The Aldridge Company and Rafte & Company Merge Services

February 1st, 2012

Leading IT consulting firms join forces to deliver strategic business solutions

HOUSTON, February 1, 2012 – The Aldridge Company (www.aldridge.com), a leading provider, consultant and integrator of Information Technology and Cloud Computing solutions for SMBs, and Rafte & Company (www.rafte.com), a leading provider of business and technology consulting services for law firms, nonprofit organizations  and other professional services firms, today announced the completion of the merger of IT support services. Under the agreement, Rafte & Company will leverage the strengths of The Aldridge Company’s Managed Services practice while continuing to focus on its strengths in the areas of business process improvement, application evaluation/selection, and consulting services for professional services firms.

“After working closely with Rafte & Company on numerous projects during the past three years, it became clear that we could accomplish more and deliver more value to our customers by combining our IT support services than we could separately,” said Chief Operating Officer, Patrick R. Wiley. “Dena and her team are experts in business process and technology for professional services firms who will be valuable assets as The Aldridge Company works to gain a strong foothold in those markets.”

The two companies share a similar history. Both were established to help Houston companies integrate technology into their business processes in the mid-1980s – Rafte & Company in 1983 and The Aldridge Company in 1984. Despite the similarities, the two rarely competed. The Aldridge Company focuses on helping small and medium-sized businesses integrate the use of strategic technology solutions to accelerate growth while Rafte’s consulting services are focused on law firms, nonprofit organizations and other professional services firms.

“With combined IT support services, Rafte & Company and The Aldridge Company offer easy availability of cloud services as well as a full complement of technology and business consulting services for small businesses, law firms and other professional services firms,” said Rafte. “While The Aldridge Company makes it possible for organizations to focus on what they do best and handoff their IT to the experts, Rafte & Company will introduce those services to law firms, nonprofit organization and professional services firms to drive efficiencies and positively impact profitability through work flows and technology.”

This combination expands both the size and breadth of expertise of the IT staff, which will better serve customer needs. Together, The Aldridge Company and Rafte & Company will jointly provide IT solutions that include a focus on the client’s business initiatives complimented by a broad range of IT management services, including management of servers, PCs and networks coupled with rapid and accurate technical support along with expertise in business strategy and process. Other services include technology and work process evaluations, audits of security and disaster recovery readiness,  a range of hosting options from dedicated servers to cloud hosting, and makes available a full suite of business consulting services.

About Rafte & Company

Established in 1983 with headquarters in Houston, Texas, Rafte & Company specializes in designing, implementing and managing strategic business and technology consulting solutions, remote collaboration systems, document management software solutions, legal software support, IT design and management services. For more information about Rafte & Company’s business consulting, IT consulting and hosted solutions, visit www.rafte.com.

About The Aldridge Company

The Aldridge Company is a Houston, Texas-based technology management, consulting and outsourcing company.  Founded in 1984, the company brings a winning combination of professional technical expertise, extensive capabilities and a strict focus on the importance of business processes.  The Aldridge Company is a leading provider, consultant and integrator of Information Technology and Cloud Computing solutions.  In 2011, the company was listed as No. 11 on the Houston Business Journal’s Fast Tech 50 list of fastest growing Houston technology companies.

Aldridge Company News

January 9th, 2012
February 1, 2012
The Aldridge Company and Rafte & Company today announced the completion of the merger of IT support services. Under the agreement, Rafte & Company will leverage the strengths of The Aldridge Company’s Managed Services practice while continuing to focus on its strengths in the areas of business process improvement, application evaluation/selection, and consulting services for professional services firms.
January 9, 2012
The Aldridge Company today announced it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Shanghai Lingang Economic Development (Group) Co., Ltd. (SLED) to help advance cloud computing in the Pudong district of Shanghai. The Aldridge Company is among a dozen organizations joining forces to form the Shanghai Lingang Free Trade Port Economic Development, which will develop a new state-of-the-art data center designed for cloud computing.
November 29, 2011
The Aldridge Company today was recognized for the third year in a row by the Houston Business Journal as one of Houston’s fastest growing technology companies. The Aldridge Company was ranked 11th in the publication’s Fast Tech 50, achieving revenue growth of more than 106 percent in 2010.

