Co-Managed IT Can Get Difficult Projects Off the Ground

Co-Managed IT Can Get Difficult Projects Off the Ground

Your company is successful and growing so fast that it is outpacing your current IT. You need to upgrade your systems, but your IT staff is constantly busy, making it extremely difficult to successfully plan, implement, and support new IT initiatives.

When your organization is short on technology expertise and resources, outsourcing some part of your organization’s new technology initiatives can work to move your company forward.

Managed IT

Driving nearly every business decision is money. Since on staff IT professionals are extremely costly, when an organization cuts their IT expenditures, they can save money. The problem becomes that they won’t always have the IT expertise needed to manage all the organization’s technology, let alone deploy and support any new technology that the organization would need to implement.

One way that organizations are getting the IT help they need is by outsourcing their management to a managed IT services provider (MSP). The MSP provides a lot of services at a fraction of the cost of that of an internal IT department. Not only will an MSP monitor and manage your computing network and infrastructure, they will also promote the use of industry best practices that can reduce many of the technology issues your organization could potentially deal with. In this way, the MSP provides extraordinary value.

Co-Managed IT

For the organization that looks at their IT staff as essential personnel, you’d think that hiring an MSP would just be a redundant cost. After all, an internal IT staff costs your organization a lot of capital as it is; but, you couldn’t ask for people who are more dedicated to your company’s IT. The problem is that many smaller businesses that choose to staff an IT administrator have problems deploying new IT solutions or completing higher-end projects.

With WheelHouse IT’s co-managed IT services, our technicians serve as a subsidy to get that IT initiative that you really wanted to accomplish off the ground; or, we can handle all of your network and infrastructure management to ensure that your IT staff can have the situation they need to accomplish your organization’s goals.

Call us today for more information at (877) 771-2384.

Managed Security Services Work to Stomp Out Security Problems

Managed Security Services Work to Stomp Out Security Problems

In the course of doing business, many of today’s businesses have encountered some type of major security threat. As these threats get more and more sophisticated, you are beginning to see more businesses and other organizations enlisting the services of companies that are in business to keep their clients safe.

We’ll take a look at some of the services that managed security service provides, and how it fits into a business’ IT strategy. Ransomware had really become a major problem as the calendar changed to 2017. No one could imagine what would have happened over the first few months of the year.

It seemed as if there was a new ransomware attack in the news every day; and, coupled with all the other hacking attacks such as distributed denial of service, phishing, viruses, trojan horses, spoofing, and more, it made it increasingly difficult for the modern business to avoid these threats.

IT service providers, who not only understand the workings of networking and infrastructure, but have proficiency in squelching targeted attacks began to roll out security services.

Sure there have been managed security services for quite awhile, but with businesses and other organizations inundated with such profit-killing IT problems coming from outside their own network, more IT businesses began to focus exclusively on higher-end security services.

Why Use a MSSP?

There are a myriad of reasons to utilize outsourced IT services. Whether you want to get comprehensive support for your information technology, you want to cut your support costs, you want help implementing a specific technology, or you simply want a professional technology consultant on retainer, outsourcing your IT management to WheelHouse IT has substantial value.

The managed security service provider does the same, except instead of focusing on your business’ well being, the service is focused solely on keeping threats from interrupting your business’ progress.

To do so, they meet the complexity of today’s threats with equally sophisticated tools designed to block and eliminate any threat thrown your way. Some of the services your average MSSP will provide include:

  • Managed Identity and Access Management
  • Managed Encryption (Virtual Private Networks)
  • Managed Firewall
  • Managed Data Loss Prevention
  • Managed Intrusion Detection
  • Managed Intrusion Prevention
  • Managed Security Information and Event Management
  • Managed Unified Threat Management

These services take your typical network security and turn up the volume. The MSSP makes certain that your information systems are completely controlled and not useful to anyone outside your organization.

Additionally, the MSSP’s security-focused effort makes compliance to regulatory laws and mandates a priority. By ensuring controls are secure,and reports that show a dedication to keep sensitive data secure, an MSSP is a good investment for any business that relies on regulatory compliance to operate effectively.

With network and cyber security becoming essential considerations for every IT department, companies of all sizes are looking to outsourced IT professionals to handle their network security.

Does your business need a security firm to overlook your business’ network?

