The Smart Pounder

Since the mid 1990s, Insight Venture Partners has maintained itself on the Worldwide stage as one of the more booming venture capital and private equity firms in the market. With outstandingly fast growth in its industry, Insight Venture Partners is also financially flexible and focused on delivering enterprises as much success as the company itself has found investing in software, Internet and data-enabled organizations.

Insight Venture Partners recognizes that the best effects are the effects of collaborations between the best and smartest in specific fields. This is why the company has in its employ a assorted array of experts in technology, software and Internet, and other arenas. One of these experts is Deven Parekh, one of the current managing directors for IVP.

Deven Parekh has worked in several capacities in the financial industry since his graduation. This would include serving on M & A committees as committee members and an advisor. As Well, Deven Parekh has widened his outstanding reach beyond finance by serving on the board of Publicolor, a non-profit organization focusing on rejected adolescents. It is this contrasting background that makes him, and other staff members who call IVP home, that outfits Deven Parekh to navigate other enterprises through the growing pains of expansion.

Deven Parekh Insight Venture Partners esteemed team member, uses today’s technology to uniquely create opportunities for entrepreneurs. As a private equity company, as a well as a venture capital firm, Deven Parekh and IVP have proven successful in navigating through data-enabled sectors and enabling businesses to grow and develop with much needed venture capital funding.

With successes that are measurable in both dollars and days, Insight Venture Partners has proven success in helping entrepreneurs reach their ambitions. During communication with the brilliant minds in technology and business today, Insight Venture Partners is able to expertly direct any organization through the occasionally muddy path of fiscal success and true growth. With over $3 billion raised by the firm in fifteen, the strength of Insight Venture Partners is proven time and time again.

Virgin Media had launched a service called XXL some time back which provides the internet user with a downloading speed of 50 MB. The service entails a 12-month contract. It also provides unlimited downloads throughout the month without any caps. BT has recently announced a new product, called Infinity, which it plans to launch in the market soon and make it available in at least four million homes. The number of homes it will become available in will increase to 10 million within six months of the launch.

When BT compared its new product, Infinity, to XXL’s service and applauded Infinity, Virgin Broadband hit back stating that Infinity is a fibre optic product which provides internet speeds of only 40MB. BT’s service also entails an 18-month contract compared to Virgin Media’s shorter 12-month deal.

According to BT, its users will save up to £7.47 by using Infinity. However, it also provides a 20GB cap on data download per month.

As a counter to BT’s claim, Virgin Media stated via a spokesperson that there is no reason why anyone would want to wait for Infinity to be launched when they could already take advantage of XXL which is a much better service.

Virgin Media has not stopped only at this. It has also stated that it is building a new fast broadband service which will provide the user with a download speed of 200 MB. However, this product is still in the development stage and the date of its launch is also not yet determined. Market conditions have not been very good and Virgin Media wants to keep that in mind before launching its new service.

Cisco certification candidates, particularly CCNA candidates, must master binary math. This includes basic conversions, such as binary-to-decimal and decimal-to-binary, as well as more advanced scenarios involving subnetting and VLSM.

There’s another conversion that might rear its ugly head on your Cisco exam, though, and that involves hexadecimal numbering.

Newcomers to hexadecimal numbering are often confused as to how a letter of the alphabet can possibly represent a number. Worse, they may be intimidated – after all, there must be some incredibly complicated formula involved with representing the decimal 11 with the letter “b”, right?

Wrong.

The numbering system we use every day, decimal, concerns itself with units of ten. Although we rarely stop to think of it this way, if you read a decimal number from right to left, the number indicates how many units of one, ten, and one hundred we have. That is, the number “15″ is five units of one and one unit of ten. The number “289″ is nine units of one, eight units of ten, and two units of one hundred. Simple enough!

Hex numbers are read much the same way, except the units here are units of 16. The number “15″ in hex is read as having five units of one and one unit of sixteen. The number “289″ in hex is nine units of one, eight units of sixteen, and two units of 256 (16 x 16).

Since hex uses units of sixteen, how can we possibly represent a value of 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15? We do so with letters. The decimal “10″ is represented in hex with the letter “a”; the decimal 11 with “b”; the decimal “12″ with “c”, “13″ with “d”, “14″ with “e”, and finally, “15″ with “f”. (CCNA candidates will remember that a MAC address of “ffff.ffff.ffff” is a Layer 2 broadcast.)

Practice Your Conversions For Exam Success

Now that you know where the letters fall into place in the hexadecimal numbering world, you’ll have little trouble converting hex to decimal and decimal to hex – if you practice.

How would you convert the decimal 27 to hex? You can see that there is one unit of 16 in this decimal; that leaves 11 units of one. This is represented in hex with “1b” – one unit of sixteen, 11 units of one.

