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Federal Agencies Finally Make the Move Towards Cloud

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

After a lot of deliberations and preparations, the federal agencies are eventually modernizing their infrastructure and taking steps towards the cloud environment.  The technology team from the federal agency had first mooted the idea of a cloud model for their IT about 9 years ago. Their arguments were valid then and even now still stand good. The benefits and savings in the cloud are too large to be overlooked.

The focus to drive digital transformation to garner efficiency and improve service delivery led to the targeting of the federal data centers. The federal government had considered moving to the virtualization technology to reduce their data center footprint. It had become necessary to streamline the IT procurement by applying the best practices using the private sector.

Slow yet moving

The moment had been slow. In fact, till about a couple of years back, the federal agencies were continuing with the legacy systems and the effort towards moving to the cloud was minimal. The Office of Management and Budget had instructed in 2016 for the federal agencies to ensure 15 percent of the IT budget must be utilized for the cloud computing services but none of the federal agencies failed in meeting it. 

Decision makers did not plan out strategies and were lost not knowing the best ways to start the cloud journey. They lacked the understanding to create a timeframe and budget. How to adopt the pay per use utility-based billing to the complex nature of procurement rules of the federal agencies.  What the likely blockades could be? Some have the fear of moving from the legacy infrastructure to a new unknown external environment.

The cloud-first approach

The ideal way for those who still are indecisive is to begin in a slow phased manner. Start with the younger lot those who are innovative and excited to explore the new technologies. The next step must be to educate the reluctant with a feedback about how the change is improving productivity and apply the same practices. This will slowly but surely build a cloud-first environment ushering in agility, innovation, and efficiency.

On way to innovation:

The thinking has changed over the period. Although it is not at the same pace as the private sector, the government organizations too have begun leaning towards the cloud. It is the people who are benefiting with faster services and solutions. They get the same experience that the consumer gets from the commercial enterprises.

For instance, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is modernizing its Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) policies to ensure there are no bottlenecks in cloud adoption. The TIC policy at the time of its initiation in 2007, had limited the number of government connections to the internet to 50 via secure gateways monitored by DHS to prevent intrusions. The DHS is working with cloud service hosting providers to build a new sensor strategy to prevent cyber threats by placing security checkpoints at the edge of federal networks. It will need time for implementation.

Defense sector:

The Ministry of Defense earlier in the year had finalized a $950 million deal with an AWS partner service, for the IaaS services as Pentagon looks to bring in more agility and speed to their purchases. The Department of Defense Information Network (DODIN) is using the Rubrik (cloud data management company) to modernize its IT infrastructure.

Health:

Cloud infrastructure is a big necessity to the health industry. The new health technology of precision medicine requires high levels of scalability and reliability to store and access information of a person which a cloud provider can deliver through innovation and on-demand services.

The financial benefits of moving to the cloud cannot be ignored. The move to migrate to the cloud is part of its plans to utilize its resources to build and strengthen the forces keeping a control over the spend.

Shared services

Government agencies understand and prefer sharing IT services to benefit from the cost savings and improvement in operational efficiency. They seek the cloud solutions to enjoy features like 24/7 monitoring, security, fraud detection and prevention, asset management and similar.  All the cloud models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) bring in greater flexibility with scalable capacity to ensure agility and responsiveness to the evolving business situations.

Security

Security was a point of concern not only for businesses but also one primary reason why many of the federal agencies had to defer the frequent requests from their respective technology officers. However, with the vast improvement in technology, security of data is one of the biggest assets of the cloud that is driving people to the cloud. Another advantage is there is lesser hardware in-house to manage and maintain reducing the workload. The leading cloud providers are FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) compliant and can be trusted to process, store, and transfer the federal agency data to the cloud environment.

Access to innovation and new technologies

In addition, moving to the cloud will enable the agencies to achieve an experience of the amazing new emerging technologies like artificial intelligence(AI), Blockchain, augmented reality, drones, big data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, robotics, virtual reality etc. Technology is developing fast and it is the right time for the federal agencies to consider and maximize the offerings.

Utility services

Most of the federal and state agencies offer a range of citizen services. There are many ways the cloud technology can be useful. Giving the citizens assess to monitor their consumption can aid in making them more responsible for usage. The citizens also benefit by tracking the services they requested for like loan applications, medical reports etc. 

Cloud adoption by the government agencies is all set to accelerate. They are bound to streamline their legacy systems to meet with their goals and missions. All the innovations and technologies can only be maximized in the cloud environment. Agencies require the scalable and elastic cloud services to be successful in their effort to reinvent their strategies and plans for the digital era.

Enterprises Gear Up For Community Cloud

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

As businesses continue to forge ahead by embracing different cloud computing models, service vendors are incessantly striving to enhance their fundamental architecture. This way they can provide clients with right support and solution after gaining better understanding about their business requirements.

With burgeoning advancement in IT realm, the perfect mix and match of private and public instances to create a secured and powerful cloud environment has become much easier. More and more enterprises are joining hands with vendors offering private and public cloud computing services to create perfect unification of technologies through powerful APIs, virtualization, and connectors.

Recently, technology pundits have projected that in coming years there will be a substantial rise in the adoption of community cloud model. And key drivers behind it are the global regulatory and network security norms followed by the providers across the globe.

Let’s try to understand what is community cloud and how it can help organizations in meeting their varying business requirements:

Due to ever-growing momentum behind cloud hosting technology across different industry verticals, I would say that it is now quite notable that businesses are gauging the potential benefits. Be it seamless collaboration within the community, continuous advancement in capabilities or reduction in IT expenditures.

