Make sure to have your Credit and Debit Cards topped up!!! Black Friday & Cyber Monday are fast approaching. Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. The term dates back to at least 1966, although its usage was primarily on... the East coast. The term has become more common in other parts of the country since 2000. Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November. According to Reuters, in 2007 135 million people participated in the Black Friday shopping rush.
The term "Black Friday" may have originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers go from being in the red (i.e., posting a loss on the books) to being in the black (i.e., turning a profit).
Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. The term made its debut in 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday' Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year". According to the Shop.org/BizRate Research 2005 eHoliday Mood Study, "77 percent of online retailers said that their sales increased substantially last year on the Monday after Thanksgiving, a trend that is driving serious online discounts and promotions on Cyber Monday this year (2005)". In 2006, Shop.org announced that it launched the CyberMonday.com portal, a one-stop shop for Cyber Monday deals. In 2009, comScore reported that consumers spent $887M online on Cyber Monday (excluding travel), the second highest spending day of 2009.

Make sure to have your Credit and Debit Cards topped up!!! Black Friday & Cyber Monday are fast approaching. Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. The term dates back to at least 1966, although its usage was primarily on... the East coast. The term has become more common in other parts of the country since 2000. Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November. According to Reuters, in 2007 135 million people participated in the Black Friday shopping rush.
The term "Black Friday" may have originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers go from being in the red (i.e., posting a loss on the books) to being in the black (i.e., turning a profit).
Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. The term made its debut in 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday' Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year". According to the Shop.org/BizRate Research 2005 eHoliday Mood Study, "77 percent of online retailers said that their sales increased substantially last year on the Monday after Thanksgiving, a trend that is driving serious online discounts and promotions on Cyber Monday this year (2005)". In 2006, Shop.org announced that it launched the CyberMonday.com portal, a one-stop shop for Cyber Monday deals. In 2009, comScore reported that consumers spent $887M online on Cyber Monday (excluding travel), the second highest spending day of 2009.

Happy Thanksgiving

B2BGateway would like to wish all our clients, partners and friends a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Intuit Connections ISP Summit 2011

B2BGateway.Net a leading global EDI solution provider and Intuit QuickBooks Gold Developer will be attending the Intuit Connections ISP 2011 Summit in Orlando, Florida this October 9-12, 2011.
This year’s summit takes place at the Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld hotel. The theme of this years event is “Connections,” to represent the important role the summit plays in connecting ISP (Intuit Solution Providers) with peers, vendors, and Intuit representatives as they look for new ways to improve and expand their business.
“Connections” will be an intimate, high touch, business and innovation focused event showcasing the industry’s best solutions including B2BGateway.Net’s Cloud\SaaS based fully integrated EDI solutions for all Intuit QuickBooks products. As in previous years, B2BGateway.Net will be a technology sponsor of the event and will have a booth in the main floor. Make sure to drop by and say hello if you are planning to attend this event.

B2BGateway.Net EDI enables the Clash of the Ash!

Hurling is the name given to a traditional Irish sport played with sticks called hurley's and a small leather ball, it is also known in colloquial terms as the Clash of the Ash - referring to the hurley sticks used which are crafted from Ash trees. Each team consists of 15 players and a game typically consists of two periods of play of 35 minutes each. Hurling is older than the recorded history of Ireland. It is thought to predate Christianity, having come to Ireland with the Celts and has been a distinct Irish pastime for at least 2000 years. The earliest written references to the sport in Brehon law date from the fifth century. The tale of the Táin Bó Cuailgne (drawing on earlier legends) describes the hero Cúchulainn playing hurling at Emain Macha. Similar tales are told about Fionn Mac Cumhail and the Fianna, his legendary warrior band. Meallbreatha describes punishments for injuring a player in several games, most of which resemble hurling. The Seanchás Mór commentaries on the Brehon Law state that the son of a rí (local king) could have his hurley hooped in bronze, while others could only use copper. It was illegal to confiscate a hurley.

