Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: Development

Here, you’ll find insights on programming languages, frameworks, and techniques that shape the web and software landscape. Whether you’re a developer looking to refine your skills or simply curious about how things work behind the scenes, this space offers practical knowledge and thoughtful perspectives.

  • Building a Custom Application to Reimagine Digital Strategy

    Building a Custom Application to Reimagine Digital Strategy

    One of the most influential life lessons that I follow every day is about planning—which teaches us that if you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail. You may wonder if planning really is that important. Uh, yes—yes, it is.

    As part of a digital agency, planning is one of the core phases of every project we engage with. The ability for us to strategize as a team really feels like a game of chess. Every piece has a purpose, and if you plan well in advance, you just might make it out alive.

    When it came to planning, communicating, and documenting data architecture, I noticed that our organization had some inefficiencies— repeated issues that chewed up both time and money. This past year, I sought out to design and develop a tool that would build in efficiency into our process—and look good while doing it too.

    Digital strategy has always been about connecting people to information through well-informed navigation.

    For most projects we’ve engaged with, there had been some level of documentation around research and data architecture. Who is this product for? What information are they seeking? How will they get to this information? Digital strategy boils down into a few primary areas.

    3 Primary Areas of Digital Strategy

    1. People

    Until the robot apocalypse occurs (it’s only a matter of time), the products we design and develop are to be consumed and engaged by people. Whether we put together assumptions on personas or we conduct user research and interview actual people, it’s important that we document the characteristics of these people to help us understand them better. The better we understand, the more accurate our recommendations become. Empathy is a powerful emotion that we can use to connect with people.

    2. Information

    Information can come in many forms, such as products or services. They can also tell stories and evoke emotions. We use content strategy methodologies to define and organize content that audiences seek. More specifically, content models help document information with a brand and define the relationship between them. These relationships help shape data types, taxonomies, and templates.

    3. Navigation

    The bridge that connects people to the information they desire is through well-informed navigation. Even the most desired information becomes useless if people cannot ultimately find it. We frame our content and navigation around sitemaps. Sitemaps help us show connections between our content, giving us a bird’s eye view of the product. Keeping our content well-organized allows us to provide better design solutions.

    Identifying Documentation Pain Points

    After countless hours of reviewing documentation across various projects, I was able to audit how we were documenting and setting ourselves up for digital success. Spoiler alert—it wasn’t pretty.

    Each project was almost entirely different in their approach to documentation, yet they all shared similar problems, like:

    • Too many documents
    • Too many file formats
    • Too many locations
    • Inconsistent branding
    • Proprietary software or hardware

    Needless to say, our documentation was fragmented and ineffective.

    Challenges With Visual Sitemaps

    One document that we typically produce in projects is called a visual sitemap. These are graphical representations of a website or applications content, and the connections made between them. What makes them unique is how we apply illustrations that best represent the kind of information each page may have. Visual sitemaps can give us a glimpse into user journeys, template architecture, and so much more. Often times, we print these sitemaps on a wide-format printer, which gives us a tangible poster for the team to review collectively.

    As you can imagine, large-scale sites or apps can make for some impressively large visual sitemaps. When producing these sitemaps projects can end up wasting lots of paper and ink – especially when you account for multiple revisions.

    Challenges With Standard Tools

    Using Google Drive as our repository for documentation was ineffective due to cultural diversity in technology and inadequate governance policies. For example, documents were being created in various applications based on personal preferences, projects were not being shared properly to team members, and nothing appeared to be brand-compliant. Drive was supposed to be the answer for us, but wasn’t measuring up to our standards.

    We also tried making visual sitemaps in Omnigraffle. Personally, I love Omnigraffle for making diagrams. However, if the designers weren’t available to make edits, the rest of our team could not help; Omnigraffle requires both macOS and a paid license.