A community cloud model is a collaborative endeavor, wherein enterprises from a specific community or agencies with common business objectives or needs share infrastructure, such as security, compliance, or authority considerations. The infrastructure can be either managed internally or outsourced to a trustworthy third-party vendor. Hence, the total expenditure is cumulatively shared by the users.

When these agencies have a collective set of requirements and prospective clients, a community cloud enables them to assimilate assets and share computing resources, data, and competencies. By eliminating the replication of analogous systems, agencies can save money and assign their limited resources more proficiently.

Some of the key attributes of the community cloud that businesses can consider are:

– It is customized according to the common needs of multiple agencies that are capable of meeting their industry vertical specific business requirements like compliance or functionality.

– The services delivered through this next generation technology are process-oriented rather than infrastructure-based services. These agencies can make most of the pay-as-you-go pricing model, as they only have to pay for the resources they have consumed.

– It makes use of hybrid cloud to store mission critical data and sensitive business information within the enterprise-grade firewall, and the less critical information can be stored in the public cloud. The service provider offering cloud hosting solutions ensure transparent disclosure of complete information to their clients.

Hence, make most of the community cloud model to manage all your critical applications and data now more efficiently. Think judiciously and make investment in the deployment model that seamlessly accommodates with your growing business requirements.

The Different Kinds of Web Hosting Services

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

With different kinds of web hosting, it might get difficult to determine which one is the best for you is. This article looks at the various web hosting services, so you can settle for the one which you feel is the most suitable for your business.

Shared Web Hosting

In the event that you just have a small site that does not see a ton of traffic, then shared web hosting could be the correct choice in your case. There are numerous favorable circumstances that accompany shared web hosting, for example, the cost which is being shared. Since the server is probably going to be imparted to a huge number of different sites, this implies your regularly scheduled payment can be quite less. On the off chance that your site is new or does not get much traffic, then shared hosting could help you profit tremendously.

Shared hosting implies that only. Your site is facilitated on a server shared by different sites. The benefit of this setup is the common cost. You can pay as meager as 5-10 USD every month for offering a super server to (most likely) hundreds/thousands of different sites. The greatest weakness of a mutual hosting account is that you are helpless before alternate destinations on your server. An extremely prevalent site may antagonistically influence the execution of your own site. Then again, in case you’re the most prevalent site on the server, you get the opportunity to utilize a super server with ease. At the point when the vast majority begin an online business, they more often than not begin with a common hosting plan to limit costs and they’re not likely getting a huge amount of traffic at first. Shared hosting is useful for a pamphlet kind of site, or a more up-to-date site that doesn’t get a considerable measure of traffic.

Reseller Web Hosting

Reseller web hosting is fundamentally the same as shared web hosting. The main contrast is that Reseller web hosting has extra instruments to enable you to exchange space. This package additionally includes higher specialized control and charging software that can enable you to provide the receipt to customers. There are numerous different apparatuses that you can utilize, including specialized help and site layouts.

In case you’re anticipating offering web hosting as a business then reseller web hosting is ideal for you. Just go with a common reseller plan in case you are a beginner. Likewise, in case you are interested in making profits, then as a web hosting subsidiary you’ll need to look at this article on the best way to profit with affiliate marketing.

Cloud-Based Web Hosting

Cloud-based Cloud hosting is a newer kind of innovation that empowers many individual servers to work together so that it seems like one major server. The purpose behind this is, as the need develops, the innovation of cloud-based web hosting empowers greater item equipment to be added to create a bigger cloud or network. Different points of interest exist with cloud-based web hosting, for example, having the capacity to oversee floods of traffic and in addition, a compensation for what you utilize methodology.  

Virtual Private Server

VPS or Virtual Private Server comprises of sharing one physical server that acts like numerous and isolates servers. A virtual private server is somewhere between shared hosting and possessing one’s own device. Despite the fact that every one of the servers shares equipment assets, a virtual private server is given its own share of computing assets. The primary benefit of a virtual private server is that it can dispose of the danger of your hosting neighbors making trouble to your site.

Dedicated Web Server

To have the capacity to utilize a devoted server, you should lease a physical server from a hosting organization. This implies you can have complete control as you need not stress over any dangers, for example, different sites hindering your site’s performance or spending every one of your assets. On the off chance that your site picks up good traffic, it is prescribed to buy a devoted server. Despite the fact that the cost of a committed server can be considerably higher than shared hosting, your site ought to be sufficiently fruitful to make room for any costs which are required. 

Steps to Safeguard Protecting Your Online Information

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

Today you have more reasons than ever before to appreciate why you must safeguard your personal information.

In October 2016 major websites suffered crises when they were inaccessible to people across most of the United States.

Dyn, a company that manages vital parts of the internet’s infrastructure suffered a major problem. Its servers experienced distributed denial-of-service.

Thousands of cameras, monitors, and home routers were affected.

In another instance, the search giant Yahoo admitted that all of the 3 billion of its site users had been impacted by a breach in 2013 – far higher than 1 billion previously estimated.

You must bear in mind that cyber attacks happen all the time, therefore it is essential that you must take certain basic steps to protect your vital information.

Here are a few pointers.

Change your passwords

It makes good sense to not to use the same password across multiple sites. Change your passwords for websites that contain sensitive information like banks, and credit card data.

Create strong passwords

If necessary make use of a password manager. A password manager site creates unique passwords for every website you visit and stores them in a database safeguarded by a master password created by you.

