Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: Managed Services

  • 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.  

  • Are Your Critical Business Applications Keeping Up with the Times?

    Most businesses today have at least one (and likely more) business applications that they use to move information, connect with customers, process transactions, monitor systems and more. These critical business applications are essential to the health of your business. In many cases, vital parts of your operation may completely shut down if these applications were not available. But how much do you pay attention to the health of these applications? And, are you making sure that they are keeping pace with new developments in technology? In this post, we’re going to explore three elements that pressure your critical business applications.

    Three Pressures on Your Critical Business Applications

    1. Changes in your business process. Over time, business processes change for a variety of reasons, such as shifts in customer needs, regulatory requirements, data collection/storage, and workflow. If your critical business applications do not adjust to fit these changes, it will get harder to work with them. For example, your business may have shifted collection and management of customer information from a call center to an online account through your website. If your core business systems storing that data are not redesigned to work with the web front-end, you will soon experience large gaps in customer information. This will threaten your ability to run your business processes efficiently.Solution: Periodically review your critical business applications against your workflow with the assistance of an application architect. This will identify the gaps and engineer solutions that will keep your applications aligned with your workflow.
    2. The Rise of Mobile. Smartphones and tablets are so integral to our daily routines that we are almost lost without them. Your customers and your workforce both expect to interact with you via mobile. Are your systems mobile-compatible? Have they been designed to be responsive to the needs of tablet and smartphone users?Solution: Start by determining whether mobile is a critical part of how users interact with your business applications. For any system that needs a strong mobile component, you should work with user experience specialists and developers to re-engineer your application to work in the mobile environment. For example, if the user is required to enter too much information into a single screen, you should break out your input requirements across several screens.
    3. The Importance of Speed and Access. In today’s business environment, speed is one of the most important performance indicators. If your applications are fast and always available, you will reduce friction and satisfy the needs of your customers and your workforce. Unfortunately, too many critical business applications in use today were built for a different era. And as a result, they cannot keep pace with the demand for speed. Today, many new business applications are designed to work with cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). This improves critical performance measures such as uptime while reducing lag (loading time). It can also improve security and help you better manage your infrastructure costs.Solution: Work with a qualified Web hosting engineer to explore the available hosting platforms that can house your business applications and meet the performance demands of your business. One of our clients, WBAL, experienced this first-hand earlier this year when they saw a 2000% increase in traffic to their core news website during the Baltimore riots. We architected their system on the AWS platform to handle such demands in traffic while balancing their need to continue publishing updated news stories to the site.

    Ready to Modernize Your Critical Business Applications?

    At Atlantic BT, we specialize in solving your toughest digital problems—including making your critical business applications drive the success of your business. If you’d like to learn more about how your business applications can perform better in today’s business environment, contact us today. Our consultants can conduct a thorough evaluation of your applications, help you explore the options available to you, and put together a roadmap to transform your critical applications for near- and long-term success.

  • How to Market Around the Holidays

    Holidays are always a great time for businesses to tap into seasonal spending spikes. There are endless amounts of benefits to be had from the holiday spending sprees. Customers are actively looking for your products and they’re on a deadline. Time is on your side, but you still need to use to wisely. In order to take full advantage of the heightened buyer environment, be sure to develop a smart digital marketing strategy. There is nothing quite like the rush of Holiday shopping. Avoid the distractions of twinkling lights and stay focused with these tips.

