MSPNetworks Blog

The entire premise of managed IT services is that they can save your business money, but in what specific ways does working with us make your budget more predictable? It’s really quite simple, and it encompasses three primary pillars: an established level of service, proactive maintenance and management, and the reliability and access to expertise that might otherwise put a stopper on your business’ potential.

The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.

With organizations running on technology, it is important that it is reliably managed. It’s also important that your organization has the technology in place that will help your team be the most productive and that will keep your data secure. The best way to accomplish this is with help from certified and knowledgeable IT technicians. 

Understanding of Business Technology

There are people who know technology, and then there are those that work with it day in and day out. You can’t operate a business without having the right technology in place, complete with those who help to keep it in proper working order. Your IT technicians should be knowledgeable about how to set up and configure computer systems, troubleshoot hardware and software, and secure a network from both internal and external threats. With this expertise, your IT technicians should be fully capable of managing and maintaining small business technology with minimal incident.

Keeping an Eye Out for Potential Issues

Certified IT technicians can work to proactively monitor your systems for a variety of issues that could lead to more frustrating problems. The idea behind proactive monitoring is that these issues can be addressed before they become worse, allowing organizations to dodge the expensive frustrating downtime and data loss that comes from a halt in operations.

Responding as Quickly as Possible (and Necessary)

If you experience technology problems during the course of everyday operations, time is of the essence. You need technicians who can respond quickly and appropriately to minimize the amount of time and money lost during the downtime. With the right combination of expertise and knowledge, a certified IT technician can get your business back in proper running order as soon as possible.

Improving Data Security

Data security is an issue that plagues all businesses, especially small businesses that don’t have the same access to enterprise-grade security tools and solutions as larger organizations do. They also struggle to take advantage of the same level of IT security expertise due to limited budgets. Thankfully, certified IT technicians and managed service providers offer small businesses the same opportunities offered to larger companies, from security solution configuration to remote backups to ensure data security and integrity on all levels.

Scaling According to Need

Small businesses can grow rapidly, and so too do their technology needs and expectations. A certified IT technician can help SMBs adapt to their constantly changing technology needs to ensure it aligns with their goals every step of the way. This involves planning for future growth, too, and ensuring that changing technological requirements do not get in the way of further innovation.

MSPNetworks can give your business access to the certified IT technicians it needs to be successful. To learn more, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

Today’s businesses are heavily reliant on technology to streamline operations and do more to enhance workforce productivity. With the multitude of technology options available, however, finding the right solutions for your business can be more difficult than it seems at first glimpse. Let’s take a look at how technology professionals can help you navigate the technology landscape and find solutions that align with your business needs.

Understanding Your Business Requirements

Technology professionals play a crucial role in helping businesses identify their unique technology requirements. By conducting in-depth consultations and understanding the specific goals and challenges within your industry, these experts can develop a comprehensive understanding of your business needs. Whether you require software applications, hardware infrastructure, or cloud-based platforms, technology professionals can conduct a thorough analysis of your requirements and recommend the most suitable options.

Getting the Right Technology

The technology marketplace is brimming with a vast array of options, making it overwhelming for business owners and decision-makers to evaluate and choose the right technology solutions. Technology professionals possess a deep knowledge of current technological trends, industry standards, and emerging innovations. They stay up-to-date with the latest advancements, ensuring they can guide businesses toward the most relevant and effective technology options.

Choosing the Right Vendors 

Choosing the right technology vendor is a critical step in the process of finding the technology your business needs. Technology professionals have established relationships with various vendors and possess extensive experience in assessing their capabilities. They can help streamline the vendor evaluation process by comparing offerings and completing due diligence. By leaning on their expertise, businesses can confidently select vendors that align with their requirements, budget, and long-term goals.

Customize Technology to Your Business’ Needs

Every business has its own unique processes and workflows. Technology professionals understand this and can help tailor technology solutions to fit seamlessly within your existing infrastructure. They possess the technical skills to customize software, develop applications, and integrate normally disconnected systems. By ensuring smooth integration and customization, technology professionals can maximize the value of the chosen technology and minimize disruptions.xc

Ensure You Have the Right Support

Technology professionals provide ongoing support and maintenance services to ensure smooth operation and optimal performance of your technology solutions. From troubleshooting technical issues to applying necessary updates and patches, these experts are dedicated to keeping your technology infrastructure running smoothly. They can also provide training to your employees, ensuring they have the necessary skills to utilize the technology effectively.

Your business needs the right technology consulting, procurement, and support to get the tools needed to point your business in the right direction. Our knowledgeable technicians can help you get and manage all the technology you use on a daily basis. Give us a call today at (516) 403-9001 to learn more about how we can help your business.

IT support is a must for the modern business. Whether you have an internal IT administrator, a team of technicians on staff, or you outsource your management, you need to ensure that your business has the support and service needed to keep your business’ technology running efficiently. 

The technology that organizations use for business hasn’t really changed much over the past few decades unless you count the emerging technologies that some organizations have rolled out recently such as AI tools and dynamic IoT technologies. In this week’s blog, we will go over how organizations have shifted their IT support structure to get more value for their business.

A Little Background

For decades businesses that depended on technology had three options: They could hire technology professionals to help deploy tools and manage the organization’s technology; they could wait until their technology breaks and get it fixed by an outside break/fix vendor; or they could just have their regular employees troubleshoot problems as they arise. Let’s go through each option to see why demand has grown for affordable outsourced IT support.

Hiring Internal IT Professionals

This option is still used by a lot of organizations. Frankly, if your organization can afford it, it is never a bad idea to have an internal IT professional at the ready to help you fix problems, create strategy, and onboard new tools. But, there's the rub: can you afford it? The average IT technician makes over $50,000 per year, with some with years of useful experience getting paid 50-to-100 percent more than that. It can be a major expense to hire new IT talent and even then you only have one person handling all the technology issues. It can be a bit much.

Waiting for Technology to Break

This was the preferred method for many organizations for years. Basically, technology will work great for a while, then it will break. It isn’t much different today. Once there was a broken computer/printer/router etc., you would take it to a break/fix vendor and then get it back in the rotation after a few days away. This seems reasonable, until you take into consideration the money you aren’t making as you wait to get your technology back. Downtime can cost any business a lot of money, and do so very rapidly. By waiting to get your technology back, you are basically succumbing to the downtime your company has to deal with. No good.

