Synergy Ladies’ celebrating Diwali.
Wishing you a Happy Diwali.
Doubt is like darkness, Trust is like light,
There is no way to destroy light by throwing darkness in to it.
So come together and enjoy the festival of lights.
Archive for October, 2019
A happy and prosperous Diwali from Synergy Software Sytems
October 27th, 2019SnapLogic iPasS integration as a service – from Synergy Software Systems.
October 20th, 2019Business Intelligence Managers/Analysts, Data/ETL Engineers, and Information/Data Architects are tasked with empowering business users to make use of
data to drive smart decisions and innovations. Data-driven initiatives can be challenging considering the explosion of data volumes due to the proliferation of sensors, IoT, and mobile computing.
Moreover, a growing number of groups within the business want access to fresh data.
To fully harness their data, organizations must also have a cloud strategy for their digital transformation efforts, namely to migrate data from
on-premises environments to the cloud. Considering the tremendous business value of unlocking that data, it’s imperative to prioritize and streamline these
data integration and migration projects.
Gone are the days when IT needed hundreds of coders to build extract, transform, load (ETL) solutions and then maintain those by writing more code. Modern integration platforms eliminate the need for custom coding. Now, data integration projects deploy and scale, often as much as ten times faster.
iPaaS platforms ease the pain because they’re designed for flexibility and ease of deployment for any integration project. A drag-and-drop UX coupled with a powerful platform and hundreds of pre-built connectors out of the box.
The connectors are always up-to-date, so the IT organization doesn’t spend an inordinate amount of time maintaining every integration by hand. This saves an incredible amount of time, money, and frustration across the team and projects and greatly reduces risk.
Not all integration platforms are created equal. Some do simple point-to-point cloud app integrations while others transform large and complex data into a data lake for advanced analytics. Some stgill require extensive developer resources to hand-code APIs while others provide self-service, drag-and-drop offerings that can be used by IT and business leaders alike. Some are best for specific tactical projects while others provide a strategic, enterprise-wide platform for multi-year digital transformation projects.
Organizations must address four key steps during the data migration and integration process:
1. Capture data that supports both the known use cases as well as future undefined use cases (think IoT data to support a future machine learning
enabled use case).
2. Conform inbound data to corporate standards to ensure governance, quality, consistency, regulatory compliance, and accuracy for downstream
consumers.
3. Refine data for its eventual downstream application and/or use cases (once its been captured and conformed to corporate standards).
4. Delivery of data needs to be broad and prepared to support future unknown destinations.
For decades, IT has been tasked to manage integration projects by writing tons of custom code. This onerous task is even more complex with the proliferation of SaaS applications, the surge in big data, the emergence of IoT, and the rise of mobile devices. IT’s integration backlog has exploded. Not only is the deployment too much work, but there is a growing cost to maintain all of the integrations.
Deploying a tactical or departmental data warehouse solution should take days, not months. Moreover, enterprise-wide data transformation projects should take months, not years.
The best data integration platforms:
– Support multiple app and data integration use cases across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid deployments
– Offer the flexibility to be used in cloud, hybrid, or on-premises environments, regardless of the execution location
– Provide a self-service user experience aided by AI, machine learning, hundreds of pre-built connectors, and integration pipeline
templates (patterns) resulting in greater user productivity, and faster time-to-integration
– Have an underlying, scalable architecture to grow with evolving data and integration requirements
– Support different data modes such as streaming, event-driven, real-time or batch
“The SnapLogic iPaaS offering is functionally rich and well-proven for a variety of use cases. It supports hybrid deployments and provides rich and differentiating features for analytics and big data integration (Hadooplex). Clients score SnapLogic as above average for cloud characteristics, functional completeness, ease of use and ability to meet SLAs.” Gartner
SnapLogic is a U.S.-based integration platform company. In mid-2013, it transitioned from a traditional software business to an iPaaS model with the release of the SnapLogic Elastic Integration Platform which provides a large set of native iPaaS capabilities that target the cloud service integration, analytics and big data integration use cases.
The flagship Enterprise Edition features a set of base adapters (Snaps), an unlimited number of connections and unlimited data volume.
Synergy Software Systems has been an Enterprise Solutions Integrator in the GCC since 1991. We are pleased to announce our formal partnership to represent Snap Logic in the MEA region.
Do you need to integrate with Azure? with SAP Data Warehouse Cloud? with Workday? With Odette compliant auto mamufacturers………..?.
