DiscoverTec News - Jacksonville web design

News

Get Started

DiscoverTec Returns to Las Vegas to Add Infrastructure
8.15.2011 The DiscoverTec Hosting team just returned from Las Vegas, adding some additional infrastructure to our current environment. Now we can offer customers an increased level of service with new load balancers and caching engines. “We are providing Global Server Load Balancing in an Active- Active configuration to several clients,” says Pete Valentine EVP of Technology at DiscoverTec. “Simplified, we are serving up content from both of our datacenters in Jacksonville and Las Vegas and directing traffic to the most responsive location,“ said Valentine. This was in response to the changing needs of our customer base and current advancements in technology. When social media was thrown into the mix hosting companies had to rethink their strategy. Instead of the steady trend of traffic traditional website experiences, social media promotions can drive tens-of-thousands of users to a website at the same time. This can have a catastrophic effect on a website and the organization who is hosting the site. The speed and availability of a website is crucial to the client’s brand -the last thing any organization wants it to drive customers to a website that isn’t there or that doesn’t respond in a timely manner. “In order to ensure the success of our customers’ online presence we have to not only respond to the high demands of the online audience but we have to stay ahead of their expectations. To assist in all of these areas we have added new caching engines providing increased speed and performance by storing website content in memory as opposed to solely on hard disks which require more time to locate the data,” said Valentine. The bottom line? The faster your website delivers your content the happier your end-users will be and in today’s world, that’s usually the users’ first impression of an organization. Contact us to learn how your company can take advantage of these enterprise services, packages start at $800.

DiscoverTec Welcomes New Hires
8.7.2011 DEVELOPMENT: Paul Grant Paul, a native Floridian, has experience developing database-driven web solutions using Microsoft technologies. A diligent web applications programmer, Paul is always eager to learn new technologies and improve his programming skills. Avani Avula Avani Avula is a native of India where she earned her degree in Mechanical Engineering from Osmania University. She is a certified application developer in Microsoft technologies and specializes in Web and Windows based Applications. She always has passion for programming and exploring latest technology trends. She also loves travelling, reading books and having fun with family & friends. Mark Radacz Mark Radacz was born and raised in Poland and lived in Germany and Canada before settling in Jacksonville. Mark has over 18 years hands-on experience in object oriented software analysis, design, development and web development in MS Windows, UNIX and Mac OS. He’s currently working on his Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist .NET Framework 4.0 ASP .NET certification. DESIGN: Raina Van Cleave Originally from Maryland, Raina received her B.S. of Advertising from University of Florida and completed a post graduate degree in Digital Media Technology. With more than 5 years of experience in the interactive media industry she is passionate about creating simple, user-friendly and effective designs solutions. Crystal Wilson Crystal Wilson received her Master’s in Urban Planning from University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), concentrating in Electronic Visualization. For the last 8 years, she has created web-based applications that help facilitate government-to-public communication around urban issues through proprietary software she developed and social media. IT: Jason Killingsworth Jason is an Exchange 2010 Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), an Exchange 2010 Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). With over 10 years experience working in Information Technology, Jason has skills and expertise to deliver enterprise level applications & services using industry best practices and standards. MARKETING: We are also pleased to announce the promotion of Kristi Bolton to Marketing Manager. Kristi Bolton Kristi received her BA from the School of Media Arts and Design at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. She has focused her career on marketing communications, from television production to graphic and web design. Always eager to stay at the forefront of new technologies, she will bring a fresh approach to your project’s needs.

Wounded Warrior Project Website Launches
8.5.2011 Wounded Warrior Project™ (WWP) is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to honoring and empowering wounded servicemen and women. We are proud to announce we recently launched their re-designed website woundedwarriorproject.org on our high-availability web servers. “We are honored to have partnered with such a fantastic organization,” said Donny Lamey, CEO of DiscoverTec. “They provide an invaluable service to so many wounded servicemen and women and we’re privileged to assist them in their online presence.” Founded in 2003, WWP aims to foster the most successful, well-adjusted generation of wounded warriors in the nation’s history. More the 45,000 of our nation’s armed forces have been physically wounded during the current military conflicts. Hundreds of thousands more are estimated to be recovering from invisible wounds of war, including post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression and traumatic brain injury. Whether through caregiver retreats, combat stress programs, career and education services or adaptive sporting opportunities, WWP empowers warriors with the tools essential to not just survive their injuries but to thrive and achieve professional success. We created a custom solution that offered the diverse audience of Wounded Warrior Project an exceptional user experience while also delivering an easily navigable website chock full of pertinent information. We also constructed a scalable infrastructure in a high-availability hosting environment. “We created a hosting solution that provides 24/7/365 public availability with 99.9% uptime,” said Pete Valentine, EVP of Technology at DiscoverTec. “These are essential functionalities for an organization as robust as Wounded Warrior Project.” To learn more about Wounded Warrior Project visit their website at woundedwarriorproject.org for more information. About Wounded Warrior Project The mission of the Wounded Warrior Project™ (WWP) is to honor and empower wounded warriors. WWP’s purpose is to raise awareness and to enlist the public’s aid for the needs of injured service members, to help injured servicemen and women aid and assist each other, and to provide unique, direct programs and services to meet their needs. WWP is a national, nonpartisan organization headquartered in Jacksonville, FL. To get involved and learn more, visit woundedwarriorproject.org .