Employee Troubleshooting

Probably the riskiest strategy of them all is to allow your staff to troubleshoot problems on their own. This not only will surely cause a lot of downtime, but it will likely have lasting impacts on your business’ ability to effectively do the things it needs to do to generate revenue. This subset of businesses is the most likely to have devastating technology issues bring down their whole company. 

A Better Strategy

For the past decade many businesses have taken advantage of a better strategy: Managed IT services. This service effectively replaces your IT management strategy with a team of technicians that work remotely to manage your business’ IT with state-of-the-art monitoring and management software. The benefit of this is to have your technology constantly monitored for threats and underperformance so that technicians can fix issues with these systems before they can become profit-sapping problems. 

This form of proactive IT management is only one of the numerous beneficial services that come with a comprehensive managed IT services contract. Some of the other features include:

• Expert technicians - You know those technicians making $80-to-$100K per year because of their field experience? Those are the level of technicians that typically run proactive services at managed IT service providers. You will get to work with a team of technicians and consultants that know how technology fits into your business, and what needs to happen to get it to that point. 
• Budgetable monthly payment - With Managed IT, you know exactly how much your technology support costs are beforehand. 
• Vendor management - You may be surprised just how much time away from your business your vendors cause you to take. Knowledgeable consultants can manage your IT vendor relationships for you to ensure that you have a professional perspective working for your business.
• Backup and Disaster Recovery - The BDR service backs up your company’s crucial data and applications to ensure that if something goes wrong, you have an up-to-date backup of the data you need to keep your business running.
• Hardware support - If something goes wrong and our technicians can’t fix it remotely, we will come onsite to ensure that your hardware is fixed and you can get back to business fast. 

The whole point is that managed services providers do things remotely and proactively so that you don’t have to see massive maintenance costs. If you would like to learn more about getting your business the technology support and management it needs, give MSPNetworks a call at (516) 403-9001.

Technology is complex, and it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. This is more the case for business technology than consumer technology. Even those who consider themselves tech-savvy might be lost when it comes to managing business-grade technology solutions. How can you make sure that your business technology is receiving the service it needs to stay operational long-term?

Managed IT services can help your business keep its technology functioning with a minimal amount of stress and involvement on your part. Even a small business can afford the assistance of a managed IT provider, giving them the same care and expertise for technology management that an enterprise might have for their internal IT department.

Consider the size difference between an enterprise and small business for a moment. Chances are the enterprise has a larger budget and more wiggle room for things like IT management. Smaller businesses that don’t produce as much revenue compared to their expenses might be operating a bit more frugally, and one of the first departments that gets cut is the one that has the biggest expense tied to it: IT. This is a major problem, though, because IT is hopelessly intertwined with other parts of your business which enable it to generate capital.

While some large companies are able to hire full, in-house IT departments, the most fortunate small businesses often only have one, or maybe two technicians on-site. Having a full IT department is great because it gives the technicians the ability to spread the workload, allowing them to focus on both innovative new tools and maintaining current systems simultaneously. The same cannot be said for small teams, who are already stretched to the point where they have to choose operational maintenance over innovation.

The answer to this is simple, but it doesn’t seem affordable at first glance: you need more help. Hiring extra technicians and adding them to your payroll is difficult, though, and not always the easiest or most sustainable decision. Rather than worry about this, you can outsource certain responsibilities to a third-party managed service provider so that your in-house team can focus on things that truly matter to running your organization. You receive services rendered according to a service level agreement, and you pay monthly in a budget-friendly payment plan. It’s a great alternative to hiring multiple new technicians to handle the increased workload. 

MSPNetworks can give your business the services and expertise it needs to properly maintain and manage its enterprise-grade solutions. We can help regardless of your current situation, whether you are looking for external help or you have an internal IT department who already maintains your infrastructure. All our assistance means is that your team is freed up to focus on what you hired them to do, and that should make everyone happy—including you and your bottom line.

To learn more about our technology services, give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today.

Outsourced IT is a great option for the modern small business, and no matter where your shortcomings lie in managing technology, we are confident you can find value in the service. Whether you need a full-fledged IT department or someone to help implement new solutions, we’ve got you covered, and for the right price point, too! Let’s take a look at some of the trends you can expect from managed IT, as well as how they influence the costs compared to those of the traditional break-fix model.

A Comparison Between Managed Services and Break-Fix

Let’s begin by really distilling the two options into the most basic description of each.

• Break-Fix services are transactional in their nature, with each issue in need of resolution being billed separately. 
• Managed services operate as an outsourced department would, with all services (based on the established agreement) covered by a set monthly subscription cost.

At the root of it is how the business is charged for the IT services rendered. While there are countless other differences between the two types of services, such as proactive versus reactive maintenance, and the scope of services rendered, we want to dial in on the financial differences between the two.

It Comes Down to How Much You Get for Your Money

With break-fix IT, you are going to have to get used to at least a certain level of downtime, as it’s built into the service model. You can’t fix technology that isn’t broken, after all. You are reacting to issues that appear after your processes have been disrupted. This means you are losing money due to the lost productivity and perhaps even missed opportunities. You have to weigh the value of these missed opportunities and issues against the cost of the services. Is it worth it? We don’t think so.

When compared against the value that managed service agreements cover, including complete monitoring and maintenance through the use of remote technologies, and live assistance available whenever your employees need it, there’s no questioning the difference. Some issues might need to be addressed in-house, but the data collected prior to that visit will make the technician’s job easier and more expedient. In all, you can expect a more consistent and predictable service offering from a managed service provider, making the service easier to budget and prepare for. It’s comparable to having a full-fledged in-house IT department on your side, only much more cost-effective.

While We May Be Biased, The Comparative Value We Offer Speaks for Itself

When you work with MSPNetworks, we ensure that you aren’t getting charged for every little thing done to your infrastructure; our business model is all-inclusive to ensure that you know what you are getting at all times. We try to limit the surprise expenses associated with technology management so you can focus on running your organization the way it’s supposed to be run.