Converting the decimal 322 to hex is no problem. There is one unit of 256; that leaves 66. There are four units of 16 in 66; that leaves 2, or two units of one. The hex equivalent of the decimal 322 is the hex figure 142 – one unit of 256, four units of 32, and 2 units of 2.

Hex-to-decimal conversions are even simpler. Given the hex number 144, what is the decimal equivalent? We have one unit of 256, four units of 16, and four units of 4. This gives us the decimal figure 324.

What about the hex figure c2? We now know that the letter “c” represents the decimal number “12″. This means we have 12 units of 16, and two units of 2. This gives us the decimal figure 194.

Tips For Exam Day

Practice your binary and hexadecimal conversions over and over again before you take your CCNA exams. Binary math questions come in many different forms; make sure you have practiced all of them before exam day. The number one reason CCNA candidates fail their exam is that they’re not prepared for the different types of binary math questions they’re going to be asked, and that they aren’t ready for hexadecimal questions at all.

You don’t have time to learn how to do in on exam day. You’ve got to be ready before you go into the exam room, and the only way to be ready is a lot of practice.

Finally, make sure you read the question carefully. You’ve got hex, decimal, and binary numbers to concern yourself with on your CCNA exams. Make sure you give Cisco the answer in the format they’re looking for.

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage (http://www.thebryantadvantage.com), home of free CCNA and CCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages. Video courses and training, binary and subnetting help, and corporate training are also available. Pass the CCNA exam with Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933!

Once you’ve got your CCNA, you’re ready to move on to the next level, the Professional certifications. For years, Cisco had one Professional certification, the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) certification. Over time, Cisco has expanded this level of certifications to include the Cisco Certified Security Professional (CCSP) and Cisco Certified Voice Professional (CCVP).

With security and voice being the two most rapidly expanding areas of today’s networks, some new CCNAs consider going after the CCSP or CCVP without first adding the CCNP to their resume.

While it’s temping to hurry up and get a Cisco security or voice certification, the best thing you can do for your networking career is achieve your CCNP certification first, then decide on the CCVP or CCSP.

Why? Because the CCNA is just the tip of a very large iceberg when it comes to routing and switching. It’s a very important accomplishment, and the CCNA is indeed the foundation of your networking career, but you need to add on to that level of understanding routing and switching before moving on to more specialized areas.

Two examples are OSPF and BGP. You learn about the theory of OSPF and some basic and intermediate configurations of that protocol in your CCNA studies, but the knowledge you acquire of OSPF in your CCNP studies is invaluable. As for BGP, there is no BGP in the CCNA curriculum, but it is a great idea to have some BGP knowledge in today’s networks. It’s also good for your career.

I know it is a huge temptation to go after the security and voice certifications while not paying attention to the CCNP. Do yourself a huge favor and add the tremendous amount of routing and switching knowledge needed for the CCNP to your knowledgebase, and you can then move on to the CCSP or CCVP. Even better, you’ll be better prepared to climb the biggest certification mountain around – the CCIE!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage (www.thebryantadvantage.com), home of free CCNA and CCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages. Video courses and training, binary and subnetting help, and corporate training are also available. Pass the CCNA exam with Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933!

INTRO

Insight Venture Partners direction is helping enterprise management teams groom their businesses. They do this by extending their expertise in, and knowledge of, investments, IPOs, strategic acquisitions, and more. They work closely with management teams to append a company’s immediate resources. Insight Venture Partners works to give value to entrepreneurial enterprises through helping them build their businesses for growth.

BODY1

With a focus on entrepreneurs embracing new technologies in the digital age, Insight Venture Partners assists cutting-edge businesses in realizing their potential. Through venture capital and private equity, they extend resource solutions unique to each of their portfolio companies. With each enterprise functioning under specialized capital structures, Insight assists growth enterprises in using their resources optimally. Their team of seasoned professionals focuses on the software and Internet verticals.

BODY2

At Insight Venture Partners, their portfolio encompasses application software, infrastructure software, Internet and new media, as well as software-enabled services enterprises. Businesses they work with are across the Americas, Asia/Pacific, and Europe. Verticals that are part of their portfolio include business software, consumer Internet, data services, e-commerce, financial services, and network management, among others.

BODY3

Their portfolio businesses can use Insight’s network to grow sales, marketing, and technology partnerships. These portfolio businesses can also use the network to build relationships with important industry insiders. They can also use the network to establish relationships with prospective customers, clients, and acquirers and market analysts. In addition, Insight works to construct relationships with industry-specific executive search companies. This is for function-specific talent for their portfolio companies looking to build their businesses with superior personnel.

CONCLUSION

Insight Venture Partners proceeds to work to deliver value; value that enterprises can measure in dollars gained through the development of their businesses. The firm concentrates their efforts on the special needs of entrepreneurial businesses. They understand that no two businesses are alike, and they strive to ensure they are meeting the exact requirements that expansion and late stage software, Internet, and data-enabled businesses require from them.

