The number 1 reason

What is the number 1 reason for modernizing TestingSaaS in 2018?

Engagement!

source: https://adsoup.com/what-is-customer-engagement/

Since the beginning of TestingSaaS it was used as a content platform to share my thoughts on SaaS related affairs like software testing, forensics, identity management and data science.
Distribution channels like Twitter and Facebook were used to spread these thoughts.
My thoughts were noticed and I got invited to write articles for online publishers like eForensics Magazine, Security Affairs and Fixate.io.
I even got the opportunity to attend and speak at international conferences.

A journey indeed.
But times are changing: spreading your thoughts online is much harder these days due to a multitude of distribution channels and stricter Search Engine Optimization.
You have to stand out.
Not only with your thoughts (the 'content'), but also with your engagement.
Marketing is getting more important.

The more you engage in a proper way online, the more you get noticed by search engines.

I always used Twitter and LinkedIn as my main engagement channels, but a month ago I tried a more direct way: the chatbot.

Engagement via a chatbot

On Facebook I got in talks with Max Ronai, founder of Gobot, an easy to use chatbot.

I agreed to test it on my blog TestingSaaS.

Unfortunately I did not get any conversations with it and when I asked my Facebook fans for feedback on the chatbot I got an answer I did not expect.

Change your blog-platform, it's outdated!!

That was something that came out of the blue.

I expected feedback on the contents of my blog, not the blog itself.

But the feedback is correct.

The content is good, but without a modern blog architecture you are nothing in today's online world.

And comparing other blog-sites, my site really looks so 2010ish :).

Even when I use a 2018 chatbot, which IMHO is a great chatbot to use.

A new blogplatform

So, I need a new platform to build for my blogging.

Wordpress, Medium.., take your pick.

As always, I will think about it and define a strategy.

In the meantime I will use Medium as my temporary blogging platform.

No worries, LinkedIn and Twitter will remain my distribution channels.

As always, sharing your thoughts on engagement, chat-bots, blogs and all kind of other SaaS-related areas is very appreciated.

See you next time on Medium.

**********************BIG UPDATE AUGUST 2018 ******************************

TestingSaaS is NOT continued on Medium, but on https://testingSaaS.nl
Here a couple of blogs are already placed for your convenience.

http://testingsaas.blogspot.nl will be continued on https://testingSaaS.nl

*********************************************************************************

PIAM, CIAM, PAM, it's all IAM

During my career I noticed abbreviations are used all the time in IT.

When I started this blog it was all about SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and some other aaS-variants.

It quickly became all known as the cloud, another fancy marketing word for the internet.

First people got headaches on finding out what all those different aaS-variants meant and then suddenly they were confronted with a new word: the cloud.

People, it's all marketing mumbo jumbo, inventing new words for already existing phenomena.

Ok, the internet as it is known now, is more complicated and interactive (especially mobile) than in the beginning, but it's still the internet, the digital highway.

It's all IAM

Why I am saying this?

Recently a infosecurity peer of mine, Andre Koot from Nixu (great guy and company!), shared on LinkedIn an article about PIAM with the remark: 'IAM, CIAM, PAM, now introducing PIAM... '.

That triggered my engagement, and especially when I saw the domain the article was posted on: securitysales.com. 

Aha, another new abbreviation and it's published on a sales-site.

PIAM is like CIAM just a way of Identity and Access Management (IAM), embodied in a product to sell. Nothing more, nothing less.

Just like the cloud, nothing more than internet.

IAM, CIAM, PIAM, keep cool!

So the next time you read: 'With this PIAM solution, by SaaS vendor X you can safely do IAM in the cloud', just keep cool and don't get worried that you do not know all the abbreviations in the sentence.

Explain SaaS through storytelling

A year ago I announced I was going to do a blog series on ‘Big data, tell it as it is!!
Well, due to a relocation and a new job that took a ‘bit’ more time.
But, I keep a promise.

G’day

As my readers know, I try to explain SaaS as it is in a readable manner.

I also like stories, so why shouldn't I use Storytelling to deliver my message and start interaction?

So last week I published on Sweetcode about Geordie and his use of R to analyze Apache error logs.
Why not publish more posts about Geordie and his employer ‘G’day’, an Aussie content marketing firm?
By doing this I can explain SaaS, datascience, infosec, forensics and QA in a ‘tell-it-as-it-is’ manner, readable for a broad audience.
Because that’s my mission, explain SaaS without the marketing and technical terms, or at least explain them.

I need your help!

Inspiration for the adventures of Geordie at ‘G’day’ I can retrieve from my own experiences, but why not use crowdsourcing?

TestingSaaS is read globally by SaaS enthusiasts from different sectors like finance (banks, accountants), government, software dev, IT consultancy and many more.
These fellow SaaS enthusiasts work in disciplines like identity, infosec, data science, digital marketing and forensics.
With storytelling we have an instrument to explain SaaS in a simple way, as it is!
But I need your input.
Are you interested or want to give feedback on my TestingSaaS storytelling?
Let me know through the TestingSaaS social media channels.

Let’s work together to explain SaaS through storytelling, as it is!!!

A day at the office: Configuring Identity in the cloud

The past half year I did not blog that much on TestingSaaS.
With good reason!
I started a new job as a technical consultant at iWelcome and I was quite busy with relocating too.

Why iWelcome?
It is Europe's Identity Platform in the cloud.
iWelcome provides Identity & Access Management as a Service (IDAAS) for organizations, so they can manage the identity lifecycle of their consumers, employees, business customers, partners and suppliers in a secure, simple and efficient manner.

How cool is that?
Since 2010 I have been studying IDAAS (thanks UMA :-) ) and now with the hype of data science (event logging !!) and data privacy (GDPR) I can all combine these disciplines in one job. Who dares wins!

Mind you, I already had some IAM experience at Essent and Onegini, but this was software related, now it's implementation, a complete other ball game with other stakes and rules.

Just one step at a time.

So stay tuned for my further adventures in IAM told on TestingSaaS, eForensics Magazine, Fixate and the iWelcome blog.

Big data, what's in a name?

Last week I announced I am going to do a blog series about big data items and explain them in a straightforward way.
Well, naturally I have to start with big data because everybody talks about it, but nobody can exactly say what it is.

You can find many definitions of big data online.

Gartner explains Big Data as

 "Big data is high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation."

This a very business-driven definition.

Technology vendors like Microsoft define it as:

“Big data is the term increasingly used to describe the process of applying serious computing power—the latest in machine learning and artificial intelligence—to seriously massive and often highly complex sets of information.”

Lots of tech-talk in a definition about data.

A more straightforward definition is given by big data expert Bernard Marr:

 "Big data refers to our ability to collect and analyze the vast amounts of data we are now generating in the world."

In other words, all definitions above state it's not about the data itself , but the way we utilize the data which is now generated in a huge amount.

Mind you, big data today is small data, or just data, in a few years from now.

Big data, it's just data, only we now learn how to use it.