How Managed IT Services Can Reduce The Cost Of Running Your IT

Have you ever wondered why your office administrator is spending more and more time on the telephone to your IT company when they should be dealing with your customer correspondence? Whatever the reason, time spent troubleshooting problems on your IT systems costs you real money, either because your staff are diverted from the jobs that they are meant to be doing, or because you need to pay your IT engineer another couple of hundred pounds to come in and sort the problem out for you.

If you want to cut the real cost of supporting your IT, you need to makes some changes. You need to do a little housekeeping to delete some of the digital clutter that PC’s accumulate as a result of carrying out your day-to-day work. You also need to make sure that your PC’s are kept updated with all of the latest patches to protect you from viruses and trojans that you can download from the internet without even realising it.

Ask yourself a few questions

• When did you last defragment or run disk cleanup on your PC hard drives?
• Would you know if one of your PC’s was running out of Hard disk space?
• How often do you check that Windows Updates are installing properly on all of your PC’s?

These are all straightforward tasks that can help you to spot potential problems before they bite you. Think of it as being the equivalent of a car service. I’ll bet that you take your car in for a service every year because it makes your car run better, and because if you don’t your engine will eventually seize up and cost you ten times more than getting it serviced regularly. Computers are no different, except that computers really need to be checked on a weekly basis.

If that sounds a daunting task, why not outsource your IT Support to a company who can manage your IT for you. Just like your car dealer, they can use automation software to perform the equivalent of a service on your PC’s via the internet. This is by far the least expensive way of performing the regular housekeeping tasks that will keep your PC’s running reliably and virus free, and as a consequence you won't need to call out an engineer to your offices so often. The net result is that your IT keeps running, your employees can get on with the job that you pay them for, and your IT costs are kept as low as possible. 

Let me know if you need an IT tip to make your PC's and Servers work better for you. Where possible, one of my engineers will answer your question on the blog. If we can't we will at least email you back and try to point you in the right direction if we can.

The 7 Secrets Of Successful IT Support

Your business needs expert IT support to keep your business running, and you expect good value for money, but what services should you look for from a potential supplier to keep your systems in good health?

There are a number of components of IT support that need to be costed and catered for to keep your IT running smoothly, protected from internet borne malware, and also to ensure that any IT issues can be rectified as quickly as possible.

1. Hardware Asset Management
By maintaining accurate records of our customers’ installed hardware, we are able to arrive on site ready and prepared to set about the task of repairing or rebuilding the system that has failed. Without this information, it can take an hour or more from the arrival of an engineer on site for them to identify the problem, work out which item needs to be replaced, and then buy a replacement from PC World (the most expensive place to buy replacement parts) before coming back to your office to effect the repair. All this time, the clock is ticking costing you money unnecessarily.

2. Software Asset Management

Software auditing allows us to monitor licence usage within your organisation on your behalf and better manage software upgrades that are required on your systems as old versions of software become unsupported. We can then advise you of recommended upgrades to be undertaken as part of a regular review programme.

3. Antivirus / Antispware Management
Maintaining up-to-date security software is an essential discipline in keeping your IT systems running reliably. Although endpoint security software is self-updating, modern malware can deactivate it in the event that your PC is infected. Indeed, antivirus software that is out of date or deactivated is a warning sign that the PC may have suffered a successful malware attack.

4. Windows Update / Patch Management

Windows and application patches are the front line battleground in combating internet malware that causes your PC’s to run slowly and crash. Sometimes Windows updates fail to install, and it is essential to monitor these events and take corrective action to make sure that the relevant update is installed as soon as possible. Also, when a WIndows patch continues to fail to install, it is a sure sign that something is wrong. When this happens, it’s time for a rebuild, and by catching the problem early we can schedule the support work so that it has a minimal impact on your business.

5. Desktop Policy Management

Your PC’s will run a lot more reliably if you ensure that you only have software that is essential for your business installed on your PC’s. We monitor software that is installed on your PC’s, and identify any unwanted software that we find. We then either agree a change to your policy with you if it is needed to run your business or take action to remove it.

6. Scheduled Maintenance

To keep your PC’s running at peak performance, you have to do a little maintenance on a regular basis. We make sure that routine maintenance is carried out to clear out temporary files and defragment your hard disk to make sure that you get best performance from your systems. We also make sure that a full antivirus scan is run overnight on your PC’s on a weekly basis.

