Most small and medium businesses can’t afford the luxury of a qualified IT administrator, let alone an entire IT department. If you’re in this position, how do you maintain the information technology infrastructure that’s critical to your organization?

One option is Managed Services, in which you outsource this role to an IT expert called a “managed services provider,” which will typically offer on-site or remote network and security monitoring, data backup and technical support.

Because the Managed Services model allow a business to focus on its core competencies, it is increasing in popularity—but sometimes it’s hard to separate the real benefit from the hype.

What’s the value to you?

• Peace of mind. Your managed services provider will monitor your IT infrastructure and prevent or resolve any problems—a sharp diversion from the traditional “fix it when it breaks” model of IT management.

• Simplicity. Your managed services provider will provide many of its services remotely, via the Internet, instead of through on-site visits. This reduces time and cost.

• Constant support. You don’t have to worry about support; your  managed services provider will offer the assistance you need, when you need it.

• Affordability. Managed services providers typically offer several price structures, including a per-month fee—which is much lower than the cost of building an in-house IT support department.

• Accountability. Have you ever tried to resolve an IT problem only to find that one vendor blames it on another who blames it on another? With managed services, you don’t have to go to multiple vendors to figure out why your network is down or you’ve experienced a security breach. You’ll have one point of contact: your managed services provider.

Want to learn more about how Managed Services can give you dependable IT with predictable costs? Give us a call.

You expect your computer to work when you turn it on. The last thing you want is to waste valuable time trying to get your email running or wrestling with a web browser that won’t load.

These are frustrations you surely have experienced, and chances are you will again. But you don’t have to. Or, at the very least, you can make them as rare as your refrigerator breaking down or your car battery dying.

To get there, you need to understand how well your IT environment is running. No, we’re not suggesting that you look under the hood to figure out what does what and how. Leave that to the IT people. What we’re proposing is a comprehensive endeavor to document all your IT processes and inventory your IT assets. Identify your best practices – those processes and functions that experience has proven to run efficiently and produce the most desirable results – and document them as part of your overall business practices.

During the process of documenting your IT processes and functions, you’re bound to discover your IT environment isn’t as efficient as it should be – hence, your computer-borne frustrations. You’ll also identify needs that you weren’t aware of. Left unaddressed, these needs cut into productivity (and therefore profits), and can sometimes lead to costly IT network emergencies that would have been a lot less expensive with the right technology and proper maintenance in place.

Let us help assess your needs through this documentation process, and identify solutions that will bring you peace of mind. Some common solutions include outsourcing some of your network functions such as security, backup and recovery, or email, so that they are maintained and updated to keep them running smoothly and prevent costly downtime.

You expect your computer to work when you turn it on – and that is what we want to make sure happens.

This post, originally titled “Don’t Rely on Your IT Guy”, was first posted in May 2009 on another blog I contribute to, Small Business Daily.  In the past 6 months I’ve received great feedback - primarily from other companies just like Evolve IT trying to highlight the value they offer to small business customers.  I also receive a number of requests each month for a link to the article, so I thought I’d repost it to perhaps make it easier for people to find, and hopefully to have a whole new bunch of people read and find value in the post.

Follow me on Twitter: @claytonhm

There are many different forms of computer support available these days, and this is no longer a linear equation of pre-paid hours and time based SLA’s. Whether you are a business owner looking for a new network support provider, or a provider looking to breathe new life into the way you service your customers, then you should read this article.

In the world of network support there is so much hidden stuff out there that the customer never sees that it’s important that we, as support providers, are alerting them to the fact that this service exists.

So what support do you need and what do you actually get?

1. Proactive Services

These are all the things related to the maintenance of the network. Proactive Services includes installing patches and upgrades, ensuring all monitoring is picking up faults and small issues that the client may not necessarily see and ensuring that backups is working and antivirus updates are being installed.

At Evolve IT we look at the amount of support calls required each month for a particular client and we analyse these numbers. If a client has an increasing number of calls due to failure every month, we look at this as a failure on our part. If this number diminished then this is good, as this means the client is experiencing more up-time.

“I am talking about genuine benefits based planning so that your clients can achieve actual goals…”

If the client is not calling this means that our proactive services are working perfectly by maintaining and maximising the up-time of the network.

As a potential managed support services client ask the vendors you are selecting what they do in the background and how they report this to you.

2. Account Management

Account Management is important for the client to get a handle on what it is that they are paying for. As stated in the last point, if we are truly doing our job perfectly then the client should never call.

