MSPNetworks Blog

When you think of downtime, you probably think about the power or your Internet connection going out and leaving you unable to do work. Unfortunately, these are anecdotes that seem benign, but are actually extraordinarily costly. When interruptions to your business’ computing infrastructure are constantly hindering productivity, you need to come up with a solution.

Technology-Induced Downtime

The way your technology functions is extremely important to reducing the amount of downtime your organization suffers. When your network and applications unexpectedly fail and crash, you will see substantial dips in productivity, a metric that is hard to quantify.

The best way to explain this is to look at how downtime affects large companies. According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime in the enterprise sector is about $5,600 per minute. In fact, 98-percent of enterprises say that an hour of operational downtime can cost well over $100,000. 

Now, as a small business owner, you may be thinking that downtime is bad, but at least we don’t see that type of loss…Well, think again. Percentage of loss is right in line all the way down to mom-and-pop businesses. If you were to have an hour of operational downtime because a server component fails, you are looking at a massive loss. Sometimes, these losses are fatal for businesses that are unprepared. 

Other Problems

The largest problem with downtime of any kind is the money you are spending to get nothing out of it. No other place is this more evident than having situational downtime that affects a number of your employees. Say one workstation fails in your office and it results in one person troubleshooting problems with a break/fix or onsite IT administrator. Not only are you getting nothing from the employee, you are also paying the technician a premium rate to support that piece of technology. If you think about it, one failed computer in the peak productivity hours of the workday will cost you at least hundreds if not thousands of dollars. 

Then you have to consider: what if that were my server?

You quickly will understand that it is completely untenable to not do what you can to avoid large swaths of downtime inside your business. 

What You Can Do

There are a few things you can do to actively fight downtime. They include:

Proactively Maintain Your Technology

The best thing that you can do for your business’ technology is to get a managed services provider to actively monitor and maintain all of your network-attached hardware. With state-of-the-art technology, an MSP can not only see how all of your technology is functioning, it can typically fix issues these systems have before they can become downtime-inducing problems. 

Keep Your Software Updated

Malware is a big problem for any business. As such, there needs to be an ongoing policy that keeps all network-attached software updated and patched for security vulnerabilities. An exploit of any holes in your software can turn into major downtime and even worse, so keeping software updated has to be a priority. 

Isolate Problems

One of the best ways to keep downtime to a minimum is to use technology services to do so. A comprehensive help desk offering can keep downtime to a minimum by giving employees direct access to tech support. Most times the help desk technician can help resolve issues in minutes, and even if they can’t they can expedite situations to the proper maintenance channels.

Comprehensive Backup

Finally, every business that utilizes information technology to their advantage needs to protect the data and infrastructure by having a comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery platform. The BDR backs up data in-house, and in the cloud to give organizations the peace of mind that no matter what happens, their data is safe. 

If you own a business, limiting downtime is a priority. If you would like to learn how MSPNetworks helps minimize downtime, give us a call today at (516) 403-9001.

Many businesses struggle with IT maintenance and management. Maybe they don’t have the resources to perform in-house maintenance due to a lack of funding and, consequently, the inability to hire full-time technicians. Maybe they believe that their technology is perfectly fine as is and doesn’t require regular maintenance. We’re here to burst that bubble; you should always have maintenance at the top of mind, and in today’s business environment, there is no excuse not to.

Why Utilize Proactive Maintenance?

Let’s say that your organization is one of the former businesses who isn’t proactive with their IT maintenance initiatives and only performs it every so often. You’re plugging along and making great progress on some projects while keeping operations moving forward without incident. All of a sudden, your computer crashes, or worse. Maybe you suffer from hardware failure on the server side of things, or a hacking attack renders your infrastructure vulnerable. In either case, you find yourself taking a reactive stance to the issue at hand.

Now let’s consider the opposite side of things. If you are proactive in your IT maintenance, you could have identified the telltale signs of failure before they happen. In the case of a hacking attack, adequately protecting your organization ahead of time could have prevented the attack in the first place. This is why it is critical to take advantage of proactive IT; you can always respond to issues, but preventing them entirely has a greater value in reduced downtime and costs accrued.

Greater Flexibility

With remote maintenance, you don’t need to have the technician come to your office to perform maintenance. Sure, some tasks might require a physical on-site presence, but the majority of issues that your network or solutions might face can be resolved without an on-site visit. This allows you to get the help when it’s needed rather than waiting around for when it is convenient for the technician to get to your office. Furthermore, patches and security updates can be applied as they are made available, meaning that they can essentially be deployed at any time.

Faster Response Time

That being said, remote maintenance is something that can be performed in that moment if it’s something that is absolutely necessary. If you are experiencing problems with your technology that prevent you from getting value out of it, technicians can remote into your systems and resolve the issue. It’s a great way to cut out downtime, which is one of the many business killers out there that can have lasting ramifications long after it fades.

Fewer Associated Costs

When you require an on-site visit, you are generally paying multiple bills, so to speak. You are paying for the technician’s travel time to and from your office. You are paying for the downtime that the problem is causing for your business. You are paying for your staff to sit around and twiddle their thumbs while you figure out how to sort out the issue. Wouldn’t it be easier to just have the technician resolve the problem without that on-site visit? We think so.

Get Started with Remote Maintenance

When you work with MSPNetworks for your remote technology maintenance needs, you are taking the first step toward securing your organization’s long-term future. We can work with your business to provide sustainable and proactive maintenance that prolongs the health of your IT infrastructure. To learn more, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

Every time something goes terribly wrong, and you are left assessing the damage of some seemingly unfortunate situation, you typically find that by taking a bit of time preparing for the worst would have kept you from the disaster you are just now dealing with. Those small acts are what we want to talk a little bit about today, because they can save your business.

The Word is Proactive

The saying is, “kicking myself”. It is used after something terrible happens and you are going over the steps you didn’t take that would have kept that terrible thing from happening. There is a word for this type of step, and the word is proactive. To be proactive, you first have to be aware.

Awareness is a big deal in any situation, but in risk assessment, it is crucial. The larger the perceived risk, the more aware you need to be about it. In the case of your business’ IT, there are a lot of (very quickly) moving parts, and any of them can cause your business to stop rolling along like the well-oiled machine it is. It would be a shame if that one iffy component fails leaving you paying your staff to sit around and twiddle their thumbs. This is why you need to be proactive.

Proactive IT Maintenance

The idea of proactive IT maintenance is now decades old. Essentially, when one of your business’ core computing apparatuses is compromised it can really hamstring your business’ ability to create revenue. In fact, downtime is one of the most expensive parts of dealing with technology malfunctions. With proactive maintenance, you can begin to see your hardware functioning better, your network clear from threats, and your business’ productivity grow.

How does MSPNetworks’s proactive maintenance accomplish this? Simple, using state-of-the-art monitoring and management software, our experienced technicians use its dynamic automated tools to check every critical piece of technology for inefficiencies. If we come across hardware that isn’t working up to expectations, we’ll do our best to sort the problem out so that your IT doesn’t cause any downtime.

Patch Management

Aside from downtime, software vulnerabilities can cause a lot of headaches for any business. If the software you depend on hasn’t been updated with the latest threat definitions and software patches, there could be trouble. As a part of our proactive maintenance platform, we make sure that the tools you use to be productive are updated, eliminating vulnerabilities and providing effective productivity, management, and collaboration tools to your business.

If you are interested in learning more about our proactive IT maintenance and what type of monetary and productivity benefits a comprehensive IT service can provide, call MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001.