If a website allows you to create password phrases, try crafting complex passwords consisting of irrational phrases. You may even create a phrase that you can remember.

For example, “My wife is forty years old”. If it does not allow phrases, you convert the phrase to password “mwifyo” 

But are passwords enough?

No, they are not. If a website offers additional security verifications, like two-factor authentication, enable them without fail.

As an example, for Google, two-factor authentication comes into play when you are logging in from a different computer.

But what happens when you cross the border?

Recently we have been hearing of some travelers being compelled to hand over their smartphones at the airport.

It is important therefore that when you carry your devices abroad you must protect your data on your gadgets in the best possible manner.

It is true that governments abroad may have their own valid reasons to ask you to reveal your personal data, including your social media accounts.

Legally, law enforcement officials cannot force you to unlock your cell phones or share passwords. But rules may vary, depending on where you are traveling to. You cannot argue with officials.

The best policy is not to lie with officials.

Yet, there are several tricks for safeguarding your cell phones.

Here are a few of them.

Carry a cheap phone

Travel with a device that does have not sensitive or important data in the first place.

Invest in a low priced phone especially for travel, so that you are not inconvenienced by the loss of a pricey gadget or by being searched by border officials.

Immobilize fingerprint readers

Some Apple and Android phones have fingerprint sensors, an ingenious feature to unlock your phone quickly. Your best approach while traveling is turned this feature off.

Use 2-step verification

If at all a situation arises that you are asked to provide the password for your Google or social media account, having 2-step verification enabled will provide extra protection, provided you have left your main phone back at home. 

Store in cloud

There could be some important data that you will need to access when abroad. Your best tactic is to back up your sensitive information to a cloud hosting service and then erase all of it on your phone.

Online storage services like Dropbox and Drive use encryption to keep your data safe. After passing through the customs you can always retrieve the data from the cloud.

Here are a few pointers to keep your data safe.

Email is not necessarily secure

Without encryption, emails can be intercepted and read without you knowing it.

Be careful of attachment received via email – they can contain viruses that can play havoc with your device.

Be wary of phishing attempts

You may get emails claiming to be from banks or trusted organizations. These emails can provide you with links to a spurious website. These websites can trick you to provide username and password.

Do not fall for such ploys. Carefully verify all claims made in the emails and review all links meticulously.

The best bet is to use only secure websites. Look for https:// in the space bar and yellow lock in the location bar.

Protecting your devices

Use anti-virus software that will detect and wipe out viruses even before they cause havoc to your devices.

Keep your device updated

Install security updates and enable automatic revisions.

Backup all important files

Avoid using public devices to access online banking

These devices may not have secure and reliable connections. Stay away from unprotected Wi-Fi. Make certain that your financial institution sends you account alerts whenever there is a withdrawal or change in password.

Summary

Cybercrime is all-encompassing. You must do your best to preempt attacks on your devices. Every month we hear of a major hack with thousands of personal records stolen.

There is no automatic fix, excepting for the actions taken by your own initiative.

SSL Certificates Pave Way to Secure Client Data

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

Security of website data is an extremely sensitive issue in view of growing instances of cyber attacks that can severely compromise security and integrity of data. SSL certificate play an important role in website data protection due to greater privacy and seamless verification procedures. Website owners and IT professionals need to understand significance of SSL certificates for securing data.

SSL certificates- brief insights

Secure Sockets Layer is the full form of an acronym SSL. SSL certificates relate to cryptographic protocols that assign encryption layers to data that is being exchanged over Internet to make sure that it is protected from intrusion or hacking attempts.

SSL certificates not only secure sensitive information such as credit card details, online transactions, personal information, health records, and email addresses but also establish legitimacy of the business. This provides much needed confidence to clients that they are transacting with reliable business entity.

It easy to recognize presence of an SSL certificate by simply looking at the website’s URL. It the address of website begins with ‘https’ instead of ‘http’ you can conclude that the site is using SSL certificate for data safety.

Encryption process

It would be easy to understand the process of data encryption by imagining a parcel that is being sent through a currier to a remote destination. Sender of the parcel is supposed to make sure that the contents are properly packed and sealed to prevent damage in transit or attempts of pilferage.

Working of SSL certificates is more or less the same. Submission of information or accessing any website involves data transfer over Internet. The data has to travel across multiple servers before it reaches the destination. This journey exposes the data to possibility of interception and hacking if it is not secured.

SSL certificates are designed to encrypt the data prior to its transmission making it impossible for anyone to break the encryption layer. Once the data has reached desired destination, the same is un-encrypted after completion of validation process.

Build confidence and trust

SSL certificates are vital for establishment of trust while carrying out transactions. Your clients will enjoy dealing with you, if they are confident of authenticity of your online presence. Secured connections play vital role in boosting consumer confidence and result in enhancement of business. Online transactions have become order of the day with extensive proliferation of ecommerce stores.

Customers need to be provided with a seal of trust while they are submitting their credit card information to your website. An SSL certificate is nothing but a visible seal of trust that offers guarantee of secured online transactions. It is not surprising that as high as 84 percent customers expressed their desire to abandon purchase on sites that do not offer security, according to a GlobalSign survey of 2014.

Confidence and trust play significant roles across many scenarios in addition to transactions that involve online payments. Many websites ask users to submit personal information or create username and passwords for log in. These are examples of vital information that needs to be protected from being intercepted by unauthorized elements in cyber space.

Presence of an SSL certificate in URL of an organization is also a proof that the concerned website is an official web presence of that enterprise and not an illegitimate phishing site. SSL certificates boost conversions and enhance your business prospects in an ethical manner. This way, an SSL certificate can play for itself in the longer run.

