Get Computer Support Small Business Enterprise on a budget

Having worked in many different technical environments I realized that there are four main flavors of how computer support is usually that depends on where the computer is. Residential, SOHO and small businesses, medium sized businesses and large corporations (enterprise.)

Residential Computer Repair
An owner of residential computers with one or two computers generally do not maintain your computer. Like a car without an oil change, things go wrong at some point. It 's inevitable. They end up losing the data they need, often the work of information, the family is screaming, and as you can get the computer repaired anywhere, it costs more than it should with some basic maintenance at low cost and have never return to the state they were before the failure, losing data permanently.

Small Business Computer Repair
A small computer business owner with fewer than 25 computers typically purchase a support contract with their supplier of hardware and will also do some business contacts computer support have met with the Chamber of Commerce. They often do not have a written plan on what to do if they lost a major computer system or service, or have a process to resolve the problem, so that you get by when it fails. Their commercial contacts for technical assistance will come through fine but since this is a service of ad hoc support, the entrepreneur will not be a priority to help customers who have over the normal service contracts. A small business owner of the computer usually but not always have anti-virus software, usually do not run Windows Update or patch systems. They usually back up some data, but not enough to get all the way up to 100% functionality quickly.

Medium Business Computer Repair
A medium-sized businesses with fewer than 500 computers in general to buy hardware and support contracts will have a small professional team of technical support by troubleshooting and repair of the reactive system as well as the work of the technical project. Probably do some 'preventive maintenance of computer systems, mission-critical, but not all of their systems or desktop. You probably have some web services hosted in a data center third for maximum service time.

Business Enterprise Computer Repair
A large business often have thousands of computers and large groups of professional technological support. Standards of service contracts will be the largest technology companies OEM. They have distributed systems that are constantly maintained their primary systems and have locked their systems are not critical to the point that it is difficult to damage them by accident. They will have a plethora of systems and technical monitoring business to tell them everything is ok. They will normally have hardware data centers in different places. Will almost certainly have a Disaster Recovery Plan Master documenting their business systems and processes and how to retrieve the most important time of failure.

Maintenance of the computer - what works
The reason for large companies spend a lot of money developing, fixing and monitor their systems is money. They know from bitter experience and case studies that each internal downtime costs them more money without downtime. Thus working to reduce as much as possible through a series of easy to implement the technical stages that ironically can be done to the smallest business.

Computer Maintenance - Disaster Recovery Plan
You do not need a brokerage firm on Wall Street to do this, and is the number one most important thing you can do for the business hands down. A disaster recovery plan is one of the easiest things for a small computer business owner to implement and requires minimal technical knowledge. It's about identifying the phases of the business processes needed to stay in business, make money, send Product, etc. When you know what these processes are, then you may find the technical systems that depend on them as part of and understand What you would need to restore them, if you lost those technical systems. The hardest part as they are the business processes, getting all the paper and can be easily done by a company official in consultation with someone from sales, purchasing, accounting, etc. Once you document the process you can bring in a qualified technician to help you document what it means in terms of technology and implement a solution or guide you on the steps to do alone. Often the solution is just to know where your important files are kept and how you can back up and restore it without risk.

Ironically its still easier for those who have computers at home since your needs are generally less complex. Your family will typically have some common groups of information they need. Family photos, documents, videos, music, etc. To understand what is a weekend then make sure you back up. You could have a small NAS in your house, which is what we do, or maybe you use an off site backup service. In either case works well.

Computer Maintenance - Anti-Virus and Malware prevention software
Living a virus on your computer system is devastating. Often thrash through all your files, your privacy is compromised, and often the car is hijacked to do some other operation. Botnets are real, can be dangerous for the system, and are easy to avoid. Antivirus software you get a piece of the way there.

Virus prevention software is cheap, often less than $ 30 per year. You can manually install it yourself or use an anti-virus managed service from a provider such as Mad River Systems. For a nominal monthly cost than installing antivirus software on a client system remotely and manage it remotely for them. Regardless of how you choose to do this step is a must have now. Not scrimp on it. Protect all systems that have the anti virus software.

Computer Maintenance - Windows Updates
After 10 years of being hammered by all, Microsoft has gotten pretty good automation and distribution system upgrades. Keeping your current computer is among the most effective ways to protect yourself from downtime. In corporate environments I have seen companies go offline by an infection of the virus and the only computer that continued to run were those that were patched. Word to the wise, take care of this. Your two basic options are too configure it to run automatically at a particular time each day or night on any machine or use a managed service provider like Mad River Systems to do it for you remotely. Just as the anti-virus solution, for a nominal fee you can handle for you so as not to disrupt your business without having to get into your business.

Computer Maintenance - System optimization
Lets face it from time to time you need to bring your car in a dealer or shop to check things out, even if it is not broke. They take care of small maintenance issues before they become large problems, and generally let you know if there is something wrong or is about to go wrong. Computers are no different.

There are many indicators of how a computer system you are running. Honestly manually control may be a chore. But you can do yourself. If you can not opt ​​for a managed service provider like Mad River Systems, which can make for you from a distance .......