Affordable Cloud Platforms

Is Free Web Hosting Actually “Free”?

There is no such thing as a free lunch and the same is true of website hosting too. No matter what a hosting provider may claim to offer, you can be sure it is never going to provide you with free of cost solutions. There will always be some hidden costs and conditions which are not clearly disclosed. This is exactly why not every business opts for a free hosting plan; they would rather pay money to get hosting solutions from a reliable web hosting service. These are some important reasons why choosing a free web hosting package may not be the best decision to take:

The truth is that no one can offer anything for free for very long. So, the companies which try to lure new clients with the temptations of free hosting plans are actually waiting to charge them later when they seek an upgrade after a few months. The clients that make a beeline to sign up for free hosting offers will soon realize that to continue receiving the services, they would have to go for an upgrade which is chargeable.

Many people feel that free hosted sites will be secure, but in reality, these vendors will never support the SSL certificates unless you have upgraded to a paid package. So, with free hosting, your personal data is liable for thefts as the information is not encrypted. An SSL certificate is essential for a website which is conducting online financial transactions because it protects data from hackers.

Since free hosting service providers will not be focusing on security, they end up distributing malware. So, your site’s online visibility is in any case compromised as result of the security lapses.

Many of these promotional free hosting offers are also time-bound. So, they act like trial periods and soon you are asked to pay up. They usually also ask for credit card details on their sites before you can enjoy the free services. This means that you will be automatically charged when the trial period ends. Even if you do manage to get your hands on free hosting offers, you will probably realize sooner or later that your storage and bandwidth limits are inadequate for content transfer.​

You will find that startups are considered to be the ones which are most benefitted by such free hosting plans, but the truth is, that their websites are the worst affected. They do not have funds to afford costly hosting solutions in the first place. Moreover, free hosts will overload their servers in catering to hundreds of websites. This will automatically slow down sites of start-ups and result in poor user experiences. When web pages take more than three seconds to load up, visitors are found to navigate to other websites. Google uses page loading speed as one of the criteria for determining search engine rankings; so, your slow-loading site is not going to be able to come within the first few ranks in search results.

Most of the hosts offering free plans will depend upon advertisements for generating revenues. This means that your site is likely to be cluttered with pop-ups of ads which are impossible to get rid of.

Besides, with free hosting, you are not likely to get round-the-clock support for troubleshooting technical problems. The result is that the site becomes unsafe and shuts down eventually.

Free hosted websites will usually have an unimpressive URL which is anything but professional looking. Prospective clients are not likely to trust a website with such a dubious ID.

The companies which extend free services will also need revenues to sustain themselves and they are likely to sell your personal data to others for money. When this data falls into the hands of scammers, your accounts can be compromised.

With reputed providers, you can get access to handy site-building tools. This advantage is missing when you sign up for free services. So, site designing and management are compromised in the process and it ends up looking very unprofessional. You can only expect to get the most basic services when you choose free hosting; you will not be free to customize the site or create mailing lists or optimize the site for search engines.

It is not true that a good web hosting will invariably be expensive and unaffordable. When you are keen to make your online presence felt you should be willing to pay for hosting solutions. There are many reliable web hosts which offer value for money so that you do not have to worry about data loss or cyber attacks.

When you sign up for free hosting plans, you will notice that in most cases, you will be asked to sign agreements saying that you cannot sell your site or even transfer it to anyone else. Your site becomes their property in exchange for the free services.

The truth is that most free web hosting services will not backup data for your website. This implies that whenever there is a server crash or malware attack, you do not have any means to recover the data and restore the site.

Free hosting platforms will also not be able to provide you with useful e-commerce features; there will not be any access to databases or SSL features which are mandatory for running these sites.

Finally, free hosting will never offer technical support; you will be expected to install the site on your own, probably with help from freelancers. Free hosts will also not have resilient data centers; chances of data theft are very high.

Will The Cloud Become More Vulnerable in 2017?

The cloud is working like a double-edged sword today; while it has made the world smaller and given access to information to users spread far and wide, it has exposed data to greater threats and more vulnerability. With the numbers of users and technologies increasing day by day, the cloud is witnessing an evolution and you can expect many more changes to occur in this year. Reports indicate that the traffic in hyperscale data centers will increase five times by 2020 and they will make up nearly 53% of data center traffic. Almost 92% of workloads is going to get processed by the cloud data centers by 2020 and enterprise workloads will make up 72% of these data center workloads. New trends in Big Data will have huge effects on our digital lives and all these developments will bring forth many more risks.

This problem becomes more profound when you try to deploy cutting edge technologies inside outdated and aging brick and mortar architecture. As new technologies make their way into our lives, you will find that attacks on these are far more sophisticated than ever before. These attacks are not only high-end; they are more lethal. So, data attacks have now become the single most worrisome factor affecting data centers which are keen to host the most updated cloud hosting technologies.

Arbor Networks says that the DDoS attacks still remain the most common attacks because of the easy availability of tools to help any individual having web connectivity to launch an attack. But the frequency, nature and complexity of these attacks have undergone radical changes. Incidentally, in the past one and a half years, there has been an average of nearly 124,000 events every week. Countries like UK, France and the US are the most common targets for such attacks. Only in October of last year, the severest DDoS attack was recorded when a botnet created by Mirai software hijacked poorly-secure devices like the CCTV cameras at 17 sites. As many as75% of the global vantage points had sent queries which got no response from Dyn servers and many of the services that were affected even caused collateral damage causing outages.

