As an active member of the gaming industry, this developer works with clients worldwide and deals with sensitive data. They depend heavily on their IT systems, which is why they need an IT company they can rely on to keep them running productively and securely.
For all things IT, they rely on Orbis Solutions.
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This developer deals with highly sensitive data in terms of their proprietary products and the information concerning the companies they work with. They require robust access controls and authorization standards to ensure that only the right people can access this data.
Before working with Orbis Solutions, this developer had partnered with another company to handle their IT support needs. While the quality of service was satisfactory, an issue prompted this developer’s leadership to look closer.
In 2019, it was discovered that unauthorized staff members had been given access to sensitive data, and the IT company could not produce any documentation or support tickets to help determine how this inappropriate access had been given.
An internal audit had determined that no sensitive information had been misused. However, it was recommended that the developer find a new IT company to work with. The auditor suggested they consider Orbis Solutions.
Our team met with the developer’s leadership to give a presentation on our services. After demonstrating what we had to offer, the developer opted to hire our team to take over their IT.
In hindsight, this developer’s staff also found their previous IT company to be “reactive” in delivering their services. It wasn’t until they started working with Orbis Solutions that they discovered how proactive IT support could be.
Call it whatever you like, but it's essentially "hourly IT support". This is the traditional style of outsourced IT services, which works by fixing your computers once they're broken.
In a nutshell, when something goes wrong—data loss, hardware failure, virus, etc.—you then get in touch with your support provider and have them fix it.
This strategy no longer works today. If you still use this method of IT service, you risk downtime that can slow you down. Reactive IT support leads to several problems…
They're encouraged to focus on billable hours when they're charging by the hour. It doesn't benefit them if your tech works the way it should. You could find yourself repeatedly calling them to help with a problem that never quite gets resolved.
A minor computer problem can quickly turn into a disaster. This is especially true today with the increase in cybercrime like ransomware. What starts out with just one malicious email can spread throughout your entire network, locking down your data and your operations.
It could take days to fix your problem - in the meantime, your employees won't have access to the data they need to continue working. You're simply "bleeding money" by the minute.
Your support provider starts charging you after you've already lost work time - time spent on repairs or updates can add up fast.
It's impossible to predict how much to budget for IT services. You can't know what will happen or how expensive it might be.
Proactive IT support monitors and maintains your IT on an ongoing basis.
Operationally, proactive monitoring provides a view into the health and status of IT assets. Like air traffic controllers, your IT company uses monitoring tools to see network traffic and plan actions to avoid potential problems. They can act proactively while using the tools to benchmark performance.
From active monitoring and patch management to responsive on-site and Help Desk support services, fully managed support takes care of everything you need.
Advantages include:
Freedom Of Focus
You can finally focus on running your firm and not on IT worries. Your IT support provider will minimize or eliminate downtime that could hit your bottom line.
Easy Budgeting
You'll benefit from a flat-rate payment model, allowing you to budget your tech more effectively. You'll be able to plan for growth far more easily and with greater peace of mind.
Cost-Effect
Tech maintenance from a third party is more cost-effective than relying on reactive solutions, especially considering the lost revenue from downtime.
“I find our Orbis relationship to be much more proactive,” says an executive member of the developer’s C-Suite.
With Orbis Solutions managing their IT, the company’s staff feels more prepared and confident in how their systems work. They can trust that Orbis Solutions is thinking ahead and keeping them in optimal shape.
“I get a quarterly review from Orbis, showing the service tickets, how long they took to resolve, etc.,” says the executive. “It helps us to evaluate their responsiveness and look at problems and how we fix them.”
As mentioned before, careful control of data access and cybersecurity, in general, is a priority for this developer. They know that cybercrime continues to become a greater threat, so they need an IT company they can trust to keep them secure.
“Orbis has done a very good job at ensuring that those who shouldn’t have access to sensitive data do not have access,” says the executive.
Access control is a critical part of modern cybersecurity. This means Implementing secure configuration settings (complex passwords, multi-factor authentication, etc.) for all accounts and controls for login and use, such as lockouts for too many unsuccessful logins, unsuccessful login alerts, and automatic log-off after a period of inactivity.
Access control is just one component of the zero-trust cybersecurity methodology. The zero trust approach to cybercrime assumes that every aspect is a potential vulnerability until it can be confirmed otherwise.
That means instead of investing in a strong firewall and antivirus and assuming you’re protected, every part of your IT environment and every user trying to access it is assessed for its security.
An organization following a zero trust security model cannot, even by default, offer any trust in any interaction in its protected systems. Risks must be continuously assessed and mitigated, and access must be continuously verified.
It’s important for business owners to understand that every potential part of their network is a target. Given the overall connected nature of the systems, comprising one part can give the cybercriminals control over the entire environment.
As our partnership has developed and strengthened over the years, this developer has come to value Orbis Solutions’ support because it is straightforward and helpful.
