Month: September 2013

As visitors can see for themselves by checking out our main site, IronOrbit has completely redesigned our website.

The most noticeable changes are the layout and the colors: the new site has a healthy amount of white space, which makes it easier to read the text; a clearer structure and navigation system, with each solution and every benefit getting its own separate page; and the addition of charts and illustrations that do a better job of explaining the technical details and benefits of our solutions and hosting infrastructure.

Overall, the new site makes it easier for visitors to learn about the exemplary solutions and unique hosting methods and features of IronOrbit; and it does a better job of reflecting our company’s status as an industry-leading, cutting-edge hosting provider.

Other notable features of the redesigned site include:

• New Testimonials Section.
  We’ve always been getting positive feedback from our customers about our solutions and services, but we’ve never had a place on our website where we could display their comments publicly—until now. We’ll continue to update this section of the site whenever we get a new review from one of our thousands of customers nationwide.
• New Top 10 Hosted Desktop Features Page.
  This page clearly lays out the top 10 reasons to select Hosted Virtual Desktops from IronOrbit. There’s no incomprehensible technobabble here—just all the advantages of IronOrbit Desktop Hosting in plain English.
• New “Cloud Savvy” Section.
  This page lists all of our most recently-published slideshows, infographics, press releases, case studies, videos, and blog posts. By checking this page regularly, you’ll not only be able to find out the latest about IronOrbit—you’ll also find a lot of interesting and informative things to view and read on the subject of cloud computing, an infinitely-promising technology that has already (whether people realize it or not) brought substantial changes to the world.
• A New Focus on Hosted Desktops.
  Hosted Desktops and Hosted VDIs aren’t the only solutions that we offer (our other services include Hosted Applications, Managed Servers, Email Hosting, and VoIP), but they’re our most popular and unique offerings. IronOrbit Hosted Desktops let users access a persistent, fully-functional Windows desktop operating system—including all of their applications, files, and emails—from anywhere and with any Internet-connected device. To reposition our Virtual Desktops as our flagship product, we’ve added a “Your Virtual Desktop” tab to our navigation bar, enhanced and expanded our Desktop Hosting-related content, and made Hosted Desktops the focus of our homepage.

In a press release announcing the launch of the site, IronOrbit CEO Alexander Saca said, “All of our departments (marketing, sales, technical, and administrative) worked collaboratively to provide a website that is informative, easy to navigate, and aesthetically pleasing; things we know potential clients are looking at when they visit a website. I am very proud of our whole staff and all the work they have put into making this site what it is today. Our website and all of our communication platforms will continue to evolve and improve to reflect what our company delivers and stands for.”

Our redesigning of our website is just another example of the last two years being a time of accelerated expansion for IronOrbit.

Highlights of 2012

• Celebrated our 15^th anniversary.
• Relocated our headquarters to a much larger and more modern building
• Finalized a partnership with Duo Security, a two-factor authentication services provider

Highlights of 2013

• We started to offer a Microsoft Windows 8 experience to our Hosted Desktop users.
• Established partnerships with Barracuda Networks and Lunarpages
• Achieved a growth rate in revenue of 28%—all while continuing to add talented people to our staff.

When it comes to characteristics that businesses look for in a hosting provider, stability (so that the business can depend on the hosting provider in the long term) and innovativeness (to stay competitive, businesses need their hosting providers to stay abreast of the latest technologies) are two of the most important.

To sign up for IT solutions from a hosting provider that’s been around since 1997 yet still continues to innovate and expand, businesses should contact IronOrbit at (888) 753-5060 or [email protected].

It’s quick, easy, and cost-efficient to sign up for Application Hosting from IronOrbit.

