Q. What do you give someone running their own business during the holiday season?

A. A break.

Sound familiar? You’re running your own business. You’re putting everything into it. You rarely have time off. What you really can use is … a break. But that could mean closing down or leaving all the critical business system challenges to someone else.

All your employees expect to be away over the holiday season, but you still have important systems and key processes to keep running. Who will monitor and maintain them if nobody is onsite? How can you and your staff enjoy that much needed break to recharge your batteries with the peace of mind knowing that everything is under control and secure?

The answer to that conundrum is as simple as – managed IT services.

We have previously discussed in our blogs some of the primary benefits available from outsourced managed IT services from a managed service provider (MSP), e.g. cloud computing, hosted email, mobile device management, data backup and disaster recovery, IT consulting, VoIP systems, etc.

Viewed through the prism of enabling you – a business owner – to enjoy a worry-free holiday season with your family, some of these added benefits can be presented as follows:

Pay for what you use. If the holiday season is generally a slow period for your business, you’re likely to be using less IT resources and can expect to pay less. Conversely, if the festive season is traditionally busy in your industry, you’re probably using more resources. But you still only pay for what you actually use, as opposed to buying and maintaining an in-house infrastructure designed to cope with the peak period.

Capacity planning. MSPs use a modern, sophisticated suite of tools to constantly monitor all aspects of the services they manage on your behalf, including file space, database size, network bandwidth and data transfer volumes and rates. We also maintain a comprehensive record of all your historical information which can be used to help your business plan during peaks and troughs. This enables peak period service requirements to be accurately anticipated and budgeted for in advance. That means no surprises or unexpected financial outlay just before or during the holidays.

24×7 offsite monitoring of all services under management. While you and your staff are enjoying the holidays, we are constantly monitoring all aspects of your IT services. If a potential problem is discovered, remedial action is implemented before it becomes a genuine problem. If an actual problem occurs, we will quickly and efficiently recover the situation and have things running normally in the fastest possible time, often without having to bother you until after it’s fixed.

Security and backups. All security updates, firewall maintenance and your backup regime will continue uninterrupted during your absence, without the need for in-house support. If the worst does happen, then we will initiate your disaster recovery plan to ensure business continuity with minimum downtime.

Service levels increase. Under our managed service plan, there is less likelihood of an IT problem hitting you at a peak period, such as the holidays. If it does, it’s more likely to be quickly fixed with minimum impact on your clients.

While you and your staff may be on holiday, or for that matter during any other time of year, you can be sure that we aren’t. All your managed IT services are being monitored and maintained, as well as potential glitches are being identified and resolved before they can have a negative impact on your business.

What’s more you can turn to us for those holiday business gifts that keep on giving throughout the New Year and beyond. Consider us for supplying your team and business with dual monitors, faster PCs and of course, less downtime. All of these items, and more, yield bottom line profit for your business. Just ask us how.

So give yourself and your business the gift of managed IT services this holiday season. For more information about how managed IT services can give you peace of mind during the most peaceful time of year, contact us today for a free hour of IT consulting.

Happy Holidays from Us to You!