IDC’s Top Technology Trends of 2015

As we enter 2015, technology analysts and firms worldwide have an eye on top tech trends of the future. Here is what IDC predicts for the next year.  

The year 2014 is about to end and technology predictions for 2015 have already begun to pour in. In such a report by International Data Corporation that was recently issued, the next year is going to be greatly influenced by Amazon’s creativity and popularity!

The following are some major highlights from the IDC webcast:

The Popular Amazon-Like Innovation

Since a significant portion of today’s business world is dominated by Amazon, IDC believes most industries will embrace Amazon-like innovation in 2015. With the same level of innovation, China will join amazon to rule the technology world, with special focus on achieving higher business efficiency at low costs.

Wireless Data will Grow Fast 

The telecom sector will have wireless data as the fastest and biggest growing segment of its overall spending. The new hybrid approach will make a baseline of telecom services accessible for all.

Phablet as the New Face of Mobile Growth

Compared to recent years, the sale of tablets and smartphones will slow down. Phablet brands will grow their sales to 60%. Business mobile apps will dominate the app market. 

Cloud Storage: Comparison of Providers and Solutions

The term “Cloud Storage” is sufficient in itself to stir up a debate in even the sanest of conversations. However, even the most anti-cloud naysayer would agree that cloud is the best solution for disaster recovery. Enterprise cloud storage providers understand that their clients are looking for security, reliability and redundancy. They are also aware of the fact that there is a lot of fear about the safety with most companies taking a staggered approach when moving to cloud storage, from archive backups to live storage. 

So, to make it convenient for you to select the best service for your company, below is a list of top 3 cloud storage providers who are well equipped with the resources to handle your company’s bytes in bulk:

1.      Amazon S3          

Amazon S3 comes under AWS umbrella and covers major internet hubs including Pinterest and Reddit. It costs $0.055/GB per month if you occupy over 5,000TB on Amazon's cloud. In case the data you’re storing does not fall under the mission-critical variety, then the company’s Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) reduces the price to $0.037/GB per month.

You can opt to store your data in any one of the many geographic locations. You can however lower the latency by selecting a location close to your home. However, considering a disaster recovery standpoint, choosing a distant location makes sense too.

2.      Google Cloud Storage

Part of the Google cloud Platform, Google Cloud Storage is specifically designed for big businesses in need of big-time storage requirements. Google storage services are charged at highly competitive prices, with 4,500TB costing $0.054/GB per month. Also the Durable Reduced Availability, as compared to Amazon S3 is slightly cheaper at $0.042/GB per month.

To safeguard the data of your enterprise, Google stores it redundantly at several different geographical locations. In addition, the company offers a little more piece of mind by constructing its own proprietary security technologies into Google Cloud Storage.

3.      Rackspace Cloud Files

It can rightly be said that Rackspace knows cloud computing pretty well. Below the 1PB/1024TB threshold, the prices charged by the company starts at $0.075/GB per month on a purchase of over 500TB of storage. However, the prices increase slightly in case you require less storage.

Rackspace's unique selling point is its Akamai CDN file transfer method. Here the company can use 213 Akamai edge locations to trasfer files over the Internet that too in record time. So, instead of transferring files from one of Rackspace's origin servers, Akamai CDN is utilized to deliver the files regionally. It’s beneficial for big businesses with numerous offices and mobile employees or websites received lots of traffic globally. 

Top Important Network Maintenance Tasks You Can Do

It is a good habit to reserve complicated tasks for the experts. But, there’s a list of things you can do on your own too. These tasks don’t require you to be a pro, knowing a few simple instructions can help you complete them without expert help. In what follows we help you recognize these tasks, take a look:  

1. Installing, Replacing Or Upgrading Both Hardware And Software

These are the most common network maintenance tasks. The procedure involved may include replacing failed or old hardware such as switching line cards and supervisor modules in Catalyst 4500 and 6500 series and upgrading the Cisco IOS images to current versions for switches and routers alike.

2. Monitoring, Tuning And Optimizing Network

Proactive monitoring is essential for effective network maintenance. It helps in detecting potential problems such that suitable remedies could be implied before they cause a severe outrage or affect an ongoing operation. Proactive monitoring also helps in:

•  Verifying the performance of the network
•  Baseline the performance
•  Understand the right amount of direction and traffic flows
•  Identify and troubleshoot potential network problems

3. Documenting The Network And Maintaining Documents

While most engineers find this a mundane task, it is important to understand that documentation is critical for overall network maintenance, for troubleshooting and to support it. Documentation should include the following information:

• Information about interconnections between devices for LAN and Wan connections
• VLAN information and IP addressing
• Topology diagram of network
•  Inventory information of all devices, modules and components
• Configuration information
•  Date traffic information

4. Securing Network From Internal And External Threats

Securing the network acts integral to network operations and maintenance tasks. It is crucial to pay equal considerations to both internal and external threats. While most organizations have dedicated network security teams, structured maintenance approach and monitoring can also be used for detecting potential security threats based on which you can take appropriate action before any undesired incident takes place.

5. Planning For Network Upgrades, Expansions Or Enhancements 

Effective network monitoring can help you identify potential issues before they arise such that you can plan for possible expansions or network upgrades to strengthen network security.

6. Scheduling Backups And Restoring Networks From Backups

Backups should be regarded as core maintenance tasks and given high priority. Backups of critical network devices and components should be scheduled, monitored and ultimately verified at all times. This will help in faster recovery of network or its components following hardware or software failures.        