Traditionally hurley sticks have been sold at club or team level or passed down from player to player, however, B2BGateway.Net EDI solutions have brought the sale of hurling sticks into the 21st Century! Champion Hurleys Ltd., one of the leading hurley manufacturing companies in Ireland started selling their hurley's to Musgraves (SuperValu & Centra retailers) and needed EDI to submit their invoices electronically to the retailer. Champion Hurley's contacted B2BGateway.Net who set them up on their cost effective, web based EDI solution - WebConnect. Champion Hurley's can now submit all their invoices electronically, bringing over 2,000 years of tradition into the 21st Century!

B2BGateway.Net offers EDI for Amazon Drop Ship Central

B2BGateway.Net offers EDI automation to Amazon Drop Ship Central users. Instead of having to manage everything manually, end users can now avail of B2BGateway.Net's EDI X12 solutions to automate the process. Documents handled include: Order Fulfillment Processes (850, 855 and 856), Consolidated Invoices, Packing Slips and Inventory. Visit www.b2bgateway.net
for further details

B2BGateway.Net develops TASC - EDI Testing Portal

Global EDI Specialist, B2BGateway.Net have expanded their offering in the Cloud with a new SaaS EDI Testing Portal - TASC (Testing And Supplier Compliance) Portal. The TASC portal offers On-Demand 24/7 EDI Testing & Validation Services for Large Format Retailers, Manufacturers and Third Party Logistics Providers (3PL’s). As more and more firms become EDI compliant the pressure on trading partners to implement successful EDI testing, mapping and validation procedures can put a huge strain on any firms resources. With B2BGateway.Net’s new TASC portal, however, firms can now access on-demand 24/7 EDI Testing and Validation services thus freeing up personnel to focus on their production environment. The advantages of using B2BGateway.Net’s TASC portal include cost and time savings, consistency, ease of use and the portal is fully customizable to meet the individual needs of any particular client.

B2BGateway CEO to be featured speaker at Right Networks Accounting C4 Conference

B2BGateway.Net CEO, Kevin Hoyle, will be a featured speaker at Right Networks Accounting C4 conference. This year’s conference will take place at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel from September 18th to 20th, 2011.
Accounting C4 is an event focused on bringing the practice and clients of all size accounting firms to the cloud to allow for integration with the hosted or SaaS business applications that best fit their needs. Attendees will gain a better understanding, through networking, training and presentations, of how to bring their own practice online and of the available technology platforms to allow their business to excel in addition to providing guidance to their clients on how to do the same.
Kevin’s topic will be B2BGateway.Net- The keys to streamlining the supply chain and increasing sales. Everyone talks about streamlining the supply chain process, tightening lead times and process flow automation…but most people have no idea what any of that means. To most, it sounds like a load of the latest buzz words with a really high price tag attached. Do you really need to be part of the cloud to make your business better? Kevin will use this session to demystify some of the newer technologies and show how you can use them to your advantage in a cost effective manner.

On being different..................

Over the past month or so, I have had some extended business travel and some free time in the European Union (EU). Having spent time in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, France and Italy, you see a few things that are different. No, not just the obvious things like different languages, or driving on the other side of the road, but the more subtle things. For example, in Europe the grocery shopping carts (trolleys) have 4 wheels that swivel. This doesn’t sound like much, but if you come from the United States and you are used to the carts traveling in two dimensions and suddenly you are faced with three dimensions, it can be a big change.
In Paris, I noticed that a lot of people seem to litter. I’ve seen Parisians eat a sandwich and throw the wrapper on the ground. I watched a lot of Parisians open a pack of cigarettes (from my limited point of view, I’m pretty sure that all Parisians smoke, although there may be one older gentleman in South Paris who does not…) and the wrapper ends up on the sidewalk. In Ireland and the UK, a large percentage of the people smoke as well, but they are not allowed to do it indoors. So the sidewalks are filled with smokers. I spend most of my time walking down the sidewalks coughing; so much that I’ve found that you have to ‘step inside for a breath of fresh air’.
In the United States, when we go to the beach, there are teams of people watching us and blowing their whistles to make sure we don’t swim out too far. If we do, they are ready to swim out and rescue you (remember the TV show Baywatch…). But in Europe, if you want to do something stupid and you end up hurt or dead, it is your own fault. “Oh, he swam out to far and drowned. Bummer, he should have known better” (It is best if you read this quote with a French accént).
But, being different is interesting. After cataloging some of the differences between the US and EU (which would fill a whole book), I started thinking about differences in organizations and in particular, B2BGateway.Net (yep, here is the tie in). At B2BGateway.Net, we are different; not just in what we do, but in how we do it. People at B2BGateway.Net enjoy what they do and take pride in their work, but they also have personalities that are different and unique. This newsletter and some of our future video clips will show some of the different personalities that make our company great. I hope you enjoy.
Thanks , Kevin