Any company can benefit from the speed, simplicity, and cost-efficiency of our signup and deployment process, but the types of businesses that gain the most from these characteristics of our onboarding practices include:

• Businesses that need their hosted applications deployed yesterday (e.g., a company with a project that has to be completed quickly and needs a SharePoint deployment to be the project’s official platform; or an organization needs to deploy multiple hosted applications ASAP to replace the ones that were in its flood-ravaged on-site data center)
• Companies with no one with enough technical knowledge to assist with a deployment or migration, or whose on-site IT personnel don’t have the time, experience, or training to help deploy a hosted application
• Organizations (small-and-medium-sized businesses, non-profits, government agencies, and budget-conscious businesses of all kinds) that can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars on the deployment of a hosted application

The first step for businesses to sign up for IronOrbit Application Hosting is to contact an IronOrbit sales representative at [email protected] or (888) 753-5060. Companies should start by letting us know the applications they want to host with us, by estimating how much storage space they’ll need for each application, and by figuring out how many of their employees will need to be able to access each application. Businesses don’t need to be exact about their storage and user capacity needs; usually, all we need to know is a business’s type of applications (accounting software, CAD software, document management software, etc.) and number of employees in order to design and build a hosted solution that satisfies its IT requirements.

Next, our sales representative will present the businesses with a customized price quote that includes their setup costs and the Hosted Applications’ low, flat monthly fee. (The setup process, up until this point, is absolutely cost- and risk-free. Therefore, don’t hesitate to call us, even if you’re just curious about how much our Application Hosting services would cost your business!) Finally, our hosting experts will take care of deploying and configuring the Hosted Applications and assist clients that are switching from an on-site deployment with the data migration process. The speed of an Application Hosting or QuickBooks Hosting deployment depends on the application and a business’s IT preferences, but we guarantee that we can migrate a business’s entire on-site IT infrastructure to our hosted IT infrastructure within 30 days—so it should take us much less than a month to deploy a single Hosted Application.

In addition to being convenient, cost-efficient, quick, and highly-customized, other features of the IronOrbit deployment process include:

• It doesn’t require businesses to purchase, install, or maintain any on-site servers.
• It also makes it unnecessary for businesses to purchase and deploy on-site PC workstations, since IronOrbit Hosted Applications can be accessed from any Internet-connected device, regardless of its age or condition (server-side processing and storage take care of 100% of our Hosted Applications’ IT requirements) and whether it’s a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
• Many software developers offer stripped-down, web-based versions of their desktop applications. IronOrbit only hosts the full desktop versions of applications, however. As a result, our clients don’t have to sacrifice critical features when they switch to Hosted Applications. It also means that our clients don’t have to purchase new software licenses when they switch to IronOrbit Application Hosting—instead, they can transfer any of their existing, non-expired licenses to the new deployment.
• IronOrbit Hosted Applications deployments aren’t set in stone; they’re scalable. If a business grows, shrinks, or develops new IT requirements, it can quickly and easily add processing power, storage capacity, and users to an already-deployed application.

IronOrbit will host ANY application; contact one of our sales representatives today to get the setup and deployment process started!

A managed server is a hosted server that is monitored, secured, and backed up by the hosting provider. IronOrbit’s Hosted Dedicated Servers, which (like all of IronOrbit’s solutions) are managed solutions, are supported by services such as 24x7x365 technical support; performance monitoring and alarm monitoring; firewalls, antivirus, spam blockers, and content filtering; patch management; and data backups

The top five reasons that businesses should select managed servers like IronOrbit’s Managed Server Hosting solutions are:

1. Peace of mind.
   Businesses don’t have to purchase or maintain any on-site servers when they sign up for unmanaged hosted servers. While the same is true for managed hosted servers, businesses don’t also have to worry about handling (or hiring a managed services provider to handle) IT support, system security, software or firmware updates, or data backups with them.
2. Increased security.
   A managed server is monitored 24x7x365 by experienced IT professionals and protected from hackers and malware by enterprise-level firewalls, intrusion prevention and detection systems (IPS/IDS), antivirus software, spam blockers, and content filters.
3. Increased performance and reliability.
   Managed servers are continually maintained, updated, repaired, and optimized by the hosting provider’s personnel. In addition, some hosting providers also enhance the speed of their managed servers using custom-designed technologies, protocols, and best practices (with the Atomic Speed Technology of IronOrbit, for example, users can launch their applications in less than a second).
4. Lower costs.
   Managed servers don’t require the purchase of any on-premise servers or the hiring of any on-site IT personnel, freelance IT repairmen, or managed services providers. Another way managed servers lower costs is by preventing expensive data loss incidents and outages. Also, though the subscription costs of managed servers are higher than those of unmanaged servers, an unmanaged server still has a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) because of its more frequent security breaches and decreased performance and availability (resulting in reduced productivity for businesses).
5. Same flexibility and scalability.
   Despite being more convenient, secure, powerful, reliable, and cost-efficient, managed servers are just as flexible and scalable as unmanaged servers. Businesses can use them to host any IT solution (including applications, virtual desktops, collaboration platforms, email, and websites). Businesses also have just as much control over and visibility into their managed servers as unmanaged servers. In addition, a managed server’s processing power, storage capacity, and user capacity can be scaled up at any time.

