Austin Managed IT Services Increase Security & Productivity

Businesses of all shapes and sizes can benefit from the use of professional IT services. Unfortunately, many business owners turn a blind eye to such services, waiting until an actual problem arises before they seek professional help. Today, we’re going to reveal some of the different ways that managed IT services can streamline your business.

Reduce Downtime

Arguably one of the greatest benefits of using an Austin managed IT services provider is reduced downtime. It’s frustrating (to say the least) when your company’s network goes offline, forcing you to turn away customers who are eager to buy your products or services. In addition to losing sales, these customers may choose to take their business elsewhere – to a competitor – in other to avoid another fiasco like this. Sure, some customers may give you another chance, but others won’t.

To put the impact of downtime into perspective, Amazon reportedly earns more than $1,000 per second. So even if it went offline for just 20 minutes, that’s a whopping $1.2 million in lost earnings down the drain! Granted, Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer, so it’s unlikely that you’ll experience the same results during a brief downtime. However, the fact remains that outages can and will cost you sales and/or productivity, the degree of which varies depending on the size of your business along with other factors. One of the key components of managed services is constant, pro-active network monitoring, which  identifies most vulnerabilities to your network before they become issues that cause downtime.

Cloud-Based Data Storage and Back-up and Disaster Recovery

How does your company store its data? Storing it only locally is just asking for trouble. If something were to happen to your facility and the servers on which data is stored, your company could be left in state of turmoil. Some companies have even been forced to close their doors as a result of lost data.  The statistics on small businesses that face major data loss emergencies surviving are surprisingly grim.

I know what you’re probably thinking: the odds of something happening to my company’s servers are low, right? Wrong. There are dozens of incidents that may damage your business’s hardware, such as fires, floods, power surges (note: surge protectors aren’t fool-proof), theft and vandalism, all of which are capable of destroying data in the process.

Partnering with an Austin managed IT service provider will prevent the aforementioned disasters from wreaking havoc on your business by allowing you to store your data in the cloud. Regardless of what happens to your local hardware, you can rest assured knowing that your data is backed up on the cloud.

Here are some of the other benefits of storing data on the cloud:

• Greater scalability
• Efficient use of computing resources
• Automate processes that were previously performed manually
• Lower overhead costs (hardware isn’t stored locally)
• Access data anywhere, anytime
• Pay only for the computing hardware and resources that you need

Cybersecurity

Cyber crime is a very real threat that’s becoming more and more common by the day. According to a Washington-based think tank, the global cost of cybercrime and economic espionage is more than $445 billion, which is roughly 1% of the entire world’s income! Businesses that choose to handle their own cybersecurity often have a higher risk of attacks simply because they lack the expertise and equipment necessary to secure their systems.

Hiring a managed IT service provider to handle your business’s cybersecurity will protect your system from such attacks. They’ll monitor network traffic, perform software updates, install firewalls and security patches, ensure user authentication systems are set up properly and more, all of which is used to strengthen the security of your systems. By placing the security of your systems in the hands of a professional IT company, you can sleep a little more soundly at night knowing that it’s safe and protected.

Competent, Trained Technical Support

Network and other IT-related problems can be a real nightmare, especially for businesses that lack the skills to handle such problems.  In many small businesses, really mundane technical issues regarding network access and basic questions about common application issues result in a lot of guesswork, wasted time and frustration.   Our managed IT services eliminate this problem by offering unlimited 24/7, 365 tech support that all of your team members can call whenever an issue or question arises.  They’ll get friendly, competent answers from a trained technician–and the technician will even be able to remotely access the network to resolve issues when need be.

There are lots of things to take care of and worry about when running a business.  IT issues shouldn’t be one of them.