Where are Virtual desktops most suited for? 

Are you and your employees having a difficult time managing your computers and other devices at your office or business? By using Virtual desktop Infrastructure or VDI, managing your systems is going to be a breeze and this can be done even through a mobile device, wherever you are. VDI systems have been identified as ideal in the following sectors. 

Hospitals 

In the case of the healthcare sector, patient’s health records can be accessed remotely and through any compatible device. However, any restrictions concerning the extent to which a health expert/doctor has in accessing the patient’s records can be customized, protecting the customer, who in this case is the patient. Hence options such as restricting access to patient’s records which are irrelevant to a particular expert can be opted to. 

Schools and colleges

By adopting a Virtual Desktop, students can access the system, where through certain restrictions being imposed, a disciplined working environment can be created. The same desktop can be accessed through a variety of devices by the students. 

Corporate world 

At offices which primarily involve using computers, implementing VDI presents great advantages. This is highlighted in places where employees work at shifts. A single computer may be used by multiple people for their work and using a VDI allows an employee to login into their Virtual Desktop. This minimizes the number of devices required and once the shift is over, the employee can log out and hand over the system to the next shift. 

Using more than one computer 

Some jobs may require the use of more than one computer, which is probably situated in two different locations. For such applications, synchronization is important, and this can be done easily through VDI. 

Outstation operations 

Depending on the sector, employees may require working out of office and might need access to the company’s computer system. This can be easily accomplished through VDI, where accessibility is available regardless of the where or when it is needed and through any device. Through such a system, efficiency and effectiveness of employees can be improved greatly. 

With rapidly improving technology, VDI systems broaden its scope further and further catering the needs more and more sectors. For more information on how and what VDI can do to help your organization, give us a call today.

Optimizing staff in your business

In today’s businesses, keeping up with the competition while minimizing operational costs is a might be a nightmare. In the case of small and medium scale businesses (SMBs), with an optimized number in staff who already have their plates full, finding time for implementing newer business technology and maintaining them would be a challenge. 

A great solution for this employed by many companies is outsourcing their operations to other companies. With newer technology available, these third-party companies can manage your operations with greater efficiency and security and at a lower cost. 

IT Managed Services explained 

Through these services, you partly or fully handover the management of your IT sectors, such as network management, disaster recovery and desktop management to a company who charges you for the volume of work they handle. This is much cheaper than investing in in-house facilities. With more complex applications and systems being acquired by small and medium scale businesses, these are beginning to turn towards these services. A recent survey done reveals that 46% of SMBs have outsourced their IT needs, while many have plans to outsource soon. 

How these Managed Services assist business expansion

By handling the load on IT, planning required in maintaining and managing this sector of your business is minimized, allowing more time and effort to be invested in the expansion of the business. The number of employees can be adjusted accordingly or redirected towards other branches of your business, which will have a direct impact on the revenue. 

With the expansion of your SMB, your IT needs become more complex and you will need more than an employee with good tech knowledge (which happens in many cases of SMBs with small numbers in staff) to handle problems that will arise. The need to employ a full-time IT expert or Management Services company will be imminent. However, a service providing company may prove to be cheaper as they only charge for the volume of services performed whereas a fulltime in-house employee may prove expensive if the probability of facing a problem is low.

Protecting your business through Managed Services 

With a lot of top-notch hacking and cyber–attacks going on today, your business may be vulnerable to one of these. Employing an on-site team to manage these threats may be impractical for an SMB considering the cost and the time needed to filter out the skills and expertise needed. Since a cyber–attack may occur at any time and without warning, having a third-party company monitoring you 24/7 all year around is advisable. Selecting a Managed Services provider with vast experience in the field of cybersecurity will protect you in the case of an attack, as they will be able to quickly detect and react to the situation. 

Lower costs 

As mentioned before, the savings are great through Managed Services as no investments for new software and servers are needed. With Service companies offering monthly subscription schemes, budget planning will be easy as the cost is fixed. With flexibility on scaling your IT sector, you can scale up or down as required and pay for the volume of services you acquire. 

 

However, though the advantages of IT outsourcing seem vast, depending on the size and nature of your business, it may or may not be practical. When it comes to data confidentiality, company rules may conflict with complete IT management. Some booming SMBs in the U.S has opted for partial outsourcing, where combined services in both IT and business sectors are employed. To find out what’s most suitable for you, feel free to contact us.  

 

 

Managing risks in Virtualization

Indifferent to risks associated with other IT sectors you associate, virtualization too, faces its own risks. To keep your business safe, it is important to take precautions. Here are some risks and what you should do to keep them at bay.