“I have nothing but good things to say about the relationship,” says the executive. “I’m an enthusiastic supporter of Orbis and everything they do for us.”
They can tell that Orbis Solutions isn’t thinking about the bottom line—we’re just trying to help this developer develop the best possible IT environment for their needs.
Orbis Solutions, Inc., in Las Vegas, Henderson, Summerlin and throughout Nevada, has developed creative, strategic and cost-effective technical solutions for a wide variety of clients. Offering a diverse range of products and services, Orbis provides IT solutions to promote your company’s productivity and profitability, and help you sort through the latest-hyped technology, so you can select the best hardware, software or service for your business needs.
You think your phone will relieve your boredom, but science shows it's more likely to increase it.
Jessica Stillman, Contributor, Inc.com
When you're bored in the middle of some mind-numbing task (or, in the current situation, a few weeks of quarantine), what do you do? If you're like many modern business owners, the answer is a no brainer: you reach for your phone. Five minutes of Facebook or kitten pictures can seem like the perfect break to relieve your brain.
If that sounds familiar, a new as yet unpublished study has bad news for you. Reaching for your phone is likely to leave you feeling even more bored.
The little boredom machine in your pocket
The problem isn't the general idea of taking a break. Previous studies show that we get more done overall if we take regular, short breaks to rest and recharge. The problem is with your phone. New Dutch research shows most of us carry around a little boredom-boosting machine in our pockets all day long.
To figure out the relationship between phones and boredom the research team installed an app on the phones of 83 volunteers to track how often they used their devices. They also asked these volunteers to keep detailed diaries at work for three days, recording their level of fatigue and boredom every hour.
When they looked at the data, the researchers first discovery was no shocker. We're on our phones a lot. "Phone breaks were extremely frequent: in the 20 minutes following each questionnaire, participants picked up their phone 52 percent of the time, spending an average of around 90 seconds on it each time," reports a writeup of the findings on the British psychological Society Research Digest blog.
Equally unsurprising was the second finding: the more tired we are, the more likely we are to reach for our phones. The real kicker was the final finding. While we look to our phones to relieve our fatigue and boredom, screen time actually seemed to modestly increase feelings of boredom.
"Participants actually reported higher levels of boredom after having used their smartphones," notes BPS.
How to take a better break
The research team speculated two different reasons why this might be so. Switching from work to your phone and back again may end up being more mentally tiring than it is stimulating. In other words, that baby goat video was nice, but not worth the cost to your brain in effort and concentration. Alternately, picking up your phone might just serve as a reminder of all the fun and interesting things out there you could be doing if you didn't have to fill out paperwork or proofread that report.
This one small study can't definitively say if either of these explanations is right, but the basic takeaway is pretty clear. You think a quick glance at your phone is going to make you feel less bored, but chances are it's actually going to make your brain feel even more fried.
What should you do instead? Here are a few suggestions for your next break:
Orbis Solutions, Inc., in Las Vegas, Henderson, Summerlin and throughout Nevada, has developed creative, strategic and cost-effective technical solutions for a wide variety of clients. Offering a diverse range of products and services, Orbis provides IT solutions to promote your company’s productivity and profitability, and help you sort through the latest-hyped technology, so you can select the best hardware, software or service for your business needs.
As a business owner, you are always looking for new ways to improve the performance of your business and staff. One of the ways to do this is to outsource your Information Technology needs to a Managed Service Provider. If you’re not sure what an MSP is or how it can help take your company to the next level, we’ll give you a quick overview of what they can do for you, coming up next.
A Managed Service Provider is a company that specializes in managing your business technology needs. Rather than wait for your networks and computers to have problems an MSP monitors and maintains your technology to improve company performance. Here are the three biggest benefits MSPs offer to the companies that use them:
Number 1 - Manage and Maintain Networks – Keeping your network running smoothly can be a daunting challenge even under the best of circumstances, let alone when you’ve got to roll out a new piece of software or change to the network structure. An MSP can coordinate and handle the details for you, allowing you to focus on the more important aspects of your company.
Number 2 - Improves Productivity and Efficiencies – By outsourcing the IT functions required to keep your company running smoothly, it frees up your staff to focus on more important, strategic issues, ultimately allowing every employee on your payroll to be more productive, effective and efficient.
Number 3 - Provides A Predictable IT Budget – Most small to medium-sized businesses struggle to effectively manage their infrastructure because of the high and unpredictable cost of hiring a dedicated IT team internally. Not only does an MSP avoid this issue by offering a cost-effective solution, but a contract with an MSP gives you an entirely predictable budget. Even better, you can scale the level of service you get from the company seamlessly as your business grows and expands.
The right MSP can help take your business to the next level, giving you a powerful strategic advantage over your competition. If you’ve been looking for a simple way to enhance the productivity of your firm and improve your bottom line, this could be the solution you’ve been looking for. If you’d like to know more about Managed Services, give our team a call.
