4 Solutions for Performance Problems in the Cloud

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One of cloud’s most important benefits is the ability to add capacity on demand, or even to scale automatically. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean cloud users will never experience performance problems.

Sources of Performance Problems in the Cloud

Performance problems in the cloud can arise from several different sources:

  • Limited computing resources. Inadequate memory and CPU power impacts cloud applications the same way it impacts applications in the data center.
  • Network latency. Cloud applications often don’t sit near to their users. In addition, cloud applications use a microservices-oriented architecture, and if the servers providing the services aren’t closely located, performance may suffer.
  • Architectural misfit. Applications that are migrated to the cloud using the lift and shift approach aren’t architected to take advantage of cloud features such as automatic scaling. In addition, many legacy applications and databases simply are poorly designed. The problems inherent in their designs don’t disappear when they are transitioned to cloud.

Addressing Performance Problems in the Cloud

Solving cloud performance problems should always start by understanding the business’s performance requirements. Once the goal is known, the next important step is reviewing metrics to identify where the problems are occurring and discover the root cause. All cloud providers offer logging and monitoring, along with reporting that highlights trends. Depending on your cloud provider, there may be analytics and advice on steps to take to address any problems.

After the metrics are analyzed, performance problems can be addressed by one of the following changes, choosing the one most appropriate for the source of the problem:

  1. Better instance and memory choice. Upgrade instances to have more memory and more powerful CPUs. Having more computing power available can solve many issues. In addition, some cloud providers may offer the option of a private server. By not sharing the physical hardware, your workloads are protected from any impact caused by other cloud users.
  2. Better network connection. Most cloud providers offer the option of a direct link to the cloud. This offers a stable level of performance and isolates your communications from load issues of the public internet.
  3. Better location strategy. Placing services closer to the users who access them can deliver better performance, so consider deploying to different regions. It can also be helpful to locate workloads close to any services they leverage.
  4. Better applications. You may need to rearchitect applications to leverage cloud’s scaling capabilities. In addition, older applications may have nonideal database structures, and revisiting those can also lead to performance improvements.

Work with an experienced managed cloud services team to address any performance issues in your cloud. Contact CCS Technology Group to learn more about getting the best performance from your cloud.

Additional Cloud Resources

Don’t Let Cloud Costs Keep You from Experiencing Cloud Benefits

Hybrid Cloud Provides Increased Flexibility In How You Use Cloud Services

6 Ways to Keep Your Cloud Secure

How True Cloud Technologies Help Distributors Stay Future-Proof

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“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” One of the many famous Yogi-isms, it’s one of the most fitting phrases in 2020. This year has proven that things can change in an instant, and it’s likely your distribution business has had to change with it. Success is built on adaptability, and adaptability requires action.

Being Future-Proof is All about Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

Now, why does it seem that some companies are always in the right place at the right time? How do some distribution firms always seem to know when to place an order for a product that became scarce seemingly overnight?

It’s not luck; fortune favors the prepared. But predicting—and preparing for—the future is easier said than done for many firms, especially those who can’t access information quickly or efficiently.

Knowing this, there are ways to make your own luck, turn data into decisions, and stay ahead of the trends, but without the right tools, it’s probably not happening. Many distributors turn to ERP for the same reason they store products in warehouses and not apartments—ERP delivers room to grow, provides an easier way to organize a business, and ultimately helps companies stay future-proof.

You Can’t Future-Proof Your Business If You’re Constantly Stuck in the Past

The problem with this is this: Some ERP solutions are stuck in the past. Legacy ERP—software introduced before the internet and designed to run on-premises—is just that. Companies move to the cloud for consistent advancement and improved automation, delivering the access, information, integration, and connectivity they need to make decisions.

Fake Cloud: Legacy with a Layer of Cloud Access

But there’s an operator in this statement—one that many companies looking at ERP overlook: the word “true.” True cloud solutions deliver integration. True cloud solutions deliver automation. True cloud solutions are future-proof, and true cloud solutions provide real-time visibility into sales, order management, inventory, purchasing, production and services. But what does that mean?

