Windows 10 Mobile is a virtually dead platform. True, Microsoft is still developing it, but there are so few active users, that it is totally irrelevant. It isn't a bad mobile operating system, but a lack of apps makes it a non-starter for many. Ultimately, there is no compelling reason to choose a device running it over, say, an iPhone 7.

Today, what looks to be the best Windows 10 Mobile smartphone ever -- the HP Elite x3 -- becomes available for purchase. It is only being sold directly from Microsoft in its retail locations or its online store. The big question, however, is who the heck will buy such an expensive phone without access to many popular apps? I mean, $800 is a significant chunk of change, am I right?

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Market analyst company Gartner has issued a report that says that investment in big data is up, but fewer companies are actually planning on investing in this field. While 48 percent of companies have invested in big data in 2016, up three percent compared to the year before, the percentage those who plan on investing within the next two years is down from 31 to 25 per cent.

According to Paul Cant, EMEA head of enterprise solutions operation for BMC Software, businesses are giving up on big data because they failed to implement it properly and are not really reaping the benefits.

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Hurricane Matthew is already the most powerful Atlantic tropical storm in almost a decade and has caused devastation in Haiti. Homes and businesses in Florida are now bracing themselves for its impact.

In response to the storm, disaster recovery as a service specialist Axcient is offering complimentary, no commitment disaster recovery services to businesses potentially affected by Matthew's approach.

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Open source employees in Europe have it good, especially when we compare that market to the rest of the world. This is according to a new report by Dice and The Linux Foundation. The report says that out of 1,000 European respondents 60 percent believe it would be fairly easy to find a new job this year. Globally, the figure stands at about 50 percent.

"Demand for open source talent is growing and companies struggle to find experienced professionals to fill open roles", says Bob Melk, president of Dice. "Rising salaries for open source professionals indicate companies recognize the need to attract, recruit and retain qualified open source professionals on a global scale. Regardless of where they reside around the world, these professionals are motivated by the opportunity to work on interesting projects".

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Traditional authentication methods are struggling to keep up with the expansion of online services. Yet additional systems like two-factor authentication can prove to be cumbersome.

The answer may lie in analysis of behavioral biometrics which can be used to determine wether credentials are being used legitimately. We spoke to Neil Costigan CEO of Swedish company BehavioSec to find out more about where it’s already being used and how it could change the way we access banking and other services.

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Whilst CRM systems are used by many companies to handle their sales processes, they still rely heavily on the human element when it comes to interpreting the data they hold.

Marketing cloud specialist Optimove is seeking to bring machine learning and artificial intelligence to bear on CRM with the launch of Optibot. This is designed to automate the analysis and interpretation of customer marketing campaigns behind the scenes and recommend actionable insights to help marketers improve their campaign performance.

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One of the key features that every database must have is scalability. This is particularly true for eCommerce websites where thousands of transactions take place every day. As such, for eCommerce websites to run smoothly you need to increase the storage as well as memory as your customer base expands. Which is why you need to know about scaling your MySQL databases. Scaling is important for merchants that are looking to add commodity servers as well as improve their read and write performance without migrating databases to bigger servers.

Generally, businesses can scale MySQL databases on cloud effectively, increasing their capacity to handle growth without having to invest in hardware. Even then, MySQL presents limitations, hence it is not surprising for your database to exhibit latency and performance issues that translate to missed revenue. To counter this, you may opt for a database that has the capability of scaling out horizontally, effectively being able to handle an unlimited number of users.

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Our offices are still not entirely paper-free, but we're slowly getting there. This optimistic prediction has been published in a new report by AIIM, entitled Paper-Free in 2016, Are we there yet?. According to it, the amount of paper going into offices is declining, while digital inbound documents are increasing, for two thirds of business executives.

The report launches as part of the run up to World Paper Free Day (WPFD) 2016, AIIM says, taking place on November 4. "The once elusive concept of paper-free business operations is today a real possibility and real progress has been made over the past 12 months", says Bob Larrivee, chief analyst at AIIM. "It remains unrealistic to think that all business processes and transactions will be paper-free in the near future, but there are definitely certain processes where paper can be removed".

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More than one in ten (11 percent) of all UK organizations have never even heard of ransomware, Trend Micro claims. Another 20 percent don't know how the malware works. Yet, more than four fifths, or 82 percent to be exact, consider malware a threat.

This general lack of knowledge about ransomware best reflects in how the organizations in question think ransomware originates. A third (33 percent) of them know it comes from malicious email attachments. However, a quarter (24 percent) believe ransomware infections come from clicking a link in an email, and 14 percent think it happens if you simply browse the web.

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There is a perception in the IT business that adopting software-as-a-service models will make life easier for tech teams and end users alike.

But a new study by cloud specialist BetterCloud suggests that in fact SaaS is making IT jobs harder. According to the survey of over 900 IT professionals, 56 percent of Google Apps and 62 percent of Office 365 IT pros believe their jobs are becoming more difficult due to rising SaaS adoption.

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In the next three years, there will be more cyberattacks than there were in the past five, a new report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) claims -- it points the finger at the growth of IoT.

The report says that out of 200 operators of critical infrastructure worldwide, 80 percent say the proliferation of IoT and Big Data is making them more vulnerable to cyberattacks.

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Addressing endpoint vulnerabilities is a major challenge for businesses, often compounded by a lack of visibility into which devices are being actively exploited.

According to Gartner 99 percent of vulnerabilities exploited are ones that professionals have known about for a year, but have lacked the solutions to address.

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Thanks to the explosion in cloud applications and the increasing number of IoT devices, enterprises have more data than ever. But there's no easy way to ensure its quality.

Data management specialist Informatica is launching its Cloud Data Quality Radar a self-service data quality solution for business. Salesforce users will be the first to benefit.

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In recent times many CRM platforms have tended to focus on using machine learning to boost sales. Sales capabilities company Qstream, however, is keen to address the human side of improving sales performance.

At this week's Dreamforce '16 conference it's announced that its expanding its Sales Capabilities Platform with a Coaching Hub, which allows managers to identify gaps in their team's required knowledge or behaviors and address them faster.

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Every business leader understands the importance of regulatory compliance and is aware of how dire the consequences can be if an organization is found to be out of compliance. With stringent regulations enforcing compliance, such as HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley, it’s imperative that companies maintain strict procedures to avoid facing potential fines or lawsuits, and risking consumer distrust. Any one of these factors can seriously threaten the long-term viability of the brand.

However, implementing the right infrastructure and policies to adhere to these requirements is a challenge that every company faces. With the hundreds, if not thousands, of customer interactions and exchanges of data that happen every day, it only takes one slip or lapse in protocol to put the entire organization at risk. Now, business leaders are turning to analytics solutions to mitigate risk and remove uncertainty.  Whether it’s the contact center, data center, or online social communities, analytics are proving a powerful tool to help keep businesses out of regulatory hot water.

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