This is a guest post by Shipwire's Nate Filmore. For all those non-believers out there, here?s a news flash: Hell exists ? at least, inventory Hell does. Just ask any growing online seller preparing for the holiday onslaught, and you?ll... Read more
Source: http://www.businesspundit.com/managing-inventory-doesn%e2%80%99t-have-to-be-a-holiday-hell/
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Mobile has been promoted as the next big thing almost every year for the past 10 years, but today it truly is becoming the platform, the technology you need to listen to (pun intended). Here are four ways that mobile is impacting your marketing efforts.
1.� Mobile devices have a smaller screen. This is painfully obvious, but have you designed for it? Mobile screens are changing e-mail messaging structures. I read an Infusionsoft report that highlighted thisRead More
From Small Business Trends
4 Ways Mobile Devices Impact Your Business and Marketing
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The preference for native mobile applications is growing among this under-35 group, said Harry Wang, director of mobile product research, Parks Associates, because apps don't require users to enter in Web addresses or force them to deal with slow browser speeds, he explained.
"The mobile experience is all about convenience and instantaneous access," Wang said. "The advantages of mobile apps could lead to a new content distribution environment for paid and ad-supported media services."
Although Wang contended that mobile apps will not completely replace Web browsers, distributors that rely too much on the mobile Web may lose audience and revenues.
While that statement may have developers running to download native SDKs (software development kits) for iPhone, Android and other platforms, a word of caution from us: this research was based on a survey, where apparently the question asked was: "I prefer apps over a Web browser when accessing mobile content. Agree? Disagree?"
As you know, surveys that ask users to identify their own behavioral patterns aren't as viable as those that actually measure the behavior itself.
It's also worth pointing out that these findings contradict two other reports we've seen this year. One report was from a mobile search company (and app maker) Taptu, which said that the future of the mobile Web is likely to be dominated by cross-platform browser-based mobile websites, not native apps. Adobe, too, released a report in October saying people prefer the mobile Web to apps.
In other words, take this latest with a grain of salt until more research arrives. But do consider that there is likely an obvious truth here: native mobile apps will always be preferred when the mobile Web experience (slow loading times, no mobile site) remains poor.
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Vostu, a social game maker focused on the Brazilian market, has raised $30 million from Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management.
Vostu, which is based in New York and has offices in S�o Paulo and Buenos Aires, is slugging it out with rival Mentez to become the Zynga of social games in Brazil. The well-known U.S. investors have put their money into Vostu because the Brazilian social game market is hot.
In August, Miami-based Mentez raised a large round (amount undisclosed) of venture funding from Insight Partners to expand its operations in Brazil and Latin America. Daniel Kafie, chief executive of Vostu, says his company will remain laser-focused on the large Brazilian market as it expands its social game business. Kafie said Vostu has 220 employees now and will be at 280 by year end and will grow to double that number by the end of 2011, partly through hiring and acquisitions of new studios.
Vostu has more than 20 million monthly active users on social networks such as Google’s Orkut, the largest social network in Brazil with more than 50 million users. The company’s biggest game is Mini Fazenda, a farming game that is similar to Zynga’s top game on Facebook, FarmVille. Players cultivate their virtual crops in the free-to-play game; gamers play for free and Vostu makes money charging players for virtual goods such as tractors.
Kafie co-founded Vostu with classmates Joshua Kushner and Mario Scholosser from Harvard University. Jim Breyer, a partner at Accel and Facebook board member, will join Vostu’s board.
Social games have been one of the hottest sectors on the web in the past couple of years. Zynga is expected to generate more than $500 million in revenue in 2010, and the overall U.S. virtual goods market is expected to hit $1.6 billion this year. The Asian market for virtual goods and social games is also hot, particularly in China, Korea and Japan. The fast growth is why Zynga is valued at $5.4 billion and why Electronic Arts bought social game maker Playfish for $400 million and Disney bought Playdom for $760 million.
Latin America, including Brazil, also shows a lot of promise. Accel was also an investor in Playfish; and Tiger Global, a hedge fund, also has holdings in Zynga. In the past six months, Vostu has raised $50 million. Vostu’s other backers include Intel Capital and General Catalyst.
