Is your organisation prepared in the event of a major IT problem? When things go wrong, do you have the means to get back on the correct course?
It’s every professional’s least favourite way to start the day. You get set up in your office, boot up your computer, and the apps that you need for your day… aren’t starting up. Or perhaps you’re met with notifications from colleagues, or your IT admin, describing a problem with your servers.
Worst of all, you might boot up your device and find you’re completely unable to access any company data or resources. Here at TechQuarters, we know as well as anyone the frustration that a major IT issue can cause workers – and that’s why we work hard to deliver a service that minimizes our clients’ downtime in the event of a major problem with their IT. Are you aware of the most common IT issues that an organisation might get hit with?
Common IT Problems (and How We Resolve Them)
Having been in this business for the last 13 years, we’ve witnessed our fair share of IT infrastructure problems. We personally feel that our services can give our customers peace of mind, knowing that in the event of an issue that affects the whole organisation, we’ll already be working to resolve it. Below are three common IT problems that we can help you with.
Power Outages
A power outage may occur on a local or regional scale (and very rarely on a commercial scale). It may be the fault of the energy provider, or it may be the fault of a natural disaster (such as weather) or some other freak accident. This type of issue can cause a business to grind to a halt, for an unforeseeable amount of time. This can be particularly worrying, because in a majority of cases, there isn’t anything you can do about the power outage. As much as we’d love to say that we can flip a big switch and turn the power back on for our customers – we don’t have the ability. But, there are a number of things we can do.
How to Prepare for Power Outages
In the field of IT, we call this type of issue a disaster – something that can seriously impact your organisation’s ability to operate as normal. This is why disaster recovery (or DR) is a big topic, and a service that we take very seriously. DR is all about making a plan that helps preserve your business’ continuity and resiliency.
Here at TechQuarters, we have helped many clients improve their business resiliency with our Disaster Recovery, which includes simply yet powerful practices like daily backups from local servers to the cloud – meaning that a power outage won’t impact business data.
Another way in which we have helped businesses improve resiliency, and preserve continuity, is with our Cloud Hosting Services – which covers a range of hosting needs; such as Web & DNS hosting, Application Hosting, Azure Hosting, and more. If your website is hosted on local servers, a power outage will knock it out (which might impact consumer trust). With your website hosted in the cloud, you can at least be sure that the customer-facing side of your business can continue running as normal.
Outdated Hardware / Software
Modern business is by and large defined by technology, but many organisations still run on outdated hardware and software. This may not seem like a huge issue – after all, if it still works for you, why replace it? The reality is a bit more complicated, however. For one thing, no technology is infallible – and that is precisely why new hardware and upgraded software is constantly in development. There are many examples of businesses who have fallen victim to cyber-attacks that were able to infiltrate their organisation through vulnerabilities in old software. Legacy hardware gets progressively slower, resulting on poorer productivity levels – plus, with the advancements in hardware-based security standards (like the Windows 11 chip-to-cloud security standard), working on old hardware could prove to be a risk to security.
How to Avoid Hardware- and Software-related Issues
Patch and update management should be a frequent and consistent procedure in any business’ IT plan. This ensures that a business is never running on vulnerable software. At TechQuarters, we recommend the use of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, like Microsoft 365, to ensure that your organisation always has access to the latest version of the programs you rely on.
As the world progressively moves away from on-premise solutions, organisations should also consider minimizing the amount of critical hardware their infrastructure relies on. For instance, a business can eliminate servers from their infrastructure with a cloud migration.
New Technology Integration
This may seem like a funny one to anyone that news us, because we are big proponents of IT modernization. But, there is a right way and a wrong way to integrate new technologies. The buzz around digital transformation over the years has meant many organisations rushed procuring new technology of their infrastructure. The trouble with that is that combining modern and legacy solutions results in an over-complicated IT infrastructure, which may be more trouble than it is worth.
How to Integrate New Technology the Right Way
Whenever a business starts thinking about procuring new technologies, it is essential that they first evaluate their existing IT infrastructure. You may find that the new solution you want to integrate will be compatible with your current infrastructure; or you might find that, in order to integrate the new solution, you will need to upgrade other parts of your stack.
At TechQuarters, we provide both Consulting and Project Management services that are designed specifically for this – it allows us to help clients manage the integration of new solutions in the right way. In addition to this, our Change Management service helps with the adoption state of new tech integration.