Online success or failure often depends on your choise of hosting for email and web.

Publisher: Sam Harfig

The type of Internet hosting service you chose for your business will determine if you fail or are a success as an online business. Planning to venture into the world of Web, the first step for a company will be to have a reliable service for Internet hosting which understands all its needs. Whether it is posting promotional blogs, launching a website or other activity, Internet hosting service is certain. Actually, selection of Internet hosting service counts heavily in the success of any online business. Or one may say that a better website host is the underlying difference between a a successful and failed online business.

Companies working to make their presence on the Internet will find a large number of hosting services. These services are primarily limited to the web such as web hosting service, reseller hosting service, shared web hosting service, dedicated web hosting service, virtual private server, managed hosting service, home servers, collocation web hosting service, etc.

Some companies believe that simply setting up a web page bearing their custom log, a brief account of services and a contact number will be sufficient. But the perception holds true in some cases, not all.

For instance, if a business has a wide range of products to sell, then merely a home page for online business will not do. In such a case, the business should explain all its services and products through customized web pages that give it prominence on the Internet. For accomplishing this task, application hosting service will be the best option since it fulfills all the business requirements.

Normally, people show concerns for other services such as e-mail hosting services, mail list management and DNS hosting services that are associated with web-based applications. Thus, for best results, application hosting services need deep and comprehensive technical expertise and support.

Thus, businesses should hire a professional to run hosting services who not only understands their requirements but also provide appropriate solutions. A business definitely has several other things to consider besides this and all that is dependent on the kind of website and equally on what sort (and magnitude) of presence the business wish to mark online. Selecting a decent web hosting service guarantees that the concerned business is eventually able to get value for money.

However, whatever Internet hosting service a company opts for, the main thing that it should keep in mind is the security of that service. It is a must for every online company to have an appropriate firewall, server spam filter and other security software in place. This will help the company a big deal to avoid various kinds of malicious threats. Rather, the company should be extremely attentive towards this in case financial transactions are taking place via its website. Ensuring the complete safety of the website will also help the company earn a good name among customers as they will feel their transactions safe on their website.

Opthalmologists need a lot more than professional knowledge, more important even than all their training and experience: for what they really tend to wish for the foremost is sure to be specialized equipment to aid them in serving up diagnoses as accurately and quickly as possible. Let’s use as examples a trio of essential pieces of equipment — involving diagnosis, patient comfort, and supply storage, and the things to remember when ordering these and similar items: be they new, used, refurbished or remanufactured. Useful for numerous diagnoses, tonometers come in several types to suit the requirements of the individual optometrist. To secure the greatest accuracy you want to select only tonometers of maximum quality and those which grant most painless use, which guarantees a substantial acceleration of the diagnostic process — which will be of help to your patients and your practice alike. Ultimately, there can be no convincing reason to deploy any tonometer but the very best. There is nothing more obstructive than difficulties trying to get the patient at the best angle for a full diaregnosis, and because every patient is different, this is not easy. When your thoughts turns to selecting exam chairs for your practice you should focus on comfort as well as flexibility. Fully adjustable examination chairs are capable of raising or lowering even the tallest patient to the perfect height. The patient’s examination should be made in comfort, with the exam chairs you selected giving him support. In-depth and long consultations will prove why this is so essential.

Click here and go to this detailed website for examination stool tips!

Toiling with your optometric instruments and other accessories is of course not the way you ought to work. Your practice should, therefore, gain significantly from a treatment cabinet. Leveling glides for uncertain flooring, drawers for difficult-to-store items, secure locks, and movable shelving are the signs of those treatment cabinets which offer the most efficient and convenient storage out there. Be sure that the cabinet of your choice isn’t too big to use with comfort in your rooms. Your ability to perform at your job is determined partly by the equipment you employ, including your choice of treatment cabinet, tonometer, and exam chair. Thus, start your equipment purchasing only after positively determining what you definitely need. Imprecise equipment can only unhinge the workflow, inversely, the smoother to use and the more accurate your gear the more efficient you should do in practice. The degree of efficiency that the right selections can provide your practice with is astonishing… As you can see, the tools you choose will have a sizable impact on how you perform in your job, and, of course, on the long term success of your entire practice.

The iPhone has become the latest craze among people. Though it does not account for half the sale, it definitely accounts for half of the smartphone usage across the world.

Blackberry and Palm Pre are not as successful as iPhones, as Blackberry accounted for around 12% of the data traffic via mobile broadband while Palm Pre accounted for merely 5% of the same in October, which is 5% lesser than September. Thus, it seems that Apple’s iPhone has conquered the market, though others have not been that successful.

This was found by a mobile advertising company AdMob that did a study on the data traffic via 3G mobiles. The company checked more than fifteen thousand websites that advertise smartphones and looked at the applications for buying these phones in order to find out the popularity of different phones.

