Category: Uncategorized

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By 2020, 30% of Security spending will be on vendors with integrated platforms

By 2020, 50% of Security telemetry will leverage Machine Learning & Cognitive solutions.

In the newest digital age, security is one of the most important assets to have in an IT environment. Despite the rapid pace of innovation and growing sophistication of enterprise cybersecurity operations, the success and impact of attacks continues to expand. The greatest gap in our advancement of cybersecurity effectiveness is the understanding of cybersecurity risk.

Clear Technologies helps uncover the security issues that management is concerned with – before they can impact the overall business. This includes unique challenges which can be answered by one or a bundle of security solutions. Clear Technologies Security Profile Assessment helps uncover security solutions aligned to core areas of the NIST Cyber Security Framework to ensure a holistic security posture.

Clear Technologies is offering security assessment checks to analyze vulnerable points such as:

• Endpoint Security
• Data Security
• Perimeter Security
• Identity & Access Management
• Mobile Security
• And more!

The purpose of the Security Profile Assessment is to gather information about your organization’s security controls, provide reporting that contains a summary and action plan to improve security posture, and how to respond to gaps & weaknesses in place. That, in turn, will enhance overall confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your organization’s data and information by following the included action plan.

If you are interested in a undergoing a security assessment, contact Brian Murphy, bmurphy@cleartechnologies.net.

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Clear Thoughts on IBM THINK 2019

In mid-February, a group from Clear Technologies had the privilege to go to San Francisco for IBM THINK, which included IBM PartnerWorld. IBM THINK is IBM’s annual technology conference showcasing the latest products, services and technologies as well as use cases, demos and client testimonials. As an IBM Platinum partner with meetings to attend with clients that were in attendance, discussions with key IBM executives at PartnerWorld, booth duty to show our storage analytics and reporting, Visual One Intelligence™, as well as a full conference of break-out sessions and lectures, it was a whirlwind week!

There were three main takeaways we noted after a very busy week for our team: 1) The Hybrid Cloud message is now more important than ever 2) AI Anywhere with IBM Watson leading the charge 3) Data Center Infrastructure will continue to be relevant to our clients

In total, Clear had 38 meetings with various clients, prospects, IBM executives and partners. While the meeting agendas and goals were unique to each meeting, the overall themes kept going back to two areas Clear has clearly differentiated itself from others in the market – Clear Intelligence and Visual One Intelligence™.

The AI solutions and use cases we have developed and continue to develop through Clear Intelligence continue to spark interest from clients and partners of all shapes and sizes, especially our Design Thinking Workshops. One thing that remains a constant is our focus on driving business value and solving problems. While we wish we could work with every client in every industry, we are focusing on solving unique issues in three main verticals: Distribution, Industrial and Utilities. In these three markets, we will focus significant resources in the AI arena focused on Vision solutions such as IBM PowerAI Vision, which is now under the IBM Watson Machine Learning umbrella. Clear Technologies intends to launch its own AI Vision Cloud in April for clients to run Proof of Concepts in a quick and agile way to prove their use cases prior to committing to a large investment of time, resources and money.

Storage is another area the Clear team committed a great deal of time discussing while at IBM THINK, which goes very well with our Clear Intelligence mission now that IBM has a family of storage products designed for Artificial Intelligence workloads. However, Visual One Intelligence™ still represents the majority of our discussion in the storage area. Our partners and clients continue to see the unique heterogenous analytics Visual One provides as well as how it can enable a true Hybrid IT strategy by identifying the right platform for each application and workload. The extremely fast time to value is also still very unique in this space.

Overall, Clear Technologies enjoyed a tremendous week at IBM THINK. We thank all of our clients, prospects and partners for making it such as success. As always, we stand ready to discover, pursue and solve problems that are meaningful to you.

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IBM Think 2019 is around the corner! Think is IBM’s flagship conference, focused on delivering the technical training, certifications, expertise, and networking opportunities customers need to stay ahead. Think 2019 is the place where IBM unveils and presents the technologies it feels will help transform customer’s IT environments. Below are some of the scheduled sessions that we feel will help lead customers into the future:

Digitizing the Flow of Goods, Information and Money with Blockchain

Early adopters have built blockchain networks to re-wire their existing processes and transactions. Networks across banking, financial markets, insurance, retail, consumer goods and others have moved into production and are realizing business value. The vision of these networks is to fully connect the flow of goods to information to money to form efficient networks to automate business processes in global trade. Leaders in the blockchain industry are realizing this vision today, including the leader of a dozen major European banks, a pioneer of a food safety network, a consumer goods leader and the team that is building a payments network.