    To make matters worse, additional methods for documentation got out of hand. Some details were posted as activity notes in our project management platform (which almost always gets lost), while others were simply emailed between one another. As if that weren’t bad enough, we’ve ran across files that were stored on people’s desktops—or worse—in their trash bin.

    If you were not part of the project team from the very beginning, getting involved became almost impossible. The landscape of how we documented and stored our plan of actions was chaotic. When you can’t effectively communicate with your team or even comprehend what is going on, you lose efficiency.

    Designing a New, Inclusive Application

    It was time to design an inclusive, customized app to promote improved team communication and strategy. I wanted to design and build an application that:

    • Centralized documentation into a single location
    • Allowed access cross-platform
    • Automatically applied branding to all documentation
    • Reduced dependency on 3rd party software
    • Eliminated ink and paper waste

    By creating an app to address the issues, my goals were:

    • Reduce Costs: Remove time-intensive inefficiencies, and uncover problems quickly with real-time metrics.
    • Increase Product Quality: Allow teams to spend more time making awesome products.

    What if we could use technology to help us make better decisions and improve planning? By allowing the application to display real-time metrics— like page counts, page title lengths, and persona distribution—we could make well-informed decisions around the data architecture.

    I branded and called the app Sapphire—for its clarity, strength, and beauty around providing value to us. Sapphire’s core value is about being a real-time data architecture planning tool that can help us strategize digital products at any scale.

    Benefits of Sapphire

    More Empathy for People in Design

    Sapphire makes it very easy to define and explore personas for projects. Every project can create as many personas as necessary, with just the right amount of information at a glance. It’s incredibly easy for team members—especially designers—to empathize with a person’s goals or frustrations.

    Better Organization for Content

    Creating well-organized architecture around a project became effortless. Each project can have content broken into data types, taxonomies, templates, and pages. In fact, you can also create relationships between pages and people. This allows us to understand who our target audience truly is.

    Clear Perspective on Navigation

    In the past, we had to document the same information multiple times. The best part about Sapphire is that both branding and visual sitemaps are automatically generated in real-time. If I could get people to focus on the content and nothing else, Sapphire could handle the rest. Visual sitemaps are fully interactive, allowing anyone to explore pages and their architecture.

    Inside the Single-Page App 

    In order to provide such a rich experience, I wanted to ensure Sapphire was using the latest technology. With performance being an important factor, I needed to choose technologies that were built for speed.

    Sapphire was built on React—as both a progressive web app and single page app—and used Google Firebase for its NoSQL real-time database. Users were authenticated securely using Google Domain Authentication and was securely hosted through Google Cloud Hosting. All of these technologies were relatively easy to learn and integrate.

    To power our intuitive sitemaps, I opted for jsPlumb framework over something like D3—primarily due to time constraints and the amount of effort required. I’ll admit, jsPlumb integrated extremely well with React and allowed me the power to customize as I needed to match the desired functionality.

    Final Thoughts on Digital Strategy

    Documentation allows teams to communicate and work together on projects of any scale, and digital strategy around architecture plays an important role in documenting how products should work. When we ignore documentation—or simply allow it to deteriorate over time— we are hurting our ability to communicate effectively.

    By recognizing these problems, I was able to design, develop, and deploy a tool that helps us reimagine digital strategy and how we document data architecture. When we can work better together as a team, anything is possible. Make something people love!

    This article was originally posted by Mark Riggan on Medium. 

  • The Real Story Behind Duplicate Content and Penalizations

    Duplicate content is a cardinal sin that will drive search engines to de-index your entire website. This is what many came to believe following a flurry of algorithm updates from May of 2015 to March of 2017. The truth is more complicated. Although content quality is a major factor in Google’s algorithm, many claims surrounding duplicate content penalizations are unwarranted and blatantly untrue. For that reason, I’d like to provide some best practices regarding duplicate content and how you can better optimize your content.

    What Types of Duplicates Can Be Penalized?

