The Changing Trend - Self-Service Portals

Portals were preferred over other content websites to provide consolidated, customized and updated information. The trend moved towards one-click information on weather, cities, movies, music, communities, latest news, stock update and much more with customized and personalized user web space. Users started expecting the possibility of paying bills, checking bank accounts, transferring funds, city information and tracking insurance claims through a secure online platform. Users, no longer, wished to be caught in the slow and lengthy request-processing loop offered by call centers.

Highly acclaimed community portal, Yahoo, introduced the user-centric personalized portal My Yahoo! in 1996. Users needed to create a profile to access a gamut of information through a personal web space. The users experienced up-to date view of information streamed on the basis of their preferences. Self-service portals, thus, evolved a user-centric web-based platform approach. It enables an anywhere anytime model with data integration from multiple sources facilitated through an open architecture. Users can access instant information through a personal web space where they can even specify their preferences to view specific data categories. With Service Oriented Architecture enabled, the information can be accessed through PCs, mobile phones, PDAs and other channels. With online self-service model, companies significantly saved on customer services.

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Customer Self-service Portal is targeted to meet the specific requirements of the B2C domain. It provides an end-to-end solution for E-commerce activities enabled through a single sign-on personalized platform for users with data and applications accessible on-demand. The end-users are provided with extensive information streamed through a wide network of sources. The information is then processed and collated into precisely the data requested by the end-users.

The overall costs incurred with toll-free phone support, emails and chat sessions amount to much more than self-service portal. Intelligent data analysis is provided by sophisticated aggregation and integration functions of portals. The advanced analysis capability enables easy identification of potential customers by capturing user-browsing behavior. 'Customer lifetime value' can be enhanced with personalized and instant interface. It also optimizes the business environment for remote and local collaboration of data, software and applications. Portals are designed to manage large data requirements like integration, storage and data processing.

With rapidly growing demands of an increasing customer base, the customer-servicing costs have become unaffordable. Dependence on human interface and contact centers is reducing due to deteriorated services and high costs. The late 90s experienced changing trend in the way customers wanted to be served. Growing complexity in businesses led to a massive increase in the number of processes, applications and user database to be maintained. Data being stored at multiple locations consumed more time to integrate. With number of users increasing and complexity of processes growing, companies outsourced their customer services to multiple call centers. The costs and the dependence on human interface, thus, added tremendous burden on company funds whereas quality of customer servicing continued to drop. Users expected faster services and access through multiple channels like the Internet and mobile phones. From an IT perspective, this translates into data integration across the enterprise and web-based customer and employee portals founded on the fundamentals of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

The Changing Trend - Self-Service Portals

Roopal is an Online Marketing Professional from http://www.infogain.com, an IT Services Company, writes blog, content, and articles. She writes marketing col-laterals and advice to Visit her web page for your concerns regarding Self Service Portals and for Retail POS Systems

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SAS BI Lite - For a Fraction of the Cost

Anyone that has followed the product offerings from SAS in recent years knows that they have a comprehensive, end-to-end Business Intelligence package known as the EBI Suite or it's little brother the BI Suite. These products offer a great business intelligence platform with all of the OLAP, Web Reporting, Analytic and Portal tools that any fortune 500 company could ever need.

But what about smaller businesses? Those that love SAS but have a limited budget. Those that just need a way to automate and web-enable some existing base SAS or Enterprise Guide reports but don't have a need for the heft of the BI suite (or its price tag). Well, the answer may have been sitting right under your nose.

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A common set of non-BI products that SAS offers includes a product called "Integration Technologies". This product flies so far under the radar and is so frequently misunderstood that you may have it licensed and don't even know it. Furthermore, even if you know that you have it licensed you may not be leveraging it at all. In almost all default version 9 installation configurations of non-BI offerings, many components of Integration Technologies are not even installed! Yes, a nice chunk of your licensing dollars may be sitting on a CD in a big ugly binder collecting dust.

