IT Trends & Technology

First National Technology Solutions (FNTS) has welcomed two strategic leaders to its executive team. Ken Marr has joined FNTS as Chief Technology Officer and Arvind Thapar has been named Vice President of Strategy. 

Watch Cloud Security Strategies & Budget Constraints Webinar

The IBM AS400 through the current IBM iSeries has been prized for performance, stability, and dependability for more than three decades and continues to serve countless businesses today. According to the market intelligence company iDatalabs, 28,148 companies are using the IBM AS400, but other sources peg the number as well over triple that figure.

On Friday, June 15, First National Technology Solutions (FNTS) is hosting a free Women in Tech event for women in the technology field and young women, ages 14 to 21, who are pursuing a tech career. 

As big data in healthcare continues its exponential growth, it represents new challenges of storage, access accuracy, and actionable use. Despite (or because of) the advance of HIT systems, the prevalence of data silos continue. Consequently, addressing these big data challenges requires careful planning for collection and processing while ensuring data integrity, so that it can be accessed and analyzed to reveal actionable outcomes.

All business today use the public cloud in one form or another. As that usage grows and evolves, cloud maintenance becomes a more complex challenge. While the need for many aspects of that maintenance are visible, there are many that can grow and evolve out of sight of the business. To that end, here are five public cloud maintenance requirements you may not have considered.

The Internet of Things (IoT), which applies to the internet-connected devices we use on a daily basis, is evolving. New terms are being coined to keep up with the growth of IoT, from the Internet of Everything (IoE), which extends the definition of IoT to include people, processes, data and things, to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), which includes remote patient care devices. According to Gartner, the number of internet connected devices has outpaced the number of humans on Earth, at 8.4 billion, revolutionizing industries and business practices.

The democratization of the cloud within the enterprise has freed operational costs, productivity, and innovative possibilities across departments that have formed the basis for digital transformation. The downside is, that freedom has led to unchecked cloud sprawl that is hampering security and cost containment. In fact, 53 percent of all cloud users and 64 percent of mature cloud users estimate that 30 percent of cloud spend is wasted, according to the RightScale 2017 State of the Cloud Report.

As mergers and acquisitions (M&A) increase, more IT departments will be faced with data center consolidation. Although it’s common practice for the acquired company to adopt the data center practices of the parent company, consolidation still requires detailed evaluation of current equipment, processes, and personnel.

First National Technology Solutions (FNTS), a leading managed IT services provider, today announced it has achieved Platinum Tier status as a Cloud Service Provider/Strategic Outsourcer within the Dell EMC Partner Program.

The Platinum Tier status recognizes FNTS for its excellence and commitment to Dell EMC . FNTS received Platinum Tier status based on achieving core competencies in compliance, revenue and training requirements. The Platinum distinction will provide FNTS access to specialized training, incentives to enhance the customer experience and offer essential infrastructure to organizations to build their digital future.

“FNTS partnered with Dell EMC to support data driven migration initiatives to an influx of customers wanting to align their workloads with manageable and scalable solutions to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,” said FNTS President, Kim Whittaker. “FNTS is proud to offer some of the industry’s most innovative, reliable and high-performing EMC solutions that maximize results for organizations. Currently, FNTS partners with Dell EMC to deliver a broad scope of services including private and hybrid cloud, storage, legacy systems and application services. ”

FNTS honored as part of the 2018 Dell EMC Global Partner Summit
for Technical Excellence Partner of the Year Award

Although the progression from a hybrid to a multi-cloud strategy is steadily increasing, it remains a challenging process for many businesses. In fact, fewer than half of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy, according to a Business Cloud News survey.

As enterprises pursue digital transformations that impact infrastructure and operations, they face evolving IT needs requiring new skills and expertise for either finite project implementations or ongoing infrastructure needs. Simultaneously, some legacy systems, such as mainframes, may require updates and maintenance to remain viable, while other infrastructure needs may call for new platform implementations.

While most businesses understand the importance of cloud computing to digital transformation and having an agile business, the cloud can only perform as well as the business’s network infrastructure. For businesses preparing to embark on a cloud strategy, aligning the network to the needs of the cloud is the first step to ensuring that the strategy is optimally realized.

Despite the growing momentum towards digital transformation, businesses across all sectors are limited to incremental change because of budget constraints. The result is legacy technologies and IT infrastructure that must be maintained for a wide variety of reasons. The challenge with this incremental approach is fulfilling the IT staffing needs for maintaining these legacy systems.