To sign up for Managed Server Hosting from IronOrbit today, contact one of our sales representatives at [email protected] and (888) 753-5060. Though our Managed Dedicated Servers cost only a low, flat monthly fee, all of our Managed Servers come equipped with Atomic Speed Technology; 24x7x365 all-inclusive, US-based technical support; the enterprise-level data protection of Orbital Security; around-the-clock performance monitoring and alarm monitoring; and fully-automated data backups!

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires healthcare organizations to keep the data of their patients from being improperly accessed or deleted.

Earlier this year, HIPAA was modified by the Department of Health and Human Services. The new HIPAA rules went into effect on March 26, 2013, and the deadline for complying with the new regulations is September 23, 2013, which is less than a week away. Healthcare organizations are required by the new HIPAA rules to give patients electronic copies of their electronic medical records upon request, to limit their sharing of private medical information for “marketing and fundraising purposes,” and to never sell patients’ medical information without their permission.

Healthcare organizations had already been required by HIPAA, a law that was passed more than 15 years ago in 1996, to ensure the privacy of their patients’ data by implementing “reasonable and appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to prevent intentional or unintentional use or disclosure of protected health information.”

Users of IronOrbit Application Hosting and Hosted Desktops in the healthcare industry have never had to spend much time or effort achieving HIPAA compliance, however; that’s because IronOrbit Application Hosting and Hosted Desktop solutions comply with HIPAA’s “reasonable and appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards” provision by default. The Orbital Security System included with all of IronOrbit’s solutions protects data from inappropriate access with features such as:

• Biometric palm readers and 24x7x365 closed-circuit video monitoring and alarm monitoring at our data centers
• Internal access control and audit trail
• Firewalls, IPS/IDS, antivirus, spam blocker, and content filtering
• Fully-automated data backups
• Dedicated server hosting (all IronOrbit deployments are hosted on their own private server or servers)

Healthcare organizations of all sizes, including private practices, hospitals, insurance companies, and medical payment processors, have signed up for Application Hosting and Hosted Desktop solutions from IronOrbit explicitly in order to comply with HIPAA regulations. Our personnel will draw on their experience of helping dozens of other healthcare organizations to get HIPAA-certified to guide you through the compliance process.

Other reasons that healthcare organizations should select Compliance Hosting from IronOrbit include:

• Our solutions can be securely accessed from anywhere with any Internet-connected computer, tablet, or smartphone. Now doctors and nurses can access a central database of electronic medical records no matter where they are in a facility.
• IronOrbit Application Hosting and Hosted Desktop solutions don’t require healthcare organizations to purchase any on-site servers or hire any additional on-premise IT personnel (our solutions come with 24x7x365 technical support and around-the-clock performance and security monitoring). Medical organizations shouldn’t let frustrating and time-consuming IT management tasks distract them from providing actual healthcare services.
• The IT infrastructure of most healthcare organizations usually includes more applications than just a single EMR or EHR system; it usually has business productivity applications like Microsoft Office and accounting software like QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Enterprise, or Sage 50, too. Fortunately, IronOrbit is capable of hosting any application, and with IronOrbit Hosted Desktops users can launch and access all of their applications from a single interface.

Sign up for Compliance Hosting before the September 23 deadline by contacting an IronOrbit sales representative at [email protected] or (888) 753-5060 today!

