Pingsta Blog

Pingsta Announces its Sponsorship of R2EL – Road to Entrepreneurial Leadership

pingstapr — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:06:48 +0000

R2EL is an empowering platform with the sole purpose of inspiring and enabling tomorrow’s technology entrepreneurs and leaders. On November 29, 2010, R2EL will be holding its very first (of many) seminars in Zurich, Switzerland. Students and budding entrepreneurs from across the globe will have the opportunity to interface directly with successful technology entrepreneurs.

For its inaugural seminar, R2EL has confirmed Mr. Ulf Michael (Monty) Widenius, Co-Founder of MySQL as its guest of honor and keynote speaker. “Monty” will be sharing the story of his road to entrepreneurial success and answering questions from R2EL’s live and online audience.

Pingsta highly encourages anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit to reserve a seat for this seminar via www.r2el.org.

See www.r2el.org/en/news.php for the full press release and we hope to see you all in Zurich!

The Pingsta Team.

Pingsta Perks program out of Beta

pingstapr — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:23:34 +0000

Being a Pingsta member has never been better!

Pingsta is proud to announce the official launch of Pingsta Perks™, a service that provides Pingsta members with an array of exclusive promotions and reward opportunities from the world’s leading luxury lifestyle brands.

Contributing industries to Pingsta Perks include private aviation, luxury vehicles, upscale hotels and resorts, high-end jewelers, and many more.

So Pingsta members, make sure to access available offers via the aggregated Perks portal in Pingsta and redeem Perks of interest using your Pingsta member number as your unique identifier. Remember, we are always taking Perk requests and adding new perks to the program for you and your immediate family members to enjoy.

Interested in becoming a Pingsta Perks partner? Contact: perks@pingsta.com

Interested in becoming a Pingsta member? Visit http://pingsta.com/pingsta_members

Does the Obama Administration See Clouds in the Forecast?

pingstapr — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:56:34 +0000

The latest reports from the White House indicate that the Obama administration will increase federal IT expenditure in the next five years – placing extra emphasis on cloud computing, public collaboration and cyber attack deterrence.

The White House’s policies currently push for transparency, participation, collaboration and innovation as the new format for business in government. As a result, more and more Government agencies are incorporating collaborative platforms. In fact, over forty agencies, including the Department of Energy, have already started using collaborative platforms to facilitate innovation and public participation. Recently, the Depart of Energy (DOE) launched their website in an effort to follow new guidelines set by President Obama’s Open Government Initiative. According to Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, this platform will allow people from all over the globe to benefit from the DOE’s data and technical resources.

By using collaborative and information platforms, enterprises and communities can interact with the public and share data across multiple applications, taping directly into the relevant knowledge and expertise. Most recently at the Gov 2.0 Conference, Vivek Kundra, the first CIO of the United States, and Aneesh Chopra, the U.S CTO, also announced his support for collaborative platforms and open data. An increasing number of government officials realize the power of cloud-based collaborative platforms and open data. The new technological opportunities and innovation these platforms generate will reshape the way we think of government today.

In addition to creating more transparency and collaboration, the Obama administration also looks to cut IT expenditures while still focusing on deterrence, maintaining security and uninterrupted access to their resources. Earlier this year, Google and thirty other companies were penetrated by cyber attacks on their networks. This comes at a time when the Government has already stated that it has no real deterrence had these cyber attacks been targeted at their power grids or financial networks. Government officials say that they are looking beyond military might as a solution to the deterrence problem and along with the Obama Administration’s emphasis on collaborative and cloud-computing platforms that can soon change.

With the Government looking towards innovative solutions – cloud-based platforms such as Pingsta ICE™ and Pingsta VPI™, can cut operational and capital expenditures while maintaining high security. Deterring cyber attacks can be difficult, so being able to respond quickly is of utmost importance. Pingsta ICE™ and Pingsta VPI™ offer a mobile workforce and direct-to-expert support, providing government agencies and enterprises a way to connect to an array of talent anywhere in the world in real time. These platforms also include on-demand capabilities, increasing responses and resources when needed to combat cyber attacks.

Pingsta’s online collaborative platforms, ICE and VPI, allow for enterprises and government agencies to not only decrease their IT expenses through our industry first collaboration features, but also achieve a higher network security through our industry expert engineers, on-demand service, and secure infrastructure.

