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Cloud Computing

June 21, 2017

Why Cloud Computing is The Right Choice for Your Hospitality Business

The hospitality industry constantly undergoes rapid turbulence as it needs to adapt itself to always-evolving lifestyle trends. Customers look for more convenience and prefer those organizations who pamper their needs the most. Economy is tough on the hospitality industry and with a huge competition in the market; it has become more difficult to survive. Cloud computing offers a cost-effective solution to hospitality businesses while minimizing risk and increasing scalability.

With cloud computing, hospitality industries experience a higher return on their investments and allow them to experiment more on newer technological aspects that focus on customer retention and appreciation. Cloud computing services make applications run faster and considerably less expensive for a low monthly subscription or an annual fee. It completely eliminates the need of investing heavily on expensive hardware and thereby reducing the financial risks associated with maintaining the infrastructure. Moreover, the cloud keeps your data secure by offering added protection from hackers which reduces the risks of a security breach. There are automatic updates at virtually no cost which means added convenience for users.

Specifically, for the hospitality industry, the cloud provides a platform that eases human resource management, inventory tracking, ordering, processing orders, and providing point-of-sale facilities.Additionally, the cloud allows faster reservations, promotions, loyalty rewards, and customer feedback. It is a package that serves the complete processes of the hospitality industry and ensures reliability while providing business owners the time to look into core business operations and plan for expansion or diversification. Cloud can accommodate unplanned expansions too and is simple to use.Regardless of all these features, cloud services ensure that the staff and consumers have the relevant information on their fingertips which builds trust in them and hence prospers business.

Hospitality industries are progressing with the advent of cloud computing solutions for their businesses and as a result many cloud computing service providers are flooding in with appealing plans. However, it is important to make a rational choice and hire the services of a reliable cloud computing solutions provider.

Net Activity Inc. has been in the industry for more than 15 years and has technical expertise that has delivered proven benefits to many industries in Ohio and across the United States. To know more about our service offerings, please visit https://www.netactivity.us/who-we-help/hospitality or contact us at 888-545-5346.

By admin

June 14, 2017

Keep Your Stress and Profit Loss to A Minimum with Cloud Computing

IT administration is constantly under pressure and intensifies with the advancement of technology. Cloud Computing is probably the best thing to happen in the IT sector and has penetrated deep into every business as well as households. This has changed the complete scenario of how operations and transactions take place using the information technology. Cloud solutions ease the IT administration and saves the admin’s time and efforts in keeping the systems up and running. Managing a wide range of IT tools like those for management, security, and monitoring is very convenient as the cloud lightens the hardware and software load and makes it easier to manage.

Cloud provides a more flexible option to store your data with the ease of use. Now, there is no need of constant updates at user end whenever a new version is launched as it is done on the vendor’s site on the cloud. With transition to the cloud, the admin as well as general users having access to the cloud can use the tools from almost any device and location. Managing your IT systems and other office operations can simply be done from your desk, a tablet, at home, or a laptop on the beach. Moreover, the IT infrastructure tools also work perfectly in synchronization with remote machines you may be using in office or at home.

Cloud fosters a relaxing work style and allows some overtime to be done from home or at your convenience. The stressful IT employees and business owners can now work in more relaxed and flexible work environments and worry less about any losses as cloud stores securely and is a very affordable platform even for start-ups.

At Net Activity Inc., we focus on collaborating your IT infrastructure with the cloud environment so that you experience extremely functional IT solutions to run your business smoothly. We are a team of professionals who have immense knowledge and years of experience in establishing IT systems on the flexible cloud platforms leveraging lot more options that scale up your business operations exponentially. Please visit https://www.netactivity.us/services/cloud-computing-services or contact Harry Bhatia at 888-545-5346 to discuss further.

By admin

May 9, 2017

5 Aspects to Consider When Selecting Your Cloud Storage

There are a wide variety of choices when it comes to deciding on cloud storage for your business which leads to confusing the business owners. Every business has a different set of requirements and thus considering both the technical as well as non-technical aspects while making the selection is essential.

Image Source: Pixabay.com

Below are some points to consider while selecting your cloud storage:

COST CONSIDERATIONS

The main reason for shift to cloud storage solutions is decreasing operating costs while securing company data. Cloud storage providers offer solutions at very competitive prices. However, you need to be analytical about the overall value the providers have to offer you at the quoted price. Factors that influence the price of cloud storage is storage space in the cloud, the sites/ other applications, and number of servers in the cloud. Here, you need to understand a fact that a low priced cloud service provider may not necessarily provide you more value for your money. You must consider the complete data lifecycle.