    Using duplicate content is inevitable, and almost every website has instances of it. According to Matt Cutts, Google’s algorithm expert, approximately 25–30% of content throughout the internet is duplicated from another web property.

    We constantly see eCommerce retail websites using manufacturers’ product descriptions, branded boilerplate content, and legal information. And in many situations, that’s required by the manufacturer—so it’s often unavoidable. Google knows that, and they’ve explicitly stated they will not penalize a website for duplicate content UNLESS the content is being used in a manipulative, intrusive, or misleading way.

    What does Google mean by manipulative or misleading? For example, some eCommerce companies create a number of microsites with entirely duplicated content in order to rank in multiple positions for the same search query. Another example of a misleading strategy is when a blogger aggregates content from other websites instead of creating his/her own content. These types of sites could easily be removed from Google’s index as a penalization, but most instances will go unnoticed.

    That said, there is always a caveat. While Google won’t necessarily penalize your website for non-egregious uses of duplicate content, they do encourage and reward unique content. Google groups all of the sites that have similar content into a cluster. From that cluster, Google’s SERPs display content from the URLs with the highest domain authority. The websites with lower domain authority won’t be removed from Google’s index, but it will be challenging for them to rank higher than the sites that created unique content.

    How to Address Duplicate Content

    There are countless reasons you might accidentally create duplicate content without manipulative intentions. For that reason, here is an outline of the most frequent scenarios with duplicates and how to resolve them.

    Problem #1 – Separate URLs exist for different variations of the same product.

    We often see this problem arise on large eCommerce or retail websites. For example, a used handbag retailer might create multiple pages for the same product if they have the item in different conditions (mint, used, poor, etc). Or, you might see a website that has the same product page listed within different categories, so the URL is technically duplicated within multiple subfolders.

    Solution – Canonical Tags

    If it makes sense from a design/UX standpoint to create multiple URLs for one product or one page, it’s paramount to tell Google this. Otherwise, you might not see any of the URLs rank well or even get indexed. In this scenario, it makes sense to utilize a canonical tag. A canonical tag tells Google there are multiple pages that feature the same content, but you only want one of the URLs to be indexed.

    A canonical tag looks like this, and should be placed directly in a page’s header:

    <link rel="canonical" href="https://usedhandbags.com/leather-bag/">

    Let’s apply this tag to the scenario above. The tag would be inserted into the header of all the duplicate pages, and it would tell Google that the href URL (http://usedhandbags.com/leather-bag/) is the only URL you want indexed. None of the other URLs will be included in Google’s search results, but you’ll at least be able to rank well for one URL, as opposed to none. If you encounter this situation, it’s also important to ensure the non-indexed URLs are easily accessible from the URL that is indexed.

    Problem #2 – There are multiple URLs for one page.

    This issue is one of the most common causes of duplicate content. After implementing an SSL tag or modifying permalinks, you might realize that there are a lot of new duplicates for one URL.  I’ve created an example below:

    http://www.example.com

    http://www.example.com

    http://example.com

    http://example.com

    Solution – 301 Redirects

    In this scenario, we see four duplicates of a website’s homepage. While canonical tags could prevent these URLs from being considered “duplicate”, it’d be more beneficial to use 301 redirects. Here’s a general rule of thumb: If you have the choice of doing a 301 redirect or setting a canonical, you should always do a redirect unless there is a technical reason not to do so. 301 redirects will pass the backlinks from one URL to another, while canonicals will simply de-index duplicate URLS without passing link juice. The only situations where a 301 wouldn’t be applicable would be temporary redirects, in which case you would want to utilize a 302 or 307. Or, as discussed in the previous scenario, a canonical tag can be used in a situation where a URL needs to remain on a website but you don’t want it to be indexed by Google.

    Problem #3 – Pagination is causing duplicate content.

    For those who aren’t familiar with pagination, it’s defined as “the process of separating print or digital content into discrete pages.” This is a scenario we often see throughout large eCommerce websites, specifically within category pages. If a category has too many items to fit into one page, product managers will often create a series of paginated URLs all with similar content and URL structure.

