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4 Major Disadvantages of Hybrid Cloud You Need to Consider in 2021

Among the cloud computing trends for the upcoming decade, the one that draws the most attention is the increasing focus on hybrid cloud. The adoption of hybrid cloud has been on the rise; if Gartner’s predictions are to be believed, more than 75% of large-and-medium-sized organizations would have transitioned to the hybrid cloud by 2021.

For those who don’t know, a hybrid cloud is a cloud hosting india architecture that spans multiple cloud environments such as on-premises, public, and private cloud services and allows data and applications to be shared between them. A hybrid cloud combines the flexibility of a private cloud with the scale of a public cloud and is often touted as an optimal middle path between the two.

Hybrid cloud enables businesses to enjoy the best of both worlds – use the public cloud for basic computing tasks while capitalizing on the private for sensitive data and applications.

Having said that, a hybrid cloud may not be suitable for every kind of organization; it has several drawbacks that may outweigh its benefits depending on what your priorities, budget, and expertise are.

Let us discuss the disadvantages of a hybrid cloud one by one.

Increased Complexity

Choosing a hybrid cloud hosting solution means you have to handle several vendors and platforms amidst two different types of computing environments. And this can be more complex than it sounds.

On account of the breadth of a hybrid network, the network specialists have more hardware to configure in the first place. Besides, ensuring uniform user authentication and access protocols across several points in this network can be a hassle.

Lack of Visibility

In a scenario where the computing environments are divided into two or more clouds, you may find it cumbersome to establish a clear picture of the overall environment – including its systems, applications, processes, and platforms, and monitor it as rigorously as it should be.

With no clear understanding of your architecture and operations, you’re likely to miss out on crucial issues and compliance regulations, and this takes us to the third key challenge.

Security and Compliance Issues

In a hybrid cloud infrastructure, you have to make sure all the cloud services – public, private and on-premises, comply with the regulations that apply to your industry. But that is a formidable task, given how complicated hybrid cloud solutions are.

In a hybrid environment, every point where the data is transmitted between two different locations is potentially vulnerable. Idle instances left running can translate into compliance issues, eventually leading to complications. In light of these issues, it’s vital that you think twice before moving your critical data to the hybrid cloud.

Data and Application Integration

Data and applications bear a close association, each being of little use without the other. So, when deciding where to store each of them, it’s vital to take into account the infrastructure they are placed on.

Now, let’s say, an application has been stored on a private cloud and its data on an on-premises data center. The application will need to access the data remotely – not an ideal scenario in many cases.

So, are hybrid cloud solutions the right fit for your business?

While there’s no denying that a hybrid cloud can be an optimal choice for those considering to shift their workloads to the cloud, organizations need to weigh meticulously the pros and cons of hybrid cloud solutions against their needs and priorities.

Here are a few measures you can take to make your hybrid cloud adoption a success:

Encrypt your data:

Preparing your data against any potential breaches by encrypting it is a vital step in protecting it.

Figure out which apps, data, and workloads are suitable for each kind of cloud:

When operating in a hybrid cloud, store your data center strategically. Sensitive data needs to be stored on a private cloud; regular data can be stored on the public cloud.

Use a container orchestration system:

Container orchestration systems such as Kubernotes can help deploy your apps across different cloud environments.

Leverage automation to simplify your work:

Automation speeds up the transmission of information. This way, you can react to a threat promptly as well as ensure consistency across all platforms. Automation can save your time and effort in managing your computing infrastructure.

Use a cloud-visibility tool:

We have already discussed how a hybrid infrastructure impairs your understanding of the entire system, resulting in security and compliance issues. A cloud visibility tool comes in handy in such a situation.

By investing in a reliable cloud visibility tool, your IT crew can focus on other important tasks instead of spending their time and energy on fixing your security issues.

So, all in all, if you are prepared to deal with the minutiae of hybrid cloud infrastructure and ready to go the extra mile to manage the complexities arising from it, go ahead and get it implemented. Otherwise, a public or private cloud can also serve your purpose well.

If you are seeking a hybrid cloud partner, get in touch with our cloud and infrastructure experts at 91-120-602-5102 (toll-free) or mail us at [email protected]. We will be glad to answer your queries.

Hybrid Clouds for Proactive and Agile Software Development

Amazing compute power and a fiercely competitive marketplace have lead to software driven approach to business development. Many enterprises are increasingly relying on agile software development to drive differentiation in their product offerings.

In short, modern marketing is essentially a ferocious race to develop innovative software at the speed of light. This has multiplied the demand for agile software development by leveraging hybrid cloud to widen choice of running the entire gamut of digital transformation. 

Agile software for accelerated marketing

Development of the agile software can not only reduce time to market new versions of products but has the far greater potential to attract new customers than a wide spectrum of physical devices. 

There are many examples of how agile software has enabled businesses gain leadership in some of the most competitive market segments. Businesses increasingly prefer agile software development to the traditional software which provide a new release every quarter. 

It is now a well accepted fact that software must be designed to become obsolete faster so that a new release can replace it. The approach has underlined the need to leverage cloud platforms which are ideal breeding grounds for agile software applications. 

In the past, companies used to struggle for months for designing physical machines to facilitate software development by evolving codes. 

However, modern technology has made it possible to access cloud computing for getting an entirely new Virtual Machine in an instant. Businesses can now aim for much faster time to market new products while continuously focusing on development of next versions that are already in the pipe line. 

Finding the right combination of clouds

As you dive deeper and try to figure out exact positioning of different applications, the things begin to appear more distinctive. Applications with data which is designed to be viewed by public deserve to be hosted in public cloud environments. The most obvious examples of such applications can be found in marketing websites of companies.

Another advantage of public cloud is its utility style of billing, which can be a perfect match for such applications because these are driven by highly fluctuating demands.   

In case of the majority of other applications, one should try these hosting in private cloud ecosystem. Private cloud hosting plans are found to provide an ideal platform to help development of agile software by catering to needs of constant integration and constant delivery. 

No company can afford to have a narrow spectrum of applications unless it is a startup or a small sized enterprise. For majority of companies, their portfolio of applications is usually diverse. This underlines need to establish a hybrid cloud infrastructure for supporting a diverse array of applications. 