Put simply? How it was built.

Legacy software is built to work on-premises and deliver the functionality needed by a business in the 2000s. Fake cloud is just a repurposed version of legacy software. If you’re in the market for distribution ERP software, then recognizing the issues of choosing a legacy application is the first step.

These issues include—but are not limited to—needing specialized software to access your legacy ERP system (causing limited availability), requiring the assistance of a trained programmer due to the lack of user interface personalization, and difficulty in integrating with third-party applications because of proprietary integration tools. These, and more, increase your ownership costs and hinder your scalability.

True Cloud: Built in the Cloud, Built for the Future-Ready Business

True cloud was built with the modern business in mind, delivering mobility, automation, and integration needed to make smarter decisions. In fact, it was built with tomorrow’s business in mind, ready to deliver information that can help your business stay ahead of the trends and competition.

But how can you tell the difference? A recent Acumatica whitepaper discussed this exact concern that businesses have, noting that true cloud solutions need to deliver the following for distributors:

  • Full functionality and reporting offered on common mobile devices as well as on the desktop.
  • Full integration of spreadsheets, data services, apps, and equipment.
  • Software that was built using modern, commonly available tools and standards.
  • The ability to pay by resource usage, not by the user.
  • Industry-standard security.
  • Deployment options.
  • Easy upgrades.

If you’re in the market for an ERP product and any of the preceding characteristics are missing, you might want to look at the company’s history and ask whether they made progress into the modern age of business management software. Want to learn even more? The entire whitepaper explores even more business benefits of using the cloud and discusses additional risks of using fake cloud.

Acumatica and CCS: True Cloud Partners for Distribution Firms

If you’re looking for a flexible and powerful solution that doesn’t hinder your initiatives, it’s time to get rolling with Acumatica. Built in the cloud to deliver the adaptable, feature rich, and integrated enterprise resource planning software that streamlines your processes and facilitates your decisions, this solution is ready for the needs of distribution firms.

Get to know more about how this product has helped distributors like you by reading these case studies, reading 7 irresistible qualities of cloud ERP, and contacting leading Acumatica Partner CCS Technology for a consultation.

Never Let a QuickBooks File Size Hold You Back: Grow with Confidence in the Cloud

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Running a growing business is hard. Despite the temporary hiccup caused by the coronavirus outbreak, it’s likely that over the past decade, you’ve seen your business take massive strides.

However, it’s likely that over the past few months, you’ve come to a realization: even if your people have valiantly adapted to the changes, even if you were able to adapt your processes and workflows to handle the new work-from home landscape, everything you’ve done to retool your company has been held back by your current business management product.

Growth Doesn’t Require Growing Pains

This is a common occurrence for growing businesses—buy a product to start out, use it for years, grow to love it, and ultimately grow beyond it. Of course, this presents a problem: if employees have gotten accustomed to a product, they’re going to be resistant to change—even if they know the product is not built for the future (or the present).

Call it comfort, call it embracing the status quo, but the reality is, it’s institutionalization. Those weird kinks in the system and the necessary workarounds are just part of the day.

The hassles your IT team had to deal with last month in order to get your employees remote access? Just one of the tradeoffs you needed to make to keep costs low, right?

After discussing the challenges and concerns businesses have had trying to get QuickBooks to work with a remote workforce, we would today like to turn our attention to another common—yet well-known—challenge: File Size Limits.

Are QuickBooks File Size Limitations Slowing You Down?

QuickBooks was built for the small business, delivering the processing power to match. This isn’t meant to be a knock on the product, millions of companies use the product and nearly as many love it. But nice words don’t increase capacity. A gallon is a gallon, a gigabyte is a gigabyte.

QuickBooks’ performance decreases as the size of the company file increases. Though there are no actual limits on the size of your company data file, performance may be hindered if your network is not capable of handling large data files.

