April 1, 2020, Ultimate Software and Kronos merged to create one of the larger players in the HCM market. Six months later, the company rebranded the merged entity to UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group). Now that just over a year has passed since the merger and with direct experience working with our Clients and the combined companies, we thought now would be a good time to assess where the company is in the landscape of HCM solutions, and where you should be encouraged (while exercising caution) in executing agreements going forward. You may also remember them as a 'one to watch' on our Top 10 HCM HRMS suppliers for 2021. Common Threads Unlike many ...
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Back in the 1980’s an established computer company, Applied Computer Techniques or ACT, wanted to crush a young upstart called ‘Apple.’ So, they renamed their computer Apricot. This copycat strategy was not much of a success, Mitsubishi Electronics bought them in the early 1990’s as a competitive domestic play at NEC eventually shutting down the brand altogether. Maybe not the smartest move by ACT. Fast forward 30 years and a young upstart made its way to the market and its consumers. Founded in 2015, Lemonade has grown to become one of the leading InsurTech companies across the world. But how does a fairly young company compete with various ...
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Inflation impacts the cost of nearly all your supplier agreements. Look closely at your IT agreements (especially your Cloud agreements). Even though the cost of technology goes down over time, and technology advancements make processes less manual, less error prone, less expensive, and more automated, many of your agreements still have antiquated clauses allowing your suppliers to *increase* your costs on an annual basis by an amount equal to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) amount, and generally include an accelerator above that amount; something like CPI + 3%, which would provide a contractual right of your supplier to increase your costs ...
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Cloud spend is anticipated to continue its massive growth trajectory for the foreseeable future. However, the spend does not have to match that same growth curve! To help our Clients maintain sound Cloud Optimization programs, we've assembled a series of articles and tips called: 12 for '21 Cloud Optimization Series (note: request a download of all 12 here). Our seventh chapter in the series: Use Spot Pricing Spot Instances are spare compute capacity at a steep discount (up to 90%) to On-Demand Instances. Spot Instances can go down with very little notice. While they are frequently used to supplement On-Demand Instances, they aren’t meant to ...
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Cloud spend is anticipated to continue its massive growth trajectory for the foreseeable future. However, the spend does not have to match that same growth curve! To help our Clients maintain sound Cloud Optimization programs, we've assembled a series of articles and tips called: 12 for '21 Cloud Optimization Series (note: request a download of all 12 here). Our sixth chapter in the series: CloudWatch with Autoscaling AWS CloudWatch (Azure Monitor, GCP Monitoring) enables you to collect consumption metrics and set up alarms to invoke actions. These tools collect these metrics, allows you to visualize them and to define alarms with the ...
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Call them what you will, but hackers, cybercriminals, and identity thieves, as well as some notable nation states, are an increasing threat to enterprises of all industries and sizes across the globe. The recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident is only the most recent and noteworthy because it impacted an important supply chain: gasoline. However, hundreds of similar breaches are playing out every day and it really goes without saying that Cybersecurity continues to be a top concern among businesses across industries, particularly as work environments have shifted from the office to the home. While Cybercriminals are attempting to ...
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Preface As a follow-up to our previous blog, “Can the White Walker Ghouls at Bloomberg Be Stopped”? We outline NET(net)’s Top 5 reasons why we believe the Bloomberg empire are ‘the walking dead’ and will soon fall. Intro Since 1982, Bloomberg has enjoyed a virtual monopoly on Wall Street, with a stranglehold on the information and technology needed to be a viable securities buyer. That virtual monopoly is coming to an end, but the folks at Bloomberg have not realized it yet. This is why we are reaching out to you folks who spend the massive amounts of money to pay for those Bloomberg devices and services, which are now outrageously ...
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Cloud spend is anticipated to continue its massive growth trajectory for the foreseeable future. However, the spend does not have to match that same growth curve! To help our Clients maintain sound Cloud Optimization programs, we've assembled a series of articles and tips called: 12 for '21 Cloud Optimization Series (note: request a download of all 12 here). Our fifth chapter in the series: Size it Right! Once you have deployed resources for a while, you have to check that your instances are optimal. For most clients, instances are set with the right configuration at time of the launch. As your consumption and business environment evolve, ...
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The news has constant reminders of the risks of an unsecure infrastructure. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware event recently caused blood pressure spikes in boardrooms and C-Suites all over the world. Microsoft continues to expand their security and compliance offerings, with a dizzying and confusing array of services, bundles, and add-ons to your 365 subscriptions. As we come into June, the end of the Microsoft fiscal year, clients are getting heavy pressure from management to “do something” about the very high-risk security and compliance requirements in today’s enterprise – and Microsoft is happy to sell “solutions”. But are they really ...
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Cloud spend is anticipated to continue its massive growth trajectory for the foreseeable future. However, the spend does not have to match that same growth curve! To help our Clients maintain sound Cloud Optimization programs, we've assembled a series of articles and tips called: 12 for '21 Cloud Optimization Series (note: request a download of all 21 here). Today we review the fourth installment in the series: Power-Cycle It. A large portion of the cloud waste originates from idle and low utilization instances. This is particularly relevant for non-production (e.g. development, testing, QA, etc.) instances and applications with consumption ...
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