Companies: Mentez, Vostu
People: Daniel Kafie
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Google Earth provides a wealth of computer-generated building models, but Google notes that trees have been "rather hard to come by." In the service of boosting the realism substantially of the 3D world substantially, today's Google Earth release includes models for dozens of species of trees. Google says it's already "planted" over 80 million trees in Google Earth.
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Street View isn't a new feature for Google Earth. It's been available since 2008. But the experience is now fully integrated, so you can zoom from the outer space view of Earth smoothly and seamlessly to your doorstep. Simply drag Pegman, the Street View mascot, onto any place where you see a blue highlighted road, an indication that Street View is available. And from there you can use the navigation controls to move around.
Like Street View, the availability of historical imagery via Google Earth isn't entirely new. But this release makes these images far easier to find. When you fly to an area where images are available, the date of the oldest imagery will appear in the status bar. Clicking on it will transport you to that view, and you can browse through other images for that location.
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We used Einstein Brothers for breakfast and lunch. We planned food for about 100 people and it worked out very well, with food taken to the after-party too. We simply booked online, chose a ton of food and it arrived at 8:15 for breakfast and 11 a.m. or so for lunch. Breakfast consisted of bagels with various schmears, coffees (remember decaf too) and some bagel poppers (think donut holes). Lunch was boxes of bagel sandwiches (remember vegetarian option), iced tea, lemonade, cookies (three kinds I think), chips (including chips that don't suck, like Sunchips) and gherkins.
Set up was very easy, there were a couple of fold out tables and a few people volunteered to set up the boxes, etc., along with the staff from EB. At the end of the day I asked everyone in the room to help clean up one item (we had boxes, empty cups, etc., etc.) and it was done very quickly.
Breakfast mingling took from 8:30-9 a.m. or so. Lunch was one hour: noon-1 p.m. It was a nice enough day that people wandered outside, chatted and so on.
As a hangover from last year, I happily used Google Sites to host www.wherecamp5280.org for free. It has a super simple editing interface. I only built a couple of very simple pages listing the details upfront as you can see.
Eventbrite was pretty awesome. You set up your event, add ticket types (with different prices), link to it and you're done. It's entirely free to use if your tickets are free. For wherecamp, the majority of the tickets were free. You can also use their iPhone app to scan peoples tickets if you like, but I didn't do this as it's free and it would have just been a hassle for very little benefit. Tip: tell the attendees this so they don't print out the paper ticket! Also see sponsorship next:
I used Eventbrite again. This worked out fantastically. Usually people spend a ton of time setting out sponsor levels, making a brochure and all that stuff about what a sponsor gets for their money. What I did instead was set up Eventbrite "tickets" that were priced as powers of two. So $16, $32, $64... $1024. Sponsors could then simply go in to Eventbrite and buy a ticket. This was wonderful for me as I didn't have to screw around with checks and bank transfers.
It was wonderful for sponsors as they could buy a "ticket" and expense that, whereas sponsorship is sometimes a much harder thing to get and has to go through other channels. One big thing to learn from though is that powers of two is a cute way to get sponsorship, but it doesn't match very well to what can be expensed. Often people can expense things with some rule like "so long as it's less than $1,000." Next time I will price things like $190, $490, $950 and so on.
As for "what do the sponsors get," I didn't produce a brochure or have anything particularly in mind. I've run conferences before which do do this and that's fine but this was a volunteer event. If the sponsors didn't come through, all I had to do was not order food (the major cost) and instead point people at nearby cafes, etc. It helps that I've run conferences before and therefore have a level of trust from the people sponsoring to not fuck it all up. I was asked a couple of times, but simply said it was a volunteer conference therefore time was short and we couldn't really produce brochures, etc.
Next page: How about actually getting the sponsors?
How about actually getting the sponsors? I've built a large set of contacts over the past six or so years so it wasn't super hard to ping people and get sponsors. You can do a lot to make things simple for them though, like the ticketing above. Talk to your friends, and your friends of friends. Don't be afraid of pinging multiple people in large organizations where some people might be in a better position to help than others. Ask who's the right person to talk to. Be available on the phone if needed, and offer to have a call to prove your not a lunatic from the interwebs.
Thankfully, all of our sponsors were clueful and spoke for themselves about things they were passionate about. There is nothing worse than subjecting your audience to a sponsor with 1,000 slides of bullet points. If you can, turn that kind of sponsor away - it's not worth the money to alienate your audience.