Here’s a quick if/then scenario: If increasing file size means decreased performance, and performance is hindered if your network is not capable of handling large data files, then the worst possible scenario is… Having a larger-than-recommended file size and adding extra steps to access the software.

Imagine, one day, the government ‘strongly encourages’ employees to work from home to stop the spread of some kind of pandemic. We can only assume that something that’s already slow at the office is going to be unbearable when you nave to run it through additional steps to access and upload a file. Sound familiar? Because the likely situation is that you’re living in this environment now.

Learn more in 6 Signs Your Business Has Outgrown QuickBooks.

Built to Scale, Built for Growth, Built to Process Effectively

While QuickBooks is built with a soft cap on the file size—a cap you start to feel with each passing day—true cloud solutions are built to grow with the companies that use it.

Built on a modular architecture and relying on some of the largest, most powerful data centers available, cloud ERP providers are able to deliver for you no matter the size. Imagine doubling in size tomorrow. Not a problem in the cloud.

One such provider, Acumatica, delivers a full-featured accounting suite that addresses the most complex requirements for companies of all sizes. Plus, it integrates with Project Accounting, Customer Resource Management (CRM), Manufacturing Management, and other product suites offered by Acumatica.

Pair this with buyer-friendly pricing and easy integration, and this solution can handle your needs without causing undue stress on your pocketbook. We invite you to learn more about your journey from entry level to the cloud by reading Seven Signs You Need ERP Software, 5 Benefits of ERP for Accounting and Financial Management, and How to Improve Efficiency with a New ERP Solution. Read to learn even more? Contact us for a free consultation.

How Best-in-Class Functionality Helps Distributors Get What They Want (and Need)

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As the song goes, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well, you might find you get what you need.” Written and released in 1969, these lyrics have become some of the most iconic in rock music. Notably, for the better part of the history of its history, the lyrics also represented the business management software buying process.

Time to Turn off the ERP Oldies

As little as a decade ago, distribution firms were forced into a product that, despite being necessary, wasn’t exactly what users wanted to work with. From the warehouses to the board room, products did what companies needed them to do.

Yes, the occasional hiccup popped up; yes, employees developed a series of workarounds; yes, many end users got no satisfaction from using the product—but it was better than nothing.

Just like the music world is no longer limited to a couple radio stations playing what executives want you to hear, ERP is no longer an inflexible, disparate, and vendor-driven product.

Today’s companies looking at ERP can get what they want—and what they need. Thanks to best-in-class functionality that’s built to integrate, we are quickly pushing towards ERP’s fourth era, according to Gartner. This era, called Enterprise Business Capabilities, coincides with what Gartner is describing as the Future of Applications.

How ERP’s Fourth Era Delivers Satisfaction for Distributors

For distribution firms, this means users get a connected experience no matter what solution or device they need to use. Want to connect your ERP with the CRM, EDI, inventory management, or logistics product of your choice? Simple—thanks to the cloud and modern APIs, integration no longer requires you to jump through hoops or copy and paste data to satisfy the requirements of your product.

Applications are now user-centric, and modern ERP vendors have changed the way they operate to deliver.

But buyer beware: Many companies who specialize in playing the ERP oldies are still around, making promises that they’ve changed. These fake cloud products deliver neither the functionality or flexibility you need to operate, and makes selecting and implementing a new ERP system a challenge—who’s telling the truth?

Integration in Modern ERP: Get What You Want and Need

If you’re in the market for an ERP product at your distribution firm, it pays to be vigilant and inquisitive. How does a vendor deliver integration? How easy is it to configure and set up? Is there an extra layer you need to work with?

Modern businesses function in a landscape where consumers expect fast, efficient service and instant gratification. Competition within every industry is high, and customer loyalty increasingly hard to earn. Modern ERP delivers integration through open APIs—because it needs to adapt to the speed of modern business.

In the past, this change came at a snail’s pace, and any time an update happened, companies were left scrambling to fix broken integrations. But today? It’s all about the open API.

