IT Can Fill In a Lot of Gaps

When the stay-at-home orders were reigning down early in March, people weren’t sure just how long precautionary measures would last. Now that a large percentage of the workforce is either out of work, just returning to work, or working from home after nearly 100 days, it has proven to be one of the most challenging periods for businesses in contemporary business history. Today, we’d like to flip the narrative a bit and talk about three technology solutions that can fix some of your business’ problems in a time when there are plenty to fix.

Not all businesses can use the same type of technology, so while we were trying to make our list here we tried to limit it to technology that most businesses could take advantage of, and the addition of which would make a major difference in the way they can fuel productivity, security, and cost effectiveness. 

#1 - Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR)

Protecting your business’ assets has to be a priority. There is no better system to protect your data from data breach and data loss than the BDR. The BDR is a network-attached device that incrementally backs up your data as it changes. The BDR can be set to run backups as frequently as every 15 minutes, ensuring that any changes your teams may make are collected and protected from loss. What makes the BDR stand out, is that once the backup is taken, it is also saved in an offsite data center, far enough away from your business as to deliver the redundancy it needs. So while your data is backed up and protected onsite, if something were to happen to your place of business (and there are a lot of disasters that can strike), you know that your data is backed up and safe in the cloud. 

#2 - Virtualized Environments

A decade ago, this product would have been out of many small and mid-sized businesses' price range. Today, it is the most effective way to save money on your business’ IT spend. Many businesses will dedicate a server for a specific function. That function may not actually use up more than 25 or 30 percent of that server’s resources. Spending five or six figures on centralized computing hardware every five-to-seven years can really be problematic for a small or medium-sized business, but with virtualized environments, a single server can run several virtual machines (VM). Each VM can emulate a specific server, so that each server, outfitted with VM technology can actually serve multiple functions for your business. What’s better yet, that this technology can now be purchased in the cloud, further reducing your company’s upfront costs. If you are looking to get the technology needed to really compete, and do it without spending huge swaths of capital, hosted servers may be your best bet.

#3 - Voice over Internet Protocol

Every business leans heavily on their phone system. Today, reliable and feature-rich phone systems through a telecom provider will cost any business more than it should. VoIP is the alternative. Using your business’ existing bandwidth, your business can have a telephone system with the reliability and features of a traditional phone system, with built-in conferencing, messaging, and mobile calling solutions for a fraction of the cost. VoIP platforms come in all shapes and sizes so you can find one that has the features and the costs that fit your business’ specific profile.  Best yet, VoIP solutions have built-in security to help your business keep your communications from being intercepted and your business’ operations interrupted.

You might expect to pay a lot for your business’ technology, but the IT experts at SMART Services can help you find solutions that work for your budget and for your business. Call us today at 586 258-0650 to learn more about the IT you can use to get a leg up on your competition.