Hybrid cloud infrastructure can be most ideally positioned within a Cloud Management Platform that works as a centralized resource for managing a variety of applications hosted in public or hybrid clouds. The unified platform simplifies deployment by supporting flexibility. 

Evolving workloads 

Applications and their related workloads have tendency to shift in terms of their targets in initial phases of development life cycles. Many workloads are required to be shifted to different hosting environments if there is a considerable variance in their projected and actual demand. 

This calls for a flexible environment to support development of workloads in initial stages.  Such a flexible environment can only be provisioned by public cloud adoption. Public clouds are designed to support elasticity and flexibility. 

Organizations have been using a public cloud approach to help applications and workloads gain momentum in their formative years for a long time. However, the public cloud environment can also provide an ideal alternative to workloads that have reached maturity stage. This is especially from the point of view of cost optimization. 

This underlines the need to develop a unified agency to distribute and manage workloads to different cloud versions by understanding their right positioning. Workload portability also necessitates adoption of hybrid cloud hosting to facilitate instant shifting of workloads from public to private cloud environments and also the other way round. 

The centralized agency can also be assigned task of cloud targeting because the cloud targets can never remain unchanged due to constant evolution of workloads in the early development stage. It should also be appreciated that this strategy has potential to offer benefits of cost effectiveness in the longer run. 

In conclusion

In order to survive the tsunami of digital revolution every business irrespective of its size or vertical, must aim to build innovations and build them fast. This approach is the only mantra to maintain visibility of the business in the excruciatingly competitive environment of modern economy. 

Hybrid cloud approach can help businesses develop agile software without significant impact on their IT budgets. Moreover, a hybrid cloud approach is also ideal for supporting easy migration of applications from public cloud to private cloud and vice versa. 

Is the Hybrid Cloud the Best Computing Solution?

Hybrid clouds are truly finding many takers. But are they the best solutions? Well, in order to understand the same, it is important to have a fair understanding of what hybrid cloud computing actually is. Simply put, they are a judicious mix of private and public cloud.

When we are referring to cloud computing in general, we mean public clouds. These are plans where companies who own servers, sell divided spaces at cheaper rates than actual individual servers. While this may seem like cost effective for most companies, it could well cause several concerns including availability, accessibility and most importantly, security.

Private servers are the most secure solutions for storing data. Companies can set up a cloud of their own and use it for computing and other processes. These clouds are meant to work as public clouds but exclusively for the company in question. This gives more space, unique availability and excellent accessibility for the company in question.

And then there is Hybrid cloud hosting which is a complete intelligent mix of public and private cloud interfaces. Here, public clouds are used for tasks that are not so sensitive while private clouds are used for those that are vital. It is more like a middle path and apparently more suitable for companies who are just making the cloud computing plunge.

The Many Advantages of the Hybrid Cloud

  • Provides for Excellent ScalabilityHybrid clouds are created in such a manner so that they can provide almost instant scalability. Within a hybrid network, several processes work together to achieve a harmonious functioning with different types of clouds. It becomes an ideal platform for loading heavy projects which may not otherwise have been possible. When the company engages a hybrid climate, the cost of spending on additional hardware support is saved. Therefore, although the upfront cost may seem more when compared to a public cloud environment, it is during these times that the actual cost benefits are realized.
     
  • Provides Global Reach: For companies that rely on a hybrid cloud computing system, global reach is never a problem. The cloud computing can be operated and accessed from all across the world. This provides universal access to the business. There are no boundaries on the basis of geographic limitations. Also, this wide reach provides endless connectivity. Outages are few and far between.
  • It’s fairly reasonable: While performing cost calculations, it is important to set the parameters right. For instance, if we end up comparing the plan with a shared hosting system, the costs will seem fairly high. However, the advantages provided by the Hybrid cloud hosting plan should always be kept in mind while performing cost assessments. Companies can find it especially difficult to invest in managed hosting. These hybrid hosting plans provides advances solutions at highly cost effective rates instead. It proves to be cheaper since companies do not need to shift plans or spend on additional hardware for catering to their enhanced needs and requirements.

What about Security?

The fear of insecurity always looms large when it comes to cloud computing. Once a cloud is launched on the internet, it remains exposed for access and even for vandalizing. In fact, it because of security concerns that many companies refrain from hitting the cloud. However, experts opine that storing data on the cloud is almost as safe as storing it in private servers.

Companies dealing with sensitive information however needs to careful. It may be prudent to store the most sensitive information on local servers. Cloud storage can be used for bulk storage of information and not so important data. Heavy processing should be left to the cloud since loading private servers with too much data overload can be harmful and may compromise basic functions of the server infrastructure. Seeking private server support for processing huge chunks of data can also mean compromised performances and increased costs.

An intelligent mix of both is required therefore.

In Conclusion

When it comes to security, there are indeed some niggling concerns associated with cloud hosting since it is a domain that resides in a common location. However, it is surely emerging as a highly favourable concept and futuristic too. The hybrid infrastructure offers the best of both worlds, private and public. The cloud infrastructure is indeed a huge boon to the computing world.

The secret of success lies in three important attributes:

  • Keeping the expectations in track when it comes to assessing the hybrid hosting plan.
  • Knowing how to manage and operate the plan to the best of its ability
  • Selecting a trustworthy computing solution provider for ensuring the best results from your chosen plan.

Although there are some concerns, hybrid hosting seems like a good idea for companies that are keen on seeking an advanced data computing system. The prices are competitive too.

Understanding Relevance of Growing Hybrid Cloud Adoption

Cloud computing has been around for quite some time and it has significantly influenced businesses and IT infrastructures across the globe. The major categories of cloud hosting such as hybrid cloud, public cloud, and private cloud have been accepted with open arms by diverse industries.

However, hybrid cloud has emerged as the most widely sought after cloud model by entrepreneurs and web administrators. It is no surprise that hybrid cloud has been adopted by large number of businesses because it is an amalgamation of private cloud, public cloud and dedicated hosting offerings. Enterprises are able to categorize applications based on different factors and use public cloud for offsite workloads while reserving private cloud solutions for management of onsite applications.

