Category: Managed Services

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EKTECH: Pioneering Seamless Connectivity and Uninterrupted Business Operations

In today’s fast-paced and interconnected world, robust and reliable network infrastructure is vital for businesses to ensure smooth operations and seamless connectivity. EKTECH, a leading independent service aggregator and managed network service provider, has emerged as a trailblazer in this field. By offering comprehensive end-to-end solutions tailored to clients’ unique needs, EKTECH has set new standards in the industry. Premium Service and Proactive Support EKTECH’s core objective is to deliver premium end-to-end services to clients who highly value uninterrupted network uptime and proactive support for their telecommunication needs. The company’s focus on providing comprehensive solutions empowers businesses to operate seamlessly and achieve their goals. EKTECH excels in managing complex wide-area-networking environments and interconnecting multi-telco hybrid communications setups. With a relentless commitment to high uptime, EKTECH ensures uninterrupted connectivity through multi-telco redundancies for adequate failure backups. The company’s round-the-clock proactive monitoring and swift on-site response guarantee optimal reliability and efficiency. Expertise in Complex Multi-Telco Environments EKTECH distinguishes itself from other managed network service providers by leveraging its unparalleled expertise in building and managing highly complex multi-telco, hybrid environments seamlessly integrating fixed lines and wireless 4G systems. With over 15 years of experience delivering and managing enterprise 4G cellular networks for critical

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Managed Network

Say Goodbye to Downtime and Hello to Seamless Network Performance

In today’s business world, network performance is a critical factor that determines the success of your organisation. Your network is the backbone of your operations, and any downtime can lead to significant losses. Downtime can cause revenue loss, decreased productivity, and loss of customer trust. As a business owner or executive, you need to ensure that your network is up and running at all times. In this article, we will explore the best practices for ensuring seamless network performance and minimising downtime. Implement Redundant Infrastructure One of the best ways to prevent downtime is to implement redundant infrastructure. Redundancy means having a backup system in place that can take over in the event of a failure. This ensures that your network remains operational even if there is an outage or hardware failure. Redundancy can be achieved by using redundant power supplies, network switches, and firewalls. By having a redundant infrastructure, you can significantly reduce the risk of downtime and maintain business continuity. Invest in Quality Equipment Investing in quality equipment is another essential factor in ensuring seamless network performance. Low-quality equipment can lead to frequent breakdowns, slower network speeds, and overall poor performance. When selecting equipment, it’s crucial to consider

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O Briens Bangsar South
Managed Network

How EKTECH Helped To Solve O’Briens Network Connectivity

O’Briens Irish Sandwich Café, a popular international lifestyle chain café from Ireland known for their healthy wholesome meals. Operating in Malaysia since 2002, the cafe chain currently has 20 outlets in Malaysia but is now on a rapid expansion plan.  Due to their aggressive plan, they ran into a number of issues getting broadband connection for their outlets. When O’Briens applied for internet broadband service from the usual service providers, the response they received was unsatisfactory: Fiber broadband infrastructure was not available and it would take months to get a network line connection. No alternate solution was provided by their service provider, which means that their outlets had to operate in offline mode for several months. EKTECH’s Solution The owner of O’Briens, Mr. Brian Pua, approached EKTECH for help, having discovered that EKTECH provides reliable independent managed network connectivity services for enterprises. EKTECH managed to solve Mr. Pua’s problem immediately by providing a wireless solution to overcome the “No infra” problem.  EKTECH as an independent service provider was able to provide any telco provider with the best coverage.   Not only did EKTECH solve the connectivity issue, but they also provided a dual-line multi-telco solution, to provide additional backup and hence