What is interesting to note here is that these threats against the cloud are not limited to the applications only; there are new kinds of risks which have the power to affect the whole cloud data center. So, when working with the modern day cloud, administrators have to take cognizance of some critical factors. These can help businesses to tackle these new emerging threats and to safeguard themselves against these as far as possible.

  • Businesses have to be well-equipped to protect data from theft and leakage since huge volumes of data are getting pumped into the cloud each day. So, institutions like financial services and healthcare institutions, government services and educational IT organizations must take every possible step to keep their data confidential and well protected.
     
  • There must be logical and physical correlation at data center levels to prevent the attacks; businesses have to seek ways to control application routes even if workloads cannot be directly controlled. The hackers are now trying to exploit the loopholes in the security system of cloud data centers and this is why businesses have to take a far more comprehensive approach when it comes to securing their data centers.
     
  • It is important to understand that today’s users are going to adopt non-traditional ways for using digital technologies. This is why you must find proper means to protect your users; so, you have to devise new EPP (end point protection) and EDR (end point detection and response) solutions. There is a growing to need to introduce artificial intelligence in security too.

The cloud is going to experience many changes because organizations now have to be even more careful about security. While you are likely to face quite a few bumps on the way, the journey is going to be worthwhile in the end. To ensure that you have to deal with a less bumpy ride, you can try to stick to a simple lifecycle for your cloud ecosystem. You must make a plan first, execute it and then validate it. Since it is easy to test cloud technologies, you should make it a point to assess your needs and choose the best model for your business requirements. And most importantly, you should be prepared to evolve as cloud technologies will need to be continuously monitored and updated. Businesses will be able to flourish when they can utilize the full potential of cloud technologies. This is why understanding security threats and implementing security provisions for the cloud should be your topmost priority. Your job is to get your hands on the best tools to secure your workload, to make the workloads more transparent and to ensure that the business is growing with the cloud.

IT Server Market Steps towards Enhanced Growth!

The server market business is showing abrupt growth in revenue on a yearly basis. According to the latest reports, there has been a steep growth in the volume of businesses within IT server markets across the globe. With optimal presence across various countries globally, the IT server market is surely on a roll! The legacy infrastructural designs along with business applications are facing modernization across firms of all sizes and at all scales. The computer platforms are operating for the best interest of administrative and infrastructural priorities for supporting the existing applications.  By supporting all the business features being developed as well as boosting growth parameters, there are good reasons for supporting the boom in business of servers! Favourable economic scenarios are operating across the Indian market, offering expanding areas for incrementing the growth and investment in the private server sector, riding the fast rate of technologically driven growth. With similar high-end growth expected in the IT server market in India, the government has launched several technical initiatives, such as smart cities and Digital India.

IT Server Market Has Relevance In Almost All Business Sectors!

Primarily, all the major deals are coming from Tier-1 telecommunication sector players and large IT or ITES organisations, along with banking and retail sector companies. The revenue of servers as a percentage of the total IT market share has grown during successive quarters. Professional IT services, telecommunications and manufacturing are among the major three verticals accounting for the server business, accounting for more than eighty percent of the server market share. With optimized servers showing high-end performance, the resultant stronger adoption of the latest server features by the prevalent end-users has significantly helped in growing the business.  The server market has grown by close to fifty percent on a year-on-year basis, in terms of revenue growth and value increment. Banking remains one of the top verticals for capacity of installed servers with more than fifty percent market share, followed by education, insurance and the manufacturing industry.

  • Better Data Outcomes: As most of the business organisations are achieving higher growth with enhanced business delivery outcomes, the IT server market has expanded in India quite fast. With growing numbers of business enterprises, there is the need for an effective and enhanced platform for harnessing the data functions across all the business workloads. To capitalize on this opportunity, the server vendors need to take care of all the major business requirements specifically to grow their businesses in the same fashion.
  • Professional Verticals: Many of the lucrative deals of the IT server market usually come from telecommunications and professional services verticals. With constant growth across various sectors, server corporations have grown promisingly, and cemented their share across newer product portfolios and channel programs. While most of the businesses are being served well by the servers catering to the banking and financial services institutions (BFSI), other sectors also have made their presence felt in the server market.
  • Better Industrial Initiatives: With major business initiatives prevailing across the industries at an infrastructural level, robust business demands for supporting applications and data availability are driving the demand for good servers and support systems. The server resources are utilized with sure-fire management of critical business processes that continue fuelling the growth of IT servers, especially in the Indian market.

Enterprises are seeking continually updated features for investing in better infrastructural designs and for supporting their business applications for achieving benefits of the cloud across their IT frameworks. As a result, the IT servers are being constructed from their design onwards to deliver enhanced revenue growth by enhancing the compatible configurations, managed prices, and data processing platforms. Go4hosting offers a fully-managed IT server management system for the best results that are desired by ambitious entrepreneurs.

With Go4hosting servers in place, even futuristic technology growth factors such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), IoT (Internet of Things), and blockchain encryption, along with cloud hosting analytics have become the latest focus area for any aspirational IT business owner. Satisfying the higher demand for multi core memory based processors, Go4hosting offers not only robust platforms, but also helps the customers to carry out business operations smoothly without getting overwhelmed. With more efficient business operational processes comes improved productivity, enabling a focussed approach towards modernisation of legacy networks and infrastructure. The new dawn of result-oriented technological network development boosts the growth and expansion of the Indian IT server market quite spectacularly!

