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Private Cloud, Public Cloud, and Managed Cloud Service: What it is, Effective Strategies & Benefits

These days many companies use managed cloud services to ensure that enterprise applications function optimally in a secure environment. This partnership between the company and the managed cloud service provider (called sometimes MSP or MCSP), ensures faster and more profitable achievement of business goals.

What is a Private Cloud?

A private cloud is an IT infrastructure dedicated to a single business or organization. There are several options for the physical location of a private cloud:

  • On-site (that is, physically located on the territory of the company).
  • Hosted by a third-party service provider (Data Center).

Thus, a private cloud is special in that all hardware and software are dedicated exclusively to one organization, and services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network.

What is a Public Cloud?

The public cloud is often used for test and development environments, online office applications, storage, and web-based email.

The public cloud is the type of cloud computing deployment where many companies share the same hardware, storage, and network devices at the same time. Public Cloud is provided by third-party providers such as Amazon or Microsoft Azure over the public Internet.

Is a Private Cloud More Secure Than a Public Cloud?

A private cloud is definitely safer than a public cloud, however, a company or managed cloud service provider must ensure that the security system is reliable and up-to-date in order to take advantage of the benefits of a private cloud.

A private cloud provides many levels of security. First, private clouds are limited to specific physical machines, which makes physical security easier. They are located behind a firewall and accessible over private secure network connections such as a Secured VPN tunnel and not over the public Internet.

What is Managed Cloud Service?

Using a private cloud gives businesses greater control and security but requires a higher level of IT skills to manage. Therefore, many companies are turning to a Managed private cloud model that is operated by a third-party provider.

With managed cloud services, the company outsources the management, maintenance, and optimization of its IT infrastructure to a third-party cloud service provider. In this way, the third-party provider delivers all the necessary equipment and provides maintenance, support, and expertise.

According to most IT decision-makers, using the services of a managed cloud service provider is the best way to keep your cloud resources running efficiently and get a maximum Return on Investment (ROI).

If you want to learn more about Managed Cloud Services, click here.

Managed Services to Achieve Your Business Goals

Managed cloud services are an important step towards digital transformation and have many benefits. The service provider allows companies to more efficiently run workloads such as Oracle, SAP, or Dynamics and provides the following:

  • Full control improved security.
  • Easily predictable IT resource costs.
  • Optimizes the performance of workloads.
  • Improves business continuity and disaster recovery
  • Increases the speed of application updates.
  • Eliminates the need for equipment maintenance.
  • Improves customer service.
  • Allows you to release and reorient staff to more meaningful work, and in the absence of the necessary IT specialists, eliminates the need to hire new additional staff.
  • Reduces the capital costs of the enterprise.

All these benefits of managed cloud services allow the business to achieve its strategic goals faster and easier.

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For more information, please visit our EDI2XML Managed Cloud Services web page.

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Why You Should Always Backup Your Google G Suite?

The global business trend is that more and more companies are migrating data to the cloud and using SaaS, cloud-based office suite, and applications such as G Suite of Google (G Suite Business, Enterprise, and G Suite for Nonprofits, G Suite for Education). Most often, management makes such a decision as part of an integrated approach to improve the overall performance of the business. This approach became very common, especially due to the worldwide pandemic spread of COVID-19, and the need to work remotely; large number of employees started working from home, outside of a traditional office environment.

What is G Suite?

G Suite or “Google Suite” official name – Google Workspace. This is a set of cloud services, productivity and collaboration tools and apps, provided by Google for all kind of businesses be it a startup, a new business of any size: small and medium-sized businesses, and large enterprises.

What is G Suite used for?

Google Workspace Apps makes collaboration simple and effective; G Suite provides a powerful solutions for four main types of tasks:

Collaboration:

  • Google Docs – the possibility of co-editing texts in real-time
  • Google Sheets – multifunctional sheets editor
  • Google Forms – to create custom forms for surveys and questionnaires.
  • Google Slides – allows collaboration on presentations.
  • Google Keep – storing and organizing notes.
  • Google Sites – to create high-quality sites for team, project, or event.
  • Google Apps Script – to create custom solutions for special business needs.

Communication:

  • Gmail – professional email
  • Google Calendar – shared calendars for planning teamwork
  • Google Chat / Meet — A chat and video meeting service

Storage and retrieval:

  • Google Drive – secure data storage in the cloud, file sharing and synchronization
  • Google Cloud Search is an efficient way to find content across G Suite services.

