4 Ways to Solve Your Small & Medium Business Tech Woes

If you're in a small or medium-sized business (SMB), you're probably used to wearing a lot of different hats and juggling a ton of different roles. Some tasks, like swapping lightbulbs, are easy to handle alongside normal responsibilities. However, treating IT as just one of those hats you wear will eventually backfire on your business.

When tech development and maintenance can't quite keep up as a strategic priority, or things change faster than your team can handle, your business might find itself dealing with unsupported software, old-school hardware, and a dip in team productivity.

In this newsletter, we'll explore four solutions to help ensure your technology propels your business growth with less effort.

1. Managing Aging Hardware

Remember when you unwrapped your brand-new server? It sparkled, it was so shiny, and you made absolutely sure it ticked all the boxes for compliance and functionality... but then, just four short years down the line, you're staring down a reality where the storage feels like a cramped closet, the processor lags 4x behind the fast-moving tech world, and the ominous glow of software EOS looms ever closer.

Resource: When is a Computer Outdated?

PaaS & IaaS

Instead of committing to significant investments in physical hardware every few years, opting for cloud services such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) ensures an effective and contemporary environment. This keeps both hardware and software updated and spares you the effort and stress of setting up and maintaining on-site systems.

Through a solution like Microsoft Azure, you can use the cloud for virtual machines, backups, web apps, additional computing, and so much more. And with Azure, you only pay for what you use.

2. Mobilizing Your Workforce

Don't let mobilizing your workforce turn into your tech taking off without you. You've got the chance to tackle those tech headaches and security risks that pop up the right way.

Hosted Email and Productivity Suite

A hosted email and productivity platform provides flexibility while reducing technical challenges and security risks. Data is typically stored in the cloud, where it's regularly backed up and accessible from almost any location.

Microsoft 365 is competitively priced and offers a great tool set with Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, and OneDrive. It eliminates the need to purchase, manage, or maintain your own Exchange server—plus, it meets compliance requirements like HIPAA, so you avoid potential fines from being incompliant.

3. Maintaining Uptime / Preventing Downtime

So, you've got a business that runs smoothly day to day, right? But then, night hits, and there you are, wide awake and stressing over the what-ifs of a critical device failing or being destroyed by a disaster.

Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan

A full-fledged backup and disaster recovery plan provides more than just uptime and business continuity—it gives peace of mind. Downtime can cost your company nearly $12,500 an hour through loss of critical resources and productivity. Backup and disaster recovery solutions keep downtime to a minimum so you stay profitable and meet customer needs.

Implementing a backup plan is your initial move toward achieving peace of mind. Our blog on getting started with a backup and disaster recovery plan can guide you through this process. The appropriate solution varies based on the specific data you need to safeguard, and we often recommend Azure for its robust capabilities. Azure excels in safeguarding your entire data center by replicating virtual machines into the hosted environment of Microsoft's geo-synchronous data centers, enabling your environment to be operational just minutes after a disaster.

Resource: How to create a disaster recovery plan – is Azure right for you?

4. Avoiding Cyberattacks

As big companies are becoming tougher nuts to crack, hackers are aiming for the smaller ones instead. Security threats are always changing and can easily sneak up on you… even when you're doing everything right.

Multifactor Authentication

We talk about MFA a lot today, but that's because it is THAT important and shouldn't be overlooked. Merely enforcing a username + password form of authentication has become dangerous and insufficient, so we often (strongly) recommend a multifactor authentication solution such as this one from WatchGuard Technologies.

MFA is comprised of well…multiple factors:

• Something you have (card, token, etc.).
• Something you know (password, question, etc.).
• Something you are (physical characteristics or biometrics of the user).

Users might get frustrated that there are too many steps to access their technology, but the truth about modern MFA systems is that most utilize 'adaptive' or 'risk-based' authentication. What does this mean, you ask? Mostly, if everything seems normal (location or device type), you may only need your password. If something is off, additional proof will be required, thus creating a balance between user experience and strong security.

Now go do what you do!

Addressing these business obstacles through sustainable solutions will free up more time to devote to your company's missions and objectives, allowing technology to become a catalyst rather than a complication!

Wearing many hats will always be in the fiber of small and medium businesses, but you don't have to wear all the hats. If managing technology feels overwhelming or seems to be slipping through your fingers, think about outsourcing it. By outsourcing your IT, whether in whole or in part, you liberate your team's time, allowing them to focus on more significant projects.

If you could use the help - CCB is here for you!