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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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Things are changing. Enterprises are shedding complex, legacy multi-tiered solutions in favor of simplified data management purpose-built for cloud. In the past, using multiple point solutions resulted in brittle infrastructure, which brought challenges such as long deployment cycles, inability to meet SLAs, lack of scalability, architectural complexity, and fragmented management.

Rubrik has come along to change that. Rubrik bridges the gap between owned, on-premises infrastructure and the cloud by decoupling data from the data center. With a software-defined approach, Rubrik delivers the agility and performance of web-scale platforms and cloud providers while automating workflow management to provide resiliency and agility as enterprises on-ramp to the cloud.

What is Cloud Data Management?

Rubrik Cloud Data Management is a single, unified software platform to manage your physical, virtual, and cloud data. With Rubrik, enterprises can drastically simplify their data protection processes, automate workflows, and migrate data to the cloud. The results are powerful: faster recoveries, easier management, no forklift upgrades, and hard dollars saved for other projects. If your company is pursuing cloud- first policies Rubrik can archive to the cloud, create cloud DR capabilities, or perform cloud-native backup. And with Rubrik’s Polaris SaaS platform, it’s never been easier to unify data across data centers and clouds, simplifying operations and governance.

Before Rubrik – The diagram below depicts legacy architecture consisting of multiple points of technology, including media servers, backup storage, tape, and software licenses.

After Rubrik – Rubrik reduces management complexity by 70% with a converged software platform that is radically simple and built for any cloud.Why

Cloud Data Management?Rubrik decouples application data from infrastructure through a software-defined fabric, driving business acceleration and resiliency at lower costs. Rubrik’s Cloud Data Management platform provides a cloud-native approach to managing the lifecycle of data, from creation to expiration, across the data center to the cloud. In one platform, Rubrik delivers instant access, automated orchestration with self-service, and unified management for any application, cloud, or location.

• Instant Access: Rubrik enables predictive global search and instant recovery by unifying data locked within disparate application silos into one globally indexed namespace while leveraging zero-byte cloning technology to enable on-demand copy data workflows. Recover quickly from ransomware from immutable backups and point-in-time recovery. Deliver fast, customized platform analytics across your entire infrastructure.
• Automated Orchestration with Self-Service: Rubrik wipes out management complexity with just a few clicks through a single policy engine that orchestrates service level agreements (SLAs) across the entire data lifecycle. Automate management across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with one programmatic interface. Integrate Rubrik into your ideal stack to accelerate application and data service delivery.
• Freedom of Choice: Rubrik frees applications and data from infrastructure, unifying management on one platform. Rubrik provides a cloud-native platform with broad support for any third-party hypervisor, application, database, and cloud. Rubrik secures application data whether in-flight or at-rest throughout its lifecycle, regardless of location.

The benefits can you expect from Rubrik’s Cloud Data Management Platform:

• Near-zero RTO – Reduce your RTOs from hours to just minutes. Deliver near-zero RTOs by mounting directly onto Rubrik. No rehydration in production required. Instantly recover from failures, disasters, and Ransomware. Deliver near-zero RTOs with predictive search. Locate VMs, databases, applications, or files, whether the data resides on-prem or in the cloud.
• Immediate Hard Savings – Achieve 30-50% in hard savings immediately from software convergence. Management simplicity amplifies savings over time while freeing resources up for true innovation.
• Get Up and Running – Customers typically get up and running in less than 15 minutes. Determine what policies to apply to your applications. Rubrik takes care of the rest.
• Daily Management Time – Use one SLA policy engine to create and automate backup, replication, and archival policies with just a few clicks. Reduce daily management time by 60%. Rubrik wipes out management complexity with just a few clicks through a single policy engine that orchestrates service level agreements (SLAs) across the entire data lifecycle. Automate management across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with one programmatic interface.
• Data Center Footprint Reduction – Eliminate complexity of legacy multi-point solutions with a single platform. Shrink your data center footprint up to 70%.

