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.