The Aldridge Company Signs MOU to Move Chinese Companies to the Cloud

January 9th, 2012

Will offer consulting and operational services for cloud computing

HOUSTON, January 9, 2012 – The Aldridge Company (www.aldridge.com), a leading provider, consultant and integrator of Information Technology and Cloud Computing solutions for SMBs, today announced it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Shanghai Lingang Economic Development (Group) Co., Ltd. (SLED) to help advance cloud computing in the Pudong district of Shanghai. The Aldridge Company is among a dozen organizations joining forces to form the Shanghai Lingang Free Trade Port Economic Development, which will develop a new state-of-the-art data center designed for cloud computing.

Under the terms of the MOU, The Aldridge Company will offer consulting and operational services for cloud computing as customers move into the data center. In addition to opening the data center, the development intends to act as a business incubator for its partners in the Pudong district of Shanghai.

“We are proud to be helping to bring the benefits of cloud computing to business and government organizations in Eastern China and view this partnership as a key step forward in our international growth,” said David L. Aldridge, president of The Aldridge Company. “This is the first of what we hope will be many new opportunities in China and elsewhere as organizations around the world embrace the cloud.”

The Aldridge Company offers a broad range of IT solutions, including enterprise-level management of servers, PCs and networks coupled with rapid and accurate technical support. Additionally, The Aldridge Company’s data center facilities offer fully-redundant, secure hosting of servers that cross the spectrum of business disciplines. These capabilities are especially in demand in China. As a result of the Shanghai Lingang Free Trade Port Economic Development partnership, The Aldridge Company is in talks with at least one potential customer about replacing its aging IT infrastructure with a cloud computing platform.

The companies that formed the Shanghai Lingang Free Trade Port Economic Development, along with the government of Pudong, will open the development in the Yangshan Free Trade Port Area near the Yangshan Deep Water Port, part of the world’s busiest cargo port of Shanghai.  The free trade port area also has the advantages of the nearby Pudong International Airport, as well as rail and highway access. Among the 11 other partners signing the memorandum of understanding with the Shanghai Lingang Economic Development (Group) Co., Ltd., are Cisco Systems and NetApp.

About The Aldridge Company

The Aldridge Company is a Houston, Texas-based technology management, consulting and outsourcing company.  Founded in 1984, the company brings a winning combination of professional technical expertise, extensive capabilities and a strict focus on the importance of business processes.  The Aldridge Company is a leading provider, consultant and integrator of Information Technology and Cloud Computing solutions.  In 2011, the company was listed as No. 11 on the Houston Business Journal’s Fast Tech 50 list of fastest growing Houston technology companies.

Stable Service in an Ever-Changing Industry

January 3rd, 2012

From The Texas Report:

Long gone are the days when IT was a separate entity from the business it served– called on only for computer malfunctions. Today, across every industry and country, technology experts are an integral part of a company’s work. That is why it is more important than ever that a business’s technical support is able to understand thoroughly the company, its goals, and its needs.

The Aldridge Company, founded in 1984 in Houston, Texas, has never been a call-if-there’s-a-problem IT firm. The company is directed by its founder David Aldridge and a group of highly qualified professionals satisfying 300 clients, typically small-to-medium-sized businesses. Aldridge develops long-term relationships with its clients through fixed-rate service, meaning that instead of billing hourly (which some other companies use to inflate issues and take advantage of clients), Aldridge charges a flat fee for a given period, and services all of their clients’ technology needs, problems, and questions at that fixed-rate.

