3 VoIP Trends To Watch Out For In 2016

Small to medium-sized businesses in Tampa are now becoming more reliant on outsourced services as the city has experienced rapid business growth, increase in the demand for IT solutions and a variety of choices for consumers, of late. When it comes to IT support in Tampa, VoIP services is the buzzword today. As far as the VoIP market is concerned, it will expand in 2016. Therefore, for companies looking for such solutions, it's imperative that they learn about the three of the most important VoIP trends of 2016.

1. Integration of Cloud with Enterprise Software

VoIP is dominating the public switch telephone network (PSTN) system simply because it's based on IP technology and not circuit switching. Most companies are now shifting to SaaS for different departments and their requirements. VoIP solutions are essential for contact centers, CRM and helpdesk management systems. The enterprises are integrating their VoIP systems with cloud-based application software.

2. Transition to Cloud PBX/Hosted VoIP

More enterprises are likely to move towards hosted VoIP/cloud because of little maintenance and reduced expenditures. This is a positive sign as companies are moving from conventional business strategies to IP enabled technology. Why small businesses alone, even bigger organizations will leverage cloud PBX systems as sellers improve their infrastructure to meet increasing demand. Cloud PBX makes more business sense as there are more customization options.

3. Mobile VoIP Will Dominate

Today, employees need to collaborate and stay in constant touch with the other staff of their organization irrespective of their present location. Laptops, smart phones, wearable devices and tablets are now an intrinsic part of the modern workforce. Though businesses have relied on desk phones while moving to VoIP, mobile integration will dominate in 2016. Mobile VoIP applications will no longer be optional, but a necessity for employees.

If you are looking for IT support in Tampa, VoIP solutions are something worthconsidering. Expect more trends and innovations for VoIP systems in 2016 and beyond.

How Remote It Support Can Protect The Progress Of Your Business

Diagnosing, curing, and updating your IT infrastructure has stopped being expensive when remote IT support became a ‘thing’. Remote solutions made creating a setup for your IT experts and investing a fortune on them irrelevant. All you need to do now is look for professionals to get IT services in Tampa, Orlando and other IT hubs in the US and poof! All your IT problems are gone. But, is just knowing something to be ‘great’ enough for you? Or would you rather understand what makes it so awesome? Having in depth knowledge about the services you are about to avail can help you use it better, right? So, let us get to know remote IT support for what it is and what it actually offers.

Quick and Cost Effective Solutions

Remote IT service providers can keep an eye on your IT systems. So, identifying, analyzing, and resolving problems can be a seamless and quick process. This facility can be an asset for business entities, since maintaining uninterrupted presence in the online world breeds business.

Plus, by selecting remote solutions, you would have to spend a fraction of what on-site experts would have billed you. How? Well, by selecting remote IT solutions, you are avoiding hiring, housing, and paying salaries to IT experts. And, do not forget to calculate the rent on space you are saving by not hiring IT people. Saving money and offering quick solutions can advance your business progress no doubt, but let us check out what else it offers.

Uninterrupted Business Processes

When you are deploying and activating new business models, you cannot afford a glitch in the IT infrastructure. Else, you would be stuck to mediocrity regardless of your business potential. Remote IT solution providers can solve IT errors through modifying and upgrading your systems to latest technology. Therefore, your IT infrastructure will never fail to support your ventures to assure progress.

Increasing Productivity

Think about it, unwanted interruptions or system failures can damage data and cut into the work hours of your employees. But, when each and every problem in your IT setup is swapped out and replaced by better technology instantly, there is no lag in the work processes. Thus, your work force can perform better and your business entity can finally move towards the desired goal with ease.

IT support is not just an option for emergencies anymore. It has become a necessity for every growing business. However, while searching for IT services in Tampa, Orlando or other IT hubs in the US, try to be extremely precise and curious. With a thorough research, you will surely get the best solutions to safeguard the progress of your business.

HOW IT CONSULTING CAN ENSURE YOUR DATA BACKUP INTEGRITY

Losing sensitive data will definitely send your clients packing, considerably shrinking your revenue and damaging global dominance. With modern failsafe IT technology, the chances of losing sensitive data has reduced. But the threat has not disappeared completely. Specific data backup solutions can be your ally in this competition to win over your clients. However, to pick the right data backup schemes, you need IT consulting in Tampa, Orlando and other known IT hubs in the U.S. Let us discuss a bit more about how professionals can maintain data backup integrity.

Using a Different Physical Drive

Choices like backing up data in your own home directory drive can lead to data backup nightmare. Without professionals to tell you otherwise, creating partitions in your home drive to keep the backed-up data might appeal to you. But, experts suggest that it is not a safe choice at all, if maintaining data integrity is your primary purpose. The right solution would be to use a spare physical drive to store the backup data.