To learn more call us on 009714 3365589
Microsoft’s Newest Flight Simulator- Wow!
October 14th, 2019To get a feel for how much technology has advanced in recent years see this post
“The new simulator models the entire planet, including something like 40,000 airports worldwide. ” ……” The world in the new version consists of 2 petabytes of data — yes, that’s one thousand times bigger. The scenery is built on Bing satellite and aerial imagery, augmented with cool buzzwordy stuff like photogrammetric 3D modeling and multiple other data sources, all of which is streamed via Microsoft’s Azure cloud service“
” …….of the scenery areas boast a resolution of 3 centimeters per pixel” ……… ” Throw in 1.5 trillion trees, individual blades of grass modeled in 3D, and a complete overhaul of lighting and shadows, and the result is an unprecedented level of detail for a flight simulator of any kind. True VFR flight, day or night, with real-world landmarks is now possible everywhere on the planet.
Windows- no more security updates for older versions of Windows 10
October 12th, 2019On Wednesday last week Microsoft warned that organizations running Windows 10 version 1703 will stop getting “quality updates” (security and nonsecurity patches) on Oct. 8, 2019.
Organizations running Windows 10 version 1803 will stop getting quality updates on Nov. 12, 2019.
So our advice is to upgrade to the latest version to continue to get patch support from Microsoft.
Patching systems is more complicated with Windows 10. Microsoft admitted a couple of year ago that it had stopped testing its quality updates when it released Windows 8 and it reduced its app testing. It now follows more of a combination of a DevOps ‘crowd -QA’ feedback approach and its “telemetry” data collection, to hold off delivering potentially problematic upgrades. It hasn’t been a problem-free approach, and there have been failures in delivering problem-free patches. Enterprise organizations also have more complex software environments to patch for in its own testing.
If Microsoft continues as indicated down the road of making Windows a service billed on consumption, then it may have to look close at the relationship between QA and its SLAs
5G – performance and security
October 12th, 20195G is now available in many countries. Gartner research indicates that 66 per cent of organisations plan to deploy 5G by 2020, while 59 per cent intend to include IoT communications with 5G. However, many enterprises are underprepared to cope with the levels of data to be captured, shared, analysed, and stored in near-real time for its benefits to be realised.
The promise is higher bandwidth delivered at lower latency offers huge potential. predecesso. 4Ghas a current maximum download speed of 100 Mbps. 5G is expected to deliver 10 Gbps; download speeds 100 times faster than 4G. Any kind of lag in transmitting information for real-time decision-making can be problematic. ERP systems notoriously suffer when they scale up to multi geographies. Because of latency, a connection or transaction might timeout before being committed. To minimise the risk thin client connections are often adopted
When data travels thousands of miles to a cloud data centre, via multiple isp providers latency is a very real concern. Edge computing address this issue with micro data centres just outside the network i.e. at “edge.” to place compute and analytics power as close to the action as possible, to enable real-time decision-making. Data that doesn’t have to be processed immediately is routed to a cloud data centre for later use.
Consider self driving cars as IoT endpoints, band lack boxes at crossroads as edge computing points, with communication secured via 5G. Context is everything. Without the ability to instantly analyse and act upon data in context, 5G will offer less value. An isolated measurement e.g. a plane is cruising at 10,000 feet isn’t very useful, unless you know it was at 36,000 less than one minute beforehand. This contextual analysis is vital to get the best from IoT. Data still needs to be processed centrally. Edge computing can provide, more rapid, but more superficial insights, but it does not give context-rich data insights. So, while there’s a clear need to be prepared to collect data from distributed sources, there’s also a need to manage and act upon it centrally.
5G is here to stay, and the number and types of devices that will connect to the network will continue to increase
So how do you optimise and secure its use for different business requirements, First identify the requirements, the options and the threats.
Custom network configuration — known as network slicing is the most significant difference between 4G and 5G. In previous generations of wireless, the networks were configured universally, and each customer, and each network operator had few options for customisation or optimisation of their network configuration.
Vertical applications, each require different levels of performance and network slicing allows operators to offer customised resources for the different types of applications running on their network. The European Commission and the European Agency for Cybersecurity issued a report earlier this week,argues that, for 5G to work, telecommunications companies will increasingly rely on software, for things like network virtualisation and slicing.
A healthcare provider require, high reliability and low latency resources in their networked applications, redundancy for applications like remote surgery or heart monitoring run on the network.
