Small and medium business (SMB) is the backbone of our economy and it accounts for the majority of our nation's GDP. These businesses face many of the same challenges, costs, and regulations as larger enterprises. And, their lower economy of scale often puts them at a disadvantage. Limited budgets and fickle business cycles routinely place heavy constraints on daily operation.
SMB companies generally have little or no dedicated IT staff. There is never enough work for a full time IT staffer and the budget typically wouldn't allow it either. As a consequence, many SMB's operate on a break/fix plan... it breaks and they call somebody to fix it. However, in an "unmanaged network", things can get out of hand rather quickly. Especially, as systems age. Computers get clogged with dirt, hard drives fill up with data, backups are not done (or verified), disks get fragmented and/or fail outright. Software patches and anti-virus systems are not kept up to date, employees browse the web and potentially download malware onto their systems, and the list keeps growing. The risk of failure keeps building until one day... it just happens.
What's worse... businesses are often not aware of new hardware and/or software capabilities that can help them reduce costs, increase productivity, or add new capabilities to grow their business.
The solution is to use part time professional IT resources... and that's where AustinIT can help.
If you have a down system or other IT problem, we can fix that. However, that's usually just treating the symptom... not addressing the larger problem... which is lack of a cost effective preventative maintenance plan.
Beyond break/fix services, our suggested approach is to conduct a free on-site consultation and evaluation of your IT systems. First, we will look at what IT assets you already have, how they are being used, whether they are secure, and finally, we will evaluate their current performance and condition. We will do this without installing any software or taking anything apart. Next, we will discuss your business objectives and future plans with you so that we can fully determine what your overall IT needs are. And finally, we propose a plan for you that includes maintenance, upgrades, and any additional IT assets/capabilities that we feel will help you meet your present and future business objectives.
For a few hours a month, you can have a professional IT team that helps you monitor and maintain your systems... without breaking your budget.