Tag: technology

West coast skin care company leverages cloud to support U.S. expansion [Byline]

/ Gary Hilson

Expanding into new markets is a challenge in and of itself, but when it’s a complex business and your financial management software can’t keep up, it’s time to make some changes.

Vancouver-based Skoah Inc. is a small chain of shops that offer facial products and treatments to its customers in 15 stores, some of which are franchises. Company president Christ Scott said that as the company looked to expand to the United States, those complexities could not be accommodated by its QuickBooks accounting software – it didn’t integrate with its Point-of-Sales (PoS) system.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

Canada a bright spot for tech investment in 2016 [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Canada wrapped up 2016 on a high note when it came to investment in venture capital-backed companies, according to a recent report, bucking the global trend of a 10 per cent decline in deals and a 23 per cent drop in total funding compared to 2015.

The MoneyTree Report from PwC Canada and CB Insights shows that deals and dollars were up in the last quarter of the year, with the number of deals increasing seven per cent from 248 to 266 in 2016 with total dollars invested equaling $1.7B USD in 2016, less than on per cent lower than last year’s figure. Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Waterloo media startup snags Vice Canada CRO [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

The trend toward having a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is growing, and Waterloo, Ont.-based Sortable has just hired its first by luring a media veteran from Vice Canada.

CROs are essentially responsible for all revenue-generating processes in the organization, said Ryan Fuss, Sortable’s latest employee, and it’s a role that’s become increasingly common in Silicon Valley. Traditionally, revenue generation has been fragmented throughout business units, he said, and there was a need to have a C-level executive overseeing all revenue generation. This includes sales and marketing, and enables a company to fully align to create cohesive plans. “It’s definitely an emerging trend.”

Read my full story on ITBusiness.ca.

Persistent Memory Platform Support Will Take Time [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

TORONTO — Over the last several years, there’s been an increasing overlap between what was traditionally seen as memory and traditionally seen as storage, as well as the increasing use of persistent memory.

Last week’s Persistent Memory Summit in San Jose, organized by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) as part of its Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI), included a presentation by Steve Pawlowski, vice president of advance computing solutions at Micron, outlining how computing architectures must change to get the right data to the processor efficiently and how persistent memory such as NVDIMMs can play a role.

EE Times spoke to Pawlowski following his SNIA keynote on why new computing architectures must support current software applications, the current roadmap for NV-DIMMs, and what might be the non-volatile memory of choice down the road.

Read my full Q+A on EE Times.

Miniaturization, IoT Fuel Electronics Adhesive Growth [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

TORONTO — The market for high-quality electronics is growing, and with that also comes a rising need for technology adhesives. This demand has been driven, in part, by miniaturization.

“As the market for high-quality electronics has increased in the past few years, the need for material to protect and bond electronic components has also increased,” said Technavio Senior Industry Analyst Chandrakumar Badala Jaganathan, in an interview with EE Times.

The research firm’s recent Global Electronic Adhesives Market 2017–2021 report is forecasting the market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of close to 10% between now and 2021, said Jaganathan. “The market in 2017 is expected to grow by 8.89% compared to 2016.”

Read my full article on EE Times.

Additive 3D Printing Creates Another Supply Chain Tier [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Improved materials with be where the innovation is in the coming years, disrupting the current paradigms of parts replacement and storage. Not surprisingly, 3D printing got a lot of attention at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, but it’s also poised to fundamentally change the behavior of supply chains.

Just as consumers are now able to more easily tap into 3D printing, 3Diligent set out to make the technology readily available globally for businesses, and last month, it announced that addition of a new process for metal parts. In a telephone interview with EBN Online, company CEO Cullen Hilkene said that the company is now able to offer the broadest range of popular metal rapid manufacturing options.

Read my full article on EBN Online.

With Outgrow.co, your business can build its own interactive viral content [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

What started as a means to streamline a company’s business development process with an interactive tool has now become its core business.

Five-year-old New York City-based Outgrow.co was always fielding questions from potential customers about pricing for its web and app development services, so it decided to create an interactive online tool to make it simple for a potential client to discover quickly if they are serious about becoming a paying customer.

In the last year, however, this has become Outgrow.co’s focus, said co-founder Pratham Mittal. “It’s hard to build interactive content today. You need designers.” And this equates to high costs and a great deal of time that many businesses don’t have.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

NRAM’s Day Is Finally Here: Report [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Better late than never might be a good way to sum up NRAM.

After years of not quite be ready for wide adoption, a new report from BCC Research is predicting that Nano-Ram (NRAM) is finally in a position to disrupt incumbent DRAM and flash memory with commercialization expected in 2018. The Wellesley, MA.-based research firm said the first non-volatile memory chip to exploit carbon-nanotube technology looks like it’s finally ready to have a serious impact on computer memory.

“Industry experts had given up on waiting for CNT memory,” said BCC Research editorial director Kevin Fitzgerald in an interview with EE Times. “I believe one needed fresh eyes to really see that the time was coming when it was really possible to make the switch from silicon to carbon.”

Read my full article on EE Times.

Optimizing customer service will be driven by AI and collaboration, Salesforce says [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

The future of exceptional customer service will be a united front powered by artificial intelligence.

That’s the theme of Saleforce’s Second Annual State of Service Report, which surveyed more than 2,600 customer service professionals worldwide to better understand how smart technologies are affecting service protocols and how service leaders are responding to customer expectations.

For example, the report found that 64 per cent of consumers and 80 per cent of business buyers expect companies to respond in real time.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Diligent’s new tool helps corporate boards evaluate themselves and improve [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Gone are the days of board members meeting just four times a year to discuss a company’s financial performance. Instead, increasing pressures are prompting the need to make sure everyone is well prepared and handling any issues effectively.

That new reality is what drove the launch of New York-based Diligent Corporation’s newest product. The company, which already provides board collaboration and communication tools to more than 4,700 organizations and 140,000 users, including 40 per cent of Fortune 1000 companies, has introduced Diligent Evaluations to make board evaluations easy to administer and analyze for both administrators and directors.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.