Cloud Technology: Making Big Data Conceivable

In recent times, the entire technological landscape has undergone a facelift due to the arrival of big data. What exactly does the new buzzword ‘big data’ signify? It is nothing but the exponential growth in availability of both structured and unstructured data. Numerous challenges arise while processing such colossal amounts of data when traditional database and software techniques are used. Some problems faced during big-data processing are as follows:

  • Analysis
  • Internment
  • Examination
  • Search
  • Sharing
  • Storage
  • Loading
  • Transmission
  • Conception or visualization
  • Privacy violation

Both small and large enterprises across the globe generate and maintain huge amounts of both archived and new data on a daily basis. The emergence and rampant usage of ubiquitous information-sensing devices is partly responsible for the same. In order to keep up with the pace of such increasing business datasets,appropriate data storage facilities must be set up. But in the field of business analytics, standard tools and procedures are not capable of searching and analyzing massive datasets.

In order to handle this, venture capitalists have begun to pour millions of dollars into service providers who promise to tackle big data related challenges. A second paradigm shift which has brewed up recently in the technology industry is cloud data.As a result, the amalgamation of cloud Technology with big data, analysis of massive amounts of data and the connection of the same with devices in the form of Internet of things has now become a reality.

Creating a competitive lead with cloud based big data analytics

It is true that big data analytics mainly focuses on data generated from social/business sources. This includes

  • E-mail
  • Videos
  • Tweets
    Facebook posts
  • Internet behavior

The scope of interest in big data analytics comprises of data from intelligent systems and complex big data. In order to handle the same, companies are now adopting cloud delivery models. This is mainly due to the flexibility which enables ITto evaluate brand new approaches. Global organizations are inclined towards private cloud environments. Big data analytics can be added to in-house offerings of cloud services providers that offer different hosting services including cloud hosting, VPS hosting, etc. One can also adopt hybrid clouds with extra security features enabled for sensitive data, yet the business can benefit from valuable external data sources as well as applications within a public cloud.

As a business owner, you can unblock the potential of big-data in Cloud by incorporating a cloud infrastructure.Though cloud-based big data is not a one size-fits-all solution, numerous factors such as workload, cost, security and data interoperability can use private cloud to mitigate risk and for the maintenance of control.

Compelling Attributes of Cloud Based DR Approach

The viability of an onsite data center playing a significant role in the process of disaster recovery cloud hosting not have been challenged in the past. After all, the stakes are so high that enterprises were prepared to spend a significant portion of their IT budget in safeguarding mission critical applications and sensitive information.

DR- then and now

Cost of gaining capability of disaster recovery was indeed highly prohibitive in the past because it demanded development of an utterly new data center infrastructure. Organizations needed to establish process for smooth transfer of critical data in the event of any disaster. It was indeed a herculean task to gain operational transferability and seamless movement of mission critical data if the primary site of an enterprise is damaged due to an act of God.

This approach would be almost be impossible in today’s context, assuming that cloud computing was not available. This is primarily due to restricted budgets and ever-reducing profit margins that put a significant strain on IT budgets of enterprises. Thanks to the advent of colocation services and increased adoption of cloud solutions, one can design a Disaster Recovery infrastructure without incurring huge expenditure.

Moving to cloud based DR

Moving data from a colocation data center facility to a cloud based infrastructure is not a cake-walk as it demands keen attention to minute details to prevent errors. You need to carefully design strategy to plan and test the entire process of transition for gaining a successful and smooth cloud Disaster Recovery capability.

Analysis of how the enterprise would benefit from gaining cloud DR capability can certainly help in the early stage of the process. One of the most striking benefits is hassle free and speedy operations that are implemented for a Disaster Recovery plan if the systems are down due to an unexpected outage.

Another feature of a cloud oriented Disaster Recovery option facilitates seamless flexibility as compared to onsite IT infrastructure. Unlike the physical servers at primary site, cloud servers are far more flexible because of being virtual instances. Finally, it all boils down to costs and cloud based disaster recovery option scores over on-site facilities by a huge margin.

You can easily adopt a cloud based disaster recovery solution by choosing a right hosting provider that offers Disaster Recovery as a Service or DRaaS. Since there are several options to choose from one should research carefully for selecting a right DRaaS provider.

Assurance of SLA backed support

Licensing and other details including extensive connectivity, data replication, and DR application, must be thoroughly checked while finalization of the service level agreement. Many services mentioned in the agreement may not be essential from your organization’s point of view.

One of the most essential aspects of a Disaster Recovery solution is a guarantee of robust support in terms of skill development of your in-house staff. Your technical personnel must be familiar with all aspects of DR operations including backup as well as recovery.

One more aspect of enterprise-specific DR costs is associated with the unique business model especially is you are looking forward to sign a long term agreement. These costs cannot be classified in the general terms of contract. It is therefore recommended that such costs should be assessed in advance to avoid disputes. You can, for example, get clarity about a future situation that demands transitioning of DR services.

Advantages of a multi-cloud solution

Although, there is a general tendency to address cloud as a singular environment, the current scenario is entirely different. Majority of organizations are acquiring a multi-cloud infrastructure to facilitate different cloud hosting providers depending on the nature of services.

In a multi-cloud setup for disaster recovery, you can significantly reduce scope of a single point of failure. This assures seamless performance of your business critical applications in spite of any event impacting your business continuity. A singe cloud approach may bring your business operations to a standstill especially during prime time.

