I'm worried about a crisis bigger than 2008: Faber

The 2008 financial crisis could be just a precursor to a more severe economic fallout on the horizon, closely followed contrarian investor Marc Faber told CNBC on Thursday.

The publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report told "Squawk Box" he's concerned about the possibility of a new financial crisis developing in the second half of this year.

I'm worried about a crisis bigger than 2008: Faber

Hotel boycott against Sharia law expands, losses hit $1.5 million

The introduction of Sharia law in the Brunei continued to ripple to the shores of California on Wednesday as the oil-rich nation's ownership of the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel resulted in business cancellations amounting to at least $1.5 million.



Hotel boycott against Sharia law expands, losses hit $1.5 million

EMC and its RSA Security Division Honored With Four CRN “Company of the Year” ARC Awards

EMC Press Release

EMC and its RSA Security Division Honored With Four CRN “Company of the Year” ARC Awards

Recognized by CRN for the Sixth Consecutive Year, EMC Voted Best in Class for Product Innovation, Support and Partnership, Receives Top Honors for, Enterprise Network Storage, Backup & Recovery Software and SMB Network Storage; RSA Awarded Network Security Software Title

HOPKINTON, Mass. - August 22, 2012

News Summary:

• Recognized by CRN for the sixth consecutive year, EMC has been named "Company of the Year" in the Enterprise Network Storage, Backup & Recovery Software and SMB Network Storage categories of the 2012 CRN Annual Report Card (ARC) survey.
• RSA, The Security Division of EMC, also received "Company of the Year" recognition in the Security Software category.

Full Story:

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced that for the sixth consecutive year it has been named Company of the Year in the Enterprise Network Storage and Backup & Recovery Software categories and for the second year in a row named Company of the Year in the small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) Network Storage category of the prestigious 2012 CRN Annual Report Card. RSA, The Security Division of EMC, has also received top honors as Network Security Software Company of the Year. The ARC awards are considered the definitive benchmark for measuring excellence in the IT Channel community, serving as the industry standard for excellence in vendor and Channel Partner relationships. Representatives from EMC and RSA accepted their awards at a ceremony during the annual XChange Americas Conference in Dallas, Texas on August 21.

The UBM Channel ARC research team surveyed more than 3,700 North American solution providers across 23 categories to evaluate their satisfaction with vendor products, support and channel programs. The Company of the Year recognition is given to a vendor that scores the highest marks across each of the award sub-categories — Product Innovation, Support, and Partnership. EMC secured the highest marks for all three in each category it participated.

EMC's continued streak of taking top honors in the ARC survey is a direct result of its commitment to delivering industry-leading products and listening to partner feedback to make significant changes, including its go-to-market approach and enhancements to its Velocity Solution Provider Partner Programto provide the most Channel-friendly experience in the industry. Key changes and enhancements made over the last 12 months include:

• Integration of EMC's business unit Channel organizations to provide a single contact to give Partners a more simplified and consistent engagement model across all of EMC's lines of business.
• EMC's recognition as Company of the Year in the SMB Network Storage category is marked by the success of the EMC VNXe® – the world's simplest, most efficient, and affordable unified storage system – as a Channel-only product that solves the unique storage requirements for SMBs, as well as the departmental needs of enterprises, remote and branch office deployments, and governmental opportunities..
• The EMC Data Domain® DD160, with all the benefits associated with Data Domain deduplication storage systems, was also introduced as a Channel-only product. In addition, the introduction of EMCAvamar® 6.1 and EMC NetWorker® 8.0 have expanded the backup and recovery opportunity for partners.
• The introduction of EMC VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructure ¬supports Partners desire to more easily sell multi-vendor solutions. The simple, efficient and flexible VSPEX reference architectures enable EMC's Channel Partners to sell complete, highly-flexible solutions to their customers, adding significant value to Partners' sales processes while increasing their mindshare in customer environments by allowing Partners to brand their own VSPEX solutions.
• In 2012 EMC announced Enterprise Select, a new go-to-market strategy in which Partners can exclusively sell to hundreds of enterprise accounts that were previously EMC-direct.

Sweeping all categories in which it participated, RSA's Network Security Software Company of the Year title is due to the strength of the RSA SecurWorld™ Partner Program, with recent program enhancements focused on fostering dynamic and mutually-beneficial relationships between RSA and its Channel Partners. During the past year, RSA has more tightly aligned the benefits and rewards provided through the SecurWorld program with its Partners' go-to-market models. Through the new solution-centric role-based training framework, RSA Partners are more quickly equipped to sell and support RSA's suite of products. Partners retain their tier status for one year, and through quarterly compliance reviews, have the opportunity to accelerate to a new tier more quickly. Another addition to the RSA SecurWorld program is the availability of the "Authorized" entry-level tier with access to deal registration.

