Layered Tech Blog - Compliant Hosting & Cloud Insights

E-Pay Innovator Drives Mobile Commerce in Developing Countries

Published on May 23, 2013 in Events, Industry Events, Layered Technologies, LT News, PCI Compliance, Strategic Partners and Technology Bits. 0 Comments
Posted by Steve Chu

It was a pleasure to serve as a judge for the e-Pay Innovation award at the recent ETA Expo in New Orleans, LA. The winner of the $10,000 award was Trak for developing technology aimed at moving Brazil’s population from a paper payment system to a more efficient electronic format.

The ETA Technology Committee oversaw the event, which was part of the 2013 Annual Event and Expo in New Orleans. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding for the winner of the e-Pay Innovation Award and offered scholarships for several startup companies to exhibit in the Payments Next Zone section of the Expo.

The focus of the event was to find startup companies that have a unique payment solution to offer to the unserved and underserved populations of developing countries. The Gates Foundation has a core belief that the developing populations around the world can rise out of poverty much faster if they have access to technology. Electronic payment technology can quickly replace ancient barter systems and rapidly increase commerce, especially in countries where the masses are just now gaining access to mobile phones.

The winning Trak system presents a unique electronic method for processing Beleto transactions in Brazil. Beleto is an old way of presenting paper invoices to the end-use customer who then physically presents payment at the merchant’s bank. The Trak Beleto incorporates a smartphone app that stores customer- and merchant-account information and provides a faster, more streamlined way of completing transactions. Trak is using the Beleto offering in Brazil as a proof of concept to bring to other countries that have no advanced method of conducting transactions beyond old fashioned bartering systems.

The ETA Technology Committee will continue working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to discover innovative payment solutions that can be brought to the unserved and underserved populations around the world. The next event will be at the ETA Strategic Leadership Forum which will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona in October. I would welcome the opportunity to continue serving as a judge on this distinguished panel. It was an honor to meet the legends, entrepreneurs and visionaries in the payment industry who have developed unique and beneficial offerings. And I look forward to watching the evolution of these great ideas as they come to fruition and become available to the masses.

About the Author: As Regional Sales Manager for Layered Tech, Steve Chu (@stevendkchu) brings over 9 years of experience to the Payment and PCI Compliant Hosting industry. His background prior to Layered Tech was with HMS/Micros Systems, which provides a point-of-sale solution for the hospitality industry, and also with global IT consulting firm, Sogeti Capgemini.

Up and to the Right: Layered Tech advances in Gartner Magic Quadrant

Published on May 15, 2013 in Cloud Computing, Compliant Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, FISMA Compliance, HIPAA Compliance, Hosting Industry, Industry Expert, Layered Technologies and PCI Compliance. 0 Comments
Posted by Kevin Van Mondfrans

Gartner recently published the 2013 edition of the Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting which included Layered Tech. Since our first inclusion in 2010, Layered Tech has significantly increased our ranking and position with respect to completeness of vision and ability to execute. We have consistently moved up and to the right.

To be considered for the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting, providers must deliver on-demand, enterprise-class managed hosting services, have a presence in multiple North American metropolitan areas, and be among the top 15 North American providers by market share. Gartner’s quadrant-based categories rate providers by “vision” – the ability to anticipate and meet customer needs – and by service-delivery excellence, based on customers’ experiences.

I have worked closely with Gartner over the past few years to help them gain deeper insight to our business, our clients, the workloads we serve and our significant differentiators. I have introduced Gartner to many of our staff and clients, to help them understand our unique abilities. As a result, the latest Gartner ratings show rapid ascension for Layered Tech along both the vision scale and the service-execution scale.

Simplifying Complexity and Reducing Risk

As one of the more focused and intimate managed hosting service providers in the Magic Quadrant, Layered Tech is recognized for its ability to manage complex hosting needs with stringent security and compliance requirements, as demonstrated with our strong SLA and compliance guarantee. Managing complex web applications and helping to achieve and maintain security or compliance objectives is a key focus of the Layered Tech business. Our ability to help clients reduce the risk to security threats and to completely achieve compliance with respect to the IT controls is a significant differentiator.

Gartner also recognized our strength and commitment to automate service delivery and change within the ITIL-based change-management framework. This is core to our ability to deliver a high quality of service to our clients. The Layered Tech automated workflow introduces check points to mitigate change risks, automates operations and improves communications.

Compliance Expertise Recognized

Last year’s Gartner report noted that Layered Tech is one of the only providers capable of delivering comprehensive PCI and HIPAA-compliant hosting services for the electronic payment and healthcare markets. This year’s report cites Layered Tech’s expansion into the federal government FISMA compliance market as a new company strength. I would add that we also perform extremely well with SaaS/ISVs, eCommerce and Media.

We think Gartner has done a great job of highlighting some critical strengths and key target markets for Layered Tech. We will continue to drive upward momentum as we work to find new ways to serve customers and anticipate their cloud hosting and compliance needs.

About the Author: As Vice President of Product Management at Layered Tech, Kevin Van Mondfrans (@VANMONDFRANS | +Kevin Van Mondfrans) is responsible for driving the Layered Tech portfolio of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and managed service offerings. With more than 20 years of experience product development and marketing, Kevin has been delivering innovative computing, storage, cloud and service offering with companies such as HP, Dell, and Savvis.

