eSP - IT Solution Providers in Europe

Microsoft Goes to War on Cloud Effort

Microsoft creates a new division, putting all of its SMB resources in a single multibillion dollar division to convince SMB solution providers that it’s time to be leading with cloud services like Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), the new Windows InTune systems management software/service and the Azure cloud platform.

Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference kicks off with the company’s loudest message that "Microsoft partners need to be “All In” with the cloud, just like Redmond itself."

Dylan was right: The Times They Are A’ Changin'.

The keynote address at this year’s InfoComm (an AV, not IT, show) was delivered by…Cisco.

Representing the IT giant, Marthin De Beer, Senior VP Emerging Technologies Business Group at Cisco, took the InfoComm stage to tell delegates that collaborative technologies like video and telepresence are changing the way people work, learn, and communicate—and even forcing radical changes in network architecture.

He says future collaboration will make it easier for users to create and control rich media and for IT departments to deliver these technologies while also cutting back on the need for end-user support. "When it comes to rich human interactions, being able to easily create, find, share, consume, and manage content is very important. And we believe the network, what we now term as 'medianet,' which you should think of as the evolution of the network that is ready for rich media,... will play a very important part."

"Video and collaboration and, in particular, telepresence are at the heart of how the future of work, the future of connected life, and the future of computing will change over time," de Beer says. "I believe it's just the beginning. We're going to see an exciting world unfold in front of us."

Go InfoComm Keynote

A white box with a touch screen on the outside cover that lets heart patients make video calls with their clinicians may prove the basis for an emerging home health market.

Aetna releases preliminary results of a joint study with Intel showing chronic heart failure patients who use a remote health management system (with an in-home patient device, the Intel Health Guide PHS6000) avoided some hospital stays and increased their independence from hospitals.

The service combines Intel’s PHS6000 with its online platform that allows clinicians to monitor patients and manage care remotely via videoconferencing. You can also connect other devices for blood-pressure, weight, pulse and blood-glucose. It records your past medical data.

Last month Intel announced it will expand the Intel Health Guide into Europe. Why is home health of interest to IT?

First, we have already have hospital facilities as clients for 3D, displays and videoconferencing. A boom in home health care means all those consumer units will have to endpoint in an environment that deals with multiple inputs and that means industrial strength routing and control of incoming video.

Also, as research like this Aetna/Intel study validates home health care, corporations may decide to jump in provide services to employees much in the way they today provide gym, creche, and other services that keep their workers healthy.

Go Intel & Aetna on Home Health Care

Exhibio releases their Enterprise System, a large-scale digital signage platform designed for easy deployment of digital signage into business and college campuses, retail chains and franchise locations.

The system is powered by the Enterprise Server, which runs Exhibio’s Digital Signage Management System, integrated software with a web-based interface where users can design signs and schedule content on screens anywhere in the world.

One Enterprise Server combined with remote smart terminals can produce hundreds of digital signs, each showing unique content or sharing content with other screens on the system.

The signs can carry the same content as Exhibio’s all-in-one X-800HD Digital Signage Engine: HTML, RSS feeds, live TV, video, audio, images, text, Flash, and more.

Exhibio’s other product lines, the X and M-Series, push a single stream of content to connected displays.

Go Exhibio Goes Enterprise