Significance of adopting hybrid cloud

Businesses are attracted to hybrid cloud solutions due to number of features including upward and downward scalability, cost optimization, robust backup facilities, and cloud bursting to name a few.

Therefore it is hardly any surprise that 2012 survey of cloud computing future by North Bridge had predicted a whopping 52 percent contribution of hybrid cloud to entire cloud computing market in 2017 from just about 37 percent in 2012. This phenomenal growth in hybrid cloud adoption can be only attributed to its impressive benefits. Let us understand important key factors that are driving growth of hybrid cloud.

Steady adoption of cloud services

In spite of so many obvious advantages of cloud computing, moving to cloud by abandoning traditional in house infrastructure is considered as a paradigm shift by many organizations and web administrators. There is an element of risk while moving business critical data to the vague and complex cloud applications. All the while, enterprises have been used to rely on in-house infrastructure that would be forever considered to be a safe haven for storage of critical data and other important workloads.

The skepticism has led to organizations adopt an intermediate approach of moving a select few applications to cloud by adopting the hybrid cloud solutions. By exploiting dedicated servers and virtual machines for running applications, organizations can slowly and steadily move relevant workloads to cloud. Interestingly enough, the much needed flexibility for implementation of such an arrangement is facilitated by hybrid cloud itself.

Mitigation of TCO

Reduction of costs leading to overall mitigation of Total Cost of Ownership is an attractive advantage of hybrid cloud adoption. Organizations need nit invest heavily in purchase of costly equipment, since the hybrid cloud service provider takes care of majority of infrastructural requirements. The monthly outlays are significantly minimized by adoption of hybrid cloud model that requires user to follow pay-as-you-go payment model. On premise backups can be expensive, while cloud based backup solutions are much more economical.

Convenience of D2D2C (disk-to-disk-to-cloud) data backup

Hybrid cloud adopts D2D2C approach for data backup. It involves using onsite storage for storing data and subsequent transfer to the third party cloud storage service provider. This process obviates data backup via internet that requires a physical desk to be sent to backup service provider. It also enables users to spend valuable time as well as efforts to focus on their core competencies due to reassurance of data safety.

Bringing together best of both the worlds

Hybrid cloud solutions help organizations gain high end cloud capabilities while preserving their onsite IT infrastructure to manage specific workloads that are more vulnerable and intensive. Availability of hybrid cloud capability empowers them to choose applications that need to be shifted to cloud or retained within on-premise infrastructure. It has been observed that majority of businesses prefer to shift less sensitive applications to cloud while maintaining business critical information within the boundaries of in-house IT facilities.

Innovation with economy

Adopting innovative technology without investing huge funds can sound like Utopian statement. New technologies are often cost intensive and highly complex. There are always chances of failure leading to loss of huge investment. Usually, enterprises need to purchase new equipment while ushering new technologies thus adding to overall costs of adoption.

However, cloud computing helps businesses embrace cutting edge technologies without any considerable investment. There is virtually no need to buy new hardware equipment for availing cloud based services.  Cloud offers dynamic provision of resources to help developers focus on their competency rather than worrying about procurement of resources for development of new projects. In addition to this, as a subscriber of hybrid cloud users are also entitled to access public cloud services a no extra charges.

In conclusion

Businesses of all sizes can easily adopt cloud hosting services by choosing the appropriate cloud solution to improve their ability to meet fluctuating business requirements. Cloud solutions offer on demand and dynamic scalability improve business continuity.

In the present volatile and competitive business landscape, hybrid cloud is a promising resource for gaining cutting edge capabilities without an iota of capital expenditure. Hybrid cloud solutions enhance business efficiency and help maintain a fine balance between on site as well as off site applications. Entrepreneurs are able to innovate new business strategies by making optimum use of resources to improve productivity.

Why Intel Launched Hybrid CPU-FPGA Chips

Intel had earlier acquired the Altera which focused on the FPGA or field programmable gate array. Recently they declared the launch of new hybrid online chips. These are designed to combine the FPGA with CPUs to achieve targets that had been set in 2010. According to forecasts, the FPGA market is destined to be worth almost $10 billion in another 5 years time. It is because of this reason that Intel has acquired Altera, the FPGA giant year before last. Following this acquisition, Intel is using its new FPGA for developing machine learning solutions, Big Data processing solutions, cloud computing solutions etc. Intel has introduced the hybrid CPU-FPGA chips to get more powerful and flexible applications. 

Are the Xeon Phi and FPGA similar?

This hybridization concept is definitely not new; it had been voiced way back in 2010. A new software stack has also been introduced which will simplify working with this new hardware. The FPGA is important as it is an IC or integrated circuit which is customizable and can cater to specific needs. So, the FPGA may be programmed on the go to carry out specific tasks as and when needed. This also explains why some people thought that the FPGA chips are expected to give the Xeon Phi accelerator a stiff competition. However, Intel has clarified that this is not their intention. They say that the FPGA is quite distinct from the Xeon Phi acceleration because the latter will offer only specialized acceleration whereas with the FPGA, you can achieve multifunction acceleration.

Similar to the GPUs, these FPGA chips are going to be employed for both offload and inline purposes. Inline refers to a condition were the CPU completely away from data and it goes directly into and out of FPGA for processing. But offloading is where the data entering first will go through CPU before it is moved to FPGA for processing. It is interesting to note that the FPGAs have been introduced by Intel because these are meant for specific tasks that cannot be performed either by the GPUs or the Xeon Phi. Intel is saying that the Altera FPGAs will work like co-processors. So, they will be competing with the Xeon Phi is certain aspects. But, they are designed to be far more versatile. They will be therefore suited for specific kinds of tasks better than either the GPUs or the Xeon Phi. The FPGA, in short, will let you cover a much wider application space.

The combined solution offers a rather tight bonding between the CPU and FPGA. External PCI Express card however is not tightly coupled. The main differences between discrete and integrated lie in the different architectures and data movement. So, when you are running multiple workloads inside a data center facility, you will not want to connect it to a single app. If done properly, technology is capable of enhancing overall customer experiences. So, the more you introduce specialization, the better is the accelerator performance. This means that the hybrid FPGA chips will now be able to guarantee much better performance in certain apps. Since it offers programmability and helps in accelerating workloads which can be parallelized, you can use these for data analytics, machine learning, AI or Artificial Intelligence, financial analysis, video transcoding, security and genomics.

