In a recent development, Framehawk has been acquired by Citrix. Framehawk is known for providing solutions that optimize delivery of virtual desktops and applications to mobile devices. In a statement released by Citrix, it said the merger of Framework with Citrix will help in combining the former’s technology with the HDX technology in Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop products. So far the financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Citrix will be much benefited having acquired Framehawk. It will help Citrix in optimizing the virtual desktop mobile experience and that too under very poor networking conditions that include highly overcrowded WiFi or mobile data networks.

The leadership and engineering team of Framehawk will be integrated into the enterprise and service provider division of Citrix.

Amazon, Dell and Cisco have already ventured into desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) plays, and VMware, Citrix’s rival in virtualization has recently acquired Desktone, it seems that the competition will get tougher with every passing day for emerging market of Desktop Virtualization.

In the arena of Information Technology, the most debated topic nowadays is to choose which one: Virtualisation or Cloud Computing. We are here to discuss our stand in this ongoing debate.

Virtualisation, as we all in the IT domain know, a mechanism by which the output of the entire IT systems could be maximized with lesser equipments. Utility softwares from Citrix or VMware, the leading players in this field of virtualisation, play the most critical role. Whether we use the virtualisation based softwares or not, unknowingly most of us have actually used the basic concept of virtualisation for PCs, Servers like doing partition of hard drives.

On the other hand, cloud computing is another growing phenomenon that can’t be ignored anyway. Google docs, Drop box, Flickr or Picasa have become an indispensable part of netizens all over the world.

Now the question is, which one is best suited as per the needs and cost factor. We here can’t decide for anybody what is best suited for whom and why, but what we can do for you to help taking decisions by highlighting the pros and cons of both Virtualisation and Cloud Computing.

Accessibility Factor: Cloud computing is unbounded of locations which is it’s strongest point. But at the same time its vulnerability to internet connections goes against it.

Virtualistion is location dependant but it accessibility doesn’t generally depend on internet connection.

Security: Cloud computing as 3rd party data storage may not be a safe option from security point of view, keeping in mind the vulnerability of cloud servers to the hackers.

In this perspective, Virtualisation definitely scores high if basic precautionary measures are in place.

Cost: As far as cost factor is concerned, Cloud computing, in general is the popular option. Though the cost of cloud storage depends on requirement, usually it costs less in comparison with virtualisation, provided parameters being kept same.

After the smashing hit by the Panda-Penguin updates on the Google page ranks, the latest one is the EMD update. EMD or Exact Match Domain is designed to target websites consisting of low quality content. While browsing the web at times you would have come across sites with long tail key phrase as their domain name. These long tail key phrases are essentially the specific search term that the users would search for.

A number of web marketers have been purchasing exact match domains with the aim of improving their page ranks and online visibility. However the existence of poor quality content may drastically hamper their page ranks. Classification of low quality content is based on two terms viz. parked domains or scraped content. Parked domains are place holder sites stuffed with various ads. Such kinds of websites do not provide any substantial information to the users.

Scraped content is a form of online plagiarism wherein content from other website/s is published as it is. Commonly known as duplicate content, such a practice can surely reduce your page ranks.

The idea is to provide comprehensive information on a particular topic so that the visitors can get what they are actually looking for. Infographics, power articles, etc. are some of the techniques that can act as savior. As long as you can engage your visitors and keep their interests intact, you need not really bother about EMD filter.

There are some related factors that can have a positive impact on your online rankings. Here are a few tips to help you improve the content quality of your website:-

1. Check out the number of broken links you have (if any) and get them corrected.

2. Checkout all low quality backlinks. Pay heed to the relevance, quantity and quality of backlinks you have.

3. Do not stuff your website with too many keywords. This also related to the need of maintaining the keyword density of your site.

4. Related metatitles should be used in your website.

5. Improve your website’s loading speed.

6. Include more contextual links instead of sponsored links.

7. Reduce the bounce rate of your site by focusing on infotainment. Infotainment is an amalgamation of useful information along with a tinge of entertainment. The mere placement of facts, figures and statistics is not enough. It is the way you present those facts in front of your target audience and entice them to stick to your website.

Remember, your goal is to satisfy your audience by offering relevant and useful information along with attractive infographics, statistics, photo sharing, video sharing, user participation platform, etc. If you are successful in serving your audience well, you are certainly there to rule the web.

When search engine marketing enters the conversation in PR circles and vice versa, it’s usually search engine optimization, not pay per click that gets attention. However, there are numerous opportunities to use the on-demand visibility of Pay Per Click as a method to attract visitors to news related content.