For an IoT application, the needs are different. The of IoT data flowing over the network will be small amounts of data from many sensors. While reliability is still a factor, more important may be the management of a very high number of connections. Mobility management might not be particularly important for a large IoT network, because the connected devices might not move. Without the need to provision mobility for a network of millions of devices, the operator can save on capital expenditure.
According to a the European report, vendor lock-in, and potential cybersecurity are weak spots for telecommunications companies all over the world looking to integrate 5G, Given the USA- China trade war controversy this year its not surprising that many in media argue that the report’s concerns are targeted at Huawei even though the company’s name was never mentioned.
If, due to a lack of skilled staff, the telcos look to outsource to suppliers for soft
zware support, then will they put their entire operation at risk? “The increased role of software and services provided by third party suppliers in 5G networks leads to a greater exposure to a number of vulnerabilities that may derive from the risk profile of individual suppliers,” the report states. .”Major security flaws, such as those deriving from poor software development processes within equipment suppliers, could make it easier for actors to maliciously insert intentional backdoors into products and make them also harder to detect. This may increase the possibility of their exploitation leading to a particularly severe and widespread negative impact.”
The report argues that, countries should not only assess at the technical qualities of their potential suppliers but also analyse the “non-technical vulnerabilities related to 5G networks”, which includes having connections and/or doing business with the government. Lack of legislation, or “democratic checks and balances”, as well as the lack of security or data protection agreements between the supplier’s country and the EU are other concerns.
“……..hostile third countries may exercise pressure on 5G suppliers in order to facilitate cyberattacks serving their national interests,” the report states. “The degree of exposure to this risk is strongly influenced by the extent to which the supplier has access to the network, in particular its most sensitive assets, and by the risk profile of the individual supplier.”
If your digital journey includes scalability, IoT, Big Data and Predictive analytics, RPA and cross platform process automation then both 5g and Wifi6 will be enablers and their secure management and the overall solution architecture needs to be considered holistically.
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SQL Server 2016 SP2 CU10 – (it fixes CU 9)
October 10th, 2019SQL Server 2016 SP2 CU10 is essentially a fixed version of CU9.
Microsoft added a note to the KB article to holdoff on CU9, and now…that CU9 KB article page has vanished altogether.
So CU9 is dead to Microsoft, Everything we said about CU9, is replaced by CU10.
Dynamics Ax 2012 and Ax 2009 -time for a Synergy Software Systems Health check?
October 8th, 2019Many Dynamics Ax customers are still to make the transition to Dynamics 365.
Upgrading an Enterprise erp system needs planning, and executing across multiple companies and geographies needs time and resources. There may be extensive vertical solutions to upgrade from layered code to extensions and he company may already be involved with other projects.
Meanwhile its current systems need to be optimised, maintained and leveraged to support new disruptive challenges. Over time, experienced skilled staff from the initial implementation move on and new staff don’t get quite the same training.. That second phase project didn’t happen.
– Maintenance schedules slip.
– New System managers have not been trained.
– Critical patches and kernel updates have not been applied.
– System setting are no longer appropriate for the new data and transaction volumes and ways of working.
– System response seems slower, there are more problems with record locks and system hang.
– Users and managers get frustrated.
– Auditors question the data.
– Meanwhile cybercrime is at an all time high.
Ax 2009, Ax 2012 RTM, Ax 2012R1 and Ax 2012 R2 are already past end of Microsoft support.
Many Ax 2012 R3 will also not be upgrading for at least another year and need to get more from their system.
Your Dynamics AX ERP system is an important investment that is central to the efficiency and profitability of your business. Determining when and why it is appropriate for your organization to undergo a thorough system audit and health check can be complicated. In some instances, a business may not have the proper resources or expertise to conduct a system analysis.
Business decision makers and managers within an organization are susceptible to overlooking critical issues and process gaps because of their close proximity to the business operations. That is why our unbiased insights are so beneficial.
Our System Health Check for Dynamics AX consists of a thorough analysis of various process-related activities and system hardware and resources to identify the source of performance problems. These include: inadequate hardware, improperly configured resources, bad network architecture or poorly written system customizations.
System Health Check:
Evaluate system performance and resources
Review key configurations
Review the management of SQL, log files and history data.
System Audit:
identify process gaps within the system.
Identify unused features
Review how well the system configuration and account structure support the business needs.
Review user issues, and auditor comments.
Security
Development Audit:
Best practice code checks
Slow running reports and queries.
