ZR Systems Blog

VPLS, a cloud-to-edge computing and solutions provider, announces today its acquisition of ZR Systems, an Aiea-based managed IT services company. The combined company will more effectively serve the growing Hawaiian client base with a range of dedicated onsite support, professional services, and industry-leading software and hardware solutions.

With this acquisition, VPLS expands its data center footprint into Hawaii, bringing its total number of global sites to 19. Additionally, Ricky Zheng, founder of ZR Systems, will join VPLS’s executive management team, bringing more than 20 years of industry experience to his new VP role.

“I am happy to extend a warm welcome to the ZR Systems clients and our new team members as they join the VPLS family,” said Arman Khalili, CEO of VPLS. “ZR Systems has a stellar reputation in the community and we are proud to partner with the local team to continue to offer quality cloud and IT solutions to this unique growing market. Together, we are committed to meeting the growing IT needs of the Hawaiian market.”

“We are excited to continue to serve the Hawaiian community,” states Ricky Zheng, owner of ZR Systems. “Together with VPLS, we will be able to expand our service portfolio with cloud-to-edge solutions, giving us the opportunity to assist both small businesses and growing enterprises. This acquisition reaffirms our collective goals of providing cost-effective, world-class support to our valued customers.”

ZR Systems will be known as “ZR Systems, a VPLS company” for a short period following this acquisition. Its expanded service portfolio will now include public and private cloud, bare metal and VPS hosting, colocation, disaster recovery and backup, as well as expanded professional services including managed network and managed SOC services.

Companies around the world have or are finding the need to send their workers home to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. For many business owners, managing your staff remotely is a brand new paradigm. Here’s what you need to know.

It has reached the point that, if you have a business, you had better have a backup prepared. Otherwise, the digital data that modern businesses like yours rely on is vulnerable to loss. Of course, depending on the age of your business, you may have data that no longer applies to your operations. That’s why we’re going over how to select the data you should continue to back up.

Microsoft’s solutions are fairly common among businesses, so there’s a fair chance that you utilize Microsoft Office 365, which gives you access to Microsoft’s cloud storage solution, OneDrive. Using this, your users are better able to share documents and collaborate on them… but what if you don’t want your users sharing company documents willy-nilly? Today, our tip will cover how to control sharing in OneDrive.

Servers are the brains of your business insofar that’s where most of the critical information is stored, and a server failure (with no contingency plan in place) could spell the end-times for your business. With that information, you should be looking for the most reliable option that works for you. Today, we’re going to look at the differences between using hosted servers vs. paying for your own in-house server. 

Businesses generate and collect a huge amount of data - some of it, practically useless, and some, critical to your business and its operations. It is this latter group that makes it so important that you have a comprehensive backup plan ready to go.

You have to establish your organization as a contender. To do so, you’re going to need to use at least the caliber of tools that your competition is using. According to the 2020 State of IT report that Spiceworks has released, the majority of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have plans to adopt new technology solutions.

There is no question that today’s business operations require technology, but even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Not only do businesses need technology, they need to maintain this technology as well. Below, we’ll review the three basic steps to technology maintenance… and how we can help simplify these steps for you.

Most of us like to take matters into our own hands, almost to a point where we might refer to ourselves as control freaks. So, when it comes to letting other people or even our own devices update themselves, we tend to click “remind me later” or “don’t ask me again”. Patches however, are a crucial task in the computing era. Keeping everything up-to-date aids your business in staying one step ahead of lurking threats. Recently, Microsoft announced that it had two major security updates which required emergency patches. 

Users seem to have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to solutions put out by Google, particularly the risks associated with Gmail. It’s almost odd to say: a security threat leverages Gmail. Unfortunately, it isn’t unheard of, as a phishing scam has been leveraging Gmail and its cooperation with Google Calendar for some time now.

To the average person there are some definite blurred lines between IT security and IT compliance. In fact, these lines are so blurry to most people that they would consider them the same thing. They aren’t. How is it possible to create a fully compliant, completely secure computing environment? You start by understanding how to make both possible.

Information technology continues to play a more significant role in businesses, and as technology changes, so should yours. IT procurement is a critical part of any business’ success, which means that your business can greatly benefit from a managed service provider. They have the know-how to procure all of the best technology. Today, we will discuss how your business can acquire the IT it deserves. 

Many businesses are capitalizing on the vast amount of benefits Managed IT services can bring to the table. These service providers are able to assist your business in obtaining, and managing the technology that you rely on. Working with one of these providers can help your business simplify data management practices, as well as make them much more secure. Today we will go over how they are able to do so.

When you need something done that requires a level of skill or experience or knowledge that you don’t have, what do you do? Generally, you call in someone who has the required skill, experience, or knowledge that is required. Your business’ information technology strategy should be approached in the same way. As we continue our series on how managed services can make a business more efficient, we’re considering consultants.

Old-school business information technology support isn’t necessarily wrong, but it most definitely isn’t cheap nor efficient. IT support strategies are developing in ways that some time ago, would have thought to be unheard of. Your business no longer needs a full on-site staff designated to maintaining network security or updating software. In part two of our five-part series, we discuss how your business can have the support it needs through managed services. 

ZR Systems is proud to announce the launch of our new website at www.zrsystems.com. The goal of the new website is to make it easier for our existing clients to submit and manage support requests, and provide more information about our services for prospective clients.

Computers sometimes appear to have a mind of their own. For businesses, this is less than ideal. If the support structure is not in place to take control of your business’ infrastructure, your business' profitability may be negatively impacted. In this five-part series, we will discuss how being proactive keeps your technology in check. 

Too frequently, we hear stories about cyberattacks, software vulnerabilities turned tragic, and other pretty terrible situations for businesses. In an effort to help fight this, we’ve put together a list of handy tips for you so that you can be prepared to ward off threats.

Are the computers in your office beginning to show their age? Do you even know how old they are? For the sake of your productivity, it may be time to replace them for a newer model. We’ll go over some warning signs that your computers may be nearing their retirement age.

Patches are a critically important aspect of your technology. As a result, you need to be sure that yours are managed properly. We have three tips to share so you can optimize your patch management processes.