Tabush Group's Cloud & Managed IT Blog

I feel like I say this every year, but I can’t believe it's January and 2016 is already behind us. Last month, at our annual company holiday party, I once again had the privilege of delivering the ‘State of the Company’ speech to our team. In 2015, I focused on the amazing journey of building, learning, and growing the company. While that journey continues on, the theme of 2016’s address was a reflection on some amazing things we accomplished and an expression of gratitude for every single person on our team who helped us reach our goals.

Just about every business today uses the cloud.

Back in 2006, companies large and small had all of their IT systems running on servers and software that lived within the company’s walls. Fast forward just ten years to 2016, and it’s very hard to find a business that does not use the cloud for some part of their IT.

By definition, cloud means an IT system or application that lives in a remote datacenter and is managed by a third party provider, as opposed to residing on a server in the customer’s location.  

When it’s done right, the cloud works brilliantly for businesses. Cloud systems are reliable, secure, and efficient. They easily scale with growing companies. Most companies we surveyed are using a cloud email service, such as Office 365 or Google Apps, both of which are great systems (although significantly different in many ways). But there is so much more than email that small businesses can and should be doing in the cloud. 

Virtual desktops are the big thing for businesses these days. Over the past few years, virtual desktops (also known as VDI, Desktop-as-a-Service or DaaS, and hosted desktops) have proven to be a more secure, stable, and scalable option than the traditional desktop and server model for small businesses, and most importantly, technology finally exists to deliver the right performance at the right price.

If your company isn't already using virtual desktops, instead of looking at a server upgrade or refresh of your desktop computers, consider virtual desktops as the next step to take for your company’s IT infrastructure. In the process, be sure to consider whether you should have your virtual desktops hosted in a private or a public cloud.

I’m often asked: “Are all types of cloud made equal?” The simple answer is: no.

There are many different types of cloud services, and like any other service you utilize for your firm, not all service partners are the right fit for your firm and needs.

To make sure you select the right cloud service and partner, it’s important to ask the right questions.

Last Friday morning 7am Eastern Time, news started breaking of the internet being down on the east coast of the US. People were having issues accessing multiple websites including Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter during a period of two hours. Later that day, a second shorter outage occurred. 

Did you know that October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month?

It's a great annual reminder for you to take a look at what you and your company are doing to protect your business and systems from potential cyber attacks that could cripple your operations and cost you thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

The IT business is loosely defined. If you surveyed 100 IT companies, you would learn just as many different ways of doing things. Every company needs the right IT resources for their business and making the right matches can be a challenge.

Over the past few years, a very common question I’m asked by potential clients and colleagues is “whose cloud do you use?” and when I tell them that we built our own, they’re often puzzled and surprised. “Why not just use Amazon – isn’t it so much cheaper and better?” they ask me. There are several reasons why we’ve built our own cloud and don’t plan on moving to a public cloud anytime soon.

Having helped create, implement, manage, and restore backup and disaster recovery plans for dozens of firms, the good news is that a solid backup plan is very doable; the bad news is that it’s not as simple as you may think. Here are some experience shares and reality checks.