The Multicloud Enterprise: Deliver Data Management and Availability with Veeam and IBM

Join Veeam for a discussion on how the senior datacenter executive’s job is changing from delivery to an IT business role. Bit by bit, the landscape, infrastructure and processes that we utilize will broaden to support a federated, multicloud world, where on-premises as well as a mix of private, managed, public and SaaS clouds are the new norm. Intelligent data management and availability must adapt to meet new business expectations. Veeam and IBM solutions can help. Join us to discuss: Why are our environments and requirements changing, and what do the new realities look like? What is a sound approach to intelligent data management and improved availability? How can Veeam and IBM solutions meet the needs of today and tomorrow?

Out-of-the-Box Blockchain Solution Acceleration Platform for Supply Chain

After years of working with top clients to deploy scalable supply chain solutions like IBM Food Trust, IBM has developed a rich set of capabilities around building Blockchain-based supply chain solutions. These capabilities, served through an API platform, address supply chain network requirements such as ecosystem onboarding, multi-party document workflow, asset provenance, invoicing, etc. Clients and partners can develop unique solutions to address ecosystem-wide requirements or individual needs as part of a supply chain network. This session introduces the value, capabilities and architecture of these assets, and showcases how they are used in some of IBM’s Blockchain solutions like IBM Food Trust and Blockchain Invoicing for TradeLens.

All Together Now: Building a Multicloud Strategy with IBM Power Systems

Industry experts and leading CIOs agree: Enterprises should pursue a hybrid or “multicloud” strategy to ensure they will have the agile, secure, high-performing and cost-effective IT resources necessary for future growth, innovation and competitiveness. But how to put all the pieces together? This session shares how clients can leverage multiple clouds and architectures in the cloud, including IBM Power Systems-based VMs, containers and GPUs in IBM Cloud, to deliver the best digital experiences from a heterogeneous, multicloud strategy.

Nutanix Basics: Unify AIX and Linux Infrastructure and Cut Deployment and Management Time by 50%

Enjoy fresh levels of simplicity in provisioning, managing and running your AIX and Linux environments on a common datacenter infrastructure. Learn how IBM Hyperconverged Systems powered by Nutanix converges compute, storage and virtualization into standardized building blocks that build a foundation for your private cloud. This infrastructure can start small and then seamlessly grow to handle the most demanding workloads, from midsized companies to the world’s largest corporations.

Building Computing Architecture for the Era of Multicloud and AI

A “cloud-first” strategy drives efficiency and competitiveness. But as organizations deploy more demanding, data-intensive workloads like in-memory databases, predictive analytics and AI in a cloud environment, most infrastructure hits a wall when it comes to performance. Learn how “purpose-built” infrastructure and co-optimized software can help you overcome these challenges, accelerate your journey to multicloud and drive performance for cutting-edge workloads like AI.

What’s New and What’s Next for AI in Watson Supply Chain Solutions

IDC projects that the application of artificial intelligence (AI) will increase cost efficiencies by up to 10%. Already, AI capabilities in IBM Supply Chain Insights (SCI) and Business Transaction Intelligence (BTI) are driving dramatic efficiencies and optimizing decision-making for clients across industries. Join us to hear their stories and learn how we’re extending the value of SCI and BTI with new capabilities, such as anomaly detection in supply chain processes, leveraging conversational analytics for response management and automatic creation of supply chain playbooks. We’ll also discuss our product roadmap and vision for integrating with solutions for Blockchain, sourcing, inventory, order management and optimization.

Learn about IBM’s Storage Solutions for Data-Driven Businesses

We live in a data-driven world, and it’s getting more data-driven by the day. IDC reports that “By 2020, 50% of the Global 2000 will see the majority of their business depend upon having ability to create digitally enhanced products, services and experiences.” To face all these challenges, the right infrastructure matters—storage matters. Hear how IBM provides the most comprehensive portfolio of storage products to help you prepare for a data-driven future.