    As an example, take a look at Lowes.com. Here we see a series of paginated URLs that were created in order to feature all of their available bathroom faucets. If every faucet was included on one URL, it would be far too large. Each one of these URLs has the same exact meta title, description, & body content. As a result, Google could easily identify them as duplicates and choose to filter them out from search results.

    Solution – Use rel=”prev”/”next” tags

    If you want to avoid drops in your organic rankings, you’ll need to tell Google why these pages are so similar, and also how they relate to one another. This can be done with rel=”prev”/”next” tags, which tell Google this is a series of URLs, not duplicates.

    Let’s review an example of how to properly implement one of these tags. In the hypothetical URL, www.example.com/shoes/page2, we’re on page 2 of a series of paginated URLs. In order for Google to understand this is not a duplicate of the first page in the series, we’ll need to add the rel=”prev”/”next” tags to the URL’s header. The tags would look like this:

    <link rel="prev” href=”www.example.com/shoes/page1”/>
     *This tag tells Google which page came before the current URL
    <link rel="next” href=”www.example.com/shoes/page3”/>
     *This tag tells Google which page comes after the current URL

    After Google crawls this site, they will understand only one URL in the paginated string should be indexed. Without implementing the tags, Google would likely filter out every version of the URL and rank them at a lower position.

    Problem #4 – You’ve copied content from another site.

    Whether intentional or accidental, you might realize there’s content on your site that is copied directly from a manufacturer, competitor, informational website, or any other web property. This could be a lengthy quote, branded copy or even legal documentation. We’re only human, and sometimes a copy-and-paste is easier than writing your own unique content. Still, it’s poor practice and it will never help your organic presence to feature duplicated content.

    Solution – Write your own content.

    While it likely won’t cause your site to be removed from Google’s index, marketers and web managers must always view duplicated content as a last resort. If you really want to bump up your position within Google’s SERPs, take the time to write rich, digestible, and unique content.

    For any questions regarding duplicate content or canonical tags, feel free to reach out and contact us. If you’d like a higher-level view of web content strategy, continue learning with this post from our recent Thirst for Knowledge on Content Strategy for Large Organizations.

  • How to Innovate in a Highly-Regulated Environment

    ABT helped Mutual Drug navigate a highly-regulated environment to provide a modern, user-friendly application which met and exceeded industry standards. Here’s how we modernized this healthcare website.

    Needed: A Secure and Streamlined Ordering System

    Pharmacists and pharmacy managers must maintain an inventory and order replenishment stock, just as any business selling physical products. However, pharmacies have the additional challenge of meeting the regulatory requirements of dealing with controlled substances (drugs that require a doctor’s permission to use). Specifically, any electronic ordering system they build or use must be compliant with the Controlled Substances Ordering System (CSOS) requirements of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). This basically requires pharmacists to digitally sign orders for controlled substances in order to verify the authenticity of the order.

    Atlantic BT’s client, NC Mutual Drug, is a pharmaceutical distributor with $1.2B+ in B2B volume. Their existing system, while CSOS-compliant, was cumbersome to use and required logging in and navigating two different systems. The client tasked us with designing and building a new system that was secure, highly available, fault tolerant, fully compliant with CSOS requirements and, most importantly, simpler and faster to use than their previous system. Achieving these objectives made it easier for the client’s customers to place small orders more frequently, thus reducing the need for bulk orders and product stockpiling.  

    Performing 11 Validations without Losing Your Mind

    Conceptually, the technical challenge was straightforward: enable the standard required use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to manage a system of digital signatures which could then be used to encrypt and ensure the authenticity and security of orders for controlled substances. This kind of technology is often integrated with web applications to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of information for a range of activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email.

    Straightforward, however, did not mean simple—we had to design, build, and test a robust, scalable, secure system that would perform eleven validations for each transaction, yet be simple and efficient for the user. After working closely with the client to understand all the usability and functional requirements, we proposed a design to meet their needs.