Read More

The Aldridge Company Featured in HBJ’s Fast Tech 50 Issue

December 15th, 2011

We are very thankful for all our great clients and proud of the positive impact we have on the organizations we touch. Great work leads to great results and we are proud of the fact that The Aldridge Company once again made the Houston Business Journal’s Fast Tech 50 list, recording more than 100 percent growth in 2010.

The Aldridge Company

The Aldridge Company is ranked among the fastest growing tech companies in Houston.

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Houston Business Journal Names The Aldridge Company to Fast Tech 50

November 29th, 2011

Complete IT Management helps SMB clients leverage IT to accelerate growth

HOUSTON, November 29, 2011 – The Aldridge Company (www.aldridge.com), a leading provider, consultant and integrator of Information Technology and Cloud Computing solutions for SMBs, today was recognized for the third year in a row by the Houston Business Journal as one of Houston’s fastest growing technology companies. The Aldridge Company was ranked 11th in the publication’s Fast Tech 50, achieving revenue growth of more than 106 percent in 2010.

“We thank our customers for entrusting us with their IT systems and information, which we believe are the most valuable assets of any business,” said Patrick R. Wiley, Chief Operating Officer of The Aldridge Company. “For many companies, IT becomes a burden that makes it harder to succeed, so our role is to remove IT obstacles and help customers align their systems and processes with their business strategy. Our customers can focus on their business and let our team of IT experts fully leverage technology to get them where they want to go.”

The Aldridge Company’s IT solutions include complete management of servers, PCs and networks coupled with rapid and accurate technical support. They provide audits of security and disaster recovery readiness, and offer a range of hosting services from dedicated servers to cloud hosting.

The Fast Tech 50 Awards recognize local technology companies with record performance based on percentage of annual revenue growth. To be eligible for the Fast Tech 50, a company’s 2009 and 2010 net revenue must have exceeded $200,000, and at least 51 percent of the consolidated revenue must involve the original manufacture, design or development of technology products or services. Companies must be for-profit and headquartered in the 10-county Houston region. This marks the 11th year of this prestigious award program.

The Houston Business Journal honored its Fast Tech 50 during a luncheon at the Hilton Americas Hotel in downtown Houston.

About The Aldridge Company
The Aldridge Company is a Houston, Texas-based technology management, consulting and outsourcing company. Founded in 1984, the company brings a winning combination of professional technical expertise, extensive capabilities and a strict focus on the importance of business processes. The Aldridge Company is a leading provider, consultant and integrator of Information Technology and Cloud Computing solutions. In 2011, the company was listed as No. 11 on the Houston Business Journal’s Fast Tech 50 list of fastest growing Houston technology companies.

Underwater Intervention 2010

February 8th, 2010

We will be exhibiting at the Underwater Intervention Conference at the New Orleans Convention Center Tuesday-Thursday this week. Come by booth 445 if you are in the area.

Houston Business Expo

December 10th, 2009

We are at the Houston Business Expo today, downtown at the Hyatt.  Our booth number is 217.  Come see us!!!!!

Five FREE Spyware & Virus Removal Tools

November 20th, 2009

As a professional IT support company, The Aldridge Company comes face to face with anti-virus, virus removal, and spyware removal problems every day. Over the years we’ve had a chance to play with a vast array of tools and programs designed to solve these problems. Obviously, some virus removal tools are better than others. Today we talked with our tech support team and came up with a list of the top 5 completely free virus recovery tools.

Anti-Virus Software

The Aldridge Company resells AVG anti-virus software and provides virus removal services.The one thing our entire tech support team agreed on was that the best way to deal with viruses is to stop them before they get a chance to infect your computer. To do this, you need quality anti-virus software – and that software has to use the most up to date virus definitions. If you’re still using the McAfee trial install from three years ago when you first got the computer, or worse, not using anything at all, you are leaving yourself open to all sorts of nasty viruses.

