In 2019, the National Small Business Association conducted its Technology and Small Business Survey1 of 550 small business owners. 74% of respondents said that keeping up with technology is very important to the success of their company. However, the biggest challenges they face with their organization’s use of technology are inadequate security measures (24%), cost of upgrades (17%), time to fix problems (17%), maintenance costs (14%), lack of technical expertise (9%), and outages (7%). As a small business executive, you probably agree with these findings but may dismiss the viability of outsourcing your IT to a data center as an...
A few years ago, some members of the IT community declared the firewall to be dead. You would think that in the age of breaches and security compromises, this would be furthest from the truth. The fact is, they were right. The traditional firewall is dead. But, with technology advances, elevated loads on software/local firewalls and application security software, as well as the need for sophisticated threat protection, a comprehensive managed firewall solution is more important than ever before. Firewalls come in two types – hardware firewalls and software firewalls. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. Software Firewalls A software...
Demand for private cloud services continues to grow, as recent research from IDC shows.1 While it may be somewhat more complicated from a technical point of view than some other kinds of hosting business, private cloud also offers some unique niche opportunities for adding value. Boutique and niche providers — companies outside of the four big hyperscale providers and the hosting giants like Alibaba that make up the “next 10” — made up well over 20 percent of the global market for cloud infrastructure services in 2017,2 so if you are serving a different market than Amazon and Oracle there...
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines white-glove service as “being marked by special care or attention.” While any data center can claim to have white-glove service, it’s important to uncover whether their actions actually deliver the special care and attention they claim or if it is simply words used in marketing materials. When comparing data centers, it can be easy for you to turn to cost as the final factor in determining which data center you select. You may decide that since you already have an internal IT team, you can save money by using the data center’s building and connectivity capabilities,...
The web hosting industry is continuing to evolve, and while hyperscale providers and global data center operators play a large role in the market’s maturity, so do resellers and other smaller service providers. The market opportunities available for new entrants to web hosting backed by quality infrastructure have never been greater, as more verticals, services, and regions digitize their operations. Web hosting can be complicated, but the basic elements that are essential to starting your own web hosting company are infrastructure to run your services from, marketing to sell them, and tech support to keep your customers happy and online....