3 Popular Managed Services Trends This Year

According to the data amassed by ChannelE2E, the demand for managed solutions is expected to increase to $230 million by 2020. This is the reason why small to medium-sized companies in Tampa and other IT hubs in the US are looking forward to it because managed services in Tampa employ the best-of-breed technology and state-of-the-art equipment to deliver business solutions with less capital outlay, safe infrastructure, and fixed monthly costs. So, businesses are keen on learning about the latest MSP trends. Here are the top three ones that you would like to know about:

1. Security of Customer Data

With enterprises embracing cloud technologies, online backup and hosted email services together with big data, organizations are also looking to implement stringent security steps to protect their client data. Enterprises are looking for solutions that would let their customers conform to industry guidelines, government orders, and meet service level agreements and the Information Technology Infrastructure Library directives. Security threats such as ransomware, malvertising, and phishing are widespread, and so your customers require data security.

2. The Internet of Things

Despite all the good things that IoT brings on board, there is one flipside— every new device that’s connected to the system becomes a potential security threat. An efficient MSP can help to change that. An MSP assesses the existing infrastructure and creates an IT roadmap to eliminate any possible security breach.

3. Hybrid Cloud Will Rule the Roost

Hybrid cloud will stay dominant as more businesses and applications become dependent on it. The MSPs will work out ways to make cloud services more flexible to meet the changing requirements of clients. 

Business can rely on managed services in Tampa, as it will help them avoid massive IT infrastructure costs and substantial capital investment in hardware, systems, and software. Some of the MSPs are now offering packaged solutions with competitive pricing, thus integrating business solutions, products, and technologies as a whole.

3 Benefits of Data Encryption Technology

The University of Central Florida witnessed a significant setback due to a security breach in 2016 when 63,000 employees and students faced the brunt of the attack. Both their names and social security details were compromised when unscrupulous cyber hackers intruded on the organization’s computers. However, educational institutions are not alone. Even the big enterprises have to cope with data threats on a day to day basis despite their detection, and security firewalls systems. Therefore, IT companies in Florida and elsewhere in the US, emphasizes on the use of encryption technology.  Today it is a must-have for businesses that want to transmit sensitive information through computer networks safely and protect it from hackers.  If you are looking for data encryption applications for your enterprise, here the three benefits to consider:

1. Data Privacy

Encryption technology or software protects all your business-critical data, including customer information. In other words, it keeps your data from the prying eyes of hackers and government bodies, thus cutting back on the possibilities of surveillance and unwanted invasion of privacy.

2. Safe Data Transmission

Your data is more susceptible to security breaches during the transmission process. Though Transport Layer Security (TSL) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is the industry norm to protect data, it has many pitfalls. This is where data encryption technology steps in, ensuring the protection of your company information during transmission or otherwise. Business files moved, uploaded, or shared to a cloud platform remain safe with high-end encryption software throughout the transmission process.

3. Data Security across–the-Devices

With the widespread use of connected devices, it is now essential to keep your data safe across multiple devices. Encryption technology keeps all your information secure from breaches, even during data transport. All business data is 100 percent safe with encryption. Besides, advanced device authentication reduces or eliminates the risks associated with intrusion by unauthorized users.

Businesses today do not follow the nine to five schedules, implying your computer systems should operate 24/7. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if you have a small or mid-sized business in the Sunshine State, professional IT companies in Florida will protect your business data through encryption software. Choose your IT partner wisely and minimize downtime, improve efficiency, and avoid unnecessary legal hassles and expenses.

3 Benefits of Server Virtualization Services

Gone are those days when server virtualization was meant for big enterprises alone. Small to medium-scale businesses are now investing in cloud virtualization technologies to make the most out of a server and desktop provisioning, reduced energy costs and downtime, less use of physical servers, and more. It has become possible because you have more service providers to choose from than you had even a few years ago. If you are in Florida, consider opting for an IT consulting service provider in Tampa that can help you tap the benefits for a feature that has been around for more than a decade.  Here are the three major advantages of virtualization that an IT consulting firm can offer you:

1. Easy Disaster Recovery

With virtualization services, the transition from a virtual machine from one server to the other is easy, safe, and quick. You can back up critical business and customer data fast as you can develop a replication site. Virtualization platforms have software that can automatically move controls to a duplicate system while detecting an error or fault. If data is vulnerable due to a disaster, you have the infrastructure in place for a quick, secure, and effective recovery.