Last month, the Commerce Department announced that the United States exceeded government estimates of a 1.7% growth rate in GDP in the second quarter of 2013 by achieving a GDP growth rate of 2.5%. Because of the improving economy, small businesses can begin to think about the growth and enhancement of their companies rather than reducing or eliminating non-essential costs.

However, though small businesses aren’t singularly focused on cost-efficiency anymore, it’s still in their best interest to switch to IronOrbit Hosted Desktops and Hosted Applications, even though many small businesses are initially drawn to our hosted solutions because they only cost a low, flat monthly fee and don’t require the purchase of any on-site servers or the hiring of any extra on-premise personnel. That’s because IronOrbit hosted solutions do more than just reduce the hardware and payroll costs of small businesses; they also support the growth and stability of small businesses by:

• Increasing productivity. With IronOrbit Hosted Desktops and Application Hosting, employees can access their files and applications from anywhere and with any Internet-connected device (including desktops, laptops, thin clients, tablets, and smartphones). This enables employees to be just as productive at home (or anyplace else where they have Internet access) as they are at the office. With what they save from switching to IronOrbit hosted solutions, small businesses can also increase their productivity even further by adding manpower (i.e., hiring more employees) and purchasing faster and more effective applications.

• Increasing IT security and reliability. The damage caused by data breaches and downtime is primarily financial, but they also decrease productivity and disrupt a business’s continuity and stability. IronOrbit prevents data loss and outages from occurring with our Orbital Security System, which includes physical and environmental (redundant HVAC, fire suppression systems, biometric palm readers, and 24x7x365 closed-circuit video monitoring in our datacenters), operational (access control and audit trail of IronOrbit personnel), and logical and system (firewall, IPS/IDS, antivirus, spam blocker, patch management, and content filter) security features and backup and disaster recovery (with backups performed daily, server snapshots performed weekly, and an RPO of four hours and an RTO of 12 hours).

• Decreasing hassles and distractions. Small businesses not only don’t have to purchase any on-site servers or hire any extra on-premise IT personnel when they sign up for IronOrbit Cloud Hosting and Application Hosting, they also don’t have to manage, maintain, or secure any of the hosted solutions’ hardware or software. With IronOrbit hosted solutions, small businesses can set their focus on attracting customers and earning revenue and let IronOrbit handle the management and maintenance of their IT solutions.

For IT solutions that help small businesses to not only decrease their IT costs but also increase their productivity and revenue, contact an IronOrbit sales representative at (888) 753-5060 or [email protected] today!

Using virtualization technologies, physical servers can be divided into multiple, independently-functioning “virtual” or “cloud” servers. Users of cloud servers can’t view or access the other cloud servers housed on the same physical server. A cloud server enables clients that don’t need a dedicated server to sign up for and use only ¼ or ½ of a hosted server.

However, by selecting cloud server hosting for its cost-efficiency, these clients actually raise their IT costs in the long run. By signing up for cloud servers, businesses incur hidden costs.

Hidden Costs:

• Increased downtime.
  Cloud servers are less stable than Dedicated Servers and more likely to suffer outages. The average cost of downtime is a devastating $5,600 per minute.
• Decreased performance.
  A cloud server has less processing power (CPU and RAM) and storage capacity than a Dedicated Server. Because applications hosted on a cloud server are slower, employees that use applications hosted on cloud servers are less productive.
• Non-compliance.
  Data security regulations (PCI DSS, HIPAA, etc.) prohibit businesses from storing sensitive files on a multi-tenant hosted server such as a cloud server. The penalties for flouting these regulations include hefty fines and public disclosure of the violation.
• Increased responsibilities.
  With no-frills cloud server hosting, businesses have to provide their own security, maintenance, IT support, and data backups. To manage a cloud server, companies have to assign non-IT employees to IT management tasks (which is a distraction) or hire a managed services provider (which is costly); or they can also leave the cloud server unmanaged (which will make the cloud server even slower, unreliable, and less secure than normal).

