It is no secret that Microsoft has been working on a Slack rival, but it is not until today that we get to take a proper look at the new collaboration tool. Called Microsoft Teams, it will officially launch in the first quarter of 2017, though the software giant is making it available as a public preview starting today. Should you give it a try?

The benefit to Microsoft Teams, as the software giant explains it, is the integration with some of its most important products and services, like Office 365 and Skype, to help users collaborate more easily on different projects. You also get support for services like GitHub and Twitter and different security features, but those are also available in other collaboration tools -- like Slack, for instance.

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In order to retain customers businesses need to be responsive to their needs and send them relevant communications.

Mobile growth platform company Urban Airship is making it easier for marketers to do this with a service that lets them deliver individualized messaging to any platform, device or marketing channel and use real-time customer data from any system.

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When businesses think of automation, they probably conjure up images of simplicity, efficiency, lower costs and increased productivity. Of course, this is something of an oversimplification and there are certainly challenges to adopting workplace automation.

However, it is not hard to see why more and more industries are automating their business processes. Whether it’s via robots or software, automation can eliminate the repetitive, manual tasks that, while essential, are a huge drain on employee time. Automation lets members of staff direct their energies into more productive areas, such as coming up with innovative new ideas.

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As cyber attacks get more sophisticated, so being able to spot them requires a different approach from simply looking for signatures.

Behavioral detection company LightCyber is launching a new version of its Magna platform that increases the precision and speed of detecting an in-progress attack from either a malicious insider or external bad actor.

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We’ve already covered what businesses need to know about enterprise content management (ECM), so now it’s time to move on to another popular business tool: enterprise resource planning (ERP).

ERP is business process management software -- typically consisting of a suite of integrated applications -- that allows an organization to manage its entire business and automate many back-office functions.

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Data centers, in the sense of a centralized space where business information is stored, have always been important, but as we move towards an increasingly digital economy, and indeed, way of life, they have taken on even greater significance. The importance of data centers to our everyday actions can be glimpsed simply by taking a look at the amount of energy that they consume.

According to the National Resource Defense Council, the Internet, which relies on data center infrastructure for its utility, represents 1.1 to 1.5 percent of all global electricity use -- with the associated annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to between 70 and 90 large coal-fired power plants.

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According to a new report 65 percent of Windows systems are still running Windows 7, and a small percentage of devices are still running Windows XP.

The survey from trusted access specialist Duo Security analyzed more than two million endpoints and found 63 percent of them running Microsoft operating systems. Yet only 24 percent are running Windows 10. Windows 7 remains the most popular despite there being over 600 vulnerabilities affecting unpatched versions.

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New research from threat intelligence platform Anomali and the Ponemon Institute shows that 70 percent of security industry professionals believe threat intelligence is often too big and/or complex to provide actionable insights.

It also shows that they often fail to share essential threat data with board members and C-level executives, despite the fact that security is now a business priority.

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Business intelligence, like military intelligence, is sometimes jokingly described as being a contradiction in terms. But in fact, in the era of big data and the Internet of things, the potential benefits to be gained from BI are greater than ever.

BI is about turning raw data into useful information for business analysis in order to aid the decision making process. The technology therefore needs to be able to handle large volumes of structured and unstructured data, turning it into reports that are easily understood and deliver insights that can provide businesses with a competitive advantage in the market and help their long-term stability.

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In an era when data is seen as an increasingly valuable commodity, the tools and techniques used to analyze that data gain extra importance.

Historically analysis, even using computers, has been something of a labor intensive task because the raw data needed to be verified and complex models built to process it. But due to the growth of machine learning and data mining techniques we’re now seeing an increase in predictive analysis where machines can take historical and current information and apply it to a model to predict future trends.

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Service oriented architecture is a principle that allows businesses to manage their IT and business transformation in order to give themselves a competitive edge. It offers benefits including insight into the running of the entire business, seamless integration of systems and the cloud, and linking of front and back office systems.

The World Wide Web Consortium defines SOA as "A set of components which can be invoked, and whose interface descriptions can be published and discovered".

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Thanks to the likes of smartphones, the internet and big data, we now have access to more information in various shapes and sizes than ever before.

In most cases, having more information is a good thing for businesses, but there comes a point where there is simply too much to keep track of. This is especially true in large enterprises, where invoices, word documents, receipts and purchase orders are in abundance and could be needed by anyone at any time.

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Like other cloud computing packages, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) delivers virtualized computing resources over a network connection, most commonly the Internet. Infrastructure as a service is an example of the wide range of cloud services now being used by businesses. IaaS packages will vary from organization to organization, but typically involve hardware, storage, servers, as well as system maintenance and security features.

The breadth of services offered by cloud providers often makes IaaS an attractive proposition for businesses that do not have the resources to effectively purchase and maintain their own hardware. Of course, as with other cloud services, IaaS still comes with its risks, so businesses must ensure that they are well versed on the finer details of infrastructure as a service before committing to a contract.

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The growth of cloud usage, increasing volumes of information and a switch towards software defined systems based on commodity hardware have all had an impact on the storage market.

About a year ago we spoke to Mark Lewis, Chairman and CEO of storage specialist Formation Data Systems  to get his views on the future of enterprise storage. This week we caught up with Mark again to find out how much the market has changed in just a short time.

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The cloud computing landscape is incredibly diverse with a broad range of vendors each offering their own unique features. One of the best ways to ways to get to grips with this is to break it down into the most prominent cloud models: software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS).

In this post we’ll examine the latter and how modern businesses are using it to gain a competitive advantage.

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