Small business owners try hard to get their business off the ground, and more importantly try even harder to keep the upward graph directed upwards, technology is the last of their concerns. But sadly so, with 60,000 new viruses, spyware, Trojans and other malware coming out every day, in a world where e-mails have replaced fax and computers have become a necessity to run any business how do the small and medium businesses deal with these and other rising IT issues. We have all been in a situation where just before when that important project was due for delivery to the customer that our computer crashed. Or when we needed our IT person the most that they were unavailable or on a prior commitment. Market Researcher Gartner estimates that 80% of the dollars companies spend on IT is dedicated to "keeping the lights on" and represents "dead money" which does not contribute directly to business growth. Downtime affects any companies bottom-line more so for the small and medium business, in another research conducted by Gartner, it is estimated that one hour of downtime for a $4 million revenue company costs $2000/hour and average company in the US experiences 2 hours of downtime per week. Hmm … so let’s take out our calculators and do the math here; $2000/hour x 2hours x 4weeks = $16,000/month And we thought, the downtime only costs us the following, called the computer person at 9:00AM, he showed up at 12:30PM worked for 4 hours at $100/hour, that makes it $400(What a bargain!). Well, if that has been your math than I would say, re-analyze your business strategy and dust-off that old resume. What the average business owner fails to calculate is the loss of employee productivity, and the amount paid to the employee to wait for the computer person to show-up. Shouldn’t the small and medium businesses deserve better service, similar to the Fortune 100 companies? In an ideal world, wouldn’t the fire-station know before a fire was about to break-out in a building and the fire-fighters proactively put it out? That might not happen maybe for a long-time, but your Computers, Network and Printers can be proactively managed, where before your system is about to get a major problem your IT Person is already aware and proactively works to resolve it. This would not only decrease your downtime, but also mean-time to resolution, where it took him/her 4 hours, since s/he is already aware of what the problem is and how it happened, it will only take 2hours. This my fellow business owners’ is managed service offering, the benefits of managed service far exceed that of a regular “call you when we need you” service. Some of the benefits include; • Availability, Performance and Predictive failure monitoringto ensure your key business resources such as servers, applications, and many other devices and services are functioning optimally and efficiently • Backup System Monitoringto ensure that your system backups occur as scheduled and that your important business data is backed up properly • Virus Protection Monitoring and Maintenanceto ensure that your antivirus programs are functioning properly and updates to your system are being received and installed • Patch Level Managementto ensure that the Windows servers in your network are always updated with the latest security patches • Email Performance Monitoringto monitor all the essential elements of your MS exchange server to ensure the highest level of reliability and optimization • Scheduled onsite technician timefor proactive and preventative server maintenance • Proactive remote maintenance and supportto avoid interfering with the productivity of your business • Network Health Assessmentto determine the overall stability of your network • IT Consulting Servicesto help you rationalize your IT spending, enabling you to make more informed business decisions – it’s the CIO expertise without the CIO price tag! • Comprehensive reportingto continually inform you about the current health of your network and to outline the work performed In conclusion as Small and Medium Businesses become more dependent on IT systems and business applications to perform their day-to-day operations, they become less tolerant of IT downtime and hassles of managing their IT environments. In fact, Businesses are becoming increasingly frustrated trying to satisfy their technology needs, and are willing to engage a full-service MSP to manage their IT operations so they can refocus on their core businesses. Managed services have become an effective method of alleviating the hassles and gaining the full business benefits from IT by producing improved performance, greater worker productivity and higher ROI. As a result, a growing number of Businesses are turning to MSPs to satisfy their IT requirements. Brixtel Corporationhttp://www.brixtel.com
...read more