OK, what are the components of Integration Technologies and how can they help me? Well there are many pieces to this product ranging from IOM servers to APIs that allow interfacing SAS with Java and dot net applications. All of that stuff is cool in itself but the real hidden gem is something called the Web Infrastructure Kit (WIK). Buried inside the WIK is something called the Stored Process Web Application. It runs inside a SAS-flavored Tomcat Apache server (also provided as part of Integration Technologies). Once these pieces are installed one can easily take an existing Enterprise Guide project, convert it to a Stored Process and expose it to the masses through a web-based interface. Security concerns? Don't sweat it. All of these stored processes can be fully secured via the SAS management console, a standard feature of version 9.

Want to maintain a few base reports but allow lots of flavors? You can create run-time parameters for the stored process and the parameters automatically show up as drop-down boxes, date-selection dialogs or pick lists automatically. Let me repeat - there is absolutely no html or Java to code. All you have to do is convert an Enterprise Guide report to a stored process through an easy-to-use wizard and you're just about done.

The possibilities for this technology are only limited by your imagination. You can allow users to summarize, slice and dice, create web-based pivot tables all within a browser. Users can create interactive graphs, charts and geographic maps that are truly interactive - with no software required on the desktop. Allow executives to summarize sales and profits by region, quarter, product or state. Allow tables to be chosen, filtered and automatically exported to Excel. Let your data breathe!

What's the catch? There is absolutely no catch from a SAS licensing perspective. You may be paying for powerful software that has never seen the light of day. The main obstacle to leveraging this technology is a somewhat tricky installation procedure. If installation and configuration are your concern then contact me through my web-site listed below and I will help get you on your way. Free your data!

SAS BI Lite - For a Fraction of the Cost

http://www.bluechipsolutions.com

Blue Chip Solutions has been helping customers make fact-based decisions for over 12 years. Use the link above to contact us today and let us help you leverage your business data for competetive advantage.

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Getting APNs SSL Certificate for Enterprises

With the gargantuan growth of mobile devices, more and more enterprises are adopting a Mobile Device Management solution to manage them. For controlling and managing iOS based mobile devices, an enterprise needs to embrace an iOS based Mobile Device Management solution. An Apple Push Notification Service (APNs) certificate from Apple is a prerequisite for implementing an iOS based MDM platform. These certificates are valid for only iOS 3.0 or above based devices.

What is APNs?

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APNs or Apple Push Notification Service is an Apple hosted mobile solution that allows enterprises to communicate with the endpoints in the cloud by sending notifications. Using the iOS based MDM platform, the administrators can push notifications to iOS devices from the cloud anytime and anywhere. Needless to say, the APNs is only relevant for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch devices.

The APNs server maintains a persistent Internet connection with the mobile device. The third party server or vendor interacts with the Apple Push Notification server for pushing any notifications to the iOS mobile device. Once the APNs server receives the alert, it pushes out the message to the iOS mobile device. The user is then notified about the update either by an audible alert, an Alert message or by updating the badge on the application icon. Since the mobile device does not poll to the APNs server every few minutes, there is no unnecessary drainage of the mobile device battery. Apart from improvement in the mobile device battery life, the APNs service also delivers seamless performance over Wi-Fi or cellular network.

Getting an APNs certificate

To reap the benefits of an APNs service, an enterprise must first enroll into the Apple Enterprise Developer program by paying an annual membership fee of 9. An Apple Enterprise account must be created for accessing the proprietary iOS resources. Once the user has logged into the Apple Development portal, there is a pool of tutorials, videos and reference documents available for APNs certificates.

For creating an enterprise account, it is mandatory that an organization has

A valid DUNs number from Dun & Bradstreet. The DUNs number is a unique number and a widely recognized standard for identifying businesses in the market place and regulatory entities. Approval from Apple for the iOS Developer Enterprise Program. The Enterprise Program permits an organization to develop and distributes iOS applications within the organization.

The Apple enterprise membership needs to be renewed for every passing year. With a single Apple enterprise account, multiple APNs certificates can be created. The certificates are valid for a year, from the date of issue, and must be reloaded every year.

