Chicago IT Support: Monthly Contract vs. As-Needed Service

Posted on May 1, 2011 by admin

If you run a small business in Chicago, you are probably thinking of ways to reduce the cost of IT support while maintaining the best IT service possible.

Most Chicago IT consulting firms are moving toward the model of a flat monthly service fee, typically based on the number of computers and servers that are supported and maintained. These plans usually include a bundled set of IT services, such as 24/7 monitoring of servers, regular maintenance, and proactive notification about potential problems. These are all good things—but do all small businesses need them?

It isn’t hard to understand why Chicago IT support firms are moving to the monthly model. For one thing, companies that sign up for them are usually locked in for at least a year—and sometimes for several years. The model provides a guaranteed source of revenue for the IT firm and creates a contractual obligation that is difficult for the small business to break.

But it is important for the small-business owner to understand the details of the flat monthly fee model. It is perfect for some small businesses, since the monthly payment is fixed. Others may find that they are paying for an insurance policy that isn’t often used. One important factor to keep in mind is this: If a network system is set up properly, not much monitoring and maintenance should be needed. If issues and problems are constantly coming up, something was not properly set up in the first place.

Overall, it is important to find an IT consulting company that has flexible support plans, allowing you to move from an as-needed model to a monthly fee model, or vice versa, without much hassle. In general, support provided on an as-needed basis will be the lowest-cost support, but it is important that some minimal maintenance is done. For example, antivirus applications and system backups can get off track if they aren’t maintained by a professional. This can lead to big and expensive issues later on. The best solution might be to work with a company on an hourly, as-needed basis at first, so that you can evaluate their service for a few months before jumping into a monthly plan or a longer-term contract.

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Dual monitors becoming a standard

Posted on May 1, 2011 by admin

One advantage of being IT consultants and working with all kinds of companies in the Chicago area is that you get to see how people work. From our extensive “research,” it is clear that one monitor per computer is becoming insufficient for the modern workplace.

There are three main components to most office projects: email, documents, and the Internet. Email is usually the most important application. It is the work requestor and the submission tool for completed work, and it needs to be referred to continually as the work is processed. Second, there is the actual document, or application, that you are using—for example, an Excel worksheet, Word document, industry application, or financial application. Finally, there is the Internet. While working on a document, you might need to use it to find a zip code, research a tax code, or look up how to create a function on Excel.

The dual monitor comes in handy when you need to look at two screens simultaneously to compare and verify. Using one monitor, you would have to constantly bounce back and forth between windows—or else resize the windows, which can be frustrating and time-consuming.

Customers we have worked with to set up a dual monitor have been amazed by the experience, and they find it hard to believe that they ever worked on a single monitor. Dual monitors will definitely become the standard in the not-very-distant future.

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The Fastest Backup and Recovery Solution

Posted on March 30, 2011 by admin

The traditional tape backup solution for backing up Microsoft Servers has several inherent problems. First, someone has to swap tapes daily. Second, tape drive requires regular maintenance, such as cleaning and replacing worn tapes. In general there is a lot of “messing about” with a tape backup system. On top of all that, backup and recovery is a slow process, because the server needs to be “rebuilt,” and the backup application reinstalled, before full recovery can happen. There are better software packages that speed up this process using server images. But on average, you should expect to lose an entire day if there is a full server crash that needs to be recovered.

Because of these problems, there has been a strong movement towards replacing tape backup solutions. Online options, for example, have come onto the market. They alleviate some of the messing about, since they are generally “no touch” systems. You install them and they run in the background, continuously, during set hours. These systems work great and are generally cost effective, but there will be some subscription fees involved in storing data offsite. The main problem with them is the recovery process. Recovering from a complete server crash can take days, because recovering all the data through the Internet takes a long time. Instead, most offsite backup locations will just send you a hard drive with your data. This is a major issue if you need to get going within hours.

The best recovery solution is a virtual machine backup, one that does backups onsite. It operates like a tape drive, but when the server crashes, you can switch it to virtual machine mode, and within 15 – 30 minutes it will act like your original server. Granted, the crashed server needs to be rebuilt, restored, and eventually put back online. But the downtime will be minimal. Offsite storage is available for this solution as well, so it can become a “no touch” system.

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Choosing the best IT consulting in Chicago

Posted on March 23, 2011 by admin

Why small businesses dump their IT consultants

For more than 10 years, we have been approached by small business in the Chicago area about our IT consulting services. Many of them are unhappy with their current IT service provider and are looking for something different. It might be helpful to summarize some of their complaints, so that you can avoid several common problems.

Terrible response time for support: It is shocking—but not uncommon—to hear about IT consultants failing to return phone calls for weeks, or failing to show up at a promised meeting. It is important to be sure you have extremely reliable IT help. Two ways to ensure this: get a list of references and ask them about responsiveness. Another method is to call them out of the blue during the initial engagement process, perhaps during lunch hours or in the late afternoon. See what kind of response you get.

High billing with low results: Small businesses do not like to be overcharged for meager results. To make matters worse, some IT consulting firms are dismissive when questioned about their invoices. It is important that invoices are discussed openly and disputes settled properly. It is more important that IT consulting companies follow up and ensure that the client is happy with the results. A meeting of the minds is important: the client should not be expected to pay until he is satisfied with the results. So it’s a good idea to ask a prospective IT consulting company how they would deal with a disputed bill. It would be useful, as well, to see a sample of their bills. Detailed invoices help both the company and the customer in pinpoint and resolve problems quickly and efficiently.

Hiding behind jargon: While it is true that consultants are hit-and-miss, personality-wise, there’s no excuse for the most common complaint heard about IT consultants: that they’re arrogant and use incomprehensible jargon. Be sure your IT consulting firm doesn’t hide behind jargon. When it comes down to it, they should be able to explain themselves to anyone. All it takes, really, is time and patience. They should let you ask as many questions as you need to, and they should respond with clear and concise answers.

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Vanity URL for Facebook

Posted on February 18, 2011 by admin

What is a vanity URL for Facebook? It’s a short URL that looks like such: facebook.com/yourvanity. It is pretty self-evident why you would want one, mainly it is easier to remember then the one given to you by default. Also such shortcuts will rank better in search engines such as Google, let alone people can find you through Facebook.

To see what vanity URLs are available you can check here.

One thing that you do need to do before getting a vanity URL is to get 25 fans to your Facebook page. To do this Facebook is nudging you to be proactive and upload your contacts to them. If your contacts have a Facebook page already, they can fan you easily enough. If they don’t then they might feel compelled to sign up for an account which helps Facebook.

Hopefully in the long run it will be a useful tool to promote your services and keep in touch with your client base. In the meantime get working for Facebook and get that vanity URL, this may be your last chance to lock in a good one.

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Prometheum Facebook Launched

Posted on January 15, 2011 by admin

Facebook page for Prometheum Technologies was launched Feb 15, 2011. We hope this social network media helps us connect better with our current clients and new clients. Overall I believe it will be a good informal channel of communication with our clients. To get to this Facebook page you can click here: www.facebook.com/chicago.it.consulting

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