In my travels around Chicago visiting prospective clients frustrated with their IT support, Chicago small businesses usually don’t have a full-time IT support person in-house. So, when I do come across such a prospect the situation is usually the same: the in-house person is taking advantage of the situation, frustrating staff, disappearing at times and nobody knows where they are. The network isn’t stable, the data is not secure, and the company is overpaying for bad IT service. Often this person is the ONLY IT staff member, which means that when this person goes on vacation, the company is left to fend for itself with non-IT folks handling support each other. When I sit down with such a prospect who has become frustrated enough to call my company, I can quickly show them that by outsourcing they can take what could be costing them $5,000 – $7,000/month with poor service and reduce that down to $2,000/month and have a much higher quality service, a team of backup techs, and immediate access to their dedicated tech who will make weekly routine onsite visits to their office. There have been plenty instances where we have gone in, and cut a client’s IT support overhead by 30-50%, fixed all the outstanding issues, got backups working properly, and settled the nerves of the staff that could then focus on their work for the company instead of complaining about how the computer network isn’t running properly. Until a company has 50-60 computers, outsourcing its IT support is the smartest, most cost effective way to run the business.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Full-time IT Support Staff Causing Headaches?
Thursday, May 6th, 2010Virtualization Provides Disaster Recovery for Chicago Businesses
Saturday, April 17th, 2010A Chicago business owner may wonder how server virtualization can provide value to their business. Disaster recovery can easily be accomplished by using a virtual server. Chicago businesses find it the the best way by allowing quick recovery during a server failure. When your server is a virtualized, it becomes a file. Then with special software you can take that file and “boot up” your virtual server on traditional server hardware. If that server hardware fails, you can simply take your virtual server file and boot it up quickly on another computer (even a desktop computer in a pinch!).
Even without lots of fancy software, the disaster recovery process can take 15-20 minutes. In the days before server virtualization, a dead server could mean running to CDW, purchasing a server off the shelf, loading the operating system, loading applications, loading backups, restoring the data and having a few days (or weeks) of tweaks and fixes to get the system somewhere near where it was before the crash. Not so with server virtulization because your whole server configuration is now a file that can be easily moved from hardware to hardware.
Adding a Printer Help with Chicago IT Consulting
Friday, February 19th, 2010If you have a home or small business network, then you might use or have a need for a network printer. This allows more than one computer to access the printer. This helps save on total printer costs and helps save space because you are reducing the clutter in the work area. It is possible to share one printer between numerous workstations. If you are doing this in a business setting, it might be easier to contact chicago it consulting to make the set up process much easier. This will allow you to make sure you completed the installation. By contacting chicago it consulting, you can save yourself from future confusion with your network printer.
A network printer can actually be one that is already installed on your home network. If it is already installed on one computer in your home or office, then you are in good shape to begin the install. First off, you will need to get the exact computer name of the workstation that the printer is installed on. Once you find this, make sure that you printer sharing is enabled. To check this, go to control panel. From here, click on the printer settings icon, right click on this icon and choose sharing. In this page, select the option that says Share this Printer and be sure to enter in a printer name. This can be whatever name you wish, just make sure it is something you will recognize.
The next step is to go to one of the workstations that does not have the printer installed. Go to the control panel and be sure to change the view to classic view. Once you switch to classic view, click on the Printer and Faxes icon. Select the “Add printer” text on the left sidebar. A dialog box will pop up and you can choose to add a network printer. The next step is to ask the computer to search for this networked printer. If the computer does not find the printer, then you will need to manually enter the information yourself. You enter this information in this format: “\\server\printername.” The server is the name of the computer that has the printer installed on it.
You will be prompted to enter in the necessary login information on the printer. Once this is completed, you will have a network printer. Overall, this might be difficult for many users to do on their own, so seeking the assistance of chicago it consulting might be to your advantage.