Search engine ranking

Higher search engine ranking is the most vital objective of SEO strategies. Businesses spend millions of dollars to ensure that their websites are able to climb up in terms of higher SERPs. Inclusion of an SSL certificate can certainly brighten your website’s prospects of getting higher search engine ranking.

It has been projected that the leading search engine, Google aims to encourage all websites to procure SSL certificate. This is evident from the fact that beginning 2014, Google has commenced giving preference to SSL powered sites as far as search rankings are concerned.

This implies that irrespective of any obvious reason such as presence of online transactions or login details, your website would be required to possess an SSL certificate.

Understanding SSL types

Different types of SSL certificates are used by websites in accidence with level of security. There are SSL certificates with more advanced features to accord security to specific types of websites.

The most basic version of an SSL certificate is known as DV or Domain Validated certificate that is easy to purchase and setup. These are ideal for simple sites such as blogs.

If you are running site that handles forms or login credentials, then your website needs OV or Organization Validation certificate that offers a visible seal of security to your site that would be clearly displayed in URL.

The highest level of security can be obtained by procuring EV or Extended Validation certificate. This certificate is most commonly required for securing online transactions such as ecommerce sites. You can confirm the presence of EV certificate with a green bar in URL.

In conclusion

SSL certificates are extremely important from multiple perspectives in addition to securing online transactions. It is now more affordable than ever to purchase an SSL certificate. You can convey your commitment to clients’ security with help of an SSL certificate.

Cutoff Comatose Servers by Leveraging Efficient Cloud Services

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

Increased ROI; never-ending user list; reduced overall expenses; and expansion into new markets – are a few factors that remain in the wish list of every entrepreneur. Companies across the globe spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in servers with an objective to suffice their peak capacity demands at an uninterrupted pace. However, this peak capacity is sporadic. That is why most of those servers remain underutilized or stay idle.

In this regard, a research conducted by the Anthesis Group states that ‘around 30% of physical servers deployed in a data center are comatose (servers perform no task, but consume power)’. The best way to save data center energy is to discontinue comatose servers. It is proved that a lot of capital can be saved by eliminating unutilized servers with the help of online comatose server savings calculator from Uptime Institute.

Server Sprawl: Experts suggest that this is one of the major concerns haunting every data center benefactor. The major reason that has come to light is an artifact of the pre-virtualization world. Years back, every single application was operated on a dedicated server hosting. With the introduction of virtualization, it was believed that it will help the IT world to reduce the dependency on dedicated physical servers; however, the story turned other way. The widely acclaimed and adopted virtualization technology has entailed another problem – virtual machine sprawl. These virtual machines run on almost all kinds of servers that are scattered in the same or different data center.

Server sprawl can be connoted as a number of circumstances in a data center facility, which leads to poor resource utilization, high energy consumption, and low security level. It goes without saying that servers that sit idle or are underutilized in a data center not only reflect poor capital expenses, but also make the environment intricate for the administrators. For smooth operation and management, the more the servers, the bigger the demand of supporting components and resources. This situation, sometimes, leads to poor management of those highly critical servers that bring the largest share of business to you.

From In-house to Emerging Cloud Technology

In order to combat such potential loopholes, companies are shifting gears toward outsourcing model, they’re outsourcing their IT related needs to cloud hosting providers. Over the past few years, companies are under immense pressure to scrutinize their IT needs and cut down their on-premises footprint.  Another issue before the IT professionals facing today is – ongoing management and maintenance of deployed IT components, plus finding out which resources are sitting idle/partially utilized and just eating power and energy. In this regard, cloud has emerged as a silver bullet solution as it flexible and as-needed basis.

Elastic infrastructure: Cloud hosting solutions help companies to run their desired applications and store data on enterprise-grade severs, hosted and managed by third party service providers. With cloud hosting, when your mission-critical website engages more user-traffic, you have the flexibility to expand its capacity, or add new features and server space accordingly. When this traffic gets back to its normal state, the resources can be contracted dynamically. Precisely, clients can provision adequate capacity at any given point of time without encountering resource crisis or over-provisioning.

Focus on Strategic Projects: It is true that if your IT professionals are spending their entire day on doing software patching, updating antivirus, or integrating a firewall solution – it is ostensible that they will not be working as per the strategies set by the organization. The saved time and bandwidth can be utilized in analyzing data for new insights, designing custom applications, experimenting with techniques, and so on.

In addition to this, cloud providers offer 99.95%-100% network uptime, which mentions that your business stays available round the clock.

Flexibility: The other important reason behind high cloud adoption rate is that it allows companies to migrate non-strategic tasks to cloud while keeping others in a legacy data center environment. They can choose hybrid cloud, public cloud, or private cloud, depending upon the nature of their applications, sensitivity, level of isolation, and compliance needs.

Predictable Cost Savings: With cloud, a major portion of capital investments becomes more predictable, as it is accessible on pay-per-use basis. The savings gained can be aligned to core business contingencies. Let’s say, if you wish to buy Microsoft Office licenses on a monthly subscription basis rather than paying for expensive licensing fees outright. Apart from this, they can quickly upgrade email or web browsing software simultaneously.

Service Levels and Quality Vary Among Cloud Hosting Benefactors

Every provider is different, so is their potential in service delivery. It is important to comprehend the scope of what they do and what they don’t.  There is a vast difference in the capability of each service provider – right from the security and performance level to regulatory and compliance requirements. Cloud services can be easily accessed and can be analyzed, that is why it is important to judge the vendor on the basis of – provisioning time of additional servers; automation and flexibility, and scalability to expand & contract.