Open APIs use a universal language allowing unparalleled access to multiple software services and data. The data and information silos of both the past and the present no longer exist, and developer workloads are significantly decreased.

In this, users see enhanced efficiency, streamlined data, easy collaboration with customers, partners, and third-party applications and, of course, streamlined integrations.

Modern ERP: It’s Time to Get Rolling

Without the right tools, distribution companies simply can’t compete. If you’re looking for a solution that works for your business, conforms to your processes, and empowers your users, look no further than Acumatica.

Built in the cloud to deliver the adaptable, feature rich, and integrated enterprise resource planning software that streamlines your processes and facilitates your decisions, this solution is ready for the needs of distribution firms. If you’re looking for a flexible and powerful solution that doesn’t hinder you, it’s time to get rolling with Acumatica.

Get to know more about how this product has helped distributors like you by reading these case studies, reading 7 irresistible qualities of cloud ERP, and contacting leading Acumatica Partner CCS Technology for a consultation.

Additional Distribution Resources

Recommendations for Selecting a Distribution ERP Solution

Digital Transform in the Distribution Industry and How Cloud ERP Can Help

Benefits of ERP Software for Distribution Business Management

The Hassles of Using Desktop Software in a Socially Distanced Business

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Time flies when you’re working from home. After four weeks, it’s likely you’ve settled into the work from home mentality and got your home office set up the way you like. But even though you’re ready to work, what about your software? For many small, medium, or otherwise growing businesses using QuickBooks, the answer is… “well… kind of.”

The Pitfalls of Using QuickBooks Remote Access

It might have taken a week or two, it might be a bit finnicky to run, you might not have complete access to the integrated applications you need, and it might be a bit slower than normal. “Oh well,” you may think to yourself, “it was just a few hoops to jump through, but at least I’m safe from the virus and can finally sit down to work.”

A healthy portion of businesses chose to take the traditional desktop-only route—because “when would we ever need to access this from outside the office?” This left many businesses scrambling for remote access tools when the stay at home orders came through.

“Necessary” Tradeoffs

The question is, why? You could have opted to pay for hosting, you could have chosen QuickBooks Online, but up until a month ago, you didn’t need to. Hosting seemed like an unnecessary cost, and many users felt that there are too many shortcomings in QBO to consider it viable.

Somewhere during your decision, there was a tradeoff that had to be made, and you took the one that was the best for your business. But why should you have to make a tradeoff in the first place?

The problem with using QuickBooks in today’s business is baked into the product category—desktop software. It was built to run on a desktop. It could be installed in hours with minimal IT staff intervention. It does what it’s supposed to—when it’s not put under stress.

However, just like the fastest, most powerful PC processor couldn’t run dozens of computers at the same time, the term ‘desktop accounting software’ means that anything beyond the basics is considered ‘stress’ on the system. Whether it’s growth, complexity, or additional access needs, when desktop software is pushed to or past its limits, it falters.

Unchained from the Desktop, Comfort in the Cloud

It doesn’t have to be like this. As a growing company using QuickBooks, you might be finding that it is showing its limitations, especially now that you’re pushing the limits of the product even further.

Some software products are built in the cloud, others are cloud ready. Desktop-based products like QuickBooks are neither. Even “Enterprise Edition” only goes so far, and you’re likely out of luck if you want anything beyond basic accounting.

Even if you can access QuickBooks Enterprise over the Internet, Intuit will admit the product is not optimized for full cloud functionality. A lack of access to cloud data limits mobility and is thus less convenient than having a cloud-based system.

Learn more in 6 Signs Your Business Has Outgrown QuickBooks.

Acumatica: The Ideal Option for Companies Outgrowing QuickBooks

QuickBooks by Intuit offers users a good starter accounting package at a good price. However, it is designed to handle basic accounting only. To manage business processes outside of financials requires an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, which can handle accounting and financial management needs along with other business requirements, such as manufacturing, distribution, and much more.

