business · Page 3 of 4

The Cost Savings Benefits of Using a Managed Service Provider

Enlisting the help of a managed service provider lets you outsource IT tasks that would otherwise require you to hire an in-house IT specialist. Outsourcing IT support helps businesses to focus on business rather than technology support.

According to this article, a managed service provider (MSP) is a type of IT service company that provides server, network, and specialized applications to end users and organizations. These applications are hosted and managed by the service provider.

Deciding to use a managed service provider requires you to analyze the benefits and how they may help you reach your business goals. The benefits of managed IT services are many.

The following benefits impact daily operations as well as your bottom line.

Monthly Costs

Managing monthly costs is critical for any business. It is important to know how much you are spending, what you are spending it on, and what you may spend in the future. By outsourcing your IT support, you will pay the same amount no matter how much support you require each month. You will know how much to budget for IT support and you can allocate your remaining budget to other areas of your business.

Small Upfront Costs

When you outsource to a managed service provider, you automatically save on the upfront costs associated with buying necessary hardware and software. You can start with a monthly plan suited to your business needs rather than investing in costly equipment.

Scale Up or Scale Down

Managed IT services allow you to scale up as your business grows. If you need more users, it is simple to add them. If you realize your business does not need certain applications, request your provider remove them. Managed IT service is flexible in terms of adjusting to your business needs at any given time. This can save your business a significant amount of money during periods of growth.

Increased Productivity

A disruption in productivity due to IT issues can cost your business thousands of dollars. Rather than have you and your staff struggle with an IT issue, you can notify your managed IT service provider to fix the issue. They can often resolve your IT problem within minutes, saving you time and money.

Whether your business is small or large, it can benefit greatly from the use of a managed service provider. You will have consistent monthly costs, access to IT experts, and be able to scale up or down as necessary.

We have been providing Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties with word-class managed services for over a decade.

business business continuity it solutions managed service provider

How to Use Cloud Computing

Cloud computing gives you access to vast amounts of data and has been credited with increasing the range of services that businesses can offer with greater flexibility and optimum use of IT resources.

According to this article, in the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer’s hard drive.

There are many ways to use cloud computing to enhance the ability of companies to meet their business goals.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Instead of investing in massive hardware servers, a business can choose to load their software onto virtual servers (i.e., infrastructure) which act like your own servers but exist in the cloud (distributed over remote physical servers). Virtual infrastructure can give you nearly limitless storage and can be completely scalable as your needs grow.

Moreover, instead of purchasing your software, a business can choose software (i.e., platforms) in the cloud on virtual servers that can run on PCs in the office but can utilize much greater resources than the PC can provide.

Private and Hybrid Clouds

If your organization needs maximum flexibility, you can make us of a private cloud. These private clouds are really reserved space for your company’s own individual use on a system of remote servers accessed through a network like the internet. Private clouds can run on your own proprietary software. You may choose a hybrid cloud option as well, where some less demanding operations are run on a public cloud (shared servers) and more demanding operations are run on a private cloud.

Testing and Development

If your company is developing infrastructure, use of the cloud may be the best test and development environment. The cloud can give you large-scale computing power before having to invest in the physical assets, manpower and time to create your own server system. Cloud computing can tailor environments for your requirements as you need capacity.

Big Data Analytics

Retailers and suppliers are now extracting massive information from millions of consumers’ buying patterns. This helps them target their advertising or to provide more complete customer services. Furthermore, social networks are supplying vast raw material for analysis of behavior patterns that organizations are using to develop products and derive meaningful information. Then, the cloud provides the potential to collect and store these enormous data-bases.

File Storage

Similarly, the cloud can offer the possibility of storing all your working files. Additionally, without having to invest in enormous equipment expenditure. Storage expansion on the cloud costs much less that equivalent storage expansion on your own equipment.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Cloud storage is a widely used solution for data backup and recovery in case of disaster. Using cloud storage means that your entire business system can be duplicated off-site. That way it can be recovered in the event of damage to physical equipment on your site. Also, Cloud backup offers the additional advantage of being secure and off-site. Your files will be backed up even if there is damage to your physical facility.

4 Corner can offer complete IT support from its offices in Fort Lauderdale, Miami and New York.

business cloud computing it solutions

3 Strategies to Help Minimize the Effect of Server and Network Downtime

Server and network downtime can cost businesses thousands of dollars. Each time a server or network goes down, your company data is at risk. There are a lot of reasons for downtime, like power issues for example. Although issues such as hardware failures, human error, and power outages are out of your control, you can control how downtime affects your business. Below are three strategies to help minimize the effects of server and network downtime.

Have a Business Continuity Plan

A continuity plan is a plan that helps your business continue to operate should a disaster occur. You can design your plan to deal with both short-term and long-term disasters. It is essential to test your plan regularly to see how reliable it is in a crisis. Update your plan accordingly when it needs improvements.

Create a Disaster Recovery Plan

When a disaster occurs that affects your data, it is important to have a disaster recovery plan in place. This plan consists of a data backup solution which can reside on local storage or cloud storage. Cloud storage is a more convenient and flexible solution. Unlike local storage, cloud storage doesn’t require a secondary backup location. Perform backups of your data on a regular basis. Nightly and weekly backups are often the best strategy.

Test Your Plans

Testing your data backup and recovery plan is essential to help minimize downtime. Regular testing will reveal areas that need improvement, whether it is hardware, software, or human error. You want to ensure your data recovery time is short.

These three strategies are a great way to help protect your company data during a disaster. In order to create well thought out plans and choose the best solutions for your business, it is best to consult with a managed service provider experienced in data disaster recovery.

