It’s easy to think of IT as a money sink. No matter how much you spend, there’s always some issue that surfaces, requiring a considerable investment on your part. But what if we told you that you don’t have to worry about IT issues?
With the right approach, you can transition from the traditional reactive method of IT maintenance to proactive IT solutions, designed to save you money.
Here are three ways managed IT services help you maintain your IT systems, allowing you to spend less, discover more opportunities, and accomplish more throughout the workday.
Prioritize Patching and Updates for Mission-Critical Systems
Regardless of how annoying it is, you need to patch and update your software, no matter how big of an inconvenience it is… and we’ll tell you why.
Patches and updates are at the forefront of your cybersecurity strategy; they are what stop the majority of new and emerging threats, especially the ones that love targeting small businesses like yours. If you don’t, it’s only a matter of time before a threat exploits a known vulnerability or sneaks in through a crack in your defenses. We recommend you implement a remote monitoring and management tool, establish a testing protocol, and define a clear maintenance window for when you’ll deploy your fixes to minimize disruptions to operations.
Another trick is to automate what you can to take the bite out of deploying patches and updates, with the most “automatic” being hiring a managed service provider like Fusion IT to handle all the work for you.
Implement a Rigorous and Regular Data Backup and Recovery Schedule
For SMBs, the biggest misunderstanding surrounding data backup is that it’s synonymous with disaster recovery, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
If your main server becomes inoperable, either due to a hardware failure or a natural disaster that destroys your infrastructure, how much data would you lose? If your answer is “more than a few hours’ worth,” you have a problem on your hands. You want a data backup solution in place that utilizes the 3-2-1 rule of data protection (3 copies of data, 2 on different media types, 1 copy off-site).
However, that data backup is only effective if it’s tested properly. Be sure to verify that your data backups are operational through routine testing. If a backup fails for any reason, you’ll want to know immediately so you can correct the issue.
Proactively Monitor Your Systems for Symptoms of Hardware Failures
IT issues are significant and dramatic, but they often exhibit signs long before they escalate into major downtime incidents.
Modern managed IT service providers like Fusion IT can use sophisticated tools to monitor hundreds of data points on every machine, checking for the more subtle and insidious signs of trouble. We’re talking about the signs that your average user probably won’t catch, like sudden spikes in CPU temperature or a server running low on disk space. By proactively monitoring these pre-failure indicators, we can help you address them before the inevitable multi-day downtime incident occurs.
In other words, we look for any piece of technology operating outside its normal baseline performance, then order replacement parts, schedule installations, and migrate data long before it has an impact on your business.
You don’t just stumble into having a stable and secure IT infrastructure; you create it with intentional investment in the right tools. A reliable infrastructure will help your business stay focused on what truly matters: providing the goods and services it’s known for to its valued customers.
To learn more about how to achieve this for your business, contact Fusion IT at (616) 828-5360 today.