FormaTech IT Services Blog

Managed IT services are all the rage in the business world, and for good reason. They allow businesses of all varieties the ability to focus on their goals rather than their IT maintenance. However, it’s not always easy to understand what every single service offered by MSPs like us provide is. Here are three great services that we can provide for your SMB.

Remote Monitoring and Management
On-site visits are a major pain point for organizations that need support immediately when there is an issue. If you experience trouble with your technology, traditionally you would have to wait until the technician arrives for the problem to be resolved. Since there’s no guarantee that they will be available immediately, you could waste valuable time and resources just waiting for help to arrive. Thanks to the Internet, however, you have a much better option that won’t keep you waiting when you need help most.

Remote monitoring and management (RMM) allows professionals to remote into your PC when there is a problem so that you don’t have to wait for a technician to arrive on-site. This winds up saving your organization both time and money, as you won’t waste any revenue on downtime while your technology is being repaired, and you don’t have to pay the technician for making the journey to your office. It’s a win-win scenario, as most problems can be resolved without the need for an on-site visit.

Backup and Disaster Recovery
Data backup is critical for any organization that wants to ensure business continuity, but it’s not always easy to figure out your ideal solution. We all know that tape backup is as outdated as it gets, but perhaps you don’t know an alternative. Tape backup is both time-consuming and resource-intensive, and it runs the unnecessary risk of completely missing a backup due to user error. How can you make sure that backups are being taken regularly?

The easy answer to this is using a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution. With BDR, you can take multiple backups of your data throughout the day, which compared to the one-a-day nature of tape is astounding. In fact, backups can be taken as often as every fifteen minutes, and can be called upon from the cloud in the event that they are needed. It’s just one way way that the cloud makes data recovery easier than ever.

Unified Threat Management
Security is of the utmost importance, especially in an industry where sensitive data is used on practically a daily basis. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think that your business will suffer from a security breach. It should make sense that you want to take preventative measures to keep issues from popping up, but sometimes it can be challenging to afford such measures when you see your organization as such an unlikely target. The problem here is that all businesses have information that is valuable for hackers, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that you will suffer from a breach in the near future.

Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions are designed to take these preventative measures against threats so that you don’t have to deal with the fallout of a hacking attack. Included are four major security solutions: a firewall, antivirus, spam blocker, and content filter, all of which aim to keep threats out of your network and promptly eliminate them before they can cause irreparable damage.

Do any of these services sound like great opportunities for your business? They should! To learn more about RMM tools, UTM solutions, or BDR devices, reach out to us at 707-258-1492.

There is no denying the value that an in-house information technology resource can offer a company. However, many small and medium-sized businesses might have a difficult time finding room in their budget to hire additional in-house resources. In cases like these, turning to other, external resources can provide a helpful boost to your IT.

The modern business needs a reliable source of information technology support. Historically, this was provided through a method known as break/fix—if your business technology was to break, a technician would come in to fix it. While this approach works, there are many trade-offs to using it that a business shouldn’t have to accept. Now that there is the managed services model, businesses no longer do.

If yours is like the majority of today’s businesses, you absolutely need to invest in network and infrastructure maintenance. Some companies hire a network administrator, but not all companies have the budget to do so. For companies in this position, there is the option to leverage managed IT services.

Business owners have a lot on their plate. Even the smallest businesses have a lot of moving parts that need to be attended to, which all add up to a mammoth amount of stress for their owners. Perhaps most obviously, financial matters contribute greatly to this angst.

Antivirus is one of the simplest means of protecting a computer network, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a business should overlook the benefits of having an antivirus. If a business doesn’t have antivirus on its systems, it’s usually because they really don’t believe they are in any danger. The harsh reality emerges after a data breach. Regardless of its size, any business holds the kind of data that would draw in thieves and rogues. From Social Security numbers to credit card numbers to many other kinds of personally identifiable information, businesses possess plenty of data that can bring in a pretty penny on the black market.

Managed IT service is a great way for the small business to save money on their IT support costs while still getting the coverage they need. One of the ways that an MSP is able to keep their costs down is by proactive maintenance. If an MSP had to fix every computer problem a company had after it became a problem, the service would largely be untenable for the small business. Today, we look at the proactive maintenance feature of our IT management strategy and how our clients save a lot of money as a result.

There is certainty in that the small business can benefit from new technology. A problem sometimes rears its head when a business wants to improve their technology all at once and the costs associated with both implementation and downtime start to spike. For the responsible business owner, it has to be a matter of putting need over want, and instituting solutions that will work to build profitability, which will ultimately provide the capital needed to institute new technology. Today, we will look at some technology implementations that many small businesses consider, and how the implementation will bring the best return on investment.