Network monitoring solutions

Why it is vital to have a first-class cloud-hosting services partner

The hidden pitfalls of transitioning to public cloud-hosting service environments Attracted by cost-saving opportunities at the same time as being able to improve the quality of resources, many UK businesses have transitioned from a privately hosted on-premises environment to a public cloud-hosting service. However, research by ‘415’ has revealed a range of issues that can arise from transitioning, and of the businesses surveyed, 21% advised they were considering a return to an on-premises based solution. A possible explanation for this could be that businesses often underestimate the complexities of switching to a cloud environment and find themselves dealing with issues of reliability and efficiency that are beyond their level of expertise. Working with a first-class cloud-hosting services partner can give you that depth of knowledge and technical skill that reduces risk and enables you to fully benefit from the transition. Public Cloud-Hosting– advantages vs. risks Advantages A public cloud service provider offers resources over the internet, such as software, data storage and applications. For a growing number of businesses, it makes sense to transition their on-premises environment to a public cloud-hosted environment for three main reasons: inexpensive – pay for what you use on an ongoing basis flexible – instant provisioning and on-demand access to high-quality services from any device scalable – easy to expand server base in line with business needs. Another appealing benefit is the ability to take advantage of these high-level services without facing the same set-up costs. Risks The reasons for transitioning your environment to the cloud are compelling, however, without the proper expertise to correctly configure and manage the environment, you run the risk of: uncontrolled escalation of ongoing costs confusion arising from increased complexity using the wrong tools leading to ineffectiveness inaccurate reporting and tracking of digital assets lack of proper support from the providers themselves. Choosing the right cloud-hosting services partner Working with a partner who has the right kind of knowledge and expertise can help you to develop, implement and deploy an effective plan for transitioning, as well as maintaining it properly afterwards. This would mean: costs being kept to a minimum and maintained at a predictable level solving issues of reliability and efficiency faster response times assessment of virtual machine use correct use of tools effective analysis of workloads. With over 20 years of experience in assisting UK businesses with their IT requirements, Awareness offers first-class expertise and technical skills in supporting your business migration to a cloud-hosted environment. We partner with you and your cloud service provider to maximise the advantages for your business while keeping costs at predictable levels. We can offer valuable insight into how your virtual machines are performing and help with aspects concerning efficiency, agility and flexibility. For further information on our cloud-hosting services, call us at ASL on 0345 862 0350.

The benefits of outsourcing your network and systems monitoring.

Maintaining performance For IT infrastructure to perform efficiently, and to ensure access to services and data at any time, continuous network monitoring is a must. However, so many businesses fail to monitor their network as they lack the resources, skills and manpower to do so. Too many just rely on the smooth operation of devices and fail to monitor their health. They assume that everything is fine rather than incur the high costs involved in staffing their own IT department to effectively monitor these assets. For example, whilst it is vital to have a UPS that activates within milliseconds of the loss of your main power source, it’s not enough on its own. The UPS itself also needs to be monitored, because if you are not aware of its battery life then you may wrongly assume that you have enough capacity to shut down your servers. The difference between knowing you have 20 minutes of battery life versus 2 minutes of battery life is essential and could have disastrous consequences for the integrity of that data. Not having a monitoring solution is therefore a high-risk strategy as it makes your business vulnerable in the event of a systems failure. What are the options for businesses without their own monitoring system in place? How do you maintain the high performance of your IT infrastructure without the hassle and cost of recruiting and training your own in-house team? The most cost-effective and secure option is to outsource, which enables you to: protect your business from disruption identify areas requiring systems improvement increase systems availability and effectiveness quickly identify slow or ailing components predict potential outages through alerts reduce your exposure to risk by minimising downtime reduce the cost of recruiting and training your own in-house team. Why outsource your network monitoring to ASL? With our monitoring solutions, we keep an eagle eye on all of your important devices within your infrastructure. Taking the UPS as an example we actively monitor; battery capacity, temperature, and running time remaining. These usage trends are monitored, identified and acted upon. Continually monitoring the status of all your infrastructure such as network, servers, UPS, databases and other key assets means you are alerted at the earliest opportunity to potential risks and areas for improvement. At ASL, we have extensive experience providing network monitoring solutions for UK SMEs, and have the expertise to support you with your network management requirements. We provide affordable solutions to suit any budget that can be scaled up or down according to demand, we: provide 24/7/365 network and systems monitoring proactively address and fix alerted issues constantly look after your environment during staff absence prevent problems by identifying software or hardware issues analyse usage so your network capacity is not exceeded configure UPS to shut down attached devices properly in the event of an outage provide highly trained and expert staff. To discuss how we can protect your business from network disruption call us at ASL on 0345 862 0350.

