Musato Technologies Blog

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

Retail Business Continuity

Published December 9, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

3 Critical Steps to Retail Business Continuity

How IT Can Help Make It Happen

Retail business has always been a fast-moving, often-changing industry. Today, change isn’t being driven by new fashion styles or popular toys. Instead, the biggest changes in the retail center on the very nature of where, when and how products are purchased.

The traditional brick-and-mortar retail model has morphed into a hybrid approach that combines physical stores, e-commerce, and virtual showrooms—all in a 24/7 time frame. In today’s retail environment, the “store” is never closed. As a result, retailers must fortify their efforts to ensure that their business systems are always operational for all internal business users and all consumers—wherever, whenever and however they want to buy. Increasingly, retail functions are shaped and driven by digital technology, creating a heightened need to support the digital lives of retail buyers and workers across a wide range of devices, applications, and services. If retailers fail to align access to their systems with constituents’ digital lives, they will find themselves in an untenable situation. This post discusses why IT availability and business continuity are critical to digital life in today’s retailers, and to the digital lives of buyers around the world.

Digital Life-Retail Business

Digital transformation is changing how retailers do business, just as it has changed the way consumers buy goods and products. No longer are consumers tied to aging retail models built around physical stores, either in a downtown shopping district or a sprawling mall environment. Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Life | Tagged Business Continuity, Digital Life, IT, IT organizations, Retail, Retail Business

Alexa for Business

Published December 8, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

Alexa for Business paves way for smart A.I. assistants at work

Amazon hopes to push Alexa into the office. At the same time, Cisco and Microsoft also see the potential for voice-activated A.I. assistants to automate mundane tasks such as starting video conferences and booking meeting rooms.-Alexa for Business

Much as smartphones did in the late 2000s, voice-activated A.I. assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant appear poised to move from homes into the workplace. That’s the idea behind this month’s launch of Alexa for Business by Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services.

The virtual assistant unveiled at the company’s Re: Invent conference, is aimed at automating and simplifying a variety of tedious office tasks. It allows users to check calendars, reorder supplies, set up meetings and kick-off video conference calls using voice commands directed at its Echo devices.

Amazon is not the first to target its intelligent assistant for workplace uses. Cisco, for example, announced its Spark Assistant last month; it’s designed specifically to take some of the pain out of organizing video conferences. Microsoft, meanwhile, has integrated Cortana with its Office 365 applications. Continue reading →

Posted in AI, Alexa, Artificial Intelligence | Tagged AI, Alexa, Amazone, Artificial Intelligence

SaaS and recurring revenue model

Published December 6, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

SaaS and recurring revenue model: Making the numbers work

Software as a Service (SaaS) has become a popular way to deliver complicated and often expensive software solutions to a wider audience.

In the traditional software world, companies did most of their business via “perpetual” software licenses. This meant that customers purchased the software and the in-house hardware necessary to use the computer program. Although the customer owned the software in perpetuity, it could get very expensive and complex to deploy and maintain. In some cases, the costs and complexity of this system excluded small and mid-sized businesses from using certain software.

With SaaS, instead of purchasing the software outright, companies can effectively “rent” the software on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis—hence the term software as a service. The software is usually deployed on servers outside the organization and is accessed over the internet. The customer no longer has to worry about maintenance or hardware costs. Continue reading →

Posted in IT Services, Software As A Service, Software Development, Software Development Tools, Software Lifecycles | Tagged cloud computing, SaaS, Software As A Service

ERP system

Published November 30, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

The modern approach to choosing an ERP system

Today’s ERP System landscape offers more options than ever before. Here’s a look at how two companies took a strategic approach to choosing the right software for their needs.

The number of options that companies have when choosing an ERP system has changed in a big way. Just take Stratus Ventures Group, which invests in early-stage startups. When the company decided to deploy an ERP system that would be used to run three of its portfolio companies, it started with one overarching requirement: The software had to be cloud-based, and it could not be an Oracle or SAP product.

“They are slow-set in concrete,” Ofir Baharav, general manager of Stratus, said of the biggest names in legacy ERP. “You build them, and then you can’t really move much unless you have a sledgehammer.”