Such multiple service provider approach must be also extended to telecom providers to sustain traffic. In addition, you can also gain by striking a better deal in a competitive environment, if multiple providers are involved.

Measureable cloud benefits

Unless you have properly defined the advantages of cloud adoption in measureable terms, you will be only groping in the dark. A measure for a successful adoption of cloud computing is therefore essential. You can implement this by defining recovery time objective that explains optimum time to sustain business activities before the actual brunt of the disaster becomes unbearable.

Another measure for defining success of a cloud initiative refers to the amount of data, which can be lost in a particular event. This measure is known as RPO or Recovery Point Objective.

In conclusion

There are several advantages of adopting a cloud based DR resource by abandoning the obsolete and cost intensive on-site backup infrastructure. However, the most notable benefit is its cost efficiency of investing in a cloud based disaster recovery option.

Key Highlights of Private Gaming Servers

Online games need to be backed by hosting support of gaming servers for their seamless accessibility to players across the globe. Many online games are designed to provide ease of customization to players instead of getting trapped inside a restrictive environment. Such freedom and control of playing can only be guaranteed by none other than a dedicated gaming server. 

Distinct features of a dedicated gaming server

Private or dedicated gaming servers empower users to dictate their own terms including payments and game customization depending on the scope of rules. These powerful servers have capability of allowing individuals to make their own rules. Most of the online games including Minecraft and Warcraft prohibit people from collecting payments from players. A dedicated server can be leveraged to host a modified version of such games so that the players can be charged for playing. It can also facilitate a group of players to enjoy gaming without any hassles.

Relevance of using a private gaming server

Some games can offer great playing pleasure if played among multiple participants. These are designed to support ‘the more the merrier’ principle. A dedicated gaming server can be setup to enable players with internet access from diverse location to engage in a multi-player gaming activity for enhanced gaming pleasure. 

Private gaming servers are cut above the rented servers that may cause time lags. Rented gaming servers also suffer from issues such as lack of timely updates as far as the new releases to the game are concerned. This underlines the need of a reliable service provider to host a private gaming server. 

Setting up of a private gaming server 

The obvious temptation of playing online games by using one’s own server can easily overcome the technicalities and complexities involved in setting up such an advanced resource. There are individuals who seek the services of private gaming server for commercial purpose, however certain games do not allow this and you need to be aware of such regulations.

It is therefore recommended to build a private server for the passion and pleasure of gaming rather than for commercial interests. Infrastructure of a gaming server consists either of a standalone server or a server cluster that is supported by an appropriate hardware configuration or the seamless running of games. 

Private game severs can be leveraged to play modified versions of games. These servers also support setting up of rules and user controls as desired. The most basic application of a gaming server is its use in private gaming events that can involve your friends. An infrastructure of LAN can help a group of individuals play multi-player games in a restricted area. 

If you wish to involve participants from distant places, then a dedicated gaming server is the best option. It guarantees undisturbed environment to support online gaming activities for enjoying multi-player games by involving players from diverse geographical locations.

Setting up a game server for WOW

There are innumerable fans of World of Warcraft across the world and the performance of the game can be greatly enhanced with help of a powerful private gaming server, which is a dedicated WOW server. Online gaming can be taken to the next level to emulate real life situations if you add certain custom features by leveraging the power of dedicated server. 

Te first and foremost step is of downloading necessary tools such as AC Web Ultimate Repack and installation of MS.NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack. 

Access Current Map Data- If you have setup your own WOW account, then collecting the current MAP Data can be a breeze. This is essential for enabling your private server to access the game. The maps file can be located inside WOW folder. In the next steps you will have to configure your database as well as ascent realms. 

This is followed by adding custom configuration of specific elements of the game by navigating to ascent-world.conf. The WOW directory contains a file named as realmlist.wtf. You need to discard the contents and restore with set realmlist 127.0.0.1. These steps will ensure that you have successfully altered the file.

Private Minecraft server

You can easily setup your Windows machine to run Minecraft gaming activities. First you need to make sure that your computer is ready to be assigned the job of hosting a personal server then you should allocate optimum RAM for smooth gaming experience. There are tolls to let you know the number of players that can be supported by your machine. 

Create a separate file to store all Minecraft files that you will be downloading. After opening the .jar file you will have your program to be up and running. Now the next step involves locating a file named as eula.txt and changing its value to eula=true from eula=false. 

Your Minecraft private server is ready to go now. In the same manner, you can customize your gaming server for supporting a wide array of games for a pure joy and passion of undisturbed gaming. 

Disaster Recovery Issues? Why the Cloud Can Be Relied Upon

In the past, when organizations planned to build their infrastructure for disaster recovery, they had to build the system from scratch on their own. They only had the local data center to fall back upon for housing their critical data and applications. But they had to pay a hefty price for ensuring data reliability with such an arrangement.

Building a data center from scratch was definitely not an easy task to handle for most organizations. They had to first create the right architecture and then move the specific data to the center, always focusing on a smooth operational transition. It worked in the past but in today’s business environment where companies have to continuously work within tight budgets and thin profit margins, this approach could prove to be disastrous.

In fact, there is a high level of complexity involved. There are dozens of tasks and processes that must be handled. If you are not conversant with the system, there could be huge errors and they could prove to be expensive ones. The transition to the cloud can be made smoothly without major risks only if proper planning and testing are involved.

Here are the steps that you must take:

Before making any changes to the DR architecture, you must have a closer look at your IT environment. If there is an extended downtime involved, which services and functions are at a risk? Identify them accurately and also the resource requirements and strategic goals for the future.