As far as its FPGA strategy is concerned, Intel has taken up a two-pronged plan. It offers both these FPGA-CPU processors and separate Arria brand FPGA devices on a PCI Express card. The hybrid FPGA-CPU device will be using faster UPI link; this is expected to be far more efficient compared to the earlier QuickPath Interconnect. It can therefore support many requests per message. Besides, Intel has also come out with a developer tool set for designing apps to cater to both discrete and integrated products. All of these are going to be written in OpenCL which is similar to C language.

So, the main reason behind the introduction of these hybrid chips is to make them compatible to the new new-generation processors. They will be easy to migrate and they will allow the FPGA developer to target a bigger user base.

Blatant Inadequacies of Active Directories

It would not amount to an exaggeration to state that the Active Directory (AD) environment is of greater value than intellectual property or any software application of an enterprise. Active Directory is the most vital resource that plays an important role by supporting system, network, application system and user.

AD can also accommodate huge gamut of managed resources including third party resources such as Linux, MAC OS X, and UNIX. It also administers access control for all resources and objects within enterprise computing infrastructure and requires overwhelming costs to manage manpower and hardware.

There are considerable hurdles for managing Active Directory for limited number of users and groups. In spite of its robust performance and wide ranging functionalities, there are distinct limitations of Active Directory that need to be discussed at length. These pain points can hardly be relieved by accessing Microsoft’s basic interface.

Managing nested groups

Creating and using AD nested groups is associated with best practices. It must be noted that built-in AD restrictions must be used to slightly modify these best practices. This would prevent administrators from extending nested groups to more than a single level. Prevention of more than one nested group for each existing group will ensure that future administrative issues in terms of administration and house-keeping are avoided.

Permitting multiple groups within groups and nesting multiple group levels amounts to complex inheritance problems in addition to bypassing security. This would also ruin organizational measures that were designed to be prevented by group management. Nested group sprawl can be corrected by implementation of periodic AD audits. Such audits are also useful to help administrators and architects reassess AD organization.

Shifting to RBAC from ACLs

Shifting away from user oriented Access Control Lists (ACLs) as per AD management style to enterprise method of Role Based Access Control (RBAC) may appear to be a smooth transition. Practically speaking, the converse is true since it is very difficult to manage and switch to ACLs. It is the same story while switching to RBAC. Active Directory lacks central location for managing permissions and results in a complex and expensive process. 

RBAC tries to reduce permissions for accessing failures. This is achieved by handling access permissions by role instead of individual. However it is not able to succeed hands down due to lack of centralized permissions management. In comparison with the difficulty level of moving to RBACs, it is much easier to manage permissions manually with ACLs on per user basis. 

ACLs fall short of scalability and dynamic manageability due to the fact that these are too broad in shape. In contrast, roles are more precise because the permissions are granted by administrators based on user roles.

RBAC considers a job function or role for defining permissions or restriction instead of assigning a user to several groups that could have facilitated broader permissions. RBAC do not need other ACL complexities or nesting for delivering superior results in addition to greater security of environment or a security platform that is managed easily.

Managing workstations

Administrator’s worst nightmare is to spend long hours and unending attempts to reconnect errant computers that are disconnected from the domain. This a common phenomenon while managing new computers or workstations that are no more connected to domain.

Unfortunately, the standard Microsoft solution is not able to provide any solution. Following the standard fix means resetting the workstation’s account object in Active Directory and rebooting followed by praying for the desired result. 

Alternative remedies are in no way better than the standard fix either. The options involve reimaging of the disconnected system for the purpose of reconnecting the same to domain. 

Managing user account lockouts

Account lockouts do not offer any self service fixes. There are few third party fixes that have found some solutions to this issue. This may involve long periods of waiting for accessing the administrators for resetting the account. 

The process of account resetting can be highly irritating for the user rather than the administrator. The significant issue regarding user account lockout events is, these need not necessarily arise out of incorrect password. It can also originate from sources and Active Directory offers no clue to the admin guy about the origin. 

Serious security concerns related to user permissions

Privileged users are capable of elevating their privileges by simply including themselves to other groups. Privileged users are able to elevate themselves to acquire additional privileges in Active Directory environment. Such feature of permission elevation can prove to be major threat to security. The feature can be exploited by a privileged user to progressively get elevated by adding privileges till the time the user is able to gain extensive control to the extent of locking out other administrators. 

Whenever the administrators do not remove user from a specific privilege group on account of change of job or profile the condition is termed as Permission Creep. This can lead to an unauthorized person gaining access to corporate assets that are not supposed to be used by the particular individual. 

Permission elevation as well as permission creep are potential threats to security. Users can access multiple third party applications for performing audits for detection and prevention of such eventualities. 

Active Directory is one of the most vital resources to facilitate user authentication, computer management, and access to various resources. It is an important piece of network infrastructure for modern enterprises. In spite of its robust attributes Active Directory suffers from multiple limitations.

It is encouraging to note that some non-Microsoft software vendors have offered to extend features of Active Directory by effectively resolving its mediocre management interface design and strengthened its functionalities by polishing some obvious shortfalls.

Drupal Vs. WordPress – How Do You Settle Upon the Best CMS

There are quite a few popular content management systems (CMSs) available in the market place to help you develop a nice and functional website. However, there are three most popular CMSs that occupy the majority of market share – Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. For a layman, the availability of more than one quality CMS and an extensive variety of important features and benefits associated with each often possess a problem of plenty.

People are often confused about which one is best and meet their website design and development expectations closely. Questions like which one is better? What are their distinguishing features? Which will serve my cause better? How they fair on efficiency quotient and ease of use? How do they fair on functionality factor? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using either of them? etc keep playing on one’s mind.

In this blog we shall talk exclusively about two best rated content management systems (CMSs)—WordPress and Drupal. We shall also deal in detail with the pros and cons of using each and seek to find out which one will serve your cause better in keeping with your website requirements.