In Case of Server Issues

Using different drives to store home directories and backup information is not really the ultimate data security process. It just makes your sensitive information little less vulnerable to glitches (man-made or natural). Although rare, there are still chances of server malfunction that can damage or even wipe out and make your backup data inaccessible. IT consulting can bring you choices like keeping your backup server away from your office space. Professionals can offer you FTP backups or remote backup solutions to keep your system in sync, while saving data to your protected servers automatically.

Using Appropriate Validation Strategies

Just storing your backup data is not enough now; you need to make sure that you can restore it whenever necessary. In order to do that, you need special strategies that can verify or validate the integrity of your backup archive. This verification process would ensure that your storage systems are not compromised in any way and data can be restored without any issue. IT professionals can use special applications for bit-level validation and support the systems with unique strategies.

Opting for data backup solution is only half the battle won. While contacting an IT consulting based in Tampa or other technology hub, a business entity must also focus on data integrity and accuracy in preservation.  You must take all the necessary steps when it comes to protect your data. Go for the right solutions to maintain data backup integrity for a successful business growth.

3 BENEFITS OF TOURISM MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT

Tourism is big in Tampa. Two years back, in 2014, 5.9 million tourists spent the night on the Pinellas side of the Tampa Bay area. The sector is an important job-spinner too – it provides employment to a whopping 1.14 million Floridians. No wonder, the city's IT firms are keen on aligning their products and services to the travel sector. And since we are living in an app-driven world, it is hardly surprising that tourism application development has become a big business in Tampa. If you are looking to make it big in the hospitality sector, you must invest in the right app. Here are three ways that the right tourism app can boost your business:

Services that Can Keep Visitors Coming Back

Forget the printed travel brochures or a responsive website with basic information; if you really want to mark your presence, give the users the power of mobile app. Right from planning a trip to safely making it back home, mobile apps ease the lives of travelers by offering the following services:

E-commerce – Hotel reservation, buying flight tickets, international banking transactions, and shopping.

Security – Emergency calling, access to local and international agencies, emergency medical services.

Navigation – Access to maps and GPS services for route planning.

Social Communication – Chatting, reviews, status and photo uploads and more.

Proximity Marketing – Alerts on deals and discounts available nearby and admission to contests.

Informational Apps – Updated information on local attractions and places, calendar of events, and more.

Communicate, Showcase, Engage

Leverage the latest in mobile technology, such as geofencing, to quickly reach out to the tourists. Channel them toward your business by sending engaging, actionable messages, flash sales, event information, local news and more. Showcase the best of what your property/ service has to offer along with a GPS-powered turn-by-turn direction, in-app FaceTime and more.

Reduce Costs

Your app will not only enable you to cut down printing and mailing costs associated with creating travel resources for visitors, but also help you make some quick bucks by monetizing the app with ads from local businesses.

How to make it big in Florida's thriving travel sector? Although there is no thumb rule, a tourism app definitely gives you a good head start. Hire a competent firm that will address the application development needs for your Tampa - based business. Such a firm can help you create a killer app that will help to attract and retain visitors.

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.

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!

Why Your App Should Have Push Notifications

Push notifications in your mobile app come with a plethora of benefits, and are a means to engage your customers and drive quality traffic. If you want to know more about push notifications and mobile application development, Tamp-based IT companies are there to add to your knowledge. These notifications provide valuable information or updates to your customers even when the application is not used. It could be anything from a new feature in your shopping app or a viral post in your social media application. We will walk you through with three of the most important benefits of including push notifications in your application.

More User Engagement

Most of the mobile apps today have a wide user base. They are downloaded, but are not frequently used. This means that they are buried amongst other applications downloaded on a user's smart-phone. Push notifications engage users with up-to-the-minute and relevant news or information, thus improving user involvement and recognition.

Reaching Your Customers Directly 

When your customers use push notifications, they are actually allowing you to market your products or services to them right away. For example, a burger store having poor sales on Mondays can expect to improve business if they send out a push message offering a $5 discount on a certain order of  say two burgers with a soda.

More Read or Acceptance Rate

Did you know that push notifications have better read rates than email marketing? Email marketing has a very poor read rate. According to Constant Contact, this number stays below 15 percent. Read rate of push notifications, on the contrary, is much higher, at about 50 percent. Even click-through rates are  twice as higher than emails.

Push notifications are not as intrusive or annoying as the other marketing platforms, provided you send out an interesting and relevant message. According to a recent Responses, Mobile Marketing Engagement Study on 1,200 US customers, 57 percent have downloaded app and 68 percent of them have enabled push notifications on their apps. Needless to say, users don’t find the notifications as intruding.

So, if you're looking for application development in Tampa, IT firms there have the knowledge, resources and competence to include the push notification feature in your app.  All you need to do is find the right IT solution provider.