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Managed Network

Why Retailers Need Network Infrastructure Upgrades

As retailers continue to compete in an ever-changing marketplace, they must remain agile and responsive to customer needs. One of the most critical components of this response is network infrastructure. Retailers require a fast, reliable, and secure network to manage their operations, support online and in-store transactions, and provide customer service. However, many retailers are still operating on outdated or inefficient network infrastructure, putting them at a competitive disadvantage. Here are the 4 key reasons why retailers need network infrastructure upgrades and how a managed network service provider can help. 1. Improved Speed and Reliability Retailers need a fast and reliable network to process transactions, manage inventory, and communicate with suppliers and customers. With the rise of online shopping, retailers must be able to handle an increasing amount of traffic on their networks. An outdated network infrastructure can slow down operations, leading to frustrated customers and lost sales. By upgrading to a modern network infrastructure, retailers can improve network speed, reduce downtime, and increase customer satisfaction.  2. Enhance Security Retailers are a prime target for cybercriminals due to the vast amount of personal and financial data they collect. A data breach can result in significant financial losses, legal liabilities, and

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Managed Network

Rise In Demand For Managed Network Services Business Recovery, Post-Covid

As we know, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to quickly pivot and transform their business practices to adapt or face imminent closure. The inability to travel across borders and necessity for social distancing gave rise to the need for businesses to find a way to allow their employees to work from home or remotely without disruptions. We adapted, and now it is time to advance. The pandemic has made many businesses realise that there is a need for managed network services. Managed network services are networking applications, functions, and services that enterprises outsource to be remotely operated, monitored, and maintained by a managed service provider. Its main purpose is to free up the team’s time, redirect their focus to more important business matters at hand, and maximise business resources. Moving forward, as businesses move into the recovery stages, we will see a rise in demand for such services. The use of on-premises servers for critical applications are expected to decline as organisations will be looking to outsource their IT requirements even more. The work-from-home culture is also expected to continue or at most, evolve to become a flexible hybrid – “the work from home and office” arrangement –

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Managed Network

EKTECH Signs with Teltonika as a Solution Partner to Provide IoT Solutions

EKTECH Communications Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of EKTECH Group, is an innovative wireless and IoT solutions provider. It has been signed as a solution partner to Teltonika IoT Group to provide Teltonika’s IoT products and solutions for Malaysian enterprises. Teltonika is a European company group that develops exceptional Internet of Things solutions for the global market. More than 20 million IoT devices has been deployed worldwide and connected to the  Internet. Teltonika has Telematics, Networks, Mobility and Industrial Automation solutions that caters for IR4.0 deployment in Energy, Smart City, Transportation, Enterprise and Retail.   EKTECH as a leading wireless 4G Solutions System Integrator and Managed Network Service provider makes it an ideal partner to provide and support Teltonika’s products for enterprises.

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Managed Network

How Network Downtime Costs Your Business

Oftentimes, businesses fail to see the importance of technology until it malfunctions, leading to network downtime. Network downtime refers to the inaccessibility of a network due to the failure of a particular system, application, or the entire network of a company. Although the interruption may be temporary, the true cost of network downtime is more than just money – it can have serious commercial consequences and lasting damage to a company’s reputation. According to TechRadar, 37% of SMBs in a survey done by cloud-based data protection company Infrascale said they have lost customers and 17% have lost revenue due to downtime.  However, just saying downtime negatively impacts your business is like saying smoking is bad without understanding what it does to your body. Thus, to understand the importance of network technology maintenance, we need to accurately assess the costs of downtime, of which there are four: 1. Loss of Revenue When your network is down, your business becomes unable to perform revenue-producing operations, such as checking stock, inputting orders, and processing transactions. When this happens, your employees may have to do it themselves manually or put in overtime, which leads to mistakes and potentially more business costs. For example, your

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4G Wireless

How the IoT Transformed the Vending Machine

The earliest example of how the Internet of Things (IoT) changed the vending machine was when students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) came up with an idea to put microswitches inside the Coca-Cola vending machine to track how many bottles were available at any given time. At that time, the students and faculty of CMU were consuming around 120 bottles of Coca-Cola products each day, which resulted in times when thirsty students and faculty would find themselves standing in front of an empty Coke machine after a troublesome walk up or down a flight of stairs. In addition to the microswitches, they also created a software for the departmental computer to track how recently the bottles were loaded, so students and faculty could ping the computer for information about the availability of soft drinks. Today, the functionality of IoT in the vending machine has evolved beyond just tracking stock availability. Here are five examples how the IoT has transformed the vending machine to be capable of enhancing economic returns and delivering a better user experience: 1. Smart Payments Following the COVID-19 pandemic, most consumers have adopted cashless modes of payment and are now used to it. Being able to pay

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Managed Network

Understanding Private Network & Why It Matters For Business

A private network is a restricted network with access given to a closed group of people or within an organisation and the network is connected to known nodes. In a private network, the IP addresses allocated are private and not known or exposed to external parties. This is the opposite of a public network, which is open for connection with anyone and can connect to any nodes available such as the Internet. Organisations need private networks to secure data transmissions of sensitive information between nodes that are geographically spread out. For example, between offices, branches and outlets that are in different parts of the country or different parts of the world that is impossible to connect with direct cabling or LAN infrastructure.  A private network typically uses dedicated lines for each organisation, thus bandwidth and throughput are guaranteed, with better connectivity.  Typically, an organisation would subscribe to a local or international telecommunications service provider to build such a network, by using their infrastructure to connect the nodes privately through many types of technologies, such as dedicated fixed-lines with private IP addresses.  Security and throughput are just one of the many advantages that a private network can bring to your business,

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Managed Network

How To Improve IoT Cybersecurity

Living in an Internet of Things (IoT) landscape, cybersecurity is now more relevant than ever. IoT is referred to as a system of interconnected day to day objects in our world– computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, animals, or people in our environment – that can be uniquely identified with the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction, in other terms, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. The adoption of IoT has brought many benefits to organisations, such as increase operational efficiency, provide better understanding of customers to deliver enhanced customer service, and improve decision-making processes. However, with great power comes great responsibility. In an age where almost every device is connected to the Internet, we are even more vulnerable to threats, because not only do we have to worry about physical threats such as fires, theft or break-ins, but we also must worry about virtual threats such as malware and hacking. According to Mike Nelson, Vice President of IoT Security at DigiCert, “…the IoT is about connecting things to create new, actionable data.  Anytime connectivity is introduced into a system, cyber risks go up. If left unsecured, this connectivity can open backdoors into the organization’s network.” Therefore,

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4G Wireless

What Is Low Latency and How To Achieve It

In your business, it is likely that you have experienced slow network due to high traffic. This is what is called network latency or a lag. The term is used to describe delays in communication over a network, with latency referring to the amount of time it takes for a packet of data to travel over a network between sender and receiver. Latency is measured in milliseconds (ms). Typically, in a Local Area Network (LAN), the latency is negligible, clocking in below 10ms. Small number of delays mean that your connection is experiencing lower latency and is what is referred to as a low-latency network. A high-latency network means long delays, which creates bottlenecks in communication – think of it like traffic on a four-lane highway trying to merge into a single lane. So, what are the causes of network latency? Distance: The further away the device making the request is from the servers responding to those requests geographically, the longer the delay will be. This is because data travelling back and forth across the internet often must cross multiple Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). Website Design: Webpages that need to load content from several third-party websites or has large files

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Managed Network

How SD-WAN Helps You Save Internet Cost

A Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a virtual WAN architecture that allows enterprises to dynamically route traffic across a hybrid-WAN based on the current network status by utilising multiple connections networks – including MPLS, LTE and broadband internet services. In short, the software determines the best way to route your traffic to your remote locations, which makes it much more efficient than traditional WAN routing. As a result, SD-WAN can help your business save on internet costs. Typically, WAN connections were built on multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), a more expensive technology with limited bandwidth but excellent quality of service (QoS). Knowing that most WAN traffic is of low value such as web content, file sharing and email – instead of wasting expensive bandwidth on high volume traffic, SD-WAN can aggregate more than one internet connection such as the low-cost public internet with the more expensive IP VPN, users can get higher speed internet for lower cost. Think RM200 – RM300 for 100mbps compared to dedicated fixed-line broadband at RM2,000 – RM 4,000 for 2mbps of bandwidth. If that’s the case, why do we even need fixed-line broadband connections anyway? Fixed-line is still required because they are more reliable and

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EKTECH Managed Services
Managed Network

Understanding Managed Services & Why You Need It

To understand what managed services are means breaking it down into two words: “managed” and “services”. Therefore, managed services refer to IT services provided by a third-party to operate an organization’s IT Operations. These services may include everything from providing and managing hardware such as desktops servers, routers and switches, to managing software such as applications, operating systems and firewalls, and managing network infrastructure.  There are various reasons why your organisation should outsource the management of their operations to third-party providers. Managed services enable organisations to: Improve efficiency and reliability of IT operations Some businesses lack the resources and skills to handle an entire operations. Compared to getting your in-house IT staff to dedicate extra time to learning the ropes and overburdening them with additional tasks, it is much more efficient and reliable to work with a third-party IT provider who already know what to do. They won’t be replacing your in-house IT staff, but they help to enhance your capabilities and free up your in-house team to focus on other strategic priorities. Ensure the network has the latest technologies and equipment Collaborating with a managed service provider also means that you get to enjoy the benefits of their technologies

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EKTECH NOC
Managed Network

2 EKTECH Network Operation Centres, Double The Support

While most IT solution companies have one network operation centre, at EKTECH, we have two – which means double the support that we can provide to your business. For the uninitiated, a network operations centre (NOC) is a centralised location where our company and our technical staff can provide 24-hour supervision in monitoring and managing your company’s services, databases, external services, firewalls and network. Our NOC is your first line of defence against any attacks or disruptions that you might experience with your telecommunication networks. A NOC is designed with two major considerations in mind: scalability and redundancy. Scalability refers the capacity to handle the number of user connections to the NOC at any one time, while redundancy means the ability to have multiple copies of critical data stored across different locations. For example, if a user loses their connection to the NOC, another copy of the same information could still be accessed from a backup device. Therefore, having two NOCs is the optimal situation that your business could have. The reason being in the case of an outage, EKTECH has another NOC to provide geographic redundancy so that your business continuity will not be affected. It also means that

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4G Wireless

EKTECH Communications Helps Popular Convenience Store Roll Out Food Vending Machines

Vending technology has grown and evolved throughout the years to provide not only convenience to consumers to purchase items out-of-store, but it gives retailers the opportunity to reach more customers with a smaller foot print.  Not only does it provide convenience and reach for both consumer and retailers but it gives immediate feedback on consumer purchases and choices. The need for real-time data has become a priority for retailers to stay ahead of the competition.  Real-time data allows for better planning and marketing by giving retailers info on trends and inventory level, allowing just-in-time stocking.  With wireless 4G VPN connectivity, it gives retailers the speed, flexibility, bandwidth and security to roll out their vending machine anywhere. EKTECH’s multi-telco managed wireless technology for vending machine connectivity gives retailers a very reliable and resilient network so that they can concentrate on their core business without worry of network disruption especially with a single provider network.  Our flexible solutions can be adapted and tailored to any business size and industry. With the possibilities for vending machines to be placed at outdoor environments where fixed lines are not available and stability of a connectivity is at risk, EKTECH’s vending machine connectivity uses a dual-sim multi-telco network allowing