Although both systems allow users to create and manage content over one or multiple websites, there are some significant differences between the two. A meaningful insight into as to how they work, what are their strong points and their unique benefits will enable you to make a better and more informed decision. The primary objective of this blog is to give you a through overview of WordPress and Drupal so that you can settle upon any particular CMSs with much more confidence.

WordPress

This is arguable the best, most popular and easy to use CMS system available in the market. Undisputed leader as far as CMSs are concerned, it enjoys popularity that exceeds Drupal by several notches. Starting out as a simple blogging system, WordPress owing to its simplicity quickly ascended the popularity charts and became a full-fledged and fully-functional content management system in a very short period of time. WordPress today holds the distinction of being the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, currently powering close to 25% website on the Web. WordPress as such is the most ideal platform for beginner bloggers and website developers. This though, in no way suggests it is not suitable for advanced web developers who can have a lot of fun with all the creative ways to customise.

Some of the important advantages offered by WordPress are as following:

  • Easy to learn and use as no extensive HTML knowledge is required.
  • Search engines show a greater love for WordPress making it the ideal CMS to develop SEO optimised websites.
  • WordPress is 100 per cent customisable with thousands of free (and paid) themes, plugins and tools.
  • Upgrades are done automatically negating any need of manual interference by website owners.
  • Gives owners complete control of their site without having to wait for web developers
  • WordPress enjoys huge community support.

Disadvantages of using WordPress

  • As mentioned above, WordPress keeps updating at frequent intervals. Some plugins as such may not adapt as quickly to the changes leading to depressed performance.
  • Users have to have knowledge of CSS and HTML to employ graphic changes.
  • Permalinks are numeric until user knowingly activates the SEO friendly feature
  • Large volume of content handling may slow down the system

The worst feature

WordPress is extremely vulnerable to plugins viruses, which have the potential of wiping out entire pages.

Drupal

Drupal is more popular amongst NGOs, government agencies, higher educational institutions, etc.  It is an incredibly powerful framework that can serve as a solid foundation for virtually any type of website. Drupal as such is more ideal for people with advanced and sophisticated knowledge of web development. Though way behind WordPress in number of users, Drupal too has an active and large community, which is always eager to provide meaningful and relevant answers to your queries.

Advanced features and unique customisation abilities makes Drupal a dream CMS for creating attractive and powerful websites.

Advantages of Drupal

  • Advanced control over URL structure
  • Unlike WordPress, it possess the ability to seamlessly handle large volumes of content
  • Drupal offers enterprise grade security
  • Supports multiple site stakeholders (admin, editors, logged in users requiring customized content, private groups, etc.)
  • Drupal is intended for building high performance websites with advanced features
  • Drupal offers greater degree of flexibility and versatility
  • Pages tend to load faster due to its defaulting caching features

Disadvantages of Drupal

  • Requires expert technical knowledge
  • Updates require manual intervention
  • Premium themes and plugins (modules) cost a lot more than WordPress

The worst feature

It is extremely difficult to install

The Popular Email Hosting Services Including Contacts, Calendars & Team Email

Emails are so universal in today’s date that we simply underestimate it. Similar to having an individual ID number, telephone number, or postal code, one has the email address—it is your computerized international ID, the apparatus that opens all your different tools.

As for your own email address, there is not too much to contemplate. You will possibly get your email address with your web or cell supplier or have a Hotmail or Gmail account you agreed to accept years back. In any case, you can send and get messages from anybody on this universe with the email address. That is precisely how the email functions: It just works, and you don’t need to break your head over it.

As for your organization’s email, however, email is the focal point of all that you do. The corporate email hosting service is not only to message; it additionally deals with your logbook, contacts, documents, and that’s just the beginning. It likely additionally deals with your organization’s information on representative’s cell phones.

That is the reason the apparatus that controls your group’s email is an imperative decision. This is what the prevalent facilitated business email suppliers do best, also your choices for facilitating your own particular email server hosting.

The enormous names in the email business still exist. You can even now permit Lotus Notes from IBM, Exchange Server from Microsoft, or BlackBerry Enterprise Server from RIM—and they can at present be a savvy answer for partnerships. For most organizations, however, the best choice is a facilitated email benefit, something like G Suite or the new Office 365 that can deal with your group’s email and more while never expecting to introduce programming or deal with a server.

Some of the popular choices are as follows:

Email in Office 365

Trade has made some amazing progress. From an interior device worked to deal with Microsoft’s own particular email to programming you’d introduce on your server, Exchange throughout the years has included new highlights and extended what we anticipate from an email benefit. What’s more, with Office 365, you would now be able to get those highlights alongside Office applications in the cloud, regardless of whether you utilize Microsoft servers or not.

Microsoft offered a facilitated rendition of Exchange for a couple of years before transforming their whole Office suite into a membership benefit in mid-2011. The present Office 365 offers indistinguishable highlights from Exchange 2016 with push email, an online rendition of Outlook, and Active Directory client administration to arrangement organization gadgets and remotely deal with your group’s information. What’s more, it’s stuffed with additional highlights, including the new Microsoft Teams visit apparatus, a Sharepoint-based intranet, a business form of OneDrive for record sharing, and Skype for Business for your telephone calls and video talks.

Maybe its best element is that all Office 365 come packaged with Office Online, with thinned down adaptations of Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint that keep running in your program so you can cooperatively alter reports with your group. With a Business Premium or Enterprise E3 membership, you can likewise get the work area and versatile adaptations of Microsoft Office, for the full programming suite alongside your email membership. It’s a simple method to get the majority of the product your group needs in a single suite that you can oversee together.

Gmail from G Suite

The first online email suite, G Suite- as of late rebranded Google Apps for Work- gives you Gmail, Google Docs, and you’re other most loved Google applications on your organization’s space. Initially only an exclusively marked variant of Gmail, G Suite has increased new applications and highlights as they’ve been added to Google’s customer-centered applications.

You’ll get the same Gmail involvement with names, channels, and an extensive variety of additional items, alongside the more up to date Google Inbox for a fast method to deal with your mail like a plan for the day. You’ll have the capacity to effortlessly impart archives and spreadsheets to your group by means of Google Docs and can impart whole organizers to your full organization with the new Team Drive. There are Hangouts for video talk, Forms to accumulate information, and Sites to help you rapidly construct a site or intranet.