When the user logs into the Apple Development Portal for creating a APNs certificate, it is mandatory that he has an Agent developer account role (Admin role access is not sufficient). The certificate can be generated from either a Mac Server or Windows Server. Regardless of the operating system, the key steps for creating aAPNs certificate are:

Create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) Upload the CSR to the Apple Development Portal Download the Signed Certificate/Complete the CSR Request Export the APNs Certificate Upload the APNs certificate to the desired third party MDM vendor portal

Finally, after uploading the APNs certificate to the MDM vendor portal, the administrators can manage and execute different actions on the iOS mobile endpoints using the iOS MDM platform.

So, don't wait. Go ahead and purchase your APNs certificate; be a step closer to managing your iOS gadgets!

Getting APNs SSL Certificate for Enterprises

Pragati Chaplot Jain is a technical writer at MaaS360 By Fiberlink. Fiberlink is the developer of MaaS360, the leading cloud-based, mobile device visibility and management platform. To learn more or take a test ride of MDM for iOS devices, please visit http://links.maas360.com/mdm_iOS.

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Redhat Linux Runlevels

The order in which Linux starts system services is governed by what runlevel is assigned to the service in question. Some runlevels will boot or halt the system itself, while others control regular system services or even programs that the administrator installs and wants started at a particular time in the boot cycle. These runlevels are controlled with scripts that are defined by runlevel named directories in which they reside. The default runlevel for the system is set in the /etc/inittab file, but it can be overridden from the GRUB boot loader menu. Redhat Enterprise Linux has six runlevels.

Runlevel 0: Halt the system. When the system is sent to this runlevel, everything shuts down and the system is completely halted. If the computer's BIOS supports it, the machine is powered off at the end of the process.

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Runlevel 1: This is single user mode. In single user mode an administrator can do all sorts of maintenance, like backups, restores, and repairs. This is useful because no other users can be logged in and the system is not prone to having others change things, which is important when this sort of work is being done. Networking is not enabled so the network interfaces and infrastructure are offline.

Runlevel 2: In this runlevel, multiuser functionality is enabled with only some networking services enabled.

Runlevel 3: Multiuser mode is enabled with full networking functionality.

Runlevel 4: This runlevel is currently not used.

Runlevel 5: The X Windows graphical user interface system is enabled and the user is brought to a graphical login screen. After logging in, the user is taken to their graphical desktop as in all of the popular operating systems of today. Networking is fully enabled.

Runlevel 6: This is the reboot runlevel. It does what it says and reboots the system. You should never set the /etc/inittab default runlevel to number 6 for obvious reasons. Your system would be in an endless reboot loop.

Each runlevel has a bunch of scripts associated with it. Runlevel 3 scripts are located in the /etc/rc.d/rc3.d directory. The runlevel directories are rc0.d through rc6.d, and they are all located under the /etc/rc.d directory. Whatever the default runlevel is set to in the /etc/inittab file, the system will look in the appropriate runlevel directory and execute the scripts in numeric order, starting and killing services according to the scripts. The start scripts start with an "S" and the kill scripts with a "K". The scripts in the runlevel directories are really just symbolic links to the real script files in the /etc/rc.d/init.d directory. The /etc/rc.d/ rc(number).d directory is hard linked to /etc/rc(number).d directory, so you can use the shorter one to get to the same place.

Knowing about Linux runlevels is an important part about knowing how to handle a Linux system, and the knowledge translates to UNIX systems as well. There will be minor and subtle differences, such as varying directory names and different boot loaders, but it is essentially the same framework.

Redhat Linux Runlevels

Tom has worked for technology companies for 15+ years starting as a software quality assurance tech and migrating over to IT as a UNIX, Linux, and Windows systems operator and administrator. The Techbait technology and tech products portal is the place to be for geeks on the go. http://techbait.net

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Affordable Disney Vacation - Orlando Vacation Package Rentals

What better way to enjoy a holiday than to have a place of your own and not worry about too many people crowding into a hotel room. When you have made up your mind to take that Walt Disney World Resort vacation, you can take a pick from the various private rentals available in Orlando area.

disney couture

If you were to look around on the Internet, you will find there are many companies that run rentals of private villas and cottages for visitors. In case you don't have any clues about these cottages, you can touch base with other travelers, who would have benefited largely thanks to these private condos. The Orlando area surrounding the park has plenty of options, from 1 room studio apartments to 3bedroom luxurious villas facing the beach.