EMC Partner Quotes:

Gary Vaughan, President & Co-founder, Clearpath Solutions Group

"The company is listening to Partner feedback and taking action to provide more sales opportunities and make it easier to do business through improved field engagement and the enforcement of the Rules of Engagement. The commitment from all levels of EMC executive management to supporting and deepening the relationships with Partners is evident and indicates there is a bright future for EMC and Partners like Clearpath."

Bob Olwig, Vice President, Corporate Business Development, World Wide Technology, Inc.

"EMC has taken many steps this year to evolve the Velocity program to provide the right training and support for us to successfully address the increasingly complex requirements of our customers as they adopt cloud computing. We appreciate the straightforward, easy to adopt programs, products, and solutions like VSPEX that will help grow our business and provide our customers with the best possible technology and experience."

UBM Quote:

Kelley Damore, Vice President & Editorial Director, UBM Channel

"When it comes to the strength of relationships, quality of products and return on Partner programs, solution providers want to hear from their fellow VARs about the IT vendors that consistently exceed expectations. The Annual Report Card gives solution providers the opportunity to share feedback and recognize the vendors who truly demonstrate Channel excellence. We congratulate EMC and RSA for being recognized as the best of the best."

EMC Quotes:

Leonard Iventosch, Vice President, Americas Channel Sales, EMC Corporation

"EMC is making the largest investments in its history in the Channel. With their extensive experience and skill at taking on more and more of the sales cycle, EMC's Velocity Partners are critically important to extending our reach into the existing customer base and to finding new customers. We are extremely honored with the results of this year's CRN ARC survey. As the results clearly show, EMC's commitment and actions in the Channel are being leveraged and appreciated by our Partners."

Bill Taylor, Vice President of Global Channels and Alliances, RSA, The Security Division of EMC

"We are committed to the success of our SecurWorld Partners and are consistently working to enhance our channel program to not only ensure mutual profitability but also provide training and support that help partners grow their businesses. We are honored to be included in this year's CRN ARC Survey. It truly validates the work we've been doing to create program that our partners are proud to be a part of."

Additional Resources:

• Learn more about partnering with EMC and RSA
• Follow @EMCChannel and join the #EMC conversation on Twitter
• Learn more about how Trusted IT from EMC = Trusted Business at: www.emc.com/trust
• Connect with EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and ECN
• Connect with RSA via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and the RSA Speaking of Security Blog and Podcast

About EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

About UBM Channel: (www.ubmchannel.com)

UBM Channel is the premier provider of IT channel-focused events, media, research, consulting, and sales and marketing services. With over 30 years of experience and engagement, UBM Channel has the unmatched channel expertise to execute integrated solutions for technology executives managing partner recruitment, enablement and go-to-market strategy in order to accelerate technology sales. UBM Channel is a UBM company. To learn more about UBM Channel, visit us at www.ubmchannel.com.

UBM plc (www.ubm.com)

UBM plc is a leading global business media company. We inform markets and bring the world's buyers and sellers together at events, online, in print and provide them with the information they need to do business successfully. We focus on serving professional commercial communities, from doctors to game developers, from journalists to jewelry traders, from farmers to pharmacists around the world. Our 6,000 staff in more than 30 countries is organized into specialist teams that serve these communities, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently. For more information, go to www.ubm.com.

Dell Helps Growing Businesses Streamline Critical Sales Processes With Addition of eSignature and eDocument Solutions To Dell Cloud Business Applications Portfolio

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Date : 3/27/2012

Round Rock, Texas

• Addition of EchoSign Global Electronic Signature Service from Adobe helps businesses automates entire signature process
• Conga Composer from AppExtremes helps businesses automate the creation of documents and reports using data from Salesforce CRM

Dell is expanding its cloud applications portfolio for growing businesses, Dell Cloud Business Applications (DCBA), with new offerings that extend its Cloud Integrated CRM solution – eSignature services from Adobe® EchoSign® and AppExtremes’ Conga Composer eDocument solutions. The expanded solution helps growing businesses increase productivity and gives them the ability to streamline critical processes involved in sales transactions. 

Just like the other elements of Dell Cloud Business Applications, both Adobe EchoSign and AppExtremes’ Conga Composer are cloud applications delivered as subscription services over the web, so there is no hardware or software to purchase or maintain, and minimal IT deployment effort required. Both solutions are also tightly integrated with CRM applications, allowing documents and data to be shared and stored in a single unified repository. The applications enhance the productivity capabilities of Dell’s Integrated CRM offering, which includes applications from salesforce.com, integration to third party applications with Dell Boomi as well as turnkey services and support packages.