Learn more about how Pingsta can help you cut cost while maintaining overall network security and availability.

Pingsta Announces Virtual Private ICE™

pingstapr — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:29:00 +0000

Recent research identifies private cloud computing as a method of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to internal customers using Internet technologies. Through 2012, analysts predict that IT organizations will make greater private cloud computing investments than on offerings from public cloud providers.

Pingsta is excited to present businesses across the globe with a revolutionary solution to realize the operational and economic benefits of private cloud computing.

Pingsta Virtual Private ICE™ (VPI) enables IT Service Providers, Government agencies and Fortune 500 corporations to create a global and profitable workforce-in-the-cloud that serves as a powerful web-based intellectual collaborative platform for all of their interdepartmental functions. Pingsta VPI™ clients enjoy enhanced workforce collaboration, seamless knowledge-capture and reuse, an easy exchange of intellectual and social communication via a private and secure cloud-based platform and an unprecedented capability to monetize excess intellectual capacity to generate new green revenue streams.

Benefits of Pingsta VPI™ include:

Enhanced collaboration throughout entire an organizational structure
Intelligent knowledge capture, storage and reuse
Simplified workforce management
Consolidate network assets by 75% and administration and travel costs by 80%
Excess capacity monetization – harness and monetize the untapped intellectual capacity of your workforce that otherwise goes to waste
Create a new, green revenue stream that could amount to US$1000 per employee per day and further differentiates your firm.

To learn more about Pingsta VPI™ visit http://pingsta.com/products/vpi

To get started, make sure to sign up today for a free 90-day Pingsta VPI™ trial and begin enjoying the efficiencies of creating your own Workforce-in-the-Cloud™.

Pingsta Launches Pingsta Perks™

pingstapr — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:09:00 +0000

Thinking about planning your next getaway? Have you got your mind set on that Ballon Bleu de Cartier watch? Are you treating yourself to a Ferrari California or upgrading to a Bugatti Veyron 16.4?

Pingsta is proud to introduce its Pingsta Perks™ Program. Through this program, all Pingsta members (and their immediate family members) will enjoy privileged access to exclusive discounted offers and promotions from leading luxury lifestyle brands across the globe. Industries such as select airlines and private jets, boutique restaurants, hotels and resorts, along with luxury car and lifestyle brands are joining Pingsta in acknowledging and celebrating the world’s internet rock stars – you!

So make sure to first stop by the Perks tab if you’re contemplating on doing some well merited self-indulgence. Pingsta Perks™ can enhance your “treat-yourself” experience that much more.

About Pingsta Perks™

Pingsta Perks™ is a free service that provides Pingsta members (and their immediate family members only) with exclusive offers and promotions from the world’s leading luxury lifestyle brands.

Luxury brands interested in participating in the Pingsta Perks™ program should contact the Perks Administrator via Pingsta feedback.

Cloud Computing Benefits

pingstapr — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:49:00 +0000

Cloud computing- a ‘trendy’ term that to many, may still sound a bit vague, but once it’s value is understood in its entirety, it is really not so ambiguous.

A recent article from EurActiv, simply defines cloud computing as a term based on the principle that users do not usually own the physical infrastructure which hosts applications and software. Keeping that in mind, cloud computing comes into focus when thinking about what IT always needs: a way to augment capacity or add capabilities on demand without investing in new infrastructure, personnel, or software. Cloud computing includes any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that can expand IT’s existing capabilities in real time, over the Internet.

Viviane Reding, EU Information Society Commissioner advised SMBs that cloud computing services are the cure needed for the current economic downturn. She strongly believes that cloud computing services can increase business productivity by changing from fixed costs (i.e. hiring staff or buying PCs) to variable costs (i.e. you only pay for what you use).

During her speech, Reding highlighted some very valuable points. In Europe, there are 23 million SMBs, making up to 99% of all of their firms. However, SMBs continue to fall behind in the use of ICT tools that can enhance overall productivity. It was estimated that a million new jobs could be created simply by relocating office activities to the cloud. This can potentially add up to 0.2% to Europe’s annual GDP within the next five years.

With cloud computing uncertainty to the side, SMBs worldwide are clearly encouraged to leverage web-based services to begin to overcome the global recession.

So what are you waiting for?