Benefits of Cloud

Now, determine what precisely you can achieve by shifting from the secondary data center to a cloud-based DR. Check of the legacy data center has been in service for long. If yes, you can gain from their streamlined infrastructure. It will also ensure a quicker and hassle-free DR process as a good quantum of the data will reside in virtual machines while in the cloud. These virtual machines inherently have greater flexibility than conventional hardware systems.

A major benefit of using the Linux cloud/hybrid model is that can reduce the costs involved by more than half when compared with a traditional solution. It would a good idea to consider using the services of services offering DRaaS or disaster recovery as a service as you can enjoy better features. An experienced provider will have well established systems in place that can be utilized for meeting competitors head-on.

You can further improve the cost/benefit ratio by focusing on:

  • Software Licensing and Support: It is seen that agreements are generally full of technical jargons and tough for a non-technical person to comprehend. Also, the devil is in the fine print in most cases. Make sure that you go over licensing agreements with a fine comb to ensure that your interests are fully protected.
  • Skills and Training: DRaaS is easy to handle but some amount of retraining is unavoidable. Choose a managed service specializing in DR to enhance efficiency. They will also be able to guide you accurately in creating the best environment for your business and even secure it. Your in-house IT staff can deal with the new backup and recovery operations while the provider handles the real tough part of the operations.
  • Unique Costs: Some costs cannot be classified as they are unique to each enterprise. You might have to look at a different approach that taking a backup facility on a long-term lease. By not doing so, your enterprise can face a series of risks during the transition process. Make sure you identify all your obligations in advance as it can help you avoid unpleasant surprises in terms of cost/benefit analysis.

The Benefits of A Multi-Cloud System

It is seen that off late, many enterprises prefer using a multi-cloud model. There are multiple benefits of doing so.

  • They can choose the best provider for a specific service.
  • Enterprises do not run the risk of being dependent on a single provider.
  • It significantly reduces the chance that any one single event will adversely affect the entire infrastructure of the organization
  • Companies will be in a position to provide high quality service even when activity is at its peak.

The same approach can also be used for telecom connectivity to and from the cloud hosting. You can ensure that you achieve high quality at low cost, by simply letting your provider know that the arrangement is performance-specific and that there is no assurance of long term commitment to a particular provider.

Measuring Success

You can measure the success of your DR efforts on two key parameters – RTO and RPO.

RTO or Recovery Time Objective is the time period you can manage your business smoothly without access to critical resources.

RPO or Recovery Point Objective gives you an idea of the quantum of data that you can possibly lose if a specific event happens.

Generally, it takes just a few minutes of downtime for organizations to suffer severe impact in the areas of critical applications and services. Data loss also happens in large numbers as advanced applications offer data-linked service with the help of data that’s quite fresh and recent.

Shedding your outdated backup infrastructure for a hybrid system is a highly recommended move.

Key Factors to Consider for Developing a Compelling Social Network Platform

Before the inception of Facebook, getting together online or building social bonds via the medium of the Internet was unimaginable. Mark Zuckerberg changed the paradigm of human networking and opened multiple avenues for others to develop an impressive array of online community portals such as Twitter, Instagram, and Whatsapp just to name a few.

Thanks to the monumental work by Zuckerberg et al, development of an online social media community is a relatively simple process. One can build a strong and commercially feasible community website by going through a well-defined process as elucidated in this article.

Define a community

If you study most of the online community platforms, you will understand that each network is targeted at satisfying specific needs of society in terms of socialization. The first step of community identification has great significance as it helps you create a solid foundation for the assured commercial success of your business venture.

You can either identify or create a need by researching the population in terms of its demography and other characteristics. Triggering a need can be a complex process unless you are well versed in the social or psychological behavior of the targeted population.

Right identification or creation of needs is required for assuring immediate response to the proposed platform. If you spend some quality time in knowing about various factors that influence the demography as a consumer, then you will have a solid idea of the foundation of your social network platform.

For example, AngiesList.com was created to fulfill the community’s need for a site that offers verified reviews of different services. Need identification will also help you design your ad campaign for generating interest in your platform.

Setting up of functions and features

Unless you have a deep understanding of multiple aspects of the community in terms of its likes, desires, wants, and needs, it would be difficult for you to define or outline network’s various features as well as functions.

These steps are vital for outlining the broad vision and defining security aspects of the social media platform. Identification of community needs must be performed precisely to ensure proper set up of features as well as functions.

These will also help you decide user functions and also the functions of the administrative team. The second step involves a large number of sub-steps that will help build a strong foundation for your social media website.

Identifying right technological resource

The entire gamut of functions and features of your social media platform needs the robust support of technologically powerful resource. Technological consideration is vital to provide a right support to the platform for the performance of its features.

At this stage, you will have to appoint experts and consultants for guiding you to select relevant technological solutions from among a broad assortment of available technologies. Choice of right technology must be based upon answers to a well thought out list of appropriate questions.

Answers to such important questions will provide a clear vision that helps compare some of the most commonly used CMS applications including.Net, Ruby on Rails, or Drupal to name a  few.

In-depth analysis of some of the major social media portals can also help you appreciate the technologies that are powering performance of their sites.

Vital pillars of social media platform

Every platform that allows its users to get engaged and remain associated with it for a longer period of time must provide a perfect ecosystem to facilitate its growth. You need to understand the significance of the three highly resourceful and important pillars for ensuring success and earn profits.