    Quick Tips for Holiday Marketing

    • Start early: Start planning 1-2 months away. You want to make sure that you have everything prepared, so that you are not rushing to do something last minute.
    • Promotion Schedule: Have a schedule of when you will be hosting certain promotions.
    • Relate your products and/or services to that holiday: If you can customize your products/services they will be more likely to buy.
    • Holiday message: Tailor your offer/promotion messaging to incorporate a holiday phase or slogan.
    • Pre-packaged, bundled, or theme-based: By already packaging products together you do the work for the buyer.
    • Promote gift cards: Gift cards are always great gifts and an easy way to make a sale.
    • Time sensitive offers: Make your offer expire before the holiday to create a urgency to buy.
    • Make your website festive: Use holiday specific images, photos, icons, buttons, etc to make your website inviting.
    • Holiday event: If you have a local store, host a holiday event. Give a special discount for a specific date and time.
    • Freebies: Everyone loves to get something for free. Have a chance to win sweepstakes or throw something in for free if they spend a certain amount.
    • E-Mail marketing: Create a holiday reminder email to all of your current customers reminding them about the holiday. Add some recommended products to the email.
    • PPC: Send traffic to targeted landing pages with the use of pay-per-click advertising. Use a consistent offer in your messaging.

    Make a List, Check it Twice

    Taking part in all of these seasonal shenanigans can be well worth it, and even fun. But if you want to maintain a festive spirit, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

    Know your goals and targets

    If your only goal is spread Christmas cheer by singing loud for all to hear, that’s great. It’s a noble, fine goal. But if you’re looking to hit certain bench marks as a result of your holiday promotions, then it’s best to know exactly what that looks like. Knowing what you aim to achieve allows you to dedicate more time and energy into the promotions that will actually help you reach the finish line. Be as specific as possible. Make the best use of your resources by only tapping into the essentials.

    Know your products and which to promote

    No one knows your store and products better than you do. Now is the time to dive into the microscopic details that make your offerings unique. Listen to your customers. What do they keep returning for? What items elicit the most feedback? Those answers coupled with your knowledge and intuition will lead you directly to the products that will shine the brightest. Once you’ve identified what you want to feature, be sure you have the inventory to keep up with increased sales. We all know what kind of chaos can happen when a popular item is perpetually out of stock. Remember this gem of advice from elementary school: if you don’t have enough for everybody, save it for later.

    Have tracking set up to monitor your campaigns

    Once you’ve laid out your goals, decked your halls, and started rocking around the Christmas tree, you’ll want to be able to see if everything works. Clearly. With numbers and metrics. Knowing which offers were most effective helps your marketing strategy in the long run. Compare your results with that of your competitors. How do they differ and why? What new pricing or promotional choices can you make in the future? With measurable results, you can count on each Holiday shopping season being stronger than the last.

    Joy to the World

    Keeping up with the holiday rush can be hectic. But with the right plan, strong goals, and dedicated energy, it can be positive and rewarding. If you’re looking to amp up your digital marketing presence in the New Year, the team at Atlantic BT is happy to cheer you on. Contact us today to learn more about how you can make an impact in an Internet world full of noise, noise, noise (as the Grinch would say). Our teams can collaborate on a strategy that’s both merry and bright.

  • Moving to the Cloud: What, Why, and How to Get Started

    The cloud. Wherever you go, you hear about “the cloud” and phrases like “cloud management” or “put it up on the cloud.” But what is the cloud? And what does moving to the cloud actually mean for your business? Perhaps you work for (or maybe even run) a company which has an old website you’re looking to update. Or maybe your business depends on an application built five to ten years ago and it’s holding back growth. If so, the cloud could be a big help.

    In this post, we’ll give you a brief summary of what the cloud is, and explain why moving your application to the cloud may save you money—or your entire business.

    The Cloud: What Is It, Exactly?

    Here’s a secret—“the cloud” is really just “the Internet.” It’s a bunch of connected computers communicating with each other on which web sites, web applications, and web storage can run. Think of it as all the computers you could connect to over the Internet that aren’t other people’s home machines.

    Why did someone invent this new term? Well, because of the sheer amount of computers that exist now, a huge percent of which are dedicated for Internet-based use. The name Internet came from a visual image of these countless connected computers hooked together like a fishing or basketball net. If you needed to, you could locate and count each place in such a net where two pieces of cord tied together.  Now picture a small puffy cloud in the sky.  Now try and consider how many drops of water are in there.  That’s probably how many computers are now connected on the Internet.