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The budget you have allotted for accommodation will determine the kind of private vacation home you opt for. If you are a group of say 5-7members, you will need two rooms if staying at a hotel, whereas if you pick up a villa or cottage, all of you can fit in with enough space to move around. An added advantage is that these places come furnished with functional kitchens and laundry services as well. So you could use them and save loads of money which can be spent going on that Kali River ride once more.

The highway 192, which is within driving distance from the Disney World, is where most of the private homes, villas and the best restaurants are situated. You can relax in one of these homes, make a day trip to the Disney World, come back at night all set for a few hours of rest. Away from the hustle and bustle of the Disney hotels, these homes offer comfort and style and make your Walt Disney vacation much more exciting. There are even a few stores where you can pick up a Mickey T shirt or some other souvenirs for your friends back home at a cheaper price.

While choosing the place to stay, check around before settling on one, for there might be some offering discounts and freebies to the park which you don't want to miss out on. Some of the villas come in a package deal that offer discount tickets to the rides or a coupon to enjoy the Dinoland USA, a visual treat for you and your children. Also check beforehand if the homes come with basic amenities such as well equipped kitchen, hot water in the bath which will be necessary during those winter months and air conditioning for summers and finally, if they provide car rentals as well.

Since all of these private rentals compete against each other vying for that customer, they offer interesting deals that you might miss out on if you are not careful. So, while booking your affordable Disney vacation, have a discussion with the agency about all that they offer and information pertaining to other services that you might require.

Affordable Disney Vacation - Orlando Vacation Package Rentals

Ian Wilkie is an author of many Affordable Disney Vacation [http://www.myaffordabledisneyvacation.com/] articles related too Discount Disney World Vacation Package & Disney Area Vacation Home Rental and owner of - My Affordable Disney Vacation [http://www.myaffordabledisneyvacation.com/] your one-stop online resource for Affordable Walt Disney World Resort Vacation [http://www.myaffordabledisneyvacation.com/site-map] information.

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How to Manage Conflict With Difficult People

Here are some quick tips that any IT architect can use when dealing with difficult people. The main point to keep in mind is to recognize their behavior and to understand it. Then discover a way to cope with it whether that involves confronting their behavior directly or learning to live it in some way. Remember there may be cultural and ethnic differences at work, which means underlying values may not be compatible.

If you decide it is worth trying to change the other person's behavior during negotiations, you need to find out how much work it will take and whether a positive result will be the outcome. Are there risks involved? You may have to accept that some people are not willing to change and if that's the case you'll need to concentrate on the changes you can make and just figure out steps to cope with the behavior.

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If you go for change remember that successful conflict resolution depends on effective communication. And this will depend on two factors - acknowledging, appreciating and productively using the differences. And you then develop a personal strategy for dealing effectively with difficult people.

Here are the steps:

1. Get really clear about the behavior that bothers you and not the values that may lie behind what people are doing. Remember to concentrate on the behavior and not the person.

2. Confront the way they are behaving in a non-threatening way and stay focused on what they are doing and try to avoid attacking the person. You can do this with a simple "when you do this, I'll feel that" type of statement.

3. You have to be willing to hear what they actually want to say. You need to use listening skills (which your coach will help you to develop) so that you can identify the facts and the feelings from other people. Remember to keep discussion as impersonal as possible and just let the other person vent.

You can resolve conflict when you try to meet the needs of each party - essentially a mini-negotiation which needs to be collaborative.

1. You then need to implement the resolution and hear the keys. Separate people from the problem. Remember that the problem is the relationship and not the people themselves. Acknowledge and appreciate differences. Be flexible yourself about the other people's viewpoints or work styles. Avoid negative labels and be flexible. Stay focused on outputs rather than positions that people take. Note that a different opinion or approach is just different and not wrong. You need to remember there are differences in thinking styles.

There are four benefits of successful conflict resolution when people are being difficult.

Behavior which is seen as negative is confronted and resolved.