ASL industry leading IT support services across Manchester, Cheshire and the UK

Wide-ranging IT support available on your doorstep. As a Manchester based IT service support provider, we are perfectly positioned to deliver industry-leading, managed IT support services to businesses around the UK. We have years of experience helping small, medium and large corporations with their IT issues, and offer an extensive range of services that deliver flexibility and value, that can be easily scaled up or down according to your business needs. 6 reasons to choose ASL Fully trained locally based IT experts – we offer first-line IT support services to businesses based anywhere in the UK by phone and email. Wide-ranging IT experience – we deliver industry-leading IT support. We are specialists in Microsoft Technologies, Microsoft Dynamics, Cloud and High Availability Systems. We offer advanced support covering a wide range of hardware and software products – including SAN’s, printers, firewalls, PCs, and SQL servers. We can help you, whatever your requirements and deliver affordable IT support so that you don’t have to pay to hire, train and manage your own IT department. Easy access to disaster recovery – outsourcing your backup and disaster recovery to us ensures your business quickly gets back up and running after a disaster, whether that’s a malicious ransomware attack, human error, power outage or weather-related disruption. With our help, you can remain operational. Onsite Surveys – we provide onsite surveys to give you the opportunity to discuss your business IT support requirements. Cost control – recruiting and training your own in-house IT support team, and keeping them up to speed with every development, can be very expensive. We constantly update our skill set, provide training and keep up to date with developments in the marketplace, so you don’t have to. Stay competitive – because your resources are not being stretched by maintaining your own IT department, you can direct your finances and expertise towards developing your business. To discuss your IT support needs, call us at ASL on 0345 862 0350.

On-premises backup and recovery considerations.

Taking the right approach with on-premises disaster recovery. The age of the Cloud has well and truly arrived, however, a large number of SMEs are still continuing to choose the on-premises backup and disaster recovery option. At ASL, we know the success of any backup and recovery solution lies in the planning. In choosing an on-premise solution, it’s extremely important to take into consideration a number of points before finalising your plan. What are the considerations for an on-premises solution? The first major consideration is whether to invest in building and maintaining your own system, which would include the appointment of IT staff with the appropriate expertise in the configuration and operation of the system. Suitably qualified personnel could be a) expensive and b) a challenge to find so you may want to consider the option of outsourcing instead. The second consideration is to determine the amount of data you need to backup and whether the purpose of this backup is file recovery only, if corruption has occurred, or data recovery, in the event of a disaster. Other considerations include: backup and recovery specifications – size and speed of storage environment RTO – recovery time objective or the maximum amount of downtime tolerable RPO – recovery point objective or how far back files are to be recovered application requirements – to accommodate real-time transactional data or static files internal or external implementation of the recovery – will consultants be needed to assist? data replication to off-site centre or cloud data amount kept on physical systems vs. virtual machines VM storage support backup server deduplication facility – to reduce storage and increase recovery speed backup to tape, disk or hot site – affects RTO Keeping your data from being exposed to third parties Keeping your data under your own control. Addressing these considerations will assist you in determining the nature of the data storage environment required. Why outsource your backup and disaster recovery to ASL ASL has more than two decades of experience in designing and implementing backup and disaster recovery solutions. We know how important it is that your IT systems, business applications and data are recovered as rapidly as possible to reduce the impact a disaster can have on your operation. Our experts have the specialist knowledge required to keep your IT systems up and running in the event of a disaster. For further information about on-premises backup and recovery solutions, contact ASL on 0345 862 0350.