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Why Break/Fix Gives Business Owners Nightmares

Why Break/Fix Gives Business Owners Nightmares

Like cars and industrial equipment, computers are complex machines.

To function properly they will need to be maintained, and sometimes fixed. Components inevitably fail, users very often make mistakes, and sometimes other people deliberately break things out of a litany of emotions.

If your computer has seen better days, and you’ve done all you can, seeing if you can get it repaired will involve unhooking it and bringing to your local computer guy.

For the small business, that has to go through this routinely, it can be an absolute nightmare; and, that’s even before we talk about cost. The cost of getting your computer fixed can be all over the map. It can be a simple fix (that will likely annoy the break/fix technician), or it can be a smile and a shrug that implies you are going to have to buy another computer.

If it is fixable, the cost to get computers fixed is typically substantial, but it’s not the largest cost associated with broken technology; that would be downtime.

Downtime can sometimes cause irrevocable damage. In fact, in one survey that asked small business owners how much they lost as a result of downtime found that the AVERAGE small business should expect to lose around $100,000 in downtime and downtime-related costs per year.

If your business can’t afford to lose $100, let alone $100,000, avoiding downtime should be at the very top of your list of priorities. But what about your broken computer?

The fact that you will have to remove it or pay someone to come to your place to fix it should do enough to be open to the other option: Managed IT Services.

Managed IT services can help you get more out of your IT, while also significantly reducing the amount of IT-related downtime your organization has to tolerate. It does this by having certified technicians proactively monitoring and managing your hardware so if there are failing components, your hardware support costs are much less than they would be.

At WheelHouse IT, our priority is always keeping your business’ IT running effectivily, so your business can be as efficient as possible.

With our proactive maintenance, and our certified technicians’ commitment to getting you the technology your staff needs to help improve your business, you’d expect our service to be expensive, but for an affordable monthly payment, you can get a professional IT staff who is dedicated to helping your organization to be the best business it can be.

For more information call us today at (877) 771-2384.

A Case in Support of Managed Services

A Case in Support of Managed Services

Thanks to what’s become known as the “as a service” business model, organizations of all sizes can take advantage of great services that once may not have been as accessible.

Even better is that they are often provided at an even more affordable rate than ever before.

We’ll walk you through the specifics of what you can expect to receive from a using an “as a service” model.

Considering Managed Services

To get right to the point, managed services can be considered anything that’s outsourced by your business where you pay as you go. This could include making monthly payments for someone else managing your business’ computing infrastructure–specifically a third-party managed service provider operated by technology professionals.

Investing in such an outsourced solution is a great way to minimize the responsibility that your business has for maintaining critical infrastructure, while also reducing costs. While it might not look like an immediate benefit, we assure you that the peace of mind created by managed services is something to be considered for any small business with a limited budget.

We’re confident that you can save both time and resources by working with a managed service provider to maintain and manage your technology. A couple great example of this are software patching and update implementation. Let’s say that your organization spends an hour every week applying patches and security updates for each device on your infrastructure.

For a single device, the amount of time spent might not seem considerable, but when it’s all added up, you are spending much more than you might realize on this task alone. With all of this extra time in the day, what else could your technicians be doing? The answer is a lot, but they might simply be too busy to do otherwise.

Outsourcing effectively eliminates many of the responsibilities that could potentially be holding your technicians back from being more productive and efficient with their time. Imagine if they were able to completely put aside most of the IT maintenance portion of their responsibilities in favor of implementing new solutions designed to help your business work more effectively.

This could save your business a lot of money in its own right. You can also think of outsourced managed services as a second branch of your IT maintenance, supplementing your business’ IT in ways that might not have seemed possible in the past.

Of course, if your business doesn’t have an IT department at all, then it’s even easier to see how this type of service benefits your organization. All businesses need help with technology to at least some extent. It’s just the matter of how much. Hiring multiple technicians can put a damper on your budget, meaning that you might instead choose to have your employees manage technology when their real talents lie elsewhere.

Outsourced managed services mean that there is no excuse for this any longer, as it’s much more affordable to hire professional technicians as part of a managed service provider than it is to hire a full team of on-site workers.

This also decreases the likelihood that your organization will suffer from downtime due to specific parts of your IT maintenance not being performed properly.

Managed services can help your business make up for its shortcomings and come out on top.

To learn more, reach out to us at (877) 771-2384.