Publishers of online news and media use Pay Per Click to create instant search visibility for hot and trending news stories. Here’s an example of the NY Times using AdWords to promote a story about Twitter.  You can also see from this screenshot via Spyfu, some of the topical and time sensitive keyword phrases they’ve bid on to drive traffic to news stories.

PR professionals can do the same with brand names, company names or executive names that often get searched on. PPC can be used to attract attention to specific news items, stories and content that is likely to be passed along once people get a chance to see it.

Deciding when PPC vs SEO is appropriate has to do with the situation and goals. Use of PPC advertisements are more of an on-demand and often times a reaction to other content displayed in the left side of the search results page. An example would be running ads on brand names that have negative information in the organic search results in order to tell the other side of the story. This can be useful to attract consumer attention away from negative listings.

As an example, here is a Search Results Page for “paypal sucks” where PayPal is bidding on and displaying an ad for its brand name.

SEO for public and media relations is a long term effort and should be viewed as an ongoing investment in time and resources. SEO is most effective when it’s built into the processes of creating and promoting news content. Using the right keywords in the right places as well as making sure the PR content is crawlable by search engine spiders compliments the need to attract inbound links.

The effect of ongoing SEO efforts (continued content creation, promotion and link building) is cumulative. The more news content on web pages and incoming links from other web sites, the wider the net that’s cast on the web from which to attract searchers. Results from SEO efforts are not often immediate so the decision to use SEO tactics should be appropriate to an ongoing commitment to see results.

With the advancement and exponential increase of the usage of the internet; regular e-mail services have been replaced by the speedy, more secured and  multifunctional e-mail management softwares. Few of the popular mailing servers like MS Exchange, Google Apps, Lotus Notes etc., provide more than just emailing services. But at present, Zimbra is the most popular email hosting solutions amongst the corporates for the professional requirements. This advanced open source e-mail server is used for managing incoming and outgoing emails, databases, inter-office communications and data storage.

Zimbra provides a rich set of full cross-platform support with native integration on major operating systems like Windows, Macs, and Linux desktops. Zimbra email suite is just like Microsoft Exchange, Gmail or any other mailing services used today. It is more flexible and compatible to different types of mobile devices and operating systems. With the association of VMware, the customized e-mailing solution has integrated the mailing service, contacts, group calendar and task sharing management and so many necessary features under one platform. Moreover, it adds an instant messaging, large file storage as well as web document management to the upgraded mail collaboration suite.

Some Major Benefits Of Zimbra Mail Server Are:

• The local server gets easily connected with the remote server to fetch e-mails from the remote server.
• Flexible, light and simple to use across multiple domains or any platform (Apple, Windows, Linux), with any mobile device (Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, flip phones).
• Zimbra e-mail hosting solution provides fully incorporated anti-spam and antivirus capabilities to protect your important e-mails.

When it comes to the decision of adopting Virtualization for an IT environment, many questions crop up in mind. Few queries that will certainly make you think twice about virtualization are:

• HOW MUCH SUITABLE WILL IT BE FOR THE EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE
• NUMBER OF PHYSICAL HOSTS REQUIRED
• AVAILABILITY OF THE BEST AND COST-EFFECTIVE STORAGE OPTION
• RISK INVOLVED WITH CRITICAL APPLICATION
• EXPENSE OF THE INITIAL OUTLAY

Here comes the importance of Capacity Plan. Most of the doubts can be cleared through this Capacity Plan. With the help of Capacity Planning, we can measure the system performances including processor utilization, total storage, disk I/Os and much more. Though many critics may raise doubts about the effectiveness of Capacity Plan, but still this is the best answer to all the queries. Now in order to get 100% genuine information regarding the cost and scalability of a virtual IT environment, one needs to go through various channel of information and do cross-check.

At the beginning, Virtualization was costly for both the end-user as well as the engineer/analyst. The cost related to the capacity plan process was significantly high in the early days of virtualization.  But nowadays, the market has changed a lot. There are many organizations, including ValueCare Inc, who are providing the service at an affordable cost.

As virtualizations are of different types, the cost of setting up an IT environment based on Virtualization platform varies. Virtualization platform is primarily three types:

1. Full Virtualization: It helps to simulate the actual hardware that will allow software consisting of guest operating system, to run without any modification. .
2. Partial Virtualization: In this case, the target environment is simulated partially. Some guest programs, therefore, may need modifications to run in this virtual environment.
3. Para Virtualization: A hardware environment is not simulated; however, the guest programs are executed in their own isolated domains, as if they are running on a separate system. Guest programs need to be specifically modified to run in this environment.