Control:

  • Google Admin Console – manage user, device, and security settings
  • Google Vault – retain, hold, search, and export users’ Google Workspace data.
  • G Suite Work Insights – statistics related to employee actions and their collaboration.

Data in G Suite is Not Automatically Protected

Many business owners think that traditional best practices like data backups are outdated.

They mistakenly believe that a SaaS application such as Google Workspace is always available, guarantees data security, and does not require backups.

Incredibly, 1 in 3 companies reports data loss in cloud-based applications. This means the loss of potentially hundreds of work hours.

What is the main reason for data loss? End-user error. Other common reasons:

  • Ransomware/cryptoviruses attacks. They work in a similar way: they encrypt important documents and files and demand a ransom.
  • Malicious activity of end-users.
  • Operational errors such as accidental overwriting of data.
  • Loss of data due to canceled account subscription
  • Errors of external applications (data corruption due to synchronization or overwriting)

According to Google Cloud Blog, “Now more than 5 million paying businesses are using G Suite. In the past year alone, 1 million new customers have signed up for G Suite”.

Thus, companies using G Suite should not ignore the risks of data loss. Remember that backups are just as important in the cloud as they are in traditional on-premises IT systems.

Few people pay attention, but even G Suite Administrator Help: https://support.google.com recommends Third-Party Backup because “You have a limited time from when the data was permanently deleted to restore files and messages. After that, the data is gone forever.”

An independent third-party SaaS backup solution is the best way to protect your business from data loss.

Google Vault is not a backup solution

Vault is information governance and eDiscovery tool for Google Workspace. However, Google Vault is not a backup solution even if Google Vault has primitive recovery capabilities, but it does not protect against:

Data loss due to a ransomware attack.

If your company has been attacked by ransomware, Google will not allow you to roll-back data to an exact time before the ransomware attack. Thus, you will lose your critical and valuable business data and no guarantees the same attack in the future.

Data loss due to permanent deletion of data.

If the end-user or administrator deletes data permanently, the files can only be recovered for a short period of time. Therefore, practice shows that searches for an accidentally deleted file do not occur immediately. It often happens that it takes a long time before the loss of important information is discovered. Moreover, administrators do not have the control they need, Vault restores all information deleted in the last 25 days.

Wasted time to recover files.

The time it takes to recover data from the cloud may take longer than you expected. This can negatively affect all business processes and lead to financial losses for the company. Keep in mind that recovering lost data can take up to several weeks.

Data loss due to inactive licenses.

You can only access G Suite data with an active G Suite license. Thus, inactive, or de-initialized user data is permanently deleted and cannot be rolled back. This often leads to the loss of important data when changing employees.

What is SaaS protection?

SaaS Protection is a backup solution to help ensure that businesses using Google Workspace can access, control, and protect their Google G Suite data.

Our company Namtek Consulting Services provides the leading G Suite backup solution for MSPs. Our SaaS Protection for G Suite is a reliable cloud-to-cloud backup solution for storing a copy of your SaaS application data in Datto’s Cloud.

SaaS Cloud protection price

Why companies need SaaS Protection for G Suite?

Reliable backup

A company that uses G Suite must have complete confidence that their data is protected with a reliable solution designed to reduce risks and quickly manage backups.

  • Automatic continuous backup of Gmail, calendar, contacts and shared drives
  • Simple and fast connection
  • Flexible storage retention options to suit individual customer needs.
  • Flexible storage options according to individual customer needs.

Fast and easy recovery

  • Fast recovery or export of data for a specific required period.
  • Rapid recovery of individual objects or entire accounts while preserving associated records and folder structure.
  • Ability to restore data from one G Suite user account to another.
  • Keeping inactive G Suite user data with SaaS Protection for as long as you need it.
  • Ability to export all accounts or specific items to standard file formats.

Protect Your Google G Suite Data with the best third-party backup solutions

If for some reason you have lost some G Suite data, this means not only a loss of data but also a loss of time and money for the recovery of valuable information. Unfortunately, without additional SaaS Data protection, it is not always possible to restore it.

Moreover, your company’s reputation and relationships with customers and business partners can be compromised.

As a cloud solutions provider, we offer enterprises an efficien

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Why Companies Choose to Integrate EDI into Their Webshop

Why companies choose to integrate EDI into their webshop

We like online stores and we like EDI services. By integrating the two, we’ll cherish them both even more.