• The complexity of the Virtualization system

The system being complex may pose greater difficulty to detect malfunctions and managing these malfunctions will similarly be difficult. 

• Constant change 

With the dynamism involved in virtualization, an increased number of virtual systems will make it hard for you to keep track of it all and hence be harder to protect. Unlike a physical system where you can actually touch and feel, virtual systems are not subjected to such interactions, and hence it would be harder to maintain and protect. 

• Moving your data 

With your virtualized system growing, time to time you may need to move your data from one sector to another, while this may seem normal, if the target sector has lower security as compared to the current sector, your data may be at a risk. 

Keeping these risks at bay is important if you are to stay safe and sound. A few sectors where you need to pay attention to are mentioned below. 

• Auditing 

Frequently audit your systems for security flaws and other issues. If possible, automate such processes, where a separate system may be implemented to manage your virtual system. 

• Departmentalization 

Keep separate departments for testing, developing and producing where virtualization is involved. 

• Update

Frequently update your Virtual systems, where security gaps can be filled with patches released by the software companies. 

• Human factor 

Keeping a human factor involved in the security of your virtual system might be a good idea. Whether it be in-house or outsourced, such a measure will drastically improve the security of your system. 

 

For more information regarding the security of your virtualized system, feel free to give us a call. 

 

How to maintain your privacy on Windows 10

We no longer keep our valuable information physically secure under lock and key within a safe. With the introduction of computers and associated password protected data storage systems, our privacy protection is at a very high level… or is it? 

Despite some rumors regarding Windows 10 data collection policies breaching user privacy rights, these useful tricks will put your mind at ease. 

 

Switch off location tracking on your devices 

With location tracking enabled, you get a ton of advantages when navigating via maps, getting an Uber or Geotagging your favorite clicks. However, you might want to have some peace from things like local weather and nearby places to visit suggestions every now and then.  

It’s easy. Go to settings and switch off location tracking. Or you can select which apps have access to your location.

 

Get rid of ad tracking

Ever wondered how you just googled some product and you start seeing ads on similar products on places such as your email platform? It’s all the handiwork of ad tracking which can be easily deactivated. In Windows 10 however, app usage and activity are monitored too. This can be deactivated through settings as well.    

 

Cortana 

Just like Siri, this Windows assistant gathers a lot of your personal information. Turn it off and clear her cloud information storage to delete all the information she had collected so far. 

 

Customize your privacy settings 

Go to the Settings app, under Privacy settings, you can customize your preferences for privacy at an advanced level, where detailed preferences can be made. 

 

Wi-Fi Sense 

Wi-Fi sense allows you to share your network with people. This allows other users to access the bandwidth of your network without them accessing the whole network.  While some may misuse it, you might want to disable “Connect to suggested open hotspots” and “Connect to networks shared my contacts”. 

Heard about the 5 types of virtualization? 

Businesses today tend to embrace virtualization as it allows the business to reduce costs and optimize the available resources. This is done through the creation of a virtual IT device corresponding to a tangible, real-world IT device. This minimizes the maintenance and management aspects related to traditional devices. Here is how and where virtualization can be applied. 

 

1. Virtual desktops 

The virtual desktops allow the user to access his/her files and software through any computer, wherever the user is, discarding the need for taking a laptop or any other device wherever the user goes. Here the virtualization allows the separation of the user interface environment such that it is available online, taking away the need for the user to stick to one location for work. This is much like the synchronizing of data between your mobile and computer, though much advance since all information and software usage can be done through a ‘profile’ which you can log in to. Software licensing costs can be minimized through desktop virtualization.

2.  Virtual apps 

Here the apps used by the user can be logged into through any device (smartphones, tablets, or laptops) without needing to log-in to the workplace computer. The apps are virtualized and sent from a server to the device directly through the network. This is ideal for businesses which require constant mobility.

3. Virtual hardware 

This method of virtualization involves the shared use of hardware of large remote servers by several virtual computers which run on this server. This allows the efficient use of hardware resources moderated by a virtual machine manager and even allows the users of these virtual computers to run operating systems of their choice. Another advantage would be that there will be no need to upgrade the memory of the user’s computer as such allocations will be done by the Virtual machine manager as per the requirement. 

4. Virtual storage 

Like the case of virtual hardware, here all local memory resources have literally been piled up into one large chunk of memory, accessible by individual devices and is very useful in the case of disaster recovery as information in one virtual sector can be copied to another location. Also, the hassle of managing multiple storage resources is eliminated due this centralization and costs can be cut down. 

5. Virtual networks  

Network virtualization amalgamates all physical networking resources into one, software run resource. Businesses with a great number of users and with systems running 24/7 will benefit from network virtualization as it also allows splitting network bandwidths into multiple channels where these can be assigned to devices and servers. These channels, in turn, speed up all communications that run through the network improving work efficiency. 