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Today, there are two basic schools of thought for architecting the infrastructure of the future: on-premise hardware or Cloud.  While both options can take many different forms (and have wildly different pros and cons), they are the basic decision one must make when modernizing their environment.  On-prem hardware can lead to lower long-term costs with better performance and more control, while Cloud offerings can offer lower upfront costs, faster speed to market and less management overhead.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]What if you could have an environment with the benefits of Cloud in on-premise architecture?

This is exactly what IBM Cloud Private offers: the speed of the public cloud with the control of owning your own hardware.  IBM Cloud Private is a Kubernetes-based container platform that embraces modern workloads and dynamic provisioning all within your own datacenter – minimizing risk, complexity and cost.  IBM Cloud Private offers Rapid Innovation, Hybrid Integration, and Compliance & Management all while leveraging your current investments.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”6544″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]IBM Cloud Private also enables cloud benefits in IBM Power environments.  IBM Cloud Private for Power strengthens its industry-leading reliability and performance capabilities while adding the automation and flexibility of Cloud.  Clients run on IBM Power for its ability to handle mission-critical applications – IBM Cloud Private enhances that ability while also providing an easy avenue to add new technologies such as AI, Blockchain and IoT.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Here are three of the reasons you should consider IBM Cloud Private for IBM Power today:

1. Leverage your current investments in IBM AIX and i while modernizing those environments for the future.
2. Add the ability to use containers to quickly deploy new solutions such as AI and Blockchain.
3. Increase the agility of your environment for a Cloud-like approach to infrastructure for new AI and Machine Learning applications.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]All of these features and more can be added to your environment for very little investment. In fact, adding this to a IBM POWER9 proposal is as simple as adding a part number. Clear Technologies has IBM Power Systems  subject matter experts ready to show you how this would work at your organization.  To learn more about how to modernize your environment and add the best of Cloud to your environment, contact your Clear Technologies rep today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”GET IN TOUCH” color=”primary” align=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp” button_block=”true” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cleartechnologies.net%2Fabout%2Fcontact%2F|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

When you hear the term Blockchain, it likely brings to mind cryptocurrency.  Although cryptocurrency is its most publicized use, Blockchain is not simply a technology for financial institutions.  Manufacturers are also utilizing Blockchain themselves in a number of ways. One of its more innovative applications is in the realm of technology service and support. Digital ledger technology is now delivering a new level of assurance that service providers are meeting their responsibilities outlined in service-level agreements (SLAs).

IBM recently launched a new Support as a Service capability powered by IBM Blockchain and aimed at businesses engaging in digital transformation. By embedding blockchain into their Multivendor Support Services “smart contracts,” IBM can provide transparent, audit-ready transaction data while monitoring SLA metrics and accountability. This process streamlines and automates the billing processes to more closely match the speed and dynamism of the digital business model.

Blockchain – Built in Trust?

The promise of blockchain is that a shared distributed ledger creates a tamper-resistant record of transactions enabling trusted and audit-ready products and services. When using blockchain, trust is delegated to people and even objects such as sensors and monitors that occupy a shared network. If one of these data sources isn’t trusted to perform well, it can be automatically rejected by the other objects on the network, as well as the transaction record itself. In this way, the ledger and its “smart contract” become the foundation of trust.

This ability to preserve trust becomes increasingly important as contracts grow in both size and complexity and transaction data is shared continuously, in near-real time. By time-stamping contract-related events and adding them to a tamper-resistant record, support providers can effectively embed trust into the digital ledger.

Blockchain is expected to become an essential resource for the enterprise to evaluate contract performance, reduce the complexity of billing processes and eliminate unrealizable billing costs due to lack of evidence or an over-delivery of services.

With blockchain now an integral part of IBM’s Support as a Service portfolio, companies can gain the ability to independently verify the activities driving their digital business processes, providing new-found confidence that they are both delivering and receiving exactly what is expected.

Learn More about IBM Multivendor Support Services in the video below:

To learn more about IBM Multivendor Support Services and how they’re using blockchain to ensure delivery of technology support services, please contact Steven Hargis, shargis@cleartechnologies.net.