Ensuring business continuity after a DDoS attack

Keeping your business running after a Distributed Denial of Service attack. Throughout 2016 there was a significant rise in serious DDoS attacks, with many large organisations including; PayPal, Twitter, GitHub, and Spotify having reported disruption to their online services. In 2017, we expect to see a rise in the number of organisations targeted for financial gain, as it’s predicted that the increased use of IoT and mobile devices will open the door to attack. Today, the resources often used to increase business flexibility and agility, can unfortunately also increase cyber-threat and attacks, these include: increased employee use of mobile devices virtualized computing infrastructure increased texting and emailing of employees outside of work employees working from home or remote locations. Is your business prepared for a DDoS attack? A Distributed Denial of Service attack happens when a machine is targeted by other maliciously corrupted systems. The purpose is to cause your IT infrastructure to crash, ultimately resulting in your business shutting down. The reasons behind attacks vary and are not limited solely to financial gain. Attackers may want to steal data or be motivated by revenge, as in the case of a disgruntled employee, or they might simply want to demonstrate their knowledge and skill in launching an attack. Reports in the media of DDoS attacks against well-known brands, mean that most of us are well aware of the level of disruption they cause. Despite this, few organisations have a business continuity plan in place. If your business was attacked today, how confident are you that you would be up and running again with minimal delay? The impact of a DDoS attack can have far-reaching consequences. The vast majority of businesses rely on IT systems to operate, and uninterrupted access to the Internet is fundamental to our digital economy. Any break in service, for whatever reason and however temporary, has an immediate impact on your bottom line. In addition, reputations are quickly damaged and client confidence diminished. ASL – keeping your business up and running 24/7/365 In order to safeguard against DDoS attacks and ensure the continuity of your business, it’s extremely important to be prepared. As business continuity can only really be guaranteed with professionally implemented backup and recovery services, the advice is to seek assistance from ASL. We have 20 years of specialist knowledge and expertise in ensuring our customers are prepared for cyber-crime. In the event of such an attack, with backup and recovery in place, you can be up and running again with minimum disruption and loss. To find out more about ensuring business continuity after a cyber-attack, call us at ASL on 0345 862 0350.

ASL implements a backup and recovery solution for Boutinot Wines

Ensuring business continuity during head-office relocation. An effective and up-to-date backup and recovery solution is vital to ensuring business continuity. Failing to restore data can have far-reaching consequences, which is why we at ASL design and implement backup and recovery solutions that minimise service disruption and quickly get you back to work. We have 20 years of experience and have helped many UK businesses plan for disaster, which proved to be crucial during Boutinot’s office move. Customer– Boutinot wines Established in 1980, Boutinot is one of the leading UK-based distributors of quality wines from around the world. Distributing more than 1400 wine varieties, totalling 44 million bottles each year to UK and International retailers, restaurateurs and wholesalers. Boutinot’s requirement is for an IT infrastructure that is as robust as its supply chain. Having worked with Boutinot since 2015, ASL were engaged to help manage the IT systems relocation; when the company moved to a new head office in Cheadle Point, Manchester. The ASL approach A major hardware upgrade and virtualisation project was planned to coincide with the move. By upgrading at the same time as relocating, we could resolve any issues that arose using the new platform, which would minimise disruption. Our approach was to ensure the Boutinot back-up and disaster recovery environment was 100% up to date. We commenced work at 6pm on Friday evening, making sure everything was powered down and prepared for the move. After Boutinot’s IT infrastructure was professionally moved to their new site, it was then our job to rebuild the server environment in the new location. We re-attended site at 8am on Saturday, and within a matter of hours, we had all of Boutinot’s servers back online, with one critical exception. The critical issue – during transit damage had occurred which prevented a server from booting up. The ASL solution – using our powerful Backup and DR solution, we were able to export a brand new virtual copy of the server onto Boutinot’s new hardware platform. This was completed in under 2 hours, and all system functionality was fully restored. The benefits – the new hardware platform has enabled Boutinot to embark on a series of Windows Domain upgrades, Exchange upgrades, remote desktop services upgrades and SQL server upgrades, which are all built on their highly available platform. Within 3 weeks of the office move, we had successfully migrated all Boutinot servers onto their new hardware platform. In addition, we also implemented our managed network monitoring solution, to actively inform Boutinot about all aspects of their IT infrastructure, hardware and networking. Had our Network monitoring solution been in place, it would have identified the issue with the failed server before the move. If you would like to discuss implementing or upgrading your disaster recovery solution speak to us at ASL. Call ASL today on 0345 862 0350 and let us help your business to remain up and running.

