In our current uncertain environment, having the ability to service your customers even when an office is inaccessible is critical. Take a moment to think about what’s most necessary for your job, and whether you can access these resources from anywhere in the event of a fire, flood, hurricane, or pandemic.

For most office work, having access to your computer, it’s associated applications and data, your Email and other communications software such as inter-office messaging, and phone access are the most critical tools to get your job done. Aces IT Support LLC can help make all 3 of these remotely accessible. So if your employee can’t make it in due to bad weather, childcare needs, or other factors, they may still be able to work if configured properly. You can even access your office phone system, including participating in call queues and transfer to other coworkers from your computer, cell phone/tablet, or even a home desk phone.

Contact Aces IT Support for assistance with making your office more flexible in regards to staffing, as well as increasing uptime during these trying times.

Many large companies are encouraging their employees to work from home. Can you as a small business allow your employees the same flexibility? With the right planning and solutions, yes you can. The correct solution depends a lot on your business, the data you interact with routinely, as well as regulatory concerns and other factors, but here are a few basic guidelines.

Many businesses have built out cloud enabled services that are accessible over a standard web browser. Obviously these companies have the greatest flexibility and easiest path for remote use. If you merely need access to basic documents, spreadsheets, and more, you can likely migrate your data to a modern office platform, such as Microsoft Office 365, or Google Suite. These allow for remote access of common data files, as well as browser based editors to view and change these files. These platforms also allow for communication including video conferencing, audio conferencing, chat, and of course business class email solutions. Costs for a full solution with email, document storage and browser editing, and communications start as low as $5/user/month for Microsoft Office 365, or $6/month for Google Suite. In either case, when you’re storing data in the cloud, you need to ensure your data is protected, so work with a qualified computer consultant to ensure your data is protected in a public cloud.

Other business have databases or licensed applications that can’t be accessed over a web browser. For these offices, various remote desktop solutions exist, from full-blown Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solutions, to remote access that simply utilizes the existing desktops/workstations that you have in place. Depending on the types of applications you’re running, various solutions will provide the best experience, so contact us via the link at the top of this page, or call us to discuss your options.

Finally, for the small business there are various remote desktop solutions available. These range from GoToMyPC, to LogMeIn, and newcomers like RemotePC. Once again, your experience is going to be determined both by the product your choose, as well as how it is configured. Your needs, such as multiple monitors, high resolution displays, and video/accurate color requirements can affect your choices here. If you do look into one of these “self-service” options, please note the following suggestions.

1. Ensure you are aware of HOW your system is being accessed. Many solutions will leave your local monitor fully visible, so people walking past your office computer can view what you are doing, including potentially confidential and secure data. They also may be able to take over control of your system from your physical desk, potentially installing malware or cloning data.

2. Make sure you are using secure, complex, and UNIQUE passwords for your remote access solution. It should go without saying, but don’t reuse passwords.

3. Ensure you have Mulfi-Factor Authentication enabled and required for remote access if you’re using an internet enabled service. I recommend using Authy for multi-factor code generation, however there are a multitude of options available. You have to enable this when you setup your service, it’s typically not enabled by default.

There are risks involved with remote access, including malware on employee’s home computers spreading to the office network, or employees browsing inappropriate materials on corporate owned laptops, again potentially infecting the office network. Reach out to us at Aces IT Support to figure out a solution that works for your specific needs and budget. Secure and efficient solutions are not limited to large fortune 500 businesses any longer, we can provide extremely cost effective solutions for small businesses with as few as 1 employee.

I’ve been working with a small business who previously used a large, premium Managed Solutions Provider for their IT services. Consulting with the client on their past needs and expenses, it became obvious that while their needs were being met, that the solutions being provided were not tailored to the customers specific needs. As such, while I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the MSP was ripping off their customer, it was obvious that they had developed a stack of products and processes that were tailored to their typical business customer, in the 50-500 employee range, while being massively overbuilt for smaller businesses.

As one of many examples, the MSP wanted to develop a system image suited to the clients workstations, and push them on brand new workstations. A system image allows you to deploy a consistent application environment across many machines. This makes troubleshooting faster in complex software environments, since groups of systems share identical installation processes and software platforms. When you’re supporting 50+ computers for a university computer lab, having the ability to pull out a spare computer, and deploy it within a few hours is very powerful and convenient. But in the case of this particular customer, they only ran a few apps on their workstations that were easy to deploy, and patch consistently. As such, the time invested to develop an image was disproportionate to their needs. The intial deployment was quoted at roughly 40 hours, for a project that will take Aces IT Support LLC less than 20 to complete. The MSP’s system image will need to be updated from time to time to ensure it’s kept up to date, while I can deploy current software builds when needed, which in the case of this small office is rare. Why update a software image every year if you only deploy new systems for new employees every 2 years? Many application installations and configuration options can be automated and kept consistent in other ways such as Group Policy, that are more cost effective than a traditional system image. Sometimes the best, isn’t the best for you.

You need to ask yourself, do you want an IT provider that prioritizes what’s best for your specific needs, or who simply quotes out the same stack of products regardless of whether you’re a 500 employee national company, or a 10 employee small business? Just because something will get the job done, doesn’t mean it’s going to be the most cost effective solution for your business. Let large enterprise MSP’s serve large enterprises, and trust Aces IT Support LLC with your small business technology needs.

Over the lifecycle of an average computer, you will go through many changes. You will constantly add more data to your system, but most will also add new applications and tasks to their workflows as job responsibilities and family responsibilities change. Depending on your foresight when purchasing your computer, the system you bought a few years ago may not be meeting your needs today. When it comes to most computers, you have a multitude of options to increase the capabilities of the system you already own, to tackle these new responsibilities.

Heavy multitasking? Add another monitor! This is a cost effective method of increasing the speed of your workflows, by eliminating the time spent minimizing/switching windows. Monitors can be added to most desktops, many all-in-one computers, and most laptops as well. Once you go multi-monitor, you don’t go back!

Storage. Changing the storage component of your system can both add capacity for more data, as well as increase the speed of your system. Solid state drives are the defining feature of modern systems, yet even some new computers lack them. Decrease your boot time, open applications in a snap, and reduce the chance of data loss when moving your laptop.

RAM. Memory can improve the performance of your system, however there are limits. Many computers come with only a single stick of RAM, which can slow down your system since most consumer systems run faster with “dual channel” memory configurations. To run in dual channel, you require at least 2 sticks of RAM. This can increase the performance of your system by 10+% alone! Beyond that, having additional RAM prevents your system from reading and writing as much data to your hard drive, but that only happens if you don’t have enough RAM in the first place. For most users, 8GB is tolerable, 16GB is ideal, and 32GB is overkill, but this varies wildly based on the applications, and number of tasks you run simultaneously.

Lastly, there’s a possibility that your system can’t be upgraded. This is common in the case of Microsoft Surface, and Apple Mac systems. Macbooks are notorious for integrating every component into a single board, so you can’t upgrade, or even replace faulty components such as storage or memory. Instead, the entire board must be replaced, at a cost that typically leads most users to replace the computer instead. Microsoft’s surface pro computers are glued together, making opening the system for component replacement extremely dangerous, with a high likelihood of breaking the screen.

Reach out to Aces IT Support to discuss your upgrade options, and when purchasing new equipment to ensure your purchase will handle not only your needs today, but also in the future.