Enjoy immediate cost savings and the complete benefits that cloud computing can bring to your business through Pingsta ICE™.

New Feature: Pingsta Collaborative Asset Manager (Pingsta CAM™)

pingstapr — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:34:00 +0000

A recent report from the Gartner Group states that effective asset management is one of the best means for businesses to achieve immediate IT cost savings: it can yield savings of up to 30% per asset within the first year. However, only about 25% of companies have a decent asset management plan. Unfortunately, many organizations continue to use outdated and extensive excel sheets to record and manage assets, email attachments to share asset data.

To solve this problem, Pingsta just launched a new Pingsta ICE™ service feature called Pingsta Collaborative Asset Manager™ (Pingsta CAM™). Pingsta CAM™ provides businesses of all sizes as well as Government agencies with organization-wide asset management capabilities.

Pingsta CAM™ Benefits Include:

Enhanced asset management by enabling the collaborative upload, update, and management of all IT assets across multiple locations worldwide in real time.
Organization-wide visibility to all IT assets such as routers, switches, firewalls, data center servers and storage networking via an intelligent world map mashup.
Reduced costs and pay-per-asset while dramatically improving efficiencies because Pingsta CAM™ requires no software to download, setup nor maintain.
Enhanced global cross-functional collaboration organization-wide.
End-to-end real-time visibility and global accessibility to accurate corporate asset data.
Improved service delivery, employee productivity and the balance sheet.

How does it work?
Pretty simple.

Sign up for free to a Pingsta ICE™ edition (e.g. Service Provider, Enterprise, or Pro), from your Pingsta ICE™ dashboard, click on the “Assets” tab, and begin adding your IT assets.

As the default account administrator, you can also add other corporate users within your organization that are involved in asset acquisition, implementation and management such as procurement, engineering, finance etc. to the same asset map so that it can be collaboratively updated.

To learn more, watch the Pingsta CAM™ video or contact Pingsta and an account manager will be glad to help you further.

To get started, make sure to sign up today for a free 90-day trial and begin leveraging Pingsta CAM™ to unify and simplify your entire asset inventory through Pingsta’s collaborative web 2.0 platform.

Pingsta ICE- 101

pingstapr — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:24:00 +0000

Pingsta ICE Lead (PIL)

pingstapr — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:00:00 +0000

New Feature – Pingsta ICE Lead (PIL)

pingstapr — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:36:00 +0000

Whether you are an independent network consultant with several private customers faced with the headaches of client management e.g. providing customer references, filling out various W-9s (tax paperwork), chasing payments long after projects are completed or you are a network engineer who is tired of dishing out expert advice on various forums for free, Pingsta has the solution you need.

Based on the feedback from the Pingsta community, we’ve developed a new feature called Pingsta ICE Lead (PIL) that simplifies task and payment management for consulting network engineers through Pingsta ICE. PIL allows consultants to migrate existing or potential customers to the Pingsta ICE platform so they can seamlessly deliver their services and simplify all accounts management tasks.

Benefits:
With PIL, independent network consultants enjoy:

Simplified task and project management – You manage all customer support and consulting tasks via Pingsta’s integrated web 2.0 platform.
Simplified accounts receivable – You no longer have to chase multiple customers for payments or fill out multiple W-9s and other paperwork. Pingsta pays you directly for all work done.
Robust backup expertise – You can rest easy from knowing that the rest of the Pingsta ICE experts will back you up on tasks that fall outside your area of expertise.

How does it work?
Pretty simple.

Have your client subscribe to Pingsta ICE Pro for only $60/company/month. (You receive a 10% commission of their first years’ subscription.)
Once logged into their Pingsta dashboard, they can go to “Account Settings”–>”PIL” and add you as their PIL using only your Pingsta member number. They should also set the hold-time – the amount of time the task should be sent only to you – ranging from 30 minutes to 24 hours.

You now have the first-right-of refusal for all new tasks your client creates. Tasks you don’t accept within the hold-time period will be intelligently routed as normal to other ICE engineers with the appropriate expertise so one of them can resolve it. You will be able to track all your PIL clients within “My PIL Accounts” under your “My ICE” tab.

Not yet a Pingsta member but looking to participate in the PIL program? No problem, request a Pingsta membership and an invitation will be sent to you once we validate your expertise.

Enjoy,

Erika