Moving your business operations to cloud demands pragmatism and revitalizing your thoughts with respect to technological setup. By outsourcing your operations to a third-party vendor, your business leverages state-of-the-art IT infrastructure, while curtailing the number of unutilized servers, reducing the upfront costs, and enabling you to on important activisms.

Significance of Web Hosting for Enhancing End User Experience

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

Have you ever wondered why your blog is not able to generate desired traffic in spite of rocking headlines, compelling visuals, and engaging content? You are not alone, since there are many bloggers who are unable to fathom reasons for their blog’s ability to attract visitors even if they have created their own infographics or developed original videos.

It is found that most of the bloggers fail to appreciate significance of web hosting to effectively present their blogs to their desired audience. Just imagine opening a link on a social platform and waiting for an excruciatingly long time for the page to open. Visitors prefer sites that open instantly and the speed of websites significantly depends on choice of web hosting. Even a few seconds delay will lead to abandonment of site by visitors.

There can be shortcuts to achieve faster loading of web pages including reducing amount of multimedia content or compromising with resolution of graphic images among others. However, these options are ultimately going to impact overall quality and objectives of your site.

Importance of web hosting

According to Wikipedia, web hosting service leverages medium of internet to enable organizations as well as individuals to impart accessibility of their websites to public at large. The web hosting service providers or web hosts provide servers on rent and support these with seamless internet connectivity in a facility known as data center.

The above mentioned description offers fundamental overview of web hosting and helps us understand core aspects of hosting. But there is more to it than meets the eye. In spite of providing these basic services, one must note that all web hosts are not equal as far as parameters of efficiency and performance are concerned.

Characteristics of a right web hosting

We often come across high-quality or average services and same applies to web hosting as well. The average web hosting services are the ones that provide slow access to server resources and impact data transfer thereby delaying your website’s loading speed. Top of the line web hosting services make sure that their servers are performing to the fullest and have excellent capabilities of DNS caching.

One of the most significant characteristics of a good hosting service is an intuitive control panel and User Interface. The UI must facilitate ease of setting up CMS applications including WordPress.

Speed of websites in terms of faster page loads needs to be mentioned clearly by web hosts for establishing authenticity of claims. This is essential for an enhanced end user experience.

Consistent web hosting services provides extremely reliable network uptime for outstanding availability of websites.  In fact reputed web hosts go one step further and mention uptime in Service Level Agreements. Usually, good web hosting providers are able to maintain 99.99 percent uptime of their services.

Upfront and transparent hosting plans can provide in depth information to clients about the services that are being offered by web hosts against their payments. Established web hosting providers make sure that custom hosting plans for catering to needs of different websites are also provided.

Value of technical service

This is the most vital aspect of a web hosting service. We can also consider it as an after sales service for better understanding. The most important attribute of technical service is round the clock availability of technical personnel who can be reached via multiple modes of communications.

Customers can come across variety of issues such as sales, billing, or a plethora of technical glitches. In web hosting industry there is a myth that expensive services are the best. It is often found that costly hosting plans are actually designed to fleece the customers by exploiting their ignorance about what is right and what is wrong.

Warning signs of below average hosting

On the other hand, economical hosting plans can mean a highly substandard hosting experience. This calls for an in depth research to study plans of different hosting companies and survey multiple web hosting companies for their technical support.

You need to be careful about some red flags that are commonly associated with cheap hosting providers. Although, these providers may be offering fairly good services, the red flags might degrade performance of your website to a significant extent. You need to rule out the possibility of web host being a reseller host if you are looking forward to the quality hosting provider.

Slow speeds and downtime issues can be attributed to negative reviews. Budget hosting providers are usually engaged in cramming too many accounts in a single server causing server overload. In addition to this, presence of multiple spamming websites can also impact online reputation of your website especially in a shared hosting environment.

It is found that budget hosting companies restrict access to MySQL database that can result cause issues in future. There is nothing wrong in making a beginning with economical hosting services. However, one needs to focus on creation of original and engaging content to establish better online reputation.

Vital Aspects of Web Hosting You Simply Can’t Afford to Miss

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

There is no substitute to a good web hosting support for building a credible website for your business that is capable of increasing your profits through more and more conversions. Web hosts provide much more than merely hosting your websites by allowing you to rent their servers.

Importance of hosting support

You cannot make your website visible and accessible on internet without a web host. Significance of an efficient and responsive web host for seamless performance of your site is a foregone conclusion. There are multiple aspects of web hosting providers to be considered and weighed prior to choosing a right hosting partner. In addition to providing a dependable hosting support, your host adds value to your business by offering domain specific email addresses.

Vital points to consider before choosing a hosting service

Since every business is unique in its own way, a reputable web host makes sure that the hosting plan is designed to cater to individual requirements of business. This is extremely important for avoiding excess hosting expenditure for services that may never be needed by your site.

In fact, you should check if the host is offering offsite back-ups to protect your data and so forth. New website owners are either extremely confused or highly excited about their online venture to understand what exactly is required and what is actually being offered by web host.

One must plan to spend prudently while purchasing hosting plans in order to avoid overpayments. Unfortunately, Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization are given more importance than performance aspects of hosting and thus many entrepreneurs are unable to understand right hosting options.

