When Do You Need Managed IT Services?

managed it services
Managed IT Services

How do you know when managed IT services are the best choice for your business?

The alternatives are to wing it informally or to have an in-house staff. One makes sense if you make minimal use of computer tech; the other requires an organization big enough to justify full-time employees. For a very broad range in between, hiring outside experts makes the most sense.

Think about some of these factors when deciding:

  • Is using computer technology an essential part of your business? If so, you need to seriously consider IT management, whether it’s your own staff or a managed service provider.
  • Are 24-hour support and high uptime important? Keeping people on call around the clock has problems. An IT person who’s awakened to fix a crash will need some time to figure out what’s going on. One who’s awakened too often will look for another job.
  • Is data security a critical issue? Everyone has to worry about network security, but if you keep confidential information on your site, you need to be extra careful. If you can’t afford a security staff, you should strongly consider managed services.
  • Do you have complex data requirements? If you’re just running a static website with a contact form, it doesn’t need a lot of management. If you maintain a database with important business information, you need to make sure it’s well run.
  • Is IT one of your core specialties? Then your own people may be able to take care of your network infrastructure. Even in that case, though, it could make more sense to let your employees focus on the customers and not be distracted by internal maintenance issues.
  • Would losing all your data be catastrophic to your business? If so, you should seriously consider engaging managed services so that you have a workable disaster recovery plan.
  • Is your business big enough to justify a full-time IT staff? If not, managed services can be a more economical and effective solution.

Our managed services can keep your network safe and smoothly running at a very reasonable cost. 

Contact us to find out what plan will best suit your business.

Benefits of Managed Network Support Services

managed it services

Today, businesses are experiencing intense competition in different industries and finding ways to counter the same can help them thrive in a volatile market. Cloud technology is one of the things you need to consider investing in to promote faster access to information, reliability, and to secure your company records to overcome the existing competition. Managed network support services can become the ideal solution if you want to stand out from the rest as an expert in your industry. Here are some of the benefits of managed network support services.

Maximum Performance and Increased Productivity

Most business owners appreciate the need to maximize the performance of their systems to increase productivity and managed network support services can serve this purpose. A competent network support services provider can merge voice and data networks to enhance the performance of your company systems while reducing support time to promote savings on cost and time.

Your staff will perform their duties efficiently and effectively when you opt for managed network support services, which results in increased productivity.

Proactive Maintenance

The possibility of system failure is one of the setbacks that most businesses are struggling to manage on a daily basis. Unfortunately, some companies do not have the resources to prevent possible system failures. Network support service providers have the necessary tools and resources to support the implementation of new software and for upgrading your systems.

Frequent system failure becomes a thing of the past when you invest in managed network support services. The reason is that providers of network support services perform proactive maintenance of your company systems on an ongoing basis.

Improved Network Security

The network infrastructure of every organization is prone to various threats, including inappropriate web content, spam, intrusions, malware, and viruses. Any attack on your business network derails your operations, and it also affects your service delivery significantly. Managed network support services secure business voice and data networks to protect critical applications and every transaction.

If you need more information on the benefits of managed network support services, contact us today!

Why You Need to Be Familiar with Your SLAs

why you need to be familiar with your slas

Normal. Usual. Typical. When your business is going well, it all feels “normal”. When you are faced with a major technology problem, however, it can trigger a series of catastrophic issues that interrupt, or in some cases destroy, the equilibrium reached when things are going as they should.

This peace of mind is the main reason many businesses owners like you have chosen to sign a service level agreement (SLA) with an outsourced IT provider. Keeping everything “normal” can keep profit rolling in. Today we look behind the SLA to show you how it works to protect your business’ normal.

What Are We Agreeing To?

At 4 Corner IT, we understand just how much you depend on your technology. That’s why we’ve established our value-based managed IT service. Not all IT service providers do it this way. Many computer shops still just fix computers when they break, and while it’s okay to do it this way, we believe that our way, where we offer you several services designed to proactively protect your company’s technology, is simply more all-around valuable. In order to make it work, however, we make use of a carefully constructed service level agreement that works to establish the kind of service delivery you can expect, while giving our clients the peace of mind about how we handle our technical, personal, and financial processes, and what they mean for your business.

The Typical SLA Covers Two Major Factors

Uptime/Downtime – Since any IT management service worth its salt will come with comprehensive remote monitoring as a standard part of the agreement, up-time is a crucial variable when thinking about an organization’s servers. This is an increasingly important metric since many IT service providers host infrastructure, applications, storage, or some other utility for their clients. Most SLAs will guarantee a certain degree of up-time.

Response Time – This measures how much time your IT services provider has before they need to respond to the problems you are having once you contact them. Generally, SLAs require the organization to go through the proper channel (usually a email-integrated ticketing system or chat interface), and hold short intervals of time to ensure that your IT system gets the attention it needs to be effective.

