Managed Service Providers: 3 Benefits of an IT Partnership

Managed Service Providers: 3 Benefits of an IT Partnership

You have a business to run. You know it can’t operate efficiently without proper infrastructure and IT solutions. But maybe IT isn’t in your wheelhouse.

At Wheelhouse IT, it’s what we do. If you’re considering outsourcing a managed service provider to help with your IT platform, here are three more benefits of doing so.

Have a Dedicated Team at Your Fingertips

You could hire your own team of tech individuals, roll them into your payroll, train them on your company culture and offerings. You could take a gamble that those random hires will know what to do, how to build and safeguard your company. But why risk it?

Instead, hire an MSP that will be your dedicated partner in all things IT from infrastructure to 24/7 help desk solutions. An MSP will build, manage and protect your company digitally, which in turn will allow you to do what you do best, manage your company growth.

Stay Current with Updates and Compliance

As with many industries, there are constant updates, compliance measures, and improvements. You don’t have time to keep current with the changing standards. Hire an MSP partner and relax, knowing you have a solid IT program that will grow with you and is in compliance.

Enjoy Significant Savings

Imagine the mounting costs associated with hiring internal IT staff, investing in hardware and upgrading software.

Now imagine instead, you’ve contracted an MSP. Instead of all those mounting IT costs, you pay a fee and partner with a company that will take care of all those purchases and implementations for you. The financial benefits are countless. The piece of mind that you don’t have to be an IT expert in order to have an expert level IT solutions platform is priceless.

Regardless of your industry, there are many benefits to partnering with an MSP for your IT needs. To discuss more or find out how Wheelhouse IT can help revamp your IT platform, contact us!

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Cyber Security Tip of the Day: Avoid These Common Cyber Security Mistakes

Precautions While Using the Internet

Cyber security should be one of your top priorities when it comes to your business. Data breaches can come unexpectedly at any time, and the results can be disastrous. Here are four common mistakes to avoid.

It Can’t Happen to Me!

Most people think, either consciously or in the back of their minds, that an attack can’t or will not happen to them. The reality is that even if you own a small business, you can still be hit with a very sophisticated virus. If it does happen, you will be in hot water, so take the necessary precautions before it is too late.

Not Having a Plan

It’s all great and dandy to have an antivirus system installed, and it’s even better when you have various other precautions, firewalls, and monitoring systems in place. However, you also need to have a backup plan! This doesn’t just refer to backing up your data, though that is a big part of it. You have to know what exactly you will do if a breach is detected, who you will be relying on to get you out of the mess, and so on.

A BYOD Policy

Having a Bring Your Own Device policy may be cheaper in the short run, but it can cost you big in the long run. There is no way for you to control what your employees do on their own phones. They will be browsing the net and downloading all sorts of programs that can expose your network to attacks. They may be connecting their devices to other networks that are not safe when they are not at work.

Not Destroying Hard Drives

You should also destroy your hard drives completely when disposing of them. Simply erasing them is not enough.

Contact us today for more cybersecurity and IT tips.

How a Managed Service Provider Can Support Your Internal IT Team

How a Managed Service Provider Can Support Your Internal IT Team

Many businesses already have an internal IT team managing their network. It is not uncommon to wonder what a managed service provider can do for your business.

As this article mentions, disrupting your own business model before it gets digitally disrupted is a daily grind. Not only are you up against nimble web start-ups, but also your own corporate inertia.

Managed services can provide internal IT teams with various types of support that can help increase business productivity and expand your business.

Create Time for Bigger Projects

Chances are your IT team is already overwhelmed with the daily maintenance of your network. They do not have much time to focus on larger projects that could help expand your business. A managed service provider can take over the day-to-day administrative tasks which frees up your IT team to focus on projects that can benefit your business.

Increase Your IT Team’s Skill Set

IT is always changing and it requires many skills to maintain a network. Locating individuals who possess all of the knowledge and skills necessary to support a network, maintain servers, and manage other technologies is difficult. Managed services can support an internal IT team that does well with some tasks but needs expertise for others. This provides your business with a larger skill set to pull from when needed.

Improved Support

Nothing is worse than having network issues when your IT manager is on vacation and is unavailable. A managed service provider can alleviate the stress and worry of network issues when your primary IT person is not available. Most managed service providers offer 24/7 support which is important for keeping your network up and running while providing added peace of mind.

These are just a few of the benefits a managed service provider can offer your business. Outsourcing day-to-day administrative tasks to a managed service provider gives your business the support it needs to grow.