Next Generation Firewalls

The Internet can be a scary place. It is an ever-evolving landscape that empowers the enterprise and is now a critical component to success for most companies. Some organizations have their entire business model based on the Internet and online retail. However, the downside to the exponential growth in customers and wonders of the Internet are now made more obvious with each passing news day. The extended reach offered by the Internet not only lets us reach out to our customers; it also opens the door for malicious entities and provides new attack vectors that target the Enterprise.

But this is old news; everyone knows that hackers, spammers and virus writers are out there trying to get in. That is why we have firewalls, spam filters, Intrusion Detection Systems, Intrusion Prevention Systems, Windows updates and everything else. Yet, given all that we have to secure the enterprise, why are there so many data breaches and public exploits? Because things change, applications mutate and what used to be a wonderful utility is now a data-stealing virus running over port 80. The funny email someone just sent has now infected the entire office and is clogging the network with spam. In other words, Outlook will no longer work and Excel has become frozen and you can’t get any work done.

Enter Next Generation Firewalls. We all know the firewall is a company’s first line of defense against the perils of the Internet. Savvy firewall administrators open only those ports that are necessary to support mission critical applications and services. Bandwidth monitoring and Content Filtering provide an essential layer of security as well. We all know this and employ this technology, so what defines a Next Generation Firewall?

Gartner defines them well in their report, available on the Palo Alto Networks website at http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/literature/research/Gartner-NGFW-Report.html or on the Gartner website at: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=171540

To view the reports you will need to enter in some information, but essentially Next Generation Firewalls can do everything that a first generation firewall does and more. To fit the Gartner definition they must have Application Awareness and full stack visibility, allowing security policies that enable or disable features at the application layer. The example cited is allowing Skype but blocking the file-sharing feature within Skype. They must have Extrafirewall Intelligence, which allows the firewall to make better blocking decisions using data from an outside rule base such as a black list or white list. Other examples of this would be directory integration, and allowing access to resources based upon the user accounts within the directory.

In today’s rapidly changing climate, what seems like innocuous behavior in an application can be much more. It is easy for applications or malware to exploit open ports in the traditional firewall and go unnoticed because of device limitations. If you would like more information on Next Generation firewalls and everything they have to offer, you might want to check out a company leading the way named Palo Alto Networks. For more information please their website at http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/products/index.html


Steve Kohler

EDI in the Cloud

B2BGateway.Net have been delivering quality Cloud/SaaS based EDI solutions worldwide since 1999, long before 'SaaS' (Software as a Service) and 'Cloud' were the buzzwords that they are today. Our quality EDI solutions will integrate seamlessly over the internet with any standard Accounts/ERP solution including QuickBooks, NetSuite, Sage, Peachtree, SAP, Interprise Suite, Microsoft Dynamics, Everest, Ross Enterprise, Mamut, Simply Accounting, Number Cruncher, Fishbowl, Take Stock etc. We can also customize our solutions for any 'one off' or 'homegrown' Accounts/ERP solution. Because of B2BGateway.Net's architecture in the Cloud, new and existing clients require no upfront or additional investment in servers, extra hardware, software or human resources. All any client needs is a computer and an internet connection. For full details on our Cloud based EDI solutions please call (401) 491 9595 or email Sales@B2BGateway.Net