Scope

The first thing the SLA will establish is a description of the service that has been contracted. The SLA will outline the specifics of what technology is covered, and how it will be covered. Typically, service-based companies will have tiers of service that customers can choose from to keep the SLA process simpler. Some companies provide more or less flexibility depending on their clientele’s needs. In managed IT services, we like to think of ourselves as solutions providers, so we try not to limit the amount of good we can do for a company, but to protect our business, we have to explicitly outline what the agreement covers and what it doesn’t.

Penalties

The SLA will likely detail the kind of compensation that the organization would receive if the IT service provider fails to meet the promises outlined in the SLA. Typical responses to this are in the form of account credit. These serve to give an organization a certain percentage more service for the following month if a situation arises. There will also likely be a clause in the agreement that allows an organization to get out of their SLA if they aren’t delivered a certain level of service.

Cost

The agreement isn’t just in place to protect the service provider. Sure, without one there are no official boundaries put on a client to demand resolution of an issue, but it also serves to outline just how much the service costs, eliminating the risk of ambiguity on the buyer.

Why Your SLA Should Matter to You

The SLA provided by your IT company helps you determine where your monthly IT budget is going, what it protects you against, and how emergencies are handled. This sets an expectation for your company when issues occur. Granted, not all IT providers live and die by their SLA, which in our opinion, is a massive disservice to their clients. Have you ever felt like you weren’t getting what you paid for with your IT provider? We understand – and we can do better.

Give us a call today at (954) 474-2204 to talk about how we could raise your expectations for your IT.

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Proactive IT or Reactive IT: How Should You Manage Incoming Problems?

proactive it or reactive it how should you manage incoming problems

There are two ways to approach IT support: proactively or reactively. In this blog, we’ll describe each strategy and explain why we believe businesses should opt for proactive IT.

Proactive IT detects problems early on

Here’s a little hint about your company’s IT hardware — there are going to be hundreds of bumps along the way. There’s nothing you can do to prevent them from ever existing.

What you can do, however, is deal with them before they ever become a serious problem. That’s an example of proactive IT support. The idea is to take an aggressive approach as soon as you spot something wrong. If everything works out, you’ll squash the small problems before they ever turn into large issues.

Reactive IT waits for problems to take shape

Reactive IT support is just the opposite; it waits for the small problems to turn into large issues. Although you might think you’re saving time by not always worrying about IT support, you’ll wind up making an even bigger investment in the long-run. Think of it like changing your car’s oil — you can either spend $25 on a quick oil change or $1000 on a new engine.

Unfortunately, this is the approach that many businesses take. They don’t understand its faults until it’s already too late.

Monitoring is proactive IT

The question whether you’ll monitor your IT hardware is the same as asking whether you’ll take a proactive or reactive approach. Monitoring is how you spot problems and errors as soon as they’re visible.

It’s all about making regular check ups and maintenance to get an idea of the state of your hardware. If you do this, you’ll occasionally have to make some minor repairs. If you don’t and wait for the problem to escalate, you’ll eventually have to deal with a much larger issue.

To talk more about proactive and reactive IT support, or anything else, contact us today.

Manage Your Cloud Infrastructure: Top 3 Tips

manage your cloud infrastructure top 3 tips

You have heard all about the Cloud and SaaS, and were convinced enough to get the software for your business. Now what do you do? How does someone manage this software successfully for the growth of their business? Learn how to manage your cloud infrastructure.

manage your cloud infrastructure

Here are three hot tips in cloud infrastructure management that will put you on the right path for greatness!

Manage your cloud infrastructure

Develop Your Strategy

Strategy is everything when managing cloud infrastructure. Successful strategies include information such as the how and what of managing the cloud infrastructure (adopting a Cloud software platform, etc.) as well as what the goals are in having the software at your disposal. Think through everything. Plan it out. Make sure it is clear as crystal; your business depends on it!

Build Your Awesome Team

We may all have hated the very idea of group work in school, but in the business world, working in teams is a must! Build for yourself an A-team of people who are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get to work helping you manage your cloud infrastructure. Having an awesome team of people to back you up and help you resolve issues that will arise is crucial to your sanity and can make or break your business.

Don’t Be Afraid to Start Small

Starting small is a wise idea, as it is always possible to build upon the infrastructure at a later date. Starting small also helps you and everyone on the team have time to get used to the software, learn how it works, and be able to manage it better. In other words, this maintains sanity in the workplace. Don’t bite off more than you can chew!

Pay attention to these three tips, and you are sure to have great success managing your cloud infrastructure! Want a few more tips on managing the cloud?

Contact us today!