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INAP: The Hybrid Infrastructure Company

Today, more than 93 percent of mid-size businesses have or plan to have a multi-platform strategy to serve the strategic business needs and tactical requirements of their enterprise systems and digital infrastructure initiatives. *

As the enterprise becomes more distributed and the remote work paradigm unfolds, there is an accelerating need to migrate workloads out of the corporate, on-premise data center and into more flexible, resilient, scalable and secure cloud and modern data center solutions.

While “cloud-first” has been a growing trend, many IT and digital leaders are now leading with a “right time, right place” strategy, which carries a higher probability to successfully deliver expected business outcomes and velocity of innovation. This “right time, right place” thinking is fueling the demand for hybrid infrastructure platforms.

According to Gartner:

“Workload placement is not only about moving to the cloud, it is about creating a baseline for infrastructure strategy based on workloads rather than physical data centers. This is causing I&O leaders to rethink infrastructure strategies, which have a direct impact on enterprise data centers.”

Recent research from INAP confirms this. A majority of IT pros said in our recent State of IT Infrastructure Management survey that the global pandemic has made their organizations more likely to move workloads away from on-site, physical data centers. The top destinations included not just hyperscale cloud, but also colocation and hosted private cloud solutions, indicating more than ever that hybrid is here and here to stay.

The Case for Hybrid Infrastructure

There are many reasons to choose a hybrid solution; let’s dive into a few of the best use cases:

When Lift and Shift is the Least Effective Option

Most enterprise applications sitting in the corporate data center are not “cloud-ready” and were not built to perform properly in distributed public clouds. This makes moving them difficult or impossible without extensive re-architecture. Across the board, environments that are not fully optimized for applications is the number one factor holding back infrastructure strategies, according to IT pros surveyed by INAP. With the right hybrid strategy, however, application-infrastructure mismatches will be a thing of the past.

When Security and Compliance Demand an Alternate Path

Many industries operate in complex regulatory environments as a result of data governance, privacy and security. Again, these workloads may not be suitable for public cloud or other multi-tenant solutions. The increased focus on data sovereignty in certain countries makes moving all applications and data sources to a single cloud risky and complex. The impact of data gravity and the need to process and store data as close to the source or destination as possible increases the need for a distributed architecture and location independence.

When Your Workloads Require Sophisticated Multiplatform Architectures

In the near future, business needs will drive workload placement and integration across multiple platforms will be necessary to maintain a competitive advantage and control costs. As a result, hybrid deployments will be the norm for the foreseeable future. Applications must remain part of a highly connected, secure and integrated enterprise ecosystem to effectively serve the needs of the business.

When Operational Flexibility is Paramount

As the requirements of the business change, so must the infrastructure that supports them. This is why many enterprise and digital innovators are choosing hybrid to maximize their chances of success as a smarter approach to infrastructure outsourcing. The fact is, where applications and data live today may not be the best destination for them to live tomorrow. As the application itself or the digital maturity of a company changes, IT and digital leaders need the flexibility to gracefully move applications to the right place, at the right time and at the right cost to get the full value of the cloud.

INAP ‘The Hybrid Infrastructure Company’

INAP is a global provider of secure, performance-oriented hybrid infrastructure solutions. We bring together an interconnected ecosystem of enterprise cloud, data center and managed services on a single technology platform. Today, our company is a combination of several respected and successful cloud and data center companies strategically brought together to create a hybrid-platform serving the mid-market enterprise and the digital innovators of tomorrow.

At INAP, we believe that flexibility is the key to creating a competitive infrastructure advantage and that the foundation of success for the mid-market enterprise and digital innovators will be built on infrastructure when and where you need it, not a single destination.

Enterprise IT and digital leaders need a single technology platform and partner that enables them to move workloads and innovate at the right time and right place without the barriers of lock-in to a single strategy.

And we provide it at INAP.

We were the first company in the industry to develop a solution spend portability program allowing clients to move infrastructure solutions, dollar-for-dollar, part way through their contracts. The program remains central to our identity and is one of several reasons why we are “The Hybrid Infrastructure Company” that helps simplify your infrastructure transformation journey.

INAP for Enterprise IT

Regardless of where you are today in your cloud journey – on-premise, hybrid, physical, virtual or public, INAP can help you navigate and transform by leveraging a combination of our strategically located data centers, enterprise cloud, dedicated bare metal, disaster recovery, security, public cloud and managed services solutions.

