Author Archives: thrivewpengine

Company Recognized for Forward-Thinking Approach to Meeting the Needs of Today’s IT Channel

Thrive Networks, the complete IT solutions for emerging to mid-sized businesses, has been named to CRN’s Managed Service Provider (MSP) 500 list as one of the MSP Elite 150. The annual list recognizes the top technology providers and consultants in North America whose cutting-edge approach to managed services puts end-user customers in the best position to improve efficiencies, cut costs and speed time to market for their own products and services.

This year, CRN’s MSP500 is broken down into three groups highlighting the MSP Elite 150, who are large data center-focused solution providers with a strong mix of on-premise professional services as well as off-premise services; the MSP Pioneer 250, who have a business model heavily weighted toward managed services focused on the small- and midsize-business market; and the MSP Hosting Service Provider 100, who own and operate their own data centers, providing a wide array of subscription-based outsourced services. (more…)

Thrive Networks is proud to have been ranked in the top 10% of managed service providers globally on MSPmentor’s Top 501 Managed Service Providers List for 2014. This is the sixth straight year that Thrive is being recognized as one of the most progressive Managed Service Providers (MSP) in the world and is one of a select few companies that have appeared on the list each year during this time period.

The MSPmentor 501

The MSPmentor 501 is an annual research report from MSPmentor and its owner, Nine Lives Media Inc., MSPmentor is widely considered the ultimate guide to managed services and the leading global destination for managed service providers. Nominees were evaluated in a range of industry-specific categories including:

• Annual managed services revenue (2013)
• Annual managed services revenue growth (2013 vs. 2012, in U.S. dollars)
• Annual managed services revenue growth (2013 vs. 2012, percentage growth)
• Percentage of overall revenue from managed services (2013)
• Devices/seats managed (2013)
• Devices/seats managed, annual growth (2013 vs. 2012) in raw numbers
• Devices/seats managed, percentage growth (2013 vs. 2012)
• Recurring revenue per full-time employee (2013)

This methodology ensures small, midsize and large MSPs from around the world are recognized on the MSPmentor 501.

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What if you were able to allow your team of IT professionals to focus on core business initiatives instead of maintaining your IT infrastructure while you have access to entire team of IT experts 24/7? This can be made possible with a hosted cloud service.

Hosted cloud services offer many advantages to businesses of all sizes, regardless if you are a small retail business or a large corporation with a complex IT infrastructure. When you work with the right hosted cloud services provider, this can help to alleviate many IT-related headaches while helping your business to reduce costs.

By divesting IT tasks such as server hosting and maintenance, firewall management, mail hosting and application management, and other critical tasks, you can empower your IT team by allowing them to focus on core strategies which help your business to move forward. A hosted cloud services provider acts as an extended IT department which provides additional support and 24/7 management of the hosted infrastructure. This is accomplished while your IT team focuses on mission-critical objectives.

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Regardless of your industry, staying proactive with patch management can be a time consuming but extremely important effort. This is where a managed patching provider can be an invaluable resource.

If you were to conduct a survey of businesses to discover whether or not they are happy with their patch management strategy, the majority of them would likely say that they struggle with patch management processes and are overall dissatisfied with their patch management system. If you are one of the businesses that is constantly burdened by patch management, here are a few of the most common issues companies face and how a managed patching provider can help.

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Traditionally spyware and viruses have been mostly a nuisance as it relates to your PC or laptop. You might notice that your system is sluggish, and you might have to clean up or even rebuild your operating system, or worst case, pay someone to perform a cleanup and spyware removal for you if you don’t know how to do it yourself. Recently however a new and far more malicious form of spyware has started appearing on unprotected PCs, and its payload is far more dangerous and the cost of recovering from it is far higher than ever before. Its name, Ransomware, says it all – it is spyware that takes over your data or your system itself and holds it hostage from you unless you hand over your hard earned money to the criminal who has infected your PC in exchange for your data or access to your computer back.

With threats like this in the wild, it is prudent to be aware of how you could become infected, what you can do to protect your data and your PCs, and what you should do if you suspect your computer has been compromised.

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In the current economy, many businesses across the globe are seeking alternatives to costly data backup methods. A popular solution to costly backup methods is cloud backup, which works well as a strategy for business continuity planning and disaster recovery. Data backup and storage in the cloud means that the cloud service provider takes responsibility for costly backup hardware and redundancy methods. The company seeking cloud storage pays a monthly subscription fee, which is based on the amount of backup and storage which is required.

In order to successfully backup and store data in the cloud, you must choose a reliable provider that has a track record for using multiple backup servers, advanced security, and immediate access and recovery in the event of a disaster. A lot of companies prefer to pursue the best of both worlds by combining the speed of local backup with the security of cloud backup. This concept is known as hybrid backup and is more cost effective than tape methods and other offsite storage methods.

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When it comes to keeping your business up and running, it is all about the time factor. Time determines how fast you can recover business operations in the event of an outage or natural disaster. If you have already completed a risk assessment, the business impact analysis ensures that you do not incur additional expenses which can result from slow recovery time.

Although you may have already completed a risk assessment and you know what critical business operations must be recovered, this will not matter unless you can recover them within a reasonable amount of time. By conducting a business impact analysis this will ensure efficient business continuity in the event of a catastrophe.

So what are some of the key components you should consider when conducting a business impact analysis?

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Today’s technology infused environment has presented many challenges for IT professionals across the globe. One of the main challenges that companies and IT pros face is making the best use of bandwidth to help optimize network resources and increase network performance.

Technical applications require a high demand for increased bandwidth. This means managing the bandwidth in the most efficient way increases company productivity while reducing server downtime due to inadequate bandwidth usage. There are many programs that consume a lot of bandwidth and the challenge is to determine what the programs are before coming up with a strategy for effectively managing network bandwidth. Here are a few tips on how to optimize bandwidth usage on your company network.

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last week released an alert indicating that all versions of Java up to and including the then latest Java version 7 update 10, contained weaknesses that could allow a malicious attacker to run code on a machine that had Java installed and enabled in web browsers on that system. What made this notification unique is that the DHS was encouraging users to disable or uninstall Java altogether whereas in past security bulletins they generally gave feedback on how to steer clear of threats to US computer systems. (more…)

Quality network security is an essential part of the operations for your business and meeting data protection compliance and regulatory requirements. It sounds really simple to say you just want to “keep the criminals out” while keeping your business in productive mode. Unfortunately, with the increased demands for technology and information security, this can result in a significant time investment.

Network security is no longer about just deploying firewalls and an antivirus program. Regardless of the size of your business, the latest threats are very advanced. This is why many companies are opting to use enterprise-class network security protection services to increase protection while saving time and money.

If you have never used this type of service for your company or small business, here is an overview of the core levels of protection that a network security protection service can provide.

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