A recent article by Derek Oja, defined the benefits of using a rugged tablet PC by explaining how companies can access back-office data, collect data and communicate in real time as well as perform a range of tasks using a single device.

By using a single rugged tablet PC organisations can eliminate the need to use multiple devices i.e. fixed mounted devices for use in vehicles and handheld devices to collect data on the go. Derek explains how this will not only help reduce hardware costs but can also reduce repair and support costs.

No doubt using a rugged tablet PC can bring all of the above benefits and more, but what if there are even further cost savings to be had?

A survey by Microsoft’s Computing Division reported that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) using cloud computing feel “three to five times better about IT costs, IT value, and IT security than those who shun the cloud”.

By embracing cloud computing, companies can slash costs further by reducing the time spent managing tablet PC’s.  IT support teams or employees using tablet PC’s no longer have to travel to each other to get the devices fixed, in-fact IT support teams can fix issues in the background without interrupting the end user, saving organisations time and money.

CentraStage can help industries using rugged tablet PC’s achieve all this by offering Centralised Device Management, which will help industries move from a break fix support model to a managed services model, enabling them to use their scarce resources efficiently and exactly where they are required.

Sign up for a free account today!

by Aneel Baqar l May 16, 2012 l No Comments »

With so much external pressure to follow the trend for tablets, and internal pressure to integrate them into business systems, it is no wonder that statistics show a forecasted 50% growth in enterprise tablet adoption in the coming years.

With millions of tablets already out in the market and more waiting to be shipped, CIO’s from various enterprises are considering the concerns over security, data access and the device management elements which come with the use of tablets. As tablets offer extreme mobility and ease of use, it is only logical to introduce them to increase productivity. However, it is also crucial to offer additional support to these tablet users as well as the tools to access and manage the data remotely.

By using CentraStage, organisations can be confident that the right support is being offered at the most affordable price. Security can be provided to these devices by knowing exactly where they are, locating them by geo IP and if that is not enough; you can use device management capabilities to trash the data on the device. With centralised device management, organisations can use groups and filters to monitor, support & audit just the devices they want.

With CentraStage On Demand offering the first 250 devices and 10 remote support sessions for free, even the smallest of the players in the market can benefit by using centralised device management at no cost at all!

Sign up and start managing your tablets today!

 

by Aneel Baqar l May 11, 2012 l No Comments »

By upgrading your free account you will be able to implement all of the features below, regardless of the size of your organisation, on an unlimited scale, providing centralised IT management to your organisation at a very affordable price.

8 features for every device:

1 ) Asset Management – Audits and tracking at the click of a button.
2 ) Centralised Device Management – Target, configure & deploy.
3 ) Monitoring – Be alerted to hardware and software changes and much more.
4 ) Remote Support – Support end users using the powerful CAG Browser.
5 ) Comprehensive Reporting – The health of your estate, at a glance. You can even schedule a regular report for your convenience.
6 ) Agent Branding – If it’s important, have visibility of your brand too!
7 ) CentraStage On Demand – Free CentraStage agents for the first 250 devices & 10 remote support sessions, along with a 7 day audit.
8 ) ComStore - Offers pre-packed scripts, pre-built monitors, handy utilities and tools.

Upgrade now!

by Aneel Baqar l May 9, 2012 l No Comments »

To succeed in an evolving server market resellers must package up hardware and services to sell a complete solution. Amro Gebreel reports. The days when a reseller could just pitch up and sell hardware are a distant memory for most, with the server market changing along with many other areas of the industry.

These days, the hardware still sells, but the emphasis is on a solution. Resellers need to be aware of how the technology is going to be used and the potential additional software and infrastructure support that customers will need to access. Get those right, and sure enough there is a fairly wide opportunity for the channel.

Read more on MicroScope.co.uk.

 

by Aneel Baqar l May 8, 2012 l No Comments »

Delivering our CentraStage service to users is a mighty challenge. It’s a simple proposition but requires complex engineering to deliver and scale. To raise the stakes, our customers  are themselves a tech savvy lot, and primarily using CentraStage to solve the IT problems of their clients. They need to be able to rely on Centrastage to deliver when the heat is on. This, and our insistence on CentraStage being the most affordable IT management solution available, led us squarly to Amazon Web Services’ door, where we host a distributed architecture serving a global customer base.

 

Distribution of all our primary services is the key to availability, but what about scale? How do we ensure that the traffic spikes we experience as both the service scales and different time zones come online don’t affect performance and user experience. Our solution has been to isolate incoming traffic spike from the backend using queues. Monitoring and audit data hits the system and is dropped into a queue thereby minimising the response times of the the collectors. A separate consumer service reads off the queue and writes to the database. This process can be throttled independently of the incoming traffic from the agents thereby isolating the database from spikes in throughput. Our database response times thus stay pretty much flat throughout the day despite massive fluctuations in traffic.

 

Using separate collectors, queues and consumers is a great way to prevent your service from bogging down during traffic spikes, thereby keeping users happy with the service response times when they need it most.

by Ian van Reenen l May 2, 2012 l No Comments »