Keeping your data backups onsite can be risky. If there’s ever a fire or a robbery, you could lose both – your backup copy and your master copy. Of course, shipping your backup tapes or DVDs to an off-site location every day can also be inconvenient.

That’s why so many people today are choosing to send their backup data, over the internet, to an off-site storage facility.

Given that web hosting prices are so cheap, it can be tempting to use your web hosting account as an online file storage or backup device for your home computer. After all, you can now get unlimited disk space and bandwidth for as little as four dollars per month.

But before you start uploading the entire contents of your hard drive, there are a few things you need to keep in mind… Read the rest of this entry »

IT managers today are facing more viruses, security threats, security updates, and data protection issues than ever before. Maintaining a large amount of desktop machines one by one is time consuming and very expensive. Windows licensing is also expensive and upgrades can be a nightmare (Windows XP to Vista).

What if there was a solution that would remove the need for maintenance on physical desktop computers and placed them in a virtualized environment? Virtualized Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) deserve a real look for SMB’s in todays Software virtualizing desktop computers is becoming commonplace for most large companies. Virtual Desktops are housed in a data center on large servers utilizing NAS for backing up. Users connect through a dummy terminal or thin client loaded on to an already existing desktop computer. No expensive desktop is required as the server is doing all of the processing. The local dummy terminal or thin client can even be a linux computer reducing costs.

The experience is identical to having a physical computer sitting on their desktop. Employees would not even know their ‘computer’ was located in a data center miles away.

Virtualization has many benefits, but the most relevant are:

• Security Updates – Can be pushed out at once to all VDI’s
• Data Security – Housed in Data Centers and not physical machines in office
• Maintenance – Reduced man hours
• Same Desktop even when traveling Read the rest of this entry »

Many small business owners struggle with planning their online presence.

The key to remember when going online with your business is that you want to give customers information about what your business does and is about. If you have a physical location, you want to show potential customers how to find you. You may also want to post information about your services, or a menu if you are a restaurant.

Most businesses do not require an expensive web site design if they are not doing online commerce. Sure, it would be great to have a beautiful web site that pleases the eye, but a custom design is not really required. Customers only care about finding your business or learning more about you. If you can set up an online brochure of sorts with contact details, maps, and product or service information that is current, you are helping those customers learn more about you.

Many of the following questions are asked when the decision has been made to go online:

• What kind of web site do you require?
• How do you find a web designer?
• What is your budget?
• Do I have the time to manage a web designer?
• Will I have time to properly update my site on a regular basis? Read the rest of this entry »

Preventing unplanned downtime and business failure.

Protecting your business data is more important than ever due to all the catastrophic, unforeseen events that can damage or destroy your data permanently. Customer data, accounts payable, invoices, email and historical communications and business applications are the backbone of your company. Without your business data, your business could not move forward on a day to day basis. Imagine not being able to access your business data for an hour, a day, a month or possibly forever.

Now you can protect your small business from data loss, prevent unplanned downtime, and prevent business failure.  NaviSite, a leading dedicated and managed hosting services company, shows you how vulnerable your data can be without the proper backup plan in place.

Click Here to access the complete white paper and learn how you can protect your business.

People know to look for the gold padlock when transacting online. E-commerce stores know they need an SSL certificate to get the gold padlock. It’s something consumers have been told numerous times whether it was from a pre-holiday news special about protecting yourself online or from the family member that thinks they know everything about technology.

The gold standard for e-commerce has gone green.

By now, you have probably seen the green address bar when you are shopping at some of the largest internet retailers out there. The green address bar only shows up when the website has an Extended Validation (EV) certificate. This is the highest level of identity assurance that can be given to visitors. This interactive and noticeable visual indicator is an overlooked way to immediately improve customer confidence and reduce shopping cart abandonment.

What about the gold padlock?

The validation process (what the Certification Authority (CA) does in order to check out that the entity asking for the certificate truly is who they say they are) varies between vendors for different certificate types. SSL Certificates were all given the exact same visual indicator, the gold padlock, regardless of the level of validation. Most users couldn’t differentiate between a certificate issued where only the domain was checked versus a certificate where the entire organization was verified against third party sources. This causes confusion as the gold padlock represents a variable level of website identity assurance.

To combat this confusion, Comodo founded the CA/B forum. The forum comprised all of the largest Certificate Authorities and major browsers who vowed to work together to create the first true standard for issuing certificates. The results of their work are the new Extended Validation standards for Certificates. These new high-level standards have become the backbone of trust and validation.

Along with the standards, the CA/B forum created a new visual indicator, the green address bar, to convey this trust. Just like the gold padlock was pushed by the media, the green address bar picks up where it left off. The green address bar tells users that the site has met the highest validation standards available. Thanks to the green address bar, people who already know to look for a visual indicator can now rely on the meaning behind it.

The PA-DSS Protects E-Commerce Users
Over the past several years, Internet security has become quite a powerful discussion topic for online businesses as well as their customers.  With the advent of online banking, shopping and bill payment, the amount of confidential data shared on the Internet is constantly increasing exponentially.  As these online services multiply, it is becoming more and more imperative to confirm that sites engaging in e-commerce activities (including businesses utilizing online shopping carts such as Miva Merchant) are compliant with the PA-DSS.