One big downside with Eventbrite is that they pay you after your event ends. So make sure you have the working capital to front money for food etc.
We had a website, Twitter feed and I emailed lots of people on various mailing lists. Make sure to thank your sponsors across media. Follow your followers on Twitter (something I was lax about). Ask people to forward on the announcement to lists they are on. This worked well with various GIS and academic mailing lists in Colorado. Make sure your announcement and website are super, super simple. People are busy and don't have time to read pages about your fantastic event.
Make it about the who, what, why, where and when. Use pictures to give a feel for the event. Make contacting you super simple, just put your phone number and email address on everything. Worried about spam? Get a spam filter. Make it clear you're looking for sponsors.
Ask your sponsors to blog and tweet about your event too. It's in their interest!
This is another big time saver you can leverage - don't have one. I gave a quick welcome, we had a 20 minute keynote and then anybody was invited to speak. To make this work in practice you need a thin structure to help organize speakers. You get everyone in one room in the morning and you tell them that anyone can speak about any topic they like. In addition, they can ask to hear about any topic they like if they're not the one who's the expert but wants to get a feel for a topic.
People form a line at the stage and describe briefly what they want to talk about. Then if there is a positive reaction they write down the topic on a standard letter sized piece of paper. They take that piece of paper and stick it on a grid on the wall. The grid has room names along the top, and time slots along the side: 9-10am, 10am-11am... and so on. They choose a time and a place and put that paper on the wall. You make the grid with other bits of paper:
Photo by robotbrainz
You can use stickies. You don't have to make an explicit grid like the above example uses tape to do. Here is what our grid looked like, to the left on this picture (thanks andrei):
This means that slots on the grid are a scarce resource so there is immediately competition to get people up on stage early to say their idea before someone grabs the slot or topic they want. You might need to cajole the audience a bit to get them to open up and start suggesting things. Make it fun. Explain this concept in an email to all attendees (something you can do easily with Eventbrite) before hand. I didn't. But it was okay because enough people had been to these types of events that it worked out ok.
You might want to make very sure your sponsors are OK with all of this, but if they aren't then it's probably better that they don't sponsor. If you start screwing around with the event you can lose coherence pretty easily - for example by forcing everyone to go together at a random time to hear a sponsor pitch.
When you have everyone in the room at the beginning you can possibly do introductions but with a large group that tends to a) take a lot of time, and b) people get bored. Personally, by the time we're halfway through I've forgotten most of peoples names and jobs anyway. You can instead ask everyone to say hi to the person to the left or right of them for 30 seconds, then the person in front and behind. I think of that as the church-hug approach and it can work, but it can also make people a bit uncomfortable and weirded out by the touchy-feely thing. It's all personal preference.
Here are my simple intro slides:
They just go over the basics - hello, here's the Wi-Fi, lunch is at noon...
At this event we also had a keynote. So I gave a little intro, there was the 20 minute keynote, then everyone comes up with session ideas, then we started. That took in its entirety from 9 a.m.-10 a.m. so we were ready at 10 to go to sessions. The keynote got people in the "conferency mood" and also gave people a opportunity to think up ideas and generally be warmed up a bit.
Lunch went on the schedule from noon-1 p.m. but people could still run sessions if they wanted. There was no official announcement of new sessions starting/ending at the top of each hour. People were expect to be grown up and know what time it was, be courteous to the next slot speakers etc and it worked out very well.
Sessions themselves - and this is important - were not one guy up on stage for an hour waffling about whatever they care about. They are interactive. People shout out from the audience, and the audience discussed between people, too. There may be several speakers with little demos or small slide sets to show. For example the session on OSM had several people up, some with slides, some just talking, some with a video to show. The audience was friendly and we had good discussion.
We didn't have any that I know about, but sometimes you get the guy in the audience who wants to super nitpick about something, or have a pointless or tolling discussion. Your audience need to know that when they go off to their separate rooms that they have the power to (politely) make that person shut up. Explain it like this: If you have 60 people in a room and someone wastes five minutes of their time, they've just wasted five man hours of time. That's just not cool!
You want to have a closing session with everybody too, so at 5 p.m. everyone came back to the main room. We had a couple of small announcements, thanked the sponsors then all went off for the after-party.