SECURITY MEASURES

The cloud has struggled a lot to prove its security as businessmen still do not completely trust this third party storage service. Due to the past stories of big companies being prey to data breaches, businessmen are not enthusiastic about relying on any third party to maintain their data. So, cloud service providers are working on innovating new, improved security measures including firewalls, data encryption, routine security audits, and anti-virus software. Once you are sure about the vendors’ security undertakings, you can figure out which plan suits your specific requirements.

LOCATION OF YOUR CLOUD STORAGE

Storing data on the cloud is very much like storing it on a physical location. You need to understand from the cloud service provider where your data will be located on the cloud. Suppose your data is located in another country, it may be affected by that country’s laws and the data can be accessed and controlled as per those laws. Also, another important factor to be considered is whether the data storage location is prone to natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, or tornadoes.

FEATURE SET

Cloud solutions offered by different cloud service providers consist of a variety of features like content management, in-cloud snapshots, in-cloud disaster recovery, file level access, etc. You must be known about what features your cloud solution provider has to offer you.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

A breakdown can happen anytime or at any hour. While choosing a vendor, you need to question about their availability, who to contact in a situation of crisis, or how much time it would require to resolve an issue.

Apart from the above listed considerations, analyzing your business and a discussion with technology experts would give you some other major points to be thought upon while choosing the services of a cloud service vendor.

If you wish to immediately contact a reliable cloud computing solution provider, Net Activity, Inc. can be your partner. Please visit https://www.netactivity.us/services/cloud-computing-services to understand what we offer or contact Harry Bhatia at 888-545-5346.

By admin

April 11, 2017

What is New in Microsoft Azure Web Application Firewall?

Microsoft recently made its new Web Application Firewall available for customers. Initially, they announced the centralized WAF service that protected the applications running in the Azure public cloud environment from attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks.

According to Yousef Khalidi, Microsoft corporate vice president for Azure Networking, it is difficult to prevent the 7-layer app-level attacks and requires maintenance, monitoring and patching through the application tiers. With the introduction of Web Application Firewalls, users will not have to make any application changes for protecting against web attacks and simplifying security management. Microsoft assures a better security against threats and intrusions with its application and compliance administrators.

Microsoft’s Azure Application Gateway can host multiple sites as this application delivery controller (ADC) includes SSL termination; URL path based routing, load distribution. The ADC also provides end-to-end SSL encryption and logging as well as SSL policy control. The WAF comes with Open Wen Application Security Project (OWASP) ModSecurity Core Rule Set (3.0 or 2.2.9) that is designed to protect against threats such as command injection, HTTP response splitting, HTTP request smuggling, HTTP protocol violation, crawlers, bots, and general scanners. Microsoft has attended to the issue of denial-of-service attacks that occur against multiple web pages.

Presently, the Azure Application Gateway can host up to 20 sites behind each gateway, all of which are capable of defending against such attacks. The Microsoft team confirmed that they intend to add the new WAF service through the Azure Security Service that recommends ways to re-mediate discovered issues after scanning the cloud based subscriptions for vulnerabilities. Their security service did not include protecting web pages that aren’t scanned by a WAF. However, it offers third party firewalls from a Barracuda Networks.

Net Activity, Inc. is a Microsoft certified partner and has actively been supporting businesses across Ohio for installation of Office 365 and Microsoft Azure. We operate since 2002 and ensure a secured cloud presence while enhancing business productivity cost-effectively. For more details, please visit https://www.netactivity.us/services/cloud-computing-services or get in touch with Harry Bhatia, President, Net Activity, Inc. at 888-545-5346.

By admin

March 28, 2017

Why Businesses are Moving their Servers to the Cloud?

Virtualization has impacted businesses a lot and cloud servers are changing the data storage aspects. With the emergence of cloud servers, there is no upgrading of hard drives, no external storage devices, and no emptying the recycle bin. Cloud servers have been a wise investment for start-ups as well as established corporations to manage and secure their data.

In this process, an operating system is separated from the hardware without impacting either in any way. Cloud servers use virtualization to allow users to install their operating systems on a generic layer overlaying the hardware. They are software independent units and do not require centrally installed software.

When cloud technology was a novice concept, it took several days for commissioning a server and involved outsourcing the process to a third-party vendor by a server rental agreement or purchasing hardware. A cloud server eases the whole thing and uses ‘redundant hardware’ which is already installed and tested by the vendor. This reduces the provisioning time to merely a few minutes.