7. Ensuring Compliance With Legal Regulations

It is vital for you to ensure that the network is compliant with both corporate policies as well as legal obligations. Regardless of your industry and its requirements, you need to ensure your business is following industry standards regulated by the law. You also need to ensure that your network completely adheres to all corporate policies.

Choose Right IT Support for your Business in Singapore

It’s vital for business companies to deploy state-of-the-art technology for smoother operations. After all, they’re growing every second and hiring new talent with every passing day. Advanced IT solutions help employees to get comfortable with their company by having access to services such as real-time messaging and online work groups. But all this is possible only if you have the right IT partner with you.

Make sure that you trust your IT partner and your employees feel comfortable with the offered or deployed IT solutions. When choosing an IT support for your business in Singapore, you should consider following points:

1. Test Your Trust

Before finalizing your IT service contract, it’s necessary to gauge the trust level between you and your IT partner. Both parties must reach a certain level of understanding in order to avoid discrepancies that may arise in future. Remember talking to each other can largely prove beneficial in building a stronger trust in your relationship. To solidify this bond, the best way is to sign a written contract with every detail precisely mentioned.

2.  Explore Options

It’s important to look out for support skills that you want from an IT support service provider. You should conduct a background check on the company’s experience and the skill-sets, or domain expertise of the vendor. The skills of an IT service company must match with your requirements otherwise it can cause great trouble in future. A good service provider has facilities for professional training as well as technical forums for remote IT support. So, look for a partner who has valuable knowledge about IT system set-up and troubleshooting.

3. Cost-Efficiency Is Good

Some good IT service companies have a good track record, but they’re too expensive. Small businesses have limited budgets for deploying IT resources. So, choosing a cost-efficient IT service provider will help you to keep your expenses in check.

4. Work Culture

If you are new to Singapore, you may well need to communicate in English. There are many IT service companies who provide support services in English language. There are four official languages of Singapore such as English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. If you are familiar with any one of these languages, there is no fear of communication lack. But, business entities from outside Asia may find trouble during communication unless they’re fluent in English.

5. Working Strategy

Did company management turn up on your calls? Does an engineer pro-actively check your IT records? What is the work-policy there? These are some of the questions, which need to be asked by a client and answered by an IT service professional. It would immensely help for the growth of both business entities.

5 Reasons Why Your Backups Aren’t Secure Enough

When we talk about backups, people usually think of tapes, DVDs, hard disks and flash storage. Fair enough. All of these are quite useful for having a complete system backup at the end of day. A lot of people feel burned with their hectic schedule and find little or no time for taking routine backups in DVDs and hard disks.

An online backup with auto sync option is a good way to replace such old backup methods. There’re some exceptions too; some people rate offline backups as more secure alternative to online ones i.e. the Cloud storage.

Given below are 5 points which offer some of the great reasons why your cold backups are not secure anymore.

1. A Disaster Ruin Your Data

Performing a full backup may require multiple discs/disks once a recording session is finalized.

The basement area (probably) where you used to archive backups is always prone to natural calamities such as fire, flood etc. A single natural calamity can damage all of your data in seconds. Yes, they do not come around every now and then.

But, are you ready to take the chances?  

2. Data Inconsistency

Data can be replicated only when the update is complete. An erroneous or old copy of data can lead to data inconsistency, crashing the entire project.

3. Risk of Theft

Physical infrastructure on-site is prone to thefts. Unless your backups are completely disconnected from the network and stored in isolation, scammers can access your confidential data, corrupt it or just erase it.  

4. Device Failure

A hard drive or DVD crash means complete loss of data stored in it. And such failures are very common.

5. Malware Attack

Ineffective security solutions at your end may result in malware or other such attacks. 

Top Online data backup & Synchronization Tools

Many IT companies have been offering online backups as dedicated and supplementary services for years. They offer few GBs worth space for free and require users to pay a subscription price for additional features or more storage space.

The following list contains some of the best online databackup and sync tools currently available:

1. Google Drive: GoogleDrive provides 15 GB of free storage to Gmail account holders. 1TB storage space is available at monthly charge of $9.99.

2. Dropbox: Dropbox keeps all your computer files placed in a safe and easily accessible ‘My Dropbox’ folder, in sync with an online account. Dropbox is a reliable off-site backup option.

3. ADrive: ADrive offers up to 50GB of free space in cloud storage. Most of your files can be stored, edited and shared under the ADrive’s basic plan.

4. Bitcasa Infinite Drive: Bitcasa offers 10 GB worth free space to its users and unlimited storage against a subscription fee of $100 per year. Bitcasa is accessible even through smart phones, encrypting all user information.

5. Carbonite: This service provides exceptionally large backups of more than 200 GB. It offers unlimited storage (after 200GB speed slows down) at $4.58 per month.

6. SugarSync: SugarSync is a classic backup utility with advance plugins; it’s great for storing your email attachments but expensive when compared to other online backup services.

7. OpenDrive: OpenDrive offers 5GB of free storage space to clients. It provides a facility to upload individual files up to 100 MB at once, with a daily bandwidth limit of 1GB.

8. Mozy: Mozy offers 2 GB free space to its account holders. It is an automated backup solution installed at the client end. Mozy charges a fee of $4.95 per month for unlimited storage facility.

9. Microsoft OneDrive: OneDrive service under Azure platform offers 7GB of free online storage. Individual files up to 2GB in size can be uploaded to the cloud via a desktop client app.

10. CrashPlan: CrashPlan can be downloaded freely to run a backup at your standalone PC. This user-friendly software charges 44.50/ month for automating your local backup.