infrastructure

Top Tips for Your Year-End Tech Review

December 6, 2022 by Paul Schwegler

Many of us look forward to January 1 as a fresh start. But before we get to hit that refresh button, it’s a good idea to look back too. No, we’re not saying you need to go sit by a waterfall and meditate on your IT infrastructure, but there are benefits to doing a year-end tech review.

What is a tech review?

In a tech review, you can accomplish several key things. First, you can gain a clear picture of what the IT infrastructure looks like. After all, technology is always evolving. You can determine what assets you have and how employees are using them. You’ll also revisit your tech spending and whether it’s achieving business outcomes.

A tech review also gives IT staff a chance to clarify roles and responsibilities, as well as mission.

Doing this at year’s end is common because many businesses slow down around the holidays. This means your team can focus more on the tasks of a thorough and effective tech review.

You may have a budget you’re looking to use by the end of the fourth quarter. With a tech review in hand, you can make sure you spend money on technology that will make a real impact.

A tech review, done at any time of year, also offers you the ability to:

improve productivity;
mitigate risk;
streamline workflow;
update and upgrade;
enhance employee engagement.

Steps for your tech review

There are many steps to take in an effective annual review of your technology. Read the main ones here.

Perform an IT inventory

Make sure you know all your tech assets and where they are in their lifecycle. This is a good time to identify current hardware and software in need of upgrade or replacement. Then, you can plan ahead and avoid security risks or unplanned downtime.

Review your IT outcomes

You should be spending on IT to achieve certain business goals. Now’s the time to consider whether your technology is doing what you wanted it to do. A Harvard Business Review study found that 77% of respondents see an IT strategy–implementation gap. So, at least you’re not alone in needing to ensure your tech initiative aligns with business outcomes.

Update tech guidelines

You probably have policies in place governing how your IT is used. Revisit these annually to ensure you are keeping up with the way your tech is evolving. For example, if your people are remote more often, make sure your guidelines match those tech deployments.

Survey employees

Ask the people who are using your technology not only about what they are using but also how they are using it. This can help you identify areas to improve, upgrade, or automate. Or you might find out people are using software that IT didn’t vet first!

Good questions to ask include:

What applications do you use most often?
What applications do you resist using?
Which technology tools can’t you do without?
Which technology do you wish our company had, and why?
Do you do any manual, repetitive processes?

Explore cybersecurity

You can ask employees whether they have experienced a cybersecurity threat this year. But you’ll also want to review your data to see if there are any indications of cyberattacks. Also, examine and revise your firewall settings to make sure they are as current as can be.

It’s also useful to have a third-party IT professional perform a vulnerability scan. A penetration test is a more involved way to identify weaknesses you might consider.

Review your findings and prioritize new technology

Drawing on the input you’ve received and the data you’ve gathered, decide what actions to take. You might want to replace redundant software or some with poor user experience. Or you may need to invest in hardware such as computers or servers. You could also find opportunities to automate manual tasks to boost your productivity.

Even if you have the budget for it, avoid making all your changes at once; it can be too overwhelming. Don’t expect your team to automate a process while also transitioning to new hardware. Bring your decision-makers together to decide on priorities and plan purchases and rollouts.

We review for you

Don’t have the resources or know-how to do a year-end technology evaluation? Our experts can investigate your IT infrastructure for you. Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

Hardware as a Service: What Is It, and Why Use It?

June 7, 2022 by Paul Schwegler

When IT infrastructure is out of date, you face performance and compatibility issues. Your business spends time troubleshooting faulty computer hardware, and productivity is lost. Yet your business can’t afford to update to more advanced technology. The solution? Hardware as a Service.

Hardware as a Service allows small or midsized businesses to lease needed computing power. The business gets access to new equipment they might not otherwise be able to afford. Plus, you save on operational expenses powering, cooling, and maintaining the tech.

IT infrastructure evolves so quickly, but Hardware as a Service helps you avoid becoming outdated. You no longer have to find the budget to purchase brand-new technology every few years. You simply lease the tech assets from a service provider.

How Hardware as a Service Works

There are different Hardware as a Service model. You might:

sign a contract for a provider to administer and maintain the computer hardware it installs in your offices;
use Internet Protocol (IP) connections to cloud computing environments and let off-site hardware do the work. This option saves on hardware costs and related OPEX, but also avoids heavy expenditure on IP bandwidth.

How does this solution differ from leasing computers? This is a managed services agreement, and you gain installation, maintenance, and support services, too.