Galway Races

B2BGateway.Net www.B2BGateway.Net would like to wish everyone attending the Galway Races this week the best of luck. The Galway Races is Ireland's largest Horse Racing event attracting roughly 150,000 to 200,000 horse racing enthusiasts over a five day period. However, it is not just the racing that makes this racing festival so popular, but the legendary Galway hospitality and 'craic' (pronounced crack - Irish word for great fun as opposed to a chemical mind altering illegal substance!). If you need to move business documents through EDI, bet on a winner and log onto www.B2BGateway.Net or email Sales@B2BGateway.Net P.S. if you have any good tips for the races please contact our Irish Office on Tel. +353 61 708533, where I am sure that the staff would more than appreciate 'a word from the horses mouth'.

B2BGateway.Net launches User Group on LinkedIn

B2BGateway.Net has just launched a User Group on LinkedIn. The group gives a platform to B2BGateway.Net's clients, partners and associates to exchange ideas,solutions and experiences in relation to EDI and associated Data Integration tools such as Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), Scan Based Trading (SBT), Warehouse Support Sites (WSS), Supplier Portals and EDI Testing & Validation Solutions. To join the group please visit www,linkedin.com and select B2BGateway.Net under the Group selection

B2BGateway Houdini

While recently considering the EDI process of receiving orders and sending invoices, I suddenly realised that our organization B2BGateway.Net was a lot like Harry Houdini (no not that we will take your money and disappear!), but rather when a trading partner sends out an order it disappears into cyber space where B2BGateway.Net grabs it, performs some magic and places the order into your Business Application (QuickBooks, NetSuite, Sage, SAP etc.) in a human readable format. Likewise B2BGateway.Net does the reverse with your invoices sent back to the trading partner. Oh by the way, this all occurs in real time and there is no re-keying of data or human intervention – Pure Magic, you don’t see a thing, just like Houdini!

Roger Leyden

It's going to be a heatwave....

The weather forecast for Boston is HOT, HOT, HOT!!! The temperatures are going to be 100+ today. Summertime is a time for fun, however, you need to be careful and take precautions to stay safe to avoid sun exposure.
On days like today, don’t you just love the thought of sitting under a big old shade tree drinking a tall glass of lemonade? B2BGateway.Net has been providing paperless EDI solutions since 1999. Since then, we helped thousands of companies become paperless, thus resulting in saving trees. An average tree yields 80,000 pieces of paper. Each Month B2BGateway.Net along with our valued clients saves 3 trees on average. That is over 432 trees so far.
Just think, utilizing the services of B2BGateway.Net to handle your EDI paperless transactions can save you time so that you can enjoy a relaxing day under the tree, as well as protect the trees for the next generations to enjoy.
Take the “shade tree challenge” and help B2BGateway.Net save even more trees for the future.

David Ziegler

How I will save the World!

"Would you like your receipt?"

"No thank you"

...and that's how I will do it. Just like that. Nothing else. You can thank me later.

Every time I go to Dunkin' Donuts, not only do I get a coffee, but also a little piece of paper for proof that I bought my coffee - even when I say the words "no receipt please", I always end up with this piece of paper in my hand. Now, multiply this action, oh say, a couple zillion times across every fast food restaurant in America - - across the globe - and we have ourselves the makings of a national receipt crisis. I'm not saying eliminate paper, it has its place (even though more companies like mine - B2BGateway.Net -have moved to a paperless/digital environment). It just doesn't belong in the wastepaper basket behind me, immediately upon making said transaction.

Solution:

"would you like a receipt with that shake?" says the cashier as I'm ordering and when I say 'no', she or he presses a button that is marked 'No Receipt'. Multiply that action across zillions of transactions and we save so many trees that the air we breathe is cleaner - saving lives, we use less fossil fuel to power the machines used for deforestation - solving the fuel crisis and leaving more land for people to peacefully coexist - creating global harmony and thereby saving the world.

You can thank me later.

oh, and if you do need a receipt for business expenses, you can still get one, there's a 'Yes' button, but there should be an app for that by the time you're done reading this.

Brian Alty