Here are just a few ways Acumatica differs:

  • True cloud: Acumatica works on premises or in the cloud without additional equipment or software. QuickBooks Enterprise can be accessed over the internet, but even Intuit acknowledges that QuickBooks has not been optimized to be a true cloud product.
  • Full function ERP: Acumatica offers your organization a complete ERP and CRM solution. While QuickBooks Enterprise contains some of these elements, it is ultimately an accounting solution and not a full function ERP solution.
  • Scale as you grow: Acumatica allows you to scale as your company grows and can accommodate multiple companies and multiple currencies. QuickBooks Enterprise limits you to a maximum of 30 users and handles multiple currencies but not multiple companies.
  • TCO: Because both products serve different purposes, it would be difficult to say which one has the best total cost of ownership. We recommend, however, that you apply due diligence when selecting a replacement product for QuickBooks to ensure you get a product that can continue to grow with your company for several years.

We have worked closely with many senior IT leaders on assessing the suitability of cloud ERP for their organizations. If you want to learn more about Acumatica cloud ERP and how it could help your business, let’s talk. Contact us for a free consultation and demo.

Additional Acumatica Resources

Acumatica Cloud ERP: Distribution Case Studies

Meeting the ASC 606 Compliance Deadline with Acumatica Deferred Revenue Accounting

Why Acumatica Outpaced NetSuite on the Most Recent G2 Survey

How Many Purposes Are Your Backups Supporting?

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Backups are not a new practice, but backups today face new challenges. They need to serve multiple purposes and meet multiple requirements. Businesses that are still creating their backups the same way they always did should review their strategy to make sure it meets today’s backup requirements.

Many Backup Purposes

Backups aren’t just about making copies of files. Backups need to create the duplicates in ways that allow them to be used for multiple purposes. These purposes include:

  1. Data retention. Depending on your industry, there may be compliance mandates to retain all data for some period of time. In addition, new application development and analytics projects need access to historical data. When planning for this need, it’s important to recognize that backups are not archives.
  2. Disaster recovery. Backups are the primary method businesses uses to recover from outages and other disasters that make servers inaccessible.
  3. Prevent tampering. Data tampering is a kind of disaster, but deserves mention on its own. Backed up data provides an audit trail and historic record of data changes that can identify whether data has been tampered with and restore it to the correct value.
  4. Comply with e-discovery and data privacy laws. Backup files provide support for e-discovery requests that mandate searches through historical data. Backups also provide support for new data privacy laws that require businesses share all the information they have about a consumer with that individual.

Many Backup Requirements

Along with being able to support multiple purposes, backup strategies need to meet multiple requirements. These include:

  1. Completeness. It’s easy to omit critical systems from backup scripts or to overlook alerts that backups are failing to complete successfully. At the same time, some data may change infrequently and not need daily backups. Matching the level of protection to data criticality requires analysis.
  2. Time to create. Creating application consistent backups generally requires applications to be quiescent. The windows available for shutting applications down continue to shrink as business continues around the clock.
  3. Time to restore. Different backup approaches offer different levels of flexibility and take different amounts of time to complete the file restore process.
  4. Security. In order to perform speedy restorations, backups need to be immediately available, but they also need to be protected from loss, tampering, and other unauthorized access.
  5. Scalability. Backup and recovery processes that work well on smaller volumes may fail when systems grow larger.
  6. Different sources. Backup strategies need to address a wide variety of different sources, including cloud and data centers, virtual machines and bare metals.

Does your backup strategy meet all of today’s challenges? If you need help updating your backup tools and procedures, contact CCS Technology Group. Our business continuity solutions apply best practices to protecting your data.

Additional Backup and Disaster Recovery Resources

7 Critical Factors to Consider When Developing Your Backup Strategy

5 Disaster Recovery Disasters to Avoid

Choose the Right Backup Strategy to Meet Time and Space Requirements

Know What’s Happening on Your Network with Network Monitoring

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Information security requires knowing what’s coming into your network so you can protect the valuable data inside.