After-party. We had a fun time in Peter's loft:
Make sure you pick a venue. I've been to too many conferences where the organizers don't specify an after-event venue. It's really simple - just pick a nearby bar or pub if you don't have the resources to do something yourself. If you don't do this, you split up the group needlessly, and everyone is confused on where to go. Pick a defined time too. Make it part of the announcement. Then people who can't make it during the day can at least come to the after party.
We had food, beer and wine provided free courtesy of our sponsors and Peter's hard work. Peter is also a master of entertainment so we had music and karaoke too.
Next page: Death by committee
This is another personal preference, but I hate inaction due to committees. You don't make your life easier picking a pub for an after-party as above by asking everyone's opinion - just choose one and maybe sanity check decisions by bouncing them off one or two key people. At the venue, if you ask the entire audience if they want to break for coffee or something, again don't expect a decision. Expect 70 people looking bewildered and looking around for the leader. Expect a few shouted out contradictory suggestions or nothing at all. Just don't bother, go make the decision yourself.
Ask everyone for feedback continually. You might have to tease it out of them as sometimes people don't like to be negative. You also have to have a balance and know when someone is nit-picking. Especially with this kind of bottom-up volunteer effort you can't be responsible for everything and there will be feedback on things you simply can't control. If you get the room for free for example, and the projector breaks half way through the day... you can try hard but really there are limits to what you can do.
You can set up a Web form and put that in your after-event email to everyone - keep it simple though. Nobody has 30 minutes to help you with your feedback. Make it a simple rating or (my preference) a open text box that anyone can enter anything they like in to. The more open-ended you are, the more likely it is you will get better feedback.
WhereCamp5280 had a fun hack day the previous day and after party. There was also a tour of the USGS the previous day. The day after, we had a ski mapping party and drinks, too. All organized by awesome people. So we turned a one-day free conference that might be viewed as a risk to attend into a three day geofest of free and fun activities with multiple angles and chances to hang out, work and play. We had people fly in from six or seven different states for this. So, find other awesome people and run things next to your event and that'll make it much more likely to succeed.
Okay Steve, I get it! Good! Now go and run your own unconference, there's nothing stopping you.
Lead photo by Chrysaora
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The holiday selling season is about to kick off and, slow economy or not, tech gadgets are going to be high on the wish list for a lot of us. At VentureBeat, we like gifts that work, that are fun, and that are affordable.
Many of these ideas for gifts aren’t brand new. That’s because new stuff breaks and costs a lot. You won’t see web-connected 3D TVs that play apps on our list because that’s too far on the bleeding edge now. They’re just not safe purchases, given how fast the technology is changing and how much better and cheaper they’re going to get with time.
Our top picks were easy. Apple or Apple or Apple. Which Apple device, was the hard question. But the iPad captured everyone’s imagination this year, as the device’s unique design finally set fire to the tablet computer category. Some devices like the Apple iPod Touch and the iPod Shuffle are also great products, but we can’t make our list full of nothing but Apple devices, can we? Throughout the year, these devices got more and more useful as the apps multiplied and the content, such as Beatles songs, arrived in droves.
What’s the right way to shop these days? Start online to find the best deals and prices. Skip the store warranty. Watch the prices go down. Of course, that won’t work with some items on this list. Microsoft’s Kinect motion-control system and the Sony PlayStation Move, for instance, are in short supply.
You can find our last year’s list here. Here’s this year’s list:
1. iPad (Apple. $499 to $829). The iPad still has about 95 percent of the tablet computer market, even though it was introduced way back in March. As we suspected, games have turned out to be the most popular application on the iPad as well as the iPhone. The mesmerizing 9.7-inch screen is great for hand gesture controls, and the accelerometer control lets you tilt the screen to make things happen. Titles such as Angry Birds show that developers are producing apps that work great on the unique hardware platform that Apple created. But other apps, such as the New York Times and Flip Board, have made the iPad into a great media consumption device. The iPad isn’t as versatile as a computer, but when you fire up an app on the iPhone, you can pretty much bet it’s going to work and it’s going to be easy to control. A lot of critics have called it too expensive. Apple should bring down the price and come out with new versions on a faster timetable. But the iPad comes with one big advantage: You can get a ton of free stuff, given the thousands of free apps available on it. From the New York Times to the loads of free games, the iPad is one of those devices that can wind up saving you a lot of money on content. Many of the paid apps are just 99 cents.