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4G Wireless

EKTECH Provides Wireless Technology to Mobile Banks

EKTECH recently helped a major Malaysian bank to provide mobile banking services to their rural customers in Sarawak. Due to the pandemic lockdown, their customers find it hard to go to their banks or ATMs to do their banking transactions. As a solution, the bank has decided to bring the services to their customers directly by making the services mobile. In order to achieve this, ATMs are placed on a moving truck that brings the services to the customers overcoming the travel restrictions. The feedback of this solution has been widely praised and accepted by their customers. EKTECH helped made this possible by providing the mobile wireless connectivity to the vehicle. We deployed our dual-sim multi-telco hybrid wireless service that ensures constant connectivity for the mobile bank throughout its journey. Our team actively and remotely monitors and manages the wireless service, 24×7, to ensure there is no network disruption that ultimately will affect their customers’ experience. EKTECH has been providing wireless 4G connectivity solutions to Banks and Financial Institutions for over 12 years enabling the banks to roll out new services from anywhere without being restricted by physical branches.

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EKTECH Magazine Cover
Brand

EKTECH Group – Connecting and Securing Business Through Managed Networks and Digital Surveillance

MyIT magazine speaks to Datuk Teoh Eng Kee, Managing Director of EKTECH Holdings on the company’s foray into digital surveillance and innovative solutions for managed networks. Established in 2002, EKTECH Holdings is a tech company specialising in providing end-to-end advanced networking and security solutions. Founded by a team of IT professionals led by Datuk Teoh Eng Kee, the company has grown to be a leading hybrid, fixed and wireless, managed network service provider in Malaysia. EKTECH connects businesses through fixed and wireless solutions, designing and building highly reliable hybrid multi-telco networks. The company is also an experienced ELV engineering organisation, providing advanced electronic security and smart solutions. Driven by its core values of being Customer Focused, Principled, Professional, Knowledgeable and Dependable, the company serves enterprises across all industries including SMEs, oil and gas, plantations, retailers, financial institutions, and property developers, among others. A FULFILLING JOURNEY WITH EKTECH Speaking about his journey building the company, Datuk Teoh shares, “My journey building EKTECH, has been very fulfilling, with plenty of thrills and challenges over the years watching my company grow. The company has grown from a team of only 3, to over 50 employees.” “The people in EKTECH are like a big

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Managed Services

WAN As-A-Service

WAN-As-A-Service (WAAS), a more precise term for network infrastructure on subscription basis, is the future way for businesses to implement their infrastructure in an IT world moving towards cloud and remote work.  Gone are the days when remote workers in remote offices and branches, and even homes, connect to your central head office via expensive, low bandwidth multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) or IPSEC virtual private networks (IP-VPNs) to access the cloud.  With more applications moving onto the cloud, remote workers, whether in the branch, outlets of home, need to access these applications directly with more efficiency, rather than going via your central head office, congesting the network in your head office.  With the advent of Software-Defined Wide-Area Networks (SD-WAN), the complexity of connecting to several applications in several locations at the same time is simplified. SD-WAN allows your remote users to access both applications in your head office or the cloud seamlessly.  SD-WAN with their GUI software interface, allows your IT personnel to easily configure multi network paths for your users to access these applications from their remote office.   Paths can be defined based on type, speed and cost of network communications available. By engaging a Manage Service Provider

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Managed Services

How SD-WAN aid remote working challenges

COVID-19 has left an impact on how companies run their daily operations and some are even making work from home (WFH) or a hybrid version of it, as their permanent work routine. So how are businesses coping with the network complexities and risks involved where their remote workers need to access to their cloud-hosted applications while maintaining the security and network infrastructure? Software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) uses software applications to help businesses create complex hybrid networks combining private and public networks to interconnect and route traffic through different types of communication lines to and from their branches and offices to various destination. For example, enterprises have been using SD-WANs to connect their branches to their headquarters. This feature allows SD-WAN to optimise your network and provides your team the ability to work remotely with no lags and more securely. The benefits of SD-WAN are evidently needed during these uncertain times, especially for businesses who are ongoing with the digital transformation. SD-WAN is a strategic investment for businesses who are looking to support remote working and secure access to cloud services and applications. With the post-COVID world likely to implement remote working, it is a vital to future-proof your company.

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