Parties learn about other people's needs and viewpoints and better understand the reasons why they behave that way.

Problem solving skills can be improved through good coaching and you can learn to discover solutions which are creative.

Finally everybody can benefit from improving their understanding and friendship with others. This will build the trust that is needed to get successful outcomes in future encounters.

You encounter many people who will make it hard to use your negotiating skills, people who will take a less educated and sometimes infuriating approach to conflict. As a developing IT architect you need to develop conflict resolution and negotiating skills and a good coach will place you on the fast track so you can effectively manage difficult people and negotiate successful outcomes.

How to Manage Conflict With Difficult People

Sharon C. Evans is an Enterprise Architect Coach, Mentor and Trainer. Her forthcoming book "Zoom Factor for Enterprise Architects: How to Focus and Accelerate Your Career" focuses on excellence and perspective for the Enterprise Architect and is due out in September 2009. She is the founder of Firefli Consulting Inc. and her member portal and more great articles can be found at http://www.architectcoach.com.

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Great Plains Implementation for Large Corporation Overview

Microsoft Dynamics GP is definitely one of the winners and breaking through ERP packages. In this article we assume that you are not small or midsize business, where accounting options are well known and openly available. Here we are giving recommendations to large corporate businesses. First of all you should be already over your former homework on Oracle EBusiness Suite, JDEdwards and Microsoft Axapta. Comparing to mentioned above GP is very good competitor, coming from the budget-oriented approaches. Budgeted doesn't mean that you are not willing to pay, it rather means that you do not have to pay for rich ERP functionality, which you do not have plans to use in the foreseeable future. Let's take a look at GP strong points and potential weaknesses:

1. Microsoft SQL Server DB platform. Here you have scalability, which fits to variety of businesses, starting from one-person operations to large corporation. SQL Server 2005 and 2000 are very robust competitors to such established DB platforms as Oracle, Ingress, MySQL. The nicety about modern SQL platforms is the fact, that they are unlimited (by HD space addressing limitation, your Server RAM and things like these)

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2. Upscale GP modules. Former name of the Great Plains Dynamics suite for corporate businesses was eEnterprise and later on Great Plains Professional. Here we would like to briefly review such modules as Manufacturing, Collection Management, Service Management Suite or Field Service, Microsoft CRM

3. Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Portal. This is new platform, which coexists in the same information schema and is stored in GP traditional company database. BP is Sharepoint web based application, which allows you to automate such functions as eCommerce (BP Order Management), Purchasing (Purchasing management), HR (Employee Self Service), Electronic Document Delivery. BP will more likely be the Microsoft Dynamics e-commerce platform, as well as it will be substantially extending traditional Great Plains user licensing model, where thin users (your company employees, purchasers, extranet customers) will be incorporated

4. Various routines. Such important compliance routines as 1099 printing, W2 in payroll, accurate State Tax calculations, based on verified delivery address are available in GP with standard or third party logic

5. Employee Self Service. This is part of Great Plains Business Portal, module allowing you to avoid mailing cost to paper mail your payroll direct deposit stubs to your employees and W-2 contractors. If you implement GP Business Portal with Employee Self Service, your insiders could simply print out their stubs from BP web pages

6. Version Upgrades. Modern Software and MRP vendors try to keep you on the short notice in compliance to their new version updates as well as on their annual software enhancement programs. This is your internal decision - if you do care about modern technologies compliance, you should decide on where to upgrade and how many version updates to skip. We recommend you to skip one version, in the scenario when GP has version 8.0 out and you upgrade to this version, the version 9.0 you skip and wait until 10.0 is released and you upgrade from 8.0 to 10.0

Great Plains Implementation for Large Corporation Overview

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group http://www.albaspectrum.com - help@albaspectrum.com, serving Microsoft Dynamics GP customers in Chicago and Houston locally plus in USA and Canada nationwide via web sessions and remote support. We also invoite you to contribute to our Great Plains support knowledge base at Pegas planet, where Taisia Karaseva is happy to review and publish your Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics articles: http://www.pegasplanet.com. If you have questions, please call us: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918. We also have customers in Latin America, Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

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