2. iPhone 4 (Apple. $199 to $299, with two-year AT&T service). Apple outdid itself and its competitors again by coming up with the best phone on the market (check out our iPhone 4 review). The high-resolution retina display delivers sharp images, and the combo camera and camcorder can capture great images to display on the device. It does video calls, multitasking, high-definition video, and the reception problem — known as Antennagate — has pretty much died down, as all you have to do is get a cheap rubber case to ensure your calls don’t get dropped. The wide variety of apps — nearly 300,000 of them — make this phone more useful to people who want to have a combination of productive work and diverting entertainment in one device. Games, books, and location apps are taking off like wildfire with iPhone consumers. Apple is adding new functionality with its improved operating system. You can find games more easily with Game Center, browse through iAds, and organize your apps with ease.
3. Kindle (Third Generation) (Amazon. $139, $179) The Kindle has long been a good gift idea, but it’s even more compelling this year, since Amazon has dropped its price considerably with the introduction of the $139 WiFi-only model. The $179 model with 3G is still a steal compared to its $259 price this time last year. What’s more, the third-generation Kindle offers many improvements over previous versions, including a higher contrast E-Ink screen and an impossibly thin profile. It’s not hyperbole to say that the Kindle is even more portable than a small paperback. Amazon will soon add book lending to the device, so you’ll be able to share books with friends easily. And the widespread availability of Kindle software across other platforms (iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, PC, and more) means that you’ll always have access to your ebooks.
4. Kinect (Microsoft.� $149, $299 with Xbox 360 bundle). Microsoft’s motion-control system for the Xbox 360 (which starts at $199) is rough around the edges. It’s not as good as we expected, but we are hard to please and it’s a lot better than other competing products on the market. We’ll wager this sells well because there are an awful lot of consumers who don’t care about Kinect’s weaknesses, which include inaccuracy, weak games (sold separately), and a limited power of recognition. For kids, it’s a magical device that lets them use their bodies to control a game on the TV screen. If you can suspend disbelief and tolerate the inaccuracy, it’s a pretty fun experience. We get a kick out of watching people play the system for the first time. They don’t mind making fools of themselves in front of their family and friends. In that sense, Kinect is inspiring wonder in consumers who were fascinated with Nintendo’s Wii motion-sensing console in 2006. Since Kinect is a software-upgradeable platform, Microsoft has a lot of time to iron out the bugs and then issue software fixes for them later. Also, game developers are likely going to learn how to make great games that compensate for the limitations of the technology. That reduces the risk of buying the system now. For now, this is the closest thing to the gesture-controlled computer that Tom Cruise used in the film Minority Report. For Microsoft, that is high praise. Usually, Microsoft’s devices come nowhere near Apple’s in terms of creating magical experiences. This device may be very hard to find by the end of the holidays, given the high demand for it.
5. OnLive MicroConsole (OnLive. $99). This system is one of the biggest bargains you’ll come across. Bundled with a wireless controller with fast reaction times, the MicroConsole is disruptive for the game consoles. By attaching it to your TV and the web, you can use it to play high-end video games on a high-definition screen with 1080p resolution. The MicroConsole taps OnLive’s games-on-demand servers. Those servers compute the game images and send them down at high speed over broadband connections to the device, which displays them on the screen. Normally, the game consoles do all of the heavy-duty computing. But with server games, the distribution system is all digital. A lot of critics said the technology wasn’t feasible. But OnLive has blown past everyone’s expectations and delivered a high-quality console experience, as you can see in this video. You can boot up the system and start playing a game in about 15 seconds. The box is tiny, and it’s silent. The only hitch right now is that there are 35 games, and you can’t play the hot game of the season, Call of Duty Black Ops, on the Onlive system. You also need a 5-megabit-per-second broadband connection to play HD games on a 40-inch TV. Better content will come, and when that happens, consumers and console makers will finally realize just how disruptive the OnLive system will be.
6. Roku XD (Roku. $80) Roku’s latest generation devices are cheaper and more capable than anything the company has produced before — giving you little reason not to pick one up if you still need a way to watch Netflix streaming video on your TV. The XD is the mid-range offering in Roku’s lineup, but there’s also the cheaper $60 Roku HD, or the top-end $100 Roku XDR. We like the XD because it gives you pretty much all the features you would need, and it’s a much better value than the $100 Apple TV. It offers a better Netflix experience than the Apple TV, as well as other services like Hulu Plus that Apple doesn’t offer yet. While you don’t have the convenience of iTunes purchases on the Roku, you have easy access to TV shows and movies via Amazon’s video on demand store.