    Now that you have a sense of what the cloud is, let’s discuss three benefits of moving your site or application to the cloud: scalability, disaster recovery, and SaaS applications.

    Scalability: Getting More (For Less)

    What This Is: When you hear someone say “scalability,” it means this: a web application which used to only run on one machine can now run on two, three, 27, etc., all at the same time.  Most websites of olden days (and still many today) ran on a single computer.  A “scalable” web site or application is designed to run smoothly no matter how many physical computers it’s copied to.

    Why This Matters: Does your website experience random peak times when the number of visitors rapidly escalates? For example, a news website may have an average daily amount of traffic. But if a major story breaks, the traffic number could be ten times that of the average. If your infrastructure doesn’t have the capacity to handle this kind of surge, these peak periods could crash your website.

    That said, you don’t want to buy lots of physical IT equipment in preparation for peak usage. Imagine your website was a restaurant – you might need 20 people on staff Friday nights, but only ten on Wednesday lunch.  If you kept a maximum staff all the time, you’d be paying a lot of employees to stand around “just in case.”  In the same way, why pay for a huge web server all of the time if you know three days of the month are the busiest?

    How the Cloud Helps: Cloud scalability solves this by allowing an application to run on a smaller machine for normal use, and more machines can be turned on automatically. For example, an Amazon Web Services cloud lets you schedule when machines turn on or off. AWS can also change capacity automatically based on how much usage a website is getting. Either way, this translates directly into lower costs and prevents your website from being overloaded.

    Disaster Recovery: Better Safe than Sorry

    What This Is: Sometimes, computers just die. “Disaster Recovery” means you avoid losing data and/or business because part of your IT infrastructure fails.  

    Why This Matters: What happens when the one machine that handles orders from your customers up and dies? If this disaster strikes and you’re not prepared, that web application (and thus a major part of your business) is toast. Also, if you rely on a single web server in a data warehouse, and it fails, your website will be offline while your IT department rebuilds that server.

    How the Cloud Helps: In the cloud, the physical machine your application runs on doesn’t matter.  Your web site, the operating system it runs on, and all the magic your IT gurus have set up are all configured and saved. If the machine hosting your site fails, the cloud realizes that machine is no longer available, and it automatically sets up a new one. Your website could be back up and running in 15 to 30 minutes without you having to do anything.

    Want an even better option?  Use the cloud to run two copies of your site on two separate machines. If one machine fails, the other is still in control and handles the load until the first is replaced—with no downtime.

    SaaS Offerings: What You Need May Already Be on the Cloud

    What This Is:  A “SaaS” stands for “Software as a Service.” This is a program you can sign up for and log into through the web. It’s not custom-made for you but instead may serve thousands of other users.  Common examples are Google Docs or Office 365, which are SaaS offerings designed to replace Microsoft Word.

    Why This Matters:  Say you’re ready to adopt a new web-based application to replace your old system and increase productivity.  However, you currently have a lot of processes in place “just because you have to” due to the old system. Is it worth the time and effort to customize your new cloud solution?

    How the Cloud Helps: SaaS offerings can offset some custom development while giving you a highly visible and agile workflow. This makes it easier to fix those bad business practices. You can now use software designed for growth and flexibility. This not only sets up your company for faster growth, it also controls costs.

    Plus, a good SaaS offering will have a well-documented and robust Application Program Interface (API).  An API allows your custom site to work with a SaaS.  For example: Dropbox for file storage and Mavenlink for project management are excellent SaaS offerings with great APIs.

    Make the Cloud Yours

    There are plenty more cloud-based features out there. Amazon’s AWS alone offers: cloud-based web servers, databases, file storage, email services, text notifications, and countless other services. All of these features set your business up for higher productivity and dynamic growth—without high overhead costs.

    Your cloud migration won’t look exactly like everyone else’s.  Take a few minutes to think about the programs you use that keep your business running and profitable.  Are they scalable? Could you recover from disaster? Is there a good, inexpensive, online way to do part of what you’re doing?

    If you said yes to any of these, welcome to the cloud.

    To learn more about a cloud upgrade, contact the team at Atlantic BT. As an AWS Certified Partner, we have the knowledge and experience to help your website reach great heights.

    *photo courtesy of Nicolas Raymond on Flickr

  • How to Integrate Security into DevOps

    [pull_quote]Good DevOps practices ensure that the same code bundle can be deployed into multiple environments and environment-specific elements can be automatically injected from outside the code bundles themselves.” -Bernard Golden, Author and CEO of Navica[/pull_quote]

    Golden describes just one example of how DevOps delivers significant improvements in development speed and agility. By increasing cooperation between IT engineers and developers, DevOps streamlines workflows across a software project. This has made DevOps a popular approach for many IT leaders.

    However, with all of this increased speed it is easy to view security concerns as inhibitors to DevOps agility. After all, if your developers are nailing their deadlines and your IT engineers are creating rock-solid environments for your software, why would you want worries about security to slow down your incredible progress? As the CommitStrip below amusingly points out, security doesn’t seem like a major concern until something goes wrong. And then, it may be too late to stop the issue from bringing down the entire application or system.

    SecDevOps means you don't make security an afterthought.
    SecDevOps means you don’t make security an afterthought.

    Question: When Should You Integrate Security into DevOps?

    Answer: Yesterday.

    [pull_quote]Information security architects must integrate security at multiple points into DevOps workflows in a collaborative way that is largely transparent to developers, and preserves the teamwork, agility and speed of DevOps and agile development environments, delivering ‘DevSecOps.’” -Gartner 2016 report  [/pull_quote]

    It is not enough to add on patchwork security protocols or systems just before deployment. Nor can you simply recruit a security expert to check your developers’ code as they work. To truly integrate security throughout your workflows, you need to ensure your developers are a transparent part of the security process. In short, stay true to the collaborative spirit of DevOps.

    This is not easy. Modern security infrastructure has lagged in its ability to become “software defined” and programmable, making it difficult to integrate security controls into DevOps-style workflows in an automated, transparent way. In addition, because developers often download and use open-source components and frameworks, modern applications are largely  “assembled,” rather than developed from scratch. This creates application security issues as many of these open-source additions are vulnerable to cyberattack.

    SecDevOps Training, Tools, and Best Practices

    So how can you stay true to the collaborative vision of DevOps as you weave security into your development processes? Information security architects should take the lead by adopting the following tactics to create a strategic SecDevOps approach:

    • Start with secure development and training. This does not mean you need to force your developers to become security experts or adapt an entirely new set of tools, but introducing the right secure practices can safeguard your software. For example, you should create deployment pipelines that allow for controlled code pushes into the production environment; by using Red/Black deployments, you can transition to the updated code running on the new infrastructure with zero impact to sessions, transactions, or the user experience. When scanning platforms, the Nessus product, from Tenable Security, can improve security without impacting your workflow.
    • Embrace the concept of people-centric security. Beyond training, this means empowering developers to take personal responsibility for security by encouraging a “trust and verify” mindset. Note that monitoring your systems is still important, but you need every team member to take ownership.
    • Require all information security platforms to expose full functionality via APIs for automatability. By automating regular code tests, you help ensure your software will be secure without demanding more effort from your team.
    • Use proven version control practices and tools for all application software and, equally as important, for all scripts, templates and blueprints used in DevOps environments. A GIT branching model is also helpful while writing code.
    • Adopt an immutable infrastructure mindset. Rather than focusing on maintaining and improving, your data center’s individual machine uptime, an immutable infrastructure relies on API-driven infrastructure-as-code. This improves flexibility by letting you lock down and change production systems via development.

    Learn More about SecDevOps Training

    This is only an introduction for how you can integrate a security mindset into your DevOps practices. If you’d like to learn more about best practices and tools to secure your applications and systems during development, contact our security team here at Atlantic BT. We know all of the ins and outs necessary to guide you to confidence and safety. 

    With these best practices and more, you will be well on your way to delivering secure-by-design software that integrates effectively with your chosen platforms.

  • NDAs: The Secrets That Make Friends and Why You Need Them

    Earlier this summer, I remember sitting in a meeting with a potential client. They asked about solutions we provided for other companies. Immediately, our team lead jumped in to answer. He referred to some clients by name, but used generic descriptions for others. For example: one client bore the name “a major health insurance provider.”

    Though this seemed to confuse a few in the room, the team lead knew exactly what he was doing. He knew our nondisclosure agreement (NDA) limited how much detail we could share. It even restricted how we publicly referred to some clients. That’s when I realized a crucial truth. It is important to know the basics of your company’s NDAs.

    What is a Nondisclosure Agreement, and why does it matter?

    NDAs are legally-binding agreements between a client and the company they have hired. It keeps secret information about the client, that the client shared, as a part of doing business. They are often used by companies to protect proprietary or sensitive information. It may also come into play to protect an organization’s brand or trademark. In addition, a nondisclosure agreement can exist between individuals. For example, an NDA may exist between a contract programmer and a company. This would protect information the contractor learns about the company’s inner workings.

    Regardless of whether an NDA is between companies or individuals, all parties involved should be aware of the terms. Here are the questions I ask to protect my team when their work involves a nondisclosure agreement:

    What information is confidential?

    • Is there private information that cannot come up in discussions? This might include financials, pending patents, new branding, or a patient diagnosis or test results. Even the company name can find protection under an NDA.

    What information can you share?

    • Protected information in a nondisclosure agreement doesn’t mean that everything is a secret. There may be other parts of the project that would be appropriate to share with the public. For example, a company may be able to post a client logo on their website. But, they cannot expose specifics about what they did for the client.

    Who are the parties involved?

    • Once everyone knows an agreement exists, they need to know all of the parties required to keep the secrets. This is pretty easy when there are just a few individuals involved. However, if the agreement is with a company, anyone in that company who is allowed to receive or use the sensitive information should also know about the agreement and be expected to adhere to it.

    Where is the nondisclosure agreement?

    • The NDA should be available to those who are bound by it in case they need to review or reference it. This can be located in your company’s wiki, for example.

    When do the restrictions apply?

    • Coverage of an NDA can extend beyond the relationship between the parties involved. It’s important to know how long the sensitive information must remain secret as a part of the agreement. In some cases, it may be several years after the business relationship has ended. In other cases, it may be required that the information be kept a secret forever.

    Why is it important to keep the agreement?

    • Breaching or violating an NDA can damage the client/contractor relationship. This unethical behavior can also result in penalty or legal action, so it’s important to adhere to the terms.

    You Need a Strategy for Handling Nondisclosure Agreements

    No matter how familiar your team is with NDAs, you want to have a plan for telling them about new agreements and potential issues. This can be as simple as saying “we have an NDA in place for this project, so please do not mention our relationship with this client publicly.” It’s important to do this as soon as an NDA is in place. Oftentimes it’s best to treat nondisclosure as the norm for all projects until you hear otherwise.

    If members of your team need to sign an NDA to work on a project, make a plan for that too. For an individual, the terms can usually be provided in a form to be signed. For a team, the terms agreed to by the company could be conveyed in a simple meeting at project kick-off. Regardless of whether a nondisclosure agreement is between individuals or organizations, providing everyone with basic information about it will give them a better chance of adhering to it.

    Compliance, in any industry, is something we value here at ABT. The rules and regulations can be difficult to navigate. If you’re in need of someone to help you find the balance between what you want to happen, what should happen, and what needs to happen, with regards to your website, we can help break it down for you.