Posted by William Toll

Small Businesses will find that the traditional Web Hosting industry will transform significantly in 2009, primarily due to the economic conditions that will continue to be a growing factor in 2009. Many of the smaller Web hosting providers will be in jeopardy as they try to continue their operations in this difficult and competitive market. The cost of capital, acquiring new customers, and servicing those customers appropriately will be too much for some of the smaller hosting providers.

In 2009, Websites and Web based applications have moved on from being just information and basic transactional models to being the foundation for new sources of revenue and increase in employee productivity. Now more than ever the knowledge that downtime, slow response, blocked IPs, poor support, billing issues can all be solved by choosing the right technologies and providers, will cause churn as businesses choose new providers. Read more…

Posted by William Toll

Small and medium-sized businesses found 2008 to be the year when many previously “leading edge” and “out of reach” technologies became accessible and, more importantly, critical to their bottom line.  In 2008, SMB technology teams, ISVs, and IT consultants were transforming their technology deployments to hosting services utilizing formerly out-of-reach technologies.

For the first time, SMBs were benefiting from solutions and technologies such as Software as a Service, Quad-Core CPUs, Virtualization, and the new Microsoft server technologies. Read more…

Posted by William Toll

NaviSite small business Dedicated Hosting customers know that this time of the year Internet traffic begins to pick up measurably. Ecommerce begins to soar as consumers begin researching and buying goods and services online. Financial and insurance firms experience an end of the year rush to prepare for the new year of taxes. Small businesses run end of year reports.

Given the explicit cost of attracting clicks and visitors, businesses need to make every visitor count! Every request to a dedicated server is important! Delays, time-outs and server slow-downs are not acceptable, this time of the year or any time of the year for that matter! Read more…

Posted by Chris Patterson

The biggest industry buzzword over the last year has been “Cloud Computing.” Every software and service provider has rolled out offerings that they say will put your business “in the cloud,” but each has a different definition. There has been so much confusion around the term that on the Wikipedia page for Cloud Computing, you can almost see the white-out.  To simplify it further, we would like to take this opportunity to weigh in on our definition of the term using as few buzzwords as possible. Read more…

Posted by Chris Patterson

As an enabler of PCI compliant environments, at NaviSite, we are frequently asked questions about what is the best way to comply with various components of the PCI Data Security Standard, as well as many other regulations. One of the key features of the DSS is the flexibility that is afforded by each organization when it comes to how specific controls are implemented, and one of the most commonly asked is around requirement 6.6. The PCI standard states the following:

For public-facing web applications, address new threats and vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis and ensure these applications are protected against known attacks by either of the following methods:

•  Reviewing public-facing web applications via manual or automated application vulnerability security assessment tools or methods, at least annually and after any changes
• Installing a web-application firewall in front of public-facing web applications

Read more…

Posted by William Toll

Hard Disks have moving parts.  Hard Disks fail.  Hard Disk failures can result into data loss.  Small businesses that loose data are at a greater risk of business failure and financial hardship. The hard disk industry knows this and a recent Carnegie Mellon University study looked at 100,000 hard drives and reached to the conclusion that hard drive manufacturers were exaggerating their meantime before failure (MTBF) rates by 15%. NaviSite strongly encourages businesses to seek solutions and providers that encourage the greater use of technologies like RAID.

Let’s discuss RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) which, when implemented, can significantly increase a server’s reliability and performance while decreasing risk by an order of magnitude. Read more…

Posted by Jim Ciampaglio

It is very common in the dedicated hosting industry for companies to “lure” you in with posted low rates or bottom priced servers.  There are quite a few “fly by night” operations that have setup shop overnight with sub-tier infrastructure and drive their marketing strategy around a very low advertised price. This certainly gets some attention but increasingly, customers are becoming wary of this tactic. The age old adage still stand here – if it is too good to be true, it generally is.  The airline industry is a good example – how often has this happened to you?   That fare you saw advertised was 20-30% less than what shows up on your credit card bill!

As businesses increasingly look at their technology assets as revenue source, cost of downtime and associated revenue loss becomes a hard reality.  Reliability, scalability and performance become tangible in this context; especially as the peak holiday season approaches. As customers begin to ask for things like proactive monitoring and management of servers, redundancy of common points of failure, coverage from security threats and attacks on the internet, the $100 server quote jumps by 2X or 3X to get to the desired solution.  Read more…

Posted by Sophia McKeown

The PCI Data Security Standards Council Community meeting held in September was indeed an eye opener. Following up the meeting, we’d like to share NaviSite’s specific observations on the just released revised Data Security Standard, version 1.2:

Wireless Systems Overhaul: The requirements for Wireless systems have increased in recent past and the Council has acknowledged the weakness of the WEP protocol for wireless. Despite its widespread use in the legacy retail systems, WEP protocol would be soon out of use and retailers are looking for ways to address this. Read more…

Posted by Terri Pecorelli

NaviSite participated in Oracle Open World held in San Francisco on September 22-25, 2008 showcasing our Oracle Professional Services. While the overall attendance dipped from 45,000 attendees last year to 40,000 attendees this year, there was significant activity and excitement at the event.

Read more…

Posted by Laura Luedeke

When you think about key factors that go into choosing a hosting provider…at the top of any list must be SERVICE.  After all, you are entrusting the foundation of your business into someone else’s hands.

At NaviSite, we have an “Always There” philosophy when it comes to providing service. We have designed our support model to provide customers with quick and easy answers to any technical questions and be available round the clock. We understand that problems can occur at any time and we have experts ready and available for our customers - only one phone call or quick click away. Our support teams are staffed 24×7x365 and are always ready to answer all of your questions. After all, if you have a technical need or question, it should not matter what time it is, day or night…if an urgent needs arises you always want to know that someone is going to answer the call and be – always there. Read more…