Storing Data in the Cloud There is a truly astronomical amount of data produced by today?s businesses, each and every day. A business that can harness it can utilize it for many purposes. However, before the data can be harnessed, it must be stored. A very popular option for some time was to simply store it in the office, which worked, but did present various disadvantages as well: Office space wasn?t used efficiently, and there wasn?t much room to expand storage Intense power requirements, adding to the office?s temperature High costs of equipment and laborious setup times Warranties were questionable, and setup could cause problems Serious oversight and intensive maintenance were needed Furthermore, on-site storage didn?t make redundancy a very easy goal when trying to mitigate data loss, and most businesses simply didn?t have the requisite experience to implement and leverage this kind of storage. With a managed service provider on their side, however, a business has access to industry professionals and the various resources they have relationships with, including cloud storage providers. Backing Up and Recovering Data Data is one of the most important assets that a business has nowadays, which is what makes the various data disasters that can strike such a serious concern. This makes it all the more important that every business maintains an up-to-date, reliable data backup, as well as devises a comprehensive business continuity plan that enables them to actually use this data. It is important to take note of the word ?reliable? there. A backup that is under just as much risk from a disaster can hardly be relied upon – something that a good managed service provider will be sure to keep in mind as they help their clients prepare for a worst-case scenario. As a result of this awareness and forethought, a managed service provider will want to make sure that there are multiple backup copies of your data securely accessible to you if you ever need them. By keeping duplicates of your data in different places, your service provider can ensure that, should you ever need your backup, you have one? along with a plan to help you make the most of it. Making Your Data Work for You Via a Data Warehouse Take a moment and consider the amount of data you have collected in your time doing business. Now, take a moment and consider the insights and patterns that you may have missed by not having it all in one place. This is exactly what the data warehouse is meant to provide – a bird?s eye view at data that provides a new perspective. Using this perspective, you could improve your business? operations and thereby increase your success. Data warehousing, as it may be expected, requires considerable computing power. A managed service provider can help you to procure the required resources and put them to use. Stay Tuned for Our Next Installment! On the topic of procurement, that?s what the next edition of this series will touch upon. Subscribe to our blog to make sure you don?t miss it and reach out to White Mountain IT Services for any additional questions to be answered. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

What Does a Consultant Do? A consultant?s role in the business can be described somewhat simply – it is someone with resources or experience that is brought in to contribute to a project or process to elevate it beyond its typical capabilities. Consultants can be brought in for a variety of reasons, such as a business lacking the skills or knowledge to properly complete an objective, or simply looking to make a project more likely to be successful. In many ways, consultants are there to help businesses mitigate issues and boost their operational efficiency. What a Consultant Should Provide Any consultant you work with needs to have a few qualities? but the most important of these qualities is naturally the familiarity they have with the process you have brought them on to assist with. They need to have the knowledge that comes from extensive (and recent) experience, and the willingness to share it. This is what makes White Mountain IT Services a team of consultants, as we are brought in by companies to assist them with their IT management and maintenance. Resultantly, we only see ourselves as successful at what we do if our services and solutions prove to be beneficial to those that we work with. This makes it crucial that we only offer services that are accompanied by clear advantages for our clients, such as: Virtual CIO Services The cost of technology is a major concern for many of our clients. Whether they?re seeking to upgrade their IT or expand it to match their business? growth, there is a shared concern among them: they want to make sure they?re getting sufficient value from their investment. This is precisely why our Virtual CIO services are useful – we evaluate and plan out their technology strategy to ensure they get that value, and more. Vendor Management While vendors are crucial for a business? continued operations, communicating with them can be a time-suck for many businesses – especially if multiple vendors need to be contacted. Our Vendor Management services allow you to focus on generating revenue, while we serve as your single point of contact for all of your different suppliers. Business Process Management The point of integrating technology into a business is largely to boost efficiency. Someone within the business in question may not have the perspective to use their available resources optimally – something that a managed service provider will have and be able to leverage. Furthermore, as your managed service provider has a stake in your continued success, you can be confident that they will do all they can to ensure that success. This Is Just the Beginning of What a Managed Service Provider Can Do A managed service provider can deliver value in this way, as well as many others. Make sure you subscribe so you don?t miss the next installment of this series, and if you want to learn more now, reach out to White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800!