GigaOM Tags Layered Tech for 3 of Top 5 Fastest Cloud Data Centers

Published on May 2, 2013 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments
Posted by Kevin Van Mondfrans

GigaOM, a leading technology news site, recently recognized Layered Tech for leading the big dogs of cloud computing in efficiency and speed. The GigaOM article highlighted Layered Tech’s superior cloud computing performance from our Chicago, Kansas City and Dallas data centers, based on Compuware/CloudSleuth’s Global Provider View. In fact, Layered Tech claimed three of the top five spots among more than 40 US-based cloud data centers competing for this honor of superior performance.

Our goal with the Layered Tech eBusiness Cloud Data Center is to offer our customers a platform well suited to running critical business transactions. Our customer’s application performance, availability and security are all critical factors. We have strived to excel in each of these areas and are happy to see our performance validated through services like CloudSleuth and GigaOM.

Tips to Guard Against Hacks and Attacks

Published on April 29, 2013 in Events, Industry Events, Industry Expert, Layered Technologies, Security, Security News and Uncategorized. 0 Comments
Posted by Jeff Reich

I attended the 2013 InnoTech San Antonio Technology Innovation Conference & Expo on April 17th. InnoTech is the region’s largest business-to-business technology event.

This conference has grown to the point of needing to move to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.

Along with the tracks offered in Mobility, Women in Tech, Infrastructure, Big Data with Analytics and IT Leadership, I participated in the Cyber Security Symposium. I moderated a panel of experts on Security – It’s All About Perspective. The panel had representation from corporate leaders, consultants and higher education. The panel members were Mark Krisak, Director of Information Security, HEB; Chip Meadows, Sr. Security Analyst, UTSA; Joe Oranday, Vice President, Enterprise Information Security, Frost; Steve Werby, President and Senior Information Security Consultant, Befriend.

We had a lively discussion with the audience of around 100 people. Even though we discussed technology and some of the newer techniques to deal with hacks and attacks, the takeaway from the gathered experience on the panel was to focus on the basics. When the panelists were asked what the one best thing was that an organization can do to protect itself, the answers were:

Keep your patches current
Focus on user security awareness training
Deliver metrics on your program to track progress and get support
Work with your users

These solutions are not new and do not require deep technical knowledge. I think we can all learn a lot from these experts.

I will be presenting a session on Hacktivism at the 2013 ETA Annual Meeting & Expo on April 30th through May 2nd in New Orleans, LA. I hope to see you there.

About the Author: As Chief Risk Officer at Layered Tech, Jeff Reich (@LayeredTechCRO, +Jeff Reich) drives the company’s security and compliance services and guides risk mitigation efforts for clients. With more than 30 years of experience, Reich is a well-known risk management and security expert in the industry. He holds CRISC, CISSP and CHS-III certifications and is an ISSA Distinguished Fellow.

Meeting the Demands of the Public Sector in Step with Microsoft Dynamics

Published on April 18, 2013 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments
Posted by Teri Erickson

At the 2013 Microsoft Dynamics Annual Conference in New Orleans this March, Layered Tech was awarded the prestigious “2013 Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the Year”. I was thrilled to be presented the award on behalf of the Layered Tech team by Microsoft General Manager for Public Sector, Amir Caprilles and Microsoft Federal Practice Director, Jody McCann.

During the presentation, Microsoft acknowledged our longstanding relationship and Layered Tech’s commitment to building secure, private, FISMA-Compliant cloud infrastructure for Microsoft federal partners. Layered Tech was selected by Microsoft from more than 90 federal partners based on redefining the opportunity for Microsoft to sell into the federal market by giving all Microsoft federal partners a FISMA-Compliant infrastructure to custom build their solutions for their federal agency customers.

Here’s some background on the partnership:

In 2012 Microsoft Corporation contracted with Layered Tech to provide “Microsoft Dynamics for Government – Hosted by Layered Tech,” a FISMA compliant cloud offering for their Dynamics solutions.

Hosted by Layered Tech in top-tier data centers, Microsoft Dynamics Government Cloud business solutions provide any federal agency the opportunity to:

Modernize mission critical workloads in either a FISMA-compliant, single-tenant private cloud with dedicated physical resources, or a FISMA-compliant, federal-only community cloud.
Sharply reduce the Certification & Accreditation time for new services by leveraging platform certification documentation developed by Layered Tech.
Partner with Layered Tech’s security professionals during the NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology) audit process through to Authorization to Operate (ATO).

We have been working in partnership with Microsoft since the fourth quarter of 2012 to further educate the 90 federal partners and 200 Microsoft federal employees to advocate our joint offering at product launch events, conferences, and are now engaging their sales teams on a road show. This partnership will allow Layered Tech to keep in step with the government’s intensifying need for the benefits of business solutions delivered through secure cloud computing, while providing Microsoft greater opportunity to leverage the versatile FISMA-compliant application platform. It’s a win-win situation.

About the Author: Teri Erickson is the Senior Director of Cloud Services, Public Sector at LT Government Solutions. Teri’s 13 years of experience in IT include the last four years at NEW WORLD APPS (a Layered Tech Company) and prior experience as a founding member and sales director at Current Analysis.