ASL private Cloud hosting solutions for ERP vendors

Taking a flexible approach to hosting ERP solutions Many claims are made about cloud computing, in particular – cloud-based solutions are faster, easier, and cheaper to implement than traditional ‘on-premises’ alternatives. While the cloud certainly requires less upfront capital investment and alleviates some technical complexity, the claims made don’t always match reality. As an ERP vendor, it’s likely that your customers and prospects (heavily influenced by software giants such as Microsoft), are expecting you to offer a cloud-based alternative to your traditional ‘on-premises’ ERP solution. With so much hype, it’s not surprising that your customers are being persuaded that the future belongs to the cloud. Overcoming the complexity of ERP hosting. Unfortunately, ERP in the cloud is not quite as simple as the hype would have you believe. ERP is often complex, customer specific and must be capable of changing to meet differing business demands. The one size fits all philosophy doesn’t apply, and that has implications for the cloud deployment of solutions where: customisation is the norm integrating with third-party ‘on-premises’ solutions is essential exporting data is a daily occurrence 24/7 access to the entire operating environment is non-negotiable adding to existing IT resources needs to be fast, efficient and cost effective multiple environments are necessary for testing and upgrades. Where companies are able to standardise their business processes, it may be true that cloud-based ERP software, on platforms such as Microsoft Azure, are faster to implement than traditional ‘on-premises’ solutions. However, in reality, it’s often the case that standard packaged solutions fail to meet the needs of many businesses, which is particularly true within the manufacturing and distribution sector. These businesses need: package software that can be modified to meet their specific requirements IT environments that can adapt quickly to a change in market conditions freedom to change software to gain competitive advantage immediate access to systems during unexpected emergencies a flexible charging structure to reflect the uncertainties of complex ERP implementations pricing models that are transparent and allow reliable budgets to be set throughout the lifetime of the project. The implications for independent software vendors (ISVs) are clear: project delays, resourcing issues, capacity planning, shifting goal posts and bespoke software can be costly and inefficient under a restrictive cloud model. A flexible approach to hosting is therefore required for ERP vendors. Why ASL’s private Cloud ERP hosting is the right way to go. Our Private Cloud Hosting Solution for ERP vendors overcomes the challenges of ERP hosting. Our pragmatic approach enables ISVs to work with professionals who understand the challenges of implementing ERP solutions. We come from an ERP background and have more than 20 years of experience providing robust hardware and infrastructure solutions that truly accommodate the needs of fast-paced, high transactional manufacturing and distribution businesses. We’ve taken everything we know about robust on-premises deployments of ERP solutions and made certain that our cloud solutions follow the same principles. Our ISV partners can confidently promote the cloud without worrying about the restrictions and pricing uncertainty that typifies the big cloud providers. The following table identifies key points of difference between ASL and Microsoft Azure: Requirement(s) Azure ASL Hosting Availability requirements with SLAs âœ“ âœ“ Ability to respond quickly to incidents *Refer to MS guides âœ“ Incident escalation *Refer to MS guides âœ“ Disaster recovery and business continuity *Refer to MS guides âœ“ Ease of integration with third party in cloud and on premise solutions *Refer to MS guides âœ“ Speed of deployment âœ“ âœ“ System performance âœ“ âœ“ Proactive system monitoring âœ“ âœ“ Moving out of the cloud to on-premise *Refer to MS guides âœ“ Easy management of the system *Refer to MS guides âœ“ WAN Integration (e.g. MPLS) âœ— âœ“ No in-house IT Knowledge required âœ— âœ“ Pricing clarity âœ— âœ“ Working with ASL, you can be confident that your customers’ cloud deployment will be straightforward, expertly managed and delivered on time with no hidden or unforeseen costs. To learn how your business can deliver ERP cloud solutions that work in the real world, call 0345 862 0350 to discuss partnering with ASL or email sales@aware-soft.co.uk

Early warning systems monitoring

Why do you need ‘early warning’ IT systems monitoring? Businesses today are under pressure to keep their IT systems up and running, however ensuring systems and services are maintained 24/7 is no easy task. With systems monitoring, failures are detected early, often before they occur, allowing you to react and prevent minor problems from becoming major issues. Regardless of size, businesses need to remain fully operational. However, with more limited IT resources, SMEs often struggle to provide the level of in-house monitoring that’s truly required. In addition, many have IT systems that are based on disparate hardware and software, which makes monitoring complex. This situation will only get worse as more systems are added to the IT infrastructure. Problems encountered by SMEs include: Employing a highly trained systems monitoring team is often cost-prohibitive. Deploying and maintaining your own in-house monitoring solution can also be challenging, unproductive and leave you open to shortfalls e.g. staff sickness and holidays. Too often IT staff are required to focus on daily problem solving, leaving little time to monitor and predict potential issues. The way computer assets are structured can make it too complex to gain clear insight into what’s happening. What are the alternatives to an in-house monitoring team? In the modern digital age, an early warning system that’s capable of predicting system outages and unforeseen failures is crucial to maintaining services 24/7/365. Systems monitoring offers you the necessary insight to keep your business running in an optimal state. It’s vital to have an overview of your entire system, as the causes of repeated server crashes, can be identified, resolved and prevented from ever happening again. Do you have the ability to monitor all of your important IT assets, and provide early warning of potential issues? If the answer is ‘no’, and you don’t have the resources to employ a highly qualified in-house team, then outsourcing to a managed service provider is the way to go. Outsourcing to Awareness – we monitor, manage and mitigate risk. Too many businesses rely on users to notify them once an issue occurs, but once a problem has arisen your business has already been negatively impacted. That’s why at ASL, we deliver a proactive approach to systems monitoring. We find problems before they occur, and prevent them from ever happening. For instance, we’re alerted when a server is getting close to running out of resources – we then carry out proactive work to ensure this does not happen. We monitor: servers – CPU usage, disk space, memory and more server service(s) to ensure websites, databases and mail flow are working efficiently network infrastructure, remote sites, internet connection, traffic and trends. Systems are checked every minute of every day to make sure key areas of functionality are working effectively. With our help you can decrease downtime, prevent issues and ensure your performance is maximised. Our managed service allows you to offload the responsibility for monitoring, maintaining and resolving IT systems problems. We free up your IT staff to concentrate on running your business. Call us on 0345 862 0350 to discuss your systems monitoring requirements or email sales@awre-soft.co.uk.

Why outsourcing network monitoring is the way forward.