Cloud Adoption One trend that has seemingly been a trend for almost a decade is the continued use of cloud computing to expand the reach of a company. Nowadays, there have been several innovations that now make cloud computing a no-brainer for the modern small business. Servers, software, and other resources can be extraordinarily expensive, and maintaining them can often cost even more. Many of today?s most utilized productivity software now come in a service package through the cloud. This presents an opportunity for the small business to get any type of software in needs without carrying the huge capital investment that buying new hardware and paying for software licensing is sure to thrust on a business.  Smarter Business (BI & BA) Another trend we are seeing is that more and more small businesses are utilizing business intelligence and business analytics platforms to get a better read on how their business investments are returning revenue-generating situations. Using these platforms allows businesses to alter their business strategies to the market in which they compete, giving them a better understanding of what they need to do to improve their operations. Everything Digital  Up until recently, and even today, digital transformation is often considered too costly for the SMB. That shouldn?t stop smaller businesses from pursuing this strategy where they can. The more a business does early to prioritize building a digital workplace, the better position they will be in going forward. There are several ways a business can go about doing this. They can start either in their customer-facing strategies or with their internal ones. One way that a business can start is by installing a platform that allows for secure remote work experiences. This will not only make it easier for their own staff to work remotely, it also opens up the possibility to leverage outsourced workers into higher degrees of productivity and cost reduction.  If you are looking for the right technology to invest in, the consultants at White Mountain IT Services can help you find innovative solutions that will create workable ROIs, while boosting efficiency, communications, and productivity. Call us today to see how we can help at (603) 889-0800.

Let?s take a few moments to examine how the support offered by a managed service provider is delivered, and how it ultimately benefits the businesses that leverage it. What Makes Managed Support So Different? Consider what you could expect to experience if you encountered a technology issue under each approach to obtaining support. In the traditional system, a user would only call in support when a problem had been encountered – one severe enough to prevent them from being productive at all, or at least one that hindered their capability to work effectively. Their ?computer guy? would come into the office to see what the problem was, and whether or not it could be fixed on the spot. If it could, the visitor would spend a few hours in the office, noisily making repairs. If not, it was back to his shop for a time, leaving the business short a workstation and an employee stuck unproductive. On the other hand, with a managed service provider offering their support, a user?s overall experience would play out quite differently. Rather than a computer guy being called in to diagnose the workstation in person (or whatever IT component was acting up), a technician could be called and, without any travel time necessary, remotely access the problematic equipment to identify the problem and resolve it. Onsite Support if Necessary In the majority of cases, this remote connection is sufficient for the managed service provider to accomplish what they need to do. However, there are some issues that will need a physical presence to resolve. In these cases, a managed service provider will send out one of their trained technicians to attend to the problem, professionally and proficiently. Rally Your Business with Reliable Support Services Technology is meant to be a tool – don?t let it actually hurt your operations. The professionals at White Mountain IT Services can help you make the most of your IT through managed services. For the next part of this series, make sure you check back on our blog.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) A recovery point objective is measured in time. The figure describes and determines how much data a business is willing to lose in the event a disaster strikes their business. This metric is a good one for an organization to determine how often to perform data backups, since in theory, the more data you need to maintain, the more frequently you will be backing up said data.  Recovery Time Objective (RTO) A recovery time objective is also measured in time. It determines how much time you can go without recovering data and IT infrastructure before you lose continuity of your business. After a disaster it is extremely important to get data and infrastructure back up as soon as possible, but some businesses can function better than others without access to its normal critical data and infrastructure.  RPO vs RTO RPO and RTO are both metrics widely used in business disaster recovery and need to be qualified properly in order to be effective. To help you and your network administrator set up a disaster recovery platform that is right for your business, we look at some of the differences between RPO and RTO: Calculation This is where it gets tricky. You would think that RPO is easier to calculate because there are fewer moving parts, right? The problem is that you can only restore data to working hardware, and if a disaster knocks out your organization?s server, for instance, you won?t be able to restore anything until new hardware is procured. So when calculating an RPO, you have no choice but to do it by calculating inherent cost and demand for data. RTO, on the other hand, has to stay aligned with what is possible. If your business? RTO is too close to its necessary RPO, you business may be in jeopardy if a major outage such as a server failure takes place.  Assessment and Cost  The costs associated with maintaining a strict RTO will likely be greater than those for RPO. This is largely because in the case of RTO, you are looking at the complete computing infrastructure, while RPO is just about data. As far as the assessment of each, RTO incorporates a lot of your business? more crucial needs, while, again, RPO is focused on data. Automation To meet your organizational RPO goals, all you need to do is perform data backups at the interval specified by your RPO assessment. Since data backup is one of the easiest parts of your business to automate, having a strong RPO strategy is simple. Unfortunately, there is no practicable way to automate RTO, since many of the systems that need to be restored are likely physical hardware systems.  Takeaways When building a disaster recovery plan that will keep you in the game after a disaster, but also won?t cost your business a lot of capital, setting realistic RPO and RTO goals is critical. For more information about RPO and RTO, or disaster recovery, reach out to our knowledgeable professionals today at (603) 889-0800.