Government Agencies Seek Tech Solutions That Promote Efficiency, Reduce Costs, New CompTIA Study Finds

Downers Grove, IL (PRWEB) May 17, 2011

Challenged by tight budgets, bureaucratic hurdles and a dramatic rise in cybersecurity attacks, government agencies are looking for technology solutions that help them become more efficient while at the same time reducing costs, according to new research released today by CompTIA, the non-profit association for the information technology (IT) industry.

CompTIAs Second Annual Government IT Purchase Plans study finds that the top influencer driving government IT purchase plans over the next 12 months is a desire to become more efficient and reduce long-term costs. It was identified as an influential or very influential factor in purchase decisions by 60 percent of the government IT decision makers or influencers surveyed.

A significant number of respondents, 54 percent, said the need to comply with a mandate or regulation is a driving factor in IT spending. Other top purchase influencers include responding to the needs of citizens and staff (53 percent); and the need to modernize aging systems (47 percent), especially systems that are vulnerable to security threats due to dated technology.

Though budget challenges and the burden of bureaucracy can slow the pace of change, government technology spending will continue, particularly on solutions that help to ease the challenges of resources and security, said Amy Carrado, director, market research, CompTIA.

But with money to spend increasingly precious, agencies are likely to demand greater returns on their investments and require vendors to clearly prove the effectiveness of their solutions.

Nearly four in ten (39 percent) of federal, state and local government IT decision makers and influencers identified new data backup and recovery solutions as a priority over the next 12 months. Security applications were cited by 37 percent of respondents, followed by virtualization solutions (30 percent) and content management solutions (24 percent). Options such as unified communications and cloud computing (18 percent each) ranked slightly lower on the list.

This may be a signal that government users need further education from their IT providers on how cloud computing and unified communications can effectively address their objectives of greater operational efficiencies, Carrado said.

Among specific products on government shopping lists, desktop PCs (51 percent) and laptop PCs (48 percent) hold the top two spots, according to the CompTIA study. Local government agencies are especially bullish on purchases of new PCs, including tablet PCs.

Other purchase priorities for the next 12 months include servers (37 percent), printers (33 percent), operating systems (32 percent), productivity suites and software (28 percent), network infrastructure (27 percent) and smart phones (23 percent).

Agencies Plan More Training

Nearly half (44 percent) of government IT respondents at the federal, state and local levels plan to implement employee training for both IT staff and end users over the next 12 months

This suggests that even under severe budget constraints, government agencies continue to recognize the importance of a well-trained workforce that understands how to effectively use technology, Carrado said.

Among the training priorities: PC maintenance, help desk and tech support; security; disaster recovery and backup; and networking. Project management, business intelligence and data management and analysis also appear on the training priority list.

Increased interest by government agencies in training is something that technology vendors and solution providers should note, according to Carrado.

Technology providers should consider providing training sessions as a value-add when government organizations purchase a product, or offering mini-tutorials to employees at agencies where there is potential for purchases in the near future, she said.

CompTIAs Second Annual Government IT Purchase Plans study was developed from a survey of 375 federal, state and local IT buyers and influencers. The data was collected during late February 2011.The full report is available at no cost to CompTIA members at http://www.comptia.org or by contacting the research department at research(at)comptia(dot)org.

About CompTIA

CompTIA is the voice of the worlds information technology (IT) industry. As a non-profit trade association advancing the global interests of IT professionals and companies, CompTIA is the recognized authority for IT education and credentials and the primary advocate for IT businesses and workers. Through its foundation, CompTIA also enables disadvantaged populations to gain the skills they need for employment in the IT industry. CompTIAs vision of the IT landscape is shaped by more than 25 years of global perspective and more than 2,000 members and 1,000 business partners. For more information, visit http://www.comptia.org or follow CompTIA on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/comptia.

Contact:

Steven Ostrowski

Director, Corporate Communications

CompTIA

630-678-8468

sostrowski(at)comptia(dot)org

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Government Agencies Seek Tech Solutions That Promote Efficiency, Reduce Costs, New CompTIA Study Finds

BBH Solutions CEO: Environmental Benefits of Cloud Computing More Apparent Amid Business Owners" Concerns Over IT-Related Energy Costs

New York, NY (PRWEB) June 28, 2011

Bruce Hoernecke, President and CEO of BBH Solutions, Inc. says that more businesses are realizing the energy saving and environmental benefits of cloud computing. Mr. Hoernecke says that recent concerns over the volatile energy market and the costs associated with delivering power and cooling to on-premise data centers, coupled with environmental consciousness are leading the way to adoption of cloud technologies.

Cloud computing allows businesses to leverage the secure and powerful resources of a service provider to host their voice, data, and video applications and data storage. These technologies are then delivered to the customers end users on demand, or as-a-service. Cloud subscribers can access email, office productivity suites, CRM, and video conferencing from anywhere with a secure internet connection. Cloud computing solutions offer security, high availability, continuity of business, and predictable monthly costs for technology applications.