IBM Storage Solutions for IBM Blockchain

Blockchain is becoming a disruptive technology in payments, logistics, medicine or anywhere a trusted, immutable ledger with provenance is required. But finding hard numbers on the storage required for on-chain data for Hyperledger blockchains is difficult, due to the newness of the technology and a lack of documentation from organizations using Blockchain in daily operations. IBM has recently announced an end-to-end, storage-to-compute, on-premises Blockchain solution for your distributed peer. Come hear about the latest IBM storage solutions specifically for Blockchain, including use cases and storage impacts.

How IBM PowerAI Vision Brings AI within Reach

Computer vision applications—from autonomous driving to automated inspection to clinical diagnosis—increasingly rely on complex neural models. But many researchers and developers are not able to take advantage of these powerful tools because of a gap in deep learning skills. In this discussion, you’ll learn how IBM PowerAI Vision streamlines the process of developing computer vision and AI applications by providing a powerful, integrated development environment from data preparation to guided model development to inference deployment.

If you’re attending Think 2019 be sure and stop by the TechData booth, say hi to our team and check out whats new with Visual One Intelligence™.

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Are you running out of space for your current infrastructure, needing additional security to meet regulatory compliance or coming to the end of a current colocation contract? Organizations of all sizes are realizing financial savings through the efficiency of colo as well as additional security, resiliency and reliability that purpose-built colocation facilities provide. This is not a new concept for many companies; however, Clear Technologies can assist you with planning for your next colo or help optimize your current environment. Clear partners with data centers across the globe to provide colocation space ranging from a single rack to fully dedicated data center spaces.

While many people today consider colo as simply floor space, power, cooling, and bandwidth in a provider’s data center, there are many other services these providers can add, which Clear Technologies can help you navigate.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”6704″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]These services can include various levels of remote hands, managed services, backup as a service targets for solutions such as Veeam and IBM Spectrum Protect, private cloud services and even cloud connect capabilities such as AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute and IBM Cloud Direct.

Colocated data centers also offer more in terms of reliability, availability, security, and efficiency than many organizations can afford themselves. These spaces have many carrier options with redundant paths to many, dual fiber paths, and dual power sources, meaning they offer protection against network or power failures. Clear partners exclusively with Enterprise-class data centers which offer various compliances (SSAE 16, PCI, HIPAA, NIST, etc.) and more than 99.9% SLA’s for uptime.

Clear is also partnering offering their own unique spin on colocation creating even more efficient data centers for the future. These data centers offer dynamic infrastructure services including variable rack densities from 1-50kW in the same row, adaptive facilities for rapid provisioning and growth that is not dependent on what other companies are near your space, and economic flexibility including utility-based pricing models to bring cloud economics to colo.

There are hundreds of potential data centers out there with a variety of specializations and niches. By working with Clear Technologies, we can align your goals as an organization with the colocations that best suit your needs. Clear has over 25 years of data center infrastructure experience and has the team and partnerships that can assist you in finding the right space, developing a migration plan, physically moving the environment and standing up your new data center efficiently with as little impact to your organization as possible.

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Clear Technologies has been working with clients with Power Systems environments for 25 years through various incarnations such as AS/400, iSeries, RS/6000 and now IBM i and AIX. This experience and background, along with in-house subject matter experts, has driven a strong part of Clear Technologies’ business.  Today, Clear still provides the same industry leading solutions to clients but has added other avenues to consume those solutions beyond just on-premises hardware.

Clear Technologies provides clients with infrastructure through capital expenditure that the client owns as well as a service through our IBM Power Infrastructure as a Service offering.  Clear’s hosted infrastructure services are available for production hosting, disaster recovery, archive and more.  We offer flexible short-term contracts for those migrating off of i or AIX as well as long-term contracts for those that would like to not have to worry about that environment ever again.  Clear also offers the capabilities to add VMware virtual machines and even physical hardware to the environment for those companies that need reporting and other applications close to their Power environment.

In addition to Power as a Service, Clear can provide the IBM i and AIX Managed Services to proactively support, monitor and administrate the systems allowing your team can get back to your core business while having best-of-breed skills managing your key infrastructure.  Clear’s comprehensive remote systems management service offers 24×7 monitoring and alerting and can incorporate your daily, weekly and monthly systems processes into a service we would perform.

