6 Reasons Why You Need Managed Services in Fort Lauderdale

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The need for managed services has never been more critical as innovation in the business world is continually on the rise. A managed IT services provider based in Fort Lauderdale can help your South Florida business mitigate natural disasters like hurricanes, keep up with the pace of advancing technology and enhance your business’ efficiency.

Are you unsure if Managed Services are correct for your business?

Here are six reasons why you might want to reconsider:

1. Minimized Downtime and Increased Productivity

A managed IT service provider helps you to avoid system shutdowns and failures, thereby reducing the time spent on making complex IT decisions. When these technology-related frustrations are minimized, your team is able to focus on their work, which in turn guarantees your company a higher level of productivity.

2. Improved Compliance and Security

As technology continues to advance, cyber-criminals are also continuing to invent new malicious attack methods, which puts businesses at a high risk of data breaches. A managed service provider will help protect your business from such attacks and offer quick solutions if one happens. They are also able to supplement additional protocols, procedures, and policies to ensure compliance.

3. High-Level Support on Up-to-the-Minute Technology

One of the benefits of constant system management and monitoring is that you can rely on the most current IT systems at no financial risk or extra costs. Additionally, as a result of their many years of experience, quality-managed service providers are able to implement new IT systems within a short time, thereby saving you money and time.

4. Good Return on Business and Cost Effectiveness

Employing the services of a managed IT service provider is a cost-saving investment. It helps to control outgoing expenses, which in turn enhances return on investment.  A managed service provider is able to achieve this by minimizing hardware costs, keeping systems updated, providing expert knowledge, and sustaining high levels of security.

5. Access to a Wide Range of Solutions

Over time, your business needs various solutions such as customer relationship management software (CRM) and accounting software solutions to handle multiple individual needs that keep on rising. With accounting solutions, it becomes easy to monitor taxes, vendors, and financial information. CRM helps to gather greater business visibility through campaigns, notes, and surveys. Managed service providers are able to provide these solutions. Resulting in a more secure data-controlled system that helps your company to manage both customer and business information.

6. Regular Maintenance

A managed IT service provider offers a proactive approach to maintenance. Thus, rids you of your worries about dependability and network speed solutions. They are always on standby to detect any potential vulnerabilities, disturbances, or threats. Then, fix them as quickly as possible.

Bottom Line

As technology continues to transform the world of business, there is a need for you to streamline your business’ IT operations. Hiring a qualified managed services provider saves you money, time, and frustrations, and, more importantly, enhances your business’ productivity.

Are you worried about how to secure the best-managed IT services provider in Fort Lauderdale? Worry no more! Bluwater Technologies, a WheelHouse IT company, has got you covered. Contact us today to see the difference.

Outsourcing IT Functions Reduces Costs and Increases Productivity

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The  ‘Forbes Technology Council’  reminds business owners to ask the right questions before making their next IT purchase: Is that hardware, program, or application “vital, a luxury, or redundant?”

Forbes: Under-capitalized SMB faces IT challenges

In general, larger companies have the financial where-with-all to maintain an in-house IT department, leaving the under-capitalized SMB owner in a “struggle to stay afloat” during a downturn. 

“Lack of expertise” behind many outsourcing IT expenditures

Keeping up with the changes in technology can impact IT expenditures. The worst-case scenario is not knowing just how the purchase will ultimately help their business succeed. 

Consequently, decision-makers can be “overwhelmed with choices,” and an overall  “lack of expertise.”  

Budgets consume business-critical systems

In fact, according to a recent Deloitte ‘Tech Trends’ report, it is not unusual for IT expenditures to consume “as much as 70%” of the budget just to keep “business-critical systems” up and running. 

“Cheaper storage, cloud, and outsourcing have lowered…budgetary outlay(s) by 20 percent or more. Yet in an era of perpetually tight IT budgets, finding ways to redirect financial and human assets from operations to innovation remains a top…goal.“

Forbes favors outsourcing IT

Forbes recommends ‘outsourcing’ IT functions to help remedy cash-flow problems, or issues stemming from a business downturn. By offloading some, or all, of their IT operations to an experienced, MSP business owners benefit from having more time to run their business. 

Ultimately, using a  managed service provider (MSP) like BluWater Technology can not only reduce IT costs but can also add that next level of expertise to your operations. Ultimately, this leads to a “win-win scenario of saving time and money” while “improving team productivity.”

To find out how your business can operate more efficiently by using our MSP services, contact us.  We help improve bottom lines by assigning fixed costs to some—or all—of a company’s IT expenditures.

