Great Lakes Computer Corporation

Managed Service Provider

You are here: Home / Great Lakes Blog

Great Lakes Blog

By

SMBs Still Favor Face-to-Face Marketing Tactics

Content Marketing is most popular non-face-to-face marketing technique used by SMB’s

Traditional, face-to-face tactics are still fundamental for SMB marketers: Personal relationships and networking (95%), tradeshows and industry events (89%), and in-person events (86%) rank as the most popular marketing tactics for finding new customers, according to a survey of small and midsized businesses conducted by Forrester Consulting for Act-On Software.

Among surveyed SMBs, content marketing (83%) is also a big part of the customer acquisition mix, followed by print advertising (77%), public relations (74%), and SEO (73%).

SMB marketing tactics
Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/9618/smbs-still-favor-face-to-face-marketing-tactics#ixzz2DmZ3UypY

By

New WhitePaper from AppAssure about Disaster Recovery

New WhitePaper Focuses on Virtual Environment Data Security

In this whitepaper, Eric Siebert, VMware vExpert at Dell AppAssure, dispells the most common myths about Backup and Disaster Recovery in virtual environments.

Download Whitepaper

By

Dell Computers standing solidly behind AppAssure Software

AppAssure named the superior product by Dell

describe the imageDell Computers made network server backup news this week in none other than Paris, France when the company announced robust support for AppAssure, which Dell purchased in July 2012. The fate of other backup appliances in the Dell lineup has been in question ever since that time. Now, Dell has made it clear that it regards AppAssure as a superior product by saying that it will no longer support the company’s main backup appliance alternative. The announcement came at the company’s official Storage Forum.

AppAssure is a software package that takes network backup protection to the next level by providing continuous data protection. Now, Dell hopes to build on the success of AppAssure by releasing a new AppAssure appliance known as the DL4000.

Intended for small- and medium-sized businesses in particular, the DL4000 AppAssure Appliance uses advanced disaster recovery techniques including snapshots, deduplication, compression, and replication and is capable of extending backup and disaster recovery to virtual machines as well as physical ones.

AppAssure can be deployed independent of this specific hardware appliance, however. SMBs using AppAssure deployed on alternate hardware are still able to take advantage of the software’s key features.  These include Live Recovery, which provides for quick restoration of operations so that data loss can be minimized or even eliminated. With Live Recovery, recovery time objectives can be reduced to mere seconds and recovery point objectives may be complete in a matter of minutes.

AppAssure also provides small and medium businesses with its trademarked Assured Recovery system, which helps maintain data integrity by providing daily validation and verification of both applications and data. This helps to ensure that the current backup file for the network will be 100% recoverable should it be needed for disaster recovery purposes.

AppAssure also stands out in terms of its scalability so that as data grows, the backup system can easily adjust to increased demands and continue offering SMBs full protection.

Great Lakes Computer is an Authorized Partner of Dell AppAssure

To learn more about AppAssure, subscribe for a free trial or download our whitepaper “Comparison and Performance Analysis of Backup and Disaster Recovery Software.”

Click me

By

Symantec Warns About “Information Sprawl’s” Impact on Data Security

Information sprawl requires a robust malware solution

Symantec logo resized 600Symantec’s recent 2012 State of Information Report is jam-packed with warnings and advice for the small- or medium-sized business, but perhaps the most important of these is the news that almost half of all business data is currently being stored outside company firewalls. This renders it far more vulnerable to attack by spyware, Trojans, worms, bots, and other forms of malware.

SMBs are particularly vulnerable on this front, with 53% of their data residing outside company firewall protection. This situation is due to the fact that SMBs tend to have a greater proportion of their information stored on mobile devices including laptops, tablet computers, and even mobile phones, some of which may be employee- rather than business-owned.

The proliferation of data away from central servers and data centers is referred to as “information sprawl.” It represents a major challenge in the area of computer safety since managing malware protection on many individual smaller computing devices can be significantly more complex than a centralized, server-based approach.

Nevertheless, a mobile computing paradigm offers such outstanding advantages in terms of cost effectiveness and employee efficiency that it is well worth the extra effort required to secure these devices against malware threats. Robust data protection for today’s SMBs requires a company-wide strategy that takes into account the diverse nature of the computing devices in use.

The U.S. business climate currently reflects a good understanding of this need. According to Symantec group president Francis deSouza: “Businesses are undergoing a transformation unlike anything we’ve seen before. With mobile devices and cloud giving employees access to information from nearly anywhere, we’re also seeing more sensitive information living beyond the traditional IT boundaries. This is creating concern about how to best protect this information.” DeSouza specializes in computer security services and products for business entities.