In contrast, IronOrbit’s Dedicated Servers are reliable, powerful, fully-compliant, and fully-managed. Our Dedicated Servers are single-tenant and equipped with an entire server’s worth of CPU, RAM, and storage capacity. All of our Dedicated Servers come with performance-boosting Atomic Speed Technology, comprehensive Orbital Security, 24x7x365 all-inclusive technical support, and managed data backups. IronOrbit Dedicated Server Hosting also shares many of the same advantages as cloud server hosting, including:

• Anywhere-accessibility.
  IronOrbit Dedicated Servers can be accessed from anywhere with any Internet-connected device.
• Cost-efficiency.
  IronOrbit Dedicated Server Hosting costs only a low, flat monthly fee.
• Scalability.
  More CPU, RAM, and storage space can be added to a Hosted Dedicated Server at any time.
• Quick deployment.
  It takes less than a day for IronOrbit to deploy a Dedicated Server for a client.

Contact an IronOrbit sales representative at [email protected] or (888) 753-5060 to sign up for Dedicated Server Hosting, Virtual Private Server Hosting, or VPS Hosting today!

IronOrbit utilizes a unique 4D security approach to ensure that your data is always secure. IronOrbit Infrastructure Security (OIS) is a powerful, fully integrated group of services, managed devices and best practices all designed to ensure the highest levels of security for your data.

Our utilization of Unified Threat Management (UTM) security services for cloud computing allows us to build a robust barrier between your IronOrbit hosted infrastructure and the dangerous world that exists beyond your private network. The UTM cloud security service is specifically designed to filter out threats at the network level and to mitigate attacks long before they can reach your IronOrbit infrastructure

What is UTM?

Unified Threat Management (UTM) is a term first used by IDC to describe a category of security solutions which integrates a range of security features into a single system. UTM systems combine firewall, gateway antivirus, and intrusion detection and prevention capabilities into a single platform. UTM is designed to protect users from multidimensional threats while reducing complexity.

Introduction to UTM

UTM products replace the traditional firewall at the border of the enterprise with an all-in-one security system capable of performing a multiplicity of threat management services.  Common UTM features include:

●     Traditional firewall protection

●     Intrusion detection and prevention

●     Virtual private networking

●     Content filtering

●     Gateway malware filtering

●     Spam filtering

●     Data loss prevention

●     Vulnerability management

While not every UTM product offers all of these features, you’re likely to find several that provide the subset you need for your enterprise.

The two major benefits offered by UTM are bundled cost and ease of management.  Typically, the price of a UTM appliance is only slightly higher than what you’re already paying for your firewall, but a UTM device provides a tremendous amount of added functionality at a fraction of the cost. From a management perspective, you’ll have a single interface to administer all of your perimeter security controls. This is a significant timesaver, reducing the number of programs you need to review during your security and maintenance checkups.

Advantages

1      Easy management

2      Reduced technical training requirements

3      Increased security

4      Regulatory compliance

5      Lower costs

Industry Leading 4-D® Protection:

IronOrbit utilizes an advanced security system called Unified Threat Management (UTM) by True Defense®. With UTM, your QuickBooks Hosting and hosted desktop solutions are under 24×7 monitoring for threats or suspicious activity. We ensure that your data is safe and sound at all times with security measures such as state-of-the-art firewalls, secure facilities, and the most comprehensive anti-virus protection around.

Every aspect of our Hosted Desktop solutions is continuously or regularly protected, monitored, and backed up. One of the keys to the effectiveness of our security infrastructure is the centralization of our Desktop Hosting solutions (our Hosted Desktops are stored on a small number of interconnected servers, between two and four Hosted Desktops per server).

The security benefits of centralization include:

• • Complete protection.

Though IronOrbit Hosted Desktops can be accessed from anywhere and with any device, their files and applications remain on the servers in our datacenters. It might appear to the user that he or she is accessing a locally-installed Windows desktop operating system, but really the user is only sending keystrokes and mouse clicks to our servers, which handle all of the processing and storage of the Hosted Desktops. Since all of the files and applications of our Hosted Desktops remain on our servers at all times, this means that every bit of data on an IronOrbit Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is equally fully-protected.

• • More efficient management.

