In today’s era of IT-driven business, is your organisations prepared to deal with the most common technology problems that might affect you?
The last thing that any business wants is to experience problems with their IT infrastructure; and with modern business being increasingly interlinked with technology, it is reasonable to be worried about that happening. If you are an organisation that relies on information technology, it is important for you to be aware of the types of IT problems you might experience. We reached out to some IT support companies to learn more about this. One company that provides IT support Law Firms rely on got back to us and described some of the problems their clients often experience, and how they handle them.
How Can IT Services Help with IT Problems?
IT services refer to any kind of professional service provided by a company that is aimed at helping the client with some facet of their information technology. This could be limited to simply IT support, or it could be full-range managed services. According to the companies we spoke with – most of whom provide business IT support London-based organisations rely on – IT services are helping businesses (especially small businesses) manage their technology more efficiently; this is because these service give businesses access to a wider and more diverse pool of experience, as well as better resources.
So, what are some examples of IT problems that a good IT service provider can help with?
1. Outdated Technology
Once an organisation starts using technology, they are locked into keeping it up to date – but why is that? If a business’ workflows and operations rely on technology, it means the business will become less efficient as the technology becomes less efficient – and all technology loses efficiency as it ages. There is not a single form of digital technology that is infallible, and which remains 100% effective forever. Outdated technology is in fact one of the biggest causes of business inefficiency.
So, how do IT services help with this problem? First and foremost, they help organisations keep on top of their technology management. This includes things like managing software patch updates across the whole organisation, or assessing when hardware is likely to need replacing. According to a company we spoke to that specialises in Microsoft 365 consulting, replacing on-premise solutions (such as server-based hosted apps) with Software as a Service (SaaS) can ensure that a business’ software remains up-to-date indefinitely.
2. IT Disasters
In business, as in life, sometimes unexpected things can happen; and sometimes things can go seriously wrong. In the context of business IT, this is what is called a disaster – it mainly refers to any event which impacts an organisation’s technology to such a degree that they are incapable of operating properly. An IT disaster may be caused by many different things – it could be a power outage that affects a business’ servers; it could be a cyber-attack; or even a natural disaster, such as a storm.
So, how do IT services help in the event of an IT disaster? Disaster recovery (DR) is in fact an important field in modern IT. It is the practice of ensuring that a business’ IT infrastructure is insulated against the potential impact of a disaster – this mainly includes ensuring your infrastructure has multiple redundancies (such as data redundancy through backups, power supply redundancy, etc.)
3. User Errors
It might not be the first thing you think of when it comes to a problem levelling a business’ IT infrastructure, but simply human error can potentially wreak havoc on technology. There are real-world examples of how something as simple as a mistyped command can result in entire infrastructures crashing for several hours (look at the time in 2017 when several high-profile websites crashed due to human error during a routine cloud maintenance procedure).
An IT service providers will know full-well about these types of issues, and will be able to help businesses setup policies and protocols that will prevent such errors from happening.