Business owners are concerned about the cost of maintaining on-premise data centers, says Mr. Hoernecke. They recognize that when they reduce their data center footprint by moving to the cloud, the requirements for additional dedicated electric circuits, cooling, and battery backup decrease as well. It just makes good financial sense, and theres the added bonus of reducing their corporate carbon footprints.

Recent studies and press coverage on the cloud have helped get the message out. Weve seen a growing trend in awareness among our customers of the environmental benefits of cloud computing and hosting.

A 2010 study by Accenture and WSP Environment and Energy(1) found that a 100 person company with applications deployed in the cloud can reduce energy consumption and emissions by more than 90 percent. The study estimates that if all US companies with 100 to 10,000 employees were using on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers and made the change to cloud-hosted Exchange, the resulting reduction in carbon emissions would be equivalent to that of taking 100,000 cars permanently off the road.

BBH Solutions launched its Cloud Integration Services program earlier this year, which is designed to help businesses transition from premise-based IT infrastructure to the cloud. The program offers hosted business applications such as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office, hosted Cisco Unified Communications Manager, and videoconferencing. Their staff will conduct a full technology needs assessment, write a project plan, and provide services for a seamless migration to The Cloud.

Cloud customers benefit from the economies of scale associated with their providers data center, says Mr. Hoernecke. Were capable of balancing server functionality and storage space precisely to the needs of the end users. Additionally, the power and cooling technologies are optimized for our Network Operations Center (NOC), which is dedicated solely for housing storage and server equipment.

About BBH Solutions, Inc. Manhattan-based BBH Solutions, Inc. provides technology services with a focus on the converged network and unified communications. BBH Solutions is certified by Microsoft as a Silver Server Platform Partner. They are an APC Gold Partner, and a member of the BlackBerry

BBH Solutions CEO: Environmental Benefits of Cloud Computing More Apparent Amid Business Owners" Concerns Over IT-Related Energy Costs

ClearDATA EMR Cloud Hosting Service Saves Advanced Arthritis Care Practice Over $30k in Server & Support Costs

Phoenix, AZ (PRWEB) May 09, 2012

ClearDATA Networks, Inc., the leading healthcare cloud computing platform and service provider, today announced that Advanced Arthritis Care and Research (AACR), a Medical Group Practice located in Scottsdale, AZ is hosting its EMR software on the ClearDATA Private Cloud at the companys datacenter. AACR needed to upgrade its EMR software to be compatible with a new billing system, but the upgrade would have taken 2.5 months and required a new server for more than $ 30,000, plus monthly support and maintenance fees. After researching its options, AACR decided to have both its EMR and billing software hosted at the ClearDATA data center, which took less than one week for the entire implementation to be up and running efficiently.

Private cloud hosting of EMR software is one of the fastest growing trends in healthcare due to the significant costs associated with increased server and storage requirements, along with monthly maintenance and support fees. ClearDATA is targeting its secure, HIPAAcompliant EMR Cloud Hosting Service to small-to-large healthcare practices across the country and has performed successful implementations with software from most of the major EMR vendors.

EMR Cloud Hosting is an area of tremendous growth for ClearDATA, said David Bean, executive vice president of sales and marketing, ClearDATA Networks, Inc. Healthcare providers are increasingly moving their EMR and EHR software to the cloud because of the significant savings in hardware expenses and support, eliminating the need for multiple servers and substantial storage. And due to increased market demand, EMR software companies are partnering with us to cloud enable their software as well as hosting their EMR solutions on our ClearDATA Cloud Computing Platform.

After multiple phone calls with ClearDATA over the course of several days and even visiting their data center, I felt very confident in going with a cloud hosted solution, said Liza Altman, administrator and office manager for Advanced Arthritis Care and Research. I actually feel more secure with their hosted solution than having the data in our office. Also, we were pleasantly surprised that our performance running GE Centricity is much faster now through the cloud than it was on our local server, and the system has never been down.

About ClearDATAs HIPAA Compliant EMR Cloud Hosting Service

In response to growing market demand, ClearDATA has developed a secure, HIPAA-compliant, and cost effective solution for EMR software delivery that features a pre-configured combination of ClearDATAs private Cloud services, HPs state-of-the art server and storage solutions, and EMR/PM software images to form a single solution delivered as a service. ClearDATAs EMR Cloud Hosting Service, which includes online backup and recovery, saves healthcare organizations from substantial capital expenditures while providing secure, reliable, high performance access to EMR software and patient information according to HIPAA Security Rule and the HITECH Act.

About ClearDATA Networks, Inc.

ClearDATA Networks, Inc. is the market leader for cloud computing and information security services for healthcare providers, software vendors and VARs. ClearDATAs services enable providers to fully automate and securely manage healthcare medical records, applications, IT infrastructure and digital storage. The company provides HITECH HIPAA-compliant cloud and hosting infrastructure and managed services, offsite backup and disaster recovery, medical image archiving, information security and world-class support. The company offers HIPAA Security Risk and Remediation services through its U.S. Healthcare Compliance division to the healthcare industry in order to ensure that they meet the rigorous standards of security required for protected health information to demonstrate Meaningful Use. For more information, call 602-635-4000, email: sales(at)cleardata(dot)net or visit: http://www.cleardata.net.

