IT is a vast undertaking in today’s quickly evolving workplace that many professionals don’t have the time, resources, or expertise to manage. Not only are many industries facing talent shortages, but a shortage of tech professionals that can keep up with the quickening pace of IT development. One study predicts that by 2030, the lack of sufficient tech talent will create an $8.5 trillion loss in revenue for companies worldwide.
As a result, many are turning to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to fill the gap and simplify their most complex IT projects. Most MSPs offer small to medium-sized businesses remote IT support for a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house team. MSPs provide ongoing monitoring, expert advice, and troubleshooting to keep a business’s infrastructure running smooth.Continue reading →
Computer viruses are almost as old as the computer itself. The first virus dates back to 1983 and was a parasitic application created by Fred Cohen to show people how to counter different threats.
As a business owner, what’s just as important as protecting your technology, is having data backup and disaster recovery. This article will take a look at why these are both vital for your business. Read on to learn about the importance of these, and make sure that your data is protected at your company today. Continue reading →
IT outsourcing is when a business uses an external IT service provider to deliver some or all of the functions required by a company and includes managing infrastructure, IT strategy, and running the service desk. IT providers can take full responsibility for all maintenance and support. This approach is also known as fully managed services. They can also provide additional support to an internal team, an approach usually taken by larger organizations.
No matter the size of your business, the large majority of companies have some IT requirements. Many companies will find IT critical to the day-to-day of their business. Not only do you need to think about the business’s overall IT requirements, but each department within the company. It’s not uncommon for each department to have their individual needs – such as specialized programs, software or workflows.
Most businesses will need some dedicated IT resource. Still, the trouble comes in deciding whether to build your own internal IT team or opt for outsourced IT support. There are benefits to both approaches. However, the key to success is determining which is the best fit for your business.
In-house IT support
Hiring the right people with the right experience and qualifications can allow you to build a support team with in-depth and specialist knowledge that correlates directly to your company’s specific systems. If based on-site, they will most likely be available immediately and solve issues reasonably quickly. Some companies see this as invaluable for potential emergencies, such as security breaches.
However, it can take time, patience and significant capital to build an internal IT team. Businesses must also understand what skills they will require in the future to create an effective team, and even for the most forward-thinking business leader, this is not easy to predict.
One-off recruitment fees are not the only consideration. The average salary for an IT specialist, according to Glassdoor, is around $86,000. For an IT Manager, you could be looking at $108,000 or higher. You’ll also need to think about ongoing training costs along with salary considerations because you’ll want your team to stay up to date with current best practices and certifications.
Another con to working solely with an internal IT team is the need to rely on only one or two people to manage your entire IT environment. Even the most experienced IT specialist will have knowledge gaps. Relying solely on a small team could cause you problems with sickness or holiday cover or potentially lead your team members to become burnt out. What would happen in the event of one member of your two-person team being on holiday and the other falls sick? You also need to consider who will be responsible for covering issues outside of regular working hours. You cannot realistically expect a single person to be on call 24/7, 365 days a year.
Outsourced IT support
One of the most significant benefits of IT outsourcing is the financial advantages it offers. Generally, outsourced IT support is more cost-effective than an in-house team, and you can expect to pay a fixed rate. The exact price typically depends on the number of users and the level of support, but outsourcing tends to be the most cost-effective once you do the calculations.
With outsourced IT support, you have support whenever you need it, so you don’t have to worry about things like sick days and holiday cover. Most IT providers have a dedicated out-of-hours line to access support whenever you need it and can resolve many issues remotely, so you may not need a full-time team on-site at all times.
You will also have on-demand access to a broader pool of expertise. A quality IT partner will have staff with a range of experience and qualifications, and as such, should be able to find someone to help, whether it’s to assist with a quick fix or for long-term projects. With an internal IT team, they may lack experience in a particular area, which may mean you need to bring in a freelance consultant. While they may only be short-term hires, contractors often require higher day rates.
Some critics argue that a third party will never be as effective as an employee or be concerned about data privacy, data ownership and disaster recovery. However, with the right IT managed services provider, you can easily avoid most of these issues with agreements in place governing the quality of service you receive. Service Level Agreements outline and prioritize how to handle the problems that arise, response times and the penalties should they not be achieved. Customer retention rate and recommendations can also give you a rough idea of quality.