All the benefits of a dedicated network monitoring team without the high cost. In today’s digitally connected world, businesses and consumers demand access to data and services anywhere, at any time. To successfully operate in data-driven markets, network monitoring is critical to ensuring 24/7 operations and service availability. While large corporations have the means to employ a dedicated team of people to monitor and manage their network 24/7, this is not the case for the majority of smaller businesses. The downside of not monitoring your network is potential downtime, leading to loss of revenue and reduced customer confidence. By not monitoring you are open to network failure, which could have massive consequences. So with network monitoring being so critical to business operations, what is the affordable alternative for SMEs needing to focus internal resources and staff on business, rather than IT? The answer for many is to outsource. By outsourcing you can reap the benefits of an IT team dedicated to continually monitoring and managing your network, without incurring high staffing costs. Reasons to outsource: frees up your resources/staff to focus on value-added functions safeguards your business from network disruption increases systems availability reduces business risk by minimising downtime The benefits of outsourcing your network monitoring Contracting a specialist network monitoring service provider, enables you to save on costs and gain peace of mind that your network is being looked after by an expert. When outsourcing you can expect: Monitoring of your hardware and software to notify you of potential problems that could lead to systems failure. In addition, usage can be monitored to ensure it doesn’t exceed network capacity. Identification of hardware or software problems to prevent a network or systems failure. Notification when system upgrades are required to ensure your business always operates at optimal efficiency. Access to highly trained experts. You receive the networking expertise you need at a fraction of the cost it would take to employ and train your own staff. Disaster recovery protocols to ensure that should your network fail, it can be quickly restored to working order. Why choose ASL as your network monitoring service provider? With over 20 years’ experience providing network monitoring services to UK businesses, we have the expertise to protect your business at a price that you can afford. Our 24/7/365 network monitoring makes your systems reliable, more responsive and robust. By outsourcing to us you gain access to a highly trained team of experts, which frees up your staff to concentrate on running business operations. Our affordable solutions can be easily scaled up to provide maximum server and network infrastructure availability in line with your changing business needs. Act now before your computer network suffers a system failure, call 0345 862 0350 to discuss your network monitoring requirements.

The Value of Network Monitoring

Why Invest in Network Monitoring? Network Monitoring to resolve business critical issues. A reliable network monitoring solution pro-actively identifies and prevents issues from arising that could jeopardise your business’ network infrastructure. It alerts you to problems with hardware, network, bandwidth, availability and services (i.e. email) as well as other key IT system issues. With pro-active monitoring, these potential issues are solved before they become business critical. IT systems are maintained to guarantee maximum uptime and reduce outages, which in turn limits any financial losses incurred through downtime. Optimization of network reliability: By monitoring your network you are aware at all times of whether routers, servers and other key systems (i.e. databases) are available. By taking a pro-active approach you don’t risk preventable issues becoming a major problem. You are able to plan, schedule and resolve issues before they become critical. Visualize topology: By mapping your network topology, at a glance you can see your entire network. This can highlight both problems and required improvements. In addition, in the event of a failure, having an accurate view of the system prior to any outage helps with troubleshooting. Understanding capacity: A flexible monitoring system enables you to maintain service levels and plan for additional devices/bandwidth to remain ahead of demand. Troubleshooting: Monitoring enables you to check any device and review performance statistics, to diagnose network problems before they impact business operations. Trend tracking: By tracking trends you are able to review the historical performance of a device, to identify intermittent problems and implement corrective measures. Network monitoring allows you to save time and costs on network management. By being aware of impending problems before they arise, you are in a stronger position to avert downtime and remain open-for-business. Why OUTSOURCE your network monitoring to ASL? We have been providing network monitoring services to businesses UK-wide for over 20 years. Our chosen partner is Paessler, an industry-leading network monitoring software provider. With our 24/7/365 PRTG Network Monitoring systems, we make your systems robust, reliable and more responsive. we safeguard your business from data loss and disruption we increase your system availability, minimise downtime and limit business risk we offer maximum server and network infrastructure availability/performance we free up your staff to focus on adding value to your business we provide you with peace of mind that your core business systems are operational we provide accurate reporting on your IT systems over the duration of a year we ensure you experience zero knowledge drain with staff changes our solutions are designed to fit any budget and can be scaled up to meet your growing business needs our experts are highly trained and focused on the smooth operation of your business IT our systems monitor 24/7/365. To discuss your network monitoring requirements in detail, call us on 0345 862 0350

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