It might be tempting to go with a low-commitment style of technology management, but we assure you that the break-fix providers are not going to have your best interests in mind. You deserve IT maintenance from a team invested in your prolonged and continued success. To learn more about how we can help you with this, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

For modern organizations that depend highly on their technology, nothing is quite so scary as an event that can completely marginalize its ability to operate. This doesn’t need to be a fire, flood, or some other major cataclysm; it could be something as simple as some of your old IT fails and you’re not ready for it. This week, we thought we’d briefly go through what a catastrophic failure looks like and some steps you can take to keep your business from experiencing one.

What Does a Catastrophic Failure Entail?

Since all of our lives are increasingly digital, it stands to reason that our businesses and organizations are. This means that your business absolutely depends on the technology you’ve chosen and when it fails, your endeavors tied to it likely do too. Today’s business uses digital systems for all of their productivity and storage needs, but also their communications, collaboration, customer interaction, and even their administrative management. This is why, when situations arise that put these systems in peril, your whole organization is as well. 

You do so much to combat downtime; so when a situation comes along that threatens the very integrity of the systems your business depends on, it can be really frightening. But today we aren’t talking about threats, we are talking about catastrophe. Honestly, failures happen in the best-designed, expertly-implemented, and constantly-supported IT infrastructures. How your business is able to rebound after that failure, and what you do to help avoid others, are controllable. 

When you have a catastrophic failure of your IT infrastructure, it means that the systems are not working and are inaccessible to the people who use them every day to make your business run. This typically means that they have been taken offline by some event that is bigger than the risk mitigation efforts you’ve put in place. Some events like a housing failure only happen in the case of major weather disasters, power surges that destroy internal components, and utilities that aren’t available to run the underlying infrastructure. There are steps you can take to help mitigate the long-term effects these types of failures have on your business. They include:

• Deploying two separate sources of power
• Deploying uninterruptible power supplies 
• Choosing vendors with high availability systems in place
• Undertaking routine building maintenance

These are basically common sense variables that can help your business in innumerable ways. The problem becomes when you do all these things and your business is presented with a situation where nothing you could have done to protect these systems happens. You’d think that this makes a compelling argument to virtualize your whole business computing infrastructure, but in many of the situations where you wouldn’t be able to run onsite hardware, you won’t have access to electricity or the bandwidth you need to access these servers anyway. That’s not to say that cloud computing isn’t a good contingency for catastrophic hardware failure, especially if your team can work remotely.

Hardware aside, catastrophic failure can be brought on by other means as well. Hacking, malware, and user error can bring productivity to a grinding halt and present your business with major challenges. That is why it is important to make sure to do all the right things to protect these systems from breach. You will need a comprehensive training regimen for your staff to ensure they understand how to spot phishing attacks, how to protect your business through the use of password best practices, and what to do if they come across situations that can ruin your business’ continuity. 

Unfortunately, the most exposed part of your business may be your most important. Your data can be corrupted from hardware or software failure, interception in transit, and several other means. Since it is such a big part of your business’ success, it stands to reason that it would be a big part of your business’ failure if it were corrupted, lost, or stolen. 

At MSPNetworks, we like to see businesses thriving because of their technology, not ruined because it doesn’t work. Our knowledgeable technicians can do a lot for a business: We can monitor and manage network-attached resources and infrastructure. We can help you put in policies and procedures, train your staff, and consult you on new purchases. We can also help you put together a comprehensive business continuity plan that will get your business back on its feet fast no matter what happens to the underlying infrastructure and resources. Give us a call today for more information at (516) 403-9001.  

Innovation is something that you want the people working with your technology to have a highly-developed sense of. Creativity isn’t often associated with business IT, but it is something that should be considered a true benefit if it can be brought into your operations.

Let’s explore exactly why creativity is an asset (even with your in-house IT team) and how you can nurture it in your employees.

Why Creative Thinking is a Business Benefit

Employing and nurturing a creative team in your business—in IT or not—presents many benefits. Having said that, it should be clear how your IT department would particularly benefit from a creative mindset after we consider some of the impacts that one imparts:

Improved Efficiency

If someone is a creative thinker, putting a challenge in front of them and telling them, “Go,” is a great motivator… and their thought process will immediately bypass those ideas that they can see won’t work. This makes it possible for better results to be accomplished faster… a key goal for any department, but particularly for IT.

Focus on Results and Problem Solving

Speaking of, creative people are largely results-oriented. Not only are they motivated to complete their objectives, they are also empowered to focus on the process instead of how the process itself will ultimately play out.

But, you may be asking, what if the process doesn’t work out? With a creative team, this is still a problem, sure, but one that you have a much better chance of resolving faster and more effectively. 

Better Ideas and Thought Processes

As it happens, this is often related to our next benefit: more productive thoughts in general. When a creative mind is applied to an issue, new and innovative ideas can result, with improved thought processes to match. The benefits are derived from having a team that is able to consider a problem from different angles, not just the ones presented to them initially.

Leadership Skills

Finally, creative people often have the ability to take leadership—whether that’s over their own work and its challenges, or over a team and its combined struggles. Giving some of your creative team members this kind of leadership—even on a small scale—can result in improved internal processes.

How to Cultivate a Creative Team

Naturally, having creative individuals on your IT team is a good thing, so let’s explore some ways you can help them embrace their creativity and put it to use at work.

Encourage Collaboration

Here’s the unspoken truth that a lot of collaboration-promoting businesses like us don’t want you to know… IT, as a general rule, isn’t a very collaborative role in an organization. However, you can fix that. Try breaking your IT team up into groups every once in a while and challenge them to solve a problem. Not only can your team members blow off some steam by focusing on a low-stakes challenge, they are naturally driven to balance their own expertise with that which their teammates hold.

Focus on Customer Challenges

Here’s another idea—ask your IT team members to brainstorm ideas for the most impactful projects… with the constraint that they can only address issues that your customers and clients have. Not only will this limitation help them to focus their efforts and think more creatively, you have the opportunity to discover the solution to a considerable business problem your team can then focus on solving.

Encourage All Ideas

We all know that all the ideas your IT department comes up with aren’t going to be winners. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t encourage these ideas to be developed and shared. On top of being good creative exercise for your team members, some part of one person’s idea may help to inspire another to come closer to solving the problem at hand.

We’re Here to Free Your Team Up for Their Creative Efforts

The biggest obstacle most teams face that prevents them from developing creative ideas and plans is time. If your team’s schedule is packed with improvement line items and support requests/demands from the rest of your team, there’s not much time left for creativity.

That’s where we come in. We can take on some of the responsibilities that bog down your IT team’s time, freeing them up to have good—no, great—ideas that directly benefit your business. Reach out to learn more about our services at (516) 403-9001.

There are countless issues that could arise when it comes to managing and maintaining your technology, but the people who are in charge of the process should not be one of them. If you don’t have a dedicated IT team to take care of your business technology, you might not be properly maintaining your technology. Thankfully, there are ways to get around limited resources, and it might not be what you think.

Who Manages Your Technology?

As is often the case with businesses with limited resources, more employees wind up doing more tasks than they should be. Sometimes businesses expect their employees to have a baseline understanding of technology, but it is not necessarily the case. In fact, assuming this can be dangerous, and untrained employees should absolutely not be maintaining your technology solutions. Under the wrong circumstances, an untrained employee could cause irreparable harm to your infrastructure.

Plus, consider the fact that poorly functioning technology can get in the way of employees doing their jobs properly, reducing productivity and impacting your bottom line. Employees who don’t know any better will simply let the dysfunctional technology be, which is why it’s better to have professionals handle the maintenance on a regular basis.

One of the biggest hold-ups for businesses without internal IT resources is that they don’t have the budget to hire full-time technicians to take care of all their technology challenges. They might choose to address problems as they occur rather than before they occur, and this could impact operations in a negative way.

The conundrum is that companies need regular IT maintenance, but they can’t afford or access it. So what’s the solution? It’s actually pretty simple: managed IT services.

The Good News

Whether you have an in-house IT team or not, all businesses can gain access to the IT support they need to be successful in the business world, and it’s all thanks to outsourcing. Most maintenance and management of technology systems can be performed without the need for an on-site visit, so it doesn’t matter what your geographical location is. Plus, considering how affordable it is compared to adding more salaries to your budget, you’ll find that it saves you time and money.

MSPNetworks wants to be your go-to IT resource for all of your technology needs. To learn more about what we can do for your business, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

If you suspect that your organization has trouble managing its technology, you are far from the only one. Small businesses tend to have more difficulties with technology management and maintenance compared to their enterprise-level counterparts, mostly due to limitations placed on resources and time. You can make things much easier for your business by working with a managed service provider.

How Managed Services Free Up Resources

First, we should establish what a managed service provider actually does for your business. Basically, for a business that doesn’t have an IT department, a managed service provider can offer services in accordance with what the business needs, no matter how complex or how simple. MSPs are an outsourced service, so you get services rendered in accordance with a service level agreement. You can control just how much you need or how little you need.

This frees up resources by giving your small business more reliable access to labor for technology maintenance, and it’s something that absolutely cannot be understated in its value. If you are currently relying on your employees—those who are not trained to maintain technology, mind you—to take care of your IT infrastructure, you are putting your organization on the line. It’s better to work with a managed service provider like MSPNetworks to ensure that you get access to the professional maintenance and services you need to be successful long-term. Even if you do have an in-house IT department, we can take some of the burden off of them by way of taking on the more menial tasks associated with IT maintenance, like patching and updating systems.

Managed Service Providers Save Time (and Money)

The biggest benefit of working with an MSP is that you can save time and money, either in the short-term or the long-term, depending on your level of commitment. Businesses using the break-fix IT model are known to address technology issues as they occur rather than prevent them outright, a prospect which can be both wasteful and time-consuming. You can save so much in terms of time and resources simply by taking proactive steps to maintain technology rather than respond to issues as they occur.

This is no small task, so we recommend that you work with an MSP to detect and resolve problems by way of preventative maintenance and monitoring services. This is the best way to eliminate downtime for your business. Imagine what you can do with all of the time you’ve taken back from the clutches of downtime! How will you use that additional revenue and time? We’ll let you answer that question for yourself.

MSPNetworks can be your go-to IT resource and managed service provider. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call us at (516) 403-9001.

Most businesses set out to do an IT project when their technology needs an upgrade. Whether your business is looking to add new hardware, refresh the systems you already have, migrate to the cloud, or add new applications to your playbook, it can get pretty intimidating as cost and time overruns threaten your profitability. This week, we thought we would discuss an approach that can help any business—large or small— get their IT projects completed and integrated effectively: co-managed IT. 

What Problems Do IT Projects Present?

Before we get into explaining co-managed IT, we want to talk about the problems that can happen when integrating new technologies. It starts with management. Before the project commences, you need to have all of your ducks in a row. This means having a dedicated project manager that has a clear idea about what tasks need to be delegated, how those tasks fit into the project as a whole, and what deadlines and cost restrictions there are for the project. This is a lot of work, and as a result, it can be difficult to keep a project on the rails, especially if the project is a major overhaul of your current computing infrastructure. Some of the problems you may run into when implementing new technologies include:

• A lack of a clear path forward - Many businesses will want to add IT without putting together a clear and efficient plan. This will inevitably cause issues with inefficiency, problematic implementation, and cost overruns that could put a damper on your new technology and on your business. 
• No plan in regards to vendors - In order to make a successful IT change, you will need to coordinate with the vendors supplying the technology to ensure that they can deliver as you are ready to implement it. 
• Problems with the speed of progress - Most IT implementations require input and work to be done from different vendors, suppliers, and workers. This collaboration needs to be coordinated so as to not hinder the speed of progress. If one or more collaborators are lagging behind, there will likely be deadlines missed and the project will take longer, and cost more than you had planned. 
• Changes in scope or priority - Many times, businesses will alter an IT project’s path forward. This puts a lot of pressure on the project manager and can lead to a devastating lack of results. Plan ahead and adjust only when absolutely necessary to get the most out of any project. 
• A lack of compatibility - One issue that can really derail an IT project is to get to a point where it needs to be integrated with standing technology, and the two systems aren’t compatible. Know what you need before you get too far down the road so as to not run into problems that could put your whole endeavor at risk. 
• Not planning for training - If your business is looking to include new software systems into your IT infrastructure, it stands to reason that the people who are using it will need time to adjust. If you don’t plan for that adjustment period, you could be looking at a complete failure. 

How Co-Managed IT Can Help

IT projects are detail-oriented ventures and require a lot of attention to produce the expected results. This can leave a business’ IT administrator and technicians searching for ways to complete an efficient project while still maintaining a company’s IT infrastructure for regular production. With co-managed IT services from MSPNetworks our knowledgeable technicians can either help run the project to get it implemented effectively, or we can take over the proactive management of your business’ IT infrastructure to keep your business running productively as your IT team proceeds in implementing your business’ new technology. Not only does this service work to get more trained eyes on a project, it can also be advantageous as we have relationships with vendors that can expedite the project’s progress. 

With the IT professionals at MSPNetworks working for you, you can ensure that your business runs as intended and get the experienced resources needed to make your new IT project a rousing success. If you would like to learn more about our co-managed IT services or talk to one of our consultants about the future of your business’ technology, give us a call today at (516) 403-9001. 

Each year we try to come up with a creative Christmas article that ties IT into one of the many holiday fables, but this year we thought we would just forgo the pageantry and talk a little bit about how important our clients are and what we do that can help take them where they want to go.

Anyone who runs a small business has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the ebbs and flows in business that have resulted from it, and the overall uncertain feeling of “what next?” Many businesses haven’t made it and others are on the brink, even as people have begun to normalize their routines. Our dedication to helping all of our New York partners handle this difficult period in stride and coming out more prosperous on the other end, is one of our most important strategies. How do we accomplish this? Let’s take a look:

Keeping a Business Running

The most important part about running a business is that the business is available to sell the product or service, and that in the course of doing so, you don’t often pay for nothing. When your organization’s technology falters, you typically need to figure out how to fix it. If this happens quite a bit, you are looking at significant downtime, potential data loss, and the financial issues both create.

It’s not a good situation. 

Our services provide a solution to those problems. First, we assess your network to let decision makers know what systems are mission-critical and which ones are less so. Then we remotely monitor critical systems around the clock to ensure that network-connected devices are working as intended. If there are signs of inconsistency, our staff of certified technicians can typically fix the issues before they cause downtime. 

What’s more, we provide your staff access to a comprehensive help desk that can solve any number of computer-related problems quickly and efficiently. This keeps your team productive, your technology running smoothly, and downtime to a minimum. 

There will be times when a network-attached device is not repairable remotely and it will require technical support or replacement. Since our technicians will know before the component fails, we can ensure that you get the repairs/replacements needed before having to deal with large swaths of downtime.

Finally, in order to ensure that a business’ data is secured, we deploy a data backup and disaster recovery service that incrementally copies your data so that you don’t lose much if you need to use it. There are dozens of different reasons that an organization would have to use their backup, so with our BDR service, you get data redundancy onsite, as well as in the cloud, to ensure that any situation in which you may need to restore or migrate data is covered. 

Promoting Security

During the pandemic, the threat landscape became more dangerous due to the opportunities presented by the many relief programs that have been rolled out. Add this to the increase in ransomware and phishing attacks that were expected, it makes it a constant struggle for most businesses to keep up. 

At MSPNetworks, we don’t just keep up, we use all of our resources and accrued knowledge to keep our clients as safe as possible. We can outfit businesses with a myriad of security tools including firewalls, content filters, virtual private networks, spam blockers, and many more. 

That’s just the beginning of what we can do to keep your business’ IT secure.

We ensure all of your software is patched and updated regularly to reduce the exploitation of potential vulnerabilities (and to ensure that you have all the new features that software updates provide). Since software is the lifeblood of most businesses, securing that crucial avenue of potential attack can stop a lot of issues, but it won’t stop them all. It’s for this reason that we also work with you to help put in policies, procedures, and training platforms that can substantially reduce your organization’s exposure to today’s worst threats.

Cybersecurity is one of the most critical components of the modern business’ IT strategy, and with the experts we have on staff in your organization’s corner, you will be able to be more effective, more efficient, and see many fewer issues. 

Using Innovation

One aspect of our jobs that we find absolutely critical—and our clients find indispensable—is our commitment to knowing how to deploy technology in such a way that it basically pays for itself. Any business owner knows that technology isn’t cheap, but if it is deployed the right way, the return on your IT investments can be robust. 

We like to keep our finger on the pulse of technology to find innovative new tools that can really push the needle for your business’ ability to operate effectively. From deploying and managing Internet of Things (IoT) devices, to outfitting your business with high-end tools like document management, to a comprehensive list of communications and collaboration tools that can allow your business to quicken the pace; MSPNetworks has access to the knowledge and expertise needed to help integrate it for your business.

You can do a lot with technology, and we can do a lot with clients willing to trust us to do what’s best for their company. We would like to thank all of you for another great year, even if it was one of the most turbulent we can remember. We hope you all have a Merry Christmas tomorrow and a pleasant holiday season.

All businesses have different goals when it comes to developing their IT infrastructure. While some might struggle just making ends meet with important maintenance, others might decide that it’s time to branch out and try innovative new solutions to take their infrastructures to the next level. We want to make one thing clear; both situations are perfectly fine, so long as you are willing to accept that you could always be doing things better, and today is the perfect time to take the next steps.

In a post-pandemic world, Gartner predicts that worldwide IT spending will increase by 9% in 2021, reaching its peak at around $4.2 trillion. This is significant, and it should be indicative that organizations are starting to move away from the old way of doing things in favor of new solutions. While organizations may have struggled throughout the pandemic just to keep operations going, they now seem to be more receptive to spending more on IT and pushing ever onward.

Where does your business lie on this spectrum? Have you worked past the operational challenges of the pandemic? Are you in a place where you feel comfortable enough to start optimizing and innovating? Working with a managed IT provider is a great decision no matter where your business currently lies. Here are some ways that we can help businesses in both categories.

For Those Who Are Struggling to Keep Up

Small businesses often have issues keeping up with their technology infrastructure, and this could be for a number of reasons. Some simply do not have the talent to administer important maintenance as it’s needed. Others don’t have the budget to procure new technology or deploy new solutions. In both cases, working with a managed IT service provider like MSPNetworks can be beneficial. We can function as an in-house IT department would, providing the technical expertise and support needed to keep up with everyday operations.

For Those Eager to Jump Ahead

Let’s say that you have your basic technology needs covered by an in-house IT department. Chances are they have their hands full, especially if your IT department consists of one or two technicians whose sole responsibility is to manage and maintain your tech. This stymies your ability to innovate and deploy new solutions to resolve issues or streamline operations. A managed IT provider like MSPNetworks can be the extra muscle needed to get these big projects off the ground. Alternatively, we can manage day-to-day tasks while your in-house team works to deploy projects.

No Matter What, We Can Help

No matter what your goals are for your organization’s IT, we are confident that managed IT services from MSPNetworks can help you reach them. Whether you are trying to get by during these difficult times or you are focusing on growing your organization, we can help you implement solutions that make your life easier. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more.

We believe that at the end of the day, employees want to do the right thing and accomplish their daily tasks without incident. However, technology can often break these plans with unexpected issues that prevent them from doing so. If you don’t take the time to provide the proper IT support when it is needed, you force your employees to either be unproductive or find unconventional (and often unsecure) solutions.

Employees Using Unsecured Devices

Generally speaking, your employees will use their work technology to fulfill their obligations, including their desktops or perhaps a work-issued laptop or mobile device. Unfortunately, depending on how well these devices are maintained, they may be slower than the technology employees use when they are out of the office. This may lead them to using technology that is not governed by your security solutions, such as their personal devices, simply because they work better than their work-issued devices.

Therefore, it is crucial that you manage and maintain your organization’s devices in a way that makes sure they are working optimally. You should follow this up with a comprehensive Bring Your Own Device policy that outlines how employees are allowed to utilize their mobile devices for work purposes. Doing so will save you a lot of grief in the long term.

Unauthorized Software Downloads

There are times when your staff will require specific tools in order to perform a function of their job. If they do not have the appropriate tools to accomplish the task, they may choose to download applications from the Internet that allow them to do so. These applications are often dangerous to utilize, as they are outside the scope of your company’s software infrastructure, and who can really tell if the application used is secure or not?

This is especially problematic for software that requires a software license. Imagine for a moment that one of your employees is going about their daily tasks without any disruptions, only to be brutally severed from the tools needed to perform these duties by an expired software license. In their desperation to keep working and meet required deadlines, they might download some free software or perhaps one with a counterfeit software license. While this solves the short-term problem of getting work done, it could come at a steep cost should your organization become subject to network audits or otherwise.

In the end, being proactive about technology support is the only way you can prevent these issues from breaking your business and budget. While your employees might feel like they are being proactive in finding a solution, you shouldn’t have to rely on them finding the solution for themselves; instead, provide them with a protocol to follow so that you know they will seek the help of experts when it is needed.

MSPNetworks can be those experts. We want to help your employees do their jobs in the most effective way possible, be it through implementing new and innovative solutions or assisting them with their daily duties through comprehensive IT support. Let your team focus on what they know best: their own jobs, not keeping their computers and other technology in proper working order.

To learn more about how we can help your employees stay productive throughout the workday, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Managed IT services are well known for being an incredibly useful service for a business as it helps offset the cost of keeping their technology up and running. What they aren’t as well known for are all the other services that they do to add value for their customers. 

Your Business Technology

The first thing that people new to managed services should understand is that, yes, IT support is our number one function and most of our services are bundled because it is the best way for our clients to experience close-to-optimal operational continuity at a price point that works for them.

That doesn’t mean that we are fixing computers all day.

In fact, in the scope of things, fixing computers is just one of the myriad of things we need to accomplish every day to ensure that our clients’ IT infrastructures are working as intended. Today, we thought we would take a look at some of the services we provide, and how collectively, the service can absolutely pay for itself. 

Remote Monitoring and Management

The first thing you’ll need to know is that we find that when our technicians are at your business, that productivity slows. Having IT technicians poking around onsite can be distracting. Besides, we aren’t trying to react to IT problems, we are trying to keep them from happening in the first place. How is that possible? With secure, remote technology.

We’ve invested in enterprise-grade, cutting-edge technology to constantly monitor your entire IT infrastructure and network to ensure that if any piece of equipment is not working as intended that it is fixed before it becomes a problem. This proactive nature to IT is the most valuable part of our offering. We fix issues with your IT before they can be profit-destroying problems. Think about how much downtime hurts your bottom line. 

If you could curtail your exposure to situations where IT problems cause your downtime and do it at a fraction of the cost of hiring a team of IT experts, you’d consider that value, right? Most decision makers would, which is why MSPs today need to deliver more. Let’s take a look at some of the other services we provide that are meant to add to our value.

Regular Reviews

One of the issues with technology is that as soon as you get a piece of technology there is something better (or worse, more suited to your needs) coming right behind it. This means that if you are going to look outside your door for IT support and services, you need them to keep you in the loop.

At MSPNetworks, we adhere to regular reviews because we want your business to be the best it can be. Around every quarter we will schedule a call or meeting to go over what your goals and priorities are for the upcoming months. Not only does that give us the ability to help you plan your technology investments, it allows us to follow up on any issues we may have had in the weeks leading up to the meeting. 

Vendor Management

Vendor management is a relatively simple service, but it can make a big difference. Think about how much time you spend dealing with your technology vendors in a given month. They follow up all the time and try to upsell you. Sometimes those investments make sense, but often they are just trying to make sales. 

Our vendor management service basically removes this responsibility from you and your staff. We will be the point of contact for all of your technology vendors. This not only puts a technology professional in place as a point of contact, it also allows you to separate yourself from those relationships that take away time and attention from your ultimate goals for your business.

Patch Management

Software is a major part of every business’ operational strategy, and if it isn’t updated regularly, it can actually expose your business to risk. Unpatched software often leaves your network vulnerable to outside attack. Today’s hackers only need one opportunity to get into your network and steal your data or infect your business’ IT with malware. With patch management, you never have to worry about that again.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Another massive value we provide comes in the form of a backup and disaster recovery solution. We offer full and partial backup programs that meet industry best practices. You will get a network-attached BDR that you can use to quickly restore from if need be, but you also get incremental backups stored in the cloud should something more severe happen. With your data protected from loss, you can have the peace of mind that if something happens, your business’ continuity will be strong.

Fix Computers

While we try to maintain every piece of your IT infrastructure, sometimes machines fail. It goes without saying that should the need arise, our professional technicians will fix your hardware onsite. 

If you would like to learn more about our professional managed IT services, or you would just like to have a conversation about your business’ technology goals, give us a call right now at (516) 403-9001.

Let me ask you a quick question: when was your critical business technology last updated? When do your software licenses expire? When did your printer last have any maintenance performed on it?

If you’re unsure of the answers to these questions, you need to have a better handle on your IT inventory. Let’s go over why, and how we can help.

Here’s the thing: for your IT to work to your favor, you need to maintain total control and awareness of it. You effectively need to know everything about every piece of hardware you possess—when it was purchased, who initially set it up, when and by who it last received maintenance.

After all, your IT required some significant investment on your part… doesn’t it make sense to invest in protecting it? Keeping a record of this kind of information is a very important part of protecting it, as this record can help you form your decisions in the future.

MSPNetworks can help you there. Not only do our professional IT technicians expertly deploy and manage the solutions our clients rely on each day, but we also maintain detailed documentation of every component of their infrastructures as well as a running record of all the actions we take to keep them up and running efficiently. Using advanced diagnostic tools, we identify and mitigate any shortcomings, ensuring your systems are fully updated with all appropriate patches applied.

Of course, doing so will cause us to generate extensive documentation. For instance, here are some of the records we keep:

• All network-attached devices you have, from your networking devices to every company-owned endpoint and peripheral that attaches to it.
• The proper configuration for each of these devices.
• The date that each of these devices was installed.
• The licenses that your business needs to maintain, and the status of the ones you have.
• A comprehensive history of any service that each of these devices have received.

Tracking this information helps to guide us as we manage our clients’ critical technology solutions so that we can deliver the greatest benefit to their operations. This record also assists our staff in identifying and diagnosing future issues that could potentially impact a client’s IT.

Experience These Benefits in Your Own Business

If you would like to find out how managed IT services could assist your operations, reach out to our team. MSPNetworks is always available to answer your questions and give you more information about our services. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today.

There is no question that a small business can benefit from technology, as has been proven time and time again. However, an issue can arise if a business bites off more than it can chew, so to speak, and ultimately creates a spike in costs. A responsible business owner will resist this temptation and prioritize the solutions they need over the ones they want - building profitability and generating capital needed to make other improvements.

In this blog, we’ll examine some of the implementations that can deliver a good return on investment to a small business.

Managed IT Services

For the small or medium-sized business seeking maximum value for their dollar, managed IT is a great choice. For a predictable, scaled monthly fee, a managed service provider (also known as an MSP) will make sure that a company’s information technology solutions are functional before a problem or issue arises. What’s more, a relationship with an MSP can also provide invaluable access to specialized vendors, enabling you to leverage some of the best solutions available.

As alluded to above, one of the biggest values that an MSP provides is in the hands-on experience that its technicians have, both on-site and remotely. A company whose solutions aren’t in working order is a company that is hemorrhaging money via downtime, and so it is crucial that a company in this situation has the means to resolve and ideally avoid downtime, continuing its productivity and revenue generation.

One of the biggest benefits to investing in managed IT services is the speed at which you will see a return on that investment. Comparing the cost of an MSP’s services to the multitude of costs that these services help you avoid will help to illustrate how much an MSP can help you. How much are you spending on break/fix services, hiring and onboarding an in-house technician, updating and upgrading your hardware and software, and weathering downtime? All of these costs can be consolidated and/or eliminated with an agreement with an MSP.

Hybrid Cloud

The cloud is growing at an explosive pace, and for the business or organization with specific needs where accessibility and security are concerned, a hybrid cloud platform may be the best strategy to leverage this industry-shaking technology. Private clouds, while secure, are costly to implement and maintain. Public clouds are more affordable, but there are some major concerns among businesses at the thought of blindly entrusting crucial data to another organization. While the security of such methods is improving, there is an understandable need for control among many business owners that disqualifies the public cloud as a viable option.

The hybrid cloud is the integration of these two halves, joined together to eliminate the downsides while preserving the advantages. This also provides control over a business’ data and applications while allowing the scalability to leverage it as needed. Arguably best of all, the hybrid cloud can add the productivity that your business needs to increase revenue and profits. These reasons are large contributors to why the hybrid cloud is swiftly being considered an inevitability for all businesses by many industry experts.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Nowadays, just about every business has a wireless network. This has led, in conjunction with every employee coming to work with a smartphone in their pocket, to a need to manage the devices that connect to that network. Allowing employees to utilize their personal devices for work purposes brings great benefits, but requires a solution to help eliminate the risks and threats that these devices bring in from the outside. There is also no shortage of incidents where inappropriate and shortsighted mobile behaviors on a wireless network have brought issues to a business. This is why you need to take the necessary steps to protect your network through the enforcement of BYOD policies.

A BYOD policy needs to take many things into account to be seen as having a worthwhile value to the organization, from how many devices are being brought into the company to the cost of the mobile device management software to the affect that introducing these devices into the workflow has on productivity and collaboration.

Of course, you should also keep in mind that some employees and most of the visitors you receive to the office will see no problem in using your business network to access things that aren’t conducive to your business operations, eating up resources that should be used for other things. This is why any BYOD implementation also needs to see to including access control and permissions within its mobile device management policies. This will provide you with benefits from heightened efficiency to enhanced security, leading to a potential boost in revenue generation - all the while enjoying the diminished costs that leveraging BYOD provides to your business’ budget.

It’s true that adding new technology solutions to your business can carry a hefty expense with it, but the right solutions can offset that cost with improved company operations and diminished security risks. The professionals at MSPNetworks have the experience and know-how with IT solutions to ensure that the right solutions are the ones that go into your business, in the right way. For more information about some of the things we can help you to improve in your organization’s IT, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

Managed services have quickly become the most reasonable option for businesses of any size to use, and based on what we’ve seen recently, will soon be the only real option for most operations. However, when considering the managed service option, you need to make sure you find a provider with the following capabilities and service offerings:

Speedy Responses

Downtime is the natural enemy of any business, regardless of its cause. If work cannot be completed in a timely manner, there are going to be some consequences. If these interruptions continue for a while, they can make your business’ survival much less likely.

This is precisely why it is so important that your provider needs to be able to diagnose and resolve the source of your downtime as quickly as possible. Ideally, your provider would be able to do so remotely, eliminating the need for travel that would only add to your lost productivity. A guaranteed response time is another promise that an MSP can make, but other providers often cannot.

Disaster Recovery Services

You might not always consider how much the term “disaster” can cover while you’re referring to your business, but it goes far beyond the data loss events or physical infrastructure damage that many tend to focus on. Lost productivity also qualifies, especially that which is brought along when an entire workforce is ordered to stay home. Find out if an IT provider can help you to minimize these interruptions and get you back in business (as much as you are able) as quickly as possible after any conceivable disaster event. This means that your resource will need to have considered the impacts that an event could cause and have prepared a strategy to minimize them.

Support Options

With so many employees now working remotely, it is crucial that they have the means to receive the support they may need to deal with any issues that they may experience. Thanks to their remote capabilities, the managed service provider can still deliver dedicated helpdesk services to your team if need be. As a result, productivity is more likely to be maintained, without trying to convince anyone to make a house call.

Proactive Upkeep

Of course, why leave your technology open to issues during a challenging time at all? An MSP can use their remote solutions to proactively monitor your tools, preventing issues from occurring in your infrastructure by catching them early. With the MSP’s support, your team will see fewer interruptions and obstacles overall, and will be able to accomplish more as a result.

Budgetary Flexibility

Again, current events have demonstrated that effectively anything can throw your business’ budget entirely out the window, which makes it all the more crucial for you to have a provider whose services are scalable, and can be adjusted to suit your circumstances. The MSP’s inclusive pricing structure, tailored to meet your business’ budgetary capability, makes it much simpler to sustain your services throughout the year.

With businesses contending with so much, especially now, their IT support shouldn’t be a pressing issue. Working with MSPNetworks can take these considerations off your plate while assisting you in accomplishing more. If this sounds like a better option for your business to consider, give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to discuss all your options.

The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.

Today, many of the largest and most lucrative companies in the world, Google, Apple, AT&T, Amazon, Verizon, Facebook and Microsoft are all, more than manufacturers of computer-based goods and services, data brokers. These data brokers create services that they then sell to advertisers that allow them to target you based on the information these companies have of you, which can accurately tell how and what to sell you.

Since nearly everyone has a near-ubiquitously-connected experience there is a lot of data collected, bought, and sold every year and it’s big business. Facebook, a company whose main revenue stream is from selling advertising, made a net profit of nearly $16 billion in 2017. This tells us that if you have people’s data, you have people’s hopes, fears, and dreams, which means you can pretty easily get someone to pay you for access to that information.

For small businesses it’s much less lucrative. In fact, all the data your organization needs to keep, is probably necessary to simply do business, not to sell to advertisers. Facebook voluntarily gets a lot of personal information from every one of their users, as where the typical small business often has to strategize to just get a name and a phone number. The information that is sensitive (mostly customer information that you collect) has a lot of value to the people looking to steal it. So while you aren’t making billions of dollars selling consumer profiles, it is still a mightily important part of doing business, and needs to be secured.

Is Data a Commodity?

Technically speaking, it isn’t. Since a commodity’s value is based namely on its scarcity and the amount of capital that needs to be put up to create it, in both resources and labor, the data that is being purchased isn’t really a commodity. In lieu of the dissolution of the U.S. Net Neutrality laws, this has created the argument in the U.S. that since now it’s up to the telecommunication companies how they want to manage (or more accurately bill) data consumption, that they would throttle and tier service, something that isn’t possible with a true commodity, where there are laws prohibiting those types of practices.

On the other hand, Internet access is something that a majority of the commerce requires, and delivering data is in itself an expensive endeavor (infrastructure spending, development, utility costs, etc.) so telecoms, who are seeing their would-be profits syphoned by over-the-top content providers, and publicly demonized as a result of a very public lobbying effort to gain control of the ability to implement some sort of prioritization strategy, have to find a strategy to sustain their ability to get a workable return on their investments.

Securing Your Organization’s Data

Regardless of what your view of data is, it’s an important resource for your organization, and as mentioned above, it needs to be secured. For one of your company’s most important resources, data can be lost relatively easily, so there needs to be a concerted effort to keep your network and infrastructure free from the threats that could put your data at risk. At MSPNetworks, that’s what we do. We ensure organizations like yours get the professional IT expertise you need to work efficiently, effectively, and securely in what is the most turbulent time in computing history. With the litany of threats your business faces everyday, you need experts that have your back. We offer:

• Backup and disaster recovery: With a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery system in place, all of your organization’s data is safe, redundant, and able to be restored on demand.
• Proactive monitoring and management: By keeping a dedicated eye on your network and infrastructure, our technicians can be proactive.
• Patch management: By keeping all of your organization’s software up to date with the latest threat definitions, you can ensure that your software isn’t going to be a problem.
• Access control and threat detection: By having full control over who can access what, and a complete view of the entire network, we can keep people who aren’t supposed to see certain information from accessing it.
• Training: Most times, your own staff is responsible for data breaches and malware. We can train you all on what to look for to ensure that you are doing your best to keep your network and infrastructure free from threats.
• Around the clock support: If three out of every four businesses deal with phishing emails, and over 95 percent of all phishing emails deliver ransomware, chances are that if a mistake were to be made, you will need immediate IT support. Our support and help desk can remediate a lot of your security issues to keep downtime to a minimum.

With data such a major part of doing business today, ensuring you have the right solutions and support in place to be confident that any situation you face will be managed before it becomes a problem is in itself a benefit. Call MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001 for more information.