Contact us today to schedule an appointment. Our managed service provider agreement includes IT support and management for businesses of all sizes.

5 Reasons Budget-Minded Business Owners Love Managed Services

5 Reasons Budget-Minded Business Owners Love Managed Services

Business owners understand that they need secure, well-maintained IT systems to succeed in a competitive and highly connected world.

At the same time, many businesses are operating within a relatively small budget for IT services, which range from performing hardware upgrades to responding to new cyber security threats.

Fortunately, there’s a way to enjoy high-quality IT services within budgetary constraints. Budget-minded business owners often opt for managed services, for the following reasons:

  1. Managed services providers will actively look for ways to save you money. They’ll help you avoid unnecessary purchases, and they’ll make IT decisions that align with your business goals, so that you aren’t wasting resources on projects and services that contribute nothing to your company.
  2. Managed services are flexible. The services you rely on can be tailored to your business and its demands and objectives. You can choose among services (or bundles of services), and many of them can also be scalable, so that you can adjust your use of data storage space and other resources based on your current needs.
  3. You receive proactive support. A strong managed services provider will give you round-the-clock support and actively work to detect problems before they become full-blown, costly emergencies. For example, your managed services provider can continuously monitor your network for unauthorized activities or signs of equipment failure. The emphasis is on prevention and detection, not simply on reacting to existing problems.
  4. Managed services providers get to know your business. When you hire a managed services provider, they come to understand your business, give you personal attention, and offer you solutions that fit with what you need. They save you time and money by handling various responsibilities that would otherwise consume your attention and distract you from other business operations.
  5. You don’t need to hire in-house personnel. Although a managed services provider can work with any in-house personnel you’ve hired and share some of the responsibilities of managing your IT systems, you don’t need to hire in-house personnel at all if your budget can’t accommodate such a decision. Your managed services provider give you an option of IT management and support at a more manageable cost.

Don’t hesitate to contact us for additional information about our managed services. Working with a managed services provider can prove to be a cost-effective decision for your company.

2018 Storm Ready

2018 Storm Ready

Every business should prepare for the worst. Those that don’t may never fully recover from a disaster. But not all disasters are created equal. And not all businesses are at risk for every kind of disaster. At WheelHouse IT, we understand what it means to be storm ready!  With the 2018 Hurricane Season, officially here our team has reviewed and refined our hurricane plans.

The WheelHouse IT team have tested our 60,000 KW generator and the redundancies to our office in Fort Lauderdale. While hurricanes and coastal storms can force a business to be closed for days if not weeks at a time we take our business continuity serious.

 

The preparation from WheelHouse IT includes but is not limited to:

  • The systems used by WheelHouse IT to support your business are strategically hosted in data centers far away from exposed coastal areas in the United States. This ensures that even if our office is closed, our systems are up 24/7/365.
  • WheelHouse IT maintains a support staff in multiple locations including our offices in New York and Los Angeles with remote teams in Iowa and Arkansas, enabling us to continue providing remote support even in an extreme event where our Florida office could be temporarily down. We also work to have hotels booked in several cities outside of the storm impact area where members of our team will be located for the duration of the storm.
  • The entire WheelHouse IT team is equipped with company-issued wireless hotspots enabling them to provide support from wherever they have safely relocated to, in the event that the operations at our Florida office are interrupted.
  • Our Fort Lauderdale office is equipped with a generator to allow our office to run at full capacity even if the power cannot be immediately restored by utility crews following an outage.
  • On a quarterly basis, our team runs an internal business continuity tests to ensure that we are prepared to support your business should a Hurricane impact our Florida office.
  • Our team understands the impact that hurricanes have on our customers. With safety being our top priority, they are committed to returning to work immediately once a hurricane has subsided to respond to any on-sites that may be needed after the storm.
  • Our Fort Lauderdale headquarters is strategically located in a well-protected and resilient environment that can withstand most storms.
  • Even though we have put extensive measures in place and were online hours after Hurricane Irma passed, hurricanes are a major natural disaster with unpredictable damage, there is no way we can guarantee that the Fort Lauderdale office will be 100% online immediately after a storm. WheelHouse IT is, however, well distributed and will be online in non-impacted locations.

Throughout this 2018 Hurricane Season, please keep an eye out for additional emails from our team. These emails will come from [email protected]. We will communicate with you about updates we receive from the National Hurricane Center as well as steps we are taking to protect your business during this Hurricane Season.