“EchoSign eSignature and AppExtremes eDocument solutions are beneficial cloud tools that help growing businesses increase sales agility and drive revenue,” said Paulette Altmaier, vice president and general manager Dell Cloud Business Software. “By adding these solutions to the Dell Cloud Business Applications family of trusted applications, small and medium businesses can maximize sales with efficient processes with greater visibility into their account stream.”

Accelerated Sales Process with EchoSign eSignature Solutions from Adobe

The Adobe EchoSign electronic signature solution helps accelerate the sales process with an automated signature process, from the request for signature to the distribution and filing of executed agreements and forms. Using EchoSign, organizations can send contracts directly from their CRM system, view contract history, and save signed contracts with specific opportunity or contact details. The customizable, user-friendly interface enables sales representatives to drag-and-drop signature design tools, preview documents before sending them for signature, and set custom alerts. 

“With the ability to track every deal in real-time across sales, legal and finance, EchoSign accelerates the sales process, delivers accurate forecasts and improves the customer’s signing experience,” said Jason Lemkin, vice president of Web business services at Adobe. “By partnering with Dell Cloud Business Applications, we ensure we not only give small and medium businesses greater visibility into their customer contracts, but also the ability to integrate valuable information across business units – ensuring technology helps to innovate, not stifle sales.”

Sophisticated Documents and Reports with AppExtremes Conga Composer

Conga Composer makes it easy to create sophisticated documents and reports using data from salesforce.com. By standardizing all customer-facing information and distributing it through a highly-branded document template framework, Conga Composer helps companies achieve consistency of message and positioning across all customer-facing documents, raising the professionalism of sales-to-customer interactions. Conga Composer enables users to pull salesforce data into MS Office or PDF forms as well as manage and distribute content and reports from within Salesforce CRM. Users are also able to enforce best practices with standardized processes, activity logging and field updates. 

"Conga Composer automates the creation and distribution of documents with salesforce.com data, ranging from account plans and activity reports to complex orders and contracts,” said Mark Whiteside, AppExtremes COO. “The seamless integration of Conga Composer with EchoSign compresses the sales and contracting cycle down to single-click generation and delivery of agreements for customer review and signature." 

Pricing and Availability

EchoSign pricing starts at $20 per user per month with an annual subscription. Conga Composer pricing starts at $12 per user per month with annual subscription and five-user minimum (volume discounts available). Both are immediately available from Dell by calling 877-857-2364.

About Dell Cloud Business Applications

Dell Cloud Business Applications offers a family of integrated cloud applications and services that enable new business processes while leveraging existing software and technology investments. Dell Integrated CRM is a cloud service uniquely packaged to meet the needs of growing companies, delivering Salesforce CRM integrated to existing infrastructure along with reporting, analytics, turnkey Dell services, and support. For more information, visitwww.dellcloudapplications.com. 

About Dell

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.dell.com. 

About Adobe EchoSign

Adobe EchoSign is the leading electronic signatures and signature automation service with more than 4 million users and 50,000 customers worldwide. Adobe EchoSign is a key component of Adobe’s document exchange services platform for reliably exchanging documents for universal access, review and approval. 

About AppExtremes

AppExtremes, Inc. is the developer of the most popular document generation and reporting solutions for Salesforce CRM and Force.com. Ranked among the top ten solutions on the Salesforce AppExchange for more than four years, AppExtremes solutions have been deployed by more than 2,700 salesforce.com customers in 35 countries. Founded in 2006, the privately-held company is based in Broomfield, Colorado. For more information, visitwww.appextremes.com.

'Hacktivists' Lead Data Breach Threats, Study Finds

A tiny but motivated band of 'hacktivists' are supplanting professional criminals as the biggest single data breach threat to large enterprises, an analysis of hundreds of confirmed incident reports has found.

On the face of it, the numbers in Verizon's 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report (which covers 2011) suggest that hacktivism is more of a nuisance than a major threat, accounting for only 3 percent of the 855 recorded attacks looked at across several countries.

But despite the modest volume of attacks, hacktivist incidents often lead to far more spectacular losses. Verizon found that from a total of 174 million records (individual database entries as well as documents) compromised in the 855 incidents, 100 million were stolen by hacktivists.

This means that hactivism is a theme in only three out of every 100 incidents, but nearly six out of ten of the actual records that are compromised. (See also "Ten Best Practices to Prevent Data and Privacy Breaches.")

For more, click the link below:


http://www.pcworld.com/article/252429/hacktivists_lead_data_breach_threats_study_finds.html#tk.nl_bdx_h_crawl