It’s extremely frustrating when you lose the data on your personal computer. Yet as annoying and time-consuming as this type of data loss is, it is nothing compared to losses that could be suffered by a business that has no IT disaster recovery plan in place. In fact, for a business, such a loss could mean the beginning of the end; more than 90 percent of businesses that lost their data for more than 10 days filed bankruptcy within one year of the data loss.
No one should be surprised that when systems go down, businesses lose money. What might be surprising is just how much money is lost because of downtime. According to Forbes, businesses averaged a loss of $100,000 for one hour of downtime in 2017. A small business in the Boston area may not lose numbers like that, but any amount of loss could have devastating effects. For this reason alone, many small to medium-sized businesses turn to managed IT services. Managed service providers (MSPs) provide your business with a talented and experienced team of IT professionals who offer around-the-clock coverage to help prevent system outages from causing your business to lose money.
According to Spiceworks’ 2019 State of IT Report, 58 percent of companies that were surveyed expect to increase their IT budget from last year. An additional 27 percent expect no change in their budget, and only 7 percent expect the amount they have to spend this year to decrease.
Businesses have a serious problem when it comes to IT. Many IT managers would agree that the speed of technology outpaces their workers’ skills. Boston-based companies are no stranger to this problem. Organizations across the region often find that their current teams lack the knowledge required to keep pace with newer technologies, or they have trouble hiring new employees to fill these needs.
With the recent Spectre and Meltdown flaws sending a wave of disruption across IT and all business communities, the scope of the problem continues to unfold. Either one or both of the flaws are present in Intel chips from the last 15 years embedded in countless processors running PCs, servers, and phones.
Everyone, by now, knows that backing up important files is one of the most important steps to take to reduce IT downtime.
Organizations often turn to cloud solutions because of the flexibility that “as a service” offerings provide. If you need more computing power, storage space, bandwidth, licenses, etc., those resources are rapidly at your disposal. There is no need to buy new hardware, install software, or upgrade your infrastructure to handle it, because your cloud service provider has it ready for you to meet any growth. Unfortunately, when these resources are so easy and quick to spin up, costs start to rise proportionately.
While technology holds great promise of productivity increases and growth for small businesses, they often feel that budget constraints put the most advantageous of those technologies out of their reach. The fact of the matter is that Office 365 can eliminate those roadblocks to productivity and affordability. Still, as a small business, you may ask: Why migrate to Office 365?
For business owners and the workforce, IT is generally something they prefer not to think about unless something goes wrong. While the ideal scenario is to ensure that they can put all their concentration into running the business, a lack of IT awareness can lead to telltale signs that something is wrong. Here are six warning signs that indicate it’s time to update your business IT solutions.
