Microsoft Office 365
Office 365 is a subscription plan that includes access to Office applications plus a wide range of productivity services that are enabled over the internet such as SharePoint, Email, and Skype for Business etc. There are many reasons why a business should use Office 365 as a core IT business service. Security is a huge concern in this day and age, and email is one of the biggest security risks. Office 365 applications are accessed through 128-bit SSL/TSL encryption so that transmission cannot be intercepted. Exchange Online uses Forefront Online protection for Exchange (FOPE) to protect mail from malware and uses anti-spam filtering and antivirus with multiple virus engines. Reliability is another important consideration. Microsoft offers an SLA of 99.9% for scheduled uptime. There are multiple datacenters at work, all over the world, meaning when one goes down, another will take its place. Office 365 is also a very affordable solution and requires very little maintenance as this is done by Microsoft at no additional cost.
Offsite Backup
Every business should understand the importance of backing up their data. Backups are critical for keeping your business up and running when a disaster impedes your day to day business operations or even your business continuity in the long run. Even if you have never had an issue with your data for years, there is always the possibility of something happening to your data. There are many advantages to Offsite backup. The first advantage is the fact that you can access your data from anywhere across the internet. You are not bound by your local network to access backup data. This leads to the next point, where if anything happens to your business, i.e. your site catches fire and you lose all your hardware and internal backups, you still have your offsite backups at a secure remote location. The cost of Offsite backup really depends on how much data you have, a company with 100GB of data to backup will be far cheaper than a business with several terabytes of data.
Private Cloud Hosting
Private cloud is a type of cloud computing that delivers similar advantages to public cloud, including scalability and self-service, but through a proprietary architecture. A private cloud is dedicated to a single organization, thus you are not sharing the same network as other companies and that in itself has advantages; which include better security and privacy. You have much greater control with a private cloud, since the servers are dedicated to a single organization, this allows room to customize and manage a solution that is specific to your requirements. Another great advantage is the ease of converting a physical machine to a virtual machine. There are great disaster recovery options for a server that is virtualized. A huge plus, is the portability of a virtual server. If anything happens to the underlying hardware of a virtual machine, you can simply migrate the server to another server and in most cases it can be done with little service disruption.
Managed IT Services
The most important service that a small-medium sized is of course Managed IT Service. Managed IT Service is exactly what it sounds like, the management of your company’s IT Services. There are many moving parts in your company’s IT environment and if it is not your core business, there is little reason to pull focus off of your core business lines. A better option is having a service provider to manage these services. Most companies try to justify that by managing their own IT, but in most cases it is not cost effective.