Our expert solution teams leverage a comprehensive, consultative approach through our Infrastructure by Business Objective (IBO) framework that ensures alignment of your mission-critical applications to available services, location, platform and deployment strategy to maximize your business outcome and return on investment.

INAP for the Digital Innovator

Whether you are in E-commerce, Gaming, Advertising Technology, Big Data or you are building the applications to power your digital tomorrow, INAP brings a rich history of delivering the lowest-latency networking and diverse global peering coupled with performance-oriented bare metal solutions that maximize response time, scale and flexibility to enhance the end-consumer experience. As innovators ourselves, we are hyper-focused on delivering the industry’s strongest SLA’s, unparalleled visibility and high-performance across our single-tenant, multi-tenant and modern data center solutions to build your digital infrastructure.

Ready to chart your hybrid course? We’re ready to partner with you.

Interested in learning more about INAP?

* Flexera State of the Cloud 2020

https://blog.cloudera.com/why-adopt-a-hybrid-multi-cloud-strategy/

Joe Corvaia

Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer

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How to Create a Company Page on LinkedIn to Promote Your Small Business

With the rise of social media marketing and the prevalence of social networks in our day-to-day lives, having a presence on a variety of platforms is a must for your company. That means creating and managing multiple accounts, which can be time-consuming.

Fortunately, building and maintaining a company page on LinkedIn only takes a little extra time and effort. By adding an air of professionalism to your online presence and showing off your products or services, a well-rounded LinkedIn page can help polish and promote your company’s identity.

This article will explain the many benefits of creating a company page on LinkedIn. Then we’ll show you how to launch one, pointing out the important requirements you’ll need to meet along the way. Let’s dive on in!

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The Benefits of Having an Outstanding LinkedIn Company Page

As a social media platform designed to help people build their professional networks, LinkedIn is a crucial resource for any business that’s hoping to grow and expand. It can help you get plugged into industry-related news and even share valuable content that promotes your company.

When compared with individual employee profiles, a LinkedIn company page can be much more effective at showcasing your business as a whole. Of course, your employees’ profiles are still useful as well. They can act as indirect company ambassadors and help build your connections organically.

On the other hand, a company page is a useful outlet for showing off your business’ latest news, along with your specialized products or services. LinkedIn will help deliver this content to other professionals in your industry to generate buzz and business.

Another handy feature of the platform is that you can easily monitor the impact of your page. Notifications and visual analytics reports will keep you apprised of how often your company is mentioned on LinkedIn so that you can see the effects of your presence there.

Plus, this will help you create effective promotional content for your page. You can keep track of trending content to see what’s working, and use custom Call to Action (CTA) buttons to send traffic towards your website. In other words, a LinkedIn company page offers a lot of potential advantages.

How to Create an Award-Winning Company Page on LinkedIn (In 6 Steps)

There are quite a few things to consider if you want to create a company page and successfully promote your business on LinkedIn. However, with a little careful planning, it can be worth the investment of time and energy. The steps below will help you effectively plan and build your page.

Step 1: Ensure That You Meet LinkedIn’s Requirements for Creating a Company Page

One potential roadblock when it comes to creating your LinkedIn company page is that there are a handful of requirements you must meet to access this feature. For instance, you’ll need to have a personal LinkedIn profile of your own. That account also has to:

Be at least seven days old
Have a profile strength of Intermediate or All Star
Show that you’re currently an employee at the company you wish to create a page for
List your company position on your profile
Have several first-degree connections (there’s no specific number you must reach, but the more you can include, the better)
Be associated with a company email address that has a unique company domain

In short, if you’re not an active LinkedIn user already, it can be challenging to get a company page started. Fortunately, anyone who’s an employee at your business can create and manage your company page. As long as you have at least one active LinkedIn user, meeting these requirements shouldn’t be too hard.

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Step 2: Add Your Company’s Details to Launch Your New Page

Once your profile (or an employee’s profile) meets all of LinkedIn’s requirements for creating a company page, you can do so by clicking on the Work icon in the toolbar. Then scroll down and select Create a Company Page.

On the next screen, choose the tile that best describes your business. After that, you’ll be able to fill in some basic details about your company. Start with your company’s name and then create your custom LinkedIn company page URL. Don’t forget to add your website’s address as well.