In addition to the above conclusions, the study also showed that smartphones using Google’s Android operating system have become very well known, as these phones have contributed for close to three quarter of the data traffic in October 2010, at least in the USA.

This establishes that the real guilt of clogging the network is on iPhones. Most of the other smartphones are not used so much that they can lead to congestion in the network. This congestion has been troubling mobile internet service providers who have been trying to manage the load so that subscribers can get good services.

The PK101 pico is the latest projector from Optoma, the trailblazer in small projectors. Headquartered in the Silicon Valley, the organisation is known for its prize winning line of projectors, particularly the micro ones. The PK101, in addition to being amazingly small and highly straightforward to handle, the projector is also the strongest in its class. An indispensable travel companion, the projector may be employed for impromptu shows as well as for catching up on the latest movie using the large screen. And the best part of it all ; it works on almost any surface.

The projector has found favour not just with commercial users but also among the younger iPod generation. The projector with its amazing picture standard and excellent sound capabilities has received some very encouraging feedback :

It’s easy to use, I just wish they had supplied an iPod cable. For us it worked straight out of the box without any problems. It was straightforward to use and the picture quality is great – pixels aren’t a problem. We are using it for iPod pictures, DVDs, television and also for displays. It truly is excellent my only negative point is the speaker but you should not be surprised size of it. Just use headphones or a battery operated speaker. I use my iPod dock and speakers and it works fine. It incorporates a handy attachment to attach a tripod which is a must and also a nice tiny leather case to keep it protected when not in use.

Optoma’s new PK101 Pico, as the name suggests, is a pocket sized projector that is going to massively change the way we share media with our friends, family and varsities. You get the projector itself, an AV cable, with a 2.5mm 4 pole jack at one end and three female RCA connectors at the other. You also get two 1100mah batteries, which is a nice thing as though the claimed battery life is 1.5 hours, on full lightness you realistically only get about an hour per battery. There is also a USB charger and USB to mini USB charging lead, which could do with being longer.

In a world where everything seems to fit into the pocket, it makes absolute sense keep a projector there also. For the business users who are continually on the go, there may be nothing better and for the amateur user, the PK101 might be the saviour from boredom during those forsaken hours. Whichever category you seem to fit into, owning this masterwork from Optoma seems extraordinarily logical.

Security is a hot topic in today’s networks, and will continue to be for a long time to come. With that in mind, you must consider adding a Cisco security certification to your resume and firewall skills to your skill set.

It’s quite a jump from the CCNA to the CCSP (Cisco Certified Security Professional), and Cisco has made that leap more manageable by adding Specialist certifications. These certifications can give quite a boost to both your resume and your skill set, and act as a great “stepping stone” to the CCSP.

At present, Cisco offers four VPN/Security certifications, those being Cisco Firewall Specialist, Cisco IPS Specialist, Cisco VPN Specialist, and Cisco VPN/Security Sales Specialist. Since every WAN engineer has contact with Cisco firewalls on a regular basis, we’ll take a closer look at this popular certification first. (And those who want to be WAN engineers had better learn something about firewalls, too!)

At the writing of this article (October 21, 2005), Cisco is offering an option for each of the two exams you’ll need to pass to earn this certification. For the first exam, you can take either the 642-551 SND (Securing Cisco Network Devices) or 642-501 SECUR (Securing Cisco IOS Networks). The final day to register for the SECUR exam is December 19, 2005.

For either, you’ll need to be able to answer questions regarding the proper use of Cisco security devices; how to configure security on a Cisco switch and on a router, including syslog logging, AAA, ACLs, and security for router services and interfaces.

The choices for the second exam are the 642-522 SNPA (Securing Network with PIX and ASA) and 642-521 CSPFA. Topics for these exams include , IPSec, NAT, firewalls, AAA, and policy mapping. (As always, you should check for the latest exam blueprints at Cisco’s website. Click “Learning And Events” on the main page, www.cisco.com).

The only prerequisite for this certification is that you must hold a valid CCNA certification.

As always, getting some hands-on experience is the best way to prepare for your Cisco exams. (Your employer is going to get a little upset if you practice your configs on his or her PIX. It would be a good idea to have a good lawyer, too.) There are online rack rental services that include Cisco security devices in their pods.

Cisco certifications are a great way to help protect your career as well as your network. The more you know, and the more varied your skills, the more valuable you are to your present and future employers. Use your CCNA as a foundation, and keep building on your skills!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage (www.thebryantadvantage.com), home of free CCNA and CCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages. Video courses and training, binary and subnetting help, and corporate training are also available.

For a FREE copy of his latest e-books, “How To Pass The CCNA” or “How To Pass The CCNP”, send a request to chris@thebryantadvantage.com today !