Google’s organization instruments are easy to use too, and progressively have the propelled highlights organizations need, for example, Google Vault for consistence chronicled. What’s more, since it’s as yet the Gmail your group definitely knows how to use, there will be a small expectation to absorb information getting your group on board.

G Suite Tools Include Calendar, Email, Contacts, Documents, Tasks, Forms, Files, Intranet, Video and Text Chat.

Zimbra Mail

Zimbra Collaboration is one of the more well-known interchanges to Microsoft Exchange (through Zimbra Email Hosting). From the most punctual days of email, in the event that you needed email, you needed to have an email server. Until the mid-2000’s, that was still almost the best way to get email directed to your company domain.

Indeed, even today, there is as yet an extensive variety of awesome apparatuses to have your own email, a large number of which are free. That is a standout amongst other things about email: It’s an administration you can keep running without anyone else that works with each other email benefit consequently. Whether you’re utilizing G Suite, run your Postfix all alone server, or have Microsoft Exchange in private VPS, or you can email any other person and know they’ll get your message, paying little mind to what email benefit they’re utilizing.

Linux and macOS accompany Postfix, the data center terminal instruments you have to run an email server. Windows Server incorporates an implicit SMTP server for an essential email involvement. Both are a Mail Transfer Agent that can send and get messages for you—and you could set them up for essential email highlights.

Striking Attributes of Microsoft Exchange and Zimbra Email Platforms

If you start listing all components of your IT infrastructure according to their significance, then email will certainly be positioned among the top IT resources. No business can function without the email facility because it has been a universally accepted mode of official communication across all enterprises irrespective of their sizes. 

Importance of email platforms

We can see employees communicating within an organization by sending email-messages. Email is also used to send business communications to customers, business associates, and vendors across all verticals of businesses. Considering the importance of such communications as well as the volume of messages that need to be handled by your email infrastructure, it is essential to choose the server with proper care. 

Email servers are also required to facilitate storage of business critical messages in addition to enabling seamless exchange of communications. Considering these factors, one should be able to compare the two most sought after business email servers including Microsoft Exchange Server and Zimbra email Hosting

These email collaboration platforms are found to be the most sought after applications by businesses to guarantee that employees are able to enjoy a feature-rich communication experience so that it is easy for them to host the entire gamut of mission critical data within a unified resource. 

Points to consider while choosing the email server

Process of zeroing on the right email server by evaluating Zimbra and Microsoft Exchange can be extremely complex. However, one should go for an in-depth comparison for sake of choosing a perfect email resource according to organizational requirements and priorities. 

In principle, both Zimbra and Microsoft Exchange platforms share common theories but differ in their own ways in terms of various features. Organizations can also have their own expectations as far as the type of attributes offered by these email server platforms. These can be radically different in terms of the business categories, target customers, security considerations, and size of the organization. 

If you run a large business enterprise with offices scattered across large geographical area, then you need to build large clusters for storage of critical information and for managing a big volume of email traffic. In contrast, a small sized enterprise or a startup may be able to fulfill email requirements with help of a single email server. 

While looking for a right email platform, one needs to consider the cost of running such systems and the overall value it offers to the organization in terms of enhanced storage, performance and efficiency of communications. If you are looking for an affordable email platform, then Zimbra email server would be a better choice because it offered as open source and is therefore free. However, for large or multi-location enterprises, Zimbra and Microsoft Exchange offer commercial options to choose from. 

Seamless expandability 

In addition to costs, you will be able to leverage Zimbra email platform for expanding your email resource for accommodating a large number of hosted users for future use. Although, both email platforms enable hosting of unlimited users, you will be able to use a single Zimbra email for enhancing email operations by deploying clusters of servers to accommodate future requirements. In fact, many users try out the free version to get accustomed with features of Zimbra email server. 

In spite of its costs, commercial versions of Microsoft Exchange or Zimbra can provide ideal environments for supporting specific business operations in large organizations, this offering a great value for money in the longer run. 

Unrestricted compatibility

If you are looking for an email platform that offers seamless syncing ability for a diverse spectrum of screens sizes such as mobile phones, tabs, and desktops, then Microsoft Exchange server will be the right option to consider. In addition to the facility of Outlook support within Windows or Mac environments, one can easily access a large number of third-party apps that are designed to offer support to Microsoft Exchange Server in addition to providing easy access to complex features including the global address book. Microsoft Exchange also finds a sound and core based support within iOS environments. Zimbra can also be built for integration with Outlook and other desktop clients.

Access to web based interfaces 

There is an excellent support for web-based clients in both MS Exchange as well as Zimbra platforms. These capabilities can be leveraged for providing seamless availability of email services to users on the go even if the devices are not appropriately configured for the same. 

Users can also access a web format based desktop Outlook with help of Outlook Web Access. In the similar manner, you can also find the same support in terms of web interface provided by Zimbra.

Takeaway

If you are operating within a Linux ecosystem, then a decision to choose Zimbra email platform is fully justified. Similarly, in Windows environment, the Microsoft Exchange Server will provide a sound support. Similarity of features of both the platforms will eventually result in equally gratifying user experience irrespective of the platform. 

Should Email Host And Web Host Be Kept Different?

Web hosting is one of the most celebrated technologies of all time. It has the capability of transforming your business without any doubt. But with changing times, the demands and requirements of your business have also evolved. Now we have the benefit of personalized solutions for all the problems so as to experience early results. This eliminates all confusion and makes our lives even more simple.

Also, why put all your eggs in one basket when you can get different ones for each of your specific requirements. It actually doesn’t make any sense to expect your web host to also handle your emailing system completely. Though we get carried away by the free service that web hosts generally provide but your business emails deserve more than just free service.

When we generally visit the market in search of a web hosting provider, we look for both our website as well as emails. Business emails are no less important than our website. If you think so that your business emails do not require separate treatment, then you must be unaware of the power and reach of email marketing. To eat the fruits of efficient email marketing, you need to keep your business emails away from the limitations of your web host. But for this, you need to know all about email hosting and its features.

What is business email hosting?