Service orientation – Customer service is a key to the guaranteed customer satisfaction as it breeds and supports long-lasting relationships. You can easily assure customer support by engaging with a reputed hosting service provider. The established vendor is sure to support your website with round the clock technical assistance as and when it is required.

The promise of a secured environment – It is pretty obvious that a secured online environment has immense potential to reassure your visitors about the safety of interacting with each other. The recent apology by Zuckerberg following the leak of user data is a proof of how important is the security aspect of a social media platform.

Room for growth – If you have a great idea and have a proper platform to engage visitors, then your platform is sure to grow in terms of its user-base. This underlines the significance of a scalable platform to ensure the seamless performance of the social network platform for years to come.

Ushering the right prospects

Your social media platform must be designed to have relevant features and functionalities to attract defined set of visitors. The relevance of features as far as the nature of visitors is concerned is a critical factor here.

 In addition to the conventional marketing aids such as word of mouth, you need to leverage advanced tools such as paid ads, email marketing, and other modern resources.

Secured features for Cloud platform for managing Holiday Season Traffic!

Most of the business teams operating on the cloud design platforms are really looking for promotion of their own business quite heavily these days. Almost all of them focus primarily on the growth, any changes pertaining to threat against the prevalent cyber-attacks. The Cyber-attacks have direct impact on the business growth sales data, existing IT teams must work in complete co-ordination with corporate houses for achieving best data hosting, infrastructural design which can be managed throughout the busy traffic. The holiday seasons have specific business sales target, to attain higher projected business growth which results in maximum output, upto 30% overall increase in your annual revenue growth for business retailers. As per the business delivery model of existing business IT teams, one must ensure following features to function on smooth and regular basis. These enhanced business features helps in achieving high business output.

Customized cloud solutions which fits your exact business requirements!

Customized cloud hosting solutions fit with the exact business requirements of any client. One of the crucial and critical factor for the retailers can be to compete with increased consumer spending on the holiday seasons, which are based specifically on the condition where you don’t lose your customer on to your competitor. For best managed cloud platform business the optimum way to handle higher business traffic are you must have well-equipped data infrastructural design in place. With the help of our existing business customers, we have been able to manage our position in market as well as offer best business features when compared to competitors.

One of the critical factor is that the retailers/shopkeeper can compete with the increased business and consumer spending’s across the holiday seasons, these are specifically based on the features of:

  • Demand Forecasting: For determination of the Holiday Season Traffic, we have seen the trend that last year the experienced of the business interruptions are purely based on the accurate predictability as to how much business traffic is being potentially generated. Few firms forecast the demand of business by using their gut-feel or regular pattern for business growth and improvement.
     
  • Scaling strategy decision, horizontal as well as vertical: The most imperative step for planning the business cloud management strategy is for using the business projections for scaling. It all depends upon the kind of business scaling used for the holiday season. It’s all dependant on the need for scaling horizontally by which one can add more instances or through the vertically managed increase in size of existing data servers.
     
  • Auto-scaling preparation: While taking advantage of scaling options one must be sure that benchmark is set through by automation triggering for your existing business application. The Auto-scaling features are required to be set, managed and configured not only for business scaling but also at lower pricing. By reviewing the auto-scaling configuration with the existing numbers of operating servers, you can have maximum level of bill growth.
     
  • Plan for capacity beyond your instances: Here the Instances are major part of existing cloud platform capacity and planning process system function. For better clarity, the scaling of your RDS- Relational Database Services, your business administration instances must be assessed appropriately.
     
  • Work with existing, managed services provider for best preparation strategy: The Cloud hosting features offer you wider business services for supporting the complete planning strategy across a number of business services enlisted in the system. In conversation with dedicated Managed Service Providers, who can offer you an in-depth business expertise for cloud management for offering best course of actions for your firm.

Always have your precious data backed up securely with cloud infrastructure!

With Cloud Infrastructures that are already existing for management of huge holiday season traffic, huge better growth and business expansion which can be attained during short span of time. Here the critical factors which work as per the business considerations which has major dependence on user profile and business system. With all the relevant business features and product category’s there is evident performance growth for competitive business growth of websites and enhanced business queries which search for the best keywords searching trends. Best business experience is attained by cloud platform infrastructure design that contributes in taking your business to new heights.

Cloud data Infrastructure design scaling being one of the most crucial and critical factor for better business enhancement, by this you can have optimum business utilization for holiday season traffic diversion as per the higher business management, along with other relevant business Services, so as to offer its clients an exquisite business experience and growth. With the operations of business that work in alignment and consultation of solution architects for achieving better, advanced and high end network & data protection experience for existing client base. However, with help of better business function qualities, which leads to the enhanced efficiency and management of business processes

Key Factors to Boost Web Optimization

In an ideal situation web hosting optimization should be included as one of the essential tasks in processes of maintenance and web development. However, it is commonly ignored by webmasters. Optimization of web hosting can lead to remarkable improvement in traffic and bring additional revenues if it is performed properly. Page load times are found to significantly impact visitor experience for conversion of visitors into leads or buyers. Your site’s traffic can be reduced by a whopping 20 percent if there is a mere half second delay of page loading.

Mitigation of third party assets

It is a common practice for all websites to request local files including a multitude of third party assets such as Cascading Style Sheets/HTML and images. Such assets need to find data from a third party server and can result in significant delay in page load times. The load time can be minimized by reducing the volume of third party assets that are loaded and only by caching the data. You can use high performance tools such as GTmetrix for evaluation of multiple assets that are to be loaded by your site.

