MicroTech Systems IT Service Blog

As a small business owner in Boise, Idaho, it's essential to have reliable IT support to keep your company running smoothly. But with so many options available, finding the right IT partner can be challenging. Managing an IT network for a small business is like trying to fix a car engine without any training and half the tools. Just as a car engine has complex components and systems that require expertise to repair and maintain, your IT network also has a variety of technical components that require specialized knowledge to manage effectively. Without the necessary skills and resources, attempting to handle IT issues on your own can lead to costly mistakes and disruptions to your business.

According to a 2021 report, around 50% of all corporate data is stored in the cloud. And why not? There are several benefits of using the cloud for your business, such as reduced IT costs, on-demand scaling, smooth collaboration, and much more. 

However, some key challenges in cloud migration include compatibility issues during data migration, lack of clarity on how to execute cloud migration, security vulnerabilities, cost transparency, etc. 

Let's now dive deeper into the technical challenges in cloud migration and understand how to combat such issues.

Cloud computing refers to renting off-premise servers for using storage and computing resources over the internet. Be it hosting email, using applications, or file storage, you can use cloud-based services for all your business needs.

Now, let’s talk about the importance of cloud services for small businesses. Cloud-based services eliminate the need to set up expensive on-site servers significantly reducing your IT spending. Additionally, you no longer need to micromanage your IT operations. Your cloud service provider takes care of security, maintenance, and system upgrades for you.

With most business operations being heavily reliant on technology, keeping a constant check on your IT systems to ensure smooth functioning is a no-brainer. Nonetheless, hiring an in-house monitoring staff or relying on on-site support for break-fix upgrades will drain your budget. Remote monitoring management is all you need to get professional help for monitoring, maintaining, and fixing IT issues at affordable costs.

Remote monitoring management (RMM) refers to keeping your IT systems in optimal condition without technicians being physically present on the site. If you are wondering why use remote monitoring and management, let's count some key benefits of RMM software. RMM tools offer proactive monitoring, faster issue resolution, enhanced user experience using automation, all these and more at budget-friendly prices.

With dozens of RMM tools out there, it's not easy to find the RMM software that best suits your business needs. Let's understand what RMM is, which features you should look for, and the benefits of using RMM software.

Being a small and medium-sized business, you are growth-focused and need to efficiently utilize your resources and scale your business operations within a limited budget. What if you could save on your IT spending, allocating more budget towards other business-critical tasks?

Remote IT Assistance offers professional IT services at affordable costs eliminating the need to hire an in-house IT support team. In addition to cost savings, remote IT support service ensures faster issue resolution, access to industry experts, 24/7 remote monitoring, and provides on-demand scalability.

According to a 2020 survey, enterprises lost between 301,000 and 400,000 U.S. dollars per hour due to critical server outages. Not only economic strain, poor network monitoring leading to downtime can also reduce your reputation among customers. You can solve network issues while ensuring maximum efficiency of your network infrastructure by simply monitoring your network activity using reliable network monitoring systems.

Monitoring your network activity such as bandwidth usage, latency, uptime, connectivity, data packet loss, etc will help you detect network performance issues enabling you to proactively fix them before it affects your customers.  

We at MicroTech, have been providing network monitoring services for small and medium-sized businesses for over 50 years now. From our experience, we have realized that to implement an optimal network performance monitor plan, you need to understand what network monitoring is, why it is important, which metrics to track, and optimization techniques for network monitoring.

Let's dive into all these topics one by one. 

If you compare the cost of hiring a full-time in-house IT staff and subscribing to remote IT support services you would find that hiring remote IT support for small businesses is easier on the pocket. Apart from your cost savings, with small business remote support, you get access to IT experts, and the overall productivity of your business increases.

...and how to Avoid These IT Mistakes in 2019

No IT strategy is ever certain – business leaders make plenty of well-informed assumptions about the future of information technology, only to find out that the future takes a different turn. This year, everyone made plenty of assumptions about the cloud, the IoT, information security, and more. What did businesses get wrong – and how will we fix things in the year to come?

If you think your system and network are safe after installing a traditional antivirus software application, think again. Today, it's all about the exploit. Hackers are getting more creative. The workforce is more distributed than ever. And, small businesses need to be prepared.

For hackers, American small business culture represents a target-rich environment. Small businesses don’t often possess robust protocols in place to deter attackers. They might not use commercial-grade antivirus, and may not consistently employ strong password policies or two-factor authentication. 

As a result, attackers have a huge opportunity when it comes to small businesses – and it’s an opportunity that they usually take. Here are a few startling statistics as of 2021: