About: Hristijan Peshevski

We are very happy to announce that we will be a part of Job Fair – Skopje again this year!

Together with our internship program named Crowd Cloud Camp we will be at stands 6 and 7 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology on the 4th and 5th of April. People of our staff, as well as some of the interns that have been a part of Crowd Cloud Camp will be there to talk to you about the things that have been going on it CCC for the past year, opportunities for students as well as programs that we include in CCC.

We hope to see a lot of young minds of the Skopje area that, and we are looking forward to the new batch of brilliant minds that will be a part of Crowd Cloud Camp.

Many of our customers and partners ask us why we decide to become a Microsoft Cloud Partner. It is so easy to order and start using Microsoft Office 365, it can be quite difficult for them to understand why a company would still need a 3^rd party for this solution. We realized that with so many of our close customers and partners saying this, anybody considering office 365 must be thinking the same thing. Here are the key reasons why you should consider working with Microsoft Cloud and Office 365 Experts:

1. Support It is true, Microsoft does support Office 365. You can always send them an email with your questions. However, for the majority of business users out there, they are not technical people and it can be quite difficult to understand their answers and implement the solution they recommend. You may have somebody in your office who is quite knowledgeable, but it is quite unlikely that they want to be come the office IT person. In addition, you probably want them to spend more time on their job and not on IT. Having somebody available, that can provide you that extra level of service and ensure that all your people are able to use their tools properly and without issue is something that most companies still need.
2. MigrationAfter you sign up for Office 365, what do you do with all your data and email that is currently hosted on the server in your office, or at another provider. Do you have the time and knowledge to be able to migrate all your data over to Office 365 and point your domain name to the new service? By working with a company that has experts on both Office 365 and all the Microsoft products, you can be sure that your data will be moved and available.
3. Product KnowledgeA survey by our partner SkyKick showed that fewer than 7.5% of all businesses with less than 250 employees are using Office 365 for email. However, that majority of those companies have email included in their packages. Typically, the service is not in use because the company doesn’t know they have it included, or they do not know how to use it. This is only for email, Office 365 includes other productivity apps such as SharePoint, OneDrive, and Skype for Business. To fully take advantage of your investment, it is best to have a partner that is knowledgeable and ready to implement all of the solutions across your company.
4. Compliance and BackupMany companies start using Office 365 without considering their data compliance and security. Office 365 does provide a backup service, but there are many reasons why you may need to have additional control over your data. We can provide you with services and tools, located exactly where you need them to be, to ensure that the data compliance rules your company may have are followed.

The key benefit of an Office 365 partner is the expertise that they are able to bring to the table. Although it is extremely easy to purchase and start using Office 365, it is extremely important to ensure that you have access to the level of expertise you need, when you need it. Having access to this expertise also ensures that you get the most out of your investment and that your business has access to all the productivity features you need.

Many times, startups assume that they can achieve all the deadlines, implement all the features of their application or solution at once, figure out all the technicalities, preserve their cash flow etc. But more often than not, this is not the case. You end up micromanaging a lot of processes that you didn’t intend to. This is why having an extended team can help you.

Extended teams are not a new or revolutionary solution. An extended team is a team of experts that is assembled for your company, to provide you with a cost effective and time saving alternative. Extended teams work for you, sharing their knowledge and expertise from a different location.

With our extensive knowledge in providing the extended team services we have pinpointed these 5 reasons why startups need extended teams:

1. Easier control of resources

Being on top of your resource management is key when handling your startup. Having a great idea is no longer enough. Managing your resources can be very tricky when shaping your great idea into reality. Having an extended team can help you with having a better grasp of what you spend your time and resources on. Your core team can focus on essential work, while other tasks are taken care of by a team of experts in the field. Ideas are infinite, resources are limited.

2. Having an access to a wider knowledge base

Not being tied down to a single location can be a great thing. By using the extended team model you can have a team in another location of the world, with a wider knowledge base of technologies, local markets, and оther skills that your startup can benefit from. Having different types of people working globally, using their knowledge, will lead to creating a startup environment that can take a solution or application on a global market easier than having a centrilized local team.

3. Constant communication

Extended teams work closely on a daily basis. And when you focus on daily meetings via online platforms, you only talk about essential tasks that need to be performed. Friendly office banter and other distractions are removed when using an extended team. Focusing on essential work is very important when working on your application or solution, and an extended team can offer you just that.

4. Cost-effectiveness

Having an extended team is much By having a team abroad, you will be able to save money and time, and still get the expertise that you need to make your application or solution work.

5. Increase global market reach

By having a team that is from different countries means that you can easily have a presence on more than one market. Of course in today’s world, you can have global reach just by having a great solution and great marketing, but to have people in different parts of the world, that know the local market and the local mentality can always help you build market reach faster.

Starting a company involves many firsts. First customer, first invoice, first ad, and of course, your first website. Very often, creating your first website requires many hours of effort to get it just the way you want it, as well as knowledge of web design. Unfortunately, after this first initial phase, most companies stop paying attention to their website, even today. In today’s digital world, this can reflect very badly on your business and as a result, you could lose sales, you won’t be able to have any brand visibility etc. Here are 5 reasons why maintaining your website and your web presence are important:

1. Your site is your window on your business

Everybody enjoys window shopping, and a website provides people with the ability to window shop any type of business. They can get an idea about your services or products and also learn more about your company and your team. It is important that they get to see the most up to date view of your company, otherwise they will get the wrong idea about what you are able to do. Regularly updating your site and keeping it active will ensure that people have an up to date view on your business and that you are still active. Customers today make informed choices, and your maintaining your website can enable them to be informed about your services or products.

2. Stay ahead of your competitors

If you aren’t keeping your website up to date, then it is very likely that your competitors are. If they are not, then you have a huge opportunity to take advantage of. People want to see modern webpages that have current and up to date information. If they see an older site that hasn’t been updated in many years, they will not stay on that page. They will simply visit the next one in the list and if they have an up to date page, they will stay there. It’s not just the information you present, it’s the way you present it that matters.

3. Stay Relevant on Search Engines

Search engines like to present new information. If there are 5 different sites that are promoting the same type of product, but only one has updated their website, this one will be presented before the others. Maintaining a blog on your website or regularly updating your products and product descriptions can go a long way to ensure that your pages stay relevant on search engines. Adding new features will also enable you to stay more relevant.

4. Stay in touch with your community

Your website can provide you a lot of information about who is visiting and how they came to your site. This information can help you find new leads and new places to advertise. Regularly updating your website will ensure that people continue to visit your site, and also share your site with other interested people. The information you can gather from these visits can be a very important tool for your marketing and sales team.

5. Stay Active

An active website lets people know that your company is open for business and available to support the needs of their customers. Updating the look and feel of your website with the new trends, maintaining the information and articles, and posting to your blog and social media outlets also ensures that your company looks professional and knowledgeable in the space that you are working in. Companies that do not maintain an active website look old and not in touch with their customer base. Keep an active website and grow your customer base. This is also very important with the previous point- staying in touch with your community.

Maintaining your website is essential to businesses today, especially now that most people do their product research on their mobile devices. If your site isn’t ready for today’s user requirements, or not cater to their desired user experience – you will most likely lose business.

We are very happy to announce that the website for оur latest joint venture with our partner VisualGest called RadixVisualGest or RVG is finally up and running!

RVG combines the best of both worlds, Radix’s development, mobile and web services, as well as the next generation ERP system of VisualGest.

This partnership is based on our mutual experience of providing services to clients in a truly global model. Both companies have a history of providing premium services to companies of all sizes, services that are uniquely created to optimize their business processes. So with that in mind, we have ventured together to combine a unique ERP system along with the best in support and development, striving to create solutions that will bring companies closer to their customers, suppliers and markets.

For more details, visit RVG.

And stay tuned for more news!

Recently, we discussed the challenges that we saw in 2016 and how we saw Cloud evolve from 2015 to 2016. We thought it would be a good idea to discuss how we will be dealing with the challenges of 2016 and what we hope to see as trends in 2017.

1. Train and Reinforce Expertise
   
   

A lot of companies have invested in very advanced and complex Cloud solutions, but are only using a small fraction of the features. The base solution is typically very easy to start using, but the advanced solutions require some expertise in the solutions. In addition, it is often quite complicated to migrate your data onto the new solution. But having all your companies’ data available is extremely beneficial. Finding the right partner, with the right expertise, will be very important in 2017 to ensure that you get the most out of your investment.

As the Cloud gains even more momentum in 2017, companies will not only look to improve their ROI from using the Cloud solutions, but they will also look to taking complete advantage of the Cloud solutions that they have adopted. This is exactly why Cloud experts will become a much more important part of the IT industry in 2017.

2. Redefine our Monitoring and CMDB

Your operations team needs a new way to be able to manage Service Levels and also keep track of IT resources. Any ITIL based organisation is dealing with a lot of issues related to the business using Cloud solutions. Ensuring that you have the right monitoring solutions, and also the right CMDB solution integrated with the different providers you are working will be key for operations.

3. Build DevOps

DevOps has been considered a tool for companies that Develop applications. But it is also a very advanced tool for the operations team. In fact, most operations teams will get more use out of DevOps tools than Development teams will. As companies get more used to the new Cloud based solutions they have started using, they will start having new demands that will be fulfilled by DevOps tools. If you have never researched DevOps, start now to ensure you can keep up with the business.

4. Update Compliance

If you have not updated your compliance documents, this year is the year to do it. There are so many different types of Cloud solutions available on the market today, that basic compliance requirements based on the Cloud of 2010 will simply keep your company in the past. Updating your documents to ensure that the different divisions in your company can take advantage of the tools built for them will be key for businesses that want to maintain agility.

5. Pricing Analysis

For many companies, the price of their first Cloud solution was not the most critical challenge. They were concerned about security, compliance, just basically if it will work at all. Now that they have moved into the Cloud and see that it works, they are ready to start looking at the cost of the tools they are using. Preparing a pricing analysis tool that will allow the business to easily compare price to features will be an important tool in many projects. As Cloud providers compete to offer the best in solutions, pricing will become a key factor in choosing the right solution.

2017 will be a year where companies build more control around their Cloud solutions, and refine their selection process. As companies become more comfortable with their data on the Cloud, and how they can move data to the Cloud, DevOps will have a much more important role in the enterprise. Advanced DevOps allow data to be move from one service to another, allowing you to ensure you are getting the best price while ensuring compliance of company rules. This will be the cornerstone of IT Operations and many companies will expand the role of DevOps in their companies to meet the challenges of the future.

Cloud Computing continued to grow rapidly in 2016. As we can see here from Synergy Research, the Cloud market is growing at 25% annually. As a company operating in the Cloud market, we definitely saw a lot of new requests for migrations and new Cloud services in 2016. We also saw the services provided by our partners and suppliers increase significantly, making it a lot easier to move companies to Cloud services and provide all the features they need. As we already see from the market, 2017 will continue to grow and new service requests will continue to come in.

During 2015, we saw Cloud become an accepted solution in most enterprises, and in 2016, we saw most of our customers opt for Cloud solutions over classic delivery options. The following are the challenges that we saw our customers deal with the most:

1. Lack of Resources / Expertise

This is a problem that many companies have with Cloud solutions. Very often, we visit a company who has purchased and is using services on the Cloud, but they have not yet migrated their data into the new solution and they are not yet using all the features available to them. To be able to fully take advantage of these solutions, it is important to work with experts to be able to enable all features and integrate all your businesses data in the tool.

In 2016 we spent hundreds of hours migrating data of companies of all sizes to Cloud services that they have purchased, but did not have a full understanding of their use and features. This is why we provided a lot of consulting services as well.

2. Security and Compliance

The main issue with security that we have to do with ensuring that users are following the companies’ standard security practices for company data. Starting to use a Cloud solution can happen very quickly, often before anybody from IT has heard about it. Most users are not able to understand if what they are following company rules or not. It is important to have a process in place to manage these decisions and ensure that data is safe.