In most of our blogs, we discuss the benefits of integrating and automating business processes through the use of modern, efficient management systems. With all our customers, we’ve found that the right IT solution can not only affect business growth and productivity, but also affect employee mood and stress levels.

When processes run smoothly, employees are happier and less stressed. They are able to work in a positive environment and can spend their time on important tasks that will contribute to the company’s growth, rather than spending their day entering data into the management system and feeling frustrated and demotivated.

Set up an e-commerce store

So, when we meet business owners who have recently set up an e-commerce store in their company, like the one at Shopify, we explain the possibilities and advantages of integrating this store not only with their ERP management system, if they have one, but also with EDI capabilities.

Many companies may be using all three technologies. They can have a management system that handles their accounting, sales, inventory and purchasing, and also use EDI services to send and receive purchase orders and invoices with their business partners.

EDI to automate processes

What many executives tend to forget is to integrate all these technologies together to further streamline and automate processes, reduce manual data entry and improve efficiency. Why hire more employees to enter new orders from your partners via EDI into your ERP system if you can automatically transfer all orders directly to the system? Why not take advantage of the ability to send orders from your e-commerce platform directly to your suppliers or manufacturers via EDI?

Enhancing the capabilities of a company’s e-commerce platform with EDI capabilities will undoubtedly ensure a better balance between customer demands from the online store and supply chain requirements.

The aim is to exchange real-time information with suppliers quickly and automatically, to ensure that the supply chain is managed as efficiently as possible.

EDI for faster order processing

The aim is to ensure that orders are processed and dispatched quickly to meet consumer needs. This is to offer consumers greater visibility of specific product inventory levels. The aim is to improve communication between distributors, retailers, manufacturers and customers. At the end of the day, what company doesn’t want to increase the speed of order processing and invoice payment receipt, as well as improve overall efficiency to boost sales?

E-commerce stores, EDI services, and modern, easy-to-use ERP systems are all on the rise. Many business owners are increasingly interested in the latest business technologies that have the potential to help their company grow and succeed. We invite everyone to integrate all these systems to see great improvements!

Read more of our blogs on e-commerce and EDI integration by visiting our EDI2XML blog page.

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Why is it profitable to use Private Cloud Hosting & Managed Cloud Services?

This post was updated to reflect current trends and information

In the current modern times, the success of any business (small, medium or large) is directly related to the capabilities of its IT infrastructure.

The need for information technology is always growing within any business. This need often overloads the physical IT infrastructure of any company, and the IT team becomes very stretched. Using Private Cloud Hosting provider, instead of on-premises physical infrastructure, gives a business several significant advantages. Following are some of the major advantages:

1 – Private Cloud: Reduced starting costs

The costs of the purchase of equipment, its installation and continuous support not only greatly affect the budget of any enterprise, but often becomes a showstopper in the development of IT infrastructure, and therefore the development of the whole company. Outsourcing to a private cloud hosting provider, companies will have the ability to host their software solutions in the Cloud, saving them on expensive hardware costs, and most important, the recurring management and continuous upgrade, support and starting cost.

2 – Increase in flexibility and speed of implementation of IT solutions

Adopting a Private Cloud and Managed Cloud Service provider, companies can quickly adapt their IT infrastructure to their current needs to fit their own business.

This will add flexibility and efficiency to a company’s IT solutions, and save a lot of money, since it will no longer need to reserve unnecessary equipment and human resources not needed.

The flexibility of a Private Cloud will allow a company to rapidly adjust it to its more important projects, and not abandon them, because of the cost of purchase of new equipment or the labor cost for implementation, add to it the long-term maintenance. Accelerating the implementation of new IT solutions increases the efficiency of any business.

3 – Purchase and support of equipment – this is no more a company’s headache

Using a private cloud infrastructure, a company will save a tremendous amount on hiring the highly qualified and expensive employees who were previously engaged in the purchase of equipment, its continuous support, and ensuring network accessibility. Now companies will be able to concentrate on more important strategic tasks.

By delegating responsibility for the operability of IT equipment to a Managed Cloud Provider, companies get the opportunity to concentrate on their core business and increase their effectiveness.

Managed Cloud Provider

Namtek Consulting Services is the right choice if a company is looking for reliability, security, competitiveness and a personalized approach. Our long-term proven expertise in the market of IT systems and infrastructure, allows us to implement almost any cloud infrastructure project. Our platform is a virtualized platform running on sophisticated SANs and hypervisors. We use brand new state-of-the-art equipment and hardware and host it in a couple of Tier II secured data centers in Montreal (Canada).