We monitor all of our Hosted Desktops from a single, consolidated management console; this allows us to impose security measures efficiently and effectively and to respond quickly to any security incidents.

• • Increased uniformity.

Decentralized IT infrastructures are made up of end-user devices that function independently and that may not have access to any centrally-hosted applications or databases. In this kind of IT environment, files and applications usually end up being stored on hard drives and on servers that are difficult or impossible to access. In addition, in a decentralized IT infrastructure the users are largely responsible for maintaining the security of their own devices, but they often lack the ability, time, or motivation to do so. With IronOrbit Hosted Desktops, however, security measures and policies are uniformly strong throughout and don’t rely on users to do anything.

Of course, the centralization of our Hosted Desktops would be meaningless if the security measures and policies that it helped impose weren’t effective. IronOrbit’s security infrastructure, however, is advanced, comprehensive, and thorough. Its features include:

• • Orbital Security

We protect our Hosted Desktops with a multidimensional security system, which provides physical, operational, logical, and system protections.

• • 24x7x365 monitoring.

Our technicians monitor businesses’ Desktop Hosting solutions around-the-clock for indications of hacking attempts or security breaches.

• • Dedicated hosting.

Though we host multiple Virtual Desktops on a single physical server, we never host the Virtual Desktops of two different clients on the same physical server. Dedicated hosting eliminates the possibility of co-tenants of a server inappropriately accessing each other’s files.

• • Compliant hosting.

Our Hosted Desktops are compliant with data security regulations such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, GLBA, SOX, and others.

For a Hosted Desktop solution that’s centralized and secure, sign up for Desktop Hosting, PCI Compliant Hosting, or HIPAA Compliant Hosting from IronOrbit today!

According to separate surveys by Family Office Exchange and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), data security ranks among either the first or second top technology concerns of accounting professionals.

Ensuring data security allows businesses to retain the trust of their customers and maintain compliance with data security regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLBA or the GLB Act), and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

The best way for a business to ensure the security of its financial data is to sign up for QuickBooks Hosting from IronOrbit. With our comprehensive Orbital Security System, IronOrbit protects accounting applications from even the most sophisticated or aggressive forms of hacking or malware.

The features of our Orbital Security System include:

• • 24x7x365 monitoring.

Our technicians will monitor your Hosted QuickBooks deployment for signs of hacking attempts or unauthorized access.

• • Operational security.

We’ve implemented internal security measures (access control, IP logs, audit trails, etc.) to prevent our own personnel from inappropriately accessing or altering your Hosted QuickBooks.

• • Physical security.

Our datacenters have redundant HVAC cooling systems and fire suppression systems and are protected from physical theft by biometric palm readers, 24x7x365 closed-circuit video surveillance, and 24x7x365 alarm monitoring.

• • Firewalls.

Our firewall blocks unauthorized users and IP addresses from accessing your Hosted QuickBooks solution.

• • Antivirus software.

Any viruses, worms, Trojans, rootkits, or keyloggers that make it past our firewalls or intrusion prevention or detection systems will be detected and removed by our antivirus system.

Two aspects of our hosting platform that further augment the security of our Hosted QuickBooks solutions are:

• • Dedicated servers.

Businesses that sign up for IronOrbit QuickBooks Hosting don’t have to share a physical server with any of our other clients. With IronOrbit, each deployment of each solution is hosted on its own private physical server. Businesses therefore don’t have to worry about their server’s co-tenants hacking into their portion of the server; their co-tenants being given access to their virtual server accidentally; or the lax security measures and policies of their co-tenants undermining their own security.

• • Server-side processing and storage.

IronOrbit Hosted QuickBooks can be accessed from anywhere via the Internet. Wherever it’s accessed from and regardless of the user’s device, however, the files and applications of IronOrbit always physically remain on the servers in our datacenter; the only data sent to users’ devices are the images displayed on their monitors or screens.

Contact IronOrbit at [email protected] or (888) 753-5060 to sign up for QuickBooks Hosting or Application Hosting today. In addition to QuickBooks, we can also host Sage 50 (formerly Peachtree Accounting), Microsoft Dynamics, or any other Windows-compatible application.