You can get a lot of really good anti-virus software packages online for free. AVG, Avast, and Avira are the most commonly used free anti-virus software packages. All three have made a name for themselves in the anti-virus arena and all three have loyal followings (even here in the office). That said, the anti-virus software we use here at The Aldridge Company is the corporate version of AVG. AVG proactively protects computers against viruses, spyware, and identity theft. We like it for three reasons: 1) the corporate version is cheaper than Norton or McAfee (and the personal version is completely free), 2) it uses less system resources than other virus scanning programs – meaning that your computer will be faster when you use it instead of other virus software —and 3) because it just works.

Click here to download the AVG personal version for free. If you are looking for low-cost, high quality virus protection for a business, call us at 832-209-2940. The Aldridge Company is a proud reseller of AVG.

Virus Removal

Virus removal is among the services offered by The Aldridge CompanyUnfortunately, even the best anti-virus software isn’t 100% effective. Whether you accidently open something (oops!) or the virus is just attacking from an angle so new none of the programs have created an update for it yet, viruses will sometimes get through your first line of defense. When your anti-virus software fails, what you need is a virus removal tool.

We won’t lie to you and say it is a magic bullet, but MalwareBytes is easily our hands-down favorite application when it comes to virus removal. There are some situations where manual fixes have to be applied, but 95% of the time, if you have a virus, MalwareBytes can quash it. Using MalwareBytes to execute a virus removal is pretty straight forward. Once you have installed and updated it, it is just a matter of running a full scan, rebooting, and repeating until the virus is gone.

Click here to download MalwareBytes for free.

Spyware Removal

Spyware removal is a common service request at The Aldridge Company.As awesome as MalwareBytes is though, it focuses entirely on viruses and malware that affect the way your computer operates. When your problem is with spyware instead of viruses, the tool we like to use is SUPER Anti-Spyware. If you are worried about people snooping on you while you are online or installing a bunch of toolbars you don’t want or people changing your home page or anything of that sort, this program will find and eliminate those types of threats.

That said, while SUPER AntiSpyware is completely free to download and run when you suspect your computer has a problem, it is not active protection against spyware. If you are willing to spend a few bucks on it though, the professional version includes useful things like automatic updates, automatic scanning, and active browser and registry protection.

Click here to download SUPER Anti-Spyware for free.

Browser Hijacks

The Aldridge Company solves browser hijacking problems when it deals with spyware and virus removal.One of the most common symptoms of viruses is the browser hijack. The victim of a browser hijack has addresses and search terms they enter into the browser redirected to other sites like porn, paid advertisers, or sites that try to con the user out of money. One of the worst parts about browser hijacking is that the damage tends to linger even after the virus itself is removed. To fix this problem, you need to get a copy of HijackThis.

HijackThis goes through the parts of your system that are vulnerable to change and lists every single entry in them that is not a default setting. This means that any changes made by viruses to your registry or to certain key files will be listed and you will be given the option to delete them. That said, this program is not for novice users. It will list EVERY change to your system – even legitimate changes your computer needs to function – and deleting the wrong thing can get you into trouble. Fortunately, HijackThis has a great community. If you take the log file of your scan results and post it to their forums, more advanced users can tell you what is and is not supposed to be there and will help you get back on track.

Click here to download HijackThis for free.

Data Backup & Data Recovery

Data recovery and restoration is a measure of last resort.The last thing to remember about computers is that, virus or no virus, they eventually fail. The absolute best thing you can do to ensure that your files are safe is to back them up (and backup often). One of the worst case scenarios when dealing with viruses is that the computer will have to be wiped completely clean and the user will have to start over from scratch. To prevent that from happening, we like to use NTBackup.

NTBackup has a couple of really good things going for it: It is free, if you use Windows it’s already installed on your computer, it is easy to use, and it’s an incredibly powerful tool that can be used to create a backup (or schedule a backup) for an entire computer with a few clicks. NTBackup is the sort of tool everyone should make use of so that, if the worst should ever occur, you can lose as little work as possible.

NTBackup comes pre-installed on many versions of Windows. If you don’t have it, you can get it free from Microsoft if you have a genuine copy of Windows installed on your PC by clicking here.