PA-DSS, or the Payment Application Data Security Standard, is based on the Payment Application Best Practices (PABP) of Visa.  The PABP was first introduced in 2005 in order to aid in the creation of secure online payment applications by software vendors.  The PA-DSS was released in 2008 with the purpose of establishing all requirements that e-commerce merchants who utilize business web hosting services must follow in order to process credit card payments.  Miva Merchant 5.5’s online shopping cart software is completely up to date with all PA-DSS compliancy conditions.  These days, any online merchant must be able to prove that they are compliant with all PCI and PA-DSS prerequisites.

The Importance of PCI Compliance
The PCI in PCI compliance stands for Payment Card Industry.  The PCI was formed when each of the five major credit card companies (Discover, Visa, MasterCard, American Express and JCB) banded together to establish the guidelines online businesses must follow to accept credit card payments.  The PCI then composed the PA-DSS as the primary means to combat fraud and establish a sense of trust and security on the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »

Most small-to-medium sized businesses are using CMS (customer management systems), E-Mail (who isn’t? 5 year olds have email accounts now), to manage a web site, and occasionally share files between employee’s. Traditionally SMB’s (Small-to-medium sized Businesses) have had to either create their own internal hosting and communication systems or piece together many disjointed software programs and hardware devices to create their intranet. Time and expense add up and often times SMB’s go without all or some of the components they require. As such, there has been a need for an all-in-one solution that can tie all of these systems together for ease of use.

Web Hosts have also had a difficult time putting together an all-in-one solution for their customers. Hosters have created some crude control panels and options for customers, but nothing that creates a seamless integrated approach for a company to manage email, hosting, CMS, file sharing, and even an online store. There are literally thousands of options out there for Email, Hosting Platforms, CMS, File Sharing, and Operating Systems.  Web hosts have traditionally focused on managing the hosting experience and simply offer an assortment of software they think their customers want. These platforms are offered and supported to an extent, but most of the grunt work is left to the SMB’s IT department. Read the rest of this entry »

As a result of my writing and research I am often looking into the customer satisfaction of various website hosting companies. There are a number of tools available for this type of research. We’ve probably all used a Google search to research web hosting at one point or another. The latest in the arsenal of tools for detecting customer dis-satisfaction with a webhost is Twitter.

So how do we check on the quality of a web hosting company using Twitter? We’ll take a look at a few US webhosting firms and two UK hosting companies. Here are a few suggestions.

Read the rest of this entry »

How can a small service provider compete against Google, Amazon, and the other giants entering the cloud/hosting market? The cloud is now a reality. However, your company can start your own affordable cloud offering and even compete against the big boys and win. It may seem like a no win situation to try and compete against the big boys. However, smaller providers can compete and win provided they do the things the big guys are not willing or capable of doing. Larger companies are slow to evolve, are generally worse at customer service, unwilling to help the customer resolve technical issues beyond the core basics, and have strict guidelines for what customers can and can not do.

KEYS TO COMPETING AGAINST LARGE COMPANIES

1. Improve your customers experience. Personalize.

A good example to showcase is Wal Mart. While Wal Mart tries to be everything to everyone, they are missing a few key components that are important to the customer experience. While Wal Mart does offer an exceptional product offering and good pricing, their customer service is horrible. Employees barely say hi to you in the check out lane. You can also expect to stand in a Soviet-Era bread line while you wait to pay for your savings on the products. Contrast to Target which charges a bit more, offers higher quality products, and you can expect to wait less in the check out lane. Both are still large companies and offer a breadth of products and offer a relatively dull customer experience.

SOLUTION(S): Let your customer get to know you better. Start a company blog that contains more than simple marketing messages. Let the customer know you are a hard working company full of energetic people willing to go the extra mile. Add additional bundled support options the larger companies simply can not compete with. Spend additional time early in the process to ensure your new customers are setup properly. Perhaps give them an email asking them if everything is fine and if they need anything. Generally in web hosting, if you can get the customer setup properly and familiar with your systems within 72 hours you will rarely hear from that customer. Yes, I know… you’re afraid of getting a lot of high maintenance customers. Fear not, your good customers will far exceed the high maintenance customers.

Showcase your companies personality and willingness to help the customer get up and running. Perhaps your site could use a re-design bringing these aspects in. Focus more on service and customer experience than pricing. Don’t copy the big providers boring and bland white paper looking web sites. Add twitter to your home page, maybe a link to a company FaceBook profile.

2. Offer niche products. Specialized plans. Read the rest of this entry »

Writing Often Keeps Your Blog Fresh

Businesses have many options to communicate with their customers these days, and hosting can play an important role. There is direct mail, email newsletters, and even Twitter. One of the most effective methods to communicate with both current and future customers is a blog for your business.
With a blog you can announce new products and services, update customers on company news, and create a stronger personality for your business brand. Even if you have very little experience with technology and the Internet, you can create a business blog in just 4 easy steps.

Step 1 – Planning Your Blog – Before you get started, you’ll need to think about what you would include in your blog. Here are a few ideas for you. If you have physical locations for your business – then you may want to include directions and maps as part of your site. If you are frequently updating your products and services, can have a section for that. Do you have visually interesting products, or want to feature photos of your employees? Create a photo gallery section. The options are only limited by your imagination. Don’t worry if you don’t have a complete idea of your site before you start, you can always create new site features once your blog has launched.

Read the rest of this entry »