Why SEO is Critical for your Online Presence
8.1.2011 As 2011 progresses we’ve seen a surge in our Internet Marketing business at DiscoverTec. Our clients are realizing the importance of search engine optimization and how it can positively impact their business. Our SEO team has been working diligently, becoming educated on the constantly changing technologies and putting them to use with our clients. More and more of our clients are coming to us as an expert in the field and we’re working hard to help them reach their goals. As a result, they are getting more traffic to their websites yielding more closed deals. We decided to break it down with Ryan Brooks, DiscoverTec’s SEO Manager, for a quick Q and A on the importance of Internet marketing today. Q. So why should companies be using SEO in their overall marketing strategy? A. Well we know from the last few years that the amount of people searching for information online is increasing every year. In fact, in February 2011 Google said they had 2 Billion plus searches per day. So the question most businesses need to ask themselves is that when people are searching for their product or service is their company at the head of that list? If the answer is no, than they need SEO. Q. So then what’s the first step? A. One of the most basic things a company can do to start improving their search results is to make sure they have great content on their website. That means they not only answer the question of the searcher but they provide information that goes above and beyond what the searcher was expecting. It also means the content is well written, easy to follow and also incorporates multimedia like video, graphics, and audio that makes the experience more unique and sharable. Q. So you’re saying content that people want to share is a big plus? A. Not only a plus but it’s imperative. The more information that’s shared from your page/site means an increase in the viability of your website thereby increasing your search result rank. Links to and from your site provides the same benefit. Q. Would that be true with blogs? A. Absolutely yes. The more you’re mentioned in blogs and social media networks (like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. ) the more you’ll increase your business’ ranking in search results. Q. What about website speed? I’ve read recently that slow speeds can hurt SEO. A. Research has shown that the faster your site the more likely it is for your customers to stay longer and buy multiple products (if you have an e-commerce site). Site speed also helps in your ranking as far as Google is concerned. Not only is your hosting strategy a key here but you also need to make sure you do simple things like keeping images at a quality that’s sufficient, not overly high or deleting unused images. Q. What about Google Places? Is that important for business to use? A. Yes, it’s essential for businesses to compete in the local marketplace. There are some main factors that matter the most. First, make sure your physical address matches in every place where it’s cited. That includes street address, city, state, zip code, phone number, email address and website address. You also want to make sure you claim it by making it an “Owner-Verified Listing.” Also make sure that everything is verified by you – the categories are correct, etc. Contact us today to find out how we can assist you in all your internet marketing needs!

DiscoverTec delivers FireHouse Subs High-Availability Website Hosting
6.20.2011 DiscoverTec recently teamed up with the great folks at Firehouse Subs to provide a high-availability managed hosting environment to meet their business objectives. “We couldn’t be happier delivering such a rock solid solution for one of our favorite home-grown franchises” said Pete Valentine, EVP of Technology at DiscoverTec. “Companies often trivialize the importance of their hosting provider when it comes to delivering their message online, not the case with FireHouse Subs” said Valentine. DiscoverTec implemented a Web Farm & Web Garden solution providing enhanced security, performance and availability to their website. “We are very happy to partner with DiscoverTec” said Jeremy Gibeault IT manager at Firehouse Subs. “They have been extremely easy to work with and very helpful in getting our website set up and running smoothly. “ DiscoverTec’s high availability implies no human intervention to restore operation in complex systems. “DiscoverTec utilizes active redundancy to achieve high availability with no performance decline,” said Valentine. Multiple items of the same kind are incorporated into a design that includes a method to detect failure and automatically reconfigure the system to bypass failed items using a voting scheme. This technology ensures that your site performs and is always available 24x7x365. As the leader in hosting Microsoft applications, DiscoverTec has tuned our architecture, our deployment and integration techniques, our secure authentication methods, our monitoring and our support to provide the most secure, reliable, high-performance, and user-friendly hosted Microsoft environment on the market today. “We are very happy with our website performance and the tools DiscoverTec has to offer,” said Gibeault. To learn how DiscoverTec can help your business exceed its requirements, Contact Us.