Next, you can select your company’s industry, size, and type. You have to choose from several drop-down menu options, so you may need to pick the available choice that’s most relevant, especially when it comes to your industry.

After that, scroll down to upload your company’s logo and add your tagline. These elements are essential for promoting brand recognition through your profile.

Keep an eye on the Page Preview section to get a peek at how your company page will look. When all your information is correct, check the box to agree to LinkedIn’s terms and then hit the Create page button.

Step 3: Spruce Up Your Company’s Profile to Attract and Inform Visitors

After you’ve officially created your company page, you can start adding additional information and brand elements. First and foremost, you’ll probably want to include a banner image. This is a large image that will be displayed at the top of your page, similar to a cover photo on Facebook.

You can use the small blue pencil icons to edit various features on your company page, including your banner image. You might use a team photo, a picture of your brick-and-mortar location, a popular product image, or a relevant decorative visual.

Additionally, you’ll want to write a compelling summary of your company for the Overview in your About section. LinkedIn provides limited space here — just 2,000 characters, including spaces — so you’ll want to make every word count. Be sure to highlight what makes your company unique and better than the competition.

Then head over to the Jobs section of your page. Here you can provide career-related information and job postings.

Since many LinkedIn users take advantage of the platform’s job hunting features, this can help to boost your page’s visibility. Just make sure to keep it updated so you don’t have people applying for positions that are no longer available.

Step 4: Post Regular Updates to Generate Industry-Related Content

Now that your page is up and includes all your company’s information and some key branding elements, it’s time to start filling it with content. There are a few ways to go about this. One of the easiest is to use LinkedIn to promote blog content you’ve already created for your business website.

This doesn’t require you to generate any new long-form content, and it can drive visitors to your website via your blog. Simply include LinkedIn as a part of your blog promotion strategy, and you’ll have a regular source of content for your company page.

However, you can also include recent business news, upcoming events, and other company-specific posts to keep your followers in the loop.

This can be a smart and simple way to demonstrate your authority in your industry, promote events, and even attract more followers. Just remember that, as with a blog, your LinkedIn company page will thrive when filled with relevant content that your followers want to see and read.

Step 5: Promote Your LinkedIn Company Page to Gain Followers

Your company page isn’t very useful if no one knows it exists. Especially when you’re first getting it off the ground, promotion will be vital to gathering followers. One of the easiest ways to get started is by adding your company’s location to your page’s About section.

This makes your company and job postings more discoverable on LinkedIn. Your page will be more likely to show up in searches as a result. Using relevant keywords in your page’s content can also help to increase your reach.

Another key promotional tactic is engaging your employees on LinkedIn. Invite them to list your company page on their own profiles and claim it as their place of employment. This will help you tap into their already existing networks to make connections with others in your industry.

Finally, it never hurts to promote your LinkedIn page on other social channels. This may mean including links to your company page in your Twitter bio or your Facebook About section. You could also include LinkedIn among your social sharing icons on your website and blog posts.

Step 6: Showcase Individual Products or Services on Their Own Pages

So far, we’ve covered all the basics for creating and maintaining a LinkedIn company page. However, you can take your profile to the next level and use it as a way to promote specific products or services, by creating showcase pages as well.

These are pages dedicated to your company’s products or services. They appear on your company page in the right-hand sidebar, under Affiliated pages.

You can write a description, share a link, and even post content on each of your showcase pages. If you offer a wide range of products or services, this is a way to provide targeted content for each of your audiences. In some cases, this technique may be more effective than offering generalized content on your company page itself.

If you’d like to create more traditional, campaign-based content for LinkedIn, you might also consider using the platform’s advertising options. LinkedIn ads are highly targeted and can help you reach other professionals in your industry, generate leads, attract job applicants, and more.

Linking Up

You have a lot of options when it comes to promoting your business on social media. With its professional audience and unique opportunities for showing off your products and services, LinkedIn can prove well worth your time.

This guide has demonstrated how to create a high-quality LinkedIn company page in just six steps:

Ensure that you meet LinkedIn’s requirements for creating a company page.
Add your company’s details to launch your new page.
Spruce up your company’s profile to attract and inform visitors.
Post regular updates to generate industry-related content.
Promote your LinkedIn company page to gain followers.
Showcase individual products or services on their own pages.

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