The changing definition of ERP

A seismic shift has occurred in the ERP landscape. The term ERP once evoked a years-long, multi-million dollar deployment followed by a 20-year commitment to an inflexible product and for good reason — that’s what an ERP implementation typically required. Yet that’s changing for companies both large and small. Today’s ERP can be whatever a company needs, from isolated pieces of back-office functionality to full-blown cloud-based suites tightly integrated with customer-management systems. Continue reading →

Posted in Enterprise resource planning, Enterprise Software, ERP packages, Information Technologies | Tagged Enterprise resource planning, Enterprise Software, ERP

MacOS security flaw

Published November 29, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

MacOS security flaw grants admin access to anyone

The latest version of MacOS includes a mindlessly simple, one-step way to take over any Mac. What are we going to do with you? In your most recent High Sierra macOS release, it turns out you’ve given away to any local user to take over a Mac — lock, stock, and two smoking barrels.- MacOS security flaw

Go over to your Mac running High Sierra and try this: Wake it up and go to your login screen. Now check “Other User” and entered root as the username and leave the password empty. You may very well find that you just logged into your system as the root user, that is the administrator. You now own that box.

That means if you stole a Mac, or just get physical access to one while the owner is away, you own all the data on it. Can you say bad? I knew you could.

This is an all-time security failure. I cannot think of anything to match it. All Macs running up-to-date macOS are wide-open for attacks.

This exploit doesn’t require any mad NSA-type hacker skills. If you can use a keyboard you can get in.

In the original version of this security hole it was found that all you had to do is go to System Preferences, then Users and Groups, and click the lock to make changes. Then, enter “root” as your username without a password. Shazam! You’re in. Continue reading →

Posted in Apple, hacker attacks, Mac OS, Security | Tagged MacOS security flaw

Cloud Computing Trends

Published November 29, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

Cloud Computing Trends for 2018

Cloud computing trend remains a hot topic in the business world, and the trend is likely to continue according to Cisco’s latest Global Cloud index forecast, which covers 2013 through 2018. Cloud data centers, private cloud solutions, infrastructure as a service, as well as a platform as a service are all hot, thanks to the numerous advantages of cloud computing.

For this article, the purpose is to explore some of the major trends in cloud computing that you should prepare to adapt to your business in 2018.

Cloud as a Catalyst for Internet of Things (IoT)

The world has undergone a rapid transformation in the last few years as far as communication and business transactions are concerned. Today, people largely use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to access the internet, inquire about businesses, purchase items, and much more. That’s when IoT came into play, rising above the use of mobile devices to accomplish more tasks.

Gartner Research predicts the number of IoT devices in the world to be at least 20 billion by 2020. You know what that means? Continue reading →

Posted in Cloud Computing, cloud network services, Enterprise Computing, Musato Technologies | Tagged cloud computing, Cloud Services, Cloud Storage, Musato Technologies, Virtualisation

Password alternatives and enhancements

Published November 25, 2017 | By Gideon E. M

Ready for more secure authentication?

Try these password alternatives and enhancements

Password-only authentication is not effective. Combine passwords with multifactor authentication, social login, biometrics, or risk-based authentication to better protect users and your reputation.-Password alternatives

The best thing you can say about using a password for authentication is that it’s better than nothing. High-profile breaches like Equifax, however, have exposed millions of passwords and user IDs, calling into question even that faint praise. If consumers don’t assume that at least some of their passwords have been compromised, they only create a dangerous false sense of security.

Companies that still rely on password authentication for access to important customer and corporate data are doing the same. Password-only protection is permanently broken, and any organization relying on it is placing its business and reputation at risk. Even if they avoid a breach, awareness of the shortcomings of password protection is much higher now thanks to Equifax. If that’s how you protect customers’ data, they will think twice about trusting you with it.

Alternatives like two-factor authentication (2FA), multifactor authentication (MFA), behavioral analytics, and biometrics have been available for some time, but adoption rates are low. The growing threat landscape and consumer awareness are lowering barriers to implementing these options — those barriers being, primarily, user resistance, complexity, and ROI. Continue reading →

Posted in cyber-security, cyberattack, Encryption, hacker attacks, Password, Technology risks | Tagged Password alternatives, Security, strong authentication