Contact us today to schedule a consultation. We provide services and solutions that can prevent or help you recover from the next disaster.

24/7 support business business continuity it

What Does a Typical Contingency Plan Outline Look Like?

Part of running a modern business is planning for the quick recovery of your business’ computer processes in the event of an emergency. In the past, when the computers went down, they just went down.

According to this article, organizations create contingency plans, sometimes called a “Plan B,” to prepare for something bad that could affect the organization’s ability to function. Developing an effective contingency plan is essential for any organization.

Having a system in place to restore them immediately was unheard of for small and medium-sized businesses; and even for many large corporations. Professionals mainly used computers to run programs like Excel or Word. They managed files in certain ways and receptionists played Solitaire. However, as we all know, times have changed.

Now our global business culture is somewhat reliant on technology for many things like:

Communication
Marketing
Customer relationship management
Online and offline reputation management
File storage
Business processes

Because of this, it’s now crucial to back up your entire computer system and have protocols in place, so that your business can continue to run smoothly even when your systems are down.

Having a good contingency plan in place will ensure that business interruption, data loss, and productivity loss are minimal across all the devices that your company uses.

This could include your company:

Desktops and laptops
Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets
Peripherals like printers and all-in-one fax machines
Servers
Websites
Computer networks
Mainframes
Distributed systems

Depending on the size of your business and your standard operating procedures, some contingency plans might include:

Having to relocate your primary business and IT systems temporarily to an alternate site, using alternate equipment, or having your IT team reset some systems manually to get them working properly again

Here’s a Typical Contingency Plan Outline

1. State your goals – In the event of a power outage, drive failure or even an extreme condition like fire or water damage, what goals must your contingency plan meet for your business to remain efficient and operational?

2. Define the impact on your business – How much downtime can your business really handle? Some businesses can handle 7 days, while others can only handle 3 hours. What type of overall impact financially and professionally would an outage and downtime cause? What is the scope of varying degrees?

Though this may seem like redundant step, it’s not. Yes, “it would be bad,” is an answer that could apply to any negative situation. However, you might not realize that certain departments can handle much less downtime than you realized and some might not need much investment in contingency planning.

3. Once you’ve identified your goals and the potential impacts on your business, decide what preventive steps you can take to minimize problems; so you don’t have so much to fix during an outage – This could mean using certain types of backup, cloud servers located in other states and taking other simple measures that will mean certain parts of your business wouldn’t even need resetting or restoration.

4. Next identify your list of go-to recovery strategies – You should have a list of recovery strategies to implement immediately when something happens. You should have strategies appropriate for both small and extreme emergencies.

5. Next, take time to test your plan and train your staff – Every contingency plan is different, so just like a fire drill, your company staff and IT staff should understand how your plan will work.

6. Ensure that you’re taking the proper maintenance steps daily, weekly etc.

Should your IT team routinely check servers?
Does any software or equipment need biannual upgrading?
Do you have any new staff you need to train on how to properly backup their work or behave in an emergency situation?

Contact Us

We understand that contingency planning is just as much a part of modern businesses as smartphones and color printers. We understand how to make the restoration process simple for businesses, yet effective in the case of an emergency.

business business continuity disaster recovery

Guess What? You Already Know How to Use Office 365, (and You Probably Already Love it Too!)

Because Office 365 is new to some people, they picture:

A program that’s hard to set up,
A program that’s only for Mac computers,
Some new app that’s only for mobile devices, or
Some confusing, new-fangled version of Microsoft products geared toward people who think the old platforms are useless or outdated.

However, Office 365 is essentially the best of the traditional Microsoft Office platform, combined with the simplest and most convenient upgrades that modern cloud computing has to offer. Though many products can easily lose their initial fan base when they upgrade or make changes to keep up with the times, by the time people most comfortable with Microsoft products understand what Office 365 actually is, everyone will realize it’s a genuinely perfect fit for most smb’s.

Why?

With 365, Microsoft gives users subscription-based access to its suite of office products. If you buy it for yourself, it’s less than $10 a month. However, many companies choose to buy it for their staff for several reasons:

Everyone in the office can collaborate on one secure system with ease.

It doesn’t matter if you’re in the office, or in another country; once you’ve connected your devices through the platform, you can quickly share documents and data through One Drive as if you were in the same office. This enables you to complete projects faster. In addition, since 365 is also integrated with Skype Lync, you can easily conduct business conferences and make free/cheap VoIP calls as well, without paying a separate company and without downloading special software.

Microsoft gives users 1 terabyte of cloud storage for each user, and each user is able to use the software on one laptop/desktop, one tablet and one phone.

Users also get full downloads of every standard Microsoft program including Outlook, Word, Excel, Sharepoint, Lync, Exchange, Power Point, One Note, Access and Publisher.

Lastly, let’s face it. The Microsoft product suite has always been notoriously expensive.

365 is basically the cheapest way anyone’s ever got a suite of Microsoft products directly from the manufacturer.

How to Use Office 365

Using Office 365 is as easy as using a website like Facebook or a software program like Skype.

You simply log into your account at portal.office.com, with the information in the email you received after you signed up.
Next, you change your password.
Then, when you’re ready to download your software, you download and install your software suite just like any other program. You just go through all the standard install prompts and options.
Once you’ve downloaded the software and your online access is up and running, you’re good to go. If you’ve ever used Microsoft Office before, you already know how to use Office 365.

However, if you have any questions or need any guidance at all — or find a program that’s new to you, because you’re mainly used to the standard programs; just contact us.

As your Managed Services Provider, 4 Corner IT offers you and your staff full installation and support for Office 365!

business computer support microsoft office 365 tips voip