Let’s have a look at the benefits of cloud servers:

Cloud servers offer a more economical solution than the standard dedicated servers. For the same price, cloud provides more resources and flexibility.

Your data is safer in the cloud environment as a software problem is isolated to and from your cloud environment. Your resources are dedicated and thus stability is guaranteed.

They are safe, fast, and secure. Cloud servers provide the best stability/cost ratio performance and they do not suffer from the usual hardware problems.

Cloud provides scalability – easily and reliably. It is more affordable too.

The list is endless. However, one thing is for sure that the cloud server can benefit IT managers largely who need to administer and manage multiple locations and devices. Here, cloud helps them reduce the cost of ownership of their network and find an efficient way to manage the networks and devices/applications.
Net Activity, Inc. can help you get a secure, accessible, cost-effective cloud space allowing you enjoy unlimited data storage capacity on a pay-per-seat basis. To experience lot more benefits of the cloud technology, please feel free to contact Harry Bhatia at 888-545-5346 or visit: https://www.netactivity.us/contact-us for further details.

By admin

February 22, 2017

Are Big Data and Cloud Computing Related? How?

Big data and cloud computing are the most hyped phenomenon driving the IT stream of businesses all around the world. Experts say that the emergence of big data was a result of the rise of cloud computing and cloud data stores. Unexceptionally, both these terminologies hold high degrees of similarity in the IT industry. They are inter-dependent in the manner that cloud resources are required to support big data projects and storage while big data is a huge business case for moving the cloud.

Big Data is more about extracting VALUE out of Variety, Velocity and Volume while Cloud has its focus on scalable, elastic, on-demand, and pay-per-use self-service models. Big Data needs a large on-demand compute power and distributed storage and Cloud seamlessly provides elastic on-demand computer required for the same. The workload nature of the Big Data computing infrastructure makes it a perfect case for the cloud.

There are many patterns which highlight the relationship better:

SIMPLICITY: To mention it simply, simplification is the key component of Cloud and Big Data, which is the prime reason for their mass adoption. The simplification provided by the combination of Big Data and Cloud Computing can increase the adoption of a seemingly complex problem of large scale distributed processing.

COST-EFFICIENCY: Both Cloud and Big Data deliver value to companies by lowering the cost of ownership. Their combination has been driving the cost down for enterprise and bringing value to enterprises.

SECURITY: Both the platforms offer data security and protect privacy concerns. System integrators have been building solutions within the enterprise to build Elastic Scalable Private Cloud Solution that brings in the value which enterprises can leverage to bring a Scalable Distributed Processing in action within the enterprise.
For more details on cloud computing, visit NetActivity or call Harry Bhatia at 216-503-5150 X 206. https://www.netactivity.us/contact-us

By admin

November 18, 2016

How Will Cloud Computing Shape in 2017

Cloud computing solutions have transformed many businesses over the last five years, but experts believe that the market has something more to explore, may be called as a second wave. The cloud market will acquire a faster pace in 2017 as organizations seek to gain relatively more efficiencies as they scale their compute resources for better customer services, says Forrester Research in a new report. cloud services

The analysts of Forrester Research say that the foremost trend comes with the enterprises. Enterprises, especially the big budgets, data centers, and complex applications are now looking at the cloud space as a viable place to run their core business applications. Forrester found that 38% of the 1,000 plus North American and European enterprise infrastructure technology decision makers are building private clouds comprising of 32 percent procuring public cloud services and the remaining are planning to implement some form of cloud technology in the next 12 months.

Cloud predictions for 2017:
Regional players will see an increase in adoption – The global public cloud market is growing at a 22 percent compound rate. With the increasing demands of cloud-based applications, it will become a herculean task for the major companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Google to service every unique request. This indicates that the small regional players will gain more importance in the upcoming years.

Cloud costs will decrease – In 2017, with their best practices maturing, the IT executives will get better at containing cloud costs. The cost management tools from AWS, Cloudability, Cloudyn, etc. are available that are capable of cutting off the cloud computing architecture costs by sharp 10% by monitoring their consumption.

Private clouds will undergo hyper convergence – Hyperconverged infrastructure solutions will offer pre-integrated compute and storage resources helping organizations get their cloud implementations running faster. Forrester recommends that organizations consider HCI as the foundation for their private cloud development, particularly for new workloads that demand rapid, automated scale-out.

