Businesses Still Using Windows XP After April 2014 Courting Peril

Businesses still using Windows XP after April 8, 2014, will be courting peril, according to countless IT experts. All Microsoft support for the operating system ends on that day, leaving XP forever vulnerable to new security breaches.

“The importance of upgrading from Windows XP cannot be overstated,” said Tim Rains, director of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing. “We truly want people to understand the risks of running Windows XP after support ends and to recognize the security benefits of upgrading to a more modern operating system.”

Not Always a Genius Move

While often ballyhooed as a panacea for the wide variety computing screen sizes company websites must accommodate, one-size-fits-all websites are actually a trade-off that often end up being more trouble than they’re worth.

The problem: these “responsive websites,” as they’re known—or sites that auto-sense a device’s screen size, and then respond by reconfiguring text and graphics to fit that screen size—often render on desktop PCs with ridiculously large text and other over-blown features that are tedious to wade through.

Vulnerability Awaiting Plunder

Rogue employees working with sensitive company data in public cloud services are regularly wreaking havoc at workplaces, triggering the loss of company secrets, the defacement of company websites and the loss of control over the cloud accounts to competitors and hackers.

“Enterprise IT is rapidly losing control of corporate data,” said Andres Rodriguez, CEO of data-storage company Nasuni. “It’s a risky proposition that IT needs to be in front of and not behind.”

Manage All Social Media With a Single Tool

Companies looking for a single tool to manage their social-media presence across all networks can take heart: Dozens of all-in-one solutions are available that will make the most of a company’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn et al. Even better: Market-research firm Forrester conducted a rigorous study of la crème de la crème of these social-media dashboards and has come up with a list of what it considers “strong performers.”

Essentially, Forrester has done all the advance shopping and legwork for you. So if you’re looking for a single tool that will handle virtually every aspect of your social-media needs, Forrester suggests you investigate the following...

A Marketing Opportunity Beckons

With mobile apps trouncing mobile websites as the preferred medium among smartphone and tablet users, businesses looking to reach those audiences are seriously considering marketing and advertising “in-app.” Essentially, mobile-device users are spending much more time with their apps than with the mobile web—in part because those apps often run much faster on smartphones and tablets than the mobile web does.

A Marketing Home Run, Research Finds

Business-to-business (B2B) marketers find that case-study articles placed in key professional and trade journals are some of the most effective ways to close new deals with current and prospective customers, according to a pair of new studies. Specifically, 67% of B2B buyers surveyed said that they relied on research and white papers presented by trade and professional organizations more than any other source when making purchasing decisions.

Marketers flocking to Facebook and Twitter without even a hint of a social media policy are discovering a disturbing truth: It takes only a few ill-placed tweets and posts to get your feathers plucked.