Network Monitoring Basics

Basic network monitoring tools work with what’s called flow data. This is very basic information such as IP addresses, ports, and protocols, along with when the communication occurred and how much data was transmitted.

While IP addresses can be mapped to domain names to provide a better understanding of traffic, a single IP address can support multiple domains. This means that the IP address and domain name by themselves provide an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the data source. Adding additional detail to the flow data is needed to provide a fuller picture.

In order to get that fuller picture, the flow data can be enhanced with application metadata. This metadata pulls additional information out of the traffic; for instance, it can identify an http request and the http hostname. This provides better support for blocking traffic to unapproved websites.

Network Monitoring Challenges

Although enriched flow data improves monitoring capabilities, there are still numerous challenges that need to be overcome in order to establish an effective monitoring strategy.

  1. Encrypted data. Today, almost all http connections are actually https connections. These encrypted connections protect transmissions from being spied on as they travel between endpoints. However, that same encryption blocks necessary security inspections once the data arrives at its destination. A message that’s encrypted isn’t necessarily “safe”; it can contain a virus or other malware.
  2. Selecting the data sources. Flow data, from routers and other devices, is necessarily high-level. You can get more detailed data through looking at packets at test access points and port mirrors. In addition, monitoring often requires installing agents on each device. The more devices installed, the higher the costs and the more maintenance required. Some software doesn’t require installing agents, but monitoring too many devices makes the effort more complex and error-prone. Finally, while network monitoring for security often focuses on external data flows, internal data flows should be monitored for suspicious usage as well.
  3. Accessing historical data. Real-time analysis isn’t always sufficient for detecting threats. More accurate threat analytics require historic data as well.
  4. Determining users. Although all data is associated with an IP address, this doesn’t necessarily identify the user associated with the data. User identity may make a difference when deciding whether data is legitimate or should be blocked.

Overcoming Network Monitoring Challenges

All of these challenges can be overcome with a more refined network monitoring strategy. Even encrypted traffic can be subjected through monitoring though designs that allow the data to be decrypted for inspection before passing it on to its destination.

Network monitoring is a vital element of both infrastructure management and information security. Managed services from CCS Technology group ensure your network provides both capacity and security. Contact us to learn more about how our services can improve your business’s IT experience.

Additional Resources

Everyone Is a Participant in Information Security

Discover the Dangers of the Dark Web

Don’t Overlook These Information Security Basics

Getting More from ERP: New Gartner Report Predicts Push Toward Enterprise Business Capabilities

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For a product companies historically only replaced once a decade, ERP has sure changed a lot in the past few years. The new class of ERP leaders bears little resemblance with the power players of the aughties (2000s). As little as a decade ago, terms like flexible, customer-first, and easily configured would be the last things you would use to describe the rigid, monolithic platforms that existed back then.

But if you believe Gartner (and you should), you should be on the lookout for another major shift. Fundamental changes are occurring in the way people acquire new capabilities from applications, and Cloud ERP development cycles offer much faster innovation adoption, which enables delivery of greater business value. What will this mean for end users and decision makers? Even more connectivity, for starters.

The New Era of ERP: Enterprise Business Capabilities

No longer are companies implementing on-site and maintaining the integrations by themselves. They’re adopting an “ERP as a service” philosophy and becoming much more open to the idea of acquiring capabilities rather than entire applications.

The Move to Enterprise Business Capabilities

Even the past five years have shown incredible innovation and transformation in the ERP space as companies making these solutions have entered an arms race to stay ahead of each other. This era of ERP, referred to by Gartner as “enterprise business capabilities” is one in which this software enables companies—at least those who know what to look for.

But what should you look for? A recent Gartner Report asked just that, noting:

“The changing nature of ERP provides unprecedented opportunities for transformation and improvements in efficiency. Gains will only be realized if CIOs are prepared with appropriate expectations, sourcing strategies, technologies and skills.”