 

All the above-mentioned advantages come with a certain level of seeming complexity and you might need experts to handle the virtualization of your business. For a safe and reliable service contact our experts for a better virtualization service for your business.   

Buying a new computer? What you need to know. 

With a vast choice of these brilliant machines to choose from, finding one that suits your work may be a bit of a hassle. Whether your purchase is for personal, family or business use, here is what you need your computer to have and what to look for. 

Type of computer that suits you 

Are you a frequent commuter who works at home, office and even while on your way to work? Then a laptop is the most suitable computer for you. Laptops are portable compact devices which allow you to work whenever and wherever you are. 

However, if you don’t intend to work out of your office and do not intend to work on the move, a desktop computer suits you better. They are much cheaper than laptops, easily upgradeable and generally have longer service lives. 

Computer memory 

This is where you store your files and depending on your type of work, say you are a film editor, you might need a large memory space. However, the use of an external drive is also an option, where drives with USB 3.1 achieve speeds of up to 10Gbps. External drives may be annoying to carry especially if you have decided to purchase a laptop and planning to move about.  

Another option with reference to memory is having a cloud storage. Its effectiveness depends on what kind of internet connection you use, where being on a metered connection may probably prove it useless for daily/frequent use for large file sizes. 

Computers today usually come with 1TB of internal memory which would be adequate for most users.

With a vast choice of these brilliant machines to choose from, finding one that suits your work may be a bit of a hassle. Whether your purchase is for personal, family or business use, here is what you need your computer to have and what to look for.

Type of computer that suits you

Are you a frequent commuter who works at home, office and even while on your way to work? Then a laptop is the most suitable computer for you. Laptops are portable compact devices which allow you to work whenever and wherever you are.

However, if you don’t intend to work out of your office and do not intend to work on the move, a desktop computer suits you better. They are much cheaper than laptops, easily upgradeable and generally have longer service lives.

Computer memory

This is where you store your files and depending on your type of work, say you are a film editor, you might need large memory space. However, the use of an external drive is also an option, where drives with USB 3.1 achieve speeds of up to 10Gbps. External drives may be annoying to carry especially if you have decided to purchase a laptop and planning to move about.

Another option with reference to memory is having a cloud storage. Its effectiveness depends on what kind of internet connection you use, where being on a metered connection may probably prove it useless for daily/frequent use for large file sizes.

Computers today usually come with 1TB of internal memory which would be adequate for most users.

The best processor and RAM for your computer 

Having the latest and most powerful processor allows you to multi-task, even with software and programs working in the background that require high processing power, at high speed. Processor performance is specified by its speed in GHz and its number of cores. Higher the number of cores, the better your processor performs. 

The RAM size determines how much multi-tasking you can do and how fast these tasks can be accomplished.  8GB of RAM would be adequate for most of your needs unless special tasks are expected to be done in your computer. 

The operating system (OS) 

There are a few OS options available for your computer that can be chosen from, where many users prefer Windows or Mac.  Depending on which OS you are familiar with, you might want to select an OS accordingly. 

 

Managing risks in Virtualization 

Indifferent to risks associated with other IT sectors you associate, virtualization too, faces its own risks. To keep your business safe, it is important to take precautions. Here are some risks and what you should do to keep them at bay. 

• The complexity of the Virtualization system 

The system being complex may pose greater difficulty to detect malfunctions and managing these malfunctions will similarly be difficult. 

• Constant change

With the dynamism involved in virtualization, an increased number of virtual systems will make it hard for you to keep track of it all and hence be harder to protect. Unlike a physical system where you can actually touch and feel, virtual systems are not subjected to such interactions, and hence it would be harder to maintain and protect. 

• Moving your data

With your virtualized system growing, time to time you may need to move your data from one sector to another, while this may seem normal, if the target sector has lower security as compared to the current sector, your data may be at a risk. 

 Keeping these risks at bay is important if you are to stay safe and sound. A few sectors where you need to pay attention to are mentioned below. 

• Auditing

Frequently audit your systems for security flaws and other issues. If possible automate such processes, where a separate system may be implemented to manage your virtual system. 

• Departmentalization

Keep separate departments for testing, developing and producing where virtualization is involved. 

• Update

Frequently update your Virtual systems, where security gaps can be filled with patches released by the software companies. 

• Human factor

Keeping a human factor involved in the security of your virtual system might be a good idea. Whether it be in-house or outsourced, such a measure will drastically improve the security of your system. 

 

For more information regarding the security of your virtualized system, feel free to give us a call.