2. Reduced Cooling and Energy Costs

With reduced physical servers and more virtual servers, you will benefit by cutting back on energy and cooling costs. You will also be able to reduce your data center’s footprint that includes the costs of UPS, generator, rack space, floor space, and network switches.

3. Enhanced Productivity

When you have less physical servers, you have fewer things to deal with and maintain. With virtualization services, applications that took several days or weeks to provide something useful to your business will now take only a couple of minutes to deliver the results. This way, your IT team can focus on reducing cost, increasing revenue, and driving new business opportunities or benefits.  

No matter if you are embracing server virtualization services for the first time or have been using it for years, an IT consulting firm in Tampa will help you with enhanced business capabilities. A groundbreaking technology such as virtualization makes your enterprise more efficient than your competitors.

3 Benefits of Using Managed IT Services for Your Business

Employing the cutting-edge technologies is critical for businesses today to achieve their goals and drive growth, although many organizations encounter many difficulties to accomplish it because of limited resources. Besides, the tendency of entrepreneurs to take help from the industry experts adds to the challenge, as quality IT solutions are available in only a few places. For instance, Tampa in Florida, the state with more than 27,000 tech-establishments is one such place where a diverse range of managed IT services for every type of businesses is found. Below are the three key benefits of managed services for your business.

1. Saves Your Money

The capital for purchasing technology, training your employees, operating costs together with time and method always cost higher than the expense of availing managed services. Moreover, an in-house team needs to be paid monthly, irrespective of the amount of work you are getting. The managed services, on the contrary, let you hire experts who ensure weekly or hourly output. There are monthly payment plans too, which are effective to complete your task without draining the money out of your pocket. Finally, by opting for these services, you get more robust and scalable services that yield the best value for your money.

2. Helps You Focus More on Core Business Activities

By outsourcing the IT functions to a technically sound partner, you can stay stress-free and can concentrate on your core business areas that call for a lot of planning and foresight. Ideally, every part of your enterprise should receive particular attention. So, when you hand over the responsibility of the most complicated IT functions to a managed service provider, being attentive to the other tasks becomes easier.

3. Ensures Security

Security management for the IT functions is quite complicated, and it requires continuous monitoring. A dedicated team is essential for evaluating the services, incorporating new technologies and updating the strategies. Moreover, you have to keep an eye on tasks like intrusion detection and management, security audits, firewall updates, patch management, and application upgrades. The managed service providers carry out all these functions seamlessly and therefore, hiring them is beneficial.

Collaborate with a managed IT service provider in Tampa to run your business processes smoothly and efficiently. They undertake all the IT related tasks on your behalf in a more secure and cost-effective way without creating any additional financial burden or affecting your bottom line.

What You Must Know About the Trendiest Responsive Website Designing Ideas

The beautiful beach city Tampa is emerging as the next tech hub of Florida with its web design start-ups, which can surprise the world with their breakthrough ideas. The online space is a unique environment, which is continuously evolving. And with this point in focus experts from the top responsive web design companies in Tampa have shared some of their super trendy ideas for 2017 and onward.

Embrace Virtual Reality

The virtual reality already amazed the gadget world last year. This year it is going to have a significant impact on the responsive sites too. A recent study revealed that interactive 360-degree video tours and life event filming enhance engagement, and increase the conversion rate more than three times than their traditional counterparts and improve the repeated view rate by 30 percent, which makes it a rewarding option for the web marketers.

Add Premium GIFs and Animations to Static Pages

Incorporating high-quality animations and GIFs is another proven way to get attention from visitors for a longer time. The static pages often appear dull and thus have higher bounce rates. Studies suggest running animations loops in these pages can hold visitors for 2 minutes on an average which is significantly higher than the usual 8 seconds span. For responsive sites, the experts recommend using Scalable Vector Graphics as it is resolution independent and facilitates you to adjust the complex images with just one code.

Make the User Interface (UI) Conversational

This year a large number of brands will adapt conversational interfaces for their sites. Such interfaces improve the retention and conversion rates along with repeated traffic, which in turn allows businesses to improve their bottom line. The conversational UI lets organizations to implement a 24/7 model without increasing the overhead cost for enhancing user engagement.