Orbis Solutions, Inc., in Las Vegas, Henderson, Summerlin and throughout Nevada, has developed creative, strategic and cost-effective technical solutions for a wide variety of clients. Offering a diverse range of products and services, Orbis provides IT solutions to promote your company’s productivity and profitability, and help you sort through the latest-hyped technology, so you can select the best hardware, software or service for your business needs.
When we first buy them, computers make life and business easier. The problem is sooner or later they start showing their age and we start to question why we got them in the first place. We’ll outline three unmistakable signs your equipment needs an upgrade, coming up next …
No matter how much you spend on your computer equipment, it’s not going to last you forever. The day’s coming, and probably much sooner than you’d like, when you’re going to have to start thinking in terms of upgrading. Here are three sure signs that it’s time:
#1 Apps Load Slowly – Since you use your system every day, you have a good feel for how long it should take for apps you use on a regular basis to load. Over time, the software you use changes. It may be a simple update to your favorite accounting software or maybe a switch to a different CRM, but one day you will notice programs load slower. As your computer ages software developers start writing their programs to take advantage of more modern components making a program that used to be snappy become so slow you can get a cup of coffee from Starbucks and drive back home before the software loads. This is a good sign it is time to upgrade.
#2 Your Operating System Becomes Outdated – Microsoft and Apple are constantly looking for ways to innovate, because of this a lot can change between operating system releases that cause compatibility issues with new versions of your favorite software. Not only do older Operating Systems have the problem of not being compatible with the latest versions of popular software, the Operating System developers reach a point where they stop providing critical security updates and patches. At that point, there’s no sense in fighting it, it’s time to modernize.
#3 A Growing Number of Crashes – No matter what OS you use, system crashes are inevitable, but any time you try to marry an older OS with modern software, incompatibilities are bound to begin creeping into the equation. As that happens, you’ll start seeing an increasing number of in-explainable crashes. When you do, it’s a sure sign your system has seen better days.
Don’t wait until your system’s problems are so bad that it’s virtually unusable. Slow systems cause frustration and a loss in productivity costing your business both time and money. If you want to get your IT systems back up to speed, call our team. We’d be glad to help
Orbis Solutions, Inc., in Las Vegas, Henderson, Summerlin and throughout Nevada, has developed creative, strategic and cost-effective technical solutions for a wide variety of clients. Offering a diverse range of products and services, Orbis provides IT solutions to promote your company’s productivity and profitability, and help you sort through the latest-hyped technology, so you can select the best hardware, software or service for your business needs.
It’s no secret that technology can streamline the way your company operates and save you a ton of money. That’s a big win for you and for the customers you serve. We’ll show you three new technologies that can help your business grow. Coming up next…
The right technology can give your business a powerful strategic advantage over your competition, enhancing your bottom line as it makes your company more efficient and productive. Here are three technologies that can do amazing things for your company.
Let’s take a closer look:
#1 - VoIP
We know it's not entirely new but VoIP can bring big benefits. Business phone lines are expensive, and switching to a VoIP system could save you a lot of money, adding to your bottom line.
In the early days of VoIP, the call quality wasn’t great, but as Internet speeds have increased, those issues are a distant memory. Newer VoIP systems with Unified Communications make all your text messages, CRM, and phone systems work together, making the move to VoIP a real winner.
#2 - 5G Networks
In the business world, the faster your connections are, the more you’ll be able to get done.
Business owners were quick to make the switch to 4G networks due to the speed increases 4G promised. 5G offers even more impressive speed increases.
While 4G networks have an average speed of 20 megabits per second. 5G networks tout speeds up to 20 gigabits per second.
If your company employs smart technology or networks of any kind, the new 5G networks can be a huge improvement for your business.
#3 - Augmented Reality
If there’s one technology that truly stands to transform the way business gets done, it’s Augmented Reality. While Virtual Reality is an entirely computer-generated world, AR combines computer generated information and items with the physical world where customers and employees can interact with them.
A good example of Augmented Reality is a car windshield that overlays GPS data over the road in front of you.
Used as a marketing tool, you can create unique, highly personalized shopping experiences for your customers. Used in the back office, your team can reduce prototyping time and cost by working with virtual representations of products, or as a training tool to facilitate guided remote repairs.
Simply put, these new technologies can make your business more efficient and profitable. If you would like to find ways to use technologies like these to take your business to the next level, give our team a call.
Orbis Solutions, Inc., in Las Vegas, Henderson, Summerlin and throughout Nevada, has developed creative, strategic and cost-effective technical solutions for a wide variety of clients. Offering a diverse range of products and services, Orbis provides IT solutions to promote your company’s productivity and profitability, and help you sort through the latest-hyped technology, so you can select the best hardware, software or service for your business needs.
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