This underlines significance of improving one’s knowledge about own hosting requirements rather than getting bogged down by plethora of unnecessary hosting features. Instead of looking for plans and then thinking about hosting requirements, it should be the other way round. We must clearly understand individual needs of our business website and subsequently design hosting plans around these needs.

Understanding importance of speed

If your business is just about to make its presence felt on World Wide Web, then you can be contented with shared hosting plan that is also the most economical one. If you wish to avoid limitations of data transfer and are worried about higher volume of traffic, then it is better to go for VPS hosting. One more option that relieves you from complex tasks of managing backend of website is that of managed WordPress hosting. These tasks include updating of applications and automated backups among others.

Superior customer service

Good web hosting is influenced by a responsive technical support services that mitigates downtime. This round the clock service is offered by way of telephone system, email, or a live chat by dedicated professionals. The support of tickets or forums is a time tested solution but it may not be the right choice in case of emergencies.

Principal hosting types

The first and foremost decision after you finalize your web hosting service provider is to decide on the type of hosting. If economy is your prime objective to launch website of your small business, then shared hosting can be an ideal alternative for you. It involves a large number of websites made to share a single server so that every website is allocated with its fair share of resources such as bandwidth and compute power. If your website is more demanding in terms of privacy and other resources, then VPS hosting could be a right fit.

In addition to availability of resources, many websites need to frequently scale as per the demands that keep on fluctuating. Cloud hosting is designed for allowing websites or web applications to derive resources from umber of servers at any given time. The smart arrangement of cloud aims at enabling websites to scale up or scale down in relation with change in resource requirement and traffic.

Websites can also be hosted on dedicated servers for extreme privacy, control, and resource availability. You will have an entire server at the disposal of your website if you go for dedicated server hosting. These standalone servers are designed to cater to demands of large organizations or secured applications that must be privately operated.

Zeroing on the right web host

The task of choosing a right host is extremely overwhelming since there are so many web hosts to be surveyed. However, it pays to spend time and efforts to select a right host for your business critical website. One should ideally select a reputed web host that offers wide choice of hosting options and guarantees excellent uptime.

There are other factors such as number of domains, sub-domains, choice of unlimited bandwidth, optimum bandwidth, and user friendly Dedicated Server control panels. These are significant for driving performance and availability of your website. Always look for guarantee of responsive customer support before finalization of a web host.

Understanding Correlation between Page Load Speed and Type of Hosting

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

There are multiple reasons why page load speed is drawing immense attention in hosting industry. One of the most important factor for sudden focus on page load speed is due to recent announcement by Google that is would be one of the attributes of page ranking since it is added to ranking algorithms.

In spite of the significance of page load speed in terms of user experience and Search Engine Optimization, it has not been taken seriously in addition to a plethora of misguiding information being disseminated by different sources.

Web hosting service is one of the often ignored but vital contributing factors for improvement of page load speed. The article therefore attempts to discuss multiple factors related to web hosting that are responsible for influencing page load speeds.

Realistic advantages of page load speed

In order to distill the importance of better page load speed, let us focus on some of the hard core benefits of faster loading sited.

Search Engine Optimization- As stated earlier, page load speed is an added algorithm for Google ranking. However, when we analyze the data, it is found that the speed factor has insignificant impact on rankings. Therefore it would be prudent not to overstate this factor while discussing the relevance of page load speed.

User experience- Influence of greater page load speed on overall experience of site visitors is significantly greater than that of Google ranking. This has been clearly brought out in wide assortment of studies and is also well documented. It has been noticed that sudden abandonment of sites by users is due to slow loading sites. More importantly, it also leads to reduction in conversion rates.

One should take into consideration the volume of traffic to the website to determine the benefits in terms of added revenues. If you are looking at a big ecommerce site, then the benefits are magnified in comparison with small online enterprises experiencing moderate traffic.

Page loading factors

Any visitor this opening a web page is essentially requesting information from a remote sever. This information is stored I form of files and can be a static web page or a live streaming of event. The ability of server to deliver this information faster is an important criterion for prompt fulfillment of the request.

If we try to dig deeper, then we can appreciate that the server has to perform three vital functions while loading the requested web page including the following:

  • Execution of multiple codes is an important aspect of opening a web page. These codes can be written in PHP or other languages and the computer needs some time for code execution.
     
  • Since a website is run by Content Management System, it needs run hundreds or thousands of database queries before delivering a single page. The database queries have to retrieve the requested webpage from database and the process requires some time to finish.
     
  • Efficiency of the web server is an important parameter because it has to serve up multiple files for opening a web page.

Relevance of web hosting plans

It is unfortunate that web hosting plans are selected by many website owners only on the basis of costs. The kind of web hosting plan you select can have a considerable impact on the loading speed of website. Most of the parameters that are responsible for faster hosting package and faster page loading are common.

  • Guaranteed and dedicated availability of resources including memory and processing power that are not going to be shared by other resource hungry websites. This explains the reason to choose a VPS plan rather than a shared hosting package.
     
  • You need to make sure that your website is also supported with greater resource availability of the resources by shifting to dedicated server hosting.
     
  • In comparison with Hard Disk Drives, Solid State Drives are appreciated to load files much faster.
     
  • It is observed that positioning of resources and databases on a different server in few of the shared hosting plans can delay page loading. These resources should be made available on the same web server.

    Understanding impact of hosting plans on site speed

If you are running resource intensive websites that involve execution of multitude of database queries and code, then provisioning of dedicated resources can significantly enhance page loading speeds.

