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The 7 Irresistible Qualities of Cloud ERP
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Ransomware 101
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The Hidden Costs of Hiring an IT Tech
/in Blog /by lindsayIf your business is at the point where you’re thinking about hiring a fulltime IT tech, congratulations! Having enough consistent needs to fill this role means you’ve worked hard and made good decisions that drove business growth. Our best advice? Don’t stop now!
Moving forward with hiring requires a lot of analysis to avoid major consequences down the line, though. One of the biggest decisions whether you’ll hire someone directly or use a third-party MSP (Managed Service Provider). In this article, we’ll get into the specifics of both scenarios.
Why Do You Need an IT Tech at All?
In the past, business people and tech people were two different breeds. Over the years, the gap has gradually shrunk to the point that many people are tech-savvy enough to get by for the little things. As your business has grown, though, you likely have needed to delegate many of your previous duties, like IT — even if you feel perfectly capable of handling them yourself. After all, when do you think was the last time Jeff Bezos packaged a shipment? Your IT needs have also likely grown much more complex.
If you don’t choose to delegate now, you fall into a major pitfall of leaving IT duties unassigned. In our current landscape, leaving an IT post open could be a death wish. Cyber attacks of all types are on the rise, and the amount of damage each one could impose is ballooning. For example, in 2016, the average ransomware attacker demanded $522. In 2020, that average sits around $84,000! Sadly, many of these attacks take place as a result of not having someone the wheel.
In addition, there’s the issue of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Being lax over time can make your systems out of date, making it harder for everyone to get their work done at a reasonable rate. In addition, only replacing equipment when it’s broken and not when it functionally obsolete can create situations where portions of or your entire workforce will be unable to do any work at all for a time.
An In-House Solution
So, let’s say you’re on board with having one or more people make up your IT team, and you make the decision to hire them directly. One certain benefit is that you can look through a collection of qualified candidates and pick just the right person(s) that you want! But then the other shoe drops.
Just like any other employee, before you hire someone for your IT needs, you have to consider the costs. For instance, the average price of an IT professional is $60,000 per year. Alright, so you budget out $60,000 — then you’re all set, right? Far from it!
Where is this person going to work? Maybe you already have space for them, but these professionals require more expensive hardware and monitor setups. Additionally, you need to factor in the network diagnostic software plus any industry-specific software. Since they’ll generally be on call, they’ll need a phone with a good plan so you can always reach them and possibly a company car (or at least some form of vehicle reimbursement) if you have multiple locations. Don’t forget that expense account!
Besides the specific expenses mentioned above, remember that this person is still an employee, so you have all the other general costs your other employees have associated with them. This can include health/life insurance, vacation time, sick time, 401K plus any bonuses or overtime pay they may rack up.
And what do you do if they leave? The implicit and explicit costs can be truly staggering when you take the time to add it all up.
A Safer Option
In the past, the above option was the only choice most employers had available to them. Based on the high costs (both known and unknown) associated with hiring an IT professional, it’s no surprise that companies have flocked to an alternative option: MSPs.
With an MSP, you have all the benefits of a fulltime employee without the downsides.
They will be consistently available, knowledgable in your network, and focused entirely on IT rather than other day job expectations. Need assistance when it’s time for regular upgrades or maintenance? Want someone to redesign your entire IT setup? Looking for someone to completely take over your IT operations, including telephone, so you can focus 100% on your core business? These are the sorts of services you can get out of an MSP.
Even better, the price you sign in the contract is the price you know you have to pay month after month, unlike the many unknown costs of an employee. There are no HR issues to worry about and the work is on the shoulders of a company, not an individual.
If your company is at the point where you know you need dedicated IT personnel but are unsure about which direction you’d like to go, contact us ASAP. We would be more than happy to go over your needs and discuss the best options.
You Can’t Solve Your IT Staffing Problem with Technology
/in Blog, Managed Services /by lindsayThe biggest problem in many IT departments isn’t technology; it’s people. There just aren’t enough of them. Hiring and retaining quality IT personnel is difficult given the high demand.
There are some technical approaches to this problem that offer some help. Automation eliminates the routine manual work, but it requires someone to write and test the automation scripts, which isn’t always simple. It also means that when the automated processes fail, fixing the issue falls to staff who are now less familiar with the technology because they aren’t working with it every day. Finding the balance between failing to alert and alerting too often isn’t straightforward, either.
Artificial intelligence is starting to be added into data center support tools, but is still novel and the benefit is uncertain. If your environment is different from the environment where the AI was trained, its insights may not be relevant.
Using cloud greatly reduces the amount of support required from in-house IT teams, as the cloud provider’s staff handles a portion of the routine staff. However, data center teams remain responsible for their own applications in Infrastructure and Platform as a Service. Supporting these platforms is often complicated by limited visibility and limited expertise with this new technology.
So the solution to the problem of not enough people isn’t more technology; it’s more people. The best way for business IT teams to get those additional people isn’t by hiring them directly. Instead, businesses should look at IT consulting and managed services as an efficient way to add skilled personnel to their teams.
How Managed Services Can Help
Using managed services eliminates the challenge businesses have in attracting and retaining staff. In addition, managed services brings several other benefits:
If you’re ready to solve your IT staffing problem, contact CCS Technology Group.
Additional Managed Services Resources
Managed IT Services Help Businesses Cope With a Crisis
5 Reasons Managed Services Are Good For Your Business
Whatever Your IT Problem, There’s a Managed Services Solution
Don’t Rely on Your Cloud Provider for Disaster Recovery
/in Blog, Business Continuity /by lindsayIt surprises some to hear this, but cloud doesn’t come with disaster recovery built in. Creating and implementing a disaster recovery strategy for your cloud infrastructure is your responsibility.
Disaster Recovery-like Features in the Cloud and Their Shortcomings
There are some capabilities in the cloud that sound like disaster recovery. Cloud has high availability, and if the hardware underlying your instance goes down, your virtual machine will readily and automatically be migrated to a new physical device. That sounds like just what you need for DR, but there are several ways this falls short:
Build Your Own Disaster Recovery Solution
The net impact of those shortcomings is that to achieve true disaster recovery capability, you need to plan and implement a solution yourself, even when your infrastructure is in the cloud. To do this, you need to add a few capabilities:
CCS Technology Services develops comprehensive disaster recovery solutions that protect your business wherever your data resides. Contact us to learn how we can help you develop a disaster recovery strategy for your cloud.
Additional Disaster Recovery Resources
5 Disaster Recovery Disasters to Avoid
Craft An Effective Disaster Recovery Plan
5 Changes to Make When You Switch to Disaster Recovery in the Cloud