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.

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.

With cybersecurity a priority for every business that depends on their IT, there are a lot of different strategies being utilized out there to keep threats off of networks and data safe. One of the most advanced strategies being used today is enlisting a service that runs a Security Operations Center (SOC). Today, we’ll investigate what a SOC is and how it works to keep threats at bay. 

Defining SOC

The Security Operations Center is a lot like the Network Operations Center (NOC), but its whole purpose is to monitor computing networks and devices and eliminate threats to their efficient operation. While that description may seem simple, business computing infrastructures are typically complex with a lot of end users, making network and device security a complicated endeavor. 

Today’s businesses have computing infrastructures and networks that run around the clock, and the SOC is staffed to facilitate that 24/7/365 demand for security monitoring and services. Working hand-in-hand with your NOC (and perhaps other IT administrators depending on the complexity of your business’ IT), the SOC typically handles the overarching cybersecurity strategy. 

Typically, businesses want their IT to align with how they want to run their business and part of that is maintaining uptime and keeping threats off of the endpoints, networks, and the vast amount of infrastructure that makes up the network. After all, all it takes is one vulnerability to be exploited and it can create major problems. The SOC deploys a myriad of tools and strategies all designed to do one thing: stay ahead of threats to the network. 

How the SOC Operates

As we stated previously, the SOC functions much like a NOC in that its main purpose is comprehensive around-the-clock monitoring and notification. If something goes wrong on the network, the SOC will log the issue and do what it can to mitigate the issue. As these things happen it will notify the IT administrator (the NOC) of the issue to keep them in the loop. Let’s take a brief look at some of the services the SOC will provide:

• Complete assessment - The discovery process is a major part of how the SOC can be most effective. In being aware of all the hardware, applications, and other tools on the network(s) your business needs, the SOC can ensure that everything is monitored continuously. 
• Continuous monitoring - Not only will the SOC monitor software and traffic trends, it will also monitor user and system behaviors as a way to identify issues. 
• Thorough logging - Keeping large computing networks secure is a big job, and a lot of your executive and managerial team don’t have the knowledge or the time to stay on top of threats as they come in. Keeping logs of every action the SOC makes, including communications with vendors/employees and steps taken to keep the network and infrastructure free from threats is a great way to provide a layer of oversight to the security process. It’s also an important factor in staying compliant with any regulatory mandates. 
• Comprehensive Incident response and investigation - This is where the SOC really becomes a major benefit for the security of your company's IT. Not only do SOC technicians respond quickly to any incident, they also work fast to investigate what caused the issue in the first place. Going further than your typical IT management, the main benefit of the SOC is the mitigation of efficiency-sapping issues such as malware and other manners of attack. 

If you think your business could use a Security Operations Center service to keep your growing network and infrastructure clean from threats and working for your business, give MSPNetworks a call today at (516) 403-9001.

How much does your business rely on technology to keep your organization running forward? As business technology becomes more complex, it’s becoming increasingly popular for organizations to have their own internal IT departments to manage and maintain it. Yet, small businesses don’t often have the necessary funds for such a feat. How can your company afford quality IT service? You can start by pursuing managed IT solutions from a managed service provider.

Unlike break-fix IT solutions, which depend on your technology breaking down, managed IT solutions aim to keep your technology in proper working order, as well as take action to proactively treat issues before they become long-term problems. Here are some of the best ways that managed IT can help your organization take better advantage of its technology.

Guaranteeing Flexibility

Let’s say that you choose to hire more employees for a specific department of your business. This means that you have more users, which can lead to more software licenses needed, more email accounts to archive, more endpoints to secure, and much more. Basically, as your workforce needs change, so too must your managed IT service agreement. MSPNetworks offers scalable solutions that can be customized to fit the needs of your business.

Supplementing In-House Maintenance

Let’s say that you do have an in-house technician or a small group of workers dedicated to IT maintenance. They might be able to get most of their work done, but generally speaking, your in-house technicians probably have their hands full. They might have their hands full with acting as help desk support, or they might be too busy maintaining the status quo to help the everyday worker with their technology. A managed IT provider helps to augment and work beside your in-house team to create greater success for your organization as a whole.

Working with Your Vendors

You work with a lot of vendors to give your company the access to the products your organization needs to be successful. This includes hardware vendors for your workstations and server units, software developers for all of your productivity suite needs, and any other service providers that you have. Reaching out to all of these can be time-consuming, which is why managed service providers like MSPNetworks offer vendor management services to create a single point of contact to keep your attention on your business and not your vendors.

Improving Operational Efficiency

Your business will generally function better by working with a managed service provider. The reason for this is simple: hands-off IT maintenance that takes up little, if any, of your time. MSPNetworks can remotely monitor and maintain your business’ technology infrastructure to provide as much of a hands-off approach to IT maintenance as you can get. To learn more about what MSPNetworks can do for your business, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

A business’ budget is the biggest authority over it. As a result, each business needs to spend some time adjusting their operational investments to put itself in the best position to reach its goals… a process that a managed service provider’s help can make much simpler. Let’s review some ways that an MSP can help a business get that much more out of its investment into its IT.

To begin, let’s review how you can optimize your costs (particularly your IT-related costs):

• Digitizing and automating your processes to help eliminate waste and boost efficiency.
• Negotiations can be made for services and solutions, allowing you to reduce your costs.
• Streamlined and standardized resources enable more to be accomplished for a smaller investment.

A managed service provider can enable a business to do all three of these things. For instance, here are just a few services that can help you to optimize the technology-related costs that your business generates.

Vendor Management

Vendors are an important player in a business’ operations but interacting with them can take away from the time you need to spend on your other essential tasks. We can take care of these interactions for you, allowing your focus to remain upon your actual operations. This offers a few additional benefits too, as we likely already have experience working with these vendors and can therefore get some better deals with them on your behalf.

Proactive Maintenance

While technology is an insanely valuable tool for businesses, there is no denying that it comes at a high cost to these businesses as they implement it. In addition to the costs required to acquire and implement it, its maintenance can quickly introduce additional and unpredictable costs that significantly add to the total. The proactive maintenance that an MSP provides and the preemptive issue resolution that can be accomplished enables costs to be saved.

Cloud-Based and Remote Services

Today’s business technology is built in such a way that the services and solutions that are available can be more easily scaled to their needs. As a result, a wider range of businesses can use the tools that support healthy operations—with improved support tacked on—in a financially sustainable way. By working with us, these tools can be embraced and used in the most effective way. This ultimately delivers the most amount of value to the business possible.

With MSPNetworks on your side, your business can accomplish more without overreaching its capabilities. To learn more about how our services could help your business function better, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and with all the work done,
The office was closing for some holiday fun;
Their coats buttoned up, they had all saved their files,
Everyone’s face creased in a big, toothy smile.

Colleen from finance had handed out treats,
Fresh homemade cookies, hand-frosted and sweet,
So, with smiling mouths filled with sugary tastes,
All had made their way home, arriving with haste.

With Santa Claus starting his gift-giving flight,
The office was dark, with minimal light.
The monitors sleeping, the servers were quiet,
All was at peace, no cause for disquiet.

For the office was shielded by a steadfast guard,
A managed service provider, of highest regard -
And thank goodness it was, for early that day
An emergency threatened to cause a delay.

In early morning hours, December 24,
The servers were running their nightly backup chores.
The MSP realized the problem at hand,
Their disk space was filled up, an issue unplanned.

Luckily, the office had wisely signed on,
To have their IT watched over to avoid denouement,
Remote Monitoring and Maintenance protected their assets,
As the MSP caught and resolved any threats.

From malware and spyware, to issues of all kinds,
Attacks and vulnerabilities, and all of their signs,
The MSP acts, and the MSP delivers,
Acting as a business’ IT caregivers.

So, when the MSP realized the disk space-based issue,
A solution was deployed so the backup could continue,

By deleting some outdated backups to free up space,
The MSP reported the problem to the workplace.

But the MSP did more than just issue a report,
The professionals there explained why the backup fell short,
And recommending to the business more space to save data,
The MSP helped keep their storage pro rata.

How happy the business was to have this service -
To know that they had little reason to be nervous!
To trust that any problems of theirs would be addressed,
Without breaking the bank or leaving them stressed.

So, the staff of the business was free to relax,
Without worrying that problems would fall through the cracks.
So, without any remnants of their after-hours plight,
A Happy Christmas was had by all, and all had a good night.