It is observed that page load speed can be enhanced by a whopping 62 percent in VPS hosting service than in shared hosting package. The selection of web hosting package from the point of view of faster loading side assumes greater importance for sites that are powered by Magento. Usually, you should consider leaving a shared hosting plan if too many sites in same environment are fighting for resources.

Takeaway

Upgrading of a web hosting package must be considered to improve site speed in addition to front end SEO tactics such as image optimization and minimization of JavaScript.

Cloud Host Providers Are Offering Solutions That Greatly Simplify Operations

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

In very simple terms, cloud computing refers to storing and accessing data and applications over the internet.

In this age of information and communication, cloud computing has made significant inroads as an affordable and robust platform for large scale and even exceedingly complex business applications.

It is already a huge business. The cloud market generated close to $100 billion in 2012, and is expected to touch $ 270 billion by 2020.

The reason for the success of cloud is not surprising.

Cloud is a powerful and ground-breaking exemplar that is offering ubiquitous computing service by abstracting software equipped infrastructure from clients.  It has found appeal among enterprises because it allows for configuration of servers in a flexible way to enable cost effective, scalable and reliable infrastructure.

Businesses no longer need expensive software packages and hardware systems. They can be downloaded from the web by paying the service provider.

Today we are witnessing huge demand for high quality cloud host providers, because they offer easy and bespoke solutions to simplify business operations.  

In India, cloud computing is set to explode. For myriads of startups and small businesses cloud has already become a game changer. The cloud market is expected to touch a whopping $ 3.5 billion equivalent by 2016.

Nevertheless, cloud hosting providers in India are facing unique challenges. One of the key issues is accessibility of the internet, which is limited due to various resource constraints.

Hopefully this problem is likely to be addressed soon.

The optimism is centered on Digital India, an initiative launched in July this year by the present government. The objective of Digital India push is to empower millions of Indians living in remote corners, and enhance economic growth.

In any case, India, driven by technology is emerging as an innovation hub. Our country already has Cloud Host Providers, who have the skill sets, robustness of infrastructures, and managed services to offer entire IT infrastructure in the cloud.

Let us try to get an idea of how cloud computing is helping IT professionals.

In short, cloud is offering enterprises a way to expand existing capacities and capabilities.

To this end, Cloud Host Providers are making available solutions in the following three formats.

1. SaaS or Software-as-a – Service

This cloud model is extremely popular, as it covers a wide range of services, from simple to complex. Cloud Host Providers host and manage this model by delivering on-demand applications that are generally paid for on subscription basis.

Enterprises find this mode beneficial over on-premise deployments because it affords minimal management and maintenance, better communication and collaboration, and importantly anytime anywhere access. The entire responsibility to provide all essential infrastructure including hardware resources and software systems is with the service provider.

2. PaaS or Platform-as-a-Service

This model is specially designed for software developers. Service providers make available a risk free and robust environment, wherein software tools are hosted by the vendor on a hardware infrastructure.

3. IaaS or Infrastructure –as-a – Service

As the name suggest the service provider offers the entire gamut of infrastructure consisting of various building blocks that can be united to form a customized environment most appropriate for the customer. Cloud Host Providers own and maintain the equipment, while the clients rent out services it needs on a pay per use basis.

Go4hosting is a leading hosting service provider based in Noida, offering a wide array of products and services including dedicated server, VPS Hosting, cloud hosting and more.

Top Web Hosting Trends You Cannot Overlook

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

When you are creating a website, you cannot afford to overlook the key trends in web hosting which can have an impact on your business.The main reason behind launching a website is to market or promote your products and services. This is why you need web hosting solutions which can offer the technical support your website needs. Just like in every other field, there are significant trends in the field of web hosting too and the industry is constantly evolving. So, it becomes imperative for business owners to take cognizance of the changes around them and keep updated with the latest trends in web hosting. While some of these changes will be simply an improvement of earlier changes; there are some which are completely new and must be embraced. This awareness is necessary for web developers because they can improve their skills accordingly and offer better services to customers.

Users will no longer be viewing hosting solutions as services which are only used for hosting websites. They will now be expecting many more solutions within a single comprehensive hosting plan. They will be expecting web designing solutions, SEO, email hosting and e-commerce solutions. According to experts, the one-stop shop approach is what will be the new trend for 2018.

Many businesses are hosting non-US extension websites; they can choose from a variety of extensions as there are many choices available today and much more to come. Gone are the days when businesses had no choice but to select from .net or .org or .com. This trend of using the same format of domain names had become boring for web developers and clients and the change in domain name format is more than welcome to them.

Environment-friendly hosting solutions or green hosting which makes use of green technologies are increasing to reduce the harmful impact of hosting on the environment. This form of green hosting can be achieved by various means such as powering data centers with renewable energy sources, making use of energy-saving equipment, planting more trees around the vicinity etc. So, green hosting is increasingly attracting businesses which are keen to protect the environment and lessen carbon footprint. With an increase amongst consumers about the value of green technologies, hosts are offering these at no extra costs.

Almost all big businesses know the power of cloud computing solutions. So, even in the most traditional markets, you will find both big and small businesses shifting their data and operations to the cloud. It becomes the responsibility of cloud service providers to offer effective security products to keep hackers away. Cloud hosting is not only cost-effective; it is also reliable and highly scalable. It can offer high server uptime so that your site is always up and running. The cloud is basically a cluster of servers which are maintained in climate-controlled secure environments; resources are made available to clients from this network of underlying servers. Cloud hosting is flexible, unlike traditional hosting where resource allocation is prefixed. In the cloud, clients can benefit from the pay-as-you-use model where you only pay for resources you use. You can also easily scale resources up and down depending on your needs. So, cloud hosting is going to be the perfect solution for businesses which have outgrown shared hosting solutions but lack the funds to afford dedicated hosting. With the cloud, enterprises are also protected from sudden outages because there are always standby servers which will take over in case any server crashes.