    Following the Rules, Even When They’re Old

    The real challenge was to implement this standard in a way that was efficient and intuitive yet compliant with standards written over a decade ago (and hence technologically outdated).

    Making matters even more complicated, the detailed requirements of implementing a CSOS-compliant system are scattered over 300+ pages of over a half-dozen government documents. On top of that, the final system would have to be certified by a 3rd-party auditor. Given the dispersed requirements and 3rd-party verification, development of a compliant CSOS system could become a very long, expensive process if not managed carefully.

    We needed to design a more modern web application which would perform both the client and server actions on a consolidated platform—while satisfying standards written more than 10 years ago. 

    Solution: Communicate, Iterate, and Evaluate

    To resolve any open questions, early in the process we contracted with an established 3rd party CSOS auditor to evaluate the application. Atlantic BT worked closely with the auditor to share documents and information so they could provide feedback on the development direction. Atlantic BT then performed multiple internal audits and tests to save our client the significant costs of multiple official audits.

    After extensive back-and-forth discussion with the client and the auditor, including a couple of challenges both to the requirements and to the proposed solution, all parties agreed a slight modification to ABT’s original design would meet both the client’s requirements and the standard. We built the system to the agreed-upon design, tested it, and had it evaluated by the auditors, who approved and certified the application as compliant.

    Result: Elegant Compliance Meets Streamlined Usability

    NC Mutual Drug now has a state-of-the-art solution for their customers to easily, securely place orders for their pharmaceuticals, including controlled substances. They can now rest assured they have a much more robust, fault-tolerant, scalable system that can easily grow with them into the future.

    Beyond stability and compliance, a validation process that formerly took 3+ minutes and multiple systems can now be completed in 30 seconds on a single interface. Considering NC Mutual Drug’s  operation runs hundreds of these processes every day, this exceptional boost in efficiency frees up member pharmacists to perform more important tasks to protect customer health.

    Get a more detailed look at the system Atlantic BT delivered by reading our in-depth writeup of Mutual Drug’s new CSOS system.

  • Grinding, Burning Out, and How Not to Hit the Wall

    Many jobs in the software industry have some level of ‘grind’. The ‘grind’ means days, weeks and (hopefully not) months of extra work that comes with projects. Perhaps a key client needed a feature added, or a certain task proved harder than expected. When you enter the software business, you have to accept there will be times when you have to grind to finish a project. But, it’s important to recognize that there is a fine balance. Taking breaks and resting will benefit teams in the long run. 

    How Can Preventing Burnout Boost Efficiency?

    Developers are thought-workers. They don’t work in a factory churning out the same thing over and over again. They have to know all the tools in the toolbox, know how to use them and know where to find new tools as well. Sometimes they even have to create new tools. A large amount of mental energy is spent in the pursuit of the solution of a problem. Some problems are very complex, and it can take hours just to understand the environment in which a problem exists.

    This takes an enormous amount of concentration, which is why you will see most developers with headphones on. It’s not just that they love the new Twenty-One Pilots album—they’re blocking out the rest of the world to eliminate as much distraction as possible while spending their mental energy inside the “zone”.

    What it Means to Live in the Zone

    The “zone” is a focused mental state where the developer’s mind is fully engaged in solving problems. It takes time for a developer to go from zero to totally zoned in and it can be derailed with a single tap on the shoulder. Every developer has a natural amount of time that they can spend in the “zone”. For some developers, a 40-hour week is all they can take. For others it might be 60 hours. It is a mentally draining experience.

    At some point the developer will hit the wall. Their brain reaches its limit and needs to do something else. Encourage teams to get up and walk around, grab a cup of coffee, or play a game of foosball when this happens.

    How Do You Know When You’re Burning Out?