Additionally, separate hosting of web components such as graphics, is not mandatory but it does improve stability of server especially during the traffic surge.

Exploit benefits of page caching

It is easy to load your website assets by using page caching technique, which is by far the fastest alternative for loading assets. It not only speeds up page loading but also helps optimize your site for search engines.

Using GZip for compression

Since page load times are essential for determining page ranks, you need to take steps for reduction of image file’s size as well as pages. Since contents are travelling from server side to user side as well as from user side to server side during an HTTP request, the overall time required for processing every request can be minimized by compressing the content.

Choosing the option of GZip can help you achieve compression on the server side. Use of GZip varies for different types of servers such as mod_zip for Apache 1.3, mod_deflate for Apache 2.x and so forth.

Efficiency of queries

Slow page loading can be due to lesser efficiency of MySQL queries. You need to note that queries should be returning the requested information faster. The more time these queries take to provide information, the slower it takes for pages to load on your site. This problem can further worsen in the event of high traffic since there will be a significant rise in time as well resource requirement. This issue can be sorted out by checking efficiency of MySQL queries and enabling slow logging for MySQL

Speeding up user data capturing

It is found that in order to capture user data many websites make use of plugins in Content Management Systems. These plugins are essential for the website. However, you can improve the process by frequently removing all unused and obsolete data or by switching the storage engine to InnoDB. In case there are too many plugins installed by you, it is advisable to delete or deactivate such plugins.

Optimization of images

Images are essential assets of any websites. However if these are not properly optimized, then they can prove to be liabilities and result in slow page loading. If you find there are too many images or too large images on your site, then these will cause the site to slow down because more information needs to be retrieved. This can also result in higher consumption of bandwidth.

An ideal way to deal with such issue is by compressing size of images. Alternatively, you can also access a plethora of tools and web services including Online Image Optimizer, JPEG and PNG Stripper, and SuperGIF to name a few.

Managing CSS

Cascading Style Sheets have become essential part of modern websites since these are capable of keeping the visitor engaged by enhancing the feel and appearance of the website. The markup should be kept clean with CSS selectors and overall CSS should be kept short. It needs to be noted that the codes perform better when they are shorter.

Use of CSS sprite technique helps reduce HTTP request during page loading as it combines all or multiple images at one place on a single image file while controlling the output with help of the CSS background position attribute. While creating CSS sprites you should focus on their usefulness and ease. It is advised to use online CSS sprite generator.

Combining multiple CSS files can significantly reduce HTTP requests. One should not forget importance of using a declaration only once to boost optimization.

Conclusion

Although web optimization is generally overlooked by web administrators, it has a significant role to play in terms of boosting number of your readers or website visitors. A properly optimized website can not only attract hordes of vistors but can also help you save your money.

Utilize Go4hosting Blockchain as a Service to Generate Higher Revenues!

Blockchain is a transparent system that has changed the way people think about exchanging value, assets and data sharing. Businesses are increasingly using Blockchain as the de facto method of enabling excellent applications.

Be Future Ready with Blockchain as a Service!

Blockchain as a Service, also referred as BaaS, allows its individual users as well as business or entrepreneurial customers the freedom to leverage cloud-based solutions for building, hosting and deploying their own custom applications quite effectively. The business functions across the Blockchain system work along with cloud based service providers, which easily manages all the necessary tasks and activities by keeping the infrastructural system operational.

It is quite prominent that the Blockchain ecosystem has been directly aiding Blockchain adoption across businesses. Today, most of the businesses are progressively willing to adapt to Blockchain technology for handling the entire major technical complexities and bringing down overhead costs involved in operation of their IT systems.  Apart from most of the leading technology giants working in this sector, many start-ups offer some of the best solutions to major problems with their unique derivations of the Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) model.

How Go4hosting Blockchain as a Service helps ?

  • BaaS consolidates operations: BaaS has an external server provider for carrying out necessary operations of Blockchain technology and infrastructure freely. With BaaS operational and its support hardware in place, the client need only pay for setting up and hosting the Blockchain system operating across the server. A BaaS service provider can handle all the complex issues for clients as well as any contemporary technology.
  • Managed & tamper-proof system: With BaaS operating across the web, cloud based hosting providers provide backing services with which one can build up efficient business websites which are capable of handling huge volumes of traffic. You can host and run your web site on your own computer/server from your own workplace, but you just need to be cautious either of having a robust support system constructed yourself or by hiring qualified cloud and Blockchain experts.
  • Better hosting functions: BaaS is an easier choice for carrying out technical processes that can be done by opting for a usual hosting function for your website through external net hosting suppliers like Amazon Web Services. The features of Blockchain as a Service allow ambitious organisations to manage all the infrastructural and maintenance needs for achieving high growth rates.

The BaaS can also operate as the second level of support, thereby permitting you to have greater specialisation in your core processes and operations individually, and letting Blockchain as a Service take care of the mundane and repetitive business procedures.

BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) is very apt for operations of widely dispersed economic systems with the help of encryption technology for resulting in a well-managed business. In any place suitable for the application of a secure block chain service, either big or small, a system can be created with the best streamlining features, for the smooth handling of technically complicated functions that are required for core business activities to continue effectively.

The BaaS operator manages all the major Blockchain artefacts and infrastructural designs by including features such as bandwidth management, resource allocation, hosting requests, and high-end security features.

