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Small business owners know that IT is essential for your company if you’re reading this. But are you spending your money in the right way? Are you seeing a good return on investment (ROI) from your IT spending?
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What is DHCP, and what does it do? This blog explains DHCP – the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. It also details the distinction between a static IP and a dynamic IP.
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Small business owners will be looking for IT and tech advice to boost productivity and profits in 2022. Technology has developed significantly in the past 18 months: specifically, the tech businesses have maintained operations during the pandemic. Small Business Owners will be looking at how they can use this newfound knowledge to drive their small business into profitability. Here’s what we’ve learned about business tech since the advent of the pandemic that you can put into practice in your firm for 2022.
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The internet is an enormous and always changing place, so it only makes sense to overview some other notable search engines. Let’s have a look at the top 12 worldwide.
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Do you know the internet requirements for VoIP? This blog post will break down exactly what you need to know so that your business can be successful. We’ll also discuss some of the common misconceptions and answer questions about it.
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The new version of Windows will launch in the next few weeks, but many businesses are predicted to be confused by the upgrade. The current operating system is similar to 11 with strict hardware requirements. And even newer computers won’t run it unless they have a specific security feature switched on.
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It’s not surprising that the rise of digital and mobile technologies has led to increased criminal activity. With so much of our lives now happening on laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc., it’s no wonder cyber hackers are targeting online accounts with greater frequency. It is also vital for individuals to protect their account security by taking advantage of 2-factor authentication or 2FA, which will help ensure a safer online experience.
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If you are looking for outsourced IT support in London, managed IT is a great option.
Outsourced IT support is a third party IT service that eliminates the need for your business to maintain its network and computers.
Haree Patel, CEO
Managed IT ensures that your devices are always up to date with the latest security features, ensuring your network is always up and running, the VoIP phones always ring and all sensitive data is secure and backed up.
Managed IT also provides disaster recovery services should anything happen to your data centre or any of your hardware. It will save you time and money and provide peace of mind regarding uptime and downtime.
Having up-to-date IT is essential for modern businesses and COVID-19 and remote working have only exacerbated that. Having said this, it is no small task to transition to new IT operations and systems.
A good MSP (managed service provider) will be able to provide you with an in-depth review of your current IT network. Then, based on the findings, they can make recommendations to proof your business IT for the future. For example, a straightforward recommendation we often make to our clients is to upgrade their Wi-Fi router’s setup to a Wi-Fi 6 system which improves capacity, connectivity and security.
In the last year, managed IT services have become powerful assets, partnering with businesses to adapt to pandemic-related restrictions. They helped clients adopt remote working and brought value through business resilience solutions like RMM (remote management and monitoring) along with cloud-based services such as VoIP phone systems.
Managed IT is a business model in which an outsourced service provider manages your information technology. Meanwhile, a managed service model tends to be subscription-based in which providers usually agree to pay a certain amount each month in exchange for ongoing system management.
The specifics of what a managed IT plan entails can vary depending on your organisation’s individual needs and the company’s skillset. Most managed services providers can offer a basic package of daily support and more sophisticated deals that include disaster recovery, VoIP, onsite engineers, server maintenance, backup recovery and printer management, to name a few.
Managed IT services usually encompass a wide range of internet and computer functions, whereas managed IT solutions provide business owners with solutions encompassing everything from network, application and system management to payroll, server maintenance, backup/recovery services and printer management.
Managed IT can also benefit staff when it comes to equipment. For instance, remote workers requiring new equipment such as keyboards or monitors can order this themselves. This means that whilst providing visibility and control over supplies for IT departments, accounting won’t need to worry about running these purchases through expenses either.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can use a managed service provider (MSP) to provide in-house cloud services or act as brokers for other cloud providers. The bonus of this process is that your MSP will have a responsibility to ensure all the software is fully installed and monitored to ensure up-time and functionality.
As the risk of security breaches grows, many companies have opted to outsource their IT needs and responsibilities to protect equipment and data. Managed security service providers (MSSPs) provide efficient patch management (security updates) and responsive backup services.
The advantages and disadvantages of a managed IT service depend on the type of service, but there are common considerations that any business should take into account before outsourcing that function, including the following.
Building and maintaining a top-notch IT team can be expensive, time-consuming and demanding. That’s why you might want to consider outsourcing the part of your company that needs technical support to an experienced service provider.
Acquiring a small in-house team that provides fully comprehensive support will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds each year. That’s not even including recruiting and set up costs!
Rather than paying open-ended prices when IT issues occur with freelancers, businesses can have a contract that outlines what they will pay in monthly instalments to account for potential problems. In the long run, managed IT will reduce costs.
With the right support plan, you will have peace of mind knowing that your IT will only cost a fixed fee each month regardless of the situation.
Managed IT takes away the need for organisations to worry about software updates and they can have access to new technologies that would otherwise have been out of their reach.
Outsourcing the management of security services, for example, reduces the demands for an in-house IT department. Outsourcing your IT also outsources management headaches such as PAYE, holidays, absences and performance management.
If there’s an outage or incident, the business has little recourse as they rely on third-party help. Theoretically, a well-managed service provider will respond faster than an internal IT team. An internal IT team for a small or medium-sized business will have nowhere near the expertise or resources as a dedicated IT support provider such as ourselves.
The flexibility of a managed IT service is more limited than having a solution customised to business needs. You will find that as your business expands, you will have to increase your level of IT support to meet demands.
If your MSP goes bust or has a catastrophic event like a fire, you are left vulnerable. In the latter case, iceConnect has multiple redundancy protocols to keep their clients’ networks fully functioning in the event of a catastrophe.
Whether or not businesses decide to go down the route of a managed IT service provider, it’s not a market that is going away any time soon. In fact, according to a new report from Global Market Insight, this particular segment of the industry was estimated to be worth $350 billion in 2019 and continues to grow larger with COVID-19 pushing many organisations into adopting managed services.
As the number of offerings and the capability of existing offerings grows, there is no doubt that we will see companies of all sizes making use of outsourced managed IT services for varying parts of their business.
To help all those scouring the market for the perfect outsourced managed IT support provider, we have created a managed IT support buyer’s guide. This comprehensive PDF document covers every single question you should be asking when choosing an IT support provider.
Simply click on the link below to download the guide or contact us directly if you’d like to book a free, no-obligation demo of how iceConnect can boost your business’ productivity.
Why not contact us to book a free no-obligation managed IT support demo with iceConnect’s director, Haree Patel.
Office 365 is more than just Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel. There are a plethora of applications that can boost your productivity. This article will show you ten applications you probably didn’t even know existed.
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