Be Minimalistic

Minimalistic design is going to be another big topic for the upcoming days. The most noticeable effect of this designing approach is—faster loading speed. Recent research shows 40 percent of the visitors immediately leave the sites, which take more than three seconds to load. It means you are likely to retain more visitors by being minimal.

Grids and wireframes are the two common minimalistic design elements for responsive sites as they provide users with the same experience on mobile and desktop. In addition, you can eliminate the pop-ups too for keeping the site simple.

Opt For Long Scrolling Site

The website visitors usually have a short attention span. It can be even shorter if the reading becomes time-consuming. Thus, the long scrolling screen is being considered as the future of responsive web design as it enables visitors to go through the information on a page uninterruptedly. Moreover, it reduces the need for cutting down or shrinking any of the elements and keeps the site visually aesthetic, which is another bonus. Finally, scrolling is a quite natural movement for touch screen device users, which make these sites a perfect fit for latest mobile devices.

Enhanced visitor experience is at the center of all recent designing trends. Also, the professionals offering responsive web design in Tampa advice not to overlook the need for enhancing the visual appeal of the site with videos, GIFs, and animations to attract visitors.

3 Ways to Protect Your Business from Ransomware

Is your business data safe from massive cyber attacks?  Have you taken any precautionary steps to address this problem? If not, it is time to think about it seriously. Why? Well, a major security threat known as WannaCry ransomware affected organizations worldwide in May 2017. It targeted PCs operating on the Windows OS. The attack targeted approximately 200,000 businesses in 150 countries globally. If it happened to them, it can happen to you as well. Even if you are a small business in Florida, you must learn your lesson from this and opt for IT consulting services in Tampa. While your IT service providers beef up your digital security, you should remember the following three ways to protect your organization from ransomware attacks in the future:

1. Avoid Clicking on Suspicious Links

Be careful while clicking on links or downloading files that look suspicious. These will not only infect your PC but also the network you use. We recommend that you delete unsolicited emails right away.

2. Update Your OS

If you are using Windows, update the OS when prompted. Recently, in March 2017, Microsoft rolled out a security patch to protect PCs from the malicious WannaCry virus. So, if your systems aren’t updated, your data may be at risk. The solution is activating the ‘auto-update’ option if your OS allows it. If not, remember to allow Windows OS updates to ensure that you are using a safe and updated system.

3. Back Up Your Business Data

Make sure that you save all your organization files, information, and documents on another system or drive. This way, you will not run the risk of losing all your enterprise data. Opt for an external hard drive that is not connected to the web. Moreover, always use antivirus application for systems that require an active internet connection.

Get in touch with an IT consulting firm in Tampa to learn about the right prevention method and detection approach to protect your data from ransomware attacks. A reliable service provider will evaluate your organization’s current IT landscape and vulnerabilities to threats, and map out a solution to keep your business data secure.

How Can Small Businesses in Tampa Get The Most Out Of Managed Service Providers?

Tampa is part of Florida’s growing tech corridor, and lots of companies in this region rely on managed IT services to handle domains like help desks and routine maintenance in a cost-effective way. But business owners should look beyond freeing up internal IT staff; they also need to build strong partnerships with the managed service providers (MSPs) to maximize their benefits.

Do Not Try to Cut Corners

Various organizations depend on MSPs to handle their IT elements as required. However, oversupply has led to commoditization in the bottom stack offerings and prompted CIOs to hunt for bargains. Unfortunately, this practice does more harm than good. Always pick MSPs with a proven track record, and check existing customer testimonials to ascertain the same.  Be wary of MSPs that provide a generic SLA (service level agreement). Your goal should be to find an MSP that identifies your business requirements and decides on a course of action to achieve your goals. Their SLA should reflect the customization your business is looking for.

Treat MSPs as Partners, Not Substitutes

Small businesses are becoming increasingly reliant on external providers to meet their IT needs. However, they can never truly replace internal IT – this is something that business owners need to understand. After all, the goal is to free up the internal IT staff to assign them to more strategic projects; not do away with the internal team. So, hiring an MSP should not threaten the existing IT arrangement within the organization.

Managed IT services have always appealed to small businesses in Tampa and other places that offer a favourable climate for business growth. Although the primary appeal of MSPs is the cost-cutting that they offer, organizations should consider the other important aspects like security, efficiency, and revenue.