Finally, Clear provides many other services around those environments to decrease risk and increase efficiency. These services include High-Availability Replication targets (Hot Site), Cold and Warm Site, Tape Restore Verification, VTL to Cloud backup, and many more.

If you would like to hear more about the full suite of Cloud, Hosting and Managed Services Clear Technologies provides for IBM Power clients, please contact your Clear representative today.

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_empty_space height=”40px”][vc_column_text]Clear Technologies is happy to announce three of its employees have been named IBM Champions in the world of IBM Systems for 2019.  Shawn Bodily, Adam Earle and Jonathan Long were chosen based on their contributions to the greater IBM ecosystem as well as the work and achievements they have made at Clear Technologies with IBM.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”6666″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The IBM Champion program is a community of experts outside of IBM that are recognized for championing the IBM company in different areas of its business.  There are over 500 Champions worldwide in various roles such as clients of IBM’s, consultants, architects, engineers and partners. Their role is to foster and support the greater IBM community and to share their expertise.

Clear Technologies is excited for Shawn Bodily, also known on Twitter and YouTube as “PowerHAguy”, for earning this recognition for the fourth year in a row. Shawn’s continued contributions to the IBM Systems technical community, especially in the world of IBM PowerHA where he is one of the world’s foremost experts, are widely recognized in the community.  Shawn is a frequent presenter at IBM Systems Technical University (TechU) where he has recently discussed topics such as “Upgrading to PowerHA SystemMirror for AIX,” “What’s new in PowerHA System Mirror for AIX,” and “Geographically Dispersed Resiliency for Power Systems.”  Shawn is also a technical lead at Clear Technologies and spends time doing everything from architecture discussions to disaster recovery/business continuity planning and system administration/troubleshooting for key clients.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”6669″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_empty_space height=”40px”][vc_column_text]Adam Earle and Jonathan Long are first-time IBM Champions and were both selected for their contributions to the IBM Systems community.  Adam’s passion for IBM’s Storage portfolio is second to none.  He is an advocate for the not only the technological innovations that IBM’s robust family of products brings, but also the business value inherent to the line that is key to a client’s success.  Adam has been a longtime believer in IBM Storage since his time as an IBM client at Lockheed Martin and has brought that to his time at Clear Technologies.  Jonathan has been working with IBM’s hardware portfolio for 10 years at both Clear Technologies and IBM in various sales and services functions. Jonathan runs Clear’s Managed & Professional Services division and he champions IBM through social media, at conferences and other speaking opportunities and through his mentorship of others new to the IBM Systems world.

Clear Technologies is an IBM Platinum partner (IBM’s highest level of partnership) with Expert-level competencies in IBM Server Systems, IBM Storage and IBM Global Financing.  Being an IBM Platinum partner is indicative of not only great sales success but also a high degree of expertise through the form of education and certifications and, most importantly, high client satisfaction. Clear is extremely proud of our team for being named IBM Champions as it not only represents their skills and work – but also that of the entire Clear Technologies team.  We look forward to announcing even more IBM Champions next year![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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The holidays are always a time to reflect.

As I sit back to reflect on the year that was 2018, there are two words that come to my mind: purpose and transformation.

We started off the year by celebrating our 25^thanniversary on March 1, with many of you, at the biggest event we have held at Clear Technologies. Thank you to all 250 clients, partners and employees past and present who were able to join. For those not there, we discussed how Clear Technologies was started primarily as an AS400 reseller, and while some still know us as just that, a majority of you know us for things far different. Our purpose has always the same – to provide meaningful value to our clients. As I said that night, it was a celebration of our past, but also an acknowledgement of our future and the company we want to be for the next 25 years.

We continued a busy month of March by attending IBM Think where I was asked to represent Clear Technologies on stage during the opening session and discuss our transformation from a niche reseller to creator of homegrown intellectual property, such as Visual One Intelligence™ which has enabled us to grow and expand our business. We were also excited to be chosen as IBM Global Financing’s partner of the year at IBM THINK. IGF has been a strategic piece of our business for many years, and the recognition of our team’s expertise in that arena is well-deserved.