For the past couple of years we have developed several solutions to fit the latest security standards in the Cloud industry. One of them is Buncro a file sharing and collaboration platform that we have had great success with in the past year, providing it to clients that need to share their data, but still need premium security while doing so.

3. Managing Multiple Services

2016 saw many companies move to hybrid Cloud solutions. Very often, this meant using 2-3 public Cloud providers in addition to your private Cloud infrastructure. However, your users still come to you to ensure quality of service and performance. Suddenly, your team is expected to be monitoring infrastructure in multiple locations, global public networks, application performance on VM’s you didn’t create, and in addition control IT costs. Service management has a new level of complexity and must be reigned in.

Many of these challenges are quite new for company IT groups. In the past, IT was able to keep very close control over these topics and ensure that nothing happened without them knowing about it. The new service offerings make it a lot more difficult to be able to manage IT in the same way. 2016 has been a year where Business managers are taking advantage of Cloud services, and IT managers are starting to work and manage these new environments driven by business instead of IT.

We are very happy to announce that we are a proud supporter of the IT4Charity event in Skopje.

The guys and girls of our Skopje office will be attending this event on the 16th of November in XO Club in Skopje.

This event is organized to help people in need in developing Macedonia, and the funds gathered at the event will be donated to SOS Detsko Selo Macedonia, an organization that is dedicated to improving the lives of homeless children by providing housing, education, and courses of those in need.

At the event itself there will be donation boxes in which everyone can contribute with their own amounts. More info and details of the event here.

Entry is free, party starts at 20:00!

Hope to see you there, IT people of the Skopje area!

We are very proud to announce that our official internship program called Crowd Cloud Camp is now open!

This is a program that was created by our development partners ITCrowd along with us here at Radix Technologies. Within this program young students and fresh graduates can take part in actual projects and attain knowledge in some of the most used Cloud platforms, enterprise level solutions that are used for managing large networks, as well as some of the most used programming languages and the most used methods for project management in IT.

Besides the technical capabilities that our students can acquire within Crowd Cloud Camp, we also provide them with courses that can improve their soft skills, such as presentation, writing skills, foreign languages, personal communication, developing emotional intelligence at work, etc.

With over 20 experts at our disposal we have made sure that the students learn from the best trainers, some with over 15 years of experience in fields such as programming, network management, system administration, Microsoft technologies, Cloud Platform experts as well as language and communication experts.

In terms of technical skills, knowing the following is preferable:

•  Programming languages
•  Some DB management experience
•  Analytical and problem-solving skills
•  Knowledge of Microsoft Technologies
•  Network Management skills
•  Android and iOS technologies

Follow Crowd Cloud Camp on their official social media for the latest information regarding the program:

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Linkedin

So, if motivation, dedication and eagerness to learn new technologies and languages are your characteristics – we are expecting you!

Crowd Cloud Camp!

This is the third part of the series with InfiniteWP Dashboard. If you you are not up to date and what we are talking about you might want to read the installation of InfiniteWP Dashboard and Adding Websites.

Let’s make the necessary updates, but first we want to backup the entire website. In the InfiniteWP dashboard go to Protect -> Backups.  Click on the Create New Backup and a pop-up will appear. Here select the desired websites for the backup process and click Enter Details.

Next is the few other settings to make before the backup process begins. Enter the Backup Name, No. Of copies to keep, Create a Zip Without compression, do you want to save Files & Database or separate, some exclusions if needed, file size to exclude if too big for backup as well as optimization of the methods. Everything is pretty self-explanatory here. After you’ve made your settings click the Backup Now button. This is what we entered for our backup.

Wait for the process to frinish, this might take some time depending on your website content and database size. After that you can update all the WP core files to a newer version and the plugins as well. What we prefer to do is update the core files first and then update the themes and plugins. You can monitor the update process in the lower right corner, and it will inform you when the process is finished with a green tick. Refresh the page and admire your latest verion of WordPress and plugins.

And it’s that easy. You can now monitor multiple websites from one central place without losing time logining in to each individual WordPress website.

Dragan Markovski, 

Lead Web Developer/Programmer @RadixCloud