Managed IT Services Blog

According to the Salesforce 2016 Connected Small Business Report, more than 80 percent of small businesses do not have an IT staff, and 72 percent of small business owners are responsible for purchasing technology for their businesses. It is the combination of these two statistics that are of concern to Boston SMBs. To develop a sound IT strategy, Boston SMBs should consider these essential questions.

Like any other government agency, New England police departments are forced to face the reality of reduced budgets. As a result, many have decided to make cuts to their IT departments by reducing staff and purchases so they don’t have to decrease expenditures to line items, such as police officers and traditional police equipment.

According to the Business Continuity Institute’s 2017 Horizon Scan Report, cyber attacks and data breaches are the top two threats facing businesses. As these threats continue to evolve, becoming increasingly more complicated and sophisticated, organizations must proactively manage their IT services in order to protect their business, clients, and data. We’ve written about three innovative technologies that can help protect you against the ever-evolving threat of cyber crime.

When people receive poor customer service, they may choose to no longer do business with that company. In fact, research indicates that more than 67 percent of people switch to another business as a result of poor customer service. Indeed, the pressure is on these departments to get things right. 

There are many resources that lend themselves to the success of a small business. There are the people who do the things, computers and networking infrastructure, creative marketing initiatives, and a strong sales team. However, all of these resources rely on certain tools to get their jobs done. Those tools are the IT applications that they use day in and day out. While certain industries may rely on specific solutions, there are some that every small-business IT department needs to have in place in order to stay competitive these days.

When it comes to small-business IT, more companies are moving parts of their IT infrastructure or even the whole thing to the cloud. Maximizing uptime, mobility on virtually any device, and the cost advantages are some of the more popular reasons to do so. Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) are the leading choices for cloud services, but businesses have a lot to consider when it comes to choosing the right one for their needs. This brief overview of each provider gives some insights that are important for small businesses to understand when making that decision. 

According to a research report from global staffing and workforce solutions advisor SIA, IT employment in the US has increased more than 36 percent, compared to a 7.5 percent increase for total employment, over the last 15 years. That’s far from surprising in the digital economy in which every business now operates. To meet the needs of the various sectors, today’s IT specialists must be well-versed in providing the latest technology hardware, software, and platform implementations via comprehensive IT certifications. 

For years, virtualization has been a large part of many a successful disaster recovery and business continuity plan. However, recognizing how powerful virtualization can be for your disaster recovery efforts and implementing the right strategy are two different things entirely. While it may be clear that you need to include this in your plans, you still need to understand the best way to go about creating the right strategy to get your critical business resources back up and running should they be taken offline for any reason. Here are four key areas in which you should focus a good deal of your efforts in a virtualized environment:

This is the age of data. You rely on big data to make data-driven decisions based on access to real-time data. No matter what business you are in, no matter the size of your organization, you will collect and rely on data. That being said, all of the data needs a place to live, and that usually means you will store it on premises in a data center or rely on a third-party cloud-based host for your data-storage needs. So the question you need to answer is: Which is the right solution for your business? 

According to IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) will contribute 40 percent of the projected $141 billion in spending on the public cloud by 2019. The dramatic growth in SMB public-cloud spending over the next few years will be fueled by the market-dominating leadership of Amazon Web Services (AWS).