In the spring, we were privileged to be selected as the winner of the Horizon Award for Outstanding Partner Performance from West, the Unified Communications service provider. Clear and West, as well as the Cisco team which was instrumental in our success, have enjoyed a great partnership over the past year, and the award was testament to hard work our team has put forth in growing our Cloud services practice. As we continue to grow that practice the rest of this year and on into 2019, we look forward to more success in the collaboration, contact center, cloud, colo and connectivity space with West and other partners.

Another part of our continued transformation was the launch of our Artificial Intelligence and IOT practice, Clear Intelligence. Brian Murphy joined Clear as our Chief Innovation Officer and has overseen the development and growth of Clear Intelligence as we have started this new venture. Clear Intelligence started off the same way that Visual One Intelligence™ did – by trying to creatively solve our clients’ problems. Have you noticed a trend?

That is our purpose. By following our purpose, to provide meaningful value, we had a tremendous year including successes such as developing a solution which we submitted to IBM’s Watson Build Contest. Our solution was chosen as one of the 10 finalist. Out of hundreds of applicants worldwide that proposed a solution in the contest, many being software developers and large consulting organizations, Clear Technologies, a small business headquartered in Addison, Texas, which launched its practice, Clear Intelligence, this year beat them out to be named a finalist. We are so very proud of our team for that and many other great achievements through the course of the year.

These are only a few of the major accomplishments that made this a year to remember. Whether it is the large accomplishments or the little daily wins, they all start with purpose. Sometimes we speak of transformation as a journey that eventually has an end when you reach your perceived goal or destination. However, the truth is I don’t think our transformation will ever reach a “conclusion.” That is because our purpose is to provide meaningful value to our customers, and your needs will change. The technology you need will change. The problems you need solved will change. Our purpose will not change, and we will continue to transform so that we can provide the valuable solutions you need most. Happy Holidays! And we look forward to continuing to be your partner of choice in 2019.

Sincerely,

Phil Godwin

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Clear Technologies is excited to announce it was chosen by IBM to be a finalist in the North American Watson Build contest. Last week, the team from Clear’s AI/IOT division, Clear Intelligence, represented Clear’s solution in New York City against other top finalists. Clear is very proud of our solution and the value it can bring to our clients.

The 2018 Watson Build contest is the second annual competition where IBM partners and solution providers utilize the IBM Watson platforms to create new and innovative solutions around Artificial Intelligence and the IBM Cloud. There are three goals of the competition: 1) Have partners leverage IBM AI tools on their own intellectual property and create a business plan detailing the solutions 2) Build a prototype on IBM Cloud and provide subject matter expertise to optimize the solutions 3) Showcase the top solutions to industry leaders at PartnerWorld at IBM THINK in 2019. This year, there were over 500 initial applicants worldwide in the competition to create the best solution that solves clients’ issues, provides value and utilizes IBM’s Watson API’s most effectively.

Clear Technologies is honored to be among the top ten finalists in North America for the 2018 Watson Build competition. Clear has a long history of working in the Distribution Industry and has vast leadership experience through Brian Murphy’s, Clear Chief Innovation Officer, history as a former Fortune 500 CIO. For our entry in the Watson Build contest, we created a solution that utilized features such as AI Chatbots, image recognition, Blockchain and Sentiment Analysis to deliver value to distribution industry clients. Our solution targeted both client internal users through reporting and analytics, as well as a client-facing application to bring more engagement to end-user customers at quick service restaurants (QSR).

This solution, and the recognition it has garnered, is very exciting for Clear Technologies. In May 2018, Clear Technologies launched Clear Intelligence to focus on emerging technologies such as AI, IOT and Blockchain in order to solve business problems for our clients. Similar to our creation of award-winning reporting & analytics SaaS, Visual One Intelligence™, in 2010, we realize that creating unique, valuable solutions and going beyond the typical IT partner is key to our future. We appreciate this recognition of our capabilities from IBM and we are extremely excited the future Clear Intelligence brings to Clear Technologies.

Clear Technologies is currently scheduling Design Thinking workshops with forward thinking organizations to identify the root cause of their business problems and the value to solve using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learn, Blockchain and other innovative solutions. If you would like to see how these technologies can impact your business, schedule a workshop with us today.

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