Malware is not the only danger that results from the problematic combination of information sprawl and insufficient data protection. More than a third of businesses have had concerns about the exposure of confidential data when mobile devices were stolen or lost.

How robust is your Data Security?

Great Lakes Computers offers a Free 27 point system audit, helping you identify problems and vulnerabilities before disaster strikes your network.

By

Data Backup & Recovery – Speed and Accuracy DO Matter

AppAssure offers disaster recovery in diverse SMB computing environments

Dell AppAssureSome network server backup solutions specialize in providing excellent disaster recovery only for a single computing environment.  While this might have been adequate in previous generations when the same technological paradigm tended to prevail at most small- and medium-sized businesses, it is no longer a satisfactory approach to backup and disaster recovery.  Today’s SMBs may be using a traditional physical computing environment, or they may have extended their data capabilities through the use of innovative IT solutions such as virtual servers and cloud computing.  AppAssure is a backup and disaster recovery product that is able to handle the particular needs of all of these types of environments.

Speed matters

The old adage that insists that “time is money,” is, like much traditional wisdom, spot on.  SMBs need a backup and disaster recovery solution that will do its job efficiently and without getting in the way of daily workflow.  AppAssure meets this need admirably, copying data at blazing speeds as fast as 8 GB per minute.

Accuracy matters

When it comes to disaster recovery, there are two types of accuracy.  Data must have been copied without errors, to be sure, but even a perfect backup will be of limited use if the data included in it is out of date.  Accuracy, therefore, must encompass efforts to make sure that all changes in data have been duly transferred into the backup with as little delay as possible.

AppAssure hits the mark on this measure of disaster recovery excellence as well.  Continuous backups as well as concurrent snapshots of ongoing activity combine to help businesses have the confidence that if disaster recovery should become necessary, they will have access to the most recent data set possible.

The Live Recovery advantage

Even the most up-to-date backup, however, can become problematic if restoring it takes so long that the process interferes with business operations.  AppAssure features Live Recovery, which permits businesses to enjoy full disaster recovery within a time span of just minutes.  This recovery time of near zero is made possible because access to virtual and physical servers is available through the backup file, which means that an SMB can get up and running before a system restore has been accomplished in full.

Don’t just take our word for it 

An independent assessment of backup and disaster recovery software solutions performed by David Bourgeois, President of My IT, LLC can be dowloaded in the whitepaper “Comparison and Performance Analysis of Backup and Disaster Recovery Software.”  In this first hand account, the author evaluates performance limitations of Acronis imaging software, ARCserve tape software, MS SQL Backup for SQL, and MIMS offsite, and goes on to outlines his careful and thorough evaluation of Dell AppAssure Backup, Replication & Recovery software solution.

 

By

Cloud Security Named in “Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2013”

Cloud security a pressing issue for 2013

Cloud SecurityThe Georgia Tech Information Security Center published information this week about the most serious threats to computer safety expected during 2013.  The evolution of software and systems unfortunately brings with it a type of parallel evolution as hackers and cyber criminals seek to leverage new technologies in malicious ways. (Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112732086/cyber-threat-forecast-georgia-tech-2013/)

Cloud computing security

The report identifies cloud security as a critical area.  Businesses have been finding out for several years now that cloud IT solutions allow them to quickly adjust their system provisioning, enabling them to add computing power as needed.  This has created a great incentive to move operations into the cloud since this power, unlike in the traditional paradigm, can be consumed – and paid for – on an occasional basis instead of as a fixed, up-front cost.

The very flexibility that makes cloud computing so attractive, however, will draw cyber criminals to it as well, according to the “Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2013.”  Malware creators could use a cloud approach to flexibly create an army of virtual machines used to carry out malicious activities.  Microsoft Windows Azure team member Yousef Khalidi detailed this scenario in the report, writing: “If I’m a bad guy, and I have a zero-day exploit and the cloud provider is not up on their toes in terms of patching, the ability to exploit such a big capacity means I can do all sorts of things.”

Another troubling scenario brought forth in the report is the development of botnets that live in the cloud, creating a huge network of virtual resources that could be used in cyber attacks on SMB computer resources.

In many ways, the cloud is like a computer itself.  It creates incentives that are too powerful to disregard, but it comes with its own set of challenges to overcome.

One thing is quite clear: cloud computing security must be of paramount importance to SMBs seeking to move operations in the cloud or expand their current use of cloud environments.  It is imperative for organizations to work with a responsible cloud service provider that takes data security seriously.

Great lakes Computer is an authorized partner of Dell AppAssure Software, and the have a great eBook which has become very popular with our blog subscribers called “Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth.”  Download this 11 chapter, step-by-step guide from Dell for creating the optimal cloud strategy for YOUR organization.

Contact Us