Web Hosting Plans

November 6th, 2009

shared web hosting service plans with it supportWhen we discuss hosting options, we’re talking about different ways to accomplish the same thing. While most users tend to take the internet for granted, every web page, email, picture, video, spread sheet, database, and file that comes to your computer has to be stored on another computer somewhere for retrieval. The job of a host is to provide the actual, physical location for that data. When a person or a company decides they want to launch a web site or start backing up their files offsite, the first thing most people look at is their hosting options – and there are a number of them.

Shared Hosting

The most basic hosting packages offered by hosting companies are the shared hosting options. With a shared web host, a client is given space on a server along with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of other users. The server is managed by the hosting company, but the client is given a control panel, FTP access, options on what type of operating system to run, and their host usually sets up things like a limited number of email accounts, support for common scripting languages such as PHP and Java, a limited number of MySQL databases, and free traffic monitoring tools.

The advantages of shared hosting are many. For starters, it’s always the least expensive hosting option a web hosting company will offer. From a cost benefit perspective, shared hosting plans are quite attractive. For most people and small businesses, a basic shared hosting plan is more than enough for hosting a web site, a blog, email, and basic offsite file backups. The last thing to keep in mind about shared hosting is that these plans are also almost always the easiest and least technical solution. Because they’re cheap, effective, and easy, shared hosting plans are by far the most popular hosting solution available.

There are two major downsides though. Firstly, because a user shares a server with other users, there is a limit on the space and resources you’re allowed to use. These limits vary from host to host, but always include a cap on bandwidth (how fast and how much data that can be exchanged with the server), and hard drive space (which will limit the amount of data you can have hosted). There are usually ways to purchase upgrades to shared hosting plans, but there will always be some kind of limit to how much activity you can perform with the account. For most users, the limits are high enough that they never become a problem, but if you host a major web site or have to back up a lot of data, a shared host may not be practical.

The second problem with shared hosting is a lack of control. If all you need hosted is a web site or email or files, they’re a perfect solution. If, however, you are using more obscure programs, have issues with specific versions of software, have to have certain operating system updates but not others, or require non-standard software to be directly installed on the server for your applications to work, shared hosting probably isn’t for you.

For most people though, shared hosting is definitely the way to go.

Virtual Hosting

If you really need more control over your host, but you aren’t pushing the limits on server or bandwidth resources, you need a virtual hosting solution. Having a virtual host is like having a computer within a computer. Like a shared host, a virtual host has many users physically located on the same server, but each user is given control of a virtual machine – effectively giving the user control of the operating environment in which their site is run. Virtual hosting is a great option for those who need control of a server without the sheer power of a completely dedicated server.

Cloud Hosting

The term “cloud computing” is something of a buzzword, but it generally describes a type of virtual hosting solution that emphasizes scalability and flexibility. A cloud server is actually a cluster of servers running a specially designed operating system capable of creating and shifting virtual servers to different physical locations to ensure that a maximum amount of usage is attainable from the smallest amount of physical resources. In many ways, cloud hosting options are quite similar to virtual hosting plans, but they are far better situated for dealing with sudden shifts in traffic, have greater redundancy, and are actually more eco-friendly than traditional servers thanks to their ability to consolidate functions into fewer, less energy intensive servers during low traffic periods.

The best part about cloud servers is that you pay as you go. If you need only the most basic of plans one month, and then your traffic goes through the roof, you only have to pay for the resources you’ve used. You get the cost effectiveness of a virtual server when you don’t need a big expensive plan, but when you need more power, you can get it by simply pressing a few buttons. You don’t have to spend the money on a dedicated server and then only use a fraction of its potential for most of the time. You can pay for what you need when you need it and save money when you don’t.

Cloud hosting is the ideal solution for companies that have seasonal shifts in their traffic, startup companies that don’t need a lot of room now but will probably see an explosion in growth, or anyone who wants to make sure they have plenty of flexibility built in to their hosting plan.

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