7. MacBook Air (Apple. $999 to $1,599) Much like the iPad, this device blurs the line between work and play. But it has a lot of the features that the iPad ought to have, such as universal serial bus (USB 2.0) ports and full browsers. It’s great for entertainment because it has the full Mac OS operating system and all of its applications. It can also run Microsoft Office and other productivity apps. The device uses flash memory instead of a hard drive. That means you can turn it on instantly and it’s fast. You can switch back and forth between fun and work without having to reboot or wait a long time. That speed is a requirement for any device that purports to straddle the line between work and play. The MacBook Air comes with either an 11.6-inch screen or a 13.3-inch model. It’s only 0.68 inches thick at the thickest part and just 0.11 inches at its thinnest. It weighs 2.9 pounds, but it’s made out of solid aluminum so it’s sturdy. The size matters because you can carry it around and it won’t give you a backache. The FaceTime video phone app lets you call people with an iPhone 4 and chat with live video. It’s beautiful enough that people will stop and ask you about it. So it can’t be bad for your social life either.
8. Sony PlayStation Move (Sony. $49 and up). The PlayStation Move is Sony’s big bet on motion controls for the Playstation 3 (which starts at $299). Based on our interview with motion-control guru Richard Marks, Sony didn’t think that 3D motion cameras, such as those used in Kinect, were ready for prime time. Instead, Sony stuck with a wand-like device you hold in your hand. It has traditional buttons, but it also has a variety of tracking sensors — a light bulb, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a compass — that give it pinpoint accuracy in tracking where your hand is moving. As such, it could prove to be much more accurate than either the Nintendo Wii or the Kinect. So far, Sony has a good combination of hardcore and casual games for the Move. But it lacks a killer application to really make the device sell. We’re not sure if Sony stretched far enough to go beyond Nintendo and to match Microsoft with the Move. If you’re a Sony fan, this could be your best purchase for the holidays. But Microsoft’s Kinect will probably stretch the imagination farther with its no-controller motion-sensing system. With Move, you get a better experience if you hold two controllers in your hand, and you also have to have a PlayStation Eye camera. When you add up all of those costs, you could spend $130 or more on the whole system.
9. Samsung Galaxy S (Samsung. $199 with two-year contract from AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint) Out of nowhere, Samsung unleashed some of the most compelling Android smartphones ever seen — and it also had an ambitious plan to bring them to all major US carriers. Samsung’s Galaxy S phones aren’t the fastest or most fully featured Android phones out there, but they are a happy medium between mainstream Android handsets, and monstrously large phones like the Evo 4G. All of the Galaxy S phones feature a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, which is by far the brightest cellphone display available, and run Samsung’s 1 gigahertz Hummingbird processor. If you’re having trouble choosing an Android phone at the moment, it’s hard to go wrong with any of the Galaxy S options. And yes, even iPhone 4 owners will be envious.
10. Nook Color (Barnes and Noble. $249) Just when you thought Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-reader was in serious trouble — given the new Kindle’s better display and cheaper price — the company unleashed the shockingly inexpensive Nook Color, a device that appears to be part e-reader, part tablet, and all Android. The Nook Color drops the E-Ink display of the original and instead opts for a 7-inch touchscreen LCD display. It’s half the price of the iPad, and more portable to boot. It’s also a better option for younger kids, as it’s far more rugged than Apple’s tablet. It’s not a genuine Android tablet, since it won’t run Android apps, but B&N says it will let developers create apps specifically for the Nook Color. We still prefer the Kindle for pure text reading, but if you’re interested in electronic magazines, or a way to enjoy colorful children’s e-books, the Nook Color is by far one of the best values this season.
Front photo via Mat Packer
Companies: Amazon, Apple, Barnes And Noble, Microsoft, OnLive, Roku, Samsung, Sony
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BlueWave Computing traditionally offered IT outsourcing and managed IT services. Last year, the company saw an opportunity to offer hosting with virtualization technology as a key part of its service. With virtualization technology, BlueWave Computing is now able to give small and medium-sized businesses the capabilities of an enterprise class data center.
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