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ClearDATA EMR Cloud Hosting Service Saves Advanced Arthritis Care Practice Over $30k in Server & Support Costs

Level Platforms Auto-Monitoring Accelerates MSP Sales and Slashes Operational Costs

Ottawa, Ontario (PRWEB) October 16, 2012

Level Platforms today introduced a new era of IT management for managed service providers (MSPs) with the release of On Premise and Cloud Editions of its Managed Workplace 2012 R2 remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform. New features, including automatic device monitoring and persistent state management help MSPs streamline and automate key processes to better engage with prospects, deliver higher quality services to existing clients and save time on lower level activities to focus staff on new revenue opportunities.

Auto-Monitoring includes important new architectural features with significant implications for MSPs. Policy Sets define customized packages of standard monitoring rules, which combined with Auto- Grouping allow MSPs to create new ways to standardize and automate operations, eliminate time-consuming tasks and provide differentiated services for end-customers including isolating unique monitoring for high-end and older devices, and much more. Persistent State Management addresses one of the biggest problems in IT management for MSPs network security compliance by leveraging automatic monitoring and grouping functionality to implement an automatic configuration verification model to enforce company policies for end-clients.

These major advances in IT monitoring help streamline and scale an MSPs entire business by eliminating time-consuming administrative tasks during customer acquisition and onboarding and simplifying service delivery and expansion processes.

Managed Workplace 2012 R2 saves us time and expense by significantly speeding up our customer onboarding process while giving us complete confidence that each customer site is being monitored to the fullest, said Andy Hanley, Head of Remote Monitoring with Blue Chip Data Systems, a large MSP headquartered in Poole, UK. With new smart policy modules and auto-grouping features, we can now automatically monitor all devices at a customer site in as little as 30 minutes. Alongside these time-saving capabilities, the ability to configure multiple policy sets for different levels of monitoring or to exclude specific devices gives us the flexibility necessary to meet various service level requirements across our customer base.

Advanced automation for prospects and clients

Level Platforms Network Audits are widely recognized as the single most powerful customer acquisition tool available today for MSPs. New Network Audit Policy Sets preconfigured in Managed Workplace collect all the data required to deliver deeply insightful reports that identify problems and opportunities across the entire customer infrastructure to help MSPs propose solutions to close the sale.

After the sale Managed Workplace then shifts from Network Audit to provide comprehensive environment-wide monitoring and management. New customers are on-boarded in minutes with a single software install providing the specific customized policies for the appropriate class of service. And as new devices are deployed on the customer site they are automatically discovered, provisioned and brought under full management according to pre-configured rules without intervention by the MSP.

For the entire IT environment under management, Managed Workplace Persistent State Management maintains and enforces configuration regardless of external environmental changes. MSPs can now easily automate processes to remove blacklisted applications and overturn undesired configuration policies to help enforce security compliance and deliver higher service level consistency for their end customers. For example, many MSPs standardize and deploy antivirus and antimalware solutions across their customer base. If an end-user accidently removes security features from their system, Managed Workplace detects and automatically redeploys the MSPs preconfigured solutions to protect the end-users device and customer network.

Additional new features in Managed Workplace 2012 R2 include alert functionality when devices are discovered after an initial network scan, an Update Center to provide easy access to product updates, MW Wire to notify users of important news related to Managed Workplace right from the Service Center dashboard, next-generation Service Modules and more.

Managed Workplace 2012 R2 solidifies our position as technology leader in the RMM market, with new features that ease configuration, dramatically speed onboarding and enable new levels of integration to significantly broaden the capabilities of our MSP platform, said Peter Sandiford, CEO Level Platforms. With our comprehensive RMM platform, Managed Workplace, MSPs can automate operations, lower operating costs and deliver high-quality services to extend and enhance their offering and grow their business by managing the full range of end customer technology including workstations, servers, networking, imaging, VoIP, mobile devices and cloud.

For full details about Managed Workplace 2012 R2, and to learn how to become a Level Platforms Partner, visit http://www.levelplatforms.com.

Managed Workplace 2012 R2 Technical Training

Level Platforms is hosting a technical deep dive into new features in Managed Workplace 2012 R2. Designed specifically for technical staff now using Managed Workplace, but open to others by invitation, two two-hour sessions will be held on Tuesday, October 30th at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. EDT. For full details and to register, Level Platforms Partners should log in to the Partner Portal and visit http://www.levelplatforms.com/LPIPortal/Connect/mw_technicaltraining.aspx. Others should contact Level Platforms at marketing (at) levelplatforms (dot) com.

About Level Platforms

Level Platforms provides Managed Workplace

Level Platforms Auto-Monitoring Accelerates MSP Sales and Slashes Operational Costs