An Evolving Definition of ERP Platform

In the previous era of ERP, the thought of an ERP platform meant ‘a platform that covered everything.’ This evolved to the concept of postmodern ERP in the late 2010s and as we enter 2020, ERP will be used to connect an interoperable set of services designed to deliver business processes through workflows.

According to Gartner, “Organizations will shift away from self-maintenance of point-to-point integration toward adopting platform as a service (PaaS) and integration platform as a service (iPaaS). This will allow them to deliver standardized administrative and operational business capabilities through an ERP platform.”

Three Characteristics of an ERP Platform

According to Gartner, these ERP-delivered platforms will have certain characteristics:

  • Platform technologies — such as low-code development and process automation — to support extension of and integration to the core ERP and/or other enterprise applications.
  • A comprehensive system that supports low-code/no-code development, simplified integration and process automation.
  • Integration to multiple applications running on multiple platforms in the cloud, delivered by multiple vendors. Integration capabilities will include assembly and orchestration more than they have in the past.

New Acquisition Strategies

Organizations will change the way they acquire applications. Some applications will still be purchased as they have been historically. However, organizations will also begin to construct new capabilities through various means: either from existing packaged application capabilities, or by acquiring them as services (or through a combination of each method).

Gartner Report: Unprecedented Changes in ERP Enable Transformation

If you’re looking to make the most of your ERP decision in the fourth generation of ERP, we invite you to read the entire report from Gartner. The entire report, 2020 ERP Predicts: Unprecedented Changes in ERP Enable Transformation, delivers the in-depth analysis and insight that business leaders need to make an informed decision in this new era. Written by leaders at Gartner including Mike Guay, Duy Nguyen, Denis Torii, Paul Schenck, and Tim Faith, these experts discuss:

  • What to expect from the “fourth era of ERP.”
  • How to use enterprise business capabilities (EBC) to your advantage.
  • Which surprising decision the top four ERP vendors will make by 2025.
  • What you really need to know about emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.
  • Four things your CIO must do to ensure your ERP continues to deliver value.

Normally available only to Gartner clients, this informative new report is available for free, courtesy of Acumatica. Click here to learn more.

Additional ERP Resources

ERP Evaluation Checklist: 5 Important Things to Consider

Acumatica Cloud ERP: Distribution Case Studies

Why Growing Companies Need ERP Software

Managed IT Services Help Businesses Cope With a Crisis

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The Covid-19 crisis is forcing many businesses to operate in a modified disaster recovery mode, with limited on-site staff. For businesses that rely on IT consulting or managed services, coping with this challenge will be easier due to services such as:

Remote support

When managed services include remote support, you’re already prepared for COVID-19 or any other disaster that prevents normal operations at your data center. Managed services can ensure your virtual desktop infrastructure is capable of supporting the load and provide help to employees who need assistance accessing their applications remotely.

24×7 monitoring

Coping with outages is tough at any time, worse when there’s chaos outside. The around-the-clock monitoring provided by managed services means problems are detected and correct before they impact end users. This is especially important when users are already stressed by the unfamiliar situation of remote work or reduced on-site staff

Experts on call

When teams lack technical expertise, they stumble through problem resolutions. Managed services mean you’ve already got experts assigned to keep your business running; you don’t have to scramble to find help in the middle of a crisis.

Staffing support

When in-house staff are unavailable, the service provider’s team provides a supplement, ensuring you’ve got adequate resources to perform key technology operations.

Backup and disaster recovery support

Managed services ensure your backup and recovery solution work properly. During the crisis, this is important for two reasons: 1) you may be relying on your disaster recovery strategy for day-to-day operations. 2) because of the existing staff disruptions, responding to any new disaster will be more difficult than usual.

Security when you’re most vulnerable

There’s been an increase in hacking efforts targeting remote workers. In addition, staffing limitations mean businesses are finding it harder to monitor networks and respond to potential intrusions. Managed services mean your systems are protected with all current patches, automated alerts ensure that potential threats are not missed, and security experts are prepared to respond to problems.

