down for hours, impacting Office365 and Active Directory customers
GeekWire by Tom Krazit on
Some Microsoft Azure customers with workloads running in its South Central US data center are having big problems coming back from the holiday weekend Tuesday, after shutdown procedures were initiated following a spike in temperature inside one of its facilities.
Around 230am Pacific Time, Microsoft identified problems with the cooling systems in one part of its Texas data center complex, which caused a spike in temperature and forced it to shut down equipment in order to prevent a more catastrophic failure, according to the Azure status page. These issues have also caused cascading effects for some Microsoft Office 365 users as well as those who rely on Microsoft Active Directory to log into their accounts.
Engineers are in the process of restoring power to affected data center devices. Resources in South Central and potentially other regions may experience impact. Please refer to your portal, https://t.co/Dw19fIGsXf and/or Twitter for updates. pic.twitter.com/zkkDKqhsG9
— Azure Support (@AzureSupport) September 4, 2018
Aug
23
2018
How smart homes are enabling new models for healthcare services
Telecoms
By David H. Deans
13 August 2018, 11:11 a.m.
Home-based healthcare options have exploded since the availability of internet access has become pervasive. Moreover, as healthcare shifts from reactive to proactive patient care, a huge market is ready for automation products that can help deliver health and wellness services through smart home solutions.
The ubiquity of broadband connectivity, development of smart sensors, and the decreasing costs of devices have already made it possible to offer aging-in-place, chronic disease management, and post-acute care services in smart homes.
Smart healthcare market development
However, digital health vendors are striving to take telehealth to the next level by developing solutions that will allow caregivers to check on the health of all the residents of the house, not just the patient’s, monitor diet and nutrition, the environment, and overall wellness, and be integrable with existing and newer systems.
“Patients are conscious of their health quotient and want to be involved in the wellness and disease management,” said Sowmya Rajagopalan Global Program at Frost & Sullivan. “With consumerization of healthcare, enabling patients to clinically manage their disease at home has been of crucial importance for care providers and OEMs today as they have made this a reality with the launch of innovation in design, devices, services, and solutions.”
Aug
22
2018
Qualcomm Teases Market With 5G SoC Sample
Light Reading . 8/22/2018
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ:QCOM), announced that its upcoming flagship mobile platform will feature a system-on-chip (SoC) built on the 7nm process node. The 7nm SoC can be paired with the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X50 5G modem, which is expected to be the first 5G-capable mobile platform for premium tier smartphones and other mobile devices. Qualcomm Technologies has begun sampling of its upcoming flagship mobile platform to multiple OEMs developing next-generation consumer devices. The upcoming platform will transform industries, encourage new business models and improve the consumer experience as operators come online with 5G services later in 2018 and through 2019.