It can be challenging to decide which approach is the right fit for your company. The most important thing is to find the right IT service provider who understands your business needs.
Book a consultation with us to learn more how we can help manage your IT solutions.
As a financial services firm, your clients depend on your guidance to help them make the most out of their fiscal decisions. From accounting to hedge fund management, your clients gain peace of mind when appropriately advised. These relationships require trust, often built over time. What would happen if that trust were threatened? How long could you keep your clients at ease if they could not retrieve information or make withdrawals? What would happen if you couldn’t get their tax returns filed in time? What would happen if someone’s identity were stolen and you couldn’t access their information to stop it?
In the financial industry, downtime can be detrimental to your ability to do your job and customer relationships. Nowadays, downtime threats are not only weather-related. Entire systems can fall victim to ransomware, and individual identities can be stolen. In these instances, your clients will turn to you for financial security. Being able to deliver that service is crucial to your reputation and business’ livelihood.
A False Sense of Security
While you may be taking some precautions, such as securing and backing up your sensitive data, sometimes that’s not enough. There is a common misconception that data is safe if backed up once a day. Still, this outdated practice is no longer sufficient for several reasons:
If you forget to perform the backup or the backup process fails, you’re not protected.
If you only back up your files once a day, you’re left vulnerable to the loss of an entire day’s work.
If you don’t correctly validate your backup files, you could be in for an unpleasant surprise when trying to use those files to restore your company’s operations.
If you only back up your files on-site, you could lose them too—leaving you with no way to meet client requests.
If you only back up your raw data, rather than all your application and server configuration files, it could take several days to restore your practice —because you will also have to rebuild your servers, operating systems, applications, etc.
Some financial services firms turn to business interruption insurance to cover the costs to rebuild, restore, or regain lost income. While an insurance provider may write you a check for the cost of a server that gets damaged due to a broken pipe, it won’t protect you from damaged client relationships. Ultimately, your reputation isn’t something for which you can easily be compensated.
How Vulnerable Are You?
If your company identifies as a business that doesn’t have the IT resources to effectively recover from a significant outage, make sure you’re weighing all of the factors around the costs of downtime. Here are the facts:
US businesses lose $12 billion annually due to data loss.
93% of companies that lose their data center for 10+ days file for bankruptcy within one year.2
Best Practices for Financial Services IT
In a 2017 survey by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, 71% of financial services firms reported cyber risk among their top five concerns. Their concern seems justified as 2017 was a costly year for the financial services industry. The Ponemon Institute reported that the cost of cyber attacks in 2017 averaged $18.28 million per financial services company. These costly incidents seem to be on the rise, but there are some precautions you can take to safeguard your data:
Outsource your company’s IT needs to an expert who has experience in the financial industry.
Don’t sacrifice quality to save money when purchasing hardware. It will benefit you (and your bottom line) to have robust technology in the long run.
Perform timely hardware and software updates, maintenance and backups.
Establish, review and maintain system security of all practice technology.
Any company that has not recently re-assessed its backup and disaster recovery procedures should therefore do so to conform to these industry-standard best practices.
The Better Way: Business Continuity
Business continuity describes a complete solution for backup and disaster recovery. A proper business continuity solution will protect data on-premises and in the cloud. Whether data is on servers or in SaaS applications, it needs to be backed up. Business continuity goes a step further and offers you the ability to restore your data, which we call disaster recovery.
Whether a business is faced with a natural disaster or one human-made, a robust solution will have you up and running in minutes. Solutions that leverage the hybrid cloud can guarantee a quicker restore time as well. Why? Local backups are great to keep data stored on local devices, but what happens if something happens to that device? A hybrid cloud backup solution takes an initial backup on a local device and then replicates the backup to a cloud server. Cloud-only solutions are not as reliable on their own due to bandwidth issues. A hybrid model works to alleviate the vulnerabilities by implementing both processes to fill in the gaps. That’s intelligent business continuity.
At Hemi IT Solutions, we offer incredible Managed IT solutions for businesses in Calgary and Edmonton. Our focus is creating and maintaining partnerships with our clients based on trust, efficiency and follow-through. For over 10 years, we have engaged our clients through excellent service and pragmatic advice.
Book a consultation with us if you are interested in outsourcing your IT.