But what happens when it comes time for renewal of the service? A client that is never spoken to will turn around and say “Well, we never call you, so we are not continuing the service”.

And there is no point in pulling out these figures only when you are bringing up the renewal of a service contract either - that is just bad service.

Monthly Account Management meetings are important so that your client knows what is being done in the background to ensure that they are experiencing the maximum up-time that they can from their network.

3. Network Planning

What are you doing to improve your clients network infrastructure?

I am NOT talking about selling here. I am talking about genuine benefits based planning so that your clients can achieve actual goals such as increase collaboration ability, hands free backup, or faster VPN connections.

These plans need to be done regularly and the client needs to know what is proposed to enhance the goal.

For example - if my client came to me and said “we need to have a space where we can all work on a document together and have a person in charge of it like a project” then obviously the suggestion is SharePoint, however this means nothing to the client.

But what if I said “there is a solution by Microsoft which enables the company to have their own virtual workspace called an Intranet. Everyone has their own site and teams can have sites too, like an internal website. Instead of having products on these pages though, each one is a workspace which enables more than one person to work on a document at the same time and a moderator who can approve changes and control document versions as well”?

This is less techie, enables the client to actually understand what I am talking about and I am not selling them a product - I am providing a solution to a problem.

4. Business Planning and Advice

Noe this is something that you can offer your clients if you have savvy people as Account Managers or business owners that meet with the clients regularly.

At Evolve IT we have business planning meetings with our clients to ensure that we are working with them towards their business goals. If there are ways that technology can help the client move forward then we can suggest and scope and the client can budget this into the business plan.

“Now the receptionist can also have a business building capacity part time and the business isgoing to see immediate advantages and long term cost saving and improved revenue as aresult of one little change”

For example I have been working with a client recently who has been using an old custom built Access database to capture their customer information over the last few years.

This client wants to become more efficient and have their staff increasing productivity without increasing wages or hours worked. Looking at the processes involved in capturing information it became obvious to me was that they need to breath new life into the way that they capture the customer data and use it within the business.

So now we are moving to an improved Customer Information System which is going to automate processes and leave more time for the staff to do their jobs. Now the receptionist can also have a business building capacity part time and the business is going to see immediate advantages and long term cost saving and improved revenue as a result of one little change in the technology behind the way that they work, not changing the way they work itself.

This is what I see as the difference between good service and fantastic service in the field of IT support. Layers of support, not merely restricted to computers and switches, but an investment in the business of the people we are supporting. If we help all of our customers grow, then they will always be our customers.

If you want some more information on this, just flick me an email

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As a result of the past year’s economic climate, many small and medium-size businesses have increased their efforts to mitigate risks and lower costs—and more and more are turning toward remote IT support to fulfill those goals.

Remote support tools allow IT providers to support an entire company’s computing infrastructure, wherever and whenever needed, from their own offices. This helps address the needs of a market that significantly benefits from doing more with less— small and medium businesses.

Some of the benefits of remote support include:

• No travel time. As long as the issue doesn’t require on-site support, you won’t pay for time spent traveling to your site.
• No waiting. Response time is faster because support staff can address your needs immediately with online access to your machines and servers.
• Less work interruption. Because support can be done remotely, much support work can be done after hours, or behind the scenes as you continue to work. No more downtime while support staff takes over your physical desk.
• Lower costs. IT support staff can work on all of your computers simultaneously from their own offices, saving time – and therefore money.
• Proactive monitoring prevents problems from ever happening. Instead of waiting to come out and fixing your infrastructure when it’s already broken, remote support provides ongoing network monitoring, management, and unlimited remote support that prevents problems from occurring in the first place – all for one fixed monthly fee.

Contact us today for details on how our remote IT support solutions can help your business stay on track.

For many small and medium-sized businesses, the cost of maintaining an old PC may be more expensive than upgrading to a new one. This insight comes from a survey conducted by research firm Techaisle, which polled 630 companies across seven countries.

Their research suggests that the average cost for SMBs to repair PCs over three years old can be 1.65 times as expensive as repairing PCs under three years old. Repairs include replacements, usually from hardware failure, and the cost to fix software crashes. Small business respondents with PCs older than three years experienced network card failures nearly eight times more than respondents with PCs less than three years old. This was followed by power supply failures, motherboard failures, software crashes, and virus attacks. Midmarket respondents experienced a similar trend, with network card failures at six times higher, followed by power supply failures and motherboard failures.

