Archive for the 'Compliant Hosting' Category

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.

Comparing Managed Service Providers – Full Service versus Service Ready

Published on February 14, 2013 in Compliant Hosting, PCI Compliance and Security. Closed
Posted by Ed Welsh

Managed services and compliance as a service: Service Sign One component of selling Layered Tech’s managed services is dealing with the competitive comparison issue, as prospective clients attempt to determine which service provider is the best fit for their IT management needs. The need to compare Layered Tech to our competition is understandable, but the breadth of our available capabilities makes direct comparisons difficult.

The old and overused “Apples to Oranges” comes to mind, but only partially describes the situation. Layered Tech is most often compared to “hosting” companies because we have hosting capabilities, but to say we are simply a hosting company is grossly inaccurate. Layered Tech is a managed services company with hosting capabilities. We provide an entire IT service and security capability. Most competitors, while they claim to offer a total solution are actually providing “service ready” solutions where most of the service is delivered by the client.

Maybe a metaphor using the auto repair industry can help clarify our situation as it relates to comparison shopping. Traditional hosting providers can be equated to a self-service auto shop where space, lifts, and tools are provided. You can rent the shop by the hour and fix up your ride. Layered Tech on the other hand, is a full service location with not only the space, but also expert mechanics ready to maintain and repair a wide range of issues. The difference between the examples above is stark, but not readily apparent until further research reveals the true nature of the service being offered.

There are a small handful of managed security service providers that take on the specialized tasks for regulatory compliance, yet you will find many others claiming to do so. They all use the same language to describe what they provide, but many simply provide the tools in a “service ready” environment. Since most regulatory requirements include an audit or review component, any service provider that is not doing event review along with data collection will not meet the requirements. They will advertise a fully compliant service offering by assuming the client will spend the time necessary to cover the review they have failed to provide. Just make sure you understand the gaps and how to fill them before your regulators tell you about them.

When Layered Tech states that a service we provide can meet a requirement, we mean that the service fully meets the requirement and that is demonstrated. The challenge is educating prospective clients on the difference when being compared to providers with less-developed ideas about services.

About the Author: As Director of Compliance and Security services, Ed Welsh maintains and guides a dedicated team in the delivery of Layered Tech’s compliance and audit services. Ed’s 16 years in IT security includes network and web application security experience from positions in the Financial Industry, HRBlock, Fishnet Security, and independent contracting. He holds a CISSP certification and has been successfully implementing PCI compliant hosting solutions for the last 5 years.

Take a Sneak Peek at our Next-Gen Secure Cloud

Published on August 23, 2012 in Cloud Computing, Compliant Hosting and Security. Closed
Posted by Kevin Van Mondfrans

We will be announcing a next generation secure cloud platform shortly. I want to give you some insight of our thoughts around cloud and security.

Secure Cloud Platform Sneak Peek Customers are often faced with choosing between greater business agility or highly secure and compliant-ready environments. We do not think this is a fair trade-off. No customer should be forced to forgo the full promise of cloud to achieve running in a secure and compliant environment. Nor should a client need to sort through piles of log data to keep themselves compliant when outsourcing to a cloud service provider. We are addressing this very quandary.

Our next generation Cloud Data Center enables customers the full benefit of running critical workloads with sensitive personal information and financial data in a self-service secure cloud environment. Security and transparency is inherent in what we do. The Layered Tech cloud platform supports customers desiring to run in a cloud that is managed to accommodate PCI DSS and HIPAA compliant hosting requirements. Our cloud makes it easy to add the necessary tools, processes and management to run in a secure environment and to achieve and pass compliance, guaranteed. We have automated over 200 steps to deliver full compliant cloud data center environments and virtual machines, in just a few mouse clicks.

Despite the focus on security, you do not need to have a compliant application or workload to run in the Layered Tech Cloud Data Center. Our next generation cloud will enable a variety of production and test/development use cases. Customers will be able to choose managed services that range from basic server and URL monitoring/alerting to proactive managed support. We built this flexible management model to enable customers with transient workloads and elastic capacity to add compute resources on an hourly basis in completely self-service model. We also enable cloud for clients who desire a managed support model to assist with complex and hybrid environments and we can provide managed support up the stack including web servers, middleware and databases. While the customer has self-service controls and visibility, Layered Tech offers layers of management to help maintain and manage client environments.

There has been significant development focus on automation of security and compliance; there has also been an equal focus on delivering a secure portal and API that will enable a breadth of self-service capabilities well beyond cloud data center provisioning and VM life-cycle management. All of this automation along with our managed services offers customers the ability to achieve a higher level of assurance and agility to run their important workloads in a cloud.

Stay tuned for more details upon our launch of this next generation secure cloud platform.