These benefits of managed services help protect businesses when they’re stressed during a crisis, and they also help companies function more smoothly during routine business operations as well. With managed services handling IT support, companies can remain confident of their capacity to operate no matter the situation in the world outside the office. Contact CCS Technology Group to learn more about the benefits of our managed services.

Additional Managed Services Resources

Solve Shadow IT Problems with Managed Services

The Metrics That Mean You Need Managed Services

5 Reasons Managed Services Are Good For Your Business

Don’t Let Cloud Costs Keep You from Experiencing Cloud Benefits

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The most challenging part of cloud may not be technology. Cloud providers usually offer lots of support to help their customers migrate to cloud and leverage cloud solutions. That’s in their best interest. But they may not offer as much support to help you manage your cloud spending. After all, the more you spend on cloud, the more they profit.

Easy to Spend Too Much on Cloud

It’s easy to spend too much on cloud:

  • Unneeded services cost money. There are often free trials of cloud services, and those are a great way to test out cloud offerings. However, if you don’t properly turn off those trials, eventually you end up with real charges. In addition, there are many environments that you need only for a short time, such as development and test servers. Forgetting to disable them after a project completes results in unnecessary expense. Even production servers lead to unnecessary charges; systems that don’t process 24 hours a day continue to accrue expenses when they’re left up overnight.
  • Everyone has access to cloud services. Cloud is a self-service environment, which means it bypasses traditional approval, purchasing, and provisioning processes. Anyone can spin up a cloud service, meaning unapproved and uncontrolled spending is common.
  • Scalability is ignored. Because cloud is highly agile, systems can scale on demand, so they should be sized to meet current requirements without additional spare capacity. This is in contrast to traditional IT approaches that keep excess capacity available in advance of need. If systems are migrated as-is to the cloud, or old planning methods aren’t updated, businesses end up paying unnecessarily for this unused capacity.
  • Spending doesn’t leverage discounts. Cloud providers often have different pricing models that can provide discounts. These can be in the form of reserved instances, where you commit to a specified level of cloud utilization, or by bidding for spot instances, where you use capacity when the provider has unused resources.
  • Workloads are migrated “as is.” In the rush to migrate to cloud, “lift and shift” is a popular, fast approach; this approach doesn’t attempt to rearchitect workloads to take better advantage of cloud capabilities but simply duplicates them in the cloud. If workloads aren’t analyzed properly before the migration, lift and shift can result in migrating spare capacity from the data center to the cloud, as well. Learn how to calculate the ROI of moving to the cloud.
  • Monitoring and managing costs is difficult. Cloud projects are often initiated at the departmental level rather than at the corporate IT level, so costs are difficult to track. In addition, multicloud infrastructure means there is more than one cloud and it’s difficult to get an overall picture of cloud utilization and cloud costs.

Get Cloud Costs Under Control

In order to keep cloud from consuming the entire IT budget, companies need to keep an eye on their cloud spending. Tools can help companies through features such as:

  • Size calculators and cost estimators. Almost every cloud provider has calculators and estimators available to help you select the most appropriate and cost-effective technology. These tools help choose the right-size instance and evaluate whether reserved instances would lead to savings.
  • Automation. Automation can help ensure that cost-saving policies such as end-of-day shutdowns are consistently applied across the entire cloud infrastructure.
  • Cost analytics. Analytics tools collect cloud spending from all your platforms and provide a consolidated view of usage and utilization, along with tools to drill down into the data to understand usage.

Cloud services from CCS Technology Group help you keep an eye on both your cloud infrastructure and your cloud spending. Contact us to learn more about the benefits of cloud services from CCS Technology Group.

Additional Cloud Resources

6 Ways to Keep Your Cloud Secure

Choose the Right Approach for Moving Applications to the Cloud

Why SMBs Should Upgrade to the Cloud