There will be containers for managing software code – Software developed for cloud apps can now be managed with the help of containers like Linux containers, which will be available in every major public and private cloud platform by early 2017. The developers will be able to consume them directly and can build their own stacks to power micro services development.

Public cloud will house enterprise apps – Recent survey has found several companies hosting enterprise applications in AWS, indicating that CIOs have become more comfortable hosting critical software in the public cloud. According to Forrester, this trend will continue as CIOs rely more heavily on public cloud providers.

Net Activity, Inc. is a team of expert professionals providing cloud computing services in Ohio. We have eased the process of migration to cloud technology for many of our clients. We engage the clients to holistically study their business requirements with our learned and trained professionals. You can get in touch with Harry Bhatia https://www.netactivity.us/contact-us/ at 2165035150 X 206.

By admin

October 24, 2016

Don’t Overlook This – Tips to Secure Your Cloud Data

Cloud-based security is here to stay. Be it Google Drive and Dropbox are some of the most comfortable and convenient data repositories for saving your data online, allowing you easy access at any place or time where internet is available. Although the convenience seems tempting, one must look into the security concerns while moving personal and confidential data over the cloud platform.

Rule No. 1: Backup Data Locally
It is a good practice to create electronic copies of your data so that you will be able to access it wherever you are without losing the original data. It also helps in case you lose the original data or it is corrupted. It is as simple as setting up an account in the cloud and remembering the credentials.
Another option is to have a manual backup of your precious data in an external storage device, which helps you when there is no or slow internet accessibility.

Rule No. 2: Avoid Storing Sensitive Information
As everyone is aware of the discrepancies of the internet privacy and the vulnerability internet security is exposed to, it is wise to avoid your highly confidential moving up to the cloud. Mainly, it is advisable to avoid putting up documents containing passwords for any of your accounts. This way you can stay confident about keeping the files that you need to access frequently.

Rule No. 3: Use Cloud Services that Encrypt Your Data
Look for cloud service providers that safeguard your privacy by offering local encryption for your data, which provides an additional layer of security. This method will also protect your data against the service providers and administrators. It would be even better if the cloud service also guarantees encryption during the uploading and downloading phases. The additional step of encrypting and decrypting your data may take a little while longer to sync and access your files, but it is worth it.

Rule No. 4: Encrypt Data Before Moving it to the Cloud
Encrypting data here means you would be able to apply passwords and generate secret key sequences to your files before you upload them to the cloud server. If your provider does not use data encryption, you can prefer to use a cloud protection app, which will solve your purpose.

Rule No. 5: Apply Two-Step Verification
As the first line of protection, you can maintain a strong password (as suggested by the internet) for all your online accounts. Also, instead of relying on a strong password created by you years ago, try to change them frequently and not repeat it across the many online accounts on your name.
Your data is really precious and you cannot afford to allow it to be leaked. While moving to the cloud, it is necessary to follow the above tips so that your data remains safe. You also need to hire the services of a cloud service provider who has a relevant experience and good customer reviews. Net Activity, Inc. can be of great help as they have been in this business since 2002. They are a team of professionals who are proficient, trained, experienced and friendly. If you wish to know more about the services offered, contact Harry Bhatia at 2165035150 X 206.

By admin

September 16, 2016

How to Encourage Prospects for Transition to the Cloud

Although cloud computing has proved its credibility in leveraging business outcomes in this decade, it is difficult to turn the minds of those adamant businesspeople who do not wish to break the traditional walls. To persuade such decision makers, you must arm yourself with a precise but explanatory list of benefits of cloud computing. Once you are yourself convinced about the pros and cons cloud provides, it gets easier to explain them to your prospect in a convincing way.

Cloud Computing

Here is a quick list of benefits to get started:

No excess server installation or labor costs
Anywhere, anytime access
No software upgrades to be installed separately
Convenient payment/subscription options
No large initial investment
No transferring files back and forth between bookkeeper and client as well as CPA and QuickBooks consultant
Well set platform for expansion

This is how your detailed conversation should proceed:

In the next step, you need to try hard to keep the ball in your court. Proceed with the discussion by presenting your points about how cloud computing is different and beneficial over other existing solutions. Don’t sound like a naive and remember that you are speaking with a managerial entrepreneur who discusses and understands things at a higher level.

Explain to them the competitive advantage that comes along with cloud computing solutions. The CFOs must realize that cloud is here to stay and it’s becoming an inseparable part of the businesses now. A recent survey conducted by McKinsey Global Survey revealed that more than 80% respondents are up with the cloud servers – experimenting and using the technology. That’s a huge number to compete with. Survival without the cloud will not be possible.