    Burnout is what happens when a developer is overworking, spending so much time in the zone that nothing else seems to exist. Your brain may turn to mush. It can become difficult to carry on a conversation, make decisions, and write clean code. Writing bad code means constantly going back and making corrections, which ultimately creates more work than the original plan.

    Have you ever completed a project as scheduled, but felt frustrated, tired, and abnormal for weeks? This constant state of grinding is not part of a healthy work environment.

    How We Stay Focused at Atlantic BT

    At Atlantic BT, we do our best to make sure that we are proactive and looking for potential problems before they happen. We borrow ideas from Agile and Scrum to help us avoid potential issues. We do daily huddles to stay informed on how a project is going. We work in sprints so that we can measure our velocity and make adjustments early and throughout the project. When we hear that someone has worked extra hours, we make a point to check in with them and make sure they haven’t hit the wall.

    We don’t want teams to grind unless it is absolutely necessary. When we do have one of those unavoidable moments when the team has to work extra to deliver value to our customers, they are focused and ready to step up to the plate.

    5 Keys to Avoid the Grinding That Leads to Burnout:

    1. Plan, Measure, and Adjust—Make a plan. At specific intervals, measure how far and how fast you are going. Adjust your plan according to the measurements to ensure no one is getting overworked.
    2. Take Breaks—Know your limit and recognize when you have reached it. Step away, reset your brain, and start again. You’ll be surprised at how that problem you couldn’t figure out suddenly has an answer.
    3. Sleep!—Turn off the Xbox, put down Candy Crush, and Game of Thrones can wait. Your brain needs downtime devoid of stimulation, and there’s no better way to recharge than a good night’s sleep.
    4. Eat Better—In an industry where pizza and soda are standard fare, we have to push ourselves to find healthy choices. Eating plenty of vegetables and avoiding excessive sugars and empty calories can do a lot for a developer’s mental endurance.
    5. Exercise—Does your company have a gym like ours? Take advantage! 30 minutes walking at a slow pace is not only better for your health than sitting in your chair, but it also helps rejuvenate your brain to regain your mental energy.

    We believe that focused teams develop the best products for our clients. If you have any questions about our processes and techniques, contact our team to learn more.

  • How Businesses Can Solve Their Toughest Digital Problems

    Many businesses today are facing some of the toughest digital problems they have ever encountered. The combination of continuous technology evolution and explosive adoption in business have created remarkable challenges for modern executives and business owners. In addition to moving the organization forward, these challenges are sometimes significant enough to threaten basic business continuity.

    A decade ago technology was often contained to individual business functions and fairly rarely exposed directly to customers. Today, that is no longer the case. As the complexity of the challenges has grown, businesses have added dozens of individual systems to perform specific business functions. Unfortunately, these systems are often disconnected and do not share data directly with the rest of the enterprise. And that creates a new set of problems that further hamper the growth of the business.

    The Pressures That Create Tough Digital Problems

    The key factors that are creating pressure for business leaders to continually solve tougher and tougher digital problems are security, efficiency, and customer/competitive demands. The pressures these key factors generate has never been greater and comes at a time when many enterprises are squeezing their IT budgets.

    So how does a business or enterprise become leaner and more agile so they can solve tough digital problems? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question but there are some specific actions an organization should take to remain competitive and avoid putting the organization in catastrophic risk territory such as what happened to Sony Pictures.