A business email host is an online email hosting service that is specially designed to take care of all your business-related emails. As emails are considered to be the uttermost professional medium of communication and thus are equally important for any kind of business. A reputed email hosting provider is aware of this fact and comes up with innovative ideas in their service so as to keep your emailing game on point.

If we talk about the services a typical email hosting provider will cover, then they are sending, receiving, and storing emails over the server. The server will be provided by the email hosting provider and the whole procedure is similar to renting space on an online server. Once you have signed up for an email host, they will customize all the business email addresses and other services as and when required.

Running a business without emails is near to impossible and so managing business emails becomes equally important for any business leader. But being into business, you have to plan your expenses as well and we understand it very well. But after going through the following reasons as to why to keep email and web host separate you will realize that your money is not put to waste.

People also get confused between an email host and an email client. Thus we have made a detailed difference between email host, web host, and email client to make things more clear.

Email ServerWeb HostEmail Client
Just like websites, email addresses also need to be hosted on a server. There are many popular email servers for this and sometimes they are hosted alongside your website on the same web host. An email server is a server that dedicatedly hosts all your business email addresses.A web host is like a high-end computer that is always online i.e. connected to the internet. One can access data and files through databases. They provide a domain name that is entered on the web browser. This is where your website’s databases are stored.An email client is a software that you use to write, read, and manage your email. The most popular email clients are Gmail, Outlook, etc.

Benefits of keeping email and web host different

  1. No impact on the other if one goes down– There can be times when your web host can go down and such situations appear unasked and unexpectedly. When people fall for those free email hosting services alongside their main web host, this problem is very eminent to happen. If for instance, your web host goes down due to some or the other issue, your business emails will also go down and thus will impact your whole business from head to toe. This happens as almost all the web host providers place everything on the same server and thus risking both your website as well as your emails. The chances of going down for such servers are even more as the loads are unmetered and doubling the risks. The crashing of both the website and the emails is something that becomes inevitable. Imagine, both your website and business email going down for just a few minutes. It would be catastrophic, right? Apart from losing money, you might lose some of your trusted visitors and clients. A separate email host is a sole solution to a problem like this. Hence, to avoid this situation of one going down then all going down, you need a good email hosting provider. The experience is so relaxing keeps you intact with all your visitors and helps in bringing more potential clients.      
  2.  Migration of data is easier with an email host– If you have started as a startup, you will need to migrate your complete database from one hosting provider to another. This is because once you start to scale up it is not possible to bound your website to the services of a single hosting provider when there is so much to offer in the market. Thus migrating from one hosting provider to another will definitely come up in the future. Everything changes from the domain name to bandwidth and thus migrating data can be a very hectic task. Already your business is going through a plethora of changes, would you want to load it more? So to avoid any further changes keeping the email host separate from the web hosting provider. To keep your business emails running a separate email host is the best idea.
  3. Support is not that dedicated– When you host both website and email on the same server then you cannot expect the support services to be very dedicated. Compare this with a situation at your home like you cannot expect your air conditioner serviceman to be good at servicing your heating appliances also. Similarly, if your emails are also hosted on the same server as your website you will not be able to receive that much of dedicated support. This is because email hosting is an additional service which is kept free by most of the web hosting providers and thus don’t feel the need to hire experts on business email hosting. Thus problems relating to business email hosting are treated secondary unintentionally. This can be very stressful for your business as troubleshooting problems or errors will be delayed by default. So email hosting is though cheap when we get as a free service but is very problematic in the longer run.

In a nutshell, keeping the email host separate from your web host always turns out to be beneficial in the longer run. The quality support and email specific features are the best you can give to your business email addresses and thus highly recommendable. Although there are few things to be kept in mind when you select your email hosting provider like cost, support, etc. but future opportunities are endless. So without wasting any further time, quickly select the most suitable email hosting provider from the market and give that edge to your business.

Secret Android Features You Probably Didn’t Know Existed

Assume you are drafting an important email and just then by mistake hit the send button. Now what? Your client is not going to be happy reading what was supposed to be a draft. But what if I told you you can unsend emails. Baffled? Probably. There are email solutions for small businesses that provide you the capability to force back an email within a given time frame. That being said,  your android phone is only as smart as you are. It is almost certain you have perhaps missed a lot of cool features that could have greatly simplified our lives had we known they existed. So, in this blog, I bring to you some of the most lethal but fun things every android phone comes packed with.

#1 You can reverse search images

Ever wondered how convenient it would be if you could search through images instead of texts? Seems like there is. This functionality was not provided on mobiles until recently, although it had existed on desktop browsers for long. To search using an image, go to Google Image Search home page. From the browser you are using, navigate to the options tab and tick desktop site. This is it, you can now upload your image and see similar images using the camera icon in the search bar.

# 2 Google Translate in Real Life—Google Lens

Android is so much about Google, it is a Google product after all. Despite that, not many of us talk about Google Lens but it is covertly getting more and more intelligent. The applications makes use of your phone’s entire arsenal of features. Lens is probably the most intelligent app ever made, deploying augmented reality, location tracking and behavior monitoring all at once. The most compelling feature of the application – and definitely worth mentioning here – is its ability to translate what you see.

# 3 Search Songs

If you thought performing searches via images was cool, you are likely to have your brains blown off by the next one. Most android phones come inbuilt with features that allow you to capture songs or music and, in turn, search the same either on your songs list or on the internet. With this feature it is easy to identify songs playing near you. Here is how this works –

Long press the home key until Google assistant pops up (you can also launch the same using by citing ‘ok Google’ or ‘hey Google’ as you use your phone. At the bottom pane, tap the mic icon, click ‘what’s this song’ and let your phone picks the beats.

# 4 Directly copy texts using split screen

Let’s be honest, split screen needs a lot of credit than it is given at present. We all know developers do not pointlessly include features unless absolutely necessary.

If you haven’t tried it before, split screen can prove to be extremely convenient when you need to copy texts from one place to the other. You no longer need to continuously switch between apps to do so.

Just pull out two apps in the split screen mode. One of the apps contains texts that you will be copying and pasting into the other application.

Select text and simply drag it over to the other application screen. Voila!

This is what it would look like.