In the coming years, there is going to be a far greater focus on personal security. The previous year witness many instances of cybersecurity meltdowns and data violations. This had made it all the more significant to focus on personal security and this is likely to be a trend which will dominate 2018. It is recommended that you choose a local web host to ensure that your data gets protected by your country’s privacy regulations. You must keep passwords unique as well as access these through password management systems. You should also ensure that your browsers and devices are routinely updated so that they are free from bugs and can offer new security provisions. You must search for SSL certificates before you upload private data online. When you have shared firewalls, the chances of unauthorized access are very much prevalent. So, if your site has sensitive data, it is better to opt for dedicated firewalls to keep it safe.

With the beginning of a new year, there are likely to be many new trends in web hosting and as business owners, it is imperative for you to know about these before you sign up for web hosting plans. Your aim should be to get hosting solutions which will enable you to create and launch a website easily.  You will look for a service that will ensure hassle-free site management so that you have an edge over the competitors. Consumers are going to be looking out for flexible and tailor-made hosting plans. Finally, the hosting world will benefit with an increased focus on customer support services. Customers will expect lesser downtimes and faster problem resolutions.

Cloud Hosting vs Normal Hosting – The real difference

Posted on by Manoj Yadav

The term “cloud” is the most frequently used word when we talk about technology. But still most of them out there are unsure about the real meaning behind it. Is there any specific reason for this technology being so obscure?

Although the tech-savvy are completely aware of the potential that cloud technology holds, for others it is an area still to be discovered. The name “cloud” has not been just given randomly, it is the result after a long thought process by the experts. So just like clouds, you might not know its exact location or what and how is exactly inside a cloud the same is the technology behind the cloud.

It’s intangible and yet so real and prominent in today’s era. It is nowhere close to normal shared web hosting in terms of advantages and value for money technology.

Nowadays when we go to the market, one gets to know about so many different types of hosting plans but the base behind all of these is more or less cloud. So the normal hosting is mainly the shared hosting service and yes there is a big difference between these two.

As most people are not aware of the difference between normal shared hosting service and cloud hosting then how will they be able to select the right one for them. Even a single wrong decision can lead your business to doom. When the person will not be very technologically sound, he or she might fall for any other hosting service that would be cheap and will seem to be the same as cloud hosting. But the benefits of cloud hosting that they are missing out is something they are going to regret afterward

Normal servers are those that are easily being installed inside our rooms and it can be referred to as the physical technology form to store data in-house. It can be installed in any part of your house but the same is not the case with a cloud server. The concept behind the cloud server is totally different, it is a system that is completely managed online.

The major concern of a cloud server is to store trillions of data online that can be retrieved at any point of time. The best part is that the data can be procured on any system or machine irrespective of its source. People traveling on business trips need not worry about losing or procuring data from any part of the world.

So without wasting any further time lets delve into cloud hosting vs normal hosting.

Scalability – Scalability is something for which a cloud server is known for. Businesses have the tendency and need to scale up or down but mostly up at any point in time. The virtual space that a cloud server consists of has the capability to scale up your business and give it a new edge. Most of the businesses have the capacity to go global but so many of them back out because they are unaware that how cloud technology can help them in shaping their organization in a whole new way. This scalability is not just any scalability; it is on-demand scalability.

This can sound more relatable for people operating their business or work online. There are times when a sudden rise in the demand or followers increase. This increase is sometimes so exponential that the company’s resources will start exhausting. But one cannot compromise in losing such a golden opportunity to live the life of their dream. This is a very commonly happening incident on e-commerce websites.

Bandwidth and data backup –  When your data is on a cloud server, then there is no more need to send data or share files through dedicated emails or by sharing through other hefty ways. Sharing of files and data becomes very handy and can be done by just sharing or receiving web links. This way is not just very handy but also saves much of your channel bandwidth. Getting access to data on any of the systems or from an operating system is way easier when it is hosted over a cloud server. The only requirement that it asks for is that the system must always be connected to an internet connection. 

Your data over the server is always backed up by a copy that has been made and saved at the remote location. It might not sound much of an importance to you, but during times like natural disasters this emerges out to as an angel technology. It makes your data way less vulnerable to hacker attacks.

Value for money- After going through all the advantages and perks over normal web hosting, you might think that cloud server hosting will cost anyone a fortune. But the reality is a bit different. Cloud server hosting is the most value for money technology one can ever ask for. There are quite a few reasons for its cost-effectiveness. But out of all lower electricity bills is the topmost one. Cloud server hosting does not ask for any local electrical power, unlike traditional web hosting. Although some would find dedicated cloud hosting a little steep the shared cloud hosting can be the cheapest way to host your data.

Running a website and business is not easy when you have not signed up for an appropriate hosting plan and starting a new one is even more hectic. Also running a website from your local machine or server sounds a very terrible idea on its own. Risking the potential of your business would be the last thing you would want. In theory, everything sounds good but when it comes to practical application, there are so many factors to be taken care of. You need to be an expert starting from setting it up and running the website and handling other glitches that might appear along. Also, the limit to the home internet connection passes as soon as the customers start to shoot. Moreover, why to worry about these problems when you have a business to take care of. Just go for your reliable cloud server hosting provider and continue with excelling in your business

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