7. Helpdesk Support

All IT Systems fail sometimes, at which point the support process starts and we will employ telephone, remote or onsite support as necessary. The benefit of diligence in undertaking all of the above processes however is that they will minimise the amount of times that your systems fail. The most expensive component of providing IT Support is the cost of sending an engineer to site, and it only makes sense to do whatever is possible to minimise this expensive activity.

Our approach is very different to self employed consultants who may charge cheaper hourly rates because they don't provide these essential preemptive maintenance services. Lower hourly charges may appear attractive initially, until you find that you are regularly writing cheques for £200 for ad-hoc support. Our approach is to do everything possible to avoid onsite callouts which are not only costly, but also result in lost staff productivity for you while your staff wait for an IT repair to be undertaken.

If you would like to know more about our IT Support services, please visit our web site, download our IT Services white paper, or contact us by telephone on 01707 255060 or via email at info@clearview.co.uk.

How To Cut The Cost Of Running Your IT

Have you ever wondered why you still get viruses / malware on your company’s PC’s even though you have purchased security software from a reputable vendor? It’s a good question and one that you need to understand if you want to minimise the operational cost of running your business. After all, every time you need to call an engineer it costs you money, and not just in terms of cheques that you write to your IT support company. In addition, there is the cost of lost employee productivity caused by degraded performance as your system becomes unusable, as well as the time lost while your employee waits for their system to be rebuilt. So what should you do to ensure that you don't waste money on engineer call-outs and lost productivity?

IT Security Is A Process

You have to recognise that IT Security doesn’t just involve installing software. You have to make sure that you perform necessary housekeeping on a regular basis. Specifically, it is essential to keep your systems updated with the latest updates and patches for Microsoft Windows and common applications such as Adobe and Java to protect you against the latest security issues that are discovered.

The reason that regular maintenance is so critical is that newly discovered software bugs (also known as vulnerabilities) are used by hackers and fraudsters to plant malicious software on your PC’s. These are the cracks in your defences that allow your security to be breached even with security software installed.

It is likely if not inevitable that you will suffer malware infections at some point if you allow your employees to access the internet. Hackers and security companies are locked in a constant battle that is played out on your IT systems on a daily basis. When a new bug is found, hackers move quickly to write and distribute code that allows them to exploit it before the security companies react with countermeasures to identify and foil their attempts. Each time a new bug is found, a number of PC’s are infected before the new updates are installed.

To give you some idea of the scale of the problem, in 2012, Secunia (the industry reference point on IT security) issued 124 “Security Advisories” for Windows 7 covering 237 vulnerabilities, of which 5% remain unresolved at the time of writing this article. Internet Explorer 9 was the subject of 14 security advisories covering 70 vulnerabilities of which 7% are not yet resolved. These are just two of the most common items of software installed on your PC’s, yet we are already talking about a new security threat being discovered almost every day.

How To Keep Your Systems Up-To-Date

Your PC’s should prompt you to update Microsoft Windows, as well as applications such as Adobe and Java on a regular basis. If you ever see a message that an update has failed to install, you need to do something about it. The reason that the update has failed is very often that you have unwittingly downloaded some malware from a “hacked” or malicious website. If this is the case, malware can be silently gathering your login credentials and feeding them back to a hacker without you realising it. Very often your PC will start to run more slowly as the malware starts to take up resources. To make things worse, once malware finds a victim it will often send out for its friends, which themselves take up more resources until your PC becomes unusable and needs to be rebuilt.

Do It Yourself Or Call In The Experts?

It is understandable that many small business owners still take a reactive approach to IT security. Taking time to make sure that the latest Windows updates and patches have been successfully applied, or making sure that antivirus software on your workstations hasn’t been disabled by malware takes time and takes you away from running your business. The problem is that unless you do spend time making these checks, you are far more likely to suffer a malware attack.

If you are happy to maintain your own systems, you can buy PC Audit software which will identify systems that aren’t updating properly, or that show other signs that they have been infected by malware. Otherwise, you may be better off outsourcing the process of regular auditing and updating your IT systems to a Managed IT Service Provider who will be able to use automation software to manage the process more efficiently and cost effectively than you are able to do yourself. They will also be able to undertake a number of other essential housekeeping tasks at the same time such as clearing out temporary files and making sure that PC Hard disks are defragmented on a regular basis, which will also boost your system performance.

If you would like to know more about the IT Support or Managed IT Services that we provide, please download our Managed IT Services White Paper, visit our web site, or contact us by telephone on 01707 255060 or via email at info@clearview.co.uk