In addition, respondents said desktops that have been in use for more than three years are more susceptible to attacks from malware and viruses (28 percent), while older notebooks are 58 percent more likely to endure a virus attack. The cost of related lost worker productivity should also be factored in by companies wishing to hold on to outdated hardware.

Are you hanging on to old PCs in an attempt to money? Contact us today. We can help you assess the health and condition of your PCs, as well as determine the cost of maintaining existing PCs versus upgrading or replacing them.

In today’s challenging economic times, many small businesses like yours are reluctant to spend money. However, a modest investment in network maintenance can ultimately improve your profitability and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your network infrastructure.

Your business depends on your network

Your revenue is directly tied to the availability and performance of your network, because it’s the backbone of your business. Your network houses critical applications, allows your employees to communicate, and gives customers access your goods and services.

When your network fails, your business suffers. Employees cannot access the applications and information they need to keep your business up and running, and basic means of communication, such as printing, filing, and emailing, are unavailable. At the same time, customers cannot access the information they need to buy your products. You’re forced to spend time and money to get the system up and running, increasing your TCO. The end result: productivity declines and revenue decreases.

Managing your network can prevent revenue loss

It pays to minimize network performance degradation and downtime, and a network management system will help you do this. Large companies have long deployed such systems, but as networks become more critical to smaller businesses, they have become important for small- and mid-size enterprises as well.

A network management system will provide tools that improve network performance, help network administrators manage the network more efficiently, and include an early warning system for network outages. These benefits allow your business to operate more efficiently, thereby cutting costs and preventing revenue loss—and reducing the TCO of your network infrastructure.

Need Help?

Finding a good network management system and deploying it correctly is by no means a simple task, but there are plenty of solutions that provide the necessary functionality at a relatively low cost. We can help you deploy an easy-to-use network management system that helps you manage your network more efficiently and save money at the same time. Contact us today for more information.

Related articles:

Assessing the business impact of network management on small and mid-size enterprises

When most people want to purchase a new computer or upgrade their current one, they focus on finding a CPU with the quickest speed, the most computing cores, or the most RAM they can afford. However, they may be overlooking the most likely reason for computing slowdowns: fragmentation in the disks.

Disk drives claim the dubious distinction of being the slowest component on today’s computers, and the more fragmented they are, the more they drag down the performance of the entire system. Fragmentation is the scattering or fragmenting of files on a hard drive from continually writing, deleting, and resizing them. The more you use your computer, the more these bits of data get scattered about. As this happens, it takes longer for the computer to retrieve this data as it reads back from the disk. Defragmentation is the process in which a special software utility is run to arrange all of this data into contiguous spaces on the disk.

Today, frequent defragmentation is becoming more and more important as drive capacities become larger and we start to use our disks more heavily. We now regularly store and retrieve various forms of media such as photos, images, music and videos from our computer disks. Thousands of media files dramatically increase disk fragmentation. We also use our systems to run “virtualized” guest operating systems, which also dramatically increases file fragmentation as these operating systems perform simultaneous read/write operations on the disk. Resident antivirus programs will also slow down disk operation if it is made to continuously read fragmented files. In a business maintaining several computers, these operations will significantly shorten the life span of the drives, and will also contribute to work slowdowns and productivity loss.

So before spending money on a new CPU or RAM upgrade, try defragmenting first. Let us help you implement a schedule and procedures to better manage this important process.

What are the key technology lessons that small and mid-sized businesses can learn from large enterprises?

Be proactive. Be prepared. Take security concerns seriously. Always watch for ways to cut costs.

That just might sum up the advice that enterprise-grade IT shops would give smaller businesses about how to avoid costly IT mistakes.

But what are some specific technology lessons that smaller fry can learn from the big fish? We asked the experts, and here’s a partial list:

• Read more at Inc Technology…

Janet Attard of The Business Know-How Blog posts 18 tips for small businesses considering outsourcing. She offers insight on how to get the best possible results from outsourced work. Among them:

1. Know the results you want to achieve.
2. Understand how long it should take to complete the work. (Ask others in your industry if you’re not sure.)
3. Set a realistic time table for achieving results.
4. Insist on all service providers and vendors document their work
5. Offer feedback and praise

When it comes to your outsourced computer support and network management these are great tips to keep in mind.

• Read more at Small Biz Resources…