# 5 T-Rex Runner

Often times, you open chrome even before your phone could connect to the internet. It might sometimes get boring, waiting for the phone to pick signals from your WiFi router, authenticate and have the internet connection up and running. If you haven’t played before, there is this game on Chrome, called the T-Rex runner. It is similar to Temple Run and Subway Surfers but only more minimalist and basic.

The game can be activate by long pressing the dragon and can be played only when your page fails to load, needless to say – when Chrome cannot connect to the internet.

# 6 Relocate your Keyboard

There are not many people left who still love the style and icons of the pre-built Gboard (Google keyboard). The relatively older style and lack of aesthetic luster made people to switch to third-party keyboards. Meanwhile, many still stick to Gboard as their primary keyboard because it comes packed with features no other application could think of.

  • Holding the enter key makes it a mini keyboard for one-handed use.
  • Pressing the float icon in one-handed mode lets you freely move the keyboard anywhere on the screen.
  • You can also create your own gifs and stickers without moving a muscle.

Quick Tip – double tapping the multi-tasking key quickly switches over to the last used application.

# 7 Rolling back sent emails

Even the best email domain hosting provider would not provide you with the option to roll back mails so easily. This might be technically unachievable because the recipient may have his email hosted on some other server. However, there are still some quick ways to prevent unintended emails from unintended receivers.

Some email providers have made rolling back sent emails unique selling points in their hosting service. As interesting as it might sound, the scope is still largely limited to email solutions for small business. Further, the receiver may not have hosted his email from the same provider, so it is technologically impossible to legitimately delete data from server that does not belong to you.

You, however, are in control of your email until it leaves your carrier network.

In Gmail, you can do a lot of things, like cancelling reply all when you meant to reply to just one person.

Login to your gmail account. Now do to settings by clicking the top right gear icon. From the dropdown menu, select settings.

Now, under the general tab continue scrolling until you find ‘undo send’. Click and enable the undo send option, while also choosing the cancellation period from the box beside it. Cancellation period is basically the amount of time after which you can no longer undo send; so choose wisely.

Try sending a test mail to your alternate email address. Right after you send one, you will notice a floating yellow dialog, which would include a button to cancel what you just sent.

Free email server hosting might not provide you the level of control you would want as an entrepreneur. Luckily at Go4hosting, we have provisions for cpanel email setup with consumer-centric features. Our professionals can configure the best email server for business in no time.

Essential Aspects of Securing a Mail Server

Protecting your mailing infrastructure is a prerequisite for building long lasting customer relationships. It is a well established fact that secured mailing infrastructure is closely associated with sender’s image and goes a long way to establish a sound reputation. One must ensure that the email system is capable of blocking entry of spam to avoid potential threats.

Possible hazards of spam

Spam can find an easy entry into the inbox of your subscribers and can pose a large array of threats including creation of large number of complaints against IP addresses and domains. Your legitimate mail can also be hampered in terms of subscriber engagement due to presence of spam.

Spam can cause your Mail Box Provider as well as subscribers to block your mail. Spam traps can be implemented by directing spam to random email accounts that are not included as your subscribers. Your mail is prone to be blacklisted in the event of an unauthorized content originating from your mail and getting into spam traps.

The above mentioned issues need to be seriously looked at because leading Mail Box Providers are constantly assessing security and performance parameters for arriving at filtering decisions that would restrict connections from your mail server infrastructure.

It needs to be noted that no matter how much time it takes to normalize performance metrics, your ROI and email deliverability is bound to suffer significantly. In order to protect your mail server one should adopt the tips mentioned below.

Security through encryption – This is probably the most significant step to make sure that the connections are secured properly You may use SSL or TLS to encrypt IMAP and POP3. It should be noted that POP3 and IMAP connections were not created to have safety features in the first place. This explains why these are usually utilized without proper authentication. Since transmission of passwords is executed in clear text via your mail server, this can lead to a significant vulnerability of by providing open access to spammers and hackers. In order to execute strong authentication, SSL/TLS is the most reliable and sought after way.

Implementation of mail relay configuration – It is always better not to become an open relay for spammers by configuring the mail relay parameter as very restrictive. This option is provided by all email hosting servers and needs you to setup relay instructions by specifying domains and IP addresses that would be used for sending mails. To put it simply, the option aims at verifying delivery destinations that need to be strictly followed by SMTP protocol. This needs to be carefully configured because any wrong configuration may lead to misuse of your network resources and mail server to spam others thus exposing you to get blacklisted.

Restriction of connections for security against DoS attacks – By limiting connections and authentication errors to SMTP server, you can prevent DoS attacks. You need to get rid of unnecessary server functionalities by way of disablement of such default settings. Vital parameters required to e used for managing connection limits are number of total connections, total number of concurrent connections, and rate of maximum connections. The parameters depend upon hardware specs of server such as CPU, memory, and NIC bandwidth. It may require refinement over time for maintaining optimal values of vital parameters. You may also have a dedicated mail server to shift services including FTP and so forth. The total, maximum, and simultaneous connections to SMTP server should be limited.

Implementation of access control mechanism – You can certainly secure your server from any unauthorized access or intrusion by implementing access control through authentication. Users need to enter username and password to use server for sending mail in case of SMTP authentication. Do not credentials for share server access with several people and such access should only be granted on SOS basis.

Prevention of abuse – Since DNSBL servers consist of list of all known spammer domains and IPs, you need to assess DNSBLs (DNS based Black Lists) to execute rejection of emails originating from IPs or domains listed therein. Ideally one should use maximum possible numbers of DNSBL servers. Additionally you can also verify SURBL (Spam URI Real Time Block-lists) to reject messages that may contain malicious and invalid links. You can also prevent malicious intrusion attempts by employing outbound filtering with your web forms such as CAPTCHA.

Significance of securing mail server

Maintaining seamless security of your mail server is a vital aspect of implementing a successful email campaign. It is also essential for making optimum use of the Certification program. There are number of other advantages such as enhanced deliverability of emails at important MBP, avoiding sensitive MBP filters, active links, and unblocking of images. It should be remembered well that spam detection on your mail by compliance team may result in suspension of domain or IP addresses from the Certification program

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