Now a day, various technology firms are betting on Blockchain technology with their best BaaS offerings. As Microsoft provides a BaaS module across the Azure platform, IBM has its own BaaS that’s focused on grouping of block chains, and Amazon and Oracle also offer their own Blockchain cloud hosting services.

With Blockchain as a Service, business owners and managers can focus completely on their core businesses and jobs, by programming the BaaS to handle the complex business functionalities quite easily. The business processes can be carried out within multiple organizations, encrypted strongly to eliminate data leakage, reduction of frauds, and thus create situations conducive to higher revenue generation.

Blockchain as a Service has achieved deep penetration in various industries globally. Get the best business security and output with Blockchain as a Service developed exclusively for your business by Go4hosting!

Why UAE Local Startups are looking at the Cloud

The Middle Eastern countries and the United Arab Emirates in particular, is showing an avid interest in cloud computing. With a growing talent pool and more venture capital making its way into this part of the world, new laws and a striking global profile, UAE has all the ingredients for emerging as a hub for technology start-ups.

Incidentally, the start-up sector here is expected to emerge as a hotbed for Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence and 3D innovations. The laws here are changing so as to make room for innovations and investments. There is also a huge network of talent in UAE since the best talents from various parts of the Middle East come here. Dubai for instance, has grown into a hub for startups. While people believe that Artificial Intelligence will be next in line, there are some roadblocks there for lack of skills, compared to China and the Silicon Valley. It is believed that some business with partner with already existing AI firms as they have done previously with Microsoft, Google or Amazon for cloud capabilities.

Cloud Hosting UAE: The growth in the adoption

Nearly 70% of the startups in Dubai have already been using cloud hosting technologies and almost 24% have even created their businesses on the cloud. The cloud hosting for startups enables their businesses to grow at a rapid pace. This is why startups all over the UAE are ready to mark their presence for cloud migration irrespective of the huge cost involved and interested in investing in cloud computing to get an edge over their competitors. While Dubai was ahead in most areas of technological advancements, it was surprisingly lagging behind in cloud technologies. While the hunger to make a switch to the cloud is still very much there, the rate of adoption is still slow as there are only limited services available. It is expected that this situation is going to change after the latest announcement by AWS that it will start a data center region by 2019 in the Middle East having offices on Bahrain and Dubai. Amazon has also expressed its interest in opening a Cloud Front Edge base in the UAE.

According to the Cloud Report of 2017, produced by Thomson Reuters together with IBM, it was found that many startups in Dubai use cloud hosting already and about 38% of those which have not yet started using the cloud plan on adopting these technologies soon enough. While 72% of these startups spend $50,000 or less on IT resources every year, almost 25% spend more than 20% of their budgets for the cloud.  Nearly 80% of the startups expressed an interest to increase their cloud expenses over the next two years. However, amongst those that have not yet embraced the cloud, almost 42% feel that the upfront costs are quite high. They may also be stalling their migration to the cloud for concerns of data security. But Wassim, the Vice President of IBM Cloud, is quite satisfied with the speed of innovations in this region over the last few years. He feels that it is up to them to groom them so that they can flourish in their own environments. The cloud is not something new as cloud technologies were even there in the past 5-6 years but the speed at which these are evolving is much higher now.

This new trend towards the cloud began with cloud storage. So, most startups are currently using cloud storage. However, along with storage benefits, the cloud has many more things to offer. The cloud can offer intelligence, readymade codes which can be used in applications for improving efficiency. So Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning etc are going to be the game-changers now. Another new wave which is taking this region by storm is the blockchain technology. This is also based upon a cloud-based environment. Dubai seems to be leading this new trend and the authorities have even suggested that this technology should be incorporated in every government department by 2020.

According to Tina Ghanem, who heads Accelerate SME, Thomson Reuters, there remain some key challenges which are stopping startups here from fully utilizing cloud hosting benefits. These challenges relate to resources, mentorship and knowhow. While there may be a truckload of data for entrepreneurs, there is actually too much of it and it is hard for the people to digest it all together. The terminology is new for them and many of these business owners cannot understand which parts of the information are going to be useful for them. Among the three types of cloud services, 76% of the startups have chosen SaaS or Software as a Service; 32% have adopted PaaS and IaaS. About one-third of startups here use multiple cloud services and nearly 9% use all these three types of cloud services. Web hosting and storage services are held as core services and most start-ups have adopted these first.

As the focus is more on technologies now, all sectors of the economy in UAE are working to bring about a digital transformation. So, it is now important to introduce good quality startups in the region. While there is enough manpower and many new ideas, there is still dearth of high-technology companies. There has however been a slow but steady growth in the recent times in the number of companies developing blockchain and AI technologies.

One of the stumbling blocks for the SMEs is restrictive registration costs together with many bureaucratic hoops which make it hard for them to enter the market on their own. Therefore, for the SMEs, which are keen to break into this region, it is necessary to work with Value Added Resellers or Value Added Distributors that already have working ties with government departments.

The focus should be on winning trust. So, it is not enough to offer cost and technology benefits; government departments and business owners will want security assurances before they can take the leap. Businesses will have to know where the servers are going to be located, who will have access to these, how the servers will be linked etc. The situation is much different in Europe where most businesses take to the cloud assuming that it is safe.

In keeping with this new trend, Dubai has launched the Smart Dubai 2021 initiative that aims to take this transformation to an altogether different level.  This digital change is expected to bring about a positive impact on Dubai, both in terms of cost savings and happiness of citizens.

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