Build a Consistent Forecast with Managed IT Support

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It can be hard to know where a small business is going to go over the course of a year. But if you have limited funds, or you have investors who want a reliable plan on how their money is going to be used and how their investments will turn into profit, then you need to minimize surprises. One of the best ways to do that is to keep your expenses consistent, and you can do that with managed IT support.

Monthly fees are better on the books than irregular, high-priced fixes.

Every company needs some version of IT support. Whether it’s a dedicated employee that you have on staff, a company you can turn to when your network goes out, or a subscription-based support plan, it’s a vital protection for both companies that have online stores and companies and that just online systems to support a physical store. But of all the available models, managed IT support subscriptions are the best for your long-term finances because you can predict the costs accurately.

Each month has the same fee for the same degree of network success. On-staff experts are expensive. This is because both security and network experts come with hefty price tags. They are a human resource that costs more than just the salary price to employ. Thus, paying for individual outages adds up.

Why should you pay a monthly fee if your network seems fine now?

Good service providers do more than maintain the status quo. They monitor your network for burgeoning outages so your website never crashes. They implement updates to help you manage the technological side of employee turnover. Additionally, they fix problems that crop up without extra fees. Downtime isn’t just an expense, it’s lost revenue.

Contact Bluwater Technologies for more ways an IT support service can help keep your expenses predictable and your business growth consistent.

The Money Savings in Multi-Tenancy: Backup as a Service

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Money Savings

Data backup as a third-party service is one of the most common data recovery elements for new and growing businesses. This isn’t just because using third parties to handle administrative matters and business tasks not related to your central product is becoming more and more popular as a business practice; it’s because cloud-based storage and data recovery can be complicated, and the risks of making a mistake and not backing up everything pose too high a cost. But one of the most valuable aspects of getting storage as a service is that you’re paying for the services you need instead of an oversized infrastructure. This means money savings for you and your organization.

How does multi-tenancy equal money savings on data storage?

Imagine the typical downtown office space. A small company might rent part of a floor, while a middle or growing business might rent a whole floor and, provided business is good, add another to their rental agreement. Even if that company keeps growing and adding floors full of salespeople and customer support reps, it will be a long time before they take up the whole building. They wouldn’t buy the building and then slowly start to fill part of it up; they’ll just keep renting what they need and then evaluate their options once the company gets large enough for them to reconsider.

Data storage is the exact same situation. While you’re a small or mid-sized company, you don’t need a whole storage array of servers and data recovery systems. You just need a small part of one, and even as the size of your data grows, it will be a long time before your provider has to dedicate an entire array just for your company. While data backup as a service does cost a monthly ‘rent,’ that rent is only for the services you need instead of an entire over-sized infrastructure for services you don’t.

Data backup keeps companies safe, and more and more businesses rely on data backup to keep their businesses thriving. Data backup as a service does that even better by giving your company access to resources and storage options without the high upfront costs and required know-how of DIY data storage. Find a plan that works best for your business with Bluwater Technologies here.

Free Open Source Software for Business

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Free Open Source Software

Budgeting for Business

Managing budgets is quite often a crucial part of any business that is woefully overlooked, especially for startups. A key area where budgets are strained is in the software that is used. Most users are familiar with using Windows or Mac along with Office applications and Antivirus software without much regard to costs beyond their initial purchase. However, for businesses, these software costs have a long-term and continuous impact.

Software is Expensive

So when we take a business approach to software where each PC would have a typical Windows operating system, Microsoft Office program, and Antivirus software, we can see how costs can add up quickly across multiple machines. In addition to the initial software costs, you also have ongoing licensing fees and any technical support services you might need beyond software.

Open Source Software as a Business Solution

Open Source Software, like the Linux operating system, is used in billions of computing devices daily. For everything from personal computing to supercomputers. Businesses especially rely heavily on Linux as a foundation to run their systems and the best part is that it’s a free open-source operating system.

Using Open Source Software can serve a variety of needs for many forms of businesses. For the typical office setup described earlier, an alternative free setup would be:

  • Desktop Operating System: Linux Mint
  • Office application: LibreOffice
  • Antivirus: not an absolute requirement for desktop Linux
  • Software costs and licenses: $0

Free Open Source Software is Good

Now the term “Free” is not often associated with quality software products. As mentioned earlier, Linux is used in every aspect of the business. So quality is not something that should be of concern. What is of value is that these free Open Source options have matured to the point where it’s simple, stable, and compatible with other software programs like Microsoft Office. And since much of our daily computing needs center on internet browsers like Chrome, users will feel right at home on an Open Source computer.

Technology is rapidly evolving and developing software solutions that lead to more efficient budgets. This is something that all businesses can gain value from. Contact us for professional technology and support solutions.