Batch case and workflow management and performance
User audit:
training level, use of system features, attitude /experience, access controls to do what is needed.
Data audit: errors, consistency checks, orphaned records, accounts balance with sub ledgers
In a few days we show you whether you can move forward with confidence, or how to recover a ‘distressed’ project. We deliver on time and on budget – don’t take our word for it ask our customers, ask Microsoft.
We have helped major companies audit struggling implementations, of Microsoft Dynamics Ax and taken them to the next level.
04336889
RPA_Robotic Process Automation in Dubai – contact UI Path Gold Partner, Synergy Software Systems
October 6th, 2019The automation first era is going to pose many challenges. An organization that is set up with the tools to transform, has the adaptability, flexibility, scalability and agility to continue to grow and succeed. The hype around digital transformation belies widespread, and often unspoken confusion on whether, why, when, and how to achieve it
In a recent poll by The Economist, 93% of business leaders said that digital transformation starts with automation. Going from that belief to transformation, however, is a path not many have yet clearly understood or articulated. To achieve digital transformation a major change management step is to establish an ‘automation first’ mindset. Whole established in manufacturing it is still a new paradigm for most ‘back office’ business processes. Most organizations recognize the potential of automation , but most are equally unsure about the next steps to leverage RPA to transformation their entire organization.
The good news is that you can start with one or two processes and scale later. There are always some areas of quick wins with clear short term ROI, low risk, that make life easier, reduce errors, and reduce costs, without major disruption that free up skilled staff to do more value added work.
Trusted by 60+ government agencies and thousands of commercial companies, the UiPath platform includes the security and audit capabilities you need to simplify compliance with the regulations that matter to your organisation. Indeed RPA provides greater data security and privacy protection than manual input.
In this year’s ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world.Forbes moved UiPath to number 3, (up from 14th).
UiPath was also named a Leader in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation Software.
UiPath’s extensible platform offers hundreds of built-in, customizable, shareable activities, plus deep integrations with the technologies you already use. Deploy and manage multiple varied processes from front-office to back-office, regardless of complexity.
UiPath Robots are learning new AI skills to automate more processes. Use out-of-the-box AI skills, source specialized AI skills from Synergy Software Systems, or let us help build your own AI skills. Seamlessly use these AI skills in your automations with UiPath drag-and-drop AI.
Synergy Software Systems is the most certified and fastest to achieve Ui Path Gold partner status in the region and we already have already completed many successful and diverse projects.
Transformation of the enterprise requires three primary automation strategies:
1. Build awareness and excitement to support growth
2. Extend automation to every person
3. Introduce and facilitate both a top-down and bottom-up automation first mindset
Make Robotic Process Automation (RPA) a first principle, to improve digital processes. Design automation strategies for each phase of growth and transformation, .
RPA deployment goes through three stages of evolution.
Early adopters automate processes across a few business units. Most of the work is done internally by each business unit.
In the second stage, process scale up, and businesses standardize their approach to automation. They consolidate best practices and facilitate the growth of a mature Center of Excellence (CoE).
In the third stage, ‘digital transformation;, employees have the freedom to automate tasks as necessary. Employees are empowered to find the most suitable processes to automate from the bottom up. This approach can be seen in many areas of digital technology. Microsoft for example talks of citizen developers. In the last 30 years office automation tools such as Word processing, spreadsheets, emails and so on have empowered employees to be more productive and more creative without depending on administrative or IT staff. The ability to write macros and to configure rather than code further enhanced productivity. RPA is the office productivity tool for Millenials and Generation Z employees.
The C-suite cultivates that engagement with an automation first mindset, and the CoE ensures proper deployment from the top down.
A1 Maturity model
The key to success after the scale up phase is for the automation strategies that both align with your business strategy and ensure your expanding scale is sustainable.
Automation will bring efficiency and productivity benefits as soon as you start deploying it, but the full potential is possible only when its part of your DNA.
1. Build the people power to support transformation. Early RPA success will create RPA champions and developers inside siloed business units.
Automating individual, isolated processes will give immediate efficiency improvements. However, having more effective business processes that scale sustainably and transforms the organisation needs company-wide buy-in.
For enterprise companies the focal point for the most effective centralized automation strategies is a Centre of Excellence (CoE). The CoE leads robot deployment and scaling. In some organizations it is called the Robotic Operations Center (ROC).A CoE centralizes governance policies and prioritizes automation requests. All automation decisions and policies flow through the CoE. The CoE serves both as a filter and as a support system, to ensure automation is prioritised and aligned to strategy, and is coordinated across companies processes and users, and is done the right way and is complaint with security privacy and other policies.
A CoE is at the core of your people power. Power is the ability to make decisions – all employees can make better business decisions with the right tools and information. Which custoomer should I visit, first, which production order, which lorry should I unload first…….. and that depends on timely accurate complete and comprehensible information. and the time, and the tools to process it. So, a transformed organization needs both diffused and centralized leadership
As you scale RPA, more than ever before your organization will need the business and IT units to work together. The C-suite provides the strategy, the policies and the leadership role. By the time the organization reaches the transform phase of growth, the C-suite considers one of its main goals to be spreading and facilitating automation beyond centralized planning. They recognize the savings and productivity benefits, and more important the potential opportunities and morale boost when staff are freed form routine tasks to focus quality time on higher value add tasks.
If you need to reduce costs now, or to make processes more robust and secure, and to start your digital transformation journey then contact us to learn more.
Synergy Software Systems is an Enterprise Solutions integrator that has implemented over a 1000 projects with Governments, Fortune 500 groups and regional groups and has the depth and breadth of technical and business skills, and soltuions to support you adopt the new technologies to compete in this fast changing digital world.
call us: 009714 3365589
Legacy web client for Dynamics 365 CRM will be deprecated. New D365 Unified Client ask Synergy Software Systems, Dubai
October 3rd, 2019On the 10th September 2019, Microsoft announced the legacy web client for Dynamics 365 CRM will be deprecated. Customers must transition to Unified Interface before October 1, 2020.
This will affect Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Project Service, and Dynamics 365 Marketing customers.
According to Microsoft, they will “continue to provide support, security, and other critical updates to the Dynamics 365 legacy web client until October 1, 2020, but will not release any additional functionality beyond what has already been announced.”
In addition, the following capabilities will also be removed from Dynamics CRM solutions by October 1, 2020:
• Process dialogs
• Task flows
We expect other current functionality to also be deprecated within the next year.
New features include:
• Form Updates
• Entity Based Dashboards
• Business Process Flows
• Role Based Apps and Views
• Navigation and Views
• Panels and Subgrids
• Timelines
• Artificial Intelligence
Contact us for an upgrade analysis. We’ll help you consider the information you need before you transition to the new UI including:
• High-level state of your current CRM system
• Cloud and mobile strategy
• Usability
• List of all third-party ISVs
• User processes
• Tenant analysis
• Deployment methodology
• License changes from 1 Oct 2019
Spyware and how to remove it
October 3rd, 2019A useful guide on this site
Some commion sense advice from the post:
Have anti-malware software installed and running on all your devices.
Avoid downloading software from unofficial sources. While this isn’t a perfect guarantee of safety, if you only download software from places like an official app store, or the site of a major publisher, you will greatly reduce the chance of getting your device infected.
Don’t open an email from unknown individuals. And don’t open any files attached to such emails.
Don’t click on pop-up ads that suddenly start appearing on your device.
Keep your anti-malware software, operating system (OS), and your browser updated at all times. When a new spyware app starts hitting targets, you’ll want to be able to install the fixed version as soon as possible.
Make sure any browser extensions are current and look for options to enhance the security of the browser.
Activate your device’s Firewall (for those devices that have the option). A Firewall can block suspicious applications from getting installed on the device.
Note:
The most popular application to block ads on the Internet is still AdBlock Plus
uBlock Origin turns on the EasyPrivacy list by default. Adblock Plus does not.
The AdBlock Plus interface is noticeably larger and more detailed
The default configuration for Adblock Plus is good for blocking oannoying ads, but does let through some third-party scripts and tracking through. The user has to go in to the configuration and turn the EasyPrivacy list on, and many don’t.
Adblock Plus has an “Acceptable Ads” program. So firms with questionable privacy practicesare able to pay to have their ads allowed as “Acceptable” (Google, Microsoft, and Amazon apparently pay Adblock Plus huge fees to get their ads unblocked). The “Acceptable Ads” program aenforces no standards on malware or fraud—it’s all about how annoying is an ad.
So with Adblock Plus you have to take two additional steps to get protected after installing:
•Turn off “Allow some nonintrusive advertising” (the “Acceptable Ads” paid whitelisting scheme)
•Turn on EasyPrivacy.
uBlock Origin is completely unrelated to the site “ublock.org”.
See wikpedia for the history of how these apps forked form each other https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin
