Musato Technologies Blog

Meltdown and Spectre security

Published January 6, 2018 | By Gideon E. M

How the Meltdown and Spectre security holes fixes will affect you

Get ready to patch every piece of computing gear in your home and company to deal with this CPU nightmare. You can’t get away from Meltdown and Spectre. These chip bugs will make your life miserable. Everything you run — and I mean everything — PCs, Macs, iPhones, tablets, cloud computing, and servers — use vulnerable CPUs. Apple, Linux developers, and Microsoft have all released patches. And all of them will slow down at least some of your programs.-Meltdown and Spectre security

While Intel gets most of the heat for these hardware vulnerabilities, it’s not alone. According to Red Hat, ARM, IBM System Z, POWER8 (Big Endian and Little Endian), and POWER9 (Little Endian) processors are all open to attack. AMD claims its chips are largely invulnerable, but it concedes there’s a near zero — but not zero — the risk of exploitation from one class of attack.

So, what does that mean for you? Here’s what the experts say you can expect from your devices and services. Continue reading →

Posted in cyber-security, cyberattack, hacker attacks, Malware, Security | Tagged IT Security, Meltdown, Meltdown and Spectre security, Spectre security

Modern app development

Published January 6, 2018 | By Gideon E. M

For modern app development through open source, users still rule

Open source development brings speed and creativity, but it can also fundamentally change how users employ tech. MIT’s Open Agriculture Initiative illustrates this point. – Modern app development

BOSTON — During conversations about open source technology for developers, common words included speed, experimentation — and empathy.

Yes, empathy is a key to open source success, according to folks at Red Hat Summit 2017. The idea rests on the notion that while development speed is great and innovation is necessary — both hallmarks of open source work and modern app development, vendors said — programmers must also stay aware about how next-generation technology can affect users.

The work of the Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg) at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass., offers a good example. The OpenAg project works with Red Hat to develop open source agricultural software, with the goal of creating a more agile way to encourage food production among small, local communities.

In other words, residents in a city borough might someday be able to use open source tech and modern app development strategies to grow their own food. Technologists currently undertake that activity in the MIT Media Lab by studying digital farming and plant physiology, growing broccoli via an IP address attached to sensors.

Caleb Harper, director and principal investigator at OpenAg, told attendees at the Red Hat Summit that digital transformation technology could make it possible to introduce 1 billion new farmers into urban neighborhoods along the way to establishing digital growing areas. Continue reading →

Posted in Application Development, Applications, Apps, IT Services, Software Design, Software Designing Tools, Software Development, Software Development Tools | Tagged Application Development, modern app development, software ddeveloper, Software Development

DevOps strategy

Published January 2, 2018 | By Gideon E. M

Four questions to ask about your DevOps strategy

There’s a lot of information about DevOps out there, making it hard to determine exactly what it means. However, there are still key principles you can stick to in order to achieve success through DevOps. Here are four questions that, according to our experts, you should be asking when thinking about your DevOps strategy.

1. Have we established a zone of business impact?

DevOps tasks should be clearly connected to the applications they support, and businesses should, in turn, identify the business processes those applications support. This lets organizations map out what is referred to as a zone of business impact for each DevOps process, and it’s a fundamental part of DevOps documentation. That way, as expert Tom Nolle points out in his piece on the connection between DevOps and enterprise architecture, the impact any DevOps strategy has on business processes — even if the impact is simply a risk of disruption — can be planned for ahead of time. This will also ensure that development teams understand the business process lifecycle or even lifecycles, that their application may impact.

2. Are we deploying continuously?

Implementing continuous delivery means that changes to your application are created and deployed on an ongoing basis. If your apps are not being delivered continuously, it’s important to start thinking about building a continuous delivery pipeline for them by making sure that everyone involved in app development and delivery is working together. According to expert Chris Tozzi in his piece on applying DevOps principles to app modernization, part of this means ensuring you have the infrastructure tools in place to roll out changes quickly from development to production. Continue reading →

Posted in Mobile app development, Mobile application, Mobile Apps, Mobility, Musato Technologies, Software As A Service, Software Designing Tools, Software Development, Technology | Tagged Application Development, DevOps strategy, Musato Technologies, Software Development

Cloud Web Services

Published December 26, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

Build cloud web services with microservices

Building cloud web services with microservices provide benefits, such as scalability, and allows enterprise apps to access new features and tools. Follow these steps to success.-Cloud Web Services

Amazon and Microsoft, the two leading public cloud providers, both offer several dozen web services, each representing a useful application feature or tool that users can invoke through an API. On the surface, these offerings look a lot like microservices. Deeper into implementation, the similarities grow.

A microservice, like a cloud web services, isn’t a part of a single application but instead provides a general resource for applications. Several different applications and many users can access a microservice at the same time — just as they could a cloud web service. A microservice also has the ability to scale in response to load and replace itself if its underlying resources fail, also like a cloud web service.

The only problem with using microservices to build your own cloud web services is that it’s not always clear what gives microservices the desirable properties above. Cloud architects may fail to deploy microservices the right way, and thereby reduce microservices’ value in providing cloud web service features. That’s why planning microservice deployment is critical. Continue reading →

Posted in Cloud Computing, cloud network services | Tagged Cloud Web Services, Musato Technologies, Web Services

Mobile App Development Tools

Published December 24, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

Buying mobile app development tools

Expert, Matthew David goes over key factors to consider when buying mobile application development tools, like security, testing, and hosting.- Mobile App Development

Purchasing mobile solutions is made complex by the increased support for multiple operating systems, a broad selection of hardware choices and the rapid evolution of the core operating systems themselves. With that said, there are several clear metrics you can leverage when making a choice to buy tools to enable the development of mobility within an enterprise:

Security
Development environment
Cost
Ease of use
Testing
Hosting
Delivery

It does not matter if you are building native Android, iOS, or Windows apps or hybrid, cross-platform solutions using HTML, these seven touch points will inform your decision as to what mobile app development tool you should buy.

Security

The highest concern for any mobile solution is security. A mobile device is designed to be highly portable, always connected and easy to use. These traits are inherently insecure, which is why security should be a top priority when selecting a mobile application development tool. Continue reading →

Posted in Application Development, Applications, IT, IT Services, Mobile app development, Mobile application, Mobile Apps, Mobility, Musato Technologies | Tagged Mobile App Development, Mobile application, Software Development

Mobile App Development Trends

Published December 22, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

Three mobile app development trends IT should track

Keep up with the latest advancements in mobile application development, such as AI and big data integration, and see which trends IT and developers are tracking in the enterprise.- Mobile app development

Just like the trees through the four seasons, mobile application developers are used to changing. This new season has brought three trends that are quickly becoming essential to keep track of for organizations both big and small.

One constant in mobile application development is that nothing is constant for long. Emerging technology has adapted to the modern mobile world and is geared toward advancing mobile app development at a rapid pace.

The enterprise is looking for applications that can work across multiple platforms and still provide an excellent UI. Developers are now using artificial intelligence (AI) to produce and integrate big data, enhancing the user experience and application integration into workplaces previously untouched.

The driving force behind the latest mobile app development trends is user experience (UX). If employees cannot do their work on the application due to an incompatible user interface or continuous lags, productivity halts. The quicker IT and developers embrace these top mobile app development trends and implement them, the sooner organizations can get ahead of the game. Continue reading →

Posted in Mobile app development, Mobile application, Mobile Apps, Musato Technologies | Tagged Mobile App Development, Mobile application development, Mobile Apps, Musato Technologies

Web Pages Over an SSL Connection

Published December 18, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

The Pros and Cons of Delivering Web Pages Over an SSL Connection

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption provides a number of benefits, including a way to validate that the page you’re on is the site you meant to reach. However, while there are many benefits to SSL, there are also a few drawbacks. Read this article to discover the pros and cons of an SSL connection, helping you to decide on whether or not to implement it.-Web pages.

