MSPNetworks Blog

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.

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.

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.

If your business experiences a technological failure, how many operations simply stop dead in their tracks until the problem is resolved? While it might seem like you have no control over your business’ technology (at least the issues that cause downtime), this is far from the truth. If you take action now, you can prevent issues from cropping up in the first place rather than reacting to them later, after they have already caused considerable problems for your business.

If you think about it, waiting to fix problems as they appear is simply accepting that downtime will be an issue. This is a dangerous and wasteful mindset to have. If you can prevent it from happening, then you should. Your bottom line will thank you for it.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to add new initiatives to the docket, whether it’s because you have plenty of other responsibilities or you don’t have the budget to hire new staff members to handle it. Thanks to a service called remote monitoring and management (RMM), you won’t have to worry as much about these problems. MSPNetworks can provide your business with remote maintenance to catch issues early and resolve them before they cause trouble. Here are some of the benefits:

The Benefits

• You’ll acquire a better understanding of your organization’s IT: Countless questions about your IT are asked throughout the day, and many of them have to be answered in order to maintain operational efficiency. RMM can address these issues before they even become problems. It’s not uncommon for issues to be resolved without the business even knowing they were about to have a major problem on their hands.
• Your internal productivity will increase, diminishing downtime: Imagine that you have recurring issues that keep your staff from being as productive as they can be. These repeated problems can basically equate to downtime, as they are unprepared for (and can create situations where) your staff cannot work as intended. MSPNetworks can monitor your systems to ensure they encounter as few problems as possible, adding more productivity back into their workday.
• You’ll learn more about your maintenance needs: Internal IT networks are essentially the engine of the business. They are what provide organizations with the tools and data needed to proceed. Of course, they will always require maintenance at some point, as they are built out of technical components that receive wear and tear from daily use. If these are monitored, you can keep them from failing when you need them most. This gives you the chance to act on these inconsistencies and prevent a disaster.
• Efficiency will increase: Without downtime in their way, employees will be empowered to get more done throughout the workday. Remote monitoring and management can cut these distractions out completely be solving the root issue of the recurring problem.
• Security will improve dramatically: Security updates can become a major point of contention for organizations that don’t issue patches as they are released. This is why so many businesses fell at the hands of ransomware like NotPetya and WannaCry. Updating systems is made much easier thanks to RMM solutions, as the patches and updates can be issued remotely without the on-site intervention of technicians. This helps you focus on operations rather than keeping your business safe.

The benefits of RMM basically mean that you’re putting all the time you would normally spend worrying about keeping your business functional back into your schedule for other tasks. If this sounds like a great deal for your organization, reach out to MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001.