An IT Support Blog from London

Do we keep our IT services in-house, or do we outsource IT responsibilities? That is the question many management teams ask themselves when they look at the benefits of managed IT services. Outsourcing IT services save costs, introduces new knowledge and helps businesses focus. However fully outsourcing IT functions is not the best route for every organisation, and there are pros and cons to each approach. But how about opting for a mixed model?

Because your main objective is to grow your business, it can be burdensome when you also need to allocate time to manage your IT assets - even if that can also translate into business benefits. The good news is that there’s a way to grow your business and manage your IT assets without spending much time on the latter. It’s called managed services.

This isn’t an article for explaining what managed services is. We’re assuming you already know what managed services is but are still looking for a good reason to hire one. This post should take care of that. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the major benefits of working with a managed services provider.

When managed correctly, a private cloud can be a worthwhile investment for certain businesses. It comes with almost all the benefits of public clouds minus the data privacy concerns. Of course, not everyone can afford a private cloud, especially the kind that’s built on-premise (i.e. not virtual private clouds offered by CSPs). So who should invest in one?

In this post, we look at some major indicators that denote a company’s suitability for a private cloud investment.

Continually reviewing your vital signs

Remote monitoring is one of the most powerful IT support tools available. Most importantly, rather than just detecting hardware and software faults in real-time, it is also able to provide the capability to predict failure.

By analysing log files created by hardware devices and active services, remote monitoring applications are able to identify events and conditions which precede failure. This is exceptionally beneficial because it frequently allows remediation of minor problems that are precursors of bigger failures.

HTL Support lets clients get on with what they do best

At HTL Support, we aim to offer professional IT support services with a difference. The foundation stone of our business is to employ expert technology support technicians with good people skills. Our friendly IT Guys take the hassle out of supporting IT issues so you can get on with the thing you most desire - running your business and practicing what you do best in servicing your customers or clients.

Is IT security in your firm where it needs to be?

IT security is near the top of the agenda for every executive management team. Although IT is not something executive managers are likely to get hands-on with and is best left to qualified practitioners, there are simple spot-checks that executive leaders can make to see if basic security is being implemented.

An ideal time to catch up and set out a review

Many firms experience a pre-Christmas rush of finishing off work and projects in early and mid-December. For items in the workflow that are on-going, there is often a sense of ‘parking’ them over the Christmas - New Year transition period until the return to work in January. Many businesses are likely to have reduced workload and staffing numbers.

Mapping IT Support services to a maturity model

If we apply maturity modelling to the IT Support function, we are able to produce an effective mapping that overlays the five levels of a traditional maturity model with five different service levels of support.

IT security and systems availability

IT security is one of the biggest concerns of our time. It might be identity theft from individuals or the hacking of business and corporate networks on an industrial scale by unscrupulous nation states trying to obtain commercial IP or military secrets. Whatever the threat, securing networks against attack is high priority for IT teams.

Besides viruses, malware and hacking, if we look at other factors that impact operational availability of business dependent IT systems, then there are a range of issues which need to be addressed.

Server status and Windows Services, disk space and database sizes are all factors that could  influence a business-critical failure. Storage and back up, the availability of network devices, satellite offices and websites are all hugely relevant.

Commoditised services and low value

In these days of highly competitive marketplaces, customer satisfaction is often the key to business success. Generally we can say a customer is satisfied when the service received exceeds or at the very least matches expectations. But what shapes our expectations?

Quite often it is determined by the concept of ‘value’.In today’s competitive market places commoditisation leads to lower quality services. If the price is appropriate to the service level then the value perception may be seen as reasonable or adequate. However, when the cost outstrips the level of service, then the value perception is likely to be poor. Ultimately, we expect to get what we pay for.