The Pros and Cons of Delivering Web Pages over an SSL Connection

The success of the Google+ launch and its overall browser security ratings seem to be attributed to its SSL-only traffic approach. What makes SSL so secure, and why doesn’t every Web application use it?
With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search between your computer and Google, preventing a third party from intercepting and reading your search terms, and your search results pages. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) has actually been superseded by TLS (Transport Layer Security), though this suite of protocols is still generally referred to as SSL. SSL encrypts a network connection using asymmetric cryptography for privacy and a keyed message authentication code for message reliability. Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Security, cyber-security, Web Hosting, Web Hosting Services, Website, Website Design in Durban, Website protection, Website Security | Tagged SSL, SSL encryption, Web pages

WordPress Web Hosting Services

Published December 16, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

The Best WordPress Web Hosting Services of 2018

WordPress, with its wide array of themes and plug-ins, is the way to go if you want to build a website. –WordPress Web Hosting

How to Get WordPress Hosting Services

WordPress, the world’s top content management system (CMS), is far more than just the simple blogging platform many people think of it as. The software has a huge library of free and premium themes and plug-ins that make it the foundation that underpins millions of websites, including personal and small business pages, brands such as Bloomberg and Disney, and even big-name high-traffic sites like Best Buy and BBC America. If you’ve thought about building a website, you should definitely consider a WordPress web host.

Most web hosts offer some form of WordPress service, be it an optimized or a managed environment. Both types boast platforms specifically designed for WordPress. In each, the CMS comes preinstalled, so you don’t have to download and set up a WordPress installation as you’d do when using a traditional web hosting environment.

Depending on the web host, you can enjoy a variety of site-friendly features, including automatic data backups, page caching, and automatic CMS updates. Please note that some web hosts restrict a short list of plug-ins that may duplicate features already built into the optimized or managed setup or negatively affect your site’s performance. Continue reading →

Posted in Web Hosting Services, Website, Website Design in Durban, Website Security, Wordpress | Tagged CMS, Content Management System, Web Hosting, Web Services, Wordpress, WordPress Web Hosting

SEO basics for boosting website rankings

Published December 12, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

SEO basics for entrepreneurs:

Easy tips for optimizing your website

One of the obvious keys to growing a business is to get introduced to people who need your products and services. Great news! Research indicates that over 90% of people use the Internet when evaluating a purchase. In other words, the Internet is full of people looking for you.-SEO basics

But how do you get them to find your website?

There are two options: either you purchase the traffic by buying online ads or you don’t. If you’re one of the 100% of people who prefer free options to paid options, this article is for you.

The free option is search engine optimization (SEO).

What is SEO?

The term refers to techniques you can use to improve your website’s ranking on the results pages of search engines such as Google. If you want to attract more free Internet traffic, it’s something you need to focus on and get right.

SEO can be complicated when you dig deep into it. But, it’s relatively easy for you to understand the basics and implement them on your site. And, just by covering the ABCs, you will be putting your business ahead of the competition in many cases. Continue reading →

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Basics | Tagged Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, SEO basics

Marketing Priorities for 2018

Published December 12, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

Your top 5 marketing priorities for 2018

The best entrepreneurs and business executives know they have to devote time, money and human resources to marketing if they want to boost their company’s brand recognition, increase sales and become a leader in their industry.- Marketing Priorities

But where to target your efforts? Marketing is constantly evolving, and to stay on top, you have to adapt to change and be ready to seize new opportunities. To help you as the new year approaches, here are the top marketing trends we anticipate for 2018.

1. Mobile first

The number of people using mobile devices to access the Internet continues to grow every year. Often, mobile is the only method people are using to surf the web. That’s why Google has announced its search results will give preference to websites with mobile responsive design over desktop-only sites.

What does this mean for your company? In a mobile-first world, your online user experience needs to be top-notch. To get an idea of how you’re doing, take a look at your bounce rate—the percentage of visitors leaving your web page without taking any action. If you have poor user experience, your bounce rate will likely be high (maybe 80% of visits or more). Continue reading →

Posted in Branding, Brands, CRM, Customer Relationship, Marketing | Tagged Branding, CRM, Digital Marketing, Marketing, marketing priorities