What is IT strategy consulting and does your business need it? Here we cover some top questions about IT strategy consulting. Say the word “consulting” and many business owners immediately think of a third party that swoops in, tells their business what to do, and then charges a hefty price for it. And yet, bringing in a consultant to help you with certain sticking points in your business can help you be more effective and even more profitable. This can certainly be the case when it comes to bringing together your business and technology. After all, your head is in business strategy and business processes, so when it comes to nailing the technology piece, some outside expertise can make [...]

Is a help desk a service desk, and vice versa? To those not in the information technology industry, these terms sometimes get thrown around interchangeably. But they’re not one in the same. Here, we’ll look at what defines an IT service desk and what you should look for when seeking out this essential function of managed services providers. What is a help desk? A help desk (sometimes called “helpdesk”) provides what’s referred to as “break-fix” support for users (whether customer or employee) of a company product, service or other function. A help desk’s purpose might cover everything from technical support to product or warranty questions, and even to basic customer service. Most important to understand: This kind of customer support [...]

When a disaster or system failure disrupts your business, data loss can be a major — and a costly — consequence. And yet it’s an inevitable part of being in business: hard drives malfunction, lost files or deleted files result from human error, and frequent cyber attacks are an unfortunate fact of today’s landscape. But there is a way to protect your data and keep your operations from coming to a screeching halt: Business continuity and data recovery planning. Backing it Up Back in the day, data was backed up on tapes and stored at an offsite location in a physical vault. Over time, that process and the technology evolved to utilize more nimble, higher capacity storage devices, like external [...]

When it comes to an IT disaster striking your business, the term to use is probably “when,” not “if.” And when a disaster happens, you can be sure it has the potential to bring your operations and your profits to a halt, with long-term repercussions: 93% of companies without a disaster recovery plan who suffer a major data disaster are out of business within one year. These days, having a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s an absolute must-have. Part of that has to do with the increasing laws and regulations requiring many business types to establish a disaster recovery plan. Whether regulations apply or not, disaster recovery and business continuity planning go [...]

The cloud is a wonderful place to be for many businesses, and there are good reasons so many are adopting the cloud: cost-effectiveness, scalability, and security, to name a few. But it’s not completely without risk. Successful migration of your applications and data to the cloud takes careful planning in order to minimize the possibility of risks that are inherent in any cloud migration, including data loss, latency, interoperability, overspending, and security. Use this checklist to maximize your migration success. Determine & engage stakeholders Those who should be involved in this project from the start include, but shouldn’t be limited to, members of your IT team. Business stakeholders and other key roles should be included from the outset, as well. [...]

In these days of remote work, moving to the cloud has surfaced as an urgent business imperative for the C-suite. And it makes sense: Cloud environments provide speed, access, capacity, scalability, connectivity, and even security features in stronger measures than on-premises environments. But as you start digging into and gaining an understanding of cloud solutions, you realize there’s more than one cloud model. In fact, there are few: private, public, and hybrid cloud are all types of deployment models that are up for your consideration. So, what does each cloud deployment type mean, and what are the benefits and drawbacks? Here, we take a look. What is a private cloud? A private cloud is solely owned by and dedicated to [...]

If your business is like so many others, you’ve probably experienced a massive surge in your team members having to work remotely, especially if a city lockdown forced you to shut down your physical workplaces. This situation left companies everywhere scrambling to support their newly virtual workforces and maintain business continuity despite a lack of technology resources that support remote work. Sound familiar at all? Remote work is probably going to be the new norm for months to come, and if this is the case for your business, you may be playing catch up as you try to figure out how to best support your employees in doing their jobs. One answer: Leveling up and leveraging your cloud infrastructure to [...]

The term “shadow IT’ sounds pretty nefarious, and the activities around it certainly can be. But oftentimes it’s a result of company employees just trying to do their jobs more efficiently. Shadow IT involves the use and management of external technology solutions, such as hardware, software, or cloud applications, without the knowledge of or explicit permission from a company’s IT department. It’s an issue that’s grown rapidly as cloud computing has become more widely adopted, and it’s increased in prevalence with more and more workers going remote. It could be going on at your business without you even realizing it. What does shadow IT look like? Usually, it looks like employees using their personal devices, such as smartphones and [...]

Are your networks healthy? How would you know if they were, or if their health were to become compromised? Or do you just assume everything is humming along, performing optimally — until something breaks? Like everything else with technology, networks aren’t “set it and forget it.” And if you do approach things that way, you could be asking for trouble. Here’s why 24x7 network monitoring matters so much to your business. What is network monitoring? Networks are complex, but you don’t have to understand all the nitty gritty details to grasp the basics. Think of your network as the connective tissue of your entire IT infrastructure. It ties together all of your hardware devices, software, servers, firewalls, other equipment, [...]

In a previous post, we talked about the importance of network monitoring around the clock, with an emphasis on monitoring all the various pieces and parts of your infrastructure to ensure everything is performing as it should, and nothing is hampering network performance. So where does security come into the picture? Security is inevitably and necessarily woven into the overarching monitoring solution, and there are a number of tools out there that overlap, but it’s not quite the same thing. Here we take a look at the differences between the two, and seek to understand more about the role of monitoring from a network security perspective. What is Network Monitoring? First, let’s look specifically at what network monitoring aims [...]

We know how it goes: You must be fully focused on running your business, not the technology that your business runs on. If this sounds like you, find out how you might benefit from outsourced IT services.  If you own or run a business, you’ve probably learned a few things about technology: 1) It’s expensive, and the costs are seemingly endless; 2) It’s time-consuming, and the to-dos required to stay on top of things are also seemingly endless; and 3) It’s constantly changing: the technology you implement today will need upgrading or complete replacement a short time from now.  Enter: an information technology services company.  In short, these businesses exist to bring you the necessary technology solutions (including hardware [...]