Want to try launching your first cloud project? Contact us and our technical consultants will assist you in recommending the best cost-effective options for your business.

Cloud Managed Service Free consultation
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Business Continuity: How to Avoid Downtime and Data Loss

Business Continuity: How to Avoid Downtime and Data Loss

How can businesses restore their backup data without incurring downtime and loss? Let’s quickly go over a brief description of a Business Continuity.

What is Business Continuity?

A Business Continuity solution is the combination of the latest backup technology and advanced processes to will ensure the business continues as usual in case a disaster strikes. It comprises of a BDR hardware device, could be a really small depending on what’s needed. It can extract and backup complete computer systems, both on a virtual and a physical machine, and can store it on both on the equipment itself and in cloud storage.

The company will benefit from double security. If something happened to the real hardware device, the data could be quickly restored from the cloud.

The goal of business continuity is to reduce downtime and reduce recovery time so that business processes do not interrupt or stop.

The top causes of downtime

Let’s look at some common causes of downtime and the costs associated with this business interruption:

  1. Human error – accidental deletion/change to data continues to be a key driver for data loss, impacting productivity specially if workers must spend time repeating previous work.
  2. Ransomware attacks, malware, data corruption – data can be lost or damaged due to malicious cyber-attacks, or through hardware/software faults.
  3. Hardware failure – despite improving hardware reliability, laptops still last on average just 3 years, making data loss due to sudden hardware failure a reality.
  4. Hardware theft or loss – as the workforce becomes more mobile, it is more likely devices such as laptops are lost or stolen.
  5. Environmental events – we hear more and more about natural disasters and the impact they have on businesses. Whether it is fire, water damage, or a tornado, you need to put safeguards in place to protect clients’ business data.

It’s important to put your business’ security first, even if you think the chances of a disaster striking your company are unlikely, you never know what can happen. Eliminate data loss and downtime costs with a Business Continuity solution like QBR and get that peace of mind you always wanted.

Having a simple, secure, automated way to protect and recover business data can reduce the risk of data loss.

How to choose a Business Continuity Solution

Finding the right Business Continuity solution for your company isn’t always easy. However, if done correctly, your critical company data will be secure 24/7 and easily restorable in case of a disaster. Even if unexpected disasters, such as fires, floods, or simply equipment failures, are unlikely, your business should always be prepared for them.

Here are 5 key points to look for when selecting a Business Continuity solution:

1.      It should backup and restore files easily, with a simple and quick implementation process and a flexible upgrade policy.

2.      The solution should provide multiple recovery points, in order to go back in time and have the option to restore from any given backup. On top of this, these recovery points should be compressed and stored on its own hardware storage device.

3.      It should be able to export the backups as HyperV or Vmware files for deployment on any virtual environment.

4.      It should offer a quick and efficient “bare metal” restore; which is the process of restoring a complete “virtual machine” sitting on the local device into a physical machine.

5.      It should be a hybrid solution, that is based on virtualization, both on the local device and in the “cloud” (hybrid solution); this entails a backup done of a whole physical or virtual machine into one file and sent to the “cloud” after compression and encryption.

When selecting your Business Continuity solution, it’s also important to look at the specifications of the technology as well as the vendor. When you find a business continuity solution that has all of these key points and specifications, like the QBR solution, your business will be able to meet or exceed your Recovery Time Objective (RTO).

Do not risk your business! Choose the safest and right insurance to back up and restore your data with QBR.

Contact us today!

Total Data Protection Business Continuity Services

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ERP System to Support Continued Growth of Your Business

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How to choose the best user training method after ERP, CRM or ECM implementation

“If you think education is expensive — try ignorance”. — Derek Bok, president of Harvard University.

User training is one of the puzzle’s pieces which allows you to create a complete picture of a successful implementation project. Attention should be paid to end-user training in the case of implementing such IT systems as ECM (Enterprise Content Management), which will be used by many employees.

user training fter a new ERP, CRM or ECM implementationNo less important is the training of ERP and CRM users, because they are aimed at solving complex business problems. Whether an implemented IT system or business application becomes a productive and useful tool for a company, directly depends on the well-organized training for end users.

In this article, we will look at end-user training in terms of process organization.

We will examine a different kind of ways to organize end-user training on implementation projects, limitations, advantages, and disadvantages of each approach, as well as our experience in applying some of these methods on IT implementation projects.

