Thursday, April 28, 2016

MOVING YOUR BUSINESS DATA TO CLOUD? DO IT RIGHT



The small to medium-scale businesses are eager to invest in cloud solutions that are easy to use and provide enough savings potential. You are in luck if your business is located in Florida. When it comes to reliable and cost-effective IT support, Tampa being the booming IT hub in Florida will live up to your expectations. However, if you've already decided to migrate your enterprise's data to cloud, you need to do it the right way. Here are three tips to help you out: 
 
1. Switch to New Databases
When migrating to cloud, always consider new databases instead of looking for the same database you use on-premises. Switch to new databases like NoSQL and SQL instead of what you've been using in your data center. You also need to leave scope for changes to your applications related to your database. Also, consider changes to database admin and operational skills.
2. Consider Data Volume
Moving your enterprise data to cloud doesn't imply you'll upload petabytes and terabytes of information to public clouds. For preliminary data transfer, you may have to ship physical drives to your cloud provider. This might involve a lot of time and energy, and hence you do need to plan it well. Collaborate with your provider to ensure that the initial data uploads are done right.
3. Take Governance and Data Security Seriously
Both governance and data security is the key to the success of data migration to the cloud. It's essential for everything including applications, information, storage and network. Needless to say, you need to be extra cautious about this aspect when going cloud.
When looking for IT support in Tampa, hire a firm that helps you cut back on costs and mitigate business risks. And, to make the most out of the data migration process to cloud, make sure you define your data at the initial stages, have a rock solid plan and look for new database models that best suit your business needs.

Friday, April 15, 2016

Should An SMB Consider Server Virtualization?


According to Techaisle, a global IT research firm focused on SMB, server virtualization penetration among the SMBs has increased from 41 to 54 percent in two years. Currently, this penetration stands at 88 percent among the midmarket businesses and there will be an additional 7 percent growth by 2016. However, server virtualization is still considered as a ‘new technology’. But, those who are already using it have realized its efficiency and capabilities and have even looked up at it as a game-changing technology. Florida, being one of the SMB technology hubs, has incorporated virtual IT solutions in Tampa, Miami and other places. Even if the cost of virtualization licenses is high, ignoring the benefits of this technology is hard.
When you compare the virtualization research of 2013 with that of 2015, you will find that SMBs mostly opt for off-premise virtualized servers. The rate of such adoption has increased to 45 percent in just two years, which clearly highlights that the remote management of infrastructure resource is gaining momentum.
As far as challenges of adoption are concerned, it 34 percent of SMBs state that high cost of virtualization licenses has been a major obstacle behind global implementation. Moreover, the projected saving is still not achieved because management of virtual servers is difficult.
Despite these challenges, one cannot deny the fact that server virtualization helps to migrate from physical servers. The smaller energy footprint for the entire data center helps to minimize the number of servers, networking gear and the server racks. So, SMBs can save a lot of money because they do not have to own a data center, and can rather use a co-location facility. One of the significant advantages of virtualization is the disaster recovery management. It has software to automate the failover during disaster.
This is a step for SMBs towards cloud computing because servers and its underlying hardware are all virtualized. So, by integrating these IT solutions in Tampa, Miami and in other parts of Florida, SMBs will experience further growth. And that must not be ignored!