Security enters as the major player in the game. You can easily convince CFOs on this ground, as they are much concerned about it. Just a simple thought of data loss, mishandling or misuse of the precious data is frightening. However, make sure you put it in the right way as you may make up or mess up with things. Persuading a business owner to move their complete or partial data to another platform is a challenging task but not impossible as you have many positives to talk about.

The cloud platform is truly rewarding and has lesser cons, so you have already won half the battle by proposing this to your prospective customer. The only thing you need to know is how to present your proposal. A homework of the business, its CFO and business objectives would help you strike the right move and hit the goal.

Net Activity, Inc. is in the business of offering authenticate cloud computing solutions since 2002. They possess expertise in providing robust cloud computing, managed support and services. The range of configurations provided includes solutions with public cloud, managed cloud solutions off premises, on premises range, and customized cloud storage solutions according to the global reach of an enterprise. To avail their cloud computing , visit https://www.netactivity.us/services/cloud-computing-services or call Harry Bhatia at 2165035150 X 206.

By admin

August 29, 2016

Leading Cloud Security Start-ups That Will Rule in 2016

Cloud Computing is a comparatively new phenomenon that is gaining importance in businesses and the tools designed for its security are also in their infancy. Many new companies have tried their luck by introducing cloud security options – some survived and some perished.

Here are a few cloud security start-ups (some are well-established players too) that you should know about:

bitium

Bitium’s approach tends to be influenced by the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend. With the increasing number of devices, an individual employee may be using, the risk of corporate data being leaked increases exponentially. Bitium offers to provide a strong security solution that allows for easy usability too. The company’s analytics offering enables corporations to see what apps individuals are using increasingly and know which ones they can pre-empt security risks as well as save money by decommissioning unused apps.

CipherCloud

CipherCloud makes the transition to the cloud easy and safe. Their approach is to build a platform that allows security features including malware detection, encryption, data loss prevention, tokenization, and auditing. Once data is encrypted locally on the clients’ devices, CipherCloud offers a gateway for it to be uploaded to cloud via SSE and stores the keys to the data locally. This relieves business of the security risks while moving to the cloud.

vmware

One of the oldest set ups operating in the cloud has a series of cloud management products, including vCloud and vRealize. VMware solutions help businesses to virtualize their security, enabling administration of the security infrastructure to use the same interface that is used for organization’s private cloud. Its flagship products VMware, vCloud Networking, and Security Edge secure the virtual data in a cost-effective way.

McAfee

McAfee, an established name in the web-security, has branched out to providing cloud security. The company has a different approach to cloud security – they allow companies to develop their own security protocols, which are then applied to the cloud environment. The many advantages of this liberal approach are clarity, transparency, compliance, as well as consistency. Organizations can choose the elements that they need while ensuring their data is safe at the cost and scalability benefits of the public cloud.

IBMcloud

The IT giant, IBM, with its experienced gesture, has proven its expertise in the cloud security tools. IBM’s offerings include application and data security, infrastructure protection, identity and access management, and security intelligence. Its dynamic cloud security is designed to work together with organizations’ existing security processes to create an integrated system including regular IT infrastructure as well as private, public and hybrid cloud setups.

Skyhigh

Skyhigh enables provision for organizations’ proper maintenance and security. The Skyhigh Secure reports a risk assessment for relevant services based on 30 different fields across a range of categories, which enables businesses to identify potential vulnerabilities. Based on this, the Skyhigh Secure provides capabilities for control and improved security that includes application auditing, encryption, data loss prevention, and cloud-to-cloud access controls.

The Skyhigh products are specifically targeted at particular cloud providers including Google Drive, Office 365, Box and Dropbox as businesses and individuals majorly use these as standard, assuming that they are secure.

Cloud security is an important issue and with many companies diving in to provide incomparable security solutions, it is difficult to make a choice. For a clarity on which cloud security service will work best for you, please contact Harry Bhatia 2165035150 X 206.

Net Activity Inc. is a leading provider of proven cloud computing solutions. Completely dedicated to its services and customer satisfaction, the team popularly addresses its customers’ diverse cloud requirements along with offering a robust environment. For more details, visit our website: https://www.netactivity.us/services/it-managed-services.

By admin

Cloud Computing

Why Cloud Computing is The Right Choice for Your Hospitality Business

Keep Your Stress and Profit Loss to A Minimum with Cloud Computing

5 Aspects to Consider When Selecting Your Cloud Storage