These days, the most popular methods of organizing end-user training are:

  • small group training in a computer lab;
  • face-to-face workshops;
  • webinar seminars;
  • training videos integrated into the system;
  • e-Learning.

Let’s review each method for various parameters: the number of users, the effectiveness of training, training schedule, complexity and cost.

Small groups user training in the computer class

Small groups user training in the computer classThis training method is optimal for organizations where the number of users working constantly with the new system is limited to several tens. The method is most effective in terms of the quality of education. Computer room user training is also recommended if the majority of employees do not have practical experience in using the automation systems. In this case, it is recommended to conduct full-time training with practical exercises. Based on our experience, such a format is most often used to educate a workgroup first.

Advantages

Disadvantages
· Possibility to present material in greater volume or with more detail

· A more guaranteed result from training

· Animated dialogue with the teacher, possibility to ask questions

· Opportunity to get practical skills

 · A limited number of users at once

· The high cost of training per participant

· The duration of training due to the combination of theory and practice

 

Full-time seminars for users

end-user trainingThis method is optimal for organizations with 100-200 users (it could be in case of ECM implementation). This training method is less effective than the previous one, but at the same time, it retains the ability to ask questions and get answers to them in real time. It is recommended to make a video recording of the training seminar, so in the future, end-users can refer to it and refresh their knowledge.

From our personal experience of using face-to-face seminars, we can recommend combining such training with detailed user instructions (both for the business process and for distribution by roles). It is also necessary to provide resources for the organization of the first line of user support at the stage of pilot production.

Advantages

Disadvantages
· Ability to reach a significant number of users

· Low cost of training per user

· Short term training

· The possibility of dialogue with the teacher, the opportunity to ask questions, clarify

 · The material is presented in theoretical form, there is no possibility of practical use of the system (it is impossible to “touch” during the training session)

· Training material is limited, most often gives a general idea of the work in the system.

Webinar user-training workshops

end user training webinar, internet educationWebinar end-users training is optimal for companies where the number of users is several hundred and more and/or employees are geographically detached.

From our experience of conducting webinars, I would like to draw attention to the following points: webinars are devoid of “eye contact,” the teacher is hard to get feedback from the audience in real time. However, if users are employees who already have experience in automation systems, such a format is quite viable.

Advantages

Disadvantages
· Capacity to reach a significant number of users

· The ability to train users without leaving the workplace (for example, employees of company branches in different cities)

· Low cost of training per user

 · The material is presented in theoretical form, there is no possibility to practice during the webinar

· Training is limited, often gives general information of the work in the system.

· The risk of technical problems

Training videos embedded in the IT system

Training videos demonstrate the standard functionality of the systemThis method also has no restrictions on the number of end-user and the time of training. Training videos demonstrate the standard functionality of the system, without taking into account any additional modifications for a specific customer. Therefore, it can be recommended to those companies whose business processes fit into the standard functionality of the system or have been adapted to the system.

Watching videos does not replace full-training and is recommended as an addition to other formats of user training.

Advantages

Disadvantages
· No need to specifically organize end-user training.  Any user can refer to the training material at any time.

· No additional financial investments

 · Videos provide the ability to view a demonstration of the functional, but there is no way to perform any practical tasks. (Is not recommended to train in the “live” system)

· They describe the standard functionality, do not take into account the customizing system for a specific customer.

Online Learning Tools (e-Learning)

Users can independently allocate time to complete these courses, and then refer to them if necessary when performing their daily dutiesThe use of online learning tools (for example, based on SAP Enable Now, Oracle Learning, DoceboLMS, etc.) is recommended for large organizations with a large number of users working in the system, including employees who working from home-office. Users can independently allocate time to complete these courses, and then refer to them if necessary when performing their daily duties.

In terms of efficiency, the method is comparable to training in a computer class, because a user can test his knowledge’s in a practical task.

Advantages

Disadvantages
· No need to specifically organize training, users at any time can refer to the training material.

· No need a large number of employees to provide first-line user support

· The opportunity to get theoretical knowledge and still see a demonstration of certain actions in the system and reproduce them in a practical unit.

 · The high cost of distance learning tools.

· There is no possibility for live-dialogue with the teacher, for asking questions

 

If you want to learn more about user training, please read other materials:

We, as a Software Provider, truly understand how important it is to organize user training for employees. It is necessary to pay attention to users’ needs, and not only to the system being implemented. Investment in employee training will allow enterprises to quickly get the benefits that the new IT system provides.

 

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