Amazon Alexa may be the darling of household technologies at the moment, but the implications for business are no less dramatic. AI is driving text-to-speech and the inverse, as well as image recognition. Cousins to Alexa, Amazon Rekognition and Lex are accelerating development in the AI space and it’s coming to businesses with real-time functionality and an affordable price point.

Disaster planning and recovery is a critical exercise for every company. In addition to the safety of your employees, the protection of your physical space, and technology at the core of most businesses, emergency management and recovery is a crucial, ongoing need.

Does your business have a disaster recovery plan? Well they should. Without a plan, sensitive data and information could be lost forever should something ever happen to your physical files. Could your business survive that? You may think "Oh, that'll never happen to my business." However, it's always best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. 

The NFIB (National Federation of Independent Businesses) releases a monthly Small Business Optimism Index every month. It’s a data-packed report that has showed a very strong run since last November.