    4 Keys to Solving Tough Digital Problems

    1. Commit to making technology a competitive advantage. Technology can either be something an organization deals with because it has to, or something an organization embraces and turns into an advantage. The first step is as simple as announcing the organization’s intention to embrace and drive technology. With clear focus and proper leadership, it will quickly grow from a liability to an asset.
    2. Determine roles and responsibilities. Clearly determine who in your organization is responsible for the overall technology vision. If left to their own devices, individual departments will innovate and solve their own problems. While this is normally a good thing, it can introduce new problems in the areas of  security, consistency and data sharing/integration. These issues are critical to the enterprise and must be managed at the top level.
    3. Take a long-term view.Without clear technology standards and leadership at the top level, each new dollar spent on technology not in line with your long-term vision is unlikely to bring your organization closer to and advantage in technology. It may solve a necessary short-term problem, but it will also push your organization further from any unified technology vision.
    4. Create clear standards and rules for engagement. In the creative world organizations use branding and style guides as a method to create consistency across enterprise marketing and communication functions. Technology standards and rules of engagement, while a bit more complicated, play the same role for technology decisions and implementations. Developing these standards and using them within your organization will bring your technology in line with the vision and reduce the friction associated with technology.

    Once your organization is on the right track, lots of individual digital problems will surface. With the proper organization and framework your business can move confidently forward and each investment in technology is much more likely to create positive ROI. Doing things that are really difficult and getting them right are what lead to enduring competitive advantages. In many cases each successive digital challenge will be made possible by the investment in the underlying framework and the ability to execute and coordinate sometimes complex operations or activities across large swaths of the enterprise.

    Want to Learn More?

    Atlantic BT is trusted to solve the toughest digital challenges for some of the world’s leading companies. Check out our case studies to see some of our recent work and give us a call at (919) 518-0670 or contact us to talk with one of our consultants to see how we can help with the digital challenges you are facing.

  • 6 Questions to Ask About Modernizing Mission-Critical Business Applications

    The pace of change in information technology can be dizzying at times. New technologies are quickly developed and yesterday’s standards are no longer acceptable. For businesses today, simply keeping up with the latest IT developments can be a chore all on its own. And keeping your mission-critical business applications up-to-speed can feel like an impossible task. But the fact remains, if you are not modernizing your IT systems and applications, you are at risk of falling further behind, which can cripple the long-term viability of your business. So, how can businesses keep their systems up-to-date with modern IT standards?

    Modernizing Mission-Critical Business Applications: 6 Questions to Ask

    Through our experience helping companies such as Mutual Drug and one of Baltimore’s leading news outlets, we’ve developed a solid process for helping companies evaluate the health of their mission-critical business applications and executing a strategy to bring them up to modern IT standards. And along the way, we’ve identified a few key questions that businesses should consider when taking a look at their IT systems and applications.

    These questions include topics such as:

    1. How old is your mission-critical business application? Old age for IT applications is not a good thing. And each year that passes potentially brings you one step closer to disaster.
    2. Who built this application and was it made specifically for your business? Your business has unique concerns that need to be addressed. Off-the-shelf applications are a risk. But so are custom-built applications if they haven’t kept up with changes in the IT landscape.
    3. How well is your application performing in your current environment? Do you regularly experience downtime with your applications? Is it slow to respond? Modern businesses demand applications that can keep pace.
    4. Was your application designed with the cloud in mind? Everyone is talking about the cloud these days. Data storage, application operation and maintenance are just a few of the concerns. Is your application ready to function in the cloud?
    5. How secure is your application? Your business applications contain data. Lots of important data. And if that data were to get in the wrong hands, it could be disastrous. Are you making sure your applications are locked down tight?
    6. Should existing applications be remodeled or rebuilt? There are many factors to consider, including cost, time and resources. The right IT partner can help you navigate this question so you can come out on the other side in a much stronger position.

    As you can see, modernizing mission-critical business applications is something you do not want to take lightly. That’s why we created the “Guide to Modernizing Mission-Critical Business Applications.” This guide explores in more detail the six questions noted above and provides you with a framework for approaching the evaluation of your company’s mission-critical IT systems.

    Need Help with Your Mission-Critical Business Applications?

    For about 20 years, Atlantic BT has helped companies with IT needs ranging from software development to hosting to cybersecurity. Our team has the experience to help you explore and solve your toughest digital problems. Want to talk with an IT expert? Contact us today and we’ll match you up with a member of our team that can help you create a plan to bring your mission-critical business applications up to modern IT standards.