More Advantages of Hardware as a Service

We’ve already mentioned cost-effectiveness and currency, but those aren’t the only benefits of using a HaaS solution.

Simplicity

Your business will pay a consistent monthly or yearly subscription fee for your HaaS. In return, you get systems that are automatically updated. The tech will be compatible with the latest software deployed. You don’t have to do the legwork to buy any hardware, and you avoid having to maintain the technology.

Proactive service

With HaaS, you don’t need an IT team in-house to manage and maintain the equipment. Additionally, the service provider offers value via effective customer service. You can expect the provider to be doing everything it can to ensure a robust hardware service so you enjoy the reliable infrastructure and round-the-clock IT infrastructure support.

Security gains

The IT ecosystem is always changing, and so, too, are the threats to cybersecurity. Your business would be more vulnerable to attack with legacy hardware. Using HaaS, you are working with more secure, up-to-date technology. This can cut the risk of downtime and service disruptions.

Scalability

If your business grows, you need your systems to grow with you. With HaaS, it’s easy to expand or upgrade infrastructure. You don’t have to worry about the huge capital expenditure for new tech; you’ll simply pay more to upgrade your HaaS solution.

With Hardware as a Service, you can affordably replace your technology before it becomes obsolete. Cut costs, and improve scalability and security, all while gaining an expert IT partner. Get in touch with us today at (515)422-1995.

Save Money and Time with Managed IT Services

March 24, 2020 by Paul Schwegler

IT services can be one of the largest and most unpredictable expenses within a business. Unexpected failures, mandatory upgrades, and sudden staff changes can happen quickly and be very expensive.

These factors, a part of the IT world, make IT departments costly, hard to manage, and difficult to budget for.

Switching your business to managed IT services can lower costs and reduce unpredictable expenses. Making the switch can cut down management overheads and reduce budgets to a fixed period cost. Here’s how.

Reducing Infrastructure

It’s common in many firms for single tasks to be required to pass through multiple devices before they can be delivered or shipped. Invoices, payroll, and digital deliverables are particularly common culprits. When looking to improve efficiency and lower unnecessary costs, this is typically the first place to trim fat.

Instead of adding office clutter with more devices, cloud resources can streamline processes. Using cloud-based technology to do some of the same tasks as before typically adds more power and improves speed.

Cloud-based services are usually faster and available to more users at once. Files and services are easier to access and less likely to clog up the internal network.

Reducing the overheads associated with running internal servers is commonly a major bonus too. Eliminating associated costs such as maintenance, security, cooling and upgrades is the largest bonus many firms receive.

Cloud technology has the power to simplify and speed up your entire workflow while making large financial savings.

For most businesses, these savings can be put into critical areas of the firm where they can be better used.

Keeping IT costs predictable

In the world of IT, bad news is a fact of life. Systems failures and critical events will always happen eventually, it’s just a question of when. Virus attacks, malware, hackers, and hardware failures occur commonly and can take a systems out of operation for days.

Managed IT services focus on tackling these issues before they happen. Continuous monitoring of systems alerts us of hardware issues before their symptoms even begin.

Antivirus, firewall, and security systems are also kept up-to-date every night to prevent threats from being exploited and data being stolen.

Reducing Downtime

IT failures that take your systems offline typically costs far more than the total repair bill to fix it. Every minute your critical systems are unavailable is time spent not creating business income or value. The more staff you employ, the more the cost multiplies too.

It’s important to consider the value of the business’s reputation on top of just downtime. Not having services available when clients or customers need them most can sour relationships fast. Your services may be the difference between meeting and missing a crucial deadline. If your service isn’t reliable then clients may look for one that is.

No Internal IT Hires

As every business owner knows, the cost of staff is far more than just their salary. Holiday pay, retirement, sick leave, training, benefits, and downtime all must be factored into the total cost. Staff costs are the single biggest bill to pay, even in the smallest IT departments.

Managed IT reduces staff costs down to a single lower cost bill that includes all your IT needs.

We train and manage our own staff to service your firm. By doing so, you get all the advantages of an IT department to meet your business needs without the overheads and management of staff that are not central to customer demands.

Managed IT Services for your Firm

While IT and services are complex, expensive, and resource consuming; it doesn’t have to be for your business. Managed IT services present a simple, cost-effective solution to meet your requirements.

We can slash your downtime, secure your business, and